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1、,英国文学选读,教学课件,Unit2 Adventure Fiction Writers,Daniel Defoe (1660-1731) Jonathan Swift (1667-1745),Daniel Defoe (1660-1731),Daniel Defoe, the son of a butcher, was born in London. He received a good education in one of the best dissenting academies. Instead of becoming a clergyman, he became a hosier(
2、袜商) and traveled in Spain, Italy, France and Germany. He was a merchant and was once rather wealthy. He was always interested in politics. During the “Glorious Revolution”, he was a loyal supporter and took great interest in establishing the new government. However, whether because of his adventurou
3、s speculation(投机) in business or on account of the disastrous losses in shipping resulted from Englands wars with France, Defoe was forced into bankruptcy in 1692. In his seventy years of life, Defoe passed through all extremes of life: from poverty to wealth, from prosperity to obscurity, from Newg
4、ate Prison to immense popularity and royal favor. All this is obscure enough in detail, but two facts stand out clearly and are worth mentioning.,First, Defoe was a jack-of-all-trades(多面手)a merchant, soldier, economist, journalist, pamphleteer(活页文章作者), publicist(宣传家) and novelist. He was famous for
5、his versatility and was at least good at journalism and novel-writing. In English literature, he was often given the credit for the discovery of the modern novel. But Defoe the novelist came out of Defoe the journalist; he once conducted several papers, the most popular one of which was The Review.
6、As a journalist, he had a reporters eye for the picturesque and a newspapermans instinct for making a good story with simple, smooth and colloquial English. This partially accounts for the great popularity of his works. Another fact about Defoe is that he knew about prison life. In 1702, when propos
7、als for increasing discrimination against dissenters(持异议者) were introduced, Defoe published an anonymous pamphlet, “The Shortest Way with the Dissenters”, advocating the most extreme measures to eradicate(根除) the dissenters. This offended both the Whigs(辉格党) and the Tories(托利党). He was tried, found
8、guilty of seditious(煽动叛乱的) libel(诽谤), fined and sentenced to stand three days in the pillory(颈手扣，枷锁) in three different parts of London. Hardly had the sentence been announced when Defoe wrote his “Hymn(赞美诗) to the Pillory”a set of doggerel(打油诗) verses ridiculing his prosecutors. He had it printed b
9、y his friends for street distribution upon his first appearance at the pillory. His courage and humor won him the sympathy of many people. Consequently, on his appearances at the pillory, he was cheered as a hero with flowers rather than pelted(投掷) with stones. This experience was a turning point in
10、 the career of Defoe. His prison experience and his further knowledge of criminals helped the creation of his numerous stories of thieves and pirates, like Captain Singleton and Moll Flanders.,When Defoe was nearly 60 years old, he wrote the great work Robinson Crusoe, for which he was remembered. I
11、t was an instant success. Other stories followed rapidly: Captain Singleton (1720)(辛格顿船长), Colonel Jacque (1722)(杰克上校), Moll Flanders (1722)(摩尔。弗兰德斯). The list grew with astonishing rapidity, ending with the History of the Devil(魔鬼的历史) in 1726. Defoe died in 1731. He was buried in what is now Bunhil
12、l fields.,Comments on the significance of the novel “Robinson Crusoe” Robinson Crusoe is one of the protagonists drawn most successfully in English novels. Throughout his characterization of Crusoe, Defoe depicts him as a hero, struggling against nature and human fate with his indomitable will and h
13、and, and eulogizes creative labor, physical and mental, an allusion to the glorification of the bourgeois creativities when it was a rising and more energetic class in the initial stage of its historical development. From an individual laborer to a master and colonizer, Crusoe seems to have gone thr
14、ough various stages of human civilization.,JONATHAN SWIFT(1667-1745) was born of English parents in Dublin, where he was educated at Trinity College, and in 1713became Dean of St Patricks Cathedral. While previously living in London, he had made friends with Pope, Gay, and Arbuthnot, formed with the
15、m the Scriblerus Club, and written propaganda for the Tory administration of another club member, Robert Harley. He had first made his fame as a satirist with A Tale of a Tub and The Battle of the Books (1704), and after his return to Dublin(1714)he used his genius for polemical satire to defend Ire
16、land(i.e. Anglo Irish Protestants) against exploitation by the English Whigs, most sensationally in S Modest Proposal(1729). Politics figured in Gullivers Travels also, but only as a single element in a story of universal appeal, full of humor and excitement. Written when Swift was nearly 60, and fi
17、rst published in 1726,it at once became literally one of the worlds classics.,Jonathan Swift (1667-1745),Gulliver travels to four extraordinary places. In the first, people are five or six inches tall, in the second, sixty or seventy feet. The third is a kind of satellite inhabited by absurdly impra
18、ctical scientists, and the fourth is a country governed by horses who treat humans as filthy animals. By turns exciting and comic, Gullivers fantastic adventures were read, in the words of Gay, from the cabinet-council to the Nursery, as a travel book and as a powerful satire on human nature. The te
19、xt is based on that of 1735, incorporating revisions by Swift of the first edition.,Jonathan Swift was born in Dublin in 1667. He had no father and his uncles decided to take charge of his education. After his university years in Dublin, he left Ireland and joined his mother in Leicester. He became
20、William Temples secretary, quite an important retired statesman and MP. Swift lived under his supervision for ten years. His job allowed him to attend theology courses and in 1694, he was named Prebent at Kilroot (near Belfast). But he soon comes back with Temple in Surrey, and it was there that he
21、wrote The Battle of the Books and Tale of a Tub (1704), although they werent published for several more years. After Temples death, Swift goes back to Ireland. In 1701 Swifts career began in earnest by writing his first politic pamphlet, favouring the Whigs, and by anonymously publishing his treatis
22、e, Dissensions in Athens and Rome, which caused a stir. Over the next decade, Jonathan Swift published numerous essays and pamphlets, most of which were commentaries on politics and current events. During this time, he also served as the editor of the Whigs publication, The Examiner. He subsequently
23、 wrote many other pamphlets, treatises and poems. In November of 1726, Gullivers Travels appeared on the market. The book became an instant success, with every class of people clamoring to read it. Using his sharp wit and even sharper tongue, he penned documents that mocked society, religion, human
24、nature, England, politics, and nearly every other facet of daily life.,The book presents itself as a simple travellers narrative with the disingenuous title Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, its authorship assigned only to “Lemuel Gulliver, first a surgeon, then a captain of several
25、ships“. Different editions contain different versions of the prefatory material which are basically the same as forewords in modern books. The book proper then is divided into four parts, which are as follows. edit Part I: A Voyage To Lilliput Mural depicting Gulliver surrounded by citizens of Lilli
26、put. The book begins with a short preamble in which Gulliver, in the style of books of the time, gives a brief outline of his life and history prior to his voyages. He enjoys travelling. This turns out to be fortunate. On his first voyage, Gulliver is washed ashore after a shipwreck and awakes to fi
27、nd himself a prisoner of a race of six-inch (15 cm) tall people, inhabitants of the neighbouring and rival countries of Lilliput and Blefuscu. After giving assurances of his good behaviour he is given a residence in Lilliput and becomes a favourite of the court. There follow Gullivers observations o
28、n the Court of Lilliput, which is intended to satirize the court of then King George I. After he assists the Lilliputians to subdue their neighbours the Blefuscudans (by stealing their fleet) but refuses to reduce the country to a province of Lilliput.,After he assists the Lilliputians to subdue the
29、ir neighbours the Blefuscudans (by stealing their fleet) but refuses to reduce the country to a province of Lilliput. This sparked off displeasure from the King and the court. He is charged with treason and sentenced to be blinded. Fortunately, with the tip off and assistance from a kind friend, Gul
30、liver escapes to Blefuscu, from whence he spots and retrieves an abandoned boat and sails out to be rescued by a passing ship which takes him back home. The feuding between the Lilliputians and the Blefuscudans is meant to represent the feuding countries of England and France, but the reason for the
31、 war is meant to satirize the feud between Catholics and Protestants, primarily the Lollards who challenged transubstantiation of the Catholic Church with consubstantiation. edit Part II: A Voyage to Brobdingnag Gulliver Exhibited to the Brobdingnag Farmer by Richard Redgrave While exploring a new c
32、ountry, Gulliver is abandoned by his companions and found by a farmer who is 72 feet (22 meters) tall (the scale of Lilliput is approximately 1:12, of Brobdingnag 12:1) who treats him as a curiosity and exhibits him for money. He is then bought by the Queen of Brobdingnag and kept as a favourite at
33、court. In between small adventures such as fighting giant wasps and being carried to the roof by a monkey, he discusses the state of Europe with the King, who is not impressed. On a trip to the seaside, his “travelling box“ is seized by a giant eagle and dropped into the sea where he is picked up by
34、 sailors and returned to England.,edit Part III: A Voyage to Laputa, Balnibarbi, Glubbdubdrib, Luggnagg and Japan Gullivers ship is attacked by pirates and he is marooned on a desolate rocky island. Fortunately he is rescued by the flying island of Laputa, a kingdom devoted to the arts of music and
35、mathematics but utterly unable to use these for practical ends. The device described simply as The Engine is possibly the first literary description in history of something resembling a computer. Laputas method of throwing rocks at rebellious surface cities also seems the first time that aerial bomb
36、ardment was conceived as a method of warfare. Gulliver is then taken to Balnibarbi to await a Dutch trader who can take him on to Japan and thence to England. While there, he tours the country as the guest of a low-ranking courtier and sees the ruin brought about by blind pursuit of science without
37、practical results in a satire on the Royal Society and its experiments. He also encounters the struldbrugs, unfortunates who are immortal and very, very old. He travels to a magicians dwelling and discusses history with the ghosts of historical figures, the most obvious restatement of the “ancients
38、versus moderns“ theme in the book. The trip is otherwise reasonably free of incident and Gulliver returns home, determined to stay there for the rest of his days.,edit Part IV: A Voyage to the Country of the Houyhnhnms Despite his earlier intention of remaining at home, Gulliver returns to sea where
39、 his crew was captured by Dutch and Japanese pirates in order to force them to become pirates also. He is abandoned in a landing boat and comes first upon a race of (apparently) hideous deformed creatures to which he conceives a violent antipathy. Shortly thereafter he meets a horse and comes to und
40、erstand that the horses (in their language Houyhnhnm or “the perfection of nature“) are the rulers and the deformed creatures (“Yahoos“) are human beings in their basest form. Gulliver becomes a member of the horses household, and comes to both admire and emulate the Houyhnhnms and their lifestyle,
41、rejecting human beings as merely Yahoos endowed with some semblance of reason which they only use to exacerbate and add to the vices Nature gave them. However, an Assembly of the Houyhnhnms rules that Gulliver, a Yahoo with some semblance of reason, is a danger to their civilization and he is expell
42、ed. He is then rescued, against his will, by a Portuguese ship that returns him to his home in England. However, he is unable to reconcile himself to living among Yahoos; he becomes a recluse, remaining in his house, largely avoiding his family, and spending several hours a day speaking with the hor
43、ses in his stables. The book finishes with a peroration against pride that is ironically boastful, and seems to be intended to show that Gullivers reason may have turned. Others argue that Swifts point is that the basic difference between humans and the Yahoos is largely artifice. However, no defini
44、te answer is forthcoming from the text, and critics have argued this point for years.,It is interesting that this fourth voyage seems to have most engaged literary critics over the years. Some readers chose to see it as proof of Swifts incipient mental deterioration (he suffered from an inner-ear disorder which led contemporaries, and Swift himself, to question his sanity). Most famously, William Thackeray described it as “filthy in word, filthy in thought, furious, raging and obscene“ - although he did live in a more prudish time (1853).,Thank you for learning,