英美文学作品分析-全.doc

作品分析
English Literature
Chapter One The Renaissance Period
I. Shakespeare’s sonnets
1. With a few exceptions, Shakespeare writes his sonnets in the popular English form of three quatrains and a couplet. The couplet usually ties the sonnet to one of the general themes, leaving the quatrains free to develop the poetic intensity.
2. The sonnet’s most common themes concern the destructive effects of time, the quickness of physical decay, and the loss of beauty, vigor, and love. Although the poems celebrate life, they are always with a keen awareness of death.
3. His sonnet 18 expresses that beautiful things can rely on the force of literature to reach eternity. Literature is created by man, thus it declares man’s eternity. The poem shows the mighty self-confidence of the newly class. The vivid, variable and rich images reflect the lively and adventurous spirits of those who were opening new world.
II. Shakespeare’s A Merchant of Venice
1. Theme
(1) Justice vs. mercy: Shakespeare suggests that all men should be merciful. There is a further aspect of justice—the injustice revealed in the Christians’ treatment of the Jews.
(2) Appearance vs. reality: e.g. superficial or external beauty vs. moral or spiritual beauty or truth (in the case of three caskets); the letters of law vs. the spirit of the law.
(3) Commercial or material values vs. love: True love is much more worthwhile than money and material values. Antonio epitomizes true love in his friendship for Bassanio.
2. The character analysis of Shylock
Shylock is a Jewish usurer, and he is a tragic-comic character.
He is comic because he finally becomes the one punished by his own evil deed. He is avaricious. He accumulates as much wealth as he can and he even equates his lost daughter with his lost money. He is also cruel. In order to revenge, he would rather claim a pound of flesh from his enemy Antonio than get back his loan.
He is tragic, because he is the victim of the society. As a Jew, he is not treated equally by the society. The law is harsh to him. He has to make as much money as he can in order to protect him. He is abused by Antonio, so he wants to get revenge.
III. The character analysis of Hamlet
Hamlet is a scholar and a warrior. His father has been killed by his uncle, Claudius, who then take the throne and marries his mother. Hamlet is informed by the ghost of his father to take revenge, but the weakness of indecisiveness or indetermination in his character always delay his action, and finally leads to his tragic fall of death. Hamlet is not a man of action, but a man of thinking at first. He hesitates at some crucial moments. At last when he is forced to take some actions, he does kill Claudius gloriously, but he also sacrifices his own life.
IV. Donne and his “The Sun Rising”
1. Metaphysical poet: He wrote poems by using unconventional and surprising conceits and full of wit and humor, but sometimes the logic argument and conceits become pervasive. The language is colloquial but powerful, creating unorthodox images on the reader’s mind.
2. His “The Sun Rising”: In this poem, the love’s wedding room has been intruded by sun and the man takes offence at the intrusion. He attack the sun as an unruly servant, and finally he allow the sun to enter their chamber and warm them. The poem’s true subject is the lady—his true emotional love. Every insult to the sun is a compliment to the lady.
V. Milton’s Paradise Lost :
1.Structure: The story is taken from the Old Testament. It extends chronologically from the exaltation of Christ before the creature of universe to the second coming of Christ. Geographically, it ranges over the entire world.
2. The character analysis of Satan:
He has the strength, the courage and the capacity for leadership, but he devoted all those qualities to evil. His defiance of God shows his egoistic pride, his false conception of freedom, and his alienation from all good. His own evil and damnation give him potentially tragic dimensions. Therefore, Satan is enveloped in dramatic irony because he fight in ignorance of the unshakable power of God and goodness.
3.Features: Parallel and contrast
The central conflict and contrast between good and evil are intensified by the contrast between heaven and hell, light and darkness, love and hate, reason and passion, etc.
Chapter Two The Neo-classical Period
I. The allegorical meaning of “The Vanity Fair” in John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress
The Vanity Fair refers to the real world where people have become so degenerated that all they are concerned is to buy and sell everything they can. It allegorically represents vanity both in the society and in people’s heart, so people are spiritually lost. However, the pilgrims refuse to buy any of the things in the Vanity Fair. Its purpose is to urge people to abide by Christian doctrines and seek salvation through constant struggle with their own weakness and social evils. Christians’ refusal shows that they are one step nearer the Celestial City.
II. Pope’s point of view on poetry criticism and the characteristics of his own poetry
1. Pope’s point of view on poetry criticism is best shown in his An Essays on Criticism. He emphasizing that literary works should be judged by classical rules of order, reason, logic, restrained emotion and good taste. He calls on people to turn to the old Greek and Roman writers for guidance. He advises the critics not to stress too much the artificial use of conceit or the external beauty of language, but to pay special attention to true wit which is best set in a plain style.
2. Pope’s poem strictly follows his idea of neoclassicism. He developed a satiric, concise, smooth, graceful and well-balanced style, and finally brought to its last perfection of the heroic couplet.
III. The social satire of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels
The account of Lilliputian life, especially the games for people at court, alludes to the similar ridiculous practices or tricks in the English government. The description of the competition in the games before the royal members leads to the fact that the success of those government officials such as the Prime Minister lies not in their being any wiser or better but in their being more dexterous in the game. This alludes to the practices in England. And the pompous words singing of the Lilliputian emperor ridicule the aristocratic arrogance and vanity.
IV. Henry Fielding and his Tom Jones
It is a good example of “comic epic in prose”. Fielding describes the fight between Molly and the villagers and her fistfight with Goody Brown in the grand style of the Homeric epic. He first of all calls on the Muses to assist him in recounting the fight as if it were of great historical importance. Like Homer who would list names of gods involved in the battle, he lists the names of the villagers. He treats Molly as a great hero at battle, an “Amazonian heroine”. Besides, he uses a mock-epic tone and seems very solemn about what he is describing. He uses formal words and refined language. Finally, he makes use of different figures of speech, particularly, irony and hyperbole.
V. Thomas Gray and his “Elegy Written in a County Church”
In the poem, Gray presents a picture of the quiet and solitary county at dusk through the sounding of the curfew, the home-coming plowman, the tinkling of bells under the necks of the cattle, the moping owl, the narrow cell (grave), etc.. He bemoans the fate of those common laborers who are now buried in the graves, tries to imagine how they had lived as loving parents and hardworking people, and praise their homely joys. He then express his contempt for those noblemen who once lived a pompous life, and despised the poor, but have ended up in a way no better than the ordinary folk. We can see Gray’s sympathy for the poor and contempt for the rich.
Chapter Three The Romantic Period
I. Wordsworth and his “I wandered lonely as a cloud”
The poem is crystal clear and lucid. Below the immediate surface, we find that all the realistic details of the flowers, the trees, the waves, the wind, and all the realistic details of the active joy, are absorbed into an over-all concrete metaphor, the recurrent image of the dance. The flowers, the stars, the waves are units in this dancing pattern of order in diversity, of linked eternal harmony and vitality. Through the revelation and recognition of his kinship with nature, the poet himself becomes as it were a part of the whole cosmic dance.

II. Shelley and his “Ode to the West Wind”
In the poem, Shelley eulogizes the west wind as a powerful phenomenon of nature that is both destroyer and preserver. The wind enjoys boundless freedom and has the power to spread messages far and wide. The keynote in the poem is Shelley’s ever-present wish for himself and his fellow men to share the freedom of the west wind, remembering meanwhile his own and common human miseries. And the dominant mood is that of hope rather than despair, as the poet is hoping for the realization of the freedom and joy. The optimism expressed in the last two lines show the poet’s critical attitude toward the ugly social reality and his faith in a bright future for humanity.
III. John Keats and his “Ode on a Grecian Urn”
In the poem Keats shows the contrast between the permanence of art and the transience of human passion. The poet has absorbed himself into the timeless beautiful scenery on the Grecian urn: the lovers, musicians and worshippers carved on the urn, and their everlasting joys. They are unaffected by time, stilled in expectation. This is the glory and the limitation of the world conjured up by and object of art. The urn celebrates but simplifies intuitions of joy by defying our pain and suffering. But at last, the urn presents his ambivalence about time and the nature of beauty.
IV. The character analysis of Elizabeth in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice
Elizabeth is a beautiful young lady in the Bennets. She is intelligent, contrasting her empty-minded, snobbish and vulgar mother. She is a women of distinct character. She is not passive, but pursue her true love bravely. She turns down Mr. Collin’s marriage proposal and seeking her happiness with Darcy, the one she possesses true affection for her. She is also courageous. When Darcy’s aunt lady comes to force her into a promise of never consenting to marry Darcy, she boldly challenges her authority, contempt and arrogance. On the whole, Elizabeth is a typical image of the good, attractive lady in the 19th century.
Chapter Four The Victorian Period
I. The features of Charles Dickens
1. His critical realism: While sticking to the principle of faithful representation of the 18th-century realist novel, he carried the duty to the criticism of the society and the defense of the mass.
2. He is a master storyteller. With his first sentence, he engages the reader’s attention and holds it to the end.
3. What he writes is mainly the middle and lower-middle class life in London.
4. He is a master of language with a large vocabulary and an adeptness with the vernacular.
5. He is a great humorist as well as a great painter of pathos. He always mingles the two to make his fictional world realistic.
6. His characters are not only true to life but also large than life. There are both individual characters and type characters.
II. Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre
1. Theme: The novel sharply criticizes the religious hypocrisy of charity institutions like Lowood School, where girls are trained to be humble slaves. It rebukes the social discrimination and false convention about love and marriage. Besides, the novel is a moral fable. It tells us that people have to go through all kinds of physical or moral tests to obtain their final happiness.
2. The character analysis of Jane Eyre: Jane Eyre is an orphan child with a fiery spirit and a longing to love and be loved. She is poor and plain, but she dares to love her master, a man superior to her in many ways, as a little governess. She is brave enough to declare to the man her love for him. She cuts a completely new women image. She represents those middle-class working women who are struggling for recognition of their basic rights and equality as a human being.
III. Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Height
1. The novel is an extraordinary moving love story: the passion between Heathcliff and Catherine is the most intense, beautiful, and the most horrible passions ever found among human beings.
2. It is also a work of critical realism. Heathcliff is abused, rejected and distorted by the society only because he is a poor orphan of obscure parents. He suffers all kinds of inhuman treatment after the death of his benefactor. He loves Catherine dearly but forced to be separated from her. So, Heathcliff’s cruel revenge upon his enemies is justified in a way.
3. The author makes clear that it is wrong to discriminate on the basis of social status, and it is cruel and destructive to break genuine, natural human passions. Although Catherine and Edgar’s marriage is ideal in the eyes of the whole neighborhood, her love for Heathcliff is hard and everlasting.
IV. Robert Brouning’s “My Last Duchess”
Dramatic Monologue can best bring out the Duke’s character in a dramatic way. The Duke is extremely cruel to kill his newly-married wife just because his jealousy. He is addressing to a character who exists but remains silent in the poem. He is showing off to this silent character about his wife’s beauty and his own power to destroy it. He justifies his own deed as a trifle matter. However, as audience, we may feel strongly the contrary. His arrogance, cruelty and hypocrisy are fully exposed. What he says and what we feel form a sharp contrast and achieve an dramatic effect.
V. George Eliot’s Middlemarch
Gorge Eliot pays great attention to the mutual effect between the inner world of the character and the outer world of the environment. Dorothea had wanted to escape the common meaningless life of the gentle ladies and enter some noble cause by marrying Casaubon. But her voluntary help, companionship and tenderness are ignored by her husband, she is forced into the idle life.
When Dorothea got up, Mr. Casaubon was in library. Looking through the windows at the white landscape and cloudy sky, she felt a dullness and lifelessness. The furniture, the book, and everything in the house too looked lifeless and shrunk to her. The gloomy environment found ready response from her inner heart. Her great disappointment with her marriage is here joined together with the outer dreary and lifeless environment to make up a pathetic picture.
Chapter Five The Modern Period
I. The features of Shaw’s plays:
1. Problem plays: He took the modern social issues as his subject with the aim of directing social reforms. Most of his plays are concerned with political, economic, or religious problems.
2. In his characterization,