English Literature Blog

Class3 : James Boswell and James Thomson (pp. 2860-2862, 2778-2810)

As a giant? Or as a dwarf?

The teacher played the film Gulliver's Travels directed by Ted Danson.

I enjoyed the film so much that it was really interesting and fantasy!

Following the protagonist, Gulliver, I experienced a exciting advanture.

Gulliver, a practical-minded Englishman trained as a surgeon who takes to the seas when his business fails.

《格列佛遊記Gulliver's Travels》 不只是童話故事

http://musewu.blogspot.com/2009/06/gullivers-travels.html

      At some point in a human beings life, we, as humans, are going to feel proud.  Whether we feel proud of something we have done, somewhere we live, or who we affiliate with, its something that we cannot help but feeling.  I myself am guilty of being proud at times.  One of the most important lessons that I have learned from the reading of Gulliver’s Travels is that pride is something to be frowned upon.  If we as humans look at the number of things that we have done good compared to the number of things we have done bad, we won’t have that same feeling of pride.  In the beginning of the novel, everywhere Lemuel Gulliver goes, he proclaims that he is a part of the English Empire.  By the end of the novel, he can barely stand to look at his families faces, because of human pride.  He realizes that, in truth, his empire is evil and shameful.  It pales in comparison to the noble government of the Brobdingnagians, or the intelligence of the Houyhnhnms. I have come to realize that I myself and we as a human race have a lot to learn.  We continue to harbor hate, create war, and practice discrimination, unlike the noble and virtuous Houyhnhnms.  I have also learned that even though we can study literature, math, and science, we never can achieve the simple understanding that all people are created equal, or that knowing everything is not what we as humans are here to do.  Learning is something that is not valued to the Houyhnhnms or the Brobdingnagians, but they are still able to lead simple and peaceful lives.  Not everything that I learned through the reading of Gulliver’s Travels made me regret being a human being.  Unlike the Houyhnhnms, we can still feel the emotions of love, happiness, and surprise.  Houyhnhnms live their lives governed by reason and have no real emotions.  We have to learn to be thankful for what we do have, like our ability to feel connection to each other.  If I’ve gained one thing from this book, its that humans are not all they are cracked up to be.  Even though we can make to most startling discoveries, we are still at fault with our morals and decisions.  We also need to learn that if we can share our emotions like love with all, perhaps the world would indeed be a better place.  Knowledge can take you far in this world, but I will always believe, by reading this book, that morals can take you farther.  Gulliver’s Travels is also another example of English literature. I can learn a lot about reading English literature through reading book like Gulliver’s Travels.

Class III: Sir Richard Steele & Joseph Addison

About the author. . .

Sir Richard Steele & Joseph Addison are usually mentioned together because of their co-founded The Spectator magazine. They are both writers and politicians. Richard is a member of the Protestant gentry, and he was educated at Charterhouse School, where he first met Addison. In 1709, Steele founded a thrice-weekly satirical magazine, Tatlers, which lasted only two years in its first incarnation. Addison was a frequent contributor. Following the demise of the Tatler, the two men founded The Spectator. A member of the Whig Kit-Kat Club, Steele became a Member of Parliament of the United Kingdom in 1713, but was soon expelled for issuing a pamphlet in favor of the Hanoverian succession. When George I of Great Britain came to the throne in the following year, Steele was knighted and given responsibility for the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, London. While at Drury Lane, Steele wrote and directed The Conscious Lovers, which was an immediate hit. However, he fell out with Addison and with the administration over the Peerage Bill, and in 1724 he retired to his wife's homeland of Wales, where he spent the remainder of his life.

About the work “The pleasures of the imagination”

In his and Richard Steele’s The Spectator, Addison developed an essay style which greatly influenced the writings in eighteenth-century periodicals. In the short well-known passages in our readings on the pleasures of the imagination, Addison clearly notes some first suggestions towards a theory of aesthetics. His contribution represents a shift in emphasis from the creations of the artist to the pleasures of the connoisseur; for this reason, Addison’s essays had great appeal to the rising middle class seeking to improve their refinement and taste. Addison notes that of the pleasures of sense, the understanding and the imagination, only the latter pleasures originate from sight. Whether or not imaginative pleasures derive from the appearance or the ideas of visible objects, the pleasure, he thinks, is due to their expansiveness, novelty, or beauty. He argues that the purpose of such pleasure is attributable to the Supreme Being providing light and color to behold His works. Accordingly, Addison believes beauty in nature surpasses that of art, even though different aspects of beauty in each form enhance the beauty of the other.

Source(s):

PARADISE LOST ~ A BRIEF OVERVIEW

. © 1999 . New Arts Library . All rights reserved

In the mid-seventeenth century, John Milton was a successful poet and political activist. He wrote scathing pamphlets against corruption in the Anglican Church and its ties to King Charles. In Milton day Puritanism meant having politically radical views. And at one point Milton was actually jailed for recording them on paper. Paradise Lost, as much as anything, is a series of arguments put forth by the characters, which in turn ultimately expresses Milton personal truth. It is, in that sense, a Puritanical work.

Milton had contemplated the composition of an epic poem for many years. For his subject matter he chose the fundamentals of Christian theology. By the time he began writing Paradise Lost in the late 1650, Milton had become blind. He dictated the entire work to secretaries.

John Bunyan  -  (1628-1688), Puritan author

John Bunyan had very little schooling. He followed his father in the tinker's trade, and he served in the parliamentary army from1644 to 1647. Bunyan married in 1649 and lived in Elstow until 1655, when his wife died. He then moved to Bedford, and married again in 1659. John Bunyan was received into the Baptist church in Bedford by immersion in 1653.

In 1655, Bunyan became a deacon and began preaching, with marked success from the start. In 1658 he was indicted for preaching without a license. The authorities were fairly tolerant of him for a while, and he did not suffer imprisonment until November of 1660, when he was taken to the county jail in Silver Street, Bedford, and there confined (with the exception of a few weeks in 1666) for 12 years until January 1672. Bunyan afterward became pastor of the Bedford church. In March of 1675 he was again imprisoned for preaching publicly without a license, this time being held in the Bedford town jail. In just six months this time he was freed, (no doubt the authorities were growing weary of providing Bunyan with free shelter and food) and he was not bothered again by the authorities.

John Bunyan wrote The Pilgrim's Progress in two parts, of which the first appeared at London in 1678,which he had begun during his imprisonment in 1676. The second part appeared in 1684. The earliest edition in which the two parts were combined in one volume came out in 1728. A third part falsely attributed to Bunyan appeared in 1693. The Pilgrim's Progressis the most successful allegory ever written, and like the Bible has been extensively translated into other languages.

John Bunyan wrote many other books, including one which discussed his inner life and reveals his preparation for his appointed work is Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners (1666). Bunyan became a popular preacher as well as a very voluminous author, though most of his works consist of expanded sermons. In theology he was a Puritan, but not a partisan. He was no scholar, except of the English Bible, but that he knew thoroughly. He also drew much influence from Martin Luther's Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians.

John Milton was born 9 December 1608 in Cheapside1 under the sign of the Spread Eagle2. His father, John Milton, Senior, was a fairly well-known composer who contributed to a collection of madrigals in honor of Queen Elizabeth3. The elder John had been disinherited by his wealthy Roman Catholic family when he decided to go with the flow and turn Protestant. He had the last laugh, though; he managed to become wealthy all on his own. So the younger John had a good education4, both because the money was there and because John, Sr. thought his son showed great promise. John was the second of the three children who survived past infancy. He had an older sister named Anne and a younger brother named Christopher, who would eventually become a Royalist, a Catholic, and a lawyer; three things which John would eventually grow to hate5.

John wrote seven or eight poems in Latin while in school6, but never at this time seriously considered a career in writing. He read a great deal even beyond his schoolwork as preparation for a career in the Church or perhaps politics. Unfortunately, his eyesight, bad since childhood, was made even worse by all this study, and he frequently suffered terrible headaches7. After finishing his formal schooling, he took a tour of the Continent, as many well-off young men did at that time8. During this tour and upon his return to England, John was planning out poetic epics and tragedies that he wanted to write, as writing began to interest him more and more. In 1640, he began a campaign of pamphlets against the authority of the bishops, which many people at that time resented.

In 1642, John married a woman named Mary Powell. She was 17. John was 34. She was from a Royalist family. John was a staunch supporter of Parliament over royalty9. She was almost completely uneducated. John was, obviously, extremely well-educated. It was as good a match as you might think. One month after the ceremony, Mary went to visit her family and stayed there10.

The English Civil War (Royalists versus Parliamentarians) began in 1643. Shortly therafter, Mary returned with a lot of bankrupt relatives in tow11. John forgave her and took all of them back; so he had a whole crowd of people to support. John dove headfirst into politics, and wrote pamphlets defending the execution of Charles I by the victorious Parliamentarians. In 1646, he published a collection of poems, but politics was still his main occupation. Besides the pamphlets, he became Secretary for Foreign Tongues under the new Commonwealth and their official propagandist. He always felt that the Commonwealth failed to reach its full potential and disapproved of Oliver Cromwell's dictatorial ways after declaring himself Lord Protector of the Commonwealth. Still, he worked away loyally, finally finishing the destruction of his eyesight in 165112. His wife died in May 1652, shortly after giving birth to the couple's third daughter, Deborah13.

John remarried in 1656 and had another daughter in 1657, but both wife and daughter died in 1658. During this brief second marriage, John began work on Paradise Lost, and Andrew Marvell began working for John as a secretary. Andrew was always a loyal friend to John, particularly when the Restoration hit and Charles II took the throne. John might easily have been hanged for his many services to the Commonwealth, but Andrew and several other people of influence spoke out on John's behalf. The newly-crowned king decided that sparing the elderly, blind poet would be viewed as a grand, magnanimous gesture, and anyway, a lot of Royalists really liked the sonnets John had written14. He was still imprisoned for a time, though, and later was in fear of his life15. What with this, the Great Fire of London and the Plague, Paradise Lost wasn't published until 1667. It was quite the hit, though none of John's other works reached widespread popularity in his lifetime16.

莎士比亞《第十二夜》簡介

英文來源：SpakNotes

中文翻譯：陳宇佑、談玉儀

William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night

Source: SparkNotes

莎士比亞《李爾王》簡介

英文來源：SpakNotes

中文翻譯：陳宇佑、談玉儀

Plot Overview: http://www.sparknotes.com/shakespeare/lear/summary.html

Lear, the aging king of Britain, decides to step down from the throne and divide his kingdom evenly among his three daughters. First, however, he puts his daughters through a test, asking each to tell him how much she loves him. Goneril and Regan, Lear’s older daughters, give their father flattering answers. But Cordelia, Lear’s youngest and favorite daughter, remains silent, saying that she has no words to describe how much she loves her father. Lear flies into a rage and disowns Cordelia. The king of France, who has courted Cordelia, says that he still wants to marry her even without her land, and she accompanies him to France without her father’s blessing.

我敲打船舷，喊道，夠了。
我將遠走。
什麼？我將永遠歎息憔悴？
我的航線和生命是自由的，像路一樣寬敞，
像風一樣不羈，像倉廩一樣廣大，