英美文学欣赏作品赏析及问答

“Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? —You think wrong!… And if God had gifted me with some beauty, and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you…—it is my spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed through the grave, and we stood at God’s feet, equal—as we are!” ---- Jane Eyer “难道你就因为我一贫如洗、默默无闻、长相平庸、个子矮小，就认为我没有灵魂，没有心肠了吗？你想错了我的心灵跟你的一样丰富，我的心胸跟你的一样充实，要是上帝赐予我一点姿色和充足的财富，我会使你同我现在一样难舍难分，我不是根据习俗常规，甚至也不是以血肉之躯同你说话，而是我的灵魂同你的灵魂的对话，就好像我们两个穿过坟墓，站在上帝脚下，彼此平等。” “My great miseries in this world have been Heathcliff's miseries, and I watched and felt each from the beginning: my great thought in living is himself. If all else perished, and HE remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger: I should not seem a part of it. ( “ Wuthering Heights” by Emily Bronte) “这个世界上，我最大的悲痛就是希斯克列夫斯基的悲痛，而且我从一开始就注意并感受到了。在我的生活中他是我思想的重心，如果别的一切都毁灭，而他留下来，我就能够继续活下去。如果别的一切都留下来，而他却消失了，这个世界对于我将成为一个极其陌生的地方，我就不想是这个世界的一分子。” It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife. … “ What is his name?”“ Is he married or single?”“ Oh! Single, my dear, to be sure! A single man of large fortune; four or five thousand a year. What a fine thing for our girls!”“ How so? How can it affect them?”“ My dear Mr. Bennet,” replied his wife, “ how can you be so tiresome! You must know that I am thinking of his marrying one of them.”---Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austin 凡是有钱的单身汉，总想娶位太太，这已经成了一条举世公认的真理。“这个人叫什么名字？”“彬格莱。”“有太太的呢，还是单身汉？”“噢！是个单身汉，亲爱的，确确实实是个单身汉！一个有钱的单身汉；每年有四五千磅的收入。真是女儿们的福气！”“这怎么说？关女儿们什么事？”“我的好老爷，”太太回答道，“你怎么这样叫人讨厌！告诉你吧，我正在盘算，他要是挑中我们一个女儿做老婆，可多好！” You loved me - then what RIGHT had you to leave me? What right - answer me - for the poor fancy you felt for Linton? Because misery and degradation, and death, and nothing that God or Satan could inflict would have parted us, YOU, of your own will, did it. I have not broken your heart - YOU have broken it; and in breaking it, you have broken mine. 你爱我——那么有什么理由要离开我？什么理由——回答我——是因为你对林顿怀有一种不切实际的怜爱吗？因为苦难，屈辱，死亡，以及上帝魔鬼所能降罪于我们的一切都休想使我们分开，而你，出于你的一厢情愿，却这么做了。不是我伤透你的心——是你使自己心碎。你使自己心碎，也使我心碎，这样对我打击更重，因为我很坚强。我想活下去吗？那会是什么样的生活呀。如果你——啊，上帝！如果你芳魂已经埋入坟墓，你还想活吗？ “ Wuthering Heights” by Emily Bronte Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living!  You said I killed you--haunt me, then!  The murdered do haunt their murderers.  I believe--I know that ghosts have wandered on earth.  Be with me always--take any form--drive me mad! only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you!  Oh God! it is unutterable!  I cannot live without my life!  I cannot live without my soul! (Wuthering Heights)——凯瑟琳·恩萧，只要在我还活着的时候；愿你也不得安息！你说我害了你——那么，缠着我吧！被害的人是缠着他的凶手的。我相信——我知道鬼魂是在人世间漫游的。那就永远跟着我——采取任何形式——把我逼疯吧！只要别把我撇在这个深渊里，这儿我找不到你！啊，上帝！真是没法说呀！没有我的生命，我不能活下去！没有我的灵魂，我不能活下去啊！” I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o'er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host, of golden daffodils; Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. Continuous as the stars that shine And twinkle on the milky way, They stretched in never-ending line Along the margin of a bay: Ten thousand saw I at a glance, Tossing their heads in sprightly dance. ---I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud by Wordsworth 我孤独地漫游，像一朵云 在山丘和谷地上飘荡， 忽然间我看见一群 金色的水仙花迎春开放， 在树荫下，在湖水边，迎着微风起舞翩翩。 连绵不绝，如繁星灿烂，在银河里闪闪发光， 它们沿着湖湾的边缘延伸成无穷无尽的一行； 我一眼看见了一万朵，在欢舞之中起伏颠簸。 I died for beauty, but was scarce Adjusted in the tomb, When one who died for truth was lain In an adjoining room. He questioned softly why I failed? "For beauty," I replied. "And I for truth, -the two are one; We brethren are," he said.-- I Died for Beauty, but was Scarce by Emily Dickinson 我是为美而死——被人安置在这个坟冢, 有人是为真理而亡的,也被葬在旁边的穴中. 他曾轻声问道“你为何而死”？ “为美，”我回答 “我，为真理——两者都一样;我们是兄弟，”他说话. Tiger! Tiger! Burning bright In the forest of the night, What immortal hand or eye Could frame thy fearful symmetry?  In what distant deeps or skies Burnt the fire of thy eyes? On what wings dare he aspires? What the hand dare seize the fire? And what shoulder, & what art, Could twist the sinews of thy heart? And when thy heart began to beat, What dread hand? and what dread feet? What the hammer? what the chain? In what furnace was thy brain? What the anvil? what dread grasp Dare its deadly terrors clasp? … ---The Tiger by William Blake 老虎！老虎！黑夜的森林中 燃烧着的煌煌的火光， 是怎样的神手或天眼造出了你这样的威武堂堂？ 你炯炯的两眼中的火燃烧在多远的天空或深渊？ 他乘着怎样的翅膀搏击？用怎样的手夺来火焰？ 又是怎样的膂力，怎样的技巧，把你的心脏的筋肉捏成？ 当你的心脏开始搏动时，使用怎样猛的手腕和脚胫？ 是怎样的槌？怎样的链子？在怎样的熔炉中炼成你的脑筋？ 是怎样的铁砧？怎样的铁臂敢于捉着这可怖的凶神？ To see a world in a grain of sand, 一沙一世界 And a heaven in a wild flower, 一花一天国 Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, 君掌盛无边 And eternity in an hour. 刹那含永生 (Auguries of Innocence—by William Blake) She walks in beauty , like the night Of cloudless clime and starry skies, And all that's best of dark and bright Meet in her aspect and her eyes; Thus mellowed to that tender light Which heaven to gaudy day denies. One shade the more, one the ray the less, Had half impaired the nameless grace Which waves in every raven tress Or softly lightens o‘er her face, where thoughts serenely sweet express How pure, how dear their dwelling-place. ---She Walks in Beauty—by Byron 她漫步在美的光彩中 像夜色般皎洁无云，繁星漫天， 明与暗的最美妙的色泽 在她的仪容和秋波中交织融合成如此柔和的光泽 让天堂和人间的一切美景都黯然失色。增减一分暗影或光亮 都会损害这难言的优雅美丽乌黑的长发犹如轻轻的波浪 或者散布淡淡的光辉在那脸庞清幽，恬静的思绪 倾诉着他们的寓所是多么的纯洁而珍贵。 If you were coming in the fall, 如果你能在秋季来到 I brush the summer by 我会用掸子把夏季打掉 With half a smile and half a spurn, 一般轻蔑，一半含笑 As houswives do, a fly. 像管家妇把苍蝇赶跑 Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear,纵使大海干涸水流尽， And the rocks melt wi’ the sun:太阳将岩石烧作灰尘 I will luve thee still. my dear,亲爱的，我永远爱你， While the sands o’life shall run.只要我一息犹存。 And fare thee weel, my only love!珍重吧，我惟一的爱人， And fare thee weel awhile!珍重吧，让我们暂时离别 And I will come again my luve,但我定要回来！ Though it were ten thousand mile. 哪怕千里万里！ ---- A Red Red Rose For oft, when on my couch I lie 每当我躺在床上不眠， In vacant or in pensive mood, 或心神空茫，或默默沉思， They flash upon that inward eye 它们常在心灵中闪现， Which is the bliss of solitude; 那是孤独之中的福祉； And then my heart with pleasure fills, 于是我的心便涨满幸福， And dances with the daffodils. 和水仙一同翩翩起舞 (I Wandered Lonely as A Cloud) We passed the School, where Children strove 我们经过学校，孩子们正在嬉笑喧闹 At Recess---in the Ring---正是课间休息 We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain---- 我们经过注目凝神的的谷物的田野 We passed the Setting Sun---我们经过落日 (Because I could not stop for Death) Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st; 也不会损失你这皎洁的红芳， Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade, 或死神夸口你在他影里漂泊， When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st: 当你在不朽的诗里与时同长。 So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, 只要一天有人类，或人有眼睛， So long lives this, and this gives life to thee .这诗将长存，并且赐给你生命。 (Sonnet 18, by Shakespear The subtitle of the novel Tess of the D’Urbervilles is A Pure Woman Faithfully Portrayed. All things considered, was Tess a pure woman? Why or Why not? Tess was a pure woman. a. pure here not refers to the physical meaning but the spiritual one.Throughout the novel, Tess was loyal to her true feelings. She remained her loyalty to Angel. Alec only claimed her body. She was spiritually with Angel all the time. b. She is responsible and does her best for the family. c. She is honest. d. She could face her tragedy with great dignity. Analyze the themes and characteristic of Hawthorne. He has been considered to be the first great American writer of fiction to work in the moralistic tradition. · 1.theme and view: showing great interest in the problems of sin and evil, like poisoning, murder, adultery and crime. He penetrated into the human soul to explore the result of sin, the moral and psychological effect on the human conscience. · He was influenced to some degree by Calvinist doctrine of “original sin’ and “total depravity”, which explains his aloofness from Emersonian Transcendental optimism and his skepticism about it. According to him, sins should be paid, if not, the effects are harmful. · Also influenced by Romanticism, he insisted on the goodness of man, stressing the heart and feeling in man. So he is the anatomist of the interior of the heart. · He was also interested in history and antiquity, which could offer literary creation. 1. Try to comment on Mark Twain’s writing style. STYE:His earlier works are light, humorous, optimistic. His later works become darker and more obscure, showing his discontent and disappointment toward the social reality. His last works shows his acute pessimism, despair, skepticism determinism. 2. Why do we say the tragedy of Tess in Tess of the D’Urbervilles is a personal as well as a social one? Tess is a victim of the environment or society. (sexual discrimination, wide gap between the rich and the poor) To be more exact, the disintegration of English peasantry and the hypocritical moral standard of capital society may be regarded as the cause of Tess’s destruction. She is just a victim of economic oppression and social injustice. 3. Analyze Emily Bronte’s unique tragic novel Wuthering Heights. Mixed reviews · Victorian readers found the book shocking and inappropriate in its depiction of passionate, ungoverned love and cruelty · “Whether it is right or advisable to create beings like Heathcliff, I do not know. I scarcely think it is”.---Charlotte Bronte Wuthering Heights 1)The Title Wuthering: a Yorkshire dialect for “weathering”, a local adj. used to describe the fierce and wild winds that blow during storms on the moors. Wuthering Heights: up in the folds of the weathering moors 2)The Family Tree 3) Narration It begins near the end of the novel. (Flashback) Nelly: the chief narrator Lockwood: forms a frame around Nelly’s narration; an intermediary between Nelly and the reader. 4. Say something about the writing style of Thomas Hardy. · Most of his works have the gloomy, sullen landscape of Wessex in the background. · The underlying theme of his novels is the struggle of man against the mysterious force which rules the world, brings misfortune into man’s life and predetermines his fate. This fatalism is strongly reflected in his writings. · There is a combination of naturalism, realism and symbolism. · He likes to use contrasts of various kinds: man/nature; man/society; the traditional/ the modern; old rural value/new utilitarian commercialism; the old false social convention/the natural human passion · His novels move rapidly in a series of episodic descriptions with details which always result in leaving sufficient room for the readers’ imagination. Say something about the features of Jane Austen’s novels. · Cool authorial attitude · Controlled and restrained imagination and passion · Scenes from everyday life, vividly portrayed characters · Simple language and conversing dialogues, witty, delightful and realistic, revealing the inner world of characters 5. The white whale, Moby Dick, is the most important symbol in Melville's novel. What symbolic meaning can you draw from it? A. To Ahab, the whale is either an evil creature itself or the agent of an evil force that controls the universe, or perhaps both.     B. To Ishmael, the whale is an astonishing force, an immense power, which defies rational explanation due to a sense of mystery it carries. It is beautiful, but malignant at the same time. It also represents the tremendous organic vitality of the universe, for it has a life force that surges onward irresistibly, impervious to the desires or wills of men.     C. As to the reader, the whale can be viewed as a symbol of the physical limits that life imposes upon man. It may also be regarded as a symbol of nature, or an instrument of God's vengeance upon evil man. In general, the multiplicity and ambivalence of the symbolic meaning of the whale is such that it becomes a source of intense speculation, an object or profound curiosity for the reader 13 Summarize the story of Mark twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in about 100 words, and comment on the theme of the novel. A. Mark Twain's novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a Sequa to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. The Story takes place along the Mississippi River before the Civil War in the United States, around 1850.     Along the river, floats a small raft, with two people on it; One is an ignorant, uneducated black slave named Jim and the other is little uneducated outcast white boy about the age of thirteen, called Huckleberry Finn or Huck Finn.    The novel relates the story of the escape of Jim from slavery and ,more important, how Huck Finn, floating along with Jim and helping him as best he could, changes his mind ,his prejudice, about Black people, and comes to accept Jim as a man and as a close friends as well.   During their journey, they experience a series of adventures: coming across two frauds, the “Duke” and the “King”, witnessing the lynching and murder of a harmless drunkard, being lost in a fog and finally Tom's coming to rescue. B. The theme of the novel may be best summed in a word “freedom”: Huck wants to escape from the bond of civilization and Jim wants to escape from the yoke of slavery. Mark Twain uses the raft's journey down the Mississippi River to express his thematic contrasts between innocence and experience, nature and culture, wilderness and civilization.  1. Analyze the symbolic meanings of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. ☆ 1) About the sea adventure: it symbols the voyage of the mind in quest of the truth and knowledge of the universe; a spirit exploration into man’s deep reality and psychology; 2) About the boat; it symbols the society, and the crew symbol all kinds of people with different social and ethnic ideas; 3) About the white whale: To the author, it symbols nature, it is complex, unfathomable and beautiful; To the captain Ahab, it is evilness, is a wall. So he will lead all his crew to cut through the wall to dig out all the unknown, mysterious things behind it. To the narrator, Ishmael, it is a mystery.  2. Analyze "The Hemingway Code Hero“. (1) They are always exposed to and victimized by violence in various forms, Nick becomes the prototype of the wounded hero who, with all the dignity and courage he could muster, confronts situation. (2) They are a group of wandering, amusing, but aimless people, who are caught in the war and removed from the path of ordinary life. (3) They are the men trapped both physically and mentally. (4) God’s design or his beneficence and to suggest that man is doomed to be entrapped. (5) They believe: life is worth living and there are causes worth dying for. (6) In a tragic sense, the struggle of Hemingway’s heroes show: it is a representation of life as a struggle against unconquerable natural forces in which only a partial victory is possible. Nevertheless, there is a feeling of great respect for the struggle and mankind. (7) Hemingway hero of athletic prowess and masculinity and unyielding heroism. (8) To master the code with the honest, the discipline, and the restrains are Hemingway Code heroes. In the general situation of his novels, life is full of tension and battles; the world is in chaos; man is always fighting desperately a losing battle. However, though life is but a losing battle, it is a struggle man can dominate in such a way that loss becomes dignity; man can be physically destroyed but never defeated spiritually.  3. Analyze the themes in Jane Eyer. 1) One of the central themes of the book is the criticism of the bourgeois system of education. 2) Not less severe is the author’s description of the English country squire. She compares them to the uncultivated and narrow-minded Philistines. 3) Another problem raised in the novel is the position of woman in society. Jane Eyre, the heroine of the novel, maintains that woman should have equal rights with men. So education is important for woman’s happiness. 4) The author advocates the equality between man and woman in marriage, also she insisted that the emotions and moral considerations are equally important in marriage. 4. Try to comment on Mark Twain’s writing style. ☆ 1.Twain as a local colorist 1)Twain preferred to present social life through portraits of the local characters of his regions, 2)Unlike James and Howells, Mark Twain wrote about the lower-class people. 3)Moreover he successfully used local color and historical settings to illustrate and shed light on the contemporary society. 2.his use of vernacular 1) His words are colloquial, concrete and direct in effect, and his sentence structures are simple, even ungrammatical, which is typical of the spoken language. And Twain skillfully used the colloquialism to cast his protagonists in their everyday life. 2)What's more, his characters, confined to a particular region and to a particular historical moment, speak with a strong accent, which is true of his local colorism. 3)Besides, different characters from different literary or cultural backgrounds talk differently, as is the case with Huck, Tom, and Jim. 4)Indeed, with his great mastery and effective use of vernacular, Twain has made colloquial speech an accepted, respectable literary medium in the literary history of the country. His style of language was later taken up by his descendants, Sherwood Anderson and Ernest Hemingway, and influenced generations of letters. 3.his humor 7 Try to make a comment on Mark Twain’s humor. * Combine humor and satire together * Lots of humor is characterized by puns, straight-faced exaggeration, repetition, and anti-climax * Mark Twain's humor is remarkable, his works tend to be funny, containing some practical jokes, comic details, witty remarks, etc., and some of them are actually tall tales. * However, his humor is not only of witty remarks mocking at small things or of farcical elements making people laugh, but a kind of artistic style used to criticize the social injustice and satirize the decayed romanticism.85.Why Hardy give the subtitle of Tess of the D’urbervilles as A Pure Woman Faithfully Portrayed. ☆All things considered, Tess was a pure woman. 1)pure here not refers to the physical meaning but the spiritual one.Throughout the novel, Tess was loyal to her true feelings. She remained her loyalty to Angel. Alec only claimed her body. She was spiritually with Angel all the time. 2)She is responsible and does her best for the family. 3)She is honest. 4)She could face her tragedy with great dignity. 6. Say something about the features of Jane Austen’s novels ☆1)Jane Austen is one of the realist novelists. The most striking thing about her works is the seeming obviousness to the big social and political upheavals in the outside world of her time. She drew vivid and realistic pictures of everyday life of the country society in her novels. 2)Austen’s work has a very narrow literary field. She only confines herself to the everyday life of simple country society with vivid description. 3)Her interest is centered chiefly upon love and marriage. Her plots are straight-forward; there is little action. 4)Her characters are like real living creatures, with faults and virtues mixed as they are in real life. 5)Her prose flows easily and naturally. Her dialogue is admirably true to life. 6)Her novels show a wealth of humor, wit and delicate satire. 10. Summarize the story of Mark twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in about 100 words, and comment on the theme of the novel. ☆Story in brief：The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is considered as Twain’s greatest achievement. It tells a story about the U.S