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1、The Eighteenth CenturyHistorical BackgroundvAfter the Glorious Revolution, the power passed from the king gradually to the parliament and cabinet ministers.vBritish Monarchs in the 18th century Stuart Dynasty Mary II and William III(1688-1694, -1702) Anne (1702-1714) Hanoverian Dynasty George I (171
2、4-1727) George II (1727-1760) George III (1760-1820)Historical BackgroundvParty politics-Party politics became more significant throughout the century, with Whigs (who supported limited monarchy, and whose support tended to come from religious dissenters) and Tories (who favored strong monarchy and
3、the religious status quo embodied in the Church of England) competing for power.Historical Background The Enclosure-Acts of Enclosure were putting more lands into the hands of fewer privileged landowners and forcing thousands of small farmers and tenants off their land to become wage earners industr
4、ial towns. The Industrial Revolution-It was a gradual process of change from ”cottage industries” to factory manufacturing Overseas expansion-Britain occupied a vast expansion of colonies in Asia, Africa and North America. Cultural Backgroundv1. Enlighten Movement - A progressive intellectual moveme
5、nt - Enlightenment thinkers such as Voltaire, Montesquieu, Locke, Hobbes, and Rousseau believed that world was an object of study and that people could understand and control the world by means of reason and empirical research.Cultural Background- The celebration of reason, the power by which man un
6、derstands the universe and improves his own condition- They claimed that the individual was the basic unit of social analysis, and that the society should emerge and develop as the result of a social contract among the individuals.-In religion, it was against superstition, intolerance, and dogmatism
7、; in politics, it was against tyranny; and in society, it was against prejudice, ignorance, inequality, and any obstacles to the realization of an individuals full intellectual and physical well-being. At the same time, they advocated universal education. In their opinion, human beings were limited,
8、 dualistic, imperfect, and yet capable of rationality and perfection through education.Idea of contract-Rejection of “divine power” of kings-The government is of the people, by the people, for the people.Puritan values of the middle class-Self-restraint, self-reliance and hard work; the meaning of l
9、ife was to work, to economize and to accumulate welth.vThe great enlighteners: - Alexander Pope - Joseph Addison - Jonathan Swift -Samuel Johnsonv2. Cultural Progress -More schools were set up throughout the country - Copyright Act of 1709 - The appearance of such popular press as pamphlets and news
10、papers and periodicals - The flourish of coffeehouses and all kinds of social clubsIII. Literature of the Periodv1. Neo-classicism - It found its artistic models in the classical literature of the ancient Greek and Roman writers like Homer, Virgil, Horace, Ovid. - A partial reaction against the fire
11、s of passion blazed in the late Renaissance, especially in the Metaphysical poetry - Prose should be precise, direct, smooth and flexible. Poetry should be lyrical, epical, didactic, satire or dramatic, and each class should be guided by its own principles. - Neo-classical writers are: John Dryden,
12、Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, Joseph Addison, Richard Steele, Henry Fielding, Samuel Johnson, Oliver Goldsmith, Edward Gibbon, etc.v2. The Realistic Novel - The English middle-class people were ready to cast away the aristocratic romance and to create a new and realistic literature of their own to
13、 express their ideas and serve their interests. - The whole life in its ordinary aspects of the middle class because the major source of interest in literature.Major novelists -Daniel Defoe -Samuel Richardson -Henry Fielding - Laurence Sterne - Oliver Goldsmith - Tobias George Smollettv3. Gothic Nov
14、el - Devoted to tales of horror and the darker supernatural forces - Derives its name from similarities to medieval Gothic architecture - Gothic Architecture-Gothic Horror: A thriller designed not only to terrify or frighten the audience, but also to convey a sense of moral failure or spiritual dark
15、ness.- The Gothic in England begins with The Castle of Otranto in 1760, by Horace Walpole, which emphasized the supernatural mixed with the grotesque in a medieval setting. - Anne Radcliffe in Mysterious of Udolpho perfectd the sentimental gothic in the 1790s. Frankenstein (1817 ) by Mary Shelley vG
16、othic Conventions - Use of a dark setting or moody atmosphere, sensationalism, exotic settings in the past, the sublime, atmosphere of dread - A ruined or weird landscape - Claustrophobic situations - Imposing architecture dwarfing humans - Demonic or monstrous forms - Hints of fantastic (bizarre),
17、supernatural incidents or suggestions of supernatural - Conventional sexist depictions of women as passive victims, distress of the pure heroine by the gothic villainv Characteristics - Ancient (esp. haunted) castles, and whole host of conventions associated with these (dungeons, secret passageways,
18、 ghosts, graveyards.Flickering lamps And torches, screams And moans).-The villain- hero sometimes a good guy gone bad (Mr. Falkland); sometimes a bad guy who poses as a good guy; sometimes just a bad guy through and through who nonetheless has some attractive qualities (virility, good looks, charism
19、a).- The damsel in distress a virtuous young woman is pursued by the villain (usually older, often an aristocrat, not infrequently Catholic), with a real or implied threat to her virtue (murder, rape, other evil deeds).- Highly symbolic one scholar calls it “an indirect form of reference” and “a mas
20、k of truth rather than imitation of reality.” - Think of the gothic as structured like a dream which reveals truths to us in symbolic format. - The rise in the gothic corresponds to that of the middle class in England and to its challenge to the nobility for political and social control. - The gothi
21、c is covertly “about” political issues, and the defeat of the villain demonstrate the middle class desire to throw off the past. - The ancestral curse: see Chapter 1 of Castle of Otranto; also Hawthorne and Faulkner. - Grave robbing: a practice not all that uncommon in 18th century when cadavers (de
22、ad body) were not widely available for medical study: see Fall of the House of Usher and Frankenstein - Entrapment and imprisonment: being chained to a wall or to the floor in a dark cell; the motif of claustrophobia (幽闭恐怖). - The unexplained supernatural: frequently referred to by psychoanalytic cr
23、itics as “the uncanny (very strange and difficult).”4. Sentimentality- It was a partial reaction against that cold, logic rationalism which dominated peoples life since the last decades of the 17th century.- A ready sympathy and an inward pain for the misery of others became part of accepted social
24、morality and ethics- Sensibility also finds pleasure in the wildness of nature, in the lawlessness of the exotic, and in the sensational indulgence of fear and awe before the mysterious or the inexplicable.- Laurence Sternes A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy (1768)- Goldsmiths The Vicar of Wakefield (1766)- Thomas Grays An Elegy written in a Country Churchyard (1750)- Goldsmiths The Deserted Village (1770)