Thomas More: Utopia 《乌托邦》
Francis Bacon: Essays 《论说文集》或 《随笔》
"Knowledge is power"----Bacon
Edmund Spencer: Faerie Queen 《仙后》
"Our sweetest songs are those that sing of saddest feelings."--- Spencer
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
1. 23rd, April 1564, Stratford-on-Avon
2. His Father, a leather merchant 皮货商
3. His school, a local Grammar school for 6 years
4. His life, dramatist, actor, poet, proprietor
5. His first son, Hamnet
6. 4 tragedies: Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth (Romeo and Juliet)
7. Main works: 37 plays, 154 sonnets , 2 narrative plays
戏剧 14行诗 叙事诗
Titus Andronicus 《泰特斯·安德洛尼克斯》
Taming of the Shrew 《驯悍记》
The Two Gentlemen of Verona 《维罗纳二绅士》
Love's Labor's Lost 《爱的徒劳》
A Midsummer Night's Dream 《仲夏夜之梦》
King John 《约翰王的生平和逝世》
Much Ado about Nothing 《无事生非》
The Merry Wives of Windsor 《温莎的风流娘们》
Julius Caesar 《朱力叶斯·凯撒》
The Merchant of Venice 《威尼斯商人》
As you like it 《皆大欢喜》
8. Carl Marx: "Aeschylus and Shakespeare are the two greatest dramatic genius the world has ever known."
9. His friend: "He does not belong to one time, but belongs to all times."
William Shakespeare's writing feature
1. A play in the play.
2. Borrow plots from other stories such as Roman, Greek and ancient myth.
3. Several threads running through the play.
4. Combination of tragic and comic elements.
William Shakespeare's writing style
1. Tremendous vocabulary (16,000 words, invent words)
2. Literary devices (alliteration, simile, metaphor)
3. Use poetry in his play
William Shakespeare's humanistic ideas
1. Against cruelty and anti-natural character of civil wars
2. Against religious persecution, racial discrimination, social inequality.
3. Hates rebellion and despises democracy
Themes in Shakespeare's sonnets
1. Express love and praise to a young man
2. Immortalize beauty through verses
3. Friendship or betrayal of friendship
Sonnet
Origin: Italy
Most famous and influential sonneteer: Petrach
Selected Reading of Shakespeare:
1. [P37] Shakespeare's Sonnet 18:
a. Ladies in the eyes of Shakespeare are not good and beautiful. His wife is 8 years older than him.
b. Iambic pentameter
c. Main ideas:
i. Quatrain 1: praise the beauty of the young man
ii. Quatrain 2: changes in life and nature
iii. Quatrain 3: "your" beauty will last forever
iv. Couplet: "your" beauty will live in my poem. à Immortalize beauty
2. [P39] An Excerpt from The Merchant of Venice
a. How does Shylock justify himself according to the accusation of Duke and Bassanio?
[P40-41] There are 3 reasons.
b. Why does Shylock stick to his bond instead of taking twice his principle?
He hates the Christians and is determined to revenge on them because his daughter elopes with a Christian.
c. What do you think of Shylock inthe early court scene? What about him later?
In the early court scene, Shylock is cruel, eloquent, stubborn, tricky, isolated from law and friendship.
In the later court scene, Shylock is greedy, sympathetic and oppressed by Christians.
d. What is Shakespeare's attitude towards Shylock?
He sympathizes those who are oppressed. Antonio is oppressed by Shylock. Shylock is oppressed by Christians.
e. The whole play is a tragi-comedy. In the scene, Shylock is the tragic side. Antonio and his friends is the comic side.
John Donne (1572-1631)
1572 Born in a merchant family
1591 Learn law at the Inns of Court in London
Private Secretary to Sir Thomas Egerton, the Lord Keeper of the Great Seal.
1601 29y. Married Egerton's niece, Ann More. He worked hard to fight against poverty. However, it's a secret marriage. When the marriage was exposed, he was put into jail. The Egertons regarded the marriage as an offence.
1617 His wife died. He devoted his time and efforts to his priestly duties, writing sermons and religious poems.
1621 Donne was appointed the Dean of St. Paul's and kept the post until his death.
John Donne's major work
1. Songs and Sonnets, wrote before 1600, 55 love poems.
2. The Elegies and Satires, his elegies wrote for love whereas others' wrote for mourning dead people.
3. Holy Sonnets & Sermons, Sonnets wrote about God, sexual life, problem of death and life. Sermons are Christian preaching.
John Donne is famed for 3 things
1. A great visitor of ladies
2. A great frequenter of plays
3. A great writer of conceited verses
At his time, John Donne was famed as a preacher. Today, he is famed as a lyric poet. John Donne compared parting love to compass, flea compared to the union of lovers. John Donne's conceit can be seen from his "Go catching the falling star" in which he listed many impossible things---the most impossible thing is a woman's faith and heart.
