Historical background:
The breaking up of feudal relations and the establishing of the foundations of capitalism; The enclosure; the war of the Roses; the strengthening of the absolute monarchy; the rise of the bourgeoisie; the defeat of the Spanish Armada.
New social and economic conditions brought about great changes in the development of science and art. So with the strengthening of new bourgeois national state, this period is marked by a flourishing of national culture known as the Renaissance.
Renaissance:
A rebith, revival of classical (Greek and Roman )arts, literature and sciences between 14th and mid 17th centuries in Europe, the greatest age of human accomplishments.
Two striking features of the Renaissance
1) A thirsting curiosity for the classical literature;
2) The keen interest in the activities of humanity( People ceased to look upon themselves as living only for God and a future world and turned to admiration for human beauty and human achievement);
Renaissance marks the transition from medieval to modern world, from feudal to capitalist, from religious to secular society. In this period the European humanist thinkers and scholars made attempts to abolish old feudal ideas in medieval Europe (the church-centered culture which were characterized by God-centeredness, otherworldliness and asceticism.) and to introduce new ideas of the rising bourgeoisie ( humanism, the man-centered culture in which man is the measure of all things.), and to carry our religious reformation.
Renaissance did not begin to show its effect in England until the reign of Henry VIII (1509-1547) owing to England’s separation from the Continent and its domestic unrest. Encouraged by Henry VIII, the Oxford reformers, scholars and humanists introduced classical literature to England. Education was revitalized and literature became more popular. From the beginning of the 16th c, the English Renaissance witnessed the brisk development of literature: the translation of ancient English, Italian and French works, as well as classical works of Greece and Rome; books of discoveries and adventures; the flowering of sonnets; the highest glory of the English renaissance is its drama ( the Elizabethan drama). This was England’s golden age in literature. There appeared many literary giants such as Shakespeare, Spenser, Jonson, Sidney, Marlowe, Bacon and Donne.
Humanism: The Renaissance was marked by the spread of humanism, the keynote (the great spirit) of Renaissance. It sprang as a result of rediscovery and restudy of the Greek and Roman civilization which is based on the conception that the man is the measure of all things, the man-centered culture. It stands for devotion to the humane values represented in classical literature.
While the medieval Catholic teachings (the church-centered culture) were characterized by God-centeredness, otherworldliness and asceticism, the Renaissance humanists emphasized the dignity of human beings and the importance of the present life; they believed human beings were glorious creatures; man can live a happy and meaningful life on earth; man can improve his condition with effort and change the world according to his desire. Man has the right to pursue personal happiness, knowledge and wealth. Humanism helped to civilize man, to make him realize his potential powers and gifts. It contributed a great deal to the progress of human society. It represented the new ideas of the rising bourgeoisie. Thomas More, Marlowe and Shakespeare are the best representatives of the English humanists. The humanistic ideas and belief permeated the literature of this period.
Christopher Marlowe-------the greatest of the pioneers of English drama
I.Literary achievement:
blank verse (unrhymed iambic pentameter)
II. Artistical limitations:
III. Major plays:
Tamburlaine (贴木耳大帝)
The Jew of Malta (马尔他岛的犹太人)
Doctor Faustus (浮士德博士)
William Shakespeare (15-1616)
Life
Works
During his 22 years of literary career he produced 37 plays, Two narrative poems, 154 sonnets.
Dramatic career
The first period----Early period (1590-1594)
2 historical plays: Henry VI (亨利六世)
Richard III (理查德三世),
4 comedies: The Comedy of Errors (错误的喜剧)（错中错）
The Two Gentlemen of Verona (维洛那二绅士)
The Taming of the Shrew (训悍记)
Love’s Labour’s Lost (爱的徒劳)
1 tragedy: Romeo and Juliet
The second period----mature period (1595-1600)
A period of great comedies and mature historical plays
6 comedies: A Midsummer Night’s Dream (仲夏夜之梦)
The Merchant of Venice (威尼斯商人)
The Merry Wives of Windsor（温莎的风流娘儿们）
Much Ado about Nothing（无事生非）
As You Like It（皆大欢喜）
Twelfth Night （第十二夜）
5 historical plays: Richard II
Henry IV (Parts 1 and 2)
Henry V
King John
1 Roman tragedy: Julius Caesar （尤利乌斯·恺撒）
The third period-----Flourishing period (Tragic period) (1601-1607)
A period of great tragedies and dark comedies
5 tragedies: Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, Timon of Athens ()
3 comedies:
Troilus and Cressida(特洛伊洛斯与克瑞西达)
All’s Well That Ends Well（终成眷属）
Measure for Measure (一报还一报)
2 Roman Tragedies:
Antony and Cleopatra (安东尼和克莉奥佩特拉)
Coriolanus (科里奥拉鲁斯)
The fourth period----Late period (1608-1612)
4 romantic drama (romances or tragicomedies):
These plays portray a wide range of tragic events and difficult conditions, but they all end in reconciliation and reunion.
Pericles (佩里克利斯)，Cymbeline（辛白林）
The Tempest（暴风雨）, The Winter’s Tale（冬天的故事）
1 historical play: Henry VIII
Four great comedies
A Midsummer Night’s Dream (仲夏夜之梦)
The Merchant of Venice (威尼斯商人)
As You Like It（皆大欢喜）
Twelfth Night （第十二夜）
Four great tragedies
Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth,
Tragedy
Classical tragedians: Aeschylus(埃斯库罗斯Premetheus Bound), Sophocles（索福克勒斯Oedipus Tyrannus）, Euripites（欧里庇得斯）
The tragic hero—a significant person, usually a member of the nobility, a leader, a wise, just and good man
Tragic flaw—a character defect which causes the downfall of the tragic hero
Tragedy
Tragedies were concerned with the harshness and apparent injustice in life. They involved the trials and eventful death of a hero who was an important person and whose death led to the downfall of others.
1.The central characters are always people of importance, like kings, queens, prince, general, nobles
2.A tragic hero is often a flawed good man; often the hero’s fall from happiness was due to a weakness in his character, by some great error in his part
3.supernatural beings are often involved in the conflict of human beings, like gods, spirits, witches, ghosts
4.Sadness is mixed with horror, murder, treachery and bloodshedding
Catharsis（净化）—purgation of audience emotions such as pity, anger, fear; the audience feel relieved or purged when they leave the theatre.
Catharsis or cathartic effect of tragedies:
Tragedies give an outlet for such emotions as greed, hatred, lust, fear and pity. The tragic action arouses feelings of awe in the audience, who often leave the theater with a renewed sense of the seriousness and significance of human life. The word catharsis is often used to describe the audience’s feelings. It means the purging from the mind of the feelings of pity and fear the play has aroused when they leave the theater.
Romeo and Juliet
His earliest success in tragedy, full of poetry and romance. Its scenes of youth and love are painted in brilliant colors. There is no tinge of pessimism in the play. Though a tragedy, the play is optimistic in spirit. It is a song of the optimistic youth, love, wit and courage of the early rising young men and women against the drab.
Hamlet
Hamlet as a typical tragic hero: a hero of the Renaissance period and a representative of humanism
Good qualities: noble-minded, brave, intelligent, learned, with a strong sense of justice, loved and respected by his people;
Weaknesses: rash, impulsive, indecisive, sometimes can be cruel, harsh and coarse
His tragic flaw is lack of emotional balance; either acts rashly, without thinking, or doesn’t act quickly and firmly enough. His indecisiveness, his inability to act when action is needed, is one of the major causes for his downfall.
Hamlet’s soliloquy (See Anthology p76-77)
(Situation) Hamlet's endurance has reached the breaking point. His father has been murdered. His mother, who he loves dearly, has married her dead husband's brother. Moreover his sweetheart, Ophelia, has been acting very strangely. He senses that she does not love him any more. Now, he's all alone. The world that he knew is shattered. His black mood of despair is deepened by his inability to act - to do something to change the situation.
Now he ponders whether to continue living - or to take his own life.
生存还是毁灭, 这是个必须回答的问题:
是否应默默的忍受坎坷命运之无情打击,
还是应与深如大海之无涯苦难奋然为敌,
并将其克服。
此二抉择, 就竟是哪个较崇高?
死即睡眠, 它不过如此!
倘若一眠能了结心灵之苦楚与肉体之百患,
那么, 此结局是可盼的!
死去, 睡去...
但在睡眠中可能有梦, 啊, 这就是个阻碍:
当我们摆脱了此垂死之皮囊,
在死之长眠中会有何梦来临?
它令我们踌躇,
使我们心甘情愿的承受长年之灾,
否则谁肯容忍人间之百般折磨,
如暴君之政、骄者之傲、失恋之痛、法章之慢、贪官之侮、或庸民之辱,
假如他能简单的一刃了之?
还有谁会肯去做牛做马, 终生疲於操劳,
默默的忍受其苦其难, 而不远走高飞, 飘於渺茫之境,
倘若他不是因恐惧身後之事而使他犹豫不前?
此境乃无人知晓之邦, 自古无返者。
所以，理智就使我们都变成了懦夫，
使得那果断的本色蒙上了一层思虑的惨白的容颜，
本来可以做出伟大的事业，
由于思虑就化为乌有了，丧失了行动的能力。
美丽的欧菲利亚, 可爱的小姐, 在你的祈祷中可别忘了我的罪孽。
What Hamlet is musing on is the comparison between the pain of life, which he sees as inevitable (the sea of troubles - the slings and arrows - the heart-ache - the thousand natural shocks) and the fear of the uncertainty of death and of possible damnation of suicide.
1.Is it better to endure silently the blows and agony that life inflicts on man without logic or reason, or to rise up against a mass of troubles and end them by fighting back?
2.Who would bear the insults and miseries of this world, the cruelties and tyranny of the oppressors, the humiliation and contempt from the arrogant people, the heart-breaking pain caused by rejected love, the inevitable slowness of the working of law, the arrogance and rudeness of those who hold official positions, the insults which good patient people suffer from those who are mean and unworthy, if a mere dagger might free him from all these troubles?
The speech reveals the psychological make-up, the intricate mental workings, the thinking process of Hamlet. The use of psychological analysis gives greater depth and breadth to the thoughts and feelings of the character.
1.a thinker, a philosopher, pondering on both his personal considerations and social problems
2.a man with a sense of justice
3.pessimistic and gloomy view about life, cynical attitude towards society
4.wide range of knowledge
5.belief in the Christian doctrine about heaven and hell
Blank verse (无韵体)—unrhymed iambic pentameter, literary form masterly handled by Shakespeare and Milton
Comedy— in most ways, the opposite of tragedy. Broadly defined, it refers to any literary work designed to amuse; And specifically, it is usually reserved for plays whose tone is lighthearted and humourous, that are amusing, and that have a happy ending.
Comedy-komo-merry-making, dealing with ordinary people in everyday situations, ordinary people, humble style, beginning with misfortune and ending with joy.
Plot—from bad to good, beginning with misfortune and ending with joy
Characters-- ordinary people, (humble and private people) in rather everyday situations; the main characters remain optimistic no matter what fate brings them, believing that in the end they will triumph.
Stereotypes—the characters tend to be stereotypical, which means they are recognizable types of people rather than fully developed characters like the tragic hero. The dumb blond, the man who thinks he is God’s gift to women, the miser, the fickle young lover, the lazy slob, the rich spoiled child, the social snob-----
Dramatic spirit—optimism; there is always a sense that everything will turn out well, despite the horrible predicaments the characters find themselves in.
Style—humble, light-hearted (as against the solemn, serious, lofty, sublime style in tragedies)
Purpose-- to entertain and educate people, to ridicule and satirize human weaknesses, but some have moral and corrective purposes
Different types of comedies—comedies of humour, of manners, burlesque, farce, satirical comedy, romance comedy, tragicomedy
The Merchant of Venice
A romantic comedy, the story of three caskets and story of a pound of flesh;
Antonio—the merchant
Bassanio—the fortune-hunter
Shylock—the Jewish usurer, the villain
Portia—the idealized woman, the daughter of the Renaissance
Theme: praising true friendship, true love, exposing social evils: greed, malice, racial prejudice, money-worship, injustice
Shylock: mean, greedy, cunning, cruel, vengeful, merciless; a sophist, an avaricious money-lender, a Jew of pride and deep religious instincts; but also a victim of racial discrimination and religious persecution
Portia: beautiful, cultured, learned, witty, courageous, prudent;
Sonnet—a poem of 14 lines in iambic pentameter with a fixed rhyme scheme
1.Italian form: octave, sestet; abba abba cde cde
2.English or Shakespearean form: 3 quatrains and one couplet; abab cdcd efef gg
Sonnet 18 (See Anthology p118-119)
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander's in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest;
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
我怎能把你比作宜人的夏天？
你比它更加可爱也更加温婉：
狂风把五月钟爱的蓓蕾摧残，
夏天延续的时间未免太短暂：
苍穹的眼睛有时照得太灼热，
金色的容颜常变得朦胧暗淡：
遭受机缘或自然变化的摧折；
美好的事物终究会不免凋残。
但是你永恒的夏天不会衰败，
你拥有的美丽会永伴你身旁，
死神不夸耀你在他影里徘徊，
当你在不朽诗行里与时同长。
只要人类能呼吸眼睛能看清，
此诗万世长存并赐予你生命。
The poet ponders on the destructive power of time and the eternal beauty brought forth by poetry to his loved one.
Beauty can be immortalized by poetry.
In addition:
1.The Evolution of Drama:
English drama has roots reaching back to
The miracle play（奇迹剧）
The morality play道德剧
The Interlude插剧
Classical comedies and tragedies经典戏剧
2.Other remarkable writers besides Shakespeare
Sidney----a poet and critic of poetry,
Apology for Poetry----a piece of literary criticism of the Renaissance;
Edmund Spenser—The Poet’s poet, the author of the greatest epic poem of the time
The Faerie Queene
Modern English: The publication of Spenser’s first work The Shepherd’s Calendar marked the budding of the Renaissance flower, the language then to be called Modern English, to distinguish from the Middle English of Chaucer’s day.
Spenserian Stanza----a special form of poetry which consists of 8 iambic pentameter lines followed by a ninth line of six iambic feet( an alexandrine), with the rhyme scheme ababbcbcc( The first 8 lines are in iambic pentameter, and the ninth, iambic hexameter, with the rhyme scheme ababbcbcc ).
Francis Bacon----the first Englisn essayist, the founder of English materialist philosophy, the founder of modern science in England
Ben Jonson-----a prolific dramatist, also a poet and a critic.
Features of Shakespeare’s drama
1.faithfully and vividly reflects the major social contradictions of his time; One of the founders of realism in world literature;
2.His dramatic creation often used the method of adoptation. He rewrote old plays or borrowed his plots widely from other sources;
3.A master hand for playwriting. In his plays, actions develop freely, without being hindered by the classical rules; Usually combining the majestic with the funny, the poetic with the prosaic, and the tragic with the comic, reproducing the various aspects of real life;
4. Employing different means of expression to utter all possible thoughts and feelings of his characters; Skilled in many poetic forms: the song, the sonnet, the couplet, and the dramatic blank verse, especially, the last one;
A great master of the English language, a large vocabulary in his work: commanded a vocabulary larger than any other English writers and used about 16000 words. Many of his coinages and expressions have become everyday usage in English life. Shakespeare and the Authorized Version of the English Bible (in 1611, James I) are the 2 great treasuries of the English language (e.g. eye for eye, tooth for tooth; the shadow of death; peacemaker; a labor of love; root of all evil; All’s well that ends well, to mention just a few).
Questions:
1.Give a summary about English literature in the Renaissance period.
2.What did Shakespeare write about in his four great tragedies?
3.What is the theme of The Merchant of Venice?
4.Comment on the character of Shylock.
5.Comment on the character of Hamlet.(p85-87)
6.How can you interpret the melancholy of Hamlet?(p87-88)下载本文
