Disappearing Through the Skylight
----Osborne Bennet Hardison Jr.
Group members: 魏萍(captain)
王琦
卢琴
李尚蓉
Disappearing Through the Skylight
Background Information
Content
Theme of the Passage
Stylistic Features
About the author
Osborne Bennet Hardison Jr. was born in
San Diego,California in 1928.He was
educated at University of North Carolina
and the University of Wisconsin.He was
taught at Princeton,the University of North
Carolina and Georgetown University.He is
the author of Lyrics and Elegies (1958),The
Enduring Monument (1962),Disappearing
Through the Skylight (1980) and so on.He
is a professor of English,a Shakespeare
scholar and an amateur physicist.
Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)
Spanish artist
one of the
recognized masters
of 20th century art.
most famous as the
founder of Cubism
Cubism（立体派）
A nonobjective school of painting and
sculpture developed in Paris in the early
20th century, characterized by the
reduction and fragmentation of natural
forms into abstract, often geometric
structures usually rendered as a set of
discrete planes.
20世纪初出现于巴黎的一个绘画和雕刻抽象流派，其特征是把各种
自然形态简化并分裂成抽象的、通常为几何形状的结构，并常被描绘
成一系列互不相联的平面
Demoiselles d’Avignon(亚维农的少女）
Guernica(格尔尼卡)
Leonardo da vinci
Italian artist & scientist
He dabbled in sculpture,
architecture,,engineerin
g,geology,hydraulics
& the military arts,all
with success.
He also made detailed
drawings of human
anatomy
Mona lisa
The last supper
Dada达达主义运动
A European artistic and
literary movement
(1916-1923) that
flouted conventional
aesthetic and cultural
values by producing
works marked by
nonsense, travesty, and
incongruity.
•Mechanical Head (The Spirit of Our
Age),
was meant to symbolize the empty spirit
of the post-World War I era
About Ford
Ford Motor Company:a global
company
Two business sectors:
Automobile sector : sells cars and
trucks ;2→3segments
Financial Services sector: the
operations of Ford Motor Credit
Company(Ford Credit);provider
About Structuralism
Structuralism is a mode of thinking
and a method of analysis practiced in
20th-century social sciences and
humanities (社会科学和人文科学).
Examining the relations and functions
of the smallest constituent elements.
Model:Ferdinand de Saussure’ work
postmodernism
Its view is cool, ironic, and accepting of the
fragmentation of contemporary existence
It concentrate on surface rather than
depths, to blur the distinctions between
high and low culture.
It challenge a wide variety of traditional
culture values.
Neomodernism
Universalism and critical thinking are
the two essential elements of human
rights
Human rights create a superiority of
some cultures over others.
Equality and relativism are “mutually
contradictory”
Theme of the Passage
The central theme of this passage is
“disappearance”.
Another important idea is the universalizing
tendency of science and technology.
The third concept is, “if man creates
machines, machines in turn shape their
creators.”
Finally, the disappearance of history is a
form of liberation and this feeling of liberation
is often expressed through play.
Stylistic Features
Scientific English.
The simple present tense.
The language of this passage is clear,
concise, objective and logical.
figurative language to make his ideas more
vivid and forceful.
Thank You