English Literature 2
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for English-major Juniors
Spring semester's goal (I)
A New Anthology of English Literature Volume
II
Chapter 8The Age of Romanticism(1798-1832)
Chapter 9 The Victorian Age(1832-1901)
Chapter 10 The Twentieth Century
Spring semester's goal (II)
 Read:
 1 novel (Walter Scott; Jane Austin; Charles Dickens;
William Thackeray; Bronte sisters; Thomas Hardy;
Joseph Conrad; Bernard Shaw; John Ausborne;William
Golding; V S Naipaul)
 1 short story collection(Charles Dickens;Thomas
Hardy;Joseph Conrad; Virginia Woolfe;James Joyce);
 Recite:
 10 poems(Wordsworth; Byron; Shelley; Keats;Tennyson;
Arnold; Eliot; Auden; Heaney);
 Present:
 1 topic;
 Translate (E-C):
 5,000 words;
Some Ideas
to appreciate;
to think;
 to share;
to act.
英美文学精品课程网站
http://202.194.137.16/ymwxs/
Date with literature
Office Hour;
In Dormitary;
Out for a walk;
QQ group chatting;
Extracurricular study(40%)
Finnal Exam(60%)
Facts of literary history;
Recognize the authors;
Complete poems;
Analyze fiction;
The semester's plan
A New Anthology of English Literature Volume
II
Chapter 8The Age of Romanticism(1798-1832)
Chapter 9 The Victorian Age(1832-1901)
Chapter 10 The Twentieth Century
The semester's plan
Poetry weeks: the first 8 weeks;
Romantic --- Victorian --- Modern poets
Fiction weeks: the next 8 weeks;
Victorian --- Modern poets
Drama weeks: the last 2 weeks;
Shaw & Becket
Poetry week 1: William Wordsworth
(1770-1850)
.
 a nature poet; a Lake poet;
 a Poet Laureate (1843);
 ①All good poetry is the spontaneous
 overflow of powerful feelings;
 ②Poetry takes its origin
 from emotion recollected in tranquility.
 The Child is father of the Man.
We are seven
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--A simple child,
That lightly draws its breath,
And feels its life in every limb,
What should it know of death?
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I met a little cottage Girl:
She was eight years old, she said;
Her hair was thick with many a curl
That clustered round her head.
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She had a rustic, woodland air,
And she was wildly clad:
Her eyes were fair, and very fair;
--Her beauty made me glad.
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"Sisters and brothers, little Maid,
How many may you be?"
"How many? Seven in all," she said
And wondering looked at me.
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"And where are they? I pray you tell."
She answered, "Seven are we;
And two of us at Conway dwell,
And two are gone to sea.
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"Two of us in the church-yard lie,
My sister and my brother;
And, in the church-yard cottage, I
Dwell near them with my mother."
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"You say that two at Conway dwell,
And two are gone to sea,
Yet ye are seven!--I pray you tell,
Sweet Maid, how this may be."
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Then did the little Maid reply,
"Seven boys and girls are we;
Two of us in the church-yard lie,
Beneath the church-yard tree."
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"You run about, my little Maid,
Your limbs they are alive;
If two are in the church-yard laid,
Then ye are only five."
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"Their graves are green, they may be seen,"
The little Maid replied,
"Twelve steps or more from my mother's door,
And they are side by side.
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"My stockings there I often knit,
My kerchief there I hem;
And there upon the ground I sit,
And sing a song to them.
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"And often after sunset, Sir,
When it is light and fair,
I take my little porringer,
And eat my supper there.
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"The first that died was sister Jane;
In bed she moaning lay,
Till God released her of her pain;
And then she went away.
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"So in the church-yard she was laid;
And, when the grass was dry,
Together round her grave we played,
My brother John and I.
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"And when the ground was white with snow,
And I could run and slide,
My brother John was forced to go,
And he lies by her side."
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"How many are you, then," said I,
"If they two are in heaven?"
Quick was the little Maid's reply,
"O Master! we are seven."
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"But they are dead; those two are dead!
Their spirits are in heaven!"
'Twas throwing words away; for still
The little Maid would have her will,
And said, "Nay, we are seven!"
To The Cuckoo

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O blithe newcomer! I have heard,
I hear thee and rejoice:
O Cuckoo! shall I call thee bird,
Or but a wandering Voice?
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While I am lying on the grass
Thy twofold shout I hear;
From hill to hill it seems to pass,
At once far off and near.
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Though babbling only to the vale
Of sunshine and of flowers,
Thou bringest unto me a tale
Of visionary hours.
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Thrice welcome, darling of the Spring!
Even yet thou art to me
No bird, but an invisible thing,
A voice, a mystery;
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The same whom in my schoolboy days
I listened to; that Cry
Which made me look a thousand ways
In bush, and tree, and sky.
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To seek thee did I often rove
Through woods and on the green;
And thou wert still a hope, a love;
Still longed for, never seen!
And I can listen to thee yet;
Can lie upon the plain
And listen, till I do beget
That golden time again.
O blessed bird! the earth we pace
Again appears to be
An unsubstantial, fairy place,
That is fit home for Thee!

Composed upon Westerminster Bridge
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a...Earth has not anything to show more fair:
b...Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
b...A sight so touching in its majesty:
a...This City now doth like a garment wear
a...The beauty of the morning: silent, bare,
b...Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
b...Open unto the fields, and to the sky,
a...All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.......8
c...Never did sun more beautifully steep
d...In his first splendour valley, rock, or hill;
c...Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
d...The river glideth at his own sweet will:
c...Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
d...And all that mighty heart is lying still!...............14
Rhyme Scheme and Meter

 .......The rhyme scheme of "Composed Upon Westminster Bridge"
and other Petrarchan sonnets is as follows: (1) first stanza (octave):
abba, abba; (2) second stanza (sestet): cd, cd, cd (or another
combination, such as cde, cde; cdc, cdc; or cde, dce.
 .......The meter of the poem is iambic pentameter, with ten syllables
(five iambic feet) per line. (An iambic foot consists of an unstressed
syllable followed by a stressed syllable.) The first two lines of the
poem demonstrate the metric pattern:
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.......1......
. ..2......... ....3................4..................5
Earth HAS..|..not AN..|..y THING..|..to SHOW..|..more FAIR:
........1.......
. ..2......... ....3.................4.................5
Dull WOULD..|..he BE..|..of SOUL | who COULD..|..pass BY
Imagery
 .......The most striking figure of speech in the poem is personification.
It dresses the city in a garment and gives it a heart, makes the sun
"in his first splendour" a benefactor, and bestows on the river a will
of its own.
 .......Examples of other figures of speech in the poem are as follows:
 Line 2, alliteration: Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
 Line 3, alliteration: A sight so touching in its majesty
 Lines 4, 5 simile: This City now doth like a garment wear / The
beauty of the morning: silent bare (comparison of beauty to a
garment)
 Line 13: metaphor: Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
(comparison of houses to a creature that sleeps)
The Solitary Reaper
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BEHOLD her, single in the field, 
Yon solitary Highland Lass!
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Reaping and singing by herself，
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Stop here, or gently pass!
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Alone she cuts and binds the
grain,
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 And sings a melancholy strain; 
 O listen! for the Vale profound
 Is overflowing with the sound. 

No Nightingale did ever chaunt
More welcome notes to weary bands
Of travelers in some shady haunt,
Among Arabian sands:
A voice so thrilling ne'er was heard
In spring-time from the Cuckoo-bird,
Breaking the silence of the seas
Among the farthest Hebrides.
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Will no one tell me what she sings?—
Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow
For old, unhappy, far-off things,
And battles long ago:
Or is it some more humble lay,
Familiar matter of to-day?
Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain,
That has been, and may be again?
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Whate'er the theme, the Maiden sang
As if her song could have no ending;
I saw her singing at her work,
And o'er the sickle bending;——
I listen'd, motionless and still;
And, as I mounted up the hill,
The music in my heart I bore,
Long after it was heard no more.
A nature poet
 Upon being born, human beings move from a perfect,
idealized realm into the imperfect, un-ideal earth. As
children, some memory of the former purity and glory in
which they lived remains, best perceived in the solemn
and joyous relationship of the child to the beauties of
nature. But as children grow older, the memory fades, and
the magic of nature dies. Still, the memory of childhood
can offer an important solace, which brings with it almost a
kind of re-access to the lost purities of the past. And the
maturing mind develops the capability to understand
nature in human terms, and to see in it metaphors for
human life, which compensate for the loss of the direct
connection.
Memory
 Memory allows Wordsworth’s speakers to overcome the
harshness of the contemporary world. Recollecting their
childhoods gives adults a chance to reconnect with the visionary
power and intense relationship they had with nature as children.
In turn, these memories encourage adults to re-cultivate as close
a relationship with nature as possible as an antidote to sadness,
loneliness, and despair. The act of remembering also allows the
poet to write that poetry sprang from the calm remembrance of
passionate emotional experiences. Poems cannot be composed at
the moment when emotion is first experienced. Instead, the initial
emotion must be combined with other thoughts and feelings from
the poet’s past experiences using memory and imagination. The
poem produced by this time-consuming process will allow the
poet to convey the essence of his emotional memory to his
readers and will permit the readers to remember similar
emotional experiences of their own.
Wandering and Wanderers
 The speakers of Wordsworth’s poems are
inveterate(habitual) wanderers: they roam solitarily,
they travel over the moors, they take private walks
through the highlands of Scotland. Active wandering
allows the characters to experience and participate in
the vastness and beauty of the natural world. Moving
from place to place also allows the wanderer to make
discoveries about himself. While wandering, speakers
uncover the visionary powers of the mind and
understand the influence of nature, as in “I wandered
lonely as a cloud” (1807). The speaker of this poem
takes comfort in a walk he once took after he has
returned from the grit and desolation of city life.
Recollecting his wanderings allows him to transcend
his present circumstances.
I wandered lonely as a cloud
1. the speaker
 I wandered lonely as a cloud
2.
simile
.
 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.
3.
personification
.
 Continuous as the stars that shine
 And twinkle on the milky way,
 They stretched in never-ending line
 Along the margin of a bay:
4.  Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
hyperbole
 Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
.
.
 The waves beside them danced; but they
 Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
5. comparison
 A poet could not but be gay,
 In such a jocund company:
 I gazed--and gazed--but little thought
 What wealth the show to me had brought:
.
 For oft, when on my couch I lie
 In vacant or in pensive mood,
 They flash upon that inward eye
 Which is the bliss of solitude;
 And then my heart with pleasure fills,
 And dances with the daffodils.
I & Daffodils
I: wandered lonely, high over;
Daffodils: a crowd,a host of; beneath the
tree; danced in glee;
I became happy upon seeing and
remembering the Daffodils.
Daffodils is my consolace and antidote to
sadness and loneliness.
Summary
 The speaker says that, wandering like a cloud floating
above hills and valleys, he encountered a field of daffodils
beside a lake. The dancing, fluttering flowers stretched
endlessly along the shore, and though the waves of the
lake danced beside the flowers, the daffodils outdid the
water in glee. The speaker says that a poet could not help
but be happy in such a joyful company of flowers. He says
that he stared and stared, but did not realize what wealth
the scene would bring him. For now, whenever he feels
“vacant” or “pensive,” the memory flashes upon “that
inward eye / That is the bliss of solitude,” and his heart fills
with pleasure, “and dances with the daffodils.”
Form
The four six-line stanzas of this poem
follow a quatrain-couplet rhyme scheme:
ABABCC.
Each line is metered in iambic tetrameter.
Commentary
 This simple poem, one of the loveliest and most famous in the
Wordsworth canon, revisits the familiar subjects of nature and
memory, this time with a particularly (simple) spare, musical
eloquence. The plot is extremely simple, depicting the poet’s
wandering and his discovery of a field of daffodils by a lake, the
memory of which pleases him and comforts him when he is lonely,
bored, or restless. The characterization of the sudden occurrence of
a memory—the daffodils “flash upon the inward eye / Which is the
bliss of solitude”—is psychologically acute, but the poem’s main
brilliance lies in the reverse personification of its early stanzas. The
speaker is metaphorically compared to a natural object, a cloud—“I
wandered lonely as a cloud / That floats on high...”, and the daffodils
are continually personified as human beings, dancing and “tossing
their heads” in “a crowd, a host.” This technique implies an inherent
unity between man and nature, making it one of Wordsworth’s most
basic and effective methods for instilling in the reader the feeling the
poet so often describes himself as experiencing.
Poetry as a prism and a winter store
 The function of poetry lies in its power to give an
unexpected splendor to familiar and commonplace
things, to incidents and situations from common life,
just as a prism(棱镜) can give a ray of commonplace
sunlight the manifold miracle of color.
 He collects a winter store of bright summer
moments.--- Gorge Brandes
The Rhodora
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
• On Being Asked, Whence Is the Flower?
•
1 In May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes,
• 2 I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods,
• 3 Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook1,
4 To please the desert and the sluggish2 brook.
•
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外国语学院
1. Slow
moving
2. Nooks and
crannies 每个
角落
The Rhodora
• 5 The purple petals, fallen in the
pool,
• 6 Made the black water with their
beauty gay;
7 Here might the red-bird come his
plumes to cool,
• 8 And court the flower that
cheapens his array.
•
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外国语学院
The Rhodora
• .
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9 Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why
10This charm is wasted on the earth and
sky,
11Tell them, dear, that if eyes were
made for seeing,
12Then Beauty is its own excuse for
being:
外国语学院
The Rhodora
13 Why thou wert there, O rival of the
rose!
14 I never thought to ask, I never
knew;
15 But, in my simple ignorance,
suppose
16The self-same Power that brought
me there brought you.
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外国语学院
I& Rhodora
• The self-same Power that brought me there
brought you.
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外国语学院
紫杜鵑
• 有人問起這花從哪里來?
• 五月，當淒厲的海風穿過荒漠，
• 紫杜鵑!如果聖人問你，為何
我看到樹林裏紫杜鵑燦然開放
你把美豔白白拋擲在天地之間，
無葉的花朵點綴于陰濕的角落，
告訴他們，親愛的，
荒漠和緩流的小溪有多麼快樂。
如果眼睛生來就是為了觀看，
紫色的花瓣紛紛揚揚飄入水池，
那麼美就是它們存在的理由。
烏黑的池水因這美麗歡欣無比。
你為什麼在那裏。玫瑰的匹敵
紅鳥可能會飛來這裏浸濕羽毛，
我從未想起要問，也從來不知道
向令它們慚愧的花兒傾吐愛慕，
。
不過，以我愚人之見，我以為，
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外国语学院
把我帶來的神明也把你帶到這裏
。
龙应台译本:
•
五月，海风刺透静寂
林中忽遇紫杜鹃
叶空，花满，遍缀湿地
荒原缓溪为之一亮
紫瓣缤纷飘落
黑水斑驳艳丽
绯鸟或暂歇凉
爱花瓣令羽色黯淡
2011-2
• 若问汝何以
绝色虚掷天地
请谓之：眼为视而生
则美为美而在
与玫瑰竞色
何必问缘起
吾来看汝，汝自开落
缘起同一
外国语学院
from what origin or source ？
• 1. On Being Asked, Whence Is the Flower?
• 2. 1-4 lines: solitudes, fresh Rhodora , in a damp
nook1, please the desert and the sluggish2 brook.
• 3. 5-8 lines: alliterative "P's" in line 5 , Made the
black water with their beauty gay, the red-bird ,
court the flower .
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外国语学院
饮酒 . 陶渊明
 结庐在人境，而无车马喧
。
 问君何能尔？心远地自偏
。
 采菊东篱下，悠然见南山
。
 山气日夕佳，飞鸟相与还
。
 此中有真意，欲辨已忘言

题都城南庄 . 崔护
鸟鸣涧. 王维
 人闲桂花落，
 夜静春山空。
 月出惊山鸟，
 时鸣春涧中。
Lake School Poets:William Wordsworth;
Samuel Taylor Coleridge; Robert Southey
Satanic School poets:
George Gordon Byron; Percy Bysshe
Shelley;
.
Cockney School Poets: Wiiliam Hazlitt;
John Keats
Romantic Essayists:
Charles Lamb; Thomas de Quincey
Romantic Novelists:
Walter Scott; Jane Austin
The 4th Week:
Romantic Period (II)
1798—1832
W W(1770-1850),G G B(1788-1824),
PBS(1792-1822),JK(1795-1821),
WS(1771-1832),JA(1775-1817),
CL(1775-1834)
Study plan for
Romantic Period (II)
I Review ;
II Class report ;
III Ode to the West wind;
IV Romantic novelists and essayist;
V Assignments:
 1.to recite 1-2 poems;
 2. to complete Chapter 1&2 of

Pride and Prejudice;
George Gordon, Lord Byron
and the Byronic hero
 A Byronic hero exhibits several characteristic
traits, and in many ways he can be considered a
rebel. The Byronic hero does not possess
"heroic virtue" in the usual sense; instead, he
has many dark qualities. With regard to his
intellectual capacity, self-respect, and
hypersensitivity, the Byronic hero is "larger than
life," and "with the loss of his titanic passions, his
pride, and his certainty of self-identity, he loses
also his status as [a traditional] hero"
He is usually isolated from society as a
wanderer or is in exile of some kind. It
does not matter whether this social
separation is imposed upon him by some
external force or is self-imposed. Byron's
Manfred, a character who wandered
desolate mountaintops, was physically
isolated from society, whereas Childe
Harold chose to "exile" himself and
wander throughout Europe. Although
Harold remained physically present in
society and among people, he was not by
any means "social."
 Often the Byronic hero is moody by nature or
passionate about a particular issue. He also has
emotional and intellectual capacities, which are
superior to the average man. These heightened
abilities force the Byronic hero to be arrogant,
confident, abnormally sensitive, and extremely
conscious of himself.
 Sometimes, this is to the point of nihilism
resulting in his rebellion against life itself . In one
form or another, he rejects the values and moral
codes of society and because of this he is often
unrepentant by society's standards.
Often the Byronic hero is
characterized by a guilty memory
of some unnamed sexual crime.
Due to these characteristics, the
Byronic hero is often a figure of
repulsion, as well as fascination.
They are beautiful but
damned。
When We Two Parted
1. Image of a guilty memory, nihilism:
cold, chill, broken, shame, knell, rue,
grieve, silence and tears.
2. A little changed rhythm: abababab;
3. Short meter, circulated structure: in
silence and tears.
4.mainly monophthongs(单元音)
She Walks in Beauty
1. Rising Diphthongs or, long-distance one : ei, ai.
2. Enjambed line, a line that does not end with a mark
of punctuation, which runs over (using its "legs")
to the next line without a pause.
3. Contrast: night-starry skies,
dark-bright, tender light-gaudy day,
4. Modifiers: softly, serenely, pure,
dear, soft, calm, innocent.
2.2 John Keats: Here lies one whose
name was writ in water.
His inspiration is the old Greek World.
On First Looking Into Chapman’s Homer
Endymion
On a Grecian Urn
To Psyche
To a nightingale
On a Grecian Urn
Beauty is truth, truth beauty,
--that’s all
 Ye know on earth,
and all ye need to know.
To a nightingale
Was it a vision,or
a waking dream?
 Fled is that music:
---Do I wake or sleep?
Endymion and Selene (Diana)

Endymion was a handsome shepherd boy of
Asia Minor, the mortal lover of the moon
goddess Selene. Each night he was kissed to
sleep by her. She begged Zeus to grant him
eternal life so she might be able to embrace him
forever. Zeus complied, putting Endymion into
eternal sleep and each night Selene visits him
on Mt. Latmus, near Milete, in Asia Minor. The
ancient Greeks believed that his grave was
situated on this mountain. Selene and Endymion
have fifty daughters.
III Ode to the West Wind & other 3
Mad Shelley and his quixotic political
attempt.
Ozymandias
Ode to the West Wind
The Cloud
To a Sky-lark
Ozymandias
1.a sonnet, metered in iambic pentameter.
The rhyme scheme is somewhat unusual :
interlinks the octave (a term for the first
eight lines of a sonnet) with the sestet (a
term for the last six lines), by gradually
replacing old rhymes with new ones in the
form ABABACDCEDEFEF.
2. the insignificance of human beings to
the passage of time.
3. a metaphor for the ephemeral nature of
political power;
4. the art and language long outlast the
other legacies of power.
5.the distancing of the narrative (the 3rd
.
person)
serves to undermine his power
over us just as completely as has the
passage of time.
6. the poet demolishes our imaginary
picture of the king, and interposes
centuries of ruin between it and us.
Ode to the West Wind
1.The sonnet form:
2.The image of West Wind:
3.How is the wind related with “me”?
IV Romantic novelists
4.1 Walter Scott (P84-116);
4.2 Jane Austen(P116-131);
V Assignments
 1.to recite 1-2 poems;
 2. to complete Chapter 1&2 of

Pride and Prejudice;

Thank you!