Advanced English (2)
Lecturer:Yang Cheng
yangchenghn@yahoo.com.cn
2012.2 – 2012.6
The Libido for the
Ugly
H.L. Mencken
Teaching Aims
• 1. To know the author, Henry L.
Mencken
• 2. To learn the writing technique
of description
• 3. To appreciate the language
features
Important and Difficult points
•
Language: difficult new words
•
Style: biting, sharp
Background
information
Henry Louis Mencken
Living period
1880--1956
Who is he?
American educator, author, critic
Did he make you
think of any
writer in China?
柏杨
Presentation
• Try your best to make your
classmates understand and
remember the following new
vocabulary. Each group have
no more than 5 minutes.
Group 1
• libido
lucrative
hideous
• forlorn
macabre
computation
abominable
alley
filth
allude
appalling desolation dreadfully
• intolerably bleak
Group 2
• monstrousness
lacerate
pretentious
linger
downright
dormer
leprous
rat—trap
misshapen
uncomely
revolting
• horrible
hideousness
•
Group 3
• shabby grime
gully
chalet
highpitched
dingy
clapboard
• preposterous
pier
cemetery
swinish
decaying
perpendicular
precarious
Group 4
• eczematous
patina
shocking
uremia
• loathsome
laborious
• incessant
decompose
• malarious
hamlet
incomparable
titanic
aberrant unlovely decomposing
Group 5
• gloomy
God-forsaken,
uncompromising
inimical
• ingenuity
grotesquery
retrospect
diabolical
concoct
insensate
brute
abomination
putrid
deface
•
Group 6
• inadvertence
obscene
disgusting
unfathomable
frightful
horror
• ghastly
enigmatical
dogmatic
edifice
depravity
penthouse
lust
etiology
pathological
Structure
•How many parts
are there in the
text?
Structure
• Section I (para 1~2) -- the general
impression of Westmoreland (rich and
ugly)
• Section II (para 3~5) -- the
description of the design and color of
the houses
• Section III (para 6~8) -- the
reason and cause why the
people in Westmoreland love
ugly houses
• Section IV (para 9) -Conclusion
Observe the pictures
carefully and choose one and
try to describe it.
Use at least 15 words or
phrases you got from the
text in your description.
• Detailed study of the text
• Section I (para 1~2) -- the
general impression of
Westmoreland (rich and ugly)
Detailed study of the text
• Libido --– Do you think it is a general
word?
– No. It is a specific word used
in psycho-analysis
– It is a technical term in
psychology. (Freudian)
Libido ---
•
Why does the writer choose
this term?
– -- in order to give his subject
scientific coloring.
Pittsburgh –
A city in southwest Pennsylvania , It
is one of the most important
industrial cities of America, and a
center
of
rail
and
river
transportation. Termed the “Steel
City” of “Smoky City”, it is the
center of rich bituminous-coal
region, producing also natural gas,
oil and limestone, a large part of
US steel and iron is produced here.
• How is para 1 developed? What
effect does the powerful contrast
in the last two sentences of para
1 have on the reader?
• How many buildings did the writer
describe in details?
• Section II (para 3~5) -- the
description of the design and
color of the houses
• How do people build the
house on the hillside?
• What impression can you get?
• What’s the main concern of para
4?
• What places were mentioned in
para 5? What do they look like?
• Why did the author mention all
these places?
• Section III (para 6~8) -- the
reason and cause why the people
in Westmoreland love ugly houses
• Why does Mencken refer to the
villages of Europe?
The Parthenon
• A beautiful doric temple built in
honor of the virgin goddess
Athena on the Acropolis in Athens
around 5h century B.C.
• Why did the author
mention the Parthenon?
• Does Mencken believe that these
people built such ugly houses
because they were just ignorant?
What is his explanation for the
ugliness in America?
• Section IV (para 9) -- Conclusion
• Is the writer serious in his
suggestions for research in
psychology and pathological
sociology in the final paragraph?
• What is description? How
to describe a place/ a
person / a thing? (order,
any suggestions?)
• Your presentation
Description
• Description is painting a picture
in words of a person, place,
object and scene.
The soul of description:
– minute details, specific concrete
words to appeal to the reader's
senses of
– sight
– smell
– taste
– hearing
– touch
• What is objective description
and what is subjective
description? When should we
use the objective description
and when, subjective?
• Your presentation
Objective \ impersonal
– realistic
– When topic is viewed from an
objective point of view, the
writer paints a verbal picture of
the realistic world, like a
camera.
– factual words
Subjective \ personal
– impressionistic \ emotional
– The writer wants to share with
the readers a kind of dominant
impression.
The
dominant
impression may be a sense
impression or an emotion
Objective \ impersonal
• To show your fairness
Subjective \ personal
• Indicate your opinion
• Serve the further development
of the article
• Take a photo of an ugly
building and bring it to the
class, then try to describe
it both objectively and
subjectively. I’d like 3
groups to do this
presentation, 2 persons for
each group.
Notice
• 1. The choice of words,
the choice of images
• 2. What are you going to
say next (the dominant
impression)?
• Is the text an objective or
subjective description? Why?
Subjective \ personal
• emotional words
– In this lesson, Mencken is very
subjective and personal. His
description is strongly
impressionistic and highly
emotional.
Subjective \ personal
• The dominant impression --ugliness
– Westmoreland is the ugliest
place not only in the US but
also in the world.
• The author makes full use of
figures of speech to create
nauseating and dreadful images to
reinforce his verbal attack. What
are the most frequently-used
rhetorical devices in this text?
• metaphor, simile, hyperbole
• sarcasm, ridicule and irony
Antithetical contrast (反衬对比)
• 1.Here was the very heart of
industrial America, the center of its
most lucrative and characteristic
activity, the boast and pride of the
richest and grandest nation ever seen
on earth—and here was a scene so
dreadfully hideous, so intolerably
bleak and forlorn that it reduced the
whole aspiration of man to a macabre
and depressing joke.
Antithetical contrast (反衬对比)
• 2.Here was wealth beyond
computation, almost beyond
imagination ---- and here were
human habitations so abominable that
they would have disgraced a race of
alley cats
• (repetition, antithesis, parallelism)
• The richest and grandest nation
vs.
hideous, bleak,forlorn﹙p1﹚
• Wealth beyond computation
vs.
So abominable that they would have
disgraced a race of alley cats﹙p1﹚
litotes﹙反叙法﹚
• It is a figure of speech in which,
rather than making a certain
statement directly, a speaker
expresses it even more
effectively, or achieves emphasis,
by denying its opposite
litotes
• e.g. "He was not unfamiliar with
the works of Dickens."
• rather than merely saying that a
person is quite attractive (or even
very attractive), one might say
that he or she is "not
unattractive".
• The country itself is not
uncomely﹙p3﹚
General introduction:
contrast (rich & ugly)
Not poor
Why: libido for the ugly
Detailed description:
Having choice
shape, color
(possible choice)
Conclusion
Elimination(排除法）
Possible reason for the ugly buildings
foreigners, poverty, lack of other
choices, positive libido
foreigners×
poverty×
lack of other Libido for ugly
choices×
positive libido
Example
“I love you.”
Possible reason:
• your money ×
• your rich and powerful family×
• your help to date with
your roommate×
………
So I love you, truly.
choice of words
“adv+adj” structure:
• dreadfully hideous,
• intolerably bleak
Use two adjectives together
• eg: bleak and forlorn;
•
macabre and depressing;
•
unbroken and agonizing
Images:
1.Leprous hill
2.rat trap
3.Swinishly
4.An egg long past all hope or
caring
5.Uremic yellow
6.A fat woman with a black eye
7.A Presbyterian grinning
Image
• Far out at the sea ，
the water is as blue as
the bluest
cornflower(矢车菊）,
and as clear as the
clearest crystal.
• All the trees and bushes were
polyps, half animal and half
plant, they looked like hundredhead snakes growing out of the
sand, the branches were long
slimy arms, with tentacles(触角）
like wriggling worms.
•
• The witch has a face of a horse,
ears of a donkey , eyes of a
toad (癞蛤蟆), a mouth
• of a hippopotamus (河马）.
• How to make effective
use of images?
• 1. Choose an image that can
convey your meaning and
feeling exactly
• 2. Choose an image that most
readers are familiar with or it
can bring a lot of imagination
to the readers
His Style
– He
is
well-known
bombastic
tongue
style
for
and
his
acid
Group activity
• Choose one building/ place you
like/hate most on our campus
and make a description with at
least 3 images.
• Do you like the article? Why
or why not? What do you
appreciate most in this writing?
What do you hate most?