《Herald先驱报》doc版.doc

Advanced English Book 2 Lesson 7Lesson Seven The Libido for the UglyBackground InformationMencken, Henry Louis (1880-1956)American journalist, critic, and essayist, whose perceptive and often controversial analyses of American life and letters made him the first American to be widely read as a critic. Born in Baltimore, Maryland, and after graduating from Baltimore Polytechnic Institute at the age of 16, Mencken began his career as a journalist in 1899 with the Baltimore Morning Herald先驱报; in 1906 he switched to the Baltimore Sun, where he remained in various editorial capacities for most of his life. With American drama critic George Jean Nathan he co-edited Smart Set, a satirical monthly magazine, from 1914 to 1923. Again with Nathan, in 1924, Mencken founded the American Mercury, the literary heir to their previous joint endeavor; Mencken remained as its editor until 1933. The shortcomings of democracy and middle-class American culture were the targets of Menckens wit and criticism. (He called the American public the “booboisie”愚民阶级(a class of people regarded as stupid and gullible.) A six-volume collection of his essays and reviews, entitled Prejudices, was published between 1919 and 1927. Menckens most important piece of scholarship was The American Language (1919), which traced the development and established the importance of American English. Happy Days (1940), Newspaper Days (1941), and Heathen Days (1943) are Menckens autobiographies. Beginning in 1971, Menckens letters, diaries, papers, and unpublished manuscripts were periodically released under the terms of his will. Their contents revealed the complexities of his personality and raised allegations of anti-Semitism, racism, and misogyny厌女症. Menckens journalistic skills became his chief handicap as a critic, because he sacrificed discrimination for immediate attention, esthetic and philosophical distinctions for the reductions of easy reading, and subtleties of statement for buffoonery打诨and bombast浮夸的言词. His appreciation of the juicy phrase interested him in its informal aspects. Behind this interest was a distrust of Englishmenthat deluded him into holding that American speech was the unique product of a new environment. By the time of his death on Jan. 29, 1956, in his beloved Baltimore, recognition of his service to the language was everywhere admitted.Mencken is well-known for his bombastic style and acid tongue and in this piece he seems to have excelled himself. Mencken doesnt just satirize, or perhaps one might more appropriately say he doesnt just berate and revile 谩骂the ugliness of Westmoreland, he attacks the whole American racea race that loves ugliness for its own sake, that lusts to make the world intolerable; a race which hates beauty as it hates truth. In his vitriolic attack he chooses the strongest words possible, words bordering on the abusive. Besides words, he uses figures of speech profusely to create nauseating and dreadful images to reinforce his verbal attack. He also uses a lot of hyperboles to exaggerate and also makes abundant use of sarcasm, ridicule and irony to taunt 奚落and jeer. However, an excessive use of strong language is always self-defeating. The average reader begins to doubt the objectivity and fairness or even the honesty of the writer. The reader feels the writer perhaps has a special axe to grind and loses interest in what he has to say. In fact one might say Mencken employs all the force of diction, structure and figures only to batter his readers into insensitivity.DescriptionDescription conveys the sensations, emotions and impressions that affect a writer experiencing a person, place, object or idea. The writer describes what he sees, hears, smells, feels and tastes, and it often includes his emotional reactions to the physical sensations of the experience. In description, a writer paints a verbal picture of some place, thing or person. In order to enable his reader to perceive the reality of the original, he reproduces an image and invokes that reality essentially by specific and concrete words that appeal to the readers sense of sight, smell, sound, taste and touch. Description is usually organized and developed by space order. He first establishes a point of view, that is, he takes a fixed position in space or a moving position through space and describes what he sees. He may also establish a mental attitude towar5d his subject as part of his point of view. He selects detail in some kind of logical order; he may concentrate on a dominant impression and then move on to other features; he may move from a distance to close up, for close up to a distance, from left to right, from right to left, etc. Description may be 1. objective, realistic or expository or 2. subjective, impressionistic or emotional. Description is realistic when the topic is viewed from an objective point of view. The intent of the writer is to inform or explain. He records only what his senses detect. This kind of description is much like a black and white photographthe camera captures only what is there. He paints with words an objective and impersonal picture, selecting factual details and using denotative and concrete words to avoid an emotional or distorted reproduction.Description is impressionistic when the writer regards the topic from a subjective point of view. The main purpose of impressionistic description is to share with the reader a single dominant impression. The dominant impression may be a sense impression or an emotion. In writing emotional description, a writer tries to evoke in the reader his feelings about the subject; therefore he selects words rich in connotative meaning and appeals strongly to the senses. He is subjective and personal.Detailed Study of the TextWhat kind of writing is this one? If this piece of writing is a description, then what does Mencken mainly describe? What is the theme of this essay? Ugliness is not due to poverty but to sth. innate in the American charactera love of ugliness for its own sake. Why does Mencken uses such a pathological term like “libido”? What does the phrase “libido for the ugly” mean? Who has the so-called libido for the ugly? Whats the target of Menckens verbal attack? libido n.: a Latin-originated word meaning “pleasure” or “lust”, now it is a term in psychoanalytic theory, referring to the psychic and emotional energy associated with instinctual biological drives; specifically, it refers to a basic form of psychic energy, comprising the positive, loving instincts manifested variously at different stages of personality development; Mencken deliberately uses this word to create the impression that his description and analysis has some scientific foundation. The love of ugliness in the U. S. is a pathological 病理学的problem. the libido for the ugly: the strong urge to love things uglyP 1: What does Mencken describe in para 1? What is his purpose?In para 1, Mencken describes both the great wealth and the abominable human habitations to make a sharp contrast between them two. His purpose is to arouse the readers curiosity because its normally difficult to understand why such rich people live in such ugly houses. And this contrast and puzzle help Mencken to make his point in the following paras. on a winter day: one day in winter. This phrase is used when the exact date is forgotten, or when the writer or speaker doesnt wish to mention the exact datePittsburgh: a city in Southwest Pennsylvania, one of the most important industrial cities of America, and a center of rail and river transportation, termed as the “Steel City” or “Smoky City”, producing coal, natural gas, oil and limestone.boy and manbefore: as a boy and later when I was a grown-up man, I had often traveled through the regionHere was the very heartjoke.Notice the many figures of speech employed here. What are they?They are: 1. metaphor: comparing this region to the heart of a human body; 2. hyperbole: exaggerating the richness and grandeur of this region and of America as a whole; 3. antithetical contrast: the richest and grandest region contrasted with the hideous, bleak and forlorn scene; 4. parallel construction: the very heartthe centerthe boast and pride ofheart: the most important industrial centersthe center of activity: the center of the most profitable and characteristic American activityindustrial activity the boast and pride ofon earth: the U. S., the richest and grandest nation ever seen on earth, both boasts about and feels proud of this center of industrial activityit reducedjoke: that this scene makes all human endeavors to advance and improve their lot appear as a ghastly, saddening joke.reduce v.: to bring to a humbler, weaker, difficult, or forced state or condition; to bring sb./sth. into a specified (usu. worse) state or conditioneg. be reduced to begging/tears/silence/despair/obedience/shadow骨瘦如柴/subjectionbeyond computationimagination: could not imagine or calculate the amount of wealth in this regionwould disgraced a race of alley cats: even homeless, mongrel cats would feel ashamed to live inunbroken ugliness: ugliness that was continuous and uninterrupted; wherever your eyes look, they meet with this uglinessagonizing ugliness: ugliness that caused great pain to the viewer/ its a transferred epithetsheer revolting monstrousness: absolute, disgusting hideousnessHow could houses insult and lacerate the eye? Here Mencken wants to exaggerate the ugliness of the houses there by saying that they are so ugly that it offended and hurt his eyes to watch them.pretentious adj.: marked by an extravagant outward showone blinkedshot away.What kind of image will be initiated in the readers mind by reading this clause? What effect does the author intend to produce? This simile creates the most horrible and gruesome picture in the readers mind. A few lingerthere: Some of the houses remain in ones memory and later when one pictures them in ones mind, they still appear to be horrible.After the colon followed the detailed and vivid descriptions of two buildings that refuse to be forgotten, that have a lasting effect of horror. What is a dormer-window look like? And what will a bare leprous hill look like? Could you describe them in your own words? dormer-window: a window set upright on a sloping roofleprous: like leprosy having ulcers 溃疡and white scaly scabs疥癣a bare leprous hill: a hillside was bare and looked as repulsive as the skin of a lepera steel stadium like a huge rattrap: a large round oval structure made of steel and looked like a big rat trapThere was notshabby. Here in this sentence, Mencken uses a double negatives and repetition of the same structural pattern to help to emphasize the “misshapen” and “shabby” of the buildings there.P 3 In this para, Mencken begins to give description of the country itself and what the buildings should be look like, what intention drives him to say so? Why not just continuing describing how ugly these house are? Mencken attempts to find out reasons behind the ugliness of these buildings. First of all, the ugliness of these buildings is not the result of the natural geographical defects. The country itselfmills: The country itself is pleasant to look at, despite the sooty dirt spread by the innumerable mills in this region.not uncomely: its a litotes间接肯定法 or understatement in which an affirmative is expressed by negating its opposite; it achieves its effect by deliberately understate a factIt is thickly settled: In this area a great number of people live close togethersolid block: a group of buildings with no breaks or empty space separating themWhats the main idea of the “if” clause? What is Menckens idea of decent houses in this area? In this “if” clause, it is sarcastically emphasized that there were no architects worthy of the honor or the high standards demanded by its profession. The houses would be Swiss-typed wooden dwelling, which lies low and is built right against the hillside/clinging to the hillsides, with steeply sloped roof.What are the houses really look like? They have takenon end: The model they followed in building their houses was a brick standing upright.This they havelow-pitched roof: They have only substituted clay by some shabby, thin wooden boards, adding a narrow, moderate-sloped roofAnd the wholepiers: And the whole house was set upon thin and ridiculous looking brick column. on their low sidesmud: metaphor, comparing the houses to pigs burying themselves/wallowing打滚 in the mud They leanprecariously: They tilt in one direction or another, clinging to their foundation unstably. one and all: everyone; every house without exceptiondead: dried up and dead tissueseczematous patches of paint: a metaphor, comparing the patches of paint to dried-up scales formed by a skin diseaseAnd one and allthe streets: All the houses are smeared with sooty dirt, and some paint which is not covered up by the soot looks like dried-up scales formed on the skin by eczema.P 4: But what brick!This is an elliptical sentence. Will you supply these untold parts?But what terrible brick it was!patina: gen. refers to the beautiful green or greenish-blue color that ageing brings to bronze or copper objects; here it refers to the black soot of the mills long past all hope and caring: an egg that had long past the time when there was some hope that it might still be edible, long past the time when people were still concerned about it/when people still cared/would like to take the trouble to make it edible; rotten eggRed brickdignity: Red brick, even in a steel town, looks quite respectable with the passing of time. Even in a steel town, old red bricks still appear pleasing to the eye.sightly: pleasant to the eyeespecially ifby the rain: esp. if the borders are made of white stone, with black soot in the hollow places and the protruding parts washed clean by the rainBut in Westmorelandyellow: But it seems that people in Westmoreland county prefer that yellow color produced by the disease uremiauremia: a toxic condition caused by the presence in the blood of waste products normally eliminated in the urine and resulting from a failure of the kidneys to secrete urineP 5: What is this championship about? Why does Mencken have to pray millions of times to award this championship? What does he pray for?championship: this word is used ironically to say not the best but the worst; he just gives Westmoreland the highest award for uglinessprayer: asking God to help him come to a correct decision so that he would not wrong Westmoreland by naming it as the ugliest one in the worldI awardprayer: I came to the conclusion that Westmoreland had the most loathsome towns and villages only after visiting and comparing many places and after constantly praying to God for guidance.“I have seenall of the most unlovely towns of the world; they are all to be found in the U. S.” is a topic sentence in this para which leads a series of sentences, and the following sentences begin with “I have seenI am familiar withI have whirled throughI have been to”, what places has he mentioned? What function do they have to illustrate Menckens point?This shows that Mencken has traveled throughout the U. S.Pullman: a railroad car with private compartments or seats that can be made up into berths for sleepingmalarious tidewater hamlet: malaria infested small village near the sea affected by the rise and fall of tideshuddle: to crowd together; to be densely packed incomparable: beyond comparison; unequaled; matchless; it has the connotative meaning of superb excellenceThey arein design: sarcasm People cant find such terrible color and design in any other region. The color and design were so bad that one couldnt find any which was worse.titanic: having great stature or enormous strengthgenius: an evil genius, having great ability to do devilHell: the powers of evil or darknessIt is as ifof them: hyperbole and irony It is as if some genius of great power, who didnt like to do the right things and who was an inflexible enemy of man, employed all the cleverness and skill of hell to build these ugly houses. grotesquerie: a thing characterized by distortions or striking incongruities in appearance, shape, mannerdiabolical: of the devil; fiendishThey showdiabolical: They show such fantastic and bizarre ugliness that, in looking back, they become almost fiendish and wicked. When one looks back at these houses whose ugliness is so fantastic and bizarre one feels that they must be the work of the devil himself.What is mainly be discussed in this para? To further state that the ugliness of these dwellings is matchless and to express the authors disbelief at finding so hideous houses in this region P 6: This para begins with a question, whats the purpose of this question?By asking the question Mencken wants to find out reasons behind this phenomenon in this region. insensate: not feeling, not capable of feeling, sensationAfter the dash lies the appositive of foreigners, what kind of words are used to modify them?brute: a brutal, crude, or insensitive personThe first question is followed by another one, is it a real one that demands an answer? What has been illustrated by the following statements after these two questions?The second is a rhetorical question, which could be read as a negative answer to the first question. And the following sentences further deny the possibility that foreigners living here are responsible for the abominations in this region, so that this ugliness is a domestic feature instead of a foreign one. putrid: decomposing; rotten and foul-smellingpull: drawing force, drive, appealborder upon: to be like, almost beBut in the