英国文学教案Introduction

1、英国文学史及作品选读 课程教案（第1讲）授课时间2017-2018学年第二学期02.26-03.03授课对象15-17级各专业选修生授课主题Introduction on English Literature教学目的 与要求1 Help the students have a general knowledge about literature.2 Help the students know some elements about novel.3 Help the students know some elements about poetry.教学重、难 点1 The Nature, Fu

2、nction and Significance of Literature;2 The Elements of Novels and Poetry主要教学方 法1 .讲述与实例相结合，老师提问，以启发式教学为主，互动为主线。每章开 课之前，学生应首先把本单元的预习工作做好。课堂教学时循序渐进，按 照教学大纲的要求的把教学任务完成。2 .授课时，教师应当把引导式和启发式融入教学之中， 使学生学会独立思考， 独立解决问题。3 .课后练习要认真完成，相互讨论研究教学内容 的组织与 设计Detailed Teaching Points & Procedure1 Introduction to

3、literature1.1 Nature of literature What is literature? There have been various attempts to define literature. Many books have been written about introduction to literature, and there have been many answers to the question what is literature. In the widest sense literature is just about anything writ

4、ten. But in the more specialized sense of the word|iterature is the art that uses language as a medium Literature contains fiction and non-fiction. Under fiction there are four genres: novels, short stories, plays and poems Fiction is referred to as creative or figurative expression of life. Non-fic

5、tion is called a literal expression of life or discursive writing. Non-fiction is essay, which has traditionally been classified into 4 categories:description, narration, exposition, argumentation. As Robert Frost says, literature is a performance in words. It is the work of men who are specially se

6、nsitive to the language of their time and who use the skill of language to make their vision of life. Literature helps us to better understand the nature of the real. Readers find meanings the wok or read for a sense of what an aspect of life means to the writer, but they also take delight in the wa

7、y that the work has been constructed, take delight in the performance in words.E.g. I kiss you ere I kill you. ” (Othello) Thus literature offers both pleasureand 川umination . It enriches our lives and increases our capacities for understanding and comprehension. Finding meaning in our world and exp

8、ressing it and sharing it with others is the most human activity of our existence.1.2 Function and significance of literature The most primitive approach to western literature, especially novels,is to read them for emotional satisfaction, for exdtement as well as for entertainmentAs young people on

9、the threshold of real life experience, our students need private windows for which to get a legitimate entry into the emotional lives of others without trespassing privacy. You laugh with shed tears when you read the interesting stories. Students at this leve look for what' soing on and what has

10、 happened to the charactersthey can identify with. All they care about is the story, created by the intricate combination of various elements of novelamong others, “plot ” . To these readers, novels are recreational al least and therapeutic at most. This kind of attitude is mainly caused by two reas

11、ons. Firstly, it stems from the idea that literary works are vehicles that contain humanistic knowledge and that writers write to share with readers what they have to say about life. Secondly, it characterizes amateurism which fails to understand literature as an autonomous academic discipline. The

12、second level on which literature exists is what can be called didactic one. Literature is regarded as a depositor of human experience of considerable variety anc scope. It gains access to questions of moral philosophyquestion of value and of normative judgment. In such belief, readers try to read as

13、 many meanings as they can into literary pieces. Literature is read forits hermeneutic function. Advanced readers of literature have a distinctive concern over matters beyond didacticism. They look for “ how it is said In other words, sophisticated readers do not allow themselves to be passively man

14、ipulated by either moving plots or fascinating characters. Instead, they have an awareness of how authors manipulate readers, of what the mode of narration is, of whom the speaker is and what the benefit of the choice is. Literature can be read as rhetoric and philology Readers at this level are als

15、o aware of artistic weakness.They even read texts closely as texts and do not move into the general context of human experience or history.1.3 Methods of reading literature Our aim in teaching literature, as we now understand, is to encourage a confrontation with actual works of art and to demonstra

16、te how literature is a particular organization of language. Literature is always inward pointing. There is no way of knowing a novel unless we go to other parts of the novel. Literature has its own specific laws, structures, and devices, which are to be studied in themselves rather than reduced to s

17、omething else. To understand works of literature, as in the case of appreciating a bridge, it is important to know its elements, to know how the component parts are put together to make the whole. Nevertheless, familiarity with technical vocabulary does not guaranteethat one will understand and enjo

18、y fiction. There is no substitute for careful reading, thinking about one's response,and rereading the text, looking for evidence that supports the initial responses or that will lead to richer or different ones. To sum up, one must be inside and outside of the work. One must allow himself to be

19、 carried away by the work, andat the same time, on reading again and again think about the way the end is connected to the beginning. Now that one knows the end, one will read the beginning in a different way. T. S. Eliot says that one has to give himself up and then recover himsel and the third mom

20、ent is having something to say before one has wholly forgotten both surrender and recovery. And the self recovered is never the same as the self before it was given. (Helen Hennessy 292)2 Elements of the novel StoryA story is a series of happenings arranged in the natural temporal order as they occu

21、r Story is the basis of the novel, and indeed the basis of narrative works of all kinds. In telling stories, the novelist aims at something higher or he intends to add something to the mere facts. Characters By their roles in the novel, the characters can be grouped asneroes/heroines main characters

22、and minor characters and foils. By the degrees of their development characters can be grouped asound characters and flat characters Round characters grow while flat characters don' t. Mosare round characters who grow emotionally or spiritually. (Emma, Pip, Stephen Dedalus )Some main characters a

23、nd many minor characters are flat characters.(Cohn, Catherine, Henry, Roger Chilingworth) Stereotypes are typical characters (stock character which don' t demand description and explanation to be believable and understood because the reader has already had a stock of knowledge about such charact

24、ers: helpless miserable orphan; the stern silent sheriff; the innocent and good-natured rustic; the resourceful detective, and the cruel, selfish stepmother. PlotThe story and the character alone cannot make s novel yet. To make a novel, a plot is prerequisite. It is a particular arrangement of happ

25、ening in novel that is aimed at revealing their causal relationships or at conveying the novelist ideas. A plot is sometimes called a story line. The most important of the traditional plot is that it should be a complete or unified action, that is, something with a beginning, a middle, and an end.E.

26、 M. Foster:"The king died and then the queen died.”“The king died and the queen died of grief.”The former is a story while the latter is a plot, becausethe causal phrase “o©rief indicates our interpretation and thus arrangement of the happenings. ThemeThe theme of a novel is its controllin

27、g idea or its central insight. Being an idea or an insight, the theme shouldbe abstractand it should generalize about life and be capable of unifying the whole novel. SettingIt is the background against which a character is depicted or an event narrated. Its purpose is to provide an imaginary link b

28、etween what happens in the novel and what the reader takes to be reality. Narrative point of view The point of view is the attitude or outlook of a narrator or character in a piece ofliterature, or it is the relationship between the narrator and the narrated Metaphorically, a point of view is a stan

29、dpoint from which the narrator sees the story and how he intends the reader to see the story.Point of view can be divided into by the narrator's relationship with the character, represented by the grammatical person: the first-person narrative, third-person narrative. In the first-person narrati

30、ve, the narrator is a participant in the events, and he has to sacrifice the privilege of omniscience. In the third-person narrative, the narrator does not actually appear. The narrator is privileged to know all the happenings. In short, the narrator is free to be omniscient or selectively omniscien

31、t or to be both alternating.Point of view can be divided by the narrators relation with the event: the participant narrator, non-participant narrator. The participant narrator is a person who has experienced something and come back to report. His report and understanding of the event may or may not

32、be reliable or complete, because he is denied omniscience and he may be prejudiced. The nonparticipant narrator standsoutside what he is relating and therefore, he is given complete freedom as for whs he wishes to do with the story.Point of view can be divided by the extent of the narrator 'know

33、ledge of the events the omniscient narrator, the selective omniscient narrator, the objectivenarrator and the so-called “innocenteye”. The omniscient narrator knows everything whereas the selective omniscient narrator knows something. The objective narrator does not tell but shows. He is like a came

34、ra. This kind of point of view is also called the dramatic point of view because the reader is like the audience in a theater. The innocent-eye narrator understands what he is relating less than the reader does. Therefore, his narration is capable of irony.3 Elements of poetry RhymeRhyme is the repe

35、tition of the stressed vowel sound and all succeeding sounds. Metrical Rhythm (meter and foot)Meter refers to the regular pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables Usually, a stressedsyllable is marked "/"and an unstressedsyllable is marked "U' ia mb (iambic) U /; anapest (anap

36、estic or anapestjc U U /; trochee (trochee)/ U; dactyl (dactylic) / U U; spondee (spondaic) / /.Foot is a unit of poetic meter of stressed and unstressedsyllable. It includes monometer (one feet), dimeter (two meter), trimeter (three feet), tetrameter (four feet), pentameter (five feet), hexameter (

37、six feet), heptameter (seven feet), octameter (eight feet).Meter is based on syllables, indicating how the stressed and unstressed syllables are arranged. Foot is applied within a single line, indicating how many meters are employed in that line. ToneTone is the poise, mood, voice, attitude and outlook of the poet. Conventionally, tonecan be defined as the poet's or the speaker ' s attitude towards his subject, his ；ceor even him