The Early 20th century English Literature 5 страница
Virginia Woolf committed suicide in 1941.
Vocabulary
affect [a'fekt] v влиять internal [m't3:nl] а внутренний
apart [a'pa:t] adv отдельно mental ['mentl] о умственный
apart from кроме того noted ['nsutid] a известный
breakdown ['breikdaun] n расстройство witness ['witnis] v быть свидетелем
Questions and Tasks
1. Relate the main facts of Virginia Woolf's life.
2. What was her first novel?
3. Give a brief account of Woolf's literary career.
4. What were the main literary principles of Virginia Woolf?
5. What is the contribution of Woolf to English literature?
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Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888-1965)
| Thomas Steams Eliot |
Thomas Steams Eliot ['rom3s'st3:nz 'eljat] was born in America, in St Louis, Missouri in 1888. His family had emigrated from England in the 17th century, to Massachusetts, and had played an active part in the spiritual and intellectual life of the growing nation. Thomas Stearns Eliot was educated first in St Louis and then went to Harward. At Harward Eliot developed his interest in poetry, writing, contributing and editing the literary review The Harward Advocate.
In 1910 Eliot left America and went to Paris to study at the Sorbonne. In 1914 he went to Oxford, where he wrote his doctoral thesis.
In England, Eliot quickly made a home. His first volume was published in 1917. This was Prufrock and Other Observations. It con-tains one of Eliot's best-known poems The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock which was first published in 1915. The poem shows Eliot's way of writing — he uses images, fragments and memorable phrases to build up a broad picture of the character, his anxieties, and his time. The poem is about time, and wasted time and how the different inner parts of the character of Prufrock grow old and see his life become more and more meaningless:
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons
I grow old... I grow old
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
We understand from the poem that J. Alfred Prufrock, a bit of dandy, worried about his clothes, going bald and growing old, unsuccessfully tries to find the courage and finally feels the enormous futility of his life falling on him.
Should I after tea and cakes and ices
Have the courage to force the moment to its crisis.
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He suffers terrible self-agonies, as memoires fill his consciousness. He is constantly aware of the passing of time, but not the clock time of the modern period; he measures the passing of time with "coffee spoons", with the changing light and the afternoons becoming evenings. He physically feels himself ageing and is unable to act, to be or to do.
In 1922 Thomas Stearns Eliot published The Waste Land and, ever since, it has been considered the most important single poem of the century. It takes the ideas of time, and waste, already found in Prufrock and extends them to all societies, all times, and all cultures. It is a poem full of references to other texts, and is one of the most complex.
The subject of the poem is the collapse of spirituality in modern society, and with it, the cultural and spiritual desolation of the world. The poet expresses his desire to reconstruct civilization.
The poem begins with an echo of Chaucer's Prologue to the Canterbury Tales. Chaucer writes of the sweet showers of spring, using April as the month which brings the coming of spring, but Eliot changes that positive idea with the words:
April is the cruelest month.
The poem then goes on to describe London, and the image of all the poem is of wastelands, deserts — the same kind of futility.
The image of the wasteland has come to be one of the most common images of modern times, and Eliot's poem has been discussed and examined by a great many cities.
Eliot believed that post-First World War Europe had become a "waste land" due to the cultural and spiritual desolation.
By 1930, Eliot had entered into a new phase of poetic production. Ash Wednesday, a deeply spiritual poem, was followed by other "religious" works, including Murder in the Cathedral, a verse drama, The Four Quartets, published between 1936— 1942, and the play The Family Reunion (1939).
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| futility [fju:'tiliti] n пустота measure ['шезэ] v измерять memorable ['тетэгэЫ] а незабываемый prologue ['prsuhxj] n пролог reference ['refsrsns] n ссылка revival [n'vaivsl] л возрождение shower fjaus] n ливень spiritual ['spiritjsl] а духовный spirituality Lspintju'celiti] n духовность thesis ['9i:sis] n диссертация wasteland ['weistlaend] n пустошь
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In 1947 Thomas Stearns Eliot was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. He continued his revival of verse-drama and poetic plays, writing three more plays, The Cocktail Party (1950), The Confidential Clerk ( 1954) and The Elder Statesman (1959).
Thomas Stearns Eliot died in London in 1965 at the age of 77. His influence on English literature was enormous, not only from the point of view of his creative work, but also for his critical articles and essays. He is considered by many critics to be the most important poet in English in the 20th century.
Vocabulary
age [eidj] v стареть agony ['аедэш] n мука anxiety [serj'zaisti] n тревога collapse [ka'lseps] n крах, крушение consciousness ['kmijbsms] n сознание constantly ['krmstanth] adv постоянно desolation [^desaTeifan] n опустошение echo ['екэи] п подражание edit ['edit] v редактировать enormous [I'rmnas] а огромный extend [iks'tend] v распространять fragment ['fraegmgnt] n фрагмент; отрывок
Questions and Tasks
1. Where was Thomas Stearns Eliot born?
2. Where was he educated?
3. What was his first volume?
4. What Eliot's best-known poem does it contain?
5. What is the main idea of the poem?
6. What Eliot's poem has been considered the most important one of the century?
7. Comment on the subject of the poem The Waste Land.
8. Characterize the late period of Eliot's literary activity.
9. When did he die?
10. Speak on Eliot's place in English literature.
Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)
Aldous Leonard Huxley ['o:kfos 'lenad 'h/\ksli] was born on July 26, 1894, into a family that included some of the most distinguished members of the English intellectual elite.
| Aldous Leonard Huxley |
Aldous'father was the son of Thomas Henry Huxley1, a great biologist. His mother was the sister of Mrs Humphrey Ward2, the novelist; the niece of Matthew Arnold3, the poet; and the grand-daughter of Thomas Arnold4, a famous educator and the real-life headmaster of Rugby School.
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Undoubtedly Huxley's heritage and upbringing had an effect on his work. But his own experiences made him stand apart from the class into which he was born. Even as a small child he was considered different, showing an alertness, an intelligence, what his brother called a superiority. He was respected and loved for these abilities.
When Huxley was 16 and a student at the prestigious school Eton, an eye illness made him nearly blind. He recovered enough vision to go on to Oxford University and graduate with honors, but not enough to fight in World War I, an important experience for many of his friends, or to do the scientific work he had dreamed of. Scientific ideas remained with him, however, and he used them in many of his books.
1 Thomas Henry Huxley (1825- 1895) — Томас Генри Хаксли, англ. биолог
2 Humphrey Ward ['riAmfhword] (1851 -1920) — Хамфри Уорд, англ. писа
тельница
3 Matthew Arnold [masGju:' u:nld] (1822 -1988) — Мэтью Арнольд, англ. поэт
"ThomasArnold ['ttmws'ainid] (1795 -1842) —Томас Арнольд, англ историк
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American Academy of Arts and Letters gave him the Award of Merit for the Novel, a prize given every five years; earlier recipients had been Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Mann1, and Theodore Driser. The range of Huxley's interests can be seen from his note that his "preliminary research" for Island included "Greek history, translations from Sanscrit and Chinese of Buddhist texts, scientific papers on pharmacology, psychology and education, together with novels, poems, critical essays, travel books, political commentaries and conversations with all kinds of people, from philosophers to actresses. He used similar, though probably fewer, sources for Brave New World. This list gives you some perspective on the wide range of ideas that Huxley studied. He also wrote an early essay on ecology that helped inspire today's environmental movement.
Huxley remained nearly blind all his life. He died November 22, 1963. |
| 1 Thomas Mann ['trjmas ma:n] (1875—1955) Томас Манн, нем. писатель |
He entered the literary world while he was at Oxford. Huxley published his first book, a collection of poems, in 1916. He married Maria Nys, a Belgian, in 1919. The family divided their time between London and Europe, mostly Italy, in the 1920s, and travelled around the world in 1925 and 1926, seeing India and making a first visit to the United States Huxley liked the confidence and vitality he found in American life.
Huxley's Crome Yellow (crome = bright) (1921) was his first success, and Antic Hay (wild dance) (1923) continued this.
In 1928 he published his novel Point Counter Point, which was his best-seller. But Huxley is best remembered for his novel Brave New World (1932), with its vision of a society controlled by scientific progress.
In 1937, the Huxleys came to the United States; in 1938 they went to Hollywood, where he became a screenwriter. He remained for most of his life in California, and one of his novels caricatures what he saw as the strange life there: After Many a Summer Dies the Swan. In it Jo Stoyte tries to achieve immortality through scientific experimentation, even if it means giving up humanity and returning to the completely animal state.
In the 1950s Huxley became famous for his interest in drugs. He was looking for a drug, that would allow an escape from the self and that if taken with caution would be physically and socially harmless. He put his beliefs in such a drug into several books.
Two were nonfiction: Doors of Perception (1954) and Heaven and Hell (1956). But Huxley warned of the dangers of such experiments in an appendix he wrote to The Devils ofLoudun (1952).
Another work centering on drugs was Island (1962), a novel that required 20 years of thought and five years of writing.
Huxley produced 47 books in his long career as a writer. Some critics thought that he was a better essayist than novelist because he cared more about his ideas than about plot or characters. But we cannot hide one important fact: the books he wrote are most read and best remembered today are all novels — Crome Yelow, Antic Hay, and Point Counter Point from the 1920s, Brave New World and After Many a Summer Dies a Swan from the 1930s. In 1959 the
Vocabulary
alertness |Vl3:tnis] n живость appendix [s'pendiks] n приложение Buddhist ['budist] n буддист caricature [^kasnks'tjus] v описывать
сатирически caution ['кэ:/эп] n осторожность centre ['senta] v сосредоточивать elite [ei'lLt] n элита essayist ['eseiist] n эссеист, автор эссе heritage ['heritidj] n традиция immortality [ imo:'ta;liti] n бессмертие nonfiction ['mmfikfan] n научная литература perspective [ps'spektiv] n перспектива pharmacology [,Га:тэ'ко1эф] п фармакология
preliminary [ргГпттэп] а предварительный
prestigious [pres'tidps] а престижный
psychology [sai'kDtac&i] n психология
range [remdj] n круг
recipient [n'sipiant] n получатель
Sanskrit ['sasnsknt] n санскрит
similar ['simils] а похожий
source [so:s] n источник; документ
superiority [sju:,prari'Dnti] n превосходство
undoubtedly [An'dautidli] adv несомненно
upbringing ['Ab,bnrjirj] n воспитание
vision ['угзэп] п зрение
vitality [vi'tseliti] n энергия
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Questions and Tasks
1. What family was Aldous Leonard Huxley born?
2. What were his relatives?
3. What traits of character did he possess being a small child?
4. Where was Aldous educated?
5. When did he enter the literary world?
6. What was his first book?
7. What works brought him success?
8. Characterize Huxley's principal works.
9. What did he become famous for in the 1950s?
10. How many books did he produce for his long career as a writer?
11. Why did some critics think that he was a better essayist?
12. What Huxley's novels are most read and best remembered?
13. Prove that the range of ideas that Huxley studied was wide.
Agatha Christie (1890-1976)
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Agatha Christie [ 'аедэЭэ 'knsti] is known all over the world as detective novelist and playwright whose books have been translated into 103 foreign languages.
She is one of the best-selling authors in the world, whose books were sold more than 100 000 000 copies.
| Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie |
Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie was born on September 15, 1890 in Torquay [to:'ki:], Devonshire. She was educated at home by her mother and took singing lessons in Paris. She began writing detective fiction while working as a nurse during World War I. Her first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, was published in 1920. That was the first appearance of Hercule Poirot [es'kjui pwcu'rau], who became one of the most popular private detectives. This little Belgian amazes everyone by his powerful intellect and his brilliant solutions to the most complicated crimes.
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He reappeared in about 25 novels and many short stories before returning to Styles, where in Curtain (1075) he died. The elderly Miss Jane Marple, Christie's other principal detective figure, first appeared in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926), which is considered Christie's masterpiece. It was followed by some 75 novels that usually made best-seller lists. Her plays include The Mousetrap (1952), which set a world record for the longest continuous run at one theatre (8,862 performances — more than 21 years — at the Ambassadors Theatre, London); and Witness for the Prosecution (1953) which, like many of her works, was adapted into a very successful film (1958).
Agatha Christie's first marriage, to Col.1 Archibald Christie, ended in divorce in 1928. After her marriage in 1930 to the archaeologist Sir Max Mallowan, she spent several months each year on expeditions in Iraq [fra:k] and Syria ['sim].
Agatha Christie's success with millions of readers lies in her entertaining plots, excellent character drawing, a great sense of humour. The reader cannot guess who the criminal is up to the end of the novel. Fortunately, evil is always punished in her novels.
Agatha Christie also wrote romantic, non-detective novels such as Absent in the Spring (1944) under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott.
Vocabulary
adapt [a'dsept] v переделывать divorce [di'vo:s] n развод
archaeologist La:kf oboist] n археолог pseudonym ['sjuidamm] n псевдоним
complicated ['krjmplikeitid] о сложный solution [sa'lju:fen] n разрешение
Questions and Tasks
1. Relate the main facts of Agatha Christie's life.
2. What is her first novel?
3. Where was the first appearance of Hercule Poirot?
4. What was last Poirot book?
5. Who was Christie's other principal detective figure?
6. What novel did Miss Jane Marple appear in?
7. What play set a world record for the longest continuous run?
8. Why are Christie's books so popular with the readers?
'Col. сокр. от Colonel ['кз:п1] — полковник
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John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892-1973)
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John Ronald Reuel Tolkien [d3on' ronld' ru:el' rolki:n] was born in the town of Bloemf ontain, South Africa on January 3rd, 1892, to English parents. In 1895 Ronald, his mother, and brother Hilary returned to England. Ronald's memories of Africa were slight but vivid, and influenced his later writing to some extent.
His father died in 1896. In the autumn of 1899 Ronald took the
entrance exam for King Edward John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
School, but failed to obtain a place.
He retook the exam a year later, and was accepted. In 1904 his
mother died, and Ronald and his brother were left to the care of
Father Francis Morgan a priest. In 1908 Ronald began his first term
at Oxford. •>
In 1915 Ronald graduated from Oxford with a First in English Language and Literature. In 1916 John Ronald Reuel Tolkien married Edith Bratt, and in 1917 his first son John was born. Tolkien worked as an assistant on the Oxford English Dictionary for two years. Ayear after that, his second son Michael was born. In 1921, Tolkien began teaching at the University of Leeds. Three years later, he became Professor of English Language at Leeds.
Also that year, his third son Christopher was born.
In 1925, Tolkien moved to Oxford, where he served as Professor of Anglo-Saxon. In 1929 his fourth child, Priscilla, was born.
Over the past few years, Tolkien had already started to write a great cycle of the myths and legends of Middle-earth, which was to become The Silmarillion. Around 1933, Tolkien first began telling his children of a funny litle creature named Bilbo. Tolkien
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