本单元具体教学内容、教学基本要求、单元重点与难点

第10次课：意象主义诗歌运动（2节）

1.教学内容

Chapter10 The Modern Period

Section 1 The 1920s

I. Introduction

The nicknames for this period:

II. Background

a) First World War – “a war to end all wars”

b) wide-spread contempt for law (looking down upon law)

C)Freud’s theory

III. Features of the literature

Writers: three groups

Two areas:

Imagism

I. Background

II. Development: three stages

III. What is an “image”?

IV. Principles

V. Significance

VI. Ezra Pound

1. life

2. literary career

3. works

(1) Cathay

(2) Cantos

(3) Hugh Selwyn Mauberley

4. point of view

5. style: very difficult to read

6. Contribution

7. The Cantos – “the intellectual diary since 1915”

Features:

(1) Language: intricate and obscure

(2) Theme: complex subject matters

(3) Form: no fixed framework, no central theme, no attention to poetic rules

VII. Robert Frost

1. life

2. point of view

3. works – poems

4. style/features of his poems

I. e. e. cummings

“a juggler with syntax, grammar and diction” – individualism, “painter poet”

II. Close reading: River Merchant’s wife

III. 1. Contribution of Chinese language to world literature.\

1. Cross-cultural interpretation

2.  教学基本要求

1)To make students acquire some political, social and philosophical background knowledge of the literary movement.

2) To develop students’ understanding of the principle of Imagist movement.

3) To improve students’ abilities to interpret and appreciate the Pound’s poems and his translation of Chinese poems.

4) To improve students’  cross-cultural comprehension between between Chinese and Western languages and poetry.

5) To improve students’ ability to judge and comprehend cultural choices in translation of texts from different culture.  

 

3. 单元重点、难点 

重点

1) Principles of Imagist Movement.

2) Chinese factors in Imagist movement

3) Pound’s interpretation of Chinese poems

难点

1) Comparison of salient differences of Chinese and English Languages.

2) Misunderstanding, underinterpretation, overinterpretation of different cultures, taking Pound’s translation of Libai

 

The Modern Period

Section 1 The 1920s

I. Introduction

The 1920s is a flowering period of American literature. It is considered “the second renaissance” of American literature.

The nicknames for this period:

(1) Roaring 20s – comfort

(2) Dollar Decade – rich

(3) Jazz Age – Jazz music

II. Background

a) First World War – “a war to end all wars”

(1) Economically: became rich from WWI. Economic boom: new inventions. Highly-consuming society.

(2) Spiritually: dislocation, fragmentation.

b) wide-spread contempt for law (looking down upon law)

1. Freud’s theory

III. Features of the literature

Writers: three groups

(1) Participants

(2) Expatriates

(3) Bohemian (unconventional way of life) – on-lookers

Two areas:

(1) Failure of communication of Americans

(2) Failure of the American society

Imagism

I. Background

Imagism was influenced by French symbolism, ancient Chinese poetry and Japanese literature “haiku”

II. Development: three stages

1. 1908~1909: London, Hulme

2. 1912~1914: England -> America, Pound

3. 1914~1917: Amy Lowell

III. What is an “image”?

An image is defined by Pound as that which presents an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time, “a vortex or cluster of fused ideas” “endowed with energy”. The exact word must bring the effect of the object before the reader as it had presented itself to the poet’s mind at the time of writing.

IV. Principles

1. Direct treatment of the “thing”, whether subjective or objective;

2. To use absolutely no word that does not contribute to the presentation;

3. As regarding rhythm, to compose in the sequence of the musical phrase, not in the sequence of a metronome.

V. Significance

1. It was a rebellion against the traditional poetics which failed to reflect the new life of the new century.

2. It offered a new way of writing which was valid not only for the Imagist poets but for modern poetry as a whole.

3. The movement was a training school in which many great poets learned their first lessons in the poetic art.

4. It is this movement that helped to open the first pages of modern English and American poetry.

VI. Ezra Pound

1. life

2. literary career

3. works

(1) Cathay

(2) Cantos

(3) Hugh Selwyn Mauberley

4. point of view

(1) Confident in Pound’s belief that the artist was morally and culturally the arbiter and the “saviour” of the race, he took it upon himself to purify the arts and became the prime mover of a few experimental movements, the aim of which was to dump the old into the dustbin and bring forth something new.

(2) To him life was sordid personal crushing oppression, and culture produced nothing but “intangible bondage”.

(3) Pound sees in Chinese history and the doctrine of Confucius a source of strength and wisdom with which to counterpoint Western gloom and confusion.

(4) He saw a chaotic world that wanted setting to rights, and a humanity, suffering from spiritual death and cosmic injustice, that needed saving. He was for the most part of his life trying to offer Confucian philosophy as the one faith which could help to save the West.

5. style: very difficult to read

Pound’s early poems are fresh and lyrical. The Cantos can be notoriously difficult in some sections, but delightfully beautiful in others. Few have made serious study of the long poem; fewer, if anyone at all, have had the courage to declare that they have conquered Pound; and many seem to agree that the Cantos is a monumental failure.

6. Contribution

He has helped, through theory and practice, to chart out the course of modern poetry.

7. The Cantos – “the intellectual diary since 1915”

Features:

(1) Language: intricate and obscure

(2) Theme: complex subject matters

(3) Form: no fixed framework, no central theme, no attention to poetic rules