2020庚子年，注定是不消停的一年，唯一捧热的就是各种接踵而来的网课，也丰富了我们居家生活。“英国好课”适时推出了介绍英国文化的网络直播课，为了解英国文化打开了大门，也为英语学习者提供了绝好的机会。由9岁的儿子Arthur 做笔记整理文字，并共享之。
Great British Writers
By Felicity Summarised by Arthur
Geoffrey Chaucer(1345-1400)
Geoffrey Chaucer was considered as the father of English poetry and was the first poet to be buried at Poets’ Corner at Westminster Abbey. He is the author of ‘The Canterbury tales’ or '24 stories written in Middle English' ( a collection of poems about 31 men including himself on a pilgrim from Tabard inn to the shrine of Thomas à Becket in Canterbury Cathedral) and was also a philosopher and astronomer. His works include ‘The Miller’s Tale’ ( a tale about a rude miller in the medieval times) and ‘The wife of Bath’ (about the role of women in medieval times).
The Miller’s Tale
Quite crude, rather naughty, bawdy, but very amusing.
Told in the language that reflects his lower - class status.
Basic stories of love or trickery
Clever use of characters to give vivid descriptions of the medieval world.
The Wife of Bath
Role of women in society
Has a lot to say
Does not conform to expected image
Almost a feminist piece ?
She has been married ten times and argues her case against the double standards of the time, that women were inferior to men.
24 stories written in Middle English
Everything you need to know to read
William Shakespeare(1564-1616)
He was not of an age, but for all time.
One of the greatest geniuses that ever existed
The most widely read of all Authors, and the popularity of his works is second only to the Bible.
William Shakespeare is the English national poet and was involved in the English Renaissance. His Works include 154 sonnets (rhyming 14-line poems to a high-ranking youth and to an anonymous ‘dark’ lady) some 39 plays and is known as ‘The Bard of Avon’ (or simply ‘the bard’). He was supposedly born on St George’s day 1564 and he was educated at an grammar school. Between the years 1585 and 1592, it is often referred to as his ‘lost years’ (as he disappeared from all biographies and articles). There have been lots of theories of where he went, including him hiding away for illegal deer hunting in an official’s grounds and being employed as a headteacher. After he ‘reappeared’, he joined a acting group called ‘The Lord Chamberlain’s men’ (later called ‘the king’s men’). In 1599, he and the others in the group started work on the Globe theatre and started to put on plays there. In 1613, the Globe was set alight after a stray spark from a cannon used in the play set the straw on fire. In 1997, an American builder rebuilt it and after a while, it was reopened. After an official came to his house, he got drunk and got an unknown illness. On his birthday, he died aged 52. His most famous plays include Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, Hamlet, Twelfth Night and Midsummer night’s dream. His plays are split into 3 types: comedies, histories and tragedies:
The Comedies
Moved from conflict to resolution, with complications and obstacles on the way, but they always ended happily.
Often mistaken identities.
Stock characters of a fool, an old man and a servant.
Arguments between families, but no deaths.
As You Like It; Much Ado About Nothing; A Midsummer Night’s Dream; The Tempest and more …
The Histories
Centred on recent past history, for the Elizabethans who knew exactly how this history was connected to their own lives.
They were of course subject to censorship, and the players were patronised by the royal court, so they had to be careful not to be controversial.
Shakespeare would have been in trouble if he had mentioned the execution of Elizabeth’s mother, the fact that the Queen was illegitimate, or the execution of James I’s mother. They were dangerous times, and he was wise to stick to historical plays, to stop at the birth of Elizabeth, and not touch on the events that were unfolding at the time.
He also wrote historical plays based on famous Roman leaders, such as Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra, and Coriolanus.
As Richard II; Henry IV Part I and Part II;Henry V; Henry VI Part I Part II and Part III; Richard III; Henry VIII
The Tragedies
He also wrote historical plays based on famous Roman leaders, such as Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra, and
Written by a more mature Shakespeare.
Centre around a tragic hero, usually a man of significant qualities who collaborates in his own terrible downfall. This leads to greater self-knowledge through suffering.
The play usually ends with peace being restored in their country, e.g. no more fighting families in Verona (Romeo and Juliet); a good King is head of Scotland(Macbeth).
As Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth and King Lear are considered to be his true masterpieces. All his plays are a mix of melodrama, intensity of feeling and the power to shock the audience, but the intensity is magnified in these plays.
The Sonnets
A Shakespearean sonnet is a love poem of fourteen lines, made up of four parts, and always follows a certain pattern.
The first three parts called quatrains have four lines each and rhyme ABAB,CDCD,EFEF and the last two lines, a rhyming couplet GG.
Shakespeare wrote 154 sonnets.
Did he ever authorise their publication? …and who put them in numerical order?
The first 126 are written to a ‘Fair Youth’ and then the rest feature a ‘Dark Lady’. Who are these people?
Does it really matter if they remain anonymous?
Was Shakespeare writing autobiographically?
Sonnet 18 –Shall I compare you to a summer’s day?/ You are more lovely than a summer’s day/Summer goes away and is sometimes shaken by rough winds/ But your eternal summer shall not fade/ so long as men can breathe or eyes can see/ they will see this poem/ and as long as this poem lives, it will give life to you.
Tips on enjoying Shakespeare
Don’t let the language put you off.
Read about the play before you watch it or read it for the first time, get a background of the context.
Look out for the central conflict in the play, is it about jealousy? Power? Fate and destiny? Love?
Enjoy the characters.
Enjoy the experience! It doesn’t have to have a deep meaning for you, you can put your own interpretation onto it and take what you will from it.
What made Shakespeare stand out?
As an actor, he understood the theatre and his audiences.
His stage management skills.
He was a man of the people and also well read.
He was financially astute.He was outstandingly talented.
Used powerful words and elaborate costumes in his plays.
He performed in some of his plays and in others’ plays too, whilst still writing and co-owning the playhouse.
John Milton(1608-1674)
John Milton was born on 9th December 1608 on Bread Street in Cheapside, London. His Father was called John Milton (senior) and was a Composer. His mother was called Sarah Jeffery. Milton’s first works were two psalms done aged 15 in a village called Long Bennington. In 1625, he attended ‘Christ’s College’ and was rusticated (suspended) in his first year for quarreling with his tutor (Bishop William Chappell). He graduated with a B.A.I 1629 and obtained his Master of arts degree in 1632. Later, he went to Cambridge and exchanged Hebrew lessons for Dutch lesson with a person called Roger Williams. He is most famous for his poem 'Paradise Lost'.
Why was Milton so special?
The most significant English writer after Shakespeare.
A Puritan, who believed in the authority of the Bible, and was opposed to religious institutions like the Church of England and the Monarchy with which it was entwined.
A Republican. Had a passion for freedom and self determination. All men were created equal and man was accountable to God.
Civil servant under Oliver Cromwell.
Accomplished scholar. Christs College, Cambridge. Spoke Latin, Greek, Hebrew, French, Spanish, Italian, Old English and Dutch.
Famously wrote epic poem Paradise Lost and later Paradise Regained.
Deeply devout. Went blind in his old age.
Dictated “On His Blindness” to his three daughters. Frustration.
Who served God best according to Milton? “ Those who can bear his milde yoak patietly” ….. “They also serve who only stand and wait”
Daniel (De)foe(1660-1731)
Daniel Defoe was born Daniel Foe 1660 England and was a writer, poet, journalist, prisoner and spy. Famous for his novel ‘Robinson Crusoe’ (were Crusoe is marooned on an island with cannibals), he took inspiration from Scottish Sailor Alexander Selkirk after he was marooned by the captain of the HMS Weymouth. Based loosely on the life of Alexander Selkirk, and other voyagers and castaways, it is credited as being one of the first novels to emerge in the English language. Defoe has a plain, direct style, writes in the first person, and enters into the minds of his protagonists by writing in the first person, and drawing the reader into the story with clear powerful imagery. This has resulted in him being called the father of the English novel.
Romantic Poetry
“The spontaneous overflow of powerful feeling”
Romantic Poetry started in the early 19th century and included lots of famous poets such as Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelly and John Keats. A faction of the poets live by the lake district and therefore is called Lake Poets, such as William Wordsworth(1770-1850), Samuel Coleridge（1772-1834), Robert Southey(1774-1843).
William Wordsworth(1770-1850)
William Wordsworth was a romantic poet who lived between 6th April 1843 and 23rd April 1850. He was the poet laureate from 1843 to his death of Pleurisy (pleuritis).His ‘Magnum Opus’ is considered to be 'The Prelude'. Remembered as a poet concerned with the human relationship to nature and a man determined to use the vocabulary and speech of the common people. His more famous works including 'The Prelude,Daffodils', ‘I wandered lonely as a cloud', 'The Lucy Poems,' ‘Expostulation and Reply’, ‘The Tables Turned’, 'Hart-Leap Well', ‘ The World is too much with us’, Ode: 'Intimations of Immortality and Tinturn Alley'.
FIRST LINES OF:
I wandered lonely as a cloud...
That floats on high o’er vales and hills...
When all at once I saw a crowd...
A host, of golden daffodils...
John Keats
John Keats was an alcoholic, romance poet who was born in Moorgate in London on Hallowe’en 1795. He was one of the main figures in the romantic movement.He died of tuberculosis (Phthisis , phthisis pulmonalis, consumption as in other names) at the age of 25 in 23rd February 1821. Recommended poem: Ode to Autumn, (where autumn is seen as a season of complete ripeness and fulfillment).
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;Conspiring with him how to load and blessWith fruit the vines that round the thatch eaves run …(Such a clear picture, autumn is a’ friend ‘of the ageing sun, planning together how to fill the vines with fruit….)
Lord Byron(1788-1824)
“I love not man the less, but nature more” ..
“The great art of life is sensation, to feel that we exist, even in pain.”
Lord Byron (or 6th baron Byron) was an English poet, peer and politician and revolutionary in the Greek war of independence. He was a friend of Percy Bysshe Shelley and wife Mary Shelley (author of Frankenstein). He was born on 22nd January 1788 and died in Missolonghi, Aetolia in the Ottoman empire of a fever.
Recommended poem: She Walks in Beauty.
Robert Burns(1759-1796)
“Farewell to the Highlands, farewell to the North, The birthplace of Valor, the country of Worth, Wherever I wander, wherever I rove, The hills of the Highlands for ever I love.”
Robert Burns (or Rabbie Burns) isn’t English, he’s actually Scottish and is the Scottish national poet. He is the bard of Ayrshire and has various other names. He was born on 25th of January 1759 in Alloway, Ayrshire (hence the name of ‘Bard of Ayrshire’). The son on a ploughman, he never forgot his humble roots, and often wrote about farming, the poorer classes and the need for social equality. He wrote several songs as well as poems, notably Auld Lang Syne and A Red Red Rose. He was only 37 when he died, but he was very popular with the Scottish people, including the aristocracy, during his lifetime. He is famous for taking the romantic movement up a level; he not only wrote in Scots ( a type of Gaelic), he also wrote in Standard English and in a Scottish dialect.
Recommended poem: To a Mouse ( about apologising to a mouse after he wrecked his/her house with a plough.)
