1. Information
a. John Gardner
John Champlin Gardner Jr. (July 21, 1933 – September 14, 1982) was an American novelist, essayist, literary critic and university professor. He is perhaps most noted for his novel Grendel, a retelling of the Beowulf myth from the monster's point of view.
b. Grendel
The basic plot derives from Beowulf, a heroic poem of unknown authorship written in Old English and preserved in a manuscript dating from around AD 1000. The poem deals with the heroic exploits of the Geat warrior Beowulf, who battles three antagonists: Grendel, Grendel' s mother, and, later in life, an unnamed dragon. Gardner's retelling, however, presents the story from the existentialist view of Grendel, exploring the history of the characters before Beowulf arrives. Beowulf himself plays a relatively small role in the novel, but he is still the only human hero that can match and kill Grendel. The dragon plays a minor part as an omniscient and bored character, whose wisdom is limited to telling Grendel "to seek out gold and sit on it"; his one action in the novel is to endow Grendel with the magic ability to withstand attacks by sword (a quality Gardner found in the original).
c. The Canterbury Tales
The Canterbury Tales is a collection of 24 stories that runs to over 17,000 lines written in Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer. In 1386, Chaucer became Controller of Customs and Justice of Peace and, three years later, Clerk of the King's work in 1389. It was during these years that Chaucer began working on his most famous text, The Canterbury Tales.
Structurally, the collection resembles The Decameron, which Chaucer may have read during his first diplomatic mission to Italy in 1372.
d. Raymond Carver
Raymond Clevie Carver, Jr. (May 25, 1938 – August 2, 1988) was an American short-story writer and poet. Carver contributed to the revitalization of the American short story in literature during the 1980s.
e. Tess of the d'urbervilles and Stonehenge
Generally, the moral atmosphere of the novel is not Christian justice at all, but pagan injustice. The forces that rule human life are absolutely unpredictable and not necessarily well-disposed to us. The pre-Christian rituals practiced by the farm workers at the opening of the novel, and Tess’ s final rest at Stonehenge at the end, remind us of a world where the gods are not just and fair, but whimsical and uncaring.
f. Anglican Communion
g. The Canterbury Tales: General Prologue
part of the poetry:
Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote,
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licóur
Of which vertú engendred is the flour;
h. 1922 in literature
This is a significant year for high modernism in English literature:
→ The modernist classic novel Ulysses by James Joyce is first published complete in book form by Sylvia Beach' s Shakespeare and Company in Paris on February 2.
→ T. S. Eliot founds The Criterion magazine containing the first publication of his poem The Waste Land.
→ Jacob's Room by Virginia Woolf is published by the Hogarth Press of Richmond upon Thames with jacket design by the author's sister Vanessa Bell. Also this summer Virginia writes the short story "Mrs Dalloway in Bond Street", the foundation of the novel Mrs Dalloway.
i. The Waste Land
part of the poetry:
April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
Bin gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt deutsch.
And when we were children, staying at the arch-duke’s,
My cousin’s, he took me out on a sled,
And I was frightened. He said, Marie,
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
In the mountains, there you feel free.
I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.
j. William Faulkner's Banquet Speech
part of the speech:
I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not
merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he
alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he
has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and
endurance. The poet's, the writer's, duty is to write about these
things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his
heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and
pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the
glory of his past. The poet's voice need not merely be the record
of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him
endure and prevail.
2. extra information
a. 美國大學生沒有學到核心能力
WASHINGTON (AFP) – A large number of US university students fail to develop critical thinking, reasoning and writing skills because of easy classes and too little time spent studying, a study found Wednesday.
The
study of 3,000 students at 29 four-year universities found that 45
percent "did not demonstrate any significant improvement in learning"
during their first two years in college as measured by a standardized
test.
After
the full four years, 36 percent had shown no development in critical
thinking, reasoning and writing, according to the study, which forms the
basis of the new book "Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College
Campuses."
"Growing
numbers of students are sent to college at increasingly higher costs,
but for a large proportion of them the gains in critical thinking,
complex reasoning and written communication are either exceedingly small
or empirically nonexistent," according to an excerpt of the book
published in The Chronicle of Higher Education.b. The Decameron
The Decameron was subtitled Prince Galehaut and it is a collection of novellas by the 14th-century Italian author Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–1375). The book is structured as a frame story containing 100 tales told by a group of seven young women and three young men sheltering in a secluded villa just outside Florence to escape the Black Death, which was afflicting the city. Boccaccio probably conceived the Decameron after the epidemic of 1348, and completed it by 1353. The various tales of love in The Decameron range from the erotic to the tragic. Tales of wit, practical jokes, and life lessons contribute to the mosaic. In addition to its literary value and widespread influence (for example on Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales), it provides a document of life at the time. Written in the vernacular of the Florentine language, it is considered a masterpiece of classical early Italian prose.
c. Salisbury
Salisbury is a cathedral city in Wiltshire, England, and the only city within the county. It is the third-largest settlement in the county, after Swindon and Chippenham. The hilltop at Old Sarum lies near the Neolithic sites of Stonehenge and Avebury and shows some signs of early settlement. It commanded a salient between the River Bourne and the Hampshire Avon near a crossroads of several early trade routes. (The place where Tess ran to.)
d. The Other Boleyn Girl
The Other Boleyn Girl is a 2008 drama film directed by Justin Chadwick. The screenplay by Peter Morgan was adapted from the 2001 novel of the same name by Philippa Gregory. It is a romanticized account of the lives of 16th-century aristocrats Mary Boleyn, one-time mistress of King Henry VIII, and her sister, Anne, who became the monarch's ill-fated second wife, though much history is distorted.
e. Danaë
In Greek mythology, Danaë was the daughter, and only child of King Acrisius of Argos and his wife Queen Eurydice. She was the mother of the hero Perseus by Zeus. She was credited with founding the city of Ardea in Latium during the Bronze Age.
Disappointed by his lack of male heirs, King Acrisius asked the oracle of Delphi if this would change. The oracle announced to him that he would never have a son, but his daughter would, and that he would be killed by his daughter's son. At the time, Danae was childless and, meaning to keep her so, King Acrisius shut her up in a bronze chamber to be constructed under the court of his palace (other versions say she was imprisoned in a tall brass tower with a single richly adorned chamber, but with no doors or windows, just a sky-light as the source of light and air). She was buried in this tomb, never to see the light again. However, Zeus, the king of the gods, desired her, and came to her in the form of golden rain which streamed in through the roof of the subterranean chamber and down into her womb. Soon after, their child Perseus was born.
Perseus grows up to be a hero, killing Medusa and rescuing Andromeda. Perseus and Danaë return to Argos with Andromeda, but King Acrisius has gone to Larissa. When Perseus arrives in Larissa, he participates in some funeral games and accidentally strikes Acrisius on the head with a discus, killing him and fulfilling the prophecy. He was the originator of the walking stick.
f. phallus
A phallus is a penis, especially when erect, an object that resembles a penis, or a mimetic image of an erect penis.
Any object that symbolically — or, more precisely, iconically — resembles a penis may also be referred to as a phallus; however, such objects are more often referred to as being phallic (as in "phallic symbol"). Such symbols often represent fertility and cultural implications that are associated with the male sexual organ, as well as the male orgasm.
→ 高塔是代表對陽物的崇拜
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