Lecture Six The Eighteenth CenturyThe Age of Enlightenment

Historical BackgroundEnlightenment MovementNeoclassicism The rise of the novelSentimentalismPre-romanticism in poetry

Historical background

Politically

After Bourgeois Revolution, the Tory and Whig joined hands against tyranny and restoration of Catholicism, and welcomed to the throne Mary and her husband, William of Orange (Glorious Revolution/Bloodless Revolution) in 1688, thus ending the autocratic monarchy, replacing it with a constitutional monarchy.

The power passed from the king gradually to the parliament and cabinet ministers.

With it established the capitalist system once and for all in England.

Socially: Age of Bourgeoisie

The old aristocratic class was fast loosing its power politically and economically to the rising urban middle class or bourgeoisie who worked hard, economized and accumulated great wealthand became the mainstay of the nation. The Puritan spirit of wisdom, diligence, honesty, and thriftiness contributed greatly to the development of the country. They accumulated more wealth and money, and their social status was raised.

Economically:

Industrial Revolution: the beginning of larger-scale manufacturing

Britain continued to expand its colonies abroad in Asia, Africa and North America, which led to social unrest in Scotland, Ireland, America

Ideologically: Age of Enlightenment Enlightenment is: an intellectual movement beginning in France and then spread throughout Europe. a continuation of Renaissance in belief in the possibility of human perfection through education the guiding principle or slogan is Ration/Reason, natural right and equality (American Independence War in 1776; French Revolution in 1789). Rationality became standard for measurement of everything. The representatives are Daniel Defoe, Jonathan Swift and Joseph Addison.

Literature: Age of Neoclassicism

Inspired by the spirit of Enlightenment, better education facilitated by developing economy, was ava

ilable to more and more people, esp. middle-class men and women, more schools and social clubs were established.

Ancient classic works and contemporary French works were models of writing.

New genres of literature appeared to satisfy middle-class readers: ---Periodicals (Tatler and Spectator) to write interesting sketches and stories, to entertain and teach ---Novels about middle class by middle class for middle class's education (realist novel, gothic novel)

Poetry Drama Sentimentality literature

Enlightenment Movement The eighteenth century Europe has witnessed one

of the greatest events in human civilization—the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment Movement was a progressive intellectual movement that flourished in France and swept through the whole Western Europe at that time. Its purpose was to enlighten the whole world with the light of modern philosophical and artistic ideas. The enlighteners celebrated reason or rationality, equality and science. They also advocated universal education. The Enlightenment movement has exerted far-reaching influence on the Eighteenth century English literature.

English EnlightenmentThe 18th English Enlightenment on the whole, was an expression of struggle of the progressive class of bourgeoisie against feudalism. The enlighteners fought against class inequality, stagnation, prejudices and other survivals of feudalism. They attempted to place all branches of science at the service of mankind by connecting them with the actual deeds and requirements of the people.

The representatives are Daniel Defoe, Jonathan Swift and Joseph Addison.

Neoclassicism

The Enlightenment brought about a revival of interest in the old classical works. This tendency is known as Neoclassicism. According to neoclassicists, all forms of literature were to be modeled after the works of ancient Greek and Roman writers and those of contemporary French ones. They believed that artistic ideals should be order, logic, restrained emotion and accuracy, and that literature should be judged in terms of its service to humanity. Neoclassicists had fixed laws and rules for almost every genre of literature.

Representative Writers of Neoclassical School

John Dryden was an advocate of Neoclassicism in the late 17th century.

Alexander Pope was the representative poet of neoclassical school in the early 18th century.

Samuel Johnson, the writer of the first English dictionary, also follows the neoclassical tradition.

Sentimentalism

In the first half of the 18th century, Pope was the leader of English poetry and the heroic couplet the fashion of poetry. By the middle of the century, however, sentimentalism gradually made its appearance. Sentimentalism came into being as the result of a bitter discontent among the enlightened people with social reality.(P169) The representatives of sentimentalism continued to struggle against feudalism, but they sensed at the same time the contradictions in the process of capitalist development. Dissatisfied with reason, which classicists appealed to, sentimentalists appealed to sentiment, "to the human heart.' Sentimentalism turned to the countryside for its material, and so is in striking contrast to classicism, which had confined itself to the clubs and drawing-rooms, and to the social and political life of London.

Sentimentalist Fiction

Sentimentalist fiction was engraved on psychoanalysis of human mind.

Sentimentalism also finds its voice in English fiction (Richardson; Goldsmith; Sterne).

The representative writers are: Samuel Richardson, the author of Pamela; Laurence Stern, the author of Tristram Shandy and Oliver Goldsmith, the author of The Vicar of Wakefield.

Sentimentalism in English Poetry

The appearance and development of sentimentalist poetry marks the midway in the transition from classicism to its opposite, Romanticism, in English poetry.Thomas Gray was the most widely read sentimentalist poet, whose An Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard established his reputation as the spokesman of Graveyard School.William Cowper, Edward Young, William Collins and James Thompson also belong to the sentimentalist school.

English novelist, Pamphleteer and journalist

Key Points and Difficulties (重点与难点 )

Daniel Defoe’s artistic features ( 笛福的艺术特征 )

Approaches to read novels ( 欣赏小说文本的方法 )

Appreciating Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders

I. Biographical Introduction

◆was born in London in a butcher’s family, not obeying his father’s will, he developed his interest in business, though his business underwent many ups and downs, yet he was never beaten;

◆He never went to university, but he received a good education in one of the best Dissenting academies（异教学院 ).

◆His marriage with an heiress named Mary Tuffley brought him the sizeable fortune of 3,700 pounds as dowry. When he died in 1731, he left his wife and daughters fairly well provided.

◆His quick mind, abundant energy and never-failing enthusiasm always brought him back on his fleet after a fall.

◆Died in 1731.

II. Five Facts to be Remembered

◆ Defoe was a jack-at-all-trades, who developed his interests largely with the working classes.

◆ He was a radical Non-conformist ( 非国教 )in religion, and was intended by his father for the independent ministry.

◆ Defoe was a journalist and pamphleteer. Be good at making “good story”

◆ Defoe knew prison life.

◆ At the age of nearly 60, he turned to fiction and wrote the great work by which he is best remembered. Robinson Crusoe earned him good reputation and fortune as well.

The Rise of the Novel

The rise and growth of the realistic novel is the most prominent achievement of 18th century English literature, which has given the world such novelists as Defoe, Swift, Richardson, Fielding, Smollett and Sterne.The novel became a dominant form of literature in the 18th-century England because it allowed the writer a creative space that no other genres of literature could provide. England produces three greatest novelists: Daniel Defoe, father of modern novel and the author of Robinson Crusoe; Jonathan Swift, the greatest English satirist and the author of Gulliver’s Travels; and Henry Fielding, the author of Tom Jones.

Approaches to Read Novels

◆ Narrator/ point of view (the first person and the third person, the omniscient point of view)

◆ Characterization —Protagonists and antagonists（ hero, anti-hero, heroine, anti-heroine)

◆ Foreshadowing / setting

◆ Rising conflict—climax—falling action

◆ Motif / Tone and theme / Symbols

Robinson Crusoe

Robinson Crusoe is based upon the experiences of Alexander Selkirk, who had been marooned in an uninhabited island and had lived there in solitude for five years.

A Case Study of Robinson Crusoe

◆ The full title should be The Life and Strange Surprising Adventure of Robinson Crusoe.

◆ It is based upon the experiences of Alexander Selkirk, or Seleraig, who had been marooned in the island of Juan Fernandez off the coast of Chile and who had been lived there in solitude for five years. However, Defoe himself didn’t acknowledge this resource.

Robinson Crusoe 1810 edition

◆ setting (time) —From 1659 to 1694

◆ setting (place) —York, England; then London; then Sallee, North Africa; then Brazil; then a deserted island off Trinidad; then England; then Lisbon; then overland from Spain toward England; then England; and finally the island again.

◆ Narrator: Robinson Crusoe, the protagonist

◆ Point of view: the first and third person

◆ Foreshadowing( 伏笔 ) and symbols

The Major Points in Robinson Crusoe

Characterization

Robinson Crusoe

◆ Self-independent; perseverant; inspiring and innovating, adventurous, colonial mind; practical

He is no flashy hero or grand epic adventurer, He does not

boast of his courage in quelling the mutiny, and he is always

ready to admit unheroic feelings of fear or panic, as when he

finds the footprint on the beach. Crusoe prefers to depict

himself as an ordinary sensible man, never as an exceptional

hero.

Brief Analysis of Robinson Crusoe

Robinson is a grand hero in westerners’ eyes. He survived in the deserted island and led a meaningful life. Robinson is a colonist, as can be seen from his selling the boy who helped save his life at the beginning of the novel.Robinson is a capitalist, as can be seen from his disposal of the gold coins he happens to find on the wrecked ship. Robinson is a man chauvinist, as can be seen from his comment on women.

Friday: The first nonwhite character to be given in a realistic

and individual portray

Q: Why was he named “Friday”?

Q: What kind of a person is Friday?

Obedient, friendly, kind and humane

Q: Compare Robinson and Friday, what are their

differences?

The Symbolic meaning of the footprint

Crusoe’s shocking discovery of a single footprint on the sand is one of the most famous moments in the novel, and it symbolizes our hero’s conflicted feelings about human companionship. Crusoe has earlier confessed how much he misses companionship, yet the evidence of a man on his island sends him into a panic. Immediately he interprets the footprint negatively, as the print of the devil or of an aggressor. This instinctively negative and fearful attitude toward others makes us consider the possibility that Crusoe may not want to return to human society after all, and that the isolation he is experiencing may actually be his ideal state.

Crusoe Saves Friday from the Cannibals

Q: What is Crusoe’s motivation to save Friday from the cannibals?

Q: Being cultivated by Crusoe, Friday lost his own national identity at the same time. Do you agree this statement?

(master/slave; white/ non-white; Christianity/ barbarous eating group)

the center of Europe (欧洲中心论 )

racial discrimination

The novel can be read in different ways:

It is a story of sea adventures.

It is an artistic projection of colonial expansion.

It implies the Western cultural values and sings a song of “the dignity of labor” .

It explores the theme of “back to nature”.

It also shows the theme of “religious devotion”.

The Artistic Characteristics of Robinson Crusoe

In the novel, the first person narrator tells the story and enables the strange events to be realistic.The description of Robinson Crusoe’s life and experience is in great detailed.The structure of the novel is clear and the language is plain and easy to be understood.

Artistic features

◆ Defoe had a gift for organizing minute details in such a vivid way that his stories could be both credible and fascinating.

◆ His sentences are sometimes short, crisp and plain, and sometimes long and rambling, which leave on the reader an impression of casual narration.

◆ His language is smooth, easy, colloquial and mostly vernacular. There is nothing artificial in his language: it is common English at its best.

◆ His novels enjoyed great popularity among the middle class.

Presentation work: Moll Flanders

It is artistically a more mature piece than Robinson Crusoe.

For the first time, Defoe introduces a lowly woman as the subject of literature. And it anticipates many later novels that take women as the center of attention in order to expose how the social system has victimized them. (Tess, Hester Pryne, Sethe)

Jonathan Swift (1667—1745)

He was born in Dublin, and his father died before he was born. Then he received his relatives’ aid to finish his schooling. (Humiliation)After studying at Trinity College, Dublin, Swift went to England to serve as a private secretary to Sir William Temple, a retired diplomat and writer of essays. Swift spent ten years in Temple's house, living a very unhappy life there. But during this hard period he read and studied widely, and wrote his first two important works: The Battle of the Books, and A Tale of a Tub.

He joined in the struggle of the Irish people against their English oppressors. He wrote some pamphlets concerning Ireland, in which he depicted the miseries of the Irish people and called on the Irish people to revolt against the English ruling class. The Draiper’s Letters (1724) and A Modest Proposal (1729)

He became insane in 1742 and died in 1745.

Major Works

The Battle of the Books (to praise ancient writers and to condemn his contemporaries)A Tale of a Tub (criticize Christianity; Anglican Church is no better than Catholics or Puritans) Gulliver’s TravelsA Modest Proposal

Gulliver’s Travels

The novel is divided into 4 parts: voyage to Lilliput; voyage to Brobdingnag; voyage to Laputa & other places; voyage to Houyhnhnm.In the first part, through the description of the Lilliputian society, the author satirizes the two party system and the religious conflict between Catholics and Protestants.In the second part, the author made his voyage to Brodingnag. The Brodingnaians are sixty feet tall. They look horrible, but they are good-natured.

In the third part, the author’s target of satire is the pedantry of scholars. They are indulged in their fanciful ideas and futile experiments.

The fourth part focuses on the sharp contrast of Yahoos to Horses. Yahoos look like human beings, but they are capable of all the evils. Horses are ugly, but they will never do harm to other species.Nowadays one of China’s 10 top websites is named Yahoo.

In the first and the second parts, man is observed from both ends of a telescope. Although the characters are much smaller or much bigger than real human beings, their world is replica of human world.

《格列佛游记》内容欣赏分析《格列佛游记》向来被当作世界儿童文学的经典，但当初斯威夫特创作这部小说的目的并不是为了儿童。作者自己说，他的创作目的“不是为了提供娱乐而是为了激怒这个世界。”也许是作品中的讽刺过于辛辣，这部小说的初版是匿名发表的。在这部小说中，斯威夫特通过丰富的想象，含沙射影地对英国的政治和社会大加撘伐，对人性的弱点进行无情的嘲讽。在慧马国中，马的理智与高贵和野胡的贪欲与鄙陋形成反差极大的对比，高下立判；再通过马的视角观察人类 --野胡的同类，或者说就是野胡 --使人性中的贪婪、堕落和无知等诸多缺点暴露无疑。斯威夫特的冷嘲热讽不可谓不辛辣尖刻，但文字上不温不火，绵里藏针，精彩之处令人拍案叫绝。斯威夫特的语言具体明晰，简略中透出优雅；他曾把文字风格定义成“恰到好处的词语用在恰到好处的地方”，这也许是对他自己的语言风格的最好评注。《格列佛游记》中的故事是幻想性的、超现实的，但他暗中讽刺的现实即使在今天也并不鲜见，而且他的描写细致入微，给人以强烈的现实感。幻想和现实的统一使这部小说超越了时空限制，成为世界范围内老幼咸宜的不朽名篇。

SatireSatire—A kind of writing that holds up to ridicule or contempt the weaknesses and wrongdoings of individuals, groups, institutions, or humanity in general. The aim of satirists is to set a standard for society, and they attempt to persuade the reader to see their point of view through the force of laughter.The most famous satirical work in English literature is Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. In the distant land of Brobdingnag, where the people are twelve times as tall as a normalhuman being, Gulliver is brought before the King to describe the English people. Swift satirizes the English people through the King’s response.

A Modest Proposal

Swift displayed his powers in his A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People from Being a Burden to Their Parents or Their Country in 1729. This ironic pamphlet proposed to cure Ireland's imbalance of people and exports by fattening poor people's children and selling them as delicacies for gentlemen's tables. It suggests that poor Irish parents sell their one-year-old baby to English lords and ladies as food so as to solve their own problem of famine.It is a devastating protest against the English exploitation and oppression.The essay is well- structured.

How to eat babies

A child will make two dishes at an entertainment for friends, and when the family dines alone, the fore or hind quarter will make a reasonable dish, and seasoned with a little pepper or salt, will be very good boiled on the fourth day, especially in winter.

Why for English lords only

I have reckoned upon a medium, that a child just born will weigh 12 pounds, and in a solar year, if tolerably nursed, increases to 28 pounds.

I grant this food will be somewhat dear, and therefore very proper for landlords, who, as they have already devoured most of the parents, seem to have the best title to the children.

I profess, in the sincerity of my heart, that I have not the least personal interest in endeavoring to promote this necessary work, having no other motive than the public good of my country, by advancing our trade, providing for infants, relieving the poor, and giving some pleasure to the rich. I have no children, by which I can propose to get a single penny; the youngest being nine years old, and my wife past child-bearing.

Comments on Jonathan Swift

Swift is one of the realist writers. His realism is quite different from Defoe's. Defoe's stories are based upon the reality of human life, while Swift's come from imagination.

His satire is marked by outward gravity and an apparent earnestness. This makes his satire all the more powerful.

He not only criticizes the evils of the English bourgeoisie but those of other bourgeois countries. Women’s ignorance also serves as a target of his satire, as can be seen from his short poem The Furniture of a Woman’s Mind.

Swift is one of the greatest masters of English prose. His language is simple, clear and vigorous. He said, "proper words in proper place, makes the true definition of a style".

Swift expresses democratic ideas in his works.

Henry Fielding (1707-1754)

Henry Fielding is the greatest novelist of the 18th century and is one of the most artistic that English literature has produced.

He came from an aristocratic family and was well educated. He spent several years at the famous Eton school and took a degree in letters at the University of Leyden in Holland.

Fielding began his literary career as a dramatist. His brilliant play is The Historical Register For The Year 1736. In this play he exposed the corruption of the English government headed by the prime minister Walpole.

Fielding's fictional writing started in 1742, when he published his first novel Joseph Andrews, a parody of Richardson's Pamela

He died soon after his arrival in Lisbon. He was buried in the English cemetery of the city.

Major works

Tom Jones

Joseph Andrews

Jonathan Wild the Great

Amelia

Don Quixote in England

The Historical Register for the Year 1736

Parody

Parody is a literary composition in which the style or form of serious writing is imitated with the intention of producing a humorous effect. (Encyclopedia Americana, 1980:343)

我那张旧船票，能否登上你的破船？

Tom Jones

Tom Jones is Fielding’s masterpiece and the archetype of modern family problem fiction or movies.Tom Jones is an illegitimate child brought up by the benevolent squire Mr. Allworthy with Allworthy’s sister’s child Blifil. Blifil is a hypocrite while Tom is a good-natured youth.Blifil comes into conflict with Tom for the inheritance of Allworthy’s fortune and for their love of the same beautiful lady, Sophia Western.

Due to Blifil’s backbiting, Allworthy drives Tom out of his house. Tom goes to London.

Sophia runs away from his house to escape his father’s arranged marriage. She goes to London, too.

Then the novel shifts its focus to the adventures on the road.The novel has a happy ending. Tom turns out to be Allworthy’s sister’s illegitimate child. He inherits Allworthy’s fortune and marries Sophia.Blifil is punished for his misdemeanor.

Comments

Fielding's method of relating a story is telling the story directly by the author. (Omniscient narrator) His rigid style stands for the order of the universe. （ cf. classic Chinese novels such as The Three States)Satire/Humor abounds everywhere in Fielding's works. Fielding believed in the educational function of the novel. Fielding is a master of style. His style is easy, unlabored and familiar, but extremely vivid and vigorous.

Samuel Richardson (1689-1761 )

Richardson was the son of a joiner. He received little education. He had a natural talent for writing letters.

When he was still a boy, he was frequently employed by working girls to write love letters for them. This early experience and his fondness for the society of ladies gave him the intimate knowledge of the hearts of sentimental and uneducated women.

When he was 50, some publishers came to him with a proposal that he write a series of Familiar Letters, which could be used as models by people who could not write. Richardson gladly accepted the proposal. He made these letters tell the connected story of a girl’s life. Thus he contrived a novel in the form of letters about a virtuous serving girl named Pamela Andrews. This is his first novel entitled Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded .

Major works

Pamela or Virtue Rewarded帕美拉

Clarrissa Harlowe《克拉瑞萨 - 哈罗》

Sir Charles Grandison《查尔斯 - 格兰迪生》

Pamela

The novel was written in the form of a series of letters (epistolary) from the heroine to her parents and two friends, telling them in great detail her adventures at her employer’s house. The first part of the novel tells us that Pamela the heroines is a young maidservant in a rich family. After the mistress’s death, her son Mr. B. pursues the beautiful maid with sweet words. He wants to make love to her and seduce her. In order to avoid more troubles, she leaves the house and goes away. Moved by Pamela’s virtue Mr. B begins to have true love to the girl and determines to marry her.

.

The second part deals with Pamela’s life after marriage, with how she tries to bear the burden of a profligate husband and how she does all her best to reform him.In this novel for the first time Richardson gave a detailed of the 18th century. There isn’t much action in the story but the novel is extremely long because Richardson describes and analyses the thoughts and especially the feelings of the heroine in great detail. The chief contribution of this novel to the development of the English novel lies in the penetrating psychological study of the heroine. Moreover the novel criticizes the bourgeois moral standards and moral hypocrisy.

Comments

Richardson is the first novelist of sentimentalist tradition. His novels have a moral purpose. His Chief object in most of his works is to inculcate virtue and good deportment. All of his novels are written in the form of letters, known as epistolary novel. Richardson is an outstanding novelist because he had much sympathy for women in their inferior social status and entered into detailed psychological study of female characters and because he not only showed the conflict between the helpless woman and the social evils around her, but also laid bare, though perhaps quite unwittingly the moral hypocrisy of the aristocratic–bourgeois society of his day.

Work to be Prepared

Previewing Thomas Gray’s Elegy Written in a

Country Churchyard ( 墓地挽歌）

What is the tone? How does the poet achieve it?

Thomas Gray (1716-1771)

Thomas Gray—the combination of NeoclThomas Gray—the combination of Neoclassical and Romantic Poetsassical and Romantic Poets

Thomas Gray is the representative figure of sentimentalists. With a classical precision and polish, the poet shows a keen interest in the English countryside and a sincere feeling of the life of common people. Nature is his greatest concern. Each natural object, either directly of by contrast, reflects the mood of man.

ElegyIn literature, an elegy is a mournful, melancholic or plaintive poem, especially a funeral song or a lament for the dead.

"Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" is noteworthy in that it mourns the death not of great or famous people, but of common men. The speaker of this poem sees a country churchyard at sunset, which impels him to meditate on the nature of human mortality.

Analysis of Analysis of Elegy Written in a Country ChurchyardElegy Written in a Country Churchyard

It is regarded as Gray’s best and most representative work. The poem is the outcome of about eight years’ careful composition and polish. It is more or less connected with the melancholy event of the death of Richard West, Gray’s intimate friend. In this poem, Gray reflects in death, the sorrows of life, and the mysteries of human life with a touch of his personal melancholy.

Form: iambic pentameter quatrains rhymed abab

In form, it has the ordered, balanced phrasing and rational sentiments of Neoclassical poetry; in tone and mood, it tends toward the emotionalism and individualism of the Romantic poets.

Detailed study of the poem

(diction, sound effects, imagery, figures of speech)

Stanza 1Stanza 1

Curfew: bell to announce the coming of night

Tolls the knell of parting day: announces the end of a day

Lowing herd: mooing herd of oxen

Lea: meadow, pasture

Death images: Knell/ lowing herd/ weary plowman/ darkness

What is the tone of the first stanza? How does the poet make it?

Long vowels and diphthongs (function); personification

The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,晚钟响起来一阵阵给白昼报丧， The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea,牛群在草原上迂回，吼声起落，The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,耕地人累了，回家走，脚步踉跄，And leaves the world to darkness and to me.把整个世界留给了黄昏与我。

Stanza 2Stanza 2Drowsy tinkling: sounds of the bell hung under the neck of the cattle which have a drowsy effect on the listeners.

Wheels droning flight: flies in circles while making a droning sound

Lull the distant folds: cause sheep to sleep or rest in a sheltered corner of a field where they are surrounded by a fence or wall for protection.

Tone and sound effect (evening, stillness contrast with droning flight, drowsy tinklings)

Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight,

苍茫的景色逐渐从眼前消退， And all the air a solemn stillness holds,

一片肃穆的寂静盖遍了尘寰， Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,

只听见嗡嗡的甲虫转圈子纷飞， And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds:

昏沉的铃声催眠着远处的羊栏。

Stanza 3Stanza 3

Ivy-mantled tower ： the clock tower of the church whose outside walls are

overgrown with ivy.

The moping owl: the owl that gives harsh, unpleasant sounds, thus making people sad.

Molest: disturb and interrupt

The quiet countryside was broken by others.

The speaker shifts his view from the natural descriptions to the graveyard.

Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tower

只听见常春藤枝裹的塔顶底下The moping owl does to the moon complain

一只阴郁的鸱枭向月亮诉苦， Of such as, wandering near her secret bower,

怪人家无端走近它秘密的住家， Molest her ancient solitary reign.

搅扰它这个悠久而僻静的领土。

Stanza 4Stanza 4

Rugged: large and rough

Heave: rise and fall

Turf: disordered grass

Moldering: decaying

This stanza begins to introduce the graves of the poor people. (turf heaves, narrow cell, rude forefathers)

Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade,峥嵘的榆树底下，扁柏的荫里，Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap,草皮鼓起了许多零落的荒堆， Each in his narrow cell for ever laid,各自在洞窟里永远放下了身体， The rude Forefathers of the hamlet sleep. 小村里粗鄙的父老在那里安睡。

Stanza 5

Beautiful scenery in the countryside in the past.

Tactile image, the visual image and auditory image (the breezy call of, swallow twittering, cock’s shrill clarion, etc)

No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed. (back to the theme, bed-grave, death-sleep)

The breezy call of incense-breathing morn,

香气四溢的晨风轻松的呼召，The swallow twittering from the straw-built shed,

燕子从茅草棚子里吐出的呢喃，The cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing horn,

公鸡的尖喇叭，使山鸣谷应的猎号No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed.

再不能唤醒他们在地下的长眠。

Stanza 6 and 7 (recall the past days)Stanza 6 and 7 (recall the past days)

Family happiness ( 家庭之乐 )/ Their hard-working scenes in their living life

The blazing hearth ( 炉火 ) shall not burn any longer, the housewife shall not be busy with the evening housework; children will not greet father’s return, and climb their knees to share the kiss.

The farming scenes in their lifetime

This stanza obviously strengthened the tone of melancholy.

For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn,他们，熊熊的炉火不再会燃烧， Or busy housewife ply her evening care:忙碌的管家妇不再会赶她的夜活； No children run to lisp their sire's return,孩子们不再会“牙牙”的报父亲来到， Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share,再为一个亲吻爬到他膝上去争夺。

Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield,

往常是：他们一开镰就所向披靡， Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke;

顽梗的泥板让他们犁出了垄沟； How jocund did they drive their team afield!

他们多么欢欣的赶牲口下地！How bow'd the woods beneath their sturdy stroke!

他们一猛砍，树木就一棵棵低头！

Stanza 8Stanza 8

A comparison between the death of great people and common people (Ambition and Grandeur)

Everybody is doomed to death. Before death, all the people are equal. There is no distinction of class

Let not Ambition mock their useful toil,

雄心别嘲讽他们实用的操劳， Their homely joys, and destiny obscure;

家常的欢乐、默默无闻的运命； Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile

豪华也不用带着轻蔑的冷笑The short and simple annals of the Poor.

来听讲穷人的又短又简的生平。

Comment

The speaker considers the fact that in death, there is no difference between great and common people. He goes on to wonder if among the lowly people buried in the churchyard there had been any natural poets or politicians whose talent had simply never been discovered or nurtured. This thought leads him to praise the dead for the honest, simple lives that they lived.

SummaryThemeIt is a sentimental meditation upon life and death, esp. of the common rural people, whose life, though simple and crude, has been full of real happiness and meaning.

Poetic pattern quatrains of iambic pentameter lines rhyming abab

Mood melancholy and calm

Style neoclassicvivid visual painting, musical/rhythmic, controlled and restrained, polished language

tone

Nostalgic

Gloomy

sentimental