Class Notes
1. today's topic
(1) Anton Chekhov - "The Lady with the Dog"
"The Lady with the Dog" is a short story by Anton Chekhov first published in 1899. It tells the story of an adulterous affair between a Russian banker and a young lady he meets while vacationing in Yalta. The story comprises four parts: part 1 describes the initial meeting inYalta, part 2 the consummation of the affair and the remaining time in Yalta, part 3 Gurov's return to Moscow and his visit to Anna's town, and part 4 Anna's visits to Moscow.
2. difinition
(1) affix:
temp- (time)
temporal / contemporary
spec- (look incide)
spectacular / spectacle / perspective
(2) setting (one of the fundamental components of fiction) (time, place, action unfold)
The setting of a story is the time and place in which the story is set. In works of narrative (especially fictional), the literary element setting includes the historical moment in time and geographic location in which a story takes place, and helps initiate the main backdrop and mood for a story. Also setting is considered one of the fundamental components of fiction.
(3) movie: Gone with the Wind
Gone with the Wind - 75th Anniversary Trailer
Gone with the Wind is a 1939 American epic historical romance fifilm adapted from Margaret Mitchell's Pulizer-winning 1936 novel. It was produced by David O. Selznick of Selznick International Pictures and directed by Victor Fleming. Set in the 19th-century American South, the film tells the story of Scarlett O'Hara, the strong-willed daughter of a Georgia plantation owner, from her romantic pursuit of Ashley Wilkes, who is married to his cousin, Melanie Hamilton, to her marriage to Rhett Butler. Set against the backdrop of the American Civil War and Reconstruction era, the story is told from the perspective of white Southerners. The leading roles are portrayed by Vivien Leigh (Scarlett), Clark Gable (Rhett), Leslie Howard (Ashley), and Olivia de Havilland (Melanie).
(4) Charles Dickens (a literary genius)
Charles John Juffam Dickens was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era. His works enjoyed unprecedented popularity during his lifetime, and by the twentieth century critics and scholars had recognised him as a literary genius. His novels and short stories enjoy lasting popularity.
1 Oliver Twist 孤雛淚
2 Hard Times 艱難時世
3 A Tale of Two Cities 雙城記
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way. . . .
epoch: An epoch is a period of time marked by certain characteristics: you might describe several peaceful decades in a nation's history as an epoch of peace.
These famous lines, which open A Tale of Two Cities, hint at the novel’s central tension between love and family, on the one hand, and oppression and hatred, on the other. The passage makes marked use of anaphora, the repetition of a phrase at the beginning of consecutive clauses—for example, “it was the age . . . it was the age” and “it was the epoch . . . it was the epoch. . . .” This technique, along with the passage’s steady rhythm, suggests that good and evil, wisdom and folly, and light and darkness stand equally matched in their struggle. The opposing pairs in this passage also initiate one of the novel’s most prominent motifs and structural figures—that of doubles, including London and Paris, Sydney Carton and Charles Darnay, Miss Pross and Madame Defarge, and Lucie and Madame Defarge.
(5) canon
Canon is the range of works that a consensus of scholars, teachers, and readers of a particular time and culture consider "great" or "major."
p.1: Works are already ones "of recognized artistic value"
(6) The Western Canon (by Harold bloom) 西方正典
The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages is a 1994 book by Harold Bloom on Western literature. Bloom defends the concept of the Western conon by focusing on 26 writers whom he sees as central to the canon. This book argues against what Bloom calls the "School of Resentment", in which he includes feminist literary criticism, Marxist literary criticism, Lacanians, New Historicism, Deconstructionists, and somioticians.
(7) poem: On First Looking into Chapman's Homer (by John Keats)
On First Looking into Chapman's Homer is a sonnet written by the English Romantic poet John Keats (1795-1821) in October 1816. It tells of the author's astonishment while reading the works of the ancient Greek poet Homer as freely translated by the Elizabethan playwright George Chapman.
(8) bildungsroman → a literary genre
In literary criticism, a bildungsroman, novel of formation, novel of education, or coming-of-age story (though it may also be known as a subset of the coming-of-age story) is a literary genre that focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from youth to adulthood (coming of age), in which character change is extremely important.
(9) gothic fiction
Gothic fiction is a subgenre of fiction conventionally featuring plots that involve secrets, mystery, and the supernatural (or the seemingly supernatural) and large, gloomy, and usually antiquated (especially medieval) buildings as settings.
ex: A rose for Emily (fiction summary) p.519 ending
(10) movie: When Harry met Sally
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