文學與人生 Dream sees the invisible, feels the intangible and achieves the impossible.

The rise of the English novel in the eighteenth century was marked by a claim of realism. It culminated in the works of Jane Austen. Discuss any one of them as a realistic novel.

        During Austen's time (1775~1817), Romanticism reached its zenith of acceptance and influence, but she rejected the tenets of that movement. The romantics extolled the power of feeling, whereas Austen upheld the supremacy of the rational faculty. Romanticism advocated the abandonment of restraint; Austen was a staunch exponent of the neo-classical belief in order and discipline. Austen supported traditional values and the established norms, and viewed the human condition in the comic spirit. In the spirit of general "realism", Austen is opted for depiction of everyday activities and experiences, instead of a romanticized or similarly stylized presentation.

       The point of view in Pride and Prejudice is told through Elizabeth, but not in first person. As a result, the mood of the novel lacks dramatic emotions. The main actions of the novel are the interactions between opinions, ideas, and attitudes, which weaves and advances the plot of the novel. The emotions in the novel are to be perceived beneath the surface of the story and are not to be expressed to the readers directly.

What kind of image of the American society does Mark Twain present in his fictional works? What is the function of humor in his presentation of the American society of his time? Use some examples to substantiate your theme.

       Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, is the story of a young boy, Huck, and an escaped slave, Jim, and their moral, ethical, and human development during an odyssey down the Mississippi River that brings them into many conflicts with greater society. What Huck and Jim seek is freedom, and this freedom is sharply contrasted with the existing civilization along the great river. The conflicts of individual versus society, freedom versus civilization, and sentimentalism versus realism, as well as Huck’s struggle between right and wrong, are all revealed in Huck and Jim’s journey. Twain infused satire and dark humor throughout the novel.

        When the boys come together at the beginning of the novel to create a band of robbers, Tom tells the gang that if anyone whispers their secrets, the boy and his entire family will be killed. The more Tom tries to convince Huck and the rest of the boys that they are stealing jewelry from Arabs and Spaniards, the more ridiculous the scene becomes. After the gang steals turnips and Tom labels them as jewelry, Huck finally decides to resign because he “couldn’t see no profit in it.”

A Marxist Approach to Jane Eyre

Based on the ideas of Karl Marx, this theoretical approach asks us to consider how a literary work reflects the socioeconomic conditions of the time in which it was written. What does the text tell us about contemporary social classes and how does it reflect classism? Jane Eyre depicts the strict, hierarchical class system in England that required everyone to maintain carefully circumscribed class positions. Primarily through the character of Jane, it also accents the cracks in this system, the places where class differences were melding in Victorian England. For example, the novel questions the role of the governess: Should she be considered upper class, based on her superior education, or lower class, because of her servant-status within the family? What happens when relationships develop between people of different classes, such as Rochester and Jane?

Jane's ambiguous class status becomes evident from the novel's opening chapter. A poor orphan living with relatives, Jane feels alienated from the rest of the Reed family. John Reed tells Jane she has "no business to take our books; you are a dependent . . . you ought to beg, and not to live here with gentleman's children like us." In this quote, John claims the rights of the gentleman, implying that Jane's family was from a lower class, and, therefore, she has no right to associate on equal footing with her wealthy cousins. Jane's lack of money leaves her dependent upon the Reeds for sustenance. She appears to exist in a no-man's land between the upper- and servant classes. By calling her cousin John a "murderer," "slave-driver," and "Roman emperor," Jane emphasizes her recognition of the corruption inherent in the ruling classes. As she's dragged away to the red-room following her fight with John Reed, Jane resists her captors like a "rebel slave," emphasizing the oppression she suffers because of her class status. When Miss Abbot admonishes Jane for striking John Reed, Jane's "young master," Jane immediately questions her terminology. Is John really her "master"; is she his servant? Emphasizing the corruption, even despotism of the upper classes, Jane's narrative makes her audience aware that the middle classes were becoming the repositories of both moral and intellectual superiority.

Jane's experiences at Thornfield reinforce this message. When Jane first arrives, she is happy to learn that Mrs. Fairfax is a housekeeper, and not Jane's employer, because this means they're both dependents and can, therefore, interact as equals. Mrs. Fairfax discusses the difference between herself, as an upper-servant, and the other servants in the house; for example, she says Leah and John are "only servants, and one can't converse with them on terms of equality; one must keep them at due distance for fear of losing one's authority." As a governess, Jane is in the same category as Mrs. Fairfax: neither a member of the family nor a member of the serving classes. The ambiguity of the governess is especially pronounced, as we see with the example of Diana and Mary Rivers: the well-educated daughters of upper-class parents who've fallen on hard financial times, the Rivers are better educated than their employers, though treated with as little respect as the family cook. Victorian society brutally maintained the boundaries between governesses and the upper-class families, practically prohibiting marriages between the two groups and attempting to desexualize governesses, who were often accused of bringing a dangerous sexuality into the family. Blanche, for example, calls governesses "incubi," and Lady Ingram believes that liaisons should never be allowed between governesses and tutors, because such relationships would introduce a moral infection into the household.

Mark Twain

作者生平

Discuss the Death of a Salesman as a Modern Tragedy

        Arthur Miller's play, "Death of a Salesman" was written and published in 1949, when the United States was booming with new economic capabilities and new found power. However, the American dream was turning out to be quite different than that of the originally idealized by their founding fathers. The play is centered around Willy Loman a husband and father of two sons, who is searching for success and happiness based on self centered ideals and illusion and ruining his life and his families lives at the same time. It is a controversial play of a typical American family and their desire to live the American dream .The story is told through the delusional eyes and mind of Willy Loman, a traveling salesman of 34 years, whose fantasy world of lies eventually causes him to suffer an emotional breakdown. Miller's play is seen by many as a tragedy.

Please give your opinions on such questions about “why” we read literature, “what” we should read, “how” we should read,etc.

To read literature is to develop the gift of one’s nature.  There exist 12 benefits by persuading literature as following:

1.     To benefit from the insight of others.