The Nightingale and the Rose Oscar Wilde Lesson 4.
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Transcript of The Nightingale and the Rose Oscar Wilde Lesson 4.
The Nightingale and the Rose
Oscar Wilde
Lesson 4
Background
Author: Oscar Wilde’s early school years In 1871, Oscar was awarded a Royal
School Scholarship to Trinity College in Dublin. Again, he did particularly well in Classics, earning first in his examinations in 1872 and earning the highest honor the College could bestow on an undergraduate - a Foundation Scholarship.
In 1874, Oscar crowned his successes at Trinity with two final achievements. He won the College's Berkeley Gold Medal for Greek and was awarded a scholarship to Magdalen College, Oxford.
1874-1878, He had a brilliant career at Oxford, where he won the Prize for English verse for a poem. Even before he left the University in 1878 Wilde had become known as one of the most affected of the professors of the aesthetic craze, and for several years it was as the typical aesthete that he kept himself before the notice of the public.
Oscar Wilde’s works
Poems 1881 The Happy Prince And Other Tales 1888 Dorian Gray 1890 The House Of Pomegranates
( 石榴 ) 1891 The Ballad of Reading Goal 1898
Plays: Lady Windermere's Fan 1892. A Woman of No Importance 1893. An Ideal Husband 1895 The Importance of Being Earnest 1895
Criticism a man of far greater originality and power
of mind than many of the apostles( 使徒 ) of aestheticism
undoubted talents in many directions as a typical aesthete that he kept himself before the notice of the public
a poet of graceful diction playwright of skill and subtle humor
a dramatist whose plays had all the characteristics of his conversations
All these pieces had the same qualities--a paradoxical humour and a perverted ( 反常的 ) outlook on life being the most prominent. They were packed with witty sayings, and the author's cleverness gave him at once a position in the dramatic world
Oscar Wilde’s belief
Art for art’s sake The only purpose of the artist is art, not
religion, or science, or interest. He who paints or writes only for financial return or to propagandize political and economic interests can only arouse feeling of disgust.
Quotes from Oscar Wilde’s Works: Quotes on Men
Men become old, but they never become good. Lady Windermere's Fan.
Rich bachelors should be heavily taxed. It is not fair that some men should be happier than others. In Conversation.
Men are horribly tedious when they are good husbands, and abominably conceited when they are not. A Woman of No Importance.
Lady Windermere: ...I don't like compliments, and I don't see why a man should think he is pleasing a woman enormously when he says to her awhile heap of things that he doesn't mean. Lady Windermere's Fan.
Quotes on Woman One should never trust a woman who tells
one her real age. A woman who would tell one that, would tell one anything.
A Woman of No Importance.
Crying is the refuge of plain women but the ruin of pretty ones.
Lady Windermere's Fan.
Women know life too late. That is the difference between men and women.
A Woman of No Importance.
Women are meant to be loved, not to be understood.
The Sphinx Without a Secret.
Quotes on Love One should always be in love. That is the
reason one should never marry. In Conversation.
To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance. Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young.
Young men want to be faithful and are not; old men want to be faithless and cannot. The Picture of Dorian Gray.
Genre of this story and its characteristics:
Fairy tales (10 min.) - fairies play a part - contain supernatural or magical elements - children’s stories - full of veiled comments on life
Characteristics:
1) personification of birds, insects, animals and trees
2) vivid, simple narration --- typical of the oral tradition of fairy tales
3) repetitive pattern
Post-class work:
1. Please write down the characters’ different attitudes toward love:
(1) The Student’s (2) The Lizard’s, the Butterfly’s and the
Daisy’s (3) The Nightingale’s 2. Is love better than life, as the Nightingale
believed? Please write down your opinion on this.
Vocabulary to work on.
Please bear in your mind this question while we go through the text:
What are the symbolic meanings of
“Red rose”, “Lizard” “Butterfly” and “Nightingale” in the text?
Text analysis--structure
Nightingale struck by the “the mystery of love”
Nightingale looking for a red rose to facilitate the love
Nightingale sacrificing her life for a red rose
Student discarding the red rose
Language Points
1. jewels (gems): emeralds (绿宝石) , ruby (红宝石) , sapphire (蓝宝石) , jade (翡翠) diamond
plants: daisy (雏菊) , rose (玫瑰花) , oak-tree (橡树), daffodil (水仙 花)
animals: nightingale, lizard (蜥蜴) , butterfly subjects: philosophy, metaphysics (形而上学) ,
logic stringed instruments: harp (竖琴) , violin
2. want: 1)the condition or quality of lacking something usual
or necessary for /from want of 由于缺少 The plants died for/from want of water. 2) pressing need; 贫困 to live in want = to live in poverty3) something desired: in want of = in need of Are you in want of money? He’s a person of few wants and needs.
3. fling
1 ) to throw violently, with force
Don’t fling your clothes on the floor.
2) to move violently or quickly
She flung herself down on the sofa.
She flung back her head proudly.
3) to devote to
He flung himself into the task.
4. ebb
n. 1).The tide is on the ebb.
2).The financial resources have reached its lowest ebb.
vi. 1) fall back from the flood stage
The tide will begin to ebb at 4 o’clock.
2) to fall away or back; decline or recede
The danger of conflict is not ebbing there.
see see about doing: attend to, make
arrangements for, deal with 安排,处理
It is time for me to see about cooking the dinner.
see something out: to last until the end of 熬过,度过
Will our supplies see the winter out? It was such a bad play we couldn’t see
out the performance and we left early.
see through sb./ sth The paper is too thick to see
though. It was a hard time for us, but we
managed to see it through. see to something: to attend to, take
care of 负责,留意 If I see to getting the car out, will
you see to closing the windows?
Symbolic meanings:
Red rose --- true love, which needs constant nourishment of passions of the lovers. Lizard --- cynic (cynical people) cynic: a person who sees little or no good in
anything and who has no belief in human progress; person who shows this by sneering and being contemptuous.
Nightingale --- a truthful, devoted pursuer of love, who dares to sacrifice his own precious life
Student --- not a true lover, ignorant of love, not persistent in pursuing love
Wilde’s comments in a letter to one of his friends(May 1888): (5 min.)
The nightingale is the true lover, if there is one. She, at least, is Romance, and the student and the girl are, like most of us, unworthy of Romance. So, at least, it seems to me, but I like to fancy that there may be many meanings in
the tale, for in writing it I did not start with an idea and cloth it in form, but began with a form and strove to make it beautiful enough to have many secrets and many answers.
Figurative speeches used in the text: (10 min.)
v Personification v Simile and Metaphor Writing techniques: v Climax and Anticlimax
Personification
give human forms or feelings to animals, or life and personal attributes to inanimate objects, or to ideas and abstractions.
E.g. Time, you old gypsy man!
Simile
(the use of) an expression comparing one thing with another, always including the words 'as' or 'like':
The lines 'She walks in beauty, like the night...' from Byron's poem contain a simile.
…her voice was like water bubbling from a silver jar.
…as white as the foam of the sea…
Metaphor:
an expression which describes a person or object in a literary way by referring to something that is considered to possess similar characteristics to the person or object you are trying to describe:
'The mind is an ocean' and 'the city is a jungle' are both metaphors.
Climax
--derived from the Greek word “ladder,” implies the progression of thought at a uniform or almost uniform rate of significance or intensity
e.g. I came, I saw, I conquered. Some books are to be tasted, others to
be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.
Anti-climax:
--- stating one’s thoughts in a descending order of significance or intensity, often used to ridicule or satire.
eg. 1. As a serious man, I loved Beethoven, Keats, and hot dogs.
2. For God, for America, for Yale. 3. You manage a business, stocks,
bonds, people. And now you can manage your hair.
Syntactic device
Inversion …yet for want of a red rose is my life made
wretched. (for emphasis) …Crimson was the girdle of petals, and
crimson as ruby was the heart. … She passed through the grove like a shadow
and like a shadow she sailed across the garden. Night after night have I sung of him.