英国文学教案第二部分.docVIP

PAGE  PAGE 75 John Galsworthy “If you don’t think about the future, you don’t have it.” It is said by John Galsworthy. He was granted the Doctor of Literature by Oxford University in 1931 and won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1932. (1907, Rudyard Kipling became the first English writer to win the Nobel Prize literature) Yet, his works are not so famous as Charles Dickens or Bronte sisters. Life Background: He was born into an upper-middle-class family. His father was a prominent London lawyer. Galsworthy was educated first at Harrow and then at Oxford. He was trained to be a lawyer, but he did not like it. So after practicing the law for a short time, he turned to literature. He became acquainted with Joseph Conrad and was influenced by the English novelist. His works: The Forsyte Saga (a trilogy) The Man of Property In Chancery To Let With two short interludes, The Indian Summer of a Firsyte The Awakening A Modern Comedy (a trilogy) The White Monkey The Silver Spoon Swan Song With two short interludes, A Silent Wooing Passers-by The above sequence records the history of four generations of the Forsyte family, a profound and true-to-life picture of the English bourgeois society during a period of 40 years, beginning from the eighties of the 19th century up to the twenties of the 20th century. He was also a dramatist. The most important plays are The Silver Box Strife Justice His viewpoints: Galsworthy was essentially a bourgeois liberal, a reformist. Throughout his life, he was preoccupied with the social injustice in his time. He regarded human life as a struggle between the rich and the poor. And his sympathy always went out to the suffering poor. In his works, the two classes often appear in contrast: a dull, parasitic and inhuman class of the rich, which is again