英国文学案Part1-4.docVIP

The Anglo-Saxon Period ⅠBasic concepts and requirements of this course 1. what’s literature? ?? In English, we use the word in at least two different senses:very often it simply means anything that is written: timetables, catalogues, text-books, travel brochures (booklet/ pamphlet). In this broad sense, an account of yesterday’s football match or an advertisement of soap powder, is as much literature as the Dialogues of Plato or the novels of D. H. Lawrence. But when we talk about English literature as we do in this course, we are using the word in a different, and perhaps more serious sense. Here we may agree that literature is writing which expresses communicates thoughts, feelings attitudes towards life. But someone may ask: what about advertisements, travel booklets, etc? They certainly seem to be expressing thoughts feelings attitudes, yet they are not literature in the sense in which we have how decided to use the word. This is because they lack one of the qualities that make serious literature so different from advertising or journalism. The quality, I have in mind, is permanence. Such things as journalism, advertising, even works of information are “here today gone tomorrow”, but literature is intended to last. To summarize what has been said, we may now say that literature is a permanent expression in words of some thoughts or feelings or ideas about life the world. ?2. What is the usefulness of studying (English) Literature? ? (1) Increasing one’s knowledge ?? ? English literature is a mirror to the social life at different stages of English history. It is a general expression of the ideas, feelings aesthetic judgments of? writers from different social classes. It is also a direct or indirect vivid expression of the relationship among people of different social classes, between people society, people nature, and the spirit psychological state of people themselves. ?? Therefore studying English literature, is one of the best ways for us to get