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THOMAS HARDY.
Tess of the d'Urbervilles.
Chapter XX.
The season developed and matured. Another year's instalment of flowers, leaves, nightingales, thrushes, finches and such ephemeral creatures, took up their positions where only a year ago others had stood in their place when these were nothing more than germs and inorganic particles. Rays from the sunrise drew forth the buds and stretched them into long stalks, lifted up sap in noiseless streams, opened petals, and sucked out scents in invisible jets and breathings.
Dairyman Crick's household of maids and men lived on comfortably, placidly, even merrily. Their position was perhaps the happiest of all position in the social scale, being above the line at which neediness ends, and below the line at which the conveniences begin to cramp natural feeling, and the stress of threadbare modishness makes too little of enough.
Thus passed the leafy time when arborescence seems to be the one thing aimed at out of doors. Tess and Clare unconsciously studied each other, ever balanced on the edge of a passion, yet apparently keeping out of it. All the while they were converging, under an irresistible law, as surely as two streams in one vale.
Tess had never in her recent life been so happy as she was now, possibly never would be so happy again. She was, for one thing, physically and mentally suited among these new surroundings. The sapling which had rooted down to a poisonous stratum on the spot of its sowing had been translated to a deeper soil. Moreover she, and Clare also, stood as yet on the debatable land between predilection and love: where no profundities have been reached; no reflections have set in, awkwardly inquiring, "Whether does this new current tend to carry me? What does it mean to my future? How does it stand towards my past?"
Tess was the merest stray phenomenon to Angel Clare as yet-a rosy warming apparition which had only just acquired the attribute of persistence in his consciousness. So he allowed his mind to be occupied with her, deeming his preoccupation to be no more than a philosopher's regard of an exceedingly novel, fresh and interesting specimen of womankind.
They met continually; they could not help it. They met daily in that strange and solemn interval, the twilight of the morning, in the violet or pink dawn; for it was necessary to rise early, so very early, here. Milking was done betimes; and before the milking came the skimming, which began at a little past three. It usually fell to lot of some one or other of them to wake the rest, the first being aroused by an alarm-clock; and, as Tess was the latest arrival, and they soon discovered that she could be depended upon not to sleep through the alarm as the others did, this task was thrust most frequently upon her. No sooner had the hour of three struck and whizzed, that she left her room and ran to the dairyman's door: then up the ladder to Angel's calling him a loud whisper; then woke her fellow milkmaids. By the time that Tess was dressed Clare was downstairs and out in the humid air. The remaining maids and the dairymen usually gave themselves another turn on the pillow, and did not appear till a quarter of an hour latter.
The gray half-tones of daybreak are not the gray half-tones of the day's close, though the degree of their shade may be the same. In the twilight of the morning light seems active, darkness passive; in the twilight of evening it is the darkness which is active and crescent, and the light which is the drowsy reverse.
Food for thought.
1. Divide the text into logically connected parts; find the key-sentences; speak on the subject matter and the idea of each.
2. Find the introduction to the text; analyse the convergence of stylistic devices and define the symbolic value of the image.
3. Comment on the social position of dairyman Crick’s household. Why does the author consider it the happiest one?
4. Find the devices likening Tess to nature, reason their usage. Speak on Tess’ feelings.
5. Speak on the way Angel Clare is presented in the text. What is the author’s attitude to him? How does his name reveal his character? Analyse the choice of words in the paragraph describing Angel’s attitude to Tess.
6. Account for the daily routine on the farm and its significance to Thomas Hardy.
7. Comment on the closing sentence and its philosophic meaning.
8. Give a summary of analysis of the text.
Topics for oral discussion.
1. Find the echo of the author’s philosophy – that of pessimistic fatalism – in the passage under study.
2. Comment on the role of nature in Hardy’s descriptions.
3. Compare the ways the main characters are described.
4. Country life and the author’s attitude to it.
5. Speak on the opening and closing paragraphs.
OSCAR WILDE.
The picture of Dorian Gray
Chapter 10
He sighed, and, having poured himself out some tea, opened Lord Henry's note. It was simply to say that he sent him round the evening paper, and a book that might interest him, and that he would be at the club at eight-fifteen. He opened The St. James's languidly, and looked through it. A red pencil-mark on the fifth page caught his eye. It drew attention to the following paragraph:
"INQUEST ON AN ACTRESS. - An inquest was held this morning at the Bell Tavern, Hoxton Road, by Mr. Danby, the District Coroner, on the body of Sibyl Vane, a young actress recently engaged at the Royal Theatre, Holborn. A verdict of death by misadventure was returned. Considerable sympathy was expressed for the mother of the deceased, who was greatly affected during the giving of her own evidence, and that of Dr. Birrell, who had made the post-mortem examination of the deceased".
He frowned, and, tearing the paper in two, went across the room and flung the pieces away. How ugly it all was! And how horribly real ugliness made things! He felt a little annoyed with Lord Henry for having sent him the report. And it was certainly stupid of him to have marked it with red pencil. Victor might have read it. The man knew more than enough English for that.
Perhaps he had read it, and had begun to suspect something. And, yet, what did it matter? What had Dorian Gray to do with Sibyl Vane's death? There was nothing to fear. Dorian Gray had not killed her.
His eye fell on the yellow book that Lord Henry had sent him. What was it, he wondered. He went towards the little pearl-coloured octagonal stand, that had always looked to him like the work of some strange Egyptian bees that wrought in silver, and taking up the volume, flung himself into an armchair, and began to turn over the leaves. After a few minutes he became absorbed. It was the strangest book that he had ever read. It seemed to him that in exquisite raiment, and to the delicate sound of flutes, the sins of the world were passing in dumb show before him. Things that he had dimly dreamed of were suddenly made real to him. Things of which he had never dreamed were gradually revealed.
It was a novel without a plot, and with only one character, being, indeed, simply a psychological study of a certain young Parisian, who spent his life trying to realise in the nineteenth century all the passions and modes of thought that belonged to every century except his own, and to sum up, as it were, in himself the various moods through which the world-spirit had ever passed, loving for their mere artificiality those renunciations that men have unwisely called virtue, as much as those natural rebellions that wise men still call sin. The style in which it was written was that curious jewelled style, vivid and obscure at once, full 6f argot and of archaisms, of technical expressions and of elaborate paraphrases, that characterises the work of some of the finest artists of the French school of Symbolistes. There were in it metaphors as monstrous as orchids, and as subtle in colour. The life of the senses was described in the terms of mystical philosophy. One hardly knew at times whether one was reading the spirital ecstases of some mediaeval saint or the morbid confessions of a modern sinner. It was a poisonous book. The heavy odour of incense seemed to cling about its pages and to trouble the brain. The mere cadence of the sentences, the subtle monotony of their music, so full as it was of complex refrains and movements elaborately repeated, produced in the mind of the lad, as he passed from the chapter to chapter, a form of reverie, a malady of dreaming, that made him unconscious of the falling day and creeping shadows.
Cloudless, and pierced by one solitary star, a copper-green sky gleamed through the windows. He read on by its wan light till he could read no more. Then after his valet had reminded him several times of the lateness of the hour, he got up, and, going into the next room, placed the book on the little Florentine table, that always stood at his bedside and began to dress for dinner.
It was almost nine o'clock before he reached the club, where he found Lord Henry sitting alone in the morning-room, looking very much bored.
"l’m so sorry, Harry", he cried, “but really it is entirely your fault. That book you sent me so fascinated me that I forgot how the time was going."
"Yes: I thought you would like it," replied his host, rising from his chair.
"I didn't say I liked it, Harry. I said it fascinated me. There is a great difference."
"Ah, you have discovered that?" murmured Lord Henry. And they passed into the dining—room.
(O.Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray. Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, 1958)
Notes
The St. James's - a London newspaper
Victor - Dorian Gray's valet
argot (French) - here: Parisian slang
Sybolistes (French) — representatives of a literary trend in the last decades of the 19th century.
The French novel mentioned in the extract is most likely the work of the French decadent writer J. -K. Huysmans called “A rebours” (1884)
Food for thought.
1. 1.Divide the text according to the subject matters and ideas of the parts.
2. Define the general mood of the first paragraph and speak on the changes in the emotional state of the character throughout the text. What stylistic devices helped you?
3. What can you say about the style of the article? Can a term “crude journalese” be applied to it? Prove you viewpoint by the examples. Compare the style of the article with that of the “yellow book”. What is the stylistic function of the contrast?
4. What thematic fields can we find in the description of the “yellow book”? Speak in this connection on the problems decadent writers were interested in.
5. Find contrasting images in the description of the “yellow book”. What stylistic devices create them? What is their function? Analyse the implications of “as monstrous as orchids”.
6. Speak how the syntactical pattern contributes to the idea.
7. Prove the fact that Dorian Gray likes to surround himself with beautiful things.
8. Define the stylistic devices to describe the evening. What is the stylistic function of the description?
9. Find a paradox in the text, analyse the means to create it and its function.
10. What can you say about Lord Henry’s influence on Dorian Gray?
11. Pick out the facts about aristocracy’s daily routine. What is the author’s attitude to it?
Topics for oral discussion.
1. Give a summary of analysis of the text. Comment on the author’s creed and the way it is revealed in the passage.
2. Analyse the strong positions of the text, reveal the mood prevailing in the opening and closing passages.
3. Comment on the types of contrast presented in the text.
4. Study the ways the idea of “Art for Art’s sake” is introduced in the passage.
5. What can you say about O. Wilde’s individual style?
WALTER SCOTT.
Ivanhoe.
Chapter X.
The Disinherited Knight, therefore, stept boldly forth to the front of his tent, and found in attendance the squires of the challengers, whom he easily knew by their russet and black dresses, each of whom led his master's charger, loaded with the armour in which he had that day fought.
``According to the laws of chivalry,'' said the foremost of these men, ``I, Baldwin de Oyley,
squire to the redoubted Knight Brian de Bois-Guilbert, make offer to you, styling yourself, for the present, the Disinherited Knight, of the horse and armour used by the said Brian de Bois-Guilbert in this day's Passage of Arms, leaving it with your nobleness to retain or to ransom the same, according to your pleasure; for such is the law of arms.''
The other squires repeated nearly the same formula, and then stood to await the decision of the Disinherited Knight.
``To you four, sirs,'' replied the Knight, addressing those who had last spoken, ``and to your honourable and valiant masters, I have one common reply. Commend me to the noble knights, your masters, and say, I should do ill to deprive them of steeds and arms which can never be used by braver cavaliers.- I would I could here end my message to these gallant knights; but being, as I term myself, in truth and earnest, the Disinherited, I must be thus far bound to your masters, that they will, of their courtesy, be pleased to ransom their steeds and armour, since that which I wear I can hardly term mine own.''
``We stand commissioned, each of us,'' answered the squire of Reginald Front-de-Boeuf, ``to offer a hundred zecchins in ransom of these horses and suits of armour.''
``It is sufficient,'' said the Disinherited Knight. ``Half the sum my present necessities compel meto accept; of the remaining half, distribute one moiety among yourselves, sir squires, and divide the other half betwixt the heralds and the pursuivants, and minstrels, and attendants.''
The squires, with cap in hand, and low reverences, expressed their deep sense of a courtesy and generosity not often practised, at least upon a scale so extensive. The Disinherited Knight then addressed his discourse to Baldwin, the squire of Brian de Bois-Guilbert. ``From your master,'' said he, ``I will accept neither arms nor ransom. Say to him in my name, that our strife is not ended - no, not till we have fought as well with swords as with
Lances - as well on foot as on horseback. To this mortal quarrel he has himself defied me, and I shall not forget the challenge. - Meantime, let him be assured, that I hold him not as one of his companions, with whom I can with pleasure exchange courtesies; but rather as one with whom I stand upon terms of mortal defiance.''
``My master,'' answered Baldwin, ``knows how to requite scorn with scorn, and blows with blows, as well as courtesy with courtesy, Since you disdain to accept from him any share of the ransom at which you have rated the arms of the other knights, I must leave his armour and his horse here, being well assured that he will never deign to mount the one nor wear the other.''
``You have spoken well, good squire,'' said the Disinherited Knight, ``well and boldly, as it beseemeth him to speak who answers for an absent master. Leave not, however, the horse and armour here. Restore them to thy master; or, if he scorns to accept them, retain them, good friend, for thine own use. So far as they are mine, I bestow them upon you freely.''
Baldwin made a deep obeisance, and retired with his companions; and the Disinherited Knight entered the pavilion.
``Thus far, Gurth,'' said he, addressing his attendant, ``the reputation of English chivalry hath not suffered in my hands.''
Food for thought.
1. Revise what you know about Scott’s style.
2. Define the subject matter of the passage under study; speak on the “laws of chivalry” as presented in the text.
3. Account for the ways the material culture of the epoch is introduced.
4. Comment on the manner of speech in the text.
5. Account for the last paragraph. What is the idea of the text in the light of the last passage? Pay attention to the variety and origin of names.
CHARLES DICKENS.
Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club.
Chapter 2.
A private sitting-room having been engaged, bedrooms inspected, and dinner ordered, the party walked out to view the city and adjoining neighbourhood. We do not find, from a careful perusal of Mr Pickwick's notes on the four towns, Stroud, Rochester, Chatham, and Brompton, that his impressions of their appearance differ in any material point from those of other travellers who have gone over the same ground. His general description is easily abridged.
"The principal productions of these towns," says Mr Pickwick, "appear to be soldiers, sailors, Jews, chalk, shrimps, officers, and dockyard men. The commodities chiefly exposed for sale in the public streets are marine stores, hardbake, apples, flat-fish, and oysters. The streets present a lively and animated appearance, occasioned chiefly by the conviviality of the military. It is truly delightful to a philanthropic mind, to see these gallant men staggering along under the influence of an overflow, both of animal and ardent spirits; more especially when we remember that the following them about, and jesting with them, affords a cheap and innocent amusement for the boy population. Nothing (adds Mr Pickwick) can exceed their good humour. It was but the day before my arrival that one of them had been most grossly insulted in the house of a publican. The barmaid had positively refused to draw him any more liquor; in return for which he had (merely in playfulness) drawn his bayonet, and wounded the girl in the shoulder. And yet this fine fellow was the very first to go down to thehouse next morning, and express his readiness to overlook the matter, and forget what had occurred.
"The consumption of tobacco in these towns (continues Mr Pickwick) must be very great: and the smell which pervades the streets must be exceedingly delicious to those who are extremely fond of smoking. A superficial traveller might object to the dirt which is their leading characteristic;
but to those who view it as an indication of traffic and commercial prosperity, it is truly gratifying."
Punctual to five o'clock came the stranger, and shortly afterwards the dinner.
Food for thought.
1. Pick out the words belonging to the scientific and high poetic style. Does sentence structure in the passage remind you of any functional style?
2. Analyse the discrepancy between the form and the subject matter of the text. What is its stylistic function?
3. Speak on Mr. Pickwick’s character as shown in the passage. What is Dickens’ attitude to him? Explain the difference between Mr. Pickwick and Charles Dickens in the opinion on the towns.
4. Find the examples of parenthesis, zeugma, bathos and pun in the text. What is the function of these stylistic devices?
5. Comment on the title of the book.
THOMAS HARDY
Tess of the d'Urbervilles.
Chapter 39.
It was three weeks after the marriage that Clare found himself descending the hill which led to the well-known parsonage of his father. With his downward course the tower of the church rose into the evening sky in a manner of inquiry as to why he had come; and no living person in the twilighted town seemed to notice him, still less to expect him. He was arriving like a ghost, and the sound of his own footsteps was almost an encumbrance to be got rid of.
The picture of life had changed for him. Before this time he had known it but speculatively; now he thought he knew it as a practical man; though perhaps he did not, even yet. Nevertheless humanity stood before him no longer in the pensive sweetness of Italian art, but in the staring and ghastly attitudes of a Wiertz Museum and with leer of a study by Van Beers.
His conduct during these first weeks had been desultory beyond description. After mechanically attempting to pursue his agricultural plans as though nothing unusual had happened, in the manner recommended by the great and wise men of all ages, he concluded that very few of those great and wise men had ever gone far outside themselves as to test feasibility of their counsel. "This is the chief thing: be not perturbed," said the pagan moralist. That was just Clare's own opinion. But he was perturbed. "Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid," said the Nazarene. Clare chimed in cordially, but his hart was troubled all the same. How he would have liked to confront those two great thinkers, and earnestly appeal to them as fellow-man to fellow-men, and ask them to tell him their method!
His mood transmuted itself into a dogged indifference till at length he fancied he was looking on his own existence with the passive interest of an outsider.
He was embitted by the conviction that all this desolation had been brought about by the accident of her being a d'Urberville. When he found that Tess came of that exhausted ancient line and was not of the new tribes from below, as he had fondly dreamed, why had he not stoically abandoned her in fidelity to his principles? This was what he had got by apostasy, and his punishement was deserved.
Then he became weary and anxious, and his anxiety increased. He wondered if he had treated her unfairly. He ate without knowing that he ate and drank without tasting. As the hours droppedpast, as the motive of each act in the long series of bygone days presented itself to his view, he perceived how intimately the notion of having Tess as a dear possession was mixed up with all his schemes and word and ways.
Wiertz Museum - a museum in Brussels.
van Beers - Led by a reaction against Romanticism, set in about 1860, writing became characterized by acute observation, description of local scenery, humour, and, not infrequently, a basic pessimism, as could be seen in the poetry of Jan van Beers.
Food for thought.
1. Define the general mood of the text. What devices helped you to do it? How does syntax contribute to it?
2. Analyse the function of art terms and names of artists in the passage.
3. What do the names of philosophers reveal about Angel Clare? Do you know the name of “the pagan moralist” mentioned in the text? What is the author’s attitude to Angel Clare?
4. What is the reason of Clare’s unhappiness? When do we find it out? What device does the author use?
5. Comment on the closure of the text.
OSCAR WILDE.
The Picture of Dorian Gray.
The preface.
THE artist is the creator of beautiful things.
To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim.
The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things.
The highest as the lowest form of criticism is a mode of autobiography.
Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.
Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there
is hope.
They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty.
There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book.
Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.
The nineteenth century dislike of Realism is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a
glass.
The nineteenth century dislike of Romanticism is the rage of Caliban not seeing his own
face in a glass.
The moral life of man forms part of the subject-matter of the artist, but the morality of art consists in.the perfect use of an imperfect medium.
No artist desires to prove anything. Even things that are true can be proved.
No artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable
mannerism of style.
No artist is ever morbid. The artist can express everything.
Thought and language are to the artist instruments of an art.
Vice and virtue are to the artist materials for an art.
From the point of view of form, the type of all arts is the art of the musician. From the point of view of feeling, the actor's craft is the type.
All art is at once surface and symbol.
Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril.
Those who read the symbol do so at their peril.
It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.
Diversity of opinion about the work of art shows that the work is new, complex and
vital.
When critics disagree the artist is in accord with himself.
We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it immensely.
All art is quite useless.
Notes.
Caliban is a character in Shakesspeare's "The Tempest", half man, half beast.
Food for thought.
1. What is the stylistic function of a preface generally?
2. Define the role of an artist, a critic, a reader.
3. What are the relations between art and life?
4. Explain O. Wilde's viewpoint on the morality of art.
5. Speak on the paragragh organization antd the usage of capital letters in the preface.
6. What is the function of the allusions used in the text?
7. Give some examples of paradox in the preface and explain their function. How are they created?
8. What does the preface reveal about the idea of the novel?
CHAPTER 11
At another time he devoted himself entirely to music, and in a long latticed room, with a vermilion-and-gold ceiling and walls of olive-green lacquer, he used to give curious concerts, in which mad gypsies tore wild music from little zithers, or grave yellow-shawled Tunisians plucked at the strained strings of monstrous lutes, while grinning negroes beat monotonously upon copper drums, and, crouching upon scarlet mats, slim turbaned Indians blew through long pipes of reed or brass, and charmed, or feigned to charm, great hooded snakes and horrible horned adders. The harsh intervals and shrill discords of barbaric music stirred him at times when Schubert's grace, and Chopin's beautiful sorrows, and the mighty harmonies of Beethoven himself, fell unheeded on his ear. He collected together from all parts of the world the strangest instruments that could be found, either in the tombs of dead nations or among the few savage tribes that have survived contact with Western civilisations, and loved to touch and try them. He had the mysterious juruparis of the Rio Negro Indians, that women are not allowed to look at, and that even youths may not see till they have been subjected to fasting and scourging, and.the earthen jars of the Peruvians that have the shrill cries of birds, and flutes of human bones such as Alfonso de Ovalle heard in Chili, and the sonorous green jaspers that are found near Cuzco and give forth a note of singular sweetness. He had painted gourds filled with pebbles that rattled when they were shaken; the long clarin of the Mexicans, into which the performer does not blow, but through which he inhales the air; the harsh ture of the Amazon tribes, that is sounded by the sentinels who sit all day long in high trees, and can be heard, it is said, at a distance of three leagues; the teponaztli that has two vibrating tongues of wood, and is beaten with sticks that are smeared with an elastic gum obtained from the milky juice of plants; the jotl-bells of the Aztecs, that are hung in clusters like grapes; and a huge cylindrical drum, covered with the skins of great serpents, like the one that Bernal Diaz saw when he went with Cortes into the Mexican temple, and of whose doleful sound he has left us so vivid a description. The fantastic character of these instruments fascinated him, and he felt a curious delight in the thought that Art, like Nature, has her monsters, things of bestial shape and with hideous voices. Yet, after some time, he wearied of them, and would sit in his box at the Opera, either alone or with Lord Henry, listening in rapt pleasure to "Tannhauser," and seeing in the prelude to that great work of art a presentation of the tragedy of his own soul.
Notes.
Juruparis, ture, teponatztli - musical instruments of South and Central America.
“Tanhauser” is an opera by Wagner based on the story of a knight-minstrel Tanhauser who fell in love with Venus and spent his life in vain pursuit of her.
Food for thought.
1. Speak on the choice of words in the passage.
2. Analyse the sentence structure and the range of stylistic devices used by the author.
3. Comment on the instances of alliteration and its function.
4. Study the contrast between barbaric and classical music and explain its significance. Account for the allusion to “Tanhauser”.
5. Comment on the usage of epithets in the text; pay your attention to colour pattern.
6. What is the function of abundance of proper names in the text?
7. What do the interests reveal about Dorian Gray?
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