2015年12月26日星期六

English Children's Literature(Week Fifteen)

2015.12.24
Week 15: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz



1. Introduction
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is an American children's novel written by author L. Frank Baum and illustrated by W. W. Denslow, originally published by the George M. Hill Company in Chicago on May 17, 1900. It has since been reprinted on numerous occasions, most often under the title The Wizard of Oz, which is the title of the popular 1902 Broadway musical as well as the iconic 1939 musical film adaptation.
The story chronicles the adventures of a young farm girl named Dorothy in the magical Land of Oz, after she and her pet dog Toto are swept away from their Kansas home by a cyclone.The novel is one of the best-known stories in American literature and has been widely translated. The Library of Congress has declared it "America's greatest and best-loved homegrown fairytale." Its groundbreaking success and the success of the Broadway musical adapted from the novel led Baum to write thirteen additional Oz books that serve as official sequels to the first story.



2.Something about the Story
(1)Oz--Dorothy believes he would grant them wishes.
*The origin of the name Oz is from the letter card. (A--O   P--Z)                                                  
(2)Dorothy wants go home.
    The Scarecrow wants to get a brain.
    The Tin Woodman wants a heart.
    The Cowardly Lion wants courage.



3. L. Frank Baum
Lyman Frank Baum (May 15, 1856 – May 6, 1919), better known by his pen name L. Frank Baum, was an American author chiefly known for his children's books, particularly The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. He wrote thirteen novel sequels, nine other fantasy novels, and a host of other works (55 novels in total, plus four "lost works", 83 short stories, over 200 poems, an unknown number of scripts,and many miscellaneous writings), and made numerous attempts to bring his works to the stage and screen. His works anticipated such century-later commonplaces as television, augmented reality, laptop computers (The Master Key), wireless telephones (Tik-Tok of Oz), women in high risk, action-heavy occupations (Mary Louise in the Country), and the ubiquity of advertising on clothing (Aunt Jane's Nieces at Work).



3. The Wizard of Oz(film)
The Wizard of Oz is a 1939 American musical comedy-drama fantasy film produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and the most well-known and commercially successful adaptation based on the 1900 novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum. The film stars Judy Garland as Dorothy Gale. The film co-stars Terry the dog, billed as Toto; Ray Bolger, Jack Haley, Bert Lahr, Frank Morgan, Billie Burke, and Margaret Hamilton, with Charley Grapewin and Clara Blandick, and the Singer Midgets as the Munchkins.
*Judy Garland (June 10, 1922 – June 22, 1969), born Frances Ethel Gumm, was an American singer, actress, and vaudevillian. She was renowned for her vocals and attained international stardom which continued throughout a career that spanned more than 40 years as an actress in musical and dramatic roles, as a recording artist, and on concert stages. Respected for her versatility, she received a Juvenile Academy Award and won a Golden Globe Award, as well as Grammy Awards and a Special Tony Award.



4. George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw was a a Nobel-Prize and Oscar-winning Irish playwright, critic and socialist whose influence on Western theatre, culture and politics stretched from the 1880s to his death in 1950. Originally earning his way as an influential London music and theatre critic, Shaw's greatest gift was for the modern drama. Strongly influenced by Henrik Ibsen, he successfully introduced a new realism into English-language drama. He wrote more than 60 plays, among them Man and Superman, Mrs. Warren's Profession, Major Barbara, Saint Joan, Caesar and Cleopatra, and Pygmalion. With his range from biting contemporary satire to historical allegory, Shaw became the leading comedy dramatist of his generation and one of the most important playwrights in the English language since the 17th century.

*Pygmalion (play)

  • Pygmalion is a play by George Bernard Shaw, named after a Greek mythological character. It was first presented on stage to the public in 1913 as My Fair Lady .
  • Professor of phonetics Henry Higgins makes a bet that he can train a bedraggled Cockney flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, to pass for a duchess at an ambassador's garden party by teaching her to assume a veneer of gentility, the most important element of which, he believes, is impeccable speech. The play is a sharp lampoon of the rigid British class system of the day and a commentary on women's independence.
  • In ancient Greek mythology, Pygmalion fell in love with one of his sculptures, which then came to life.Pygmalion and Galatea
  • Galatea& Bicentennial Man (film)
  • The Pygmalion effect, or Rosenthal effect, is the phenomenon whereby higher expectations lead to an increase in performance.


My Fair Lady(film)




5. Marcel Proust 往事追憶錄
Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust  was a French novelist, critic, and essayist best known for his monumental novel À la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time; earlier translated as Remembrance of Things Past, published in seven parts between 1913 and 1927. He is considered by many to be one of the greatest authors of all time.
*Remembrance of Things Past
His most prominent work, it is known both for its length and its theme of involuntary memory, the most famous example being the "episode of the madeleine" which occurs early in the first volume. It gained fame in English in translations by C. K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin as Remembrance of Things Past, but the title In Search of Lost Time, a literal rendering of the French, has gained usage since D. J. Enright adopted it for his revised translation published in 1992.
Volume Five: The Prisoner



6. Songs
(1) Somewhere Over The Rainbow 
Somewhere over the rainbow
Way up high
There's a land that I heard of
Once in a lullaby

Somewhere over the rainbow
Skies are blue
And the dreams that you dare to dream
Really do come true

Some day I'll wish upon a star
And wake up where the clouds are far behind me
Where troubles melt like lemondrops
Away above the chimney tops
That's where you'll find me

Somewhere over the rainbow
Bluebirds fly
Birds fly over the rainbow
Why then, oh why can't I?
Some day I'll wish upon a star
And wake up where the clouds are far behind me
Where troubles melt like lemondrops
Away above the chimney tops
That's where you'll find me

Somewhere over the rainbow
Bluebirds fly
Birds fly over the rainbow
Why then, oh why can't I?

If happy little bluebirds fly
Beyond the rainbow
Why, oh why can't I?


(2)Have Yourself  a Merry Little Christmas
"Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas", a song written by Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane, was introduced by Judy Garland in the 1944 MGM musical Meet Me in St. Louis.
*Meet Me in St. Louis is a 1944 musical film from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer which tells the story of an American family living in St. Louis at the time of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition World's Fair in 1904. The picture stars Judy Garland, Margaret O'Brien, Mary Astor, Lucille Bremer, Tom Drake, Leon Ames, Marjorie Main, June Lockhart, and Joan Carroll.



7. Vocabulary and Phrases
(1) vugular       adj. 晶簇的
(2) secular        adj.世俗的
(3) religious     adj. 宗教的
(4) wizard        n. 男巫
(5) gifted          adj. 有天賦的
(6) hollow         adj. 空的
(7) warm-hearted   adj. 熱心的
(8) illustrator   n. 插畫家
(9) initial          adj.最初的
(10) rule over   分封
(11) by virtue of  由於
(12) ruby          n. 紅寶石
(13) triumphantly  adv. 成功地
(14) broom       n. 掃把
(15) terrier       n. 一種活潑的小狗
(16) drop          n. 喉糖
(17) bough       n. 蝴蝶結
(18) rainbow   n. 彩虹
                彎的
(19) holy          adj. 神聖的
(20) jolly          adj. 開心的
(21) lads and lasses    蘇格蘭小男孩和小女孩
(22) frightful    adj. 可怕的
(23) headless of   不在意

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