English Children's Literature(Week Seventeen)

1.7.2016
Week 17: The Secret Garden



1. Introduction
The Secret Garden is a novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett. It was initially published in serial format starting in the autumn of 1910, and was first published in its entirety in 1911. It is now one of Burnett's most popular novels, and is considered to be a classic of English children's literature. Several stage and film adaptations have been produced.

Mary Lennox is a very troubled, sickly, and unloved 10-year-old girl who was born in India to selfish, wealthy British parents who never wanted her and were too wrapped up in their own lives to love or care about her. She was taken care of primarily by servants, who pacified her as much as possible to keep her out of her parents' way. Spoiled and selfish, she is aggressive, surly, rude, and obstinate. Later, there is a cholera epidemic which hits India and kills her parents and all the servants. She is discovered alone but alive after the house is empty. She briefly lives with an English clergyman and his family and is then sent to Yorkshire, England, to live with Archibald Craven, an uncle she has never met, at his home called Misselthwaite Manor.



2. Frances Hodgson Burnett
Frances Eliza Hodgson Burnett (24 November 1849 – 29 October 1924) was an American-English novelist and playwright. She is best known for the three children's novels Little Lord Fauntleroy (published in 1885–1886), A Little Princess (1905), and The Secret Garden (1911).

Frances Eliza Hodgson was born in Cheetham, England. After her father died in 1852, the family fell on straitened circumstances and in 1865 immigrated to the United States, settling near Knoxville, Tennessee. There Frances began writing to help earn money for the family, publishing stories in magazines from the age of 19. In 1870 her mother died, and in 1872 Frances married Swan Burnett, who became a medical doctor. The Burnetts lived for two years in Paris, where their two sons were born, before returning to the United States to live in Washington, D.C., Burnett then began to write novels, the first of which (That Lass o' Lowrie's), was published to good reviews. Little Lord Fauntleroy was published in 1886 and made her a popular writer of children's fiction, although her romantic adult novels written in the 1890s were also popular. She wrote and helped to produce stage versions of Little Lord Fauntleroy and A Little Princess.

3. Something in common about English Children's Literature
(1) 主人公(protagonist) 往往孤獨無依，擁有孤獨的心靈。
      e.g. Harry Potter(Harry Potter), Dorothy(The Wonderful Wizard of Oz), Mary Lenox(The Secret Garden), Peter Rabbit , March girls(Little Women)...

(2)  What is children literature? What is it for?

• The function of writer is to make sense of life.
• Literature is not expected to reform but to help us understand.
• Literature offers many kinds of human motives.
• We read for pleasure.

4. The Catcher in the Rye
The Catcher in the Rye is a 1951 novel by J. D. Salinger. A controversial novel originally published for adults, it has since become popular with adolescent readers for its themes of teenage angst and alienation. It has been translated into almost all of the world's major languages. Around 250,000 copies are sold each year with total sales of more than 65 million books. The novel's protagonist Holden Caulfield has become an icon for teenage rebellion.The novel also deals with complex issues of identity, belonging, loss, and connection.

*Famous quote: The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.

*Finding Forrester (2000)
Although the film is not based on a true story, film critics have compared the character portrayed by Connery with real life writer J.D. Salinger. Connery later acknowledged that the inspiration for his role was indeed Salinger.

5. "Youth"
For years, Samuel Ullman (1840-1924) and his prose poem "Youth" have been known and admired by the Japanese because of General MacArthur . However, both the man and his work are largely unknown in the United States, even in Birmingham where he spent the last forty years of his life in service to the community.

(see more information)

"YOUTH" 

Samuel Ullman

Youth is not a time of life; it is a state of mind; it is not a matter of rosy cheeks, red lips and supple knees; it is a matter of the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions; it is the freshness of the deep springs of life.

Youth means a temperamental predominance of courage over timidity of the appetite, for adventure over the love of ease. This often exists in a man of sixty more than a boy of twenty. Nobody grows old merely by a number of years. We grow old by deserting our ideals.

Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul. Worry, fear, self-distrust bows the heart and turns the spirit back to dust.

Whether sixty or sixteen, there is in every human being's heart the lure of wonder, the unfailing child-like appetite of what's next, and the joy of the game of living. In the center of your heart and my heart there is a wireless station; so long as it receives messages of beauty, hope, cheer, courage and power from men and from the infinite, so long are you young.


When the aerials are down, and your spirit is covered with snows of cynicism and the ice of pessimism, then you are grown old, even at twenty, but as long as your aerials are up, to catch the waves of optimism, there is hope you may die young at eighty.

6. Bildungsroman 
In literary criticism, a Bildungsroman, novel of formation, novel of education, or coming-of-age story (though it may also be known as a subset of the coming-of-age story) is a literary genre that focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from youth to adulthood (coming of age), and in which, therefore, character change is extremely important.

8. Vocabulary&Phrases
(1) whisper sth to sb       對某人耳語
(2) aunt's words in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (bible)
      spare the rod and spile(spoil) the child      
     the lord's truth
     the Good Book                                                  
     the Scripture
(3) cliff       懸崖
(4) keep peck at   找麻煩
(5) tiresome and lonesome    無聊寂寞
(6) mournful        哀悼的
(7) owl                 貓頭鷹
(8) almost break my neck  狗吃屎
(9) a red-hunting hat
(10) a third omniscient point of view  全知視角
(11) run-away anti-hero     反英雄形象
(12) stretcher       誇張
(13) civilize         教化
(14) disagreeable 令人厭惡的
(15) manor           荒院大宅
(16) a sour expression   尖酸刻薄的言語
(17) Ayah             菲傭

English Children's Literature(Week Sixteen)

12.31.2015
Week 16: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer



1. Introduction
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain is an 1876 novel about a young boy growing up along the Mississippi River. It is set in the fictional town of St. Petersburg, inspired by Hannibal, Missouri, where Twain lived.

*The Article from Ms. T. Sara Sun




2. Mark Twain
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist. He wrote The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), the latter often called "The Great American Novel".
*The "Great American Novel" is the concept of a novel that shows the culture of the United States of America at a specific time. 

Twain grew up in Hannibal, Missouri, which provided the setting for Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer. After an apprenticeship with a printer, he worked as a typesetter and contributed articles to the newspaper of his older brother, Orion Clemens. He later became a riverboat pilot on the Mississippi River before heading west to join Orion in Nevada. He referred humorously to his singular lack of success at mining, turning to journalism for the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise. In 1865, his humorous story, "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County", was published, based on a story he heard at Angels Hotel in Angels Camp, California, where he had spent some time as a miner. The short story brought international attention, and was even translated into classic Greek. His wit and satire, in prose and in speech, earned praise from critics and peers, and he was a friend to presidents, artists, industrialists, and European royalty.
*His becoming a riverboat pilot on the Mississippi River--Twain

Twain was born shortly after a visit by Halley's Comet, and he predicted that he would "go out with it", too. He died the day after the comet returned. He was lauded as the "greatest American humorist of his age", and William Faulkner called Twain "the father of American literature".

3. Literary realism&Initiation& Bildungsroman
(1) Literary realism is part of the realist art movement beginning with mid nineteenth-century French literature (Stendhal), and Russian literature (Alexander Pushkin) and extending to the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Literary realism, in contrast to idealism, attempts to represent familiar things as they are. Realist authors chose to depict everyday and banal activities and experiences, instead of using a romanticized or similarly stylized presentation. Literary critic Ian Watt, however, dates the origins of realism in United Kingdom to the early 18th-century novel. Subsequent related developments in the arts are naturalism, social realism, and in the 1930s, socialist realism.

Blue and Gold – Old Battersea Bridge (1872)

(2) Initiation is a rite of passage marking entrance or acceptance into a group or society. It could also be a formal admission to adulthood in a community or one of its formal components. In an extended sense it can also signify a transformation in which the initiate is 'reborn' into a new role. Examples of initiation ceremonies might include Hindu diksha, Christian baptism or confirmation, Jewish bar or bat mitzvah, acceptance into a fraternal organization, secret society or religious order, or graduation from school or recruit training. A person taking the initiation ceremony in traditional rites, such as those depicted in these pictures, is called an initiate.
*往往是主角開始一段旅程，受到啟迪，人性發生變化，成熟進步，which can be called initiation journey.

Freemasonry initiation

(3) In literary criticism, a Bildungsroman, novel of formation, novel of education, or coming-of-age story (though it may also be known as a subset of the coming-of-age story) is a literary genre that focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from youth to adulthood (coming of age), and in which, therefore, character change is extremely important.

e.g. Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship--by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

(4) Goethe's Faust is a tragic play in two parts usually known in English as Faust, Part One and Faust, Part Two. Although rarely staged in its entirety, it is the play with the largest audience numbers on German-language stages. Faust is Goethe's magnum opus and considered by many to be one of the greatest works of German literature.

4. Important Quotations Explained(from Sparknotes)

(1)Tom was a glittering hero once more—the pet of the old, the envy of the young. His name even went into immortal print, for the village paper magnified him.There were some that believed he would be President, yet, if he escaped hanging.

The community’s assessment of Tom in Chapter 24, after his testimony against Injun Joe, implicitly acknowledges the close relationship between Tom’s misbehavior and his heroism. If Tom had not sneaked out at night to carouse in the cemetery with Huck, he would never have been present to witness Dr. Robinson’s murder—as by all rights he should not have been. Tom’s consistently bold and risky behavior puts him in the position to save the day. Distinguishing himself from the conventional, run-of-the-mill behavior that is accepted as the standard in his community is an achievement that cuts both ways, as it makes Tom exceptional in both the good and the bad sense: an extreme character like his is bound to lead either to greatness or to ignominy; as the town puts it, he either will become president or hang.

(2)Huck Finn’s wealth and the fact that he was now under the Widow Douglas’s protection introduced him into society no, dragged him into it, hurled him into it—and his sufferings were almost more than he could bear. The widow’s servants kept him clean and neat, combed and brushed….He had to eat with knife and fork; he had to use napkin, cup, and plate; he had to learn his book, he had to go to church; he had to talk so properly that speech was become insipid in his mouth;whithersoever he turned, the bars and shackles of civilization shut him in and bound him hand and foot.

This passage from Chapter 35 is perhaps the clearest description of the way Huck’s life changes after the Widow Douglas takes him in. Though told by the narrator rather than by Huck himself, the passage nevertheless renders the situation as it appears through Huck’s eyes. This technique—rendering a limited, childish point of view as though it were objective—is one Twain uses throughout the novel to help us identify with the boys more than with the adults of the town. Much of the force of Twain’s heavily nostalgic narrative comes from the way it tugs at the memories most adult readers have stored away, however deeply, of what it was like to be a child. We are thus able to view the events of the novel from a double perspective: from a child’s point of view and from a wider perspective that sees the limitations of that view and, most likely, its charm as well. The ordinary quality of the things the Widow Douglas compels Huck to do is meant to shock us out of our own assumptions. We realize afresh how unorthodox Huck’s life has actually been. This realization in turn forces us to contemplate more intently the way a life of normalcy could feel like a prison after a life of such radical freedom.

5. Was this the face that launched a thousand ships?(Helen of Troy)
In Greek mythology, Helen of Troy , also known as Helen of Sparta, was the daughter of Zeus and Leda, and was a sister of Castor, Pollux, and Clytemnestra. In Greek myths, she was considered the most beautiful woman in the world.
Her beauty inspired artists of all time to represent her, frequently as the personification of ideal beauty. Christopher Marlowe's lines from his tragedy Doctor Faustus (1604) are frequently cited: "Was this the face that launch'd a thousand ships / And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?" Images of her start appearing in the 7th century BC. In classical Greece, her abduction by—or elopement with—Paris was a popular motif. In medieval illustrations, this event was frequently portrayed as a seduction, whereas in Renaissance painting it is usually depicted as a rape by Paris.

6. Vocabulary and Phrases
(1) egg drop soup     蛋花湯
(2) puff                     擬聲詞（呼呼）
(3) greed                   adj. 貪婪的
(4) sneak                   v. 偷偷溜進
     swallow               v. 吞下
      nibble                 v. 小口吃
(5) pebbles               n. 小石頭
(6) pain in the ass    adj. 機車的
(7) launch                v.  出發
(8) topless                adj. 無頂的，樓塌的
(9) whitewash the fence   粉刷籬笆
(10) graveyard         n. 墓地
(11) sibling rivalry  同胞手足之爭
(12) insect               n. 昆蟲
       arthropod          截足類動物
       invertebrate      脊椎類動物
       insecticide         殺蟲類
                 謀殺
       homicide           殺人犯
       suicide              自殺     
       genocide           種族屠殺 
(13) wart                  n. 油
(14) charm               n. 魔力，幸運符
(15) white trash       窮苦的白人
(16) keep sth from   不要找到......
(17) spill                  v. 灑
(18) claim(baggage claim) 機場取行李的地方
(19) pirate               v./n. 海盜
        parrot              n. 鸚鵡
       There was a parrot on a pirate's shoulder.
       April apple
       fake cake
       fat cat
       ten eggs
(20) suspect            v. 可疑
            to look
(21) encounter(面對)   遭遇
       變成強有力的動詞