Chapter 5: The Modern Period
General Introduction
1. Modern period: from the second half of the 19th century and the early decades of the 20th century.
2. The social, historical background of the modern English literature: First World War tremendously weakened the British Empire and brought about great sufferings to its people as well. The Second World War marked the last stage of the disintegration of the British Empire. The Great Depression made the English think about the life of the poor. People were in economic, cultural, and belief crises.
3. The ideological background of the modern English literature
1 Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’ scientific socialism
2Darwin’s theory of evolution
3 Einstein’s theory of relativity
4Freud’s analytical psychology
5Irrationalism philosophers
4. Modernism:
1Original source: skepticism and disillusion of capitalism.
2Basis: the irrational philosophy and the theory of psycho-analysis.
3Theme: the distorted, alienated and ill relationships between man and nature, man and society, man and man, and man and himself.
4Concentration: more on the private than on the public, more on the subjective than on the objective.
5Concerning: the inner being of an individual.
6Characteristics: “the dehumanization of art”. And pay more attention to the psychic time than the chronological one. In their writings, the past, the present and the future are mingled together and exist at the same time in the consciousness of an individual.
7The relation with realism: a reaction against realism. Rejection to rationalism, which is the theoretical base of realism; it excludes from its major concern the external, objective, material world, which is the only creative source of realism; by advocating a free experimentation on new forms and new techniques in literary creation, it casts away almost all the traditional elements in literature such as story, plot, character, chronological narration, etc., which are essential to realism. As a result, the works created by the modernist writers are often labeled as anti-novel, anti-poetry and anti-drama.
8Definition: It is a reaction against realism. It rejects rationalism which is the theoretical base of realism; it excludes from its major concern the external, objective, material world, which is the only creative source of realism; by advocating a free experimentation on new forms and new techniques in literary creation, it casts away almost all the traditional elements in literature such as story, plot, character, chronological narration, etc.. which are essential to realism. Modernism takes the irrational philosophy and the theory of psycho-analysis as its theoretical base.
5. The development Novels in the 20th century:
1Realistic novelists (at the early age): John Galsworthy, H.G. Well and Arnold Bennett (their styles are the continuity of Victorian tradition)
2Modernist novelists (the streams of consciousness in 1930s): James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Dorothy Richardson, E.M. Forster and D.H. Lawrence (This is the golden age)
3The Angry Young Men: Kingsley Amis (the first to attack the privileges), John Wain, John Braine and Alan Sillitoe .
6. The development Dramas in the 20th century:
1Modernism:Oscar Wilde —the pioneer of modern drama.George Bernard Shaw –best known since Shakespeare Galsworthy.
2Irish National Theater Movement: W.B. Yeats, Lady Gregory, J.M. Synge and Sean O’Casey .
3Poetic drama:T.S. Eliot regarded drama as the best medium.
4English Dramatic Revolution:The working class drama and The Theater of Absurd.
The typical authors during this period:
I. George Bernard Shaw
1. His life and writing:
Bernard Shaw, a brilliant dramatist, was born in Dublin, Ireland, of English parentage. He once worked in a landagent’s office where he had much contact with the poor people in Dublin and came to know their miserable life. This experience surely enriched his understanding of the society and the sufferings of the people. In 1876 Shaw gave up his job and went to London, where he devoted much of his time to self-education by wide reading. Shaw came under the influence of Henry George and William Morris and took an interest in socialist theories. He started to attend all kinds of public meetings and to read Karl Marx in the British Museum. In 1884 Shaw joined the Fabian Society and became one of its most influential members.
2. Shaw’s reform ideas:
He regarded the establishment of socialism by the emancipation of land and industrial capital from individual and class ownership as the final goal. But on how to achieve it, he differed greatly from the Marxists. He was against the means of violent revolution or armed struggle in achieving the goal of socialism; he also had a distrust of the uneducated working class in fighting against capitalists. This reformist view of his caused him a painful, often conscious, inner conflict between his sincere desire for the new world and his inability to break out of the snobbish intellectual isolation throughout his life and work.
3. His major works:
Five novels -- best one Cashel Byron’s Profession (1886)
Criticism -- Our Theaters in the Nineties (1931).
Plays of a variety of subjects:
1His early plays were mainly concerned with social problems and directed towards the criticism of the contemporary social, economic, moral and religious evils. Widowers’ House is a grotesquely realistic exposure of slum landlordism; Mrs. Warren’s Profession is a play about the economic oppression of women.
2Shaw wrote quite a few history plays, in which he kept an eye on the contemporary society. The important plays of this group are Caesar and Cleopatra (1898) and St. Joan (1923).
3Shaw also produced several plays, exploring his idea of “Life Force,” the power that would create superior beings to be equal to God and to solve all the social, moral, and metaphysical problems of human society. The typical examples of this group are Man and Superman (1904) and Back to Methuselah(1921).
4Besides, Shaw wrote plays on miscellaneous subjects: The Apple Cart(1929); John Bull’s Other Island(1904); Pygmalion(1912); Getting Married(1908); Misalliance(1910); Fanny’s First Play(1911) ; The Doctor’s Dilemma(1906).
5With the author’s almost nihilistic bitterness on the subjects of the cruelty and madness of World War I and the aimlessness and disillusion of the young. Too True to Be Good (1932) is a better play of the later period.
4. Shaw’s literary ideas:
Shaw held that art should serve social purposes by reflecting human life, revealing social contradictions and educating the common people.
Being a drama critic, Shaw directed his attacks on the Neo-Romantic tradition and the fashionable drawing-room drama. His criticism was witty, biting, and often brilliant.
Shaw was strongly against the credo of “art for art’s sake” held by those decadent aesthetic artists.
In his critical essays, he vehemently condemned the "well made" but cheap, hollow plays which filled the English theater of the late 19th century to meet the low taste of the middle class.
5. The main characteristics of Bernard Shaw’s plays:
Structurally and thematically, Shaw followed the great traditions of realism.. Most of his plays, termed as problem plays, and are concerned with political, economic, moral, or religious problems.
One feature of Shaw’s characterization is that he makes the trick of showing up one character vividly at the expense of another. Another feature is that Shaw’s characters are the representatives of ideas, points of view, that shift and alter during the play, for Mr. Shaw is primarily interested in doctrines.
The inversion, a device found in Shaw from beginning to end, is an integral part of an interpretation of life. Inversion is also used in character portrayal to achieve comic effects.
Shaw’s plays have plots, but they do not work by plots.
II. T. S. Eliot
1. His life and writing:
Thomas Stearns Eliot was born at St. Louis, Missouri, U.S.A.Eliot was first educated at Smith Academy and then at Harvard where he concentrated his energies on studying philosophy and logic. He took interest in Elizabethan literature, the Italian Renaissance and Indian mystical philosophy of Buddhism. He was also attracted by the French symbolist poetry. He worked as the editor of The Egoist and The Criterion, the two most influential literary reviews of 20th century.He won various awards, including the Nobel Prize and the Order of Merit in 1948.
2. His poetic career and major achievements:
Eliot had a long poetic career, which was generally divided into two periods: the early one from 1915 to 1925, and the later one from 1927 onward. Most of his early poems are about a state of mind. There is little “action” in a physical sense; the action is totally psychological. The poems are dominated by the dark horror of an earthly hell. The more important poems of this period are: Prufrock, Gerontion (is a poem of dramatic monologue), The Waste Land, The Hollow Men. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, The Burial of the Dead, Unreal city, A Game of Chess, HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME, The Fire Sermon, Death by Water, What the Thunder Said.
The Waste Land
The position and the theme: The Waste Land, Eliot’s most important single poem, has been hailed as a landmark and a model of the 20th-century English poetry, comparable to Wordsworth’s Lyrical Ballads.With bold technical innovations in versification and style, the poem not only presents a panorama of physical disorder and spiritual desolation in the modern Western world, but also reflects the prevalent mood of disillusionment and despair of a whole post-war generation.
The main ideas of each section:
Section I, “The Burial of the Dead,” deals chiefly with the theme of death in life.
Section II, “A Game of Chess,” gives a rather concrete illustration of the sterile situation.
Section III, “The Fire Sermon,” expresses a painfully elegiac feeling by juxtaposing the vulgarity and shallowness of the modern with the beauty and simplicity of the past.
Section IV, “Death by Water,” the drowned Phoenician Sailor is an emblem of futile worries over profit and loss, youth and age.
Section V, “What the Thunder Said,” appears to be derived from an Indian myth, in which the supreme Lord of the Creation speaks through the thunder.
The poem’s social significance:
The Waste Land is a poem concerned with the spiritual breakup of a modern civilization in which human life has lost its meaning, significance and purpose. The poem has developed a whole set of historical, cultural and religious themes; but it is often regarded as being primarily a reflection of the 20th-century people’s disillusionment and frustration in a sterile and futile society. The horror and menace, the anguish and dereliction, and the futility and sterility expressed in his poetry had been afflicting all sensitive members of the postwar generation.
3. T. S. Eliot’s major achievement in drama writing:
He was one of the important verse dramatists in the first half of the 20th century. Besides some fragmentary pieces, Eliot had written in his lifetime five full-length plays:
Murder in the Cathedral (1935)大教堂谋杀案
The Family Reunion (1939)团员
The Cocktail Party (1950)鸡尾酒会
The Confidential Clerk (1954)机要秘书
The Elder Statesman (1959) 资深政客
All the plays have something to do with Christian themes. His three later plays are also concerned with the subject of spiritual self-discovery but in the form of a sophisticated modern social comedy.
Eliot’s major achievement in play writing has been the creation of a verse drama in the 20th century to express the ideas and actions of modern society with new accents of the contemporary speech.
III. D. H. Lawrence
1. His life and writing:
His life and writing: David Herbert Lawrence was born at a mining village in Nottinghamshire. His father was a coal-miner with little education; but his mother, once a school teacher, was from a somewhat higher class, who came to think that she had married beneath her and desired to have her sons well educated so as to help them escape from the life of coal miners.
The conflict between the earthy, coarse, energetic but often drunken father and the refined, strong-willed and up-climbing mother is vividly presented in his autobiographical novel, Sons and Lovers (1913).
2. Lawrence’s major works:
1As a novelist:
The White Peacock--first novel; The Trespasser --second novel; Sons and Lovers; The Rainbow; Women in Love
The Rainbow:
The story: The Rainbow is a story about the three generations of the Brangwen family on the Marsh farm. The first part is about the marriage and life of Tom Brangwen and Lydia Lensky, a Polish widow. They have a deep and loving understanding of each other in spite of the utter foreignness between them. They can also communicate with the mysterious natural world. Their relationship is presented as the model one in the novel. The second part of the novel is about Anna Lensky, Lydia’s daughter by her first husband, and Will, Tom’s nephew. They have physical passion for each other; but, in Lawrence’s words, “their souls remain separate.” Their relationship is fraught with conflicts, and their marriage fails to achieve the final fulfillment of the older generation. The last part of the novel deals with Ursula, the eldest daughter of Will and Anna, who carries the story on into the third generation. This part of the novel traces Ursula’s life from childhood through adolescence up to adulthood. At the end of the novel; Ursula is left with much experience behind her, but still “uncreated” in face of the unknown future.
The social significance of The Rainbow: In this novel, Lawrence illustrates a terrible social corruption that accompanies the progress of human civilization. In Lawrence’s opinion, the mechanical civilization is responsible for the unhealthy development of human personalities, the perversion of love and the failure of human fulfillment in marital relationships. In reading the novel, the reader often feels the threatening shadows of the disintegration and destructiveness of the whole civilized world which loom behind the emotional conflicts and psychological tensions of the characters. As a matter of fact, it is the first time for Lawrence to make a conscious attempt to combine social criticism with psychological exploration in his novel writing.
Women in Love:
The story: As its title implies, Women in Love is a novel about two pairs of lovers, around whom a series of episodes are dramatically presented. The two heroines are Ursula Brangwen and her younger sister Gudrun; and the two chief male characters are Gerald Crich, a young coalmine owner, and Rupert Birkin, a school inspector. At the opening of the story, Ursula and Birkin strike an immediate kin ship with each other, while Gudrun is attracted by Gerald’s physical energy. The rest of the novel is a working out of the relationships of these four through interrelating events and conflicts of personalities. After a series of ups and downs, Birkin and Ursula have reached a fruitful relationship by maintaining their integrity and independence as individuals and decided to get married in the end. But the passionate love between Gudrun and Gerald experiences a process of tension and deterioration. As both of them have let their “will-power” and “ideals” interfere with their proper relations, their love turns out to be a disastrous tragedy.
The symbolic meanings in this novel: Women in Love is rich in its symbolic meanings. Gerald Crich, an efficient but ruthless coalmine owner, who makes the machine his god and establishes the inhuman mechanical system in his mining kingdom, is a symbolic figure of spiritual death, representing the whole set of bourgeois ethics. Whereas Birkin, a self-portrait of Lawrence, who fights against the cramping pressures of mechanized industrialism and the domination of any kind of dead formulas, is presented as a symbolic figure of human warmth, standing for the spontaneous Life Force. Women in Love is a remarkable novel in which the individual consciousness is subtly revealed and strands of themes are intricately wound up. The structural pattern of the book derives from the contrast between the destinies of the two pairs of lovers and the subordinate masculine relationship between Birkin and Gerald. The two sisters, the two male friends, and the two couples are closely paralleled in ideas, actions and relations so that each is corresponding to and contrasting with the other. Thus, Women in Love is regarded to be a more profoundly ordered novel than any other written by Lawrence.
2As a poet: Lawrence is also a proficient poet. He began his poetry writing very early and wrote quite a large number of poems in his whole career. His poems fall roughly into three categories-satirical and comic poems, poems about human relationships and emotions, and poems about nature.
3As a dramatist: Lawrence’s three influential plays are known as the Lawrence trilogy: A Collier’s Friday Night; The Daughter-in-Law; The Widowing of Mrs. Holroyed.
They have in common the typical working-class environments set in Nottinghamshire. What the plays focus on is the direct and violent emotions of the main characters in times of crisis in their married life. The plays are presented with a higher degree of objectivity and detachment than the novels by Lawrence.
3. The creative features and the social significance of Lawrence’s writing:
Lawrence is one of the greatest English novelists of the 20th century. The major characteristics of his novel are that he combined social criticism with psychological exploration in his novel writing. He was not concerned with technical innovations; his interest lays in the tracing of psychological development of his character and in his energetic criticism of the dehumanizing effect of the capitalist industrialization on human nature.
1The theme: In his writings, Lawrence has expressed a strong reaction against the mechanical civilization.
2Lawrence’s influence to modern and contemporary English literature: He was one of the first novelists to introduce themes of psychology into his works.
3Lawrence’s artistic tendency is mainly realism, which combines dramatic scenes with an authoritative commentary.
4In presenting the psychological aspects of his characters, Lawrence makes use of poetic imagination and symbolism in his writing.
1. waste [weɪst] n. 浪费;废物;荒地; v. 浪费;adj. 废弃的;多余的;荒芜的 E.g. T. S. Eliot’s most important single poem The Waste Land has been hailed as a landmark and a model of the 20th-century English poetry. T.S. Eliot 的《荒原》的出版， 可以看作是 20 世纪英国文学现代主义时期的开端，具有划时代的意义。
2. drama ['drɑːmə] n. 戏剧，戏剧艺术;剧本;戏剧性事件 E.g. T. S. Eliot’ s Murder in the Cathedral is the best of his plays in the sense that it contains the best poetry and the most coherent drama. 艾略特的《大教堂谋杀案》 是他最好的诗剧，因为其中包含了他最好的诗和最连贯的戏剧。
3. dramatic [drə'mæ tɪk] adj. 戏剧的;引人注目的;激动人心的
4. monologue ['mɒn(ə)lɒg] n. 独白 E.g. T. S. Eliot’s most striking early achievement “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” is in a form of dramatic monologue. 他的第一首重要诗作“J·阿尔弗瑞德·普鲁弗洛克 的情歌”于 1915 年问世，全诗的形式是戏剧独白。
5. tradition [trə'dɪʃ(ə)n] n. 惯例，传统;传说
6. individual [ɪndɪ'vɪdjʊ(ə)l] adj. 个人的;个别的;独特的 n. 个人，个体 E.g. As an important prose writer, in his famous essay, Tradition and Individual Talent Eliot put great emphasis on the importance of tradition both in creative writing and in criticism. 在著名散文“传统与个人天才”中，他强调传统对创作与评论两方面的重要作用。
7. achievement [ə'tʃiːvm(ə)nt] n. 成就;完成;达到 E.g. T. S. Eliot’s most striking early achievement “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” is in a form of dramatic monologue. 他的第一首重要诗作“J·阿尔弗瑞德·普鲁 弗洛克的情歌”于 1915 年问世，全诗的形式是戏剧独白。
8. autobiographical [ɔːtəbaɪə'græ fɪk(ə)l] adj. 自传的;自传体的;自传作家的 E.g. D. H. Lawrence’s autobiographical novel is Sons and Lovers. 《儿子与情人》 是他的自传体作品。该作品出版后，他才确立了杰出小说家的地位。
9. energetic [,enə'dʒetɪk] adj. 精力充沛的;积极的;有力的 E.g. D. H. Lawrence’s autobiographical novel, Sons and Lovers shows the conflict between the earthy, coarse, energetic but often drunken father and the refined, strong-willed and up-climbing mother. 劳伦斯的自传体小说《儿子与情人》，展示了粗俗的，精力充沛但经常醉酒的父亲和有教养的，意志坚强且积极上进的母亲之间的冲突。
9. cathedral [kə'θiːdr(ə)l] n. 大教堂
10. murder ['mɜːdə] v. 谋杀，凶杀 n. 谋杀，凶杀 E.g. T. S. Eliot’ s Murder in the Cathedral is the best of his plays in the sense that it contains the best poetry and the most coherent drama. 艾略特的《大教堂谋杀案》是他最好的诗剧，因为其中包含了他最好的诗和最连贯的戏剧。
11. creative [kriː'eɪtɪv] adj. 创造性的 E.g. As an important prose writer, in his famous essay, Tradition and Individual Talent Eliot put great emphasis on the importance of tradition both in creative writing and in criticism. 在著名散文“传统与个人天才”中，他强调传统对创作与评论两方面的重要作用。
12. Gerontion 小老头(书名)
13. prelude ['preljuːd] n. 前奏;序幕;前奏曲 vt. 成为...的序幕; E.g. T. S. Eliot’s “Gerontion” is a poem of dramatic monologue and a prelude to The Waste Land, helping to point up the continuity of Eliot’s thinking. 艾略特的“小老头“一诗采用戏剧独白，并且为《荒原》一书开篇，强调了艾略特思想的连续性。
14. masterpiece ['mɑːstəpiːs] n. 杰作
15. rainbow ['reɪnbəʊ] n. 彩虹 E.g. D. H. Lawrence’s novels The Rainbow and Women in Love are generally regarded as his masterpieces. 劳伦斯的《虹》和《恋爱中的女人》被认为是他的代表作。
16. profession [prə'feʃ(ə)n] n. 职业，专业;声明，宣布，表白 E.g. The typical representatives of George Bernard Shaw are Widowers’ House and Mrs. Warren’ s Profession. 乔治·萧伯纳典型代表作是《华伦夫人的职业》和《鳏夫的房产》。
17. spiritual ['spɪrɪtʃʊəl] n. 圣歌(尤指美国南部黑人的)adj. 精神的，心灵的 E.g. The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot is a poem concerned with the spiritual breakup of a modern civilization in which human life has lost its meaning, significance and purpose.《荒原》一诗的主题是表现现代文明中人们精神的堕落与崩溃，人生已失去了意义与目的。
18. striking ['straɪkɪŋ] adj. 显著的，突出的 E.g. “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" , Eliot’s most striking early achievement, presents the meditation of an aging young man over the business of proposing marriage.他的第一首重要诗作“J·阿尔弗瑞德·普鲁弗洛克的情歌”于 1915 年问世，描述的是一位羞涩的中年男人对求婚的思考。
19. theme [θiːm] n. 主题;主旋律;题目 E.g. D. H. Lawrence was one of the first novelists to introduce themes of psychology into his works. D.H. 劳伦斯是第一个将心理学主题带入作品的小说家。
20. psychological [saɪkə'lɒdʒɪk(ə)l] adj. 心理的;心理学的;精神上的
21. dehumanize [diː'hjuːmənaɪz] vt. 使成兽性;使失掉人性 E.g. The major concern of D. H. Lawrence fiction lies in the tracing of the psychological development of his characters and in his energetic criticism of the dehumanizing effect of the capitalist industrialization on human nature. 劳伦斯小说的主要探究他小说中人物的心理发展，以及资本主义工业化对人性的非人性化影响的有力抨击。
22. capitalist ['kæpɪt(ə)lɪst] n. 资本家;资本主义者 adj. 资本主义的;资本家的
23. industrialization [ɪndʌstrɪəlɪ'zeʃən] n. 工业化 E.g. The major concern of D. H. Lawrence fiction lies in the tracing of the psychological development of his characters and in his energetic criticism of the dehumanizing effect of the capitalist industrialization on human nature. 劳伦斯小说的主要探究他小说中人物的心理发展，以及资本主义工业化对人性的非人性化影响的有力抨击。
24. consciousness ['kɒnʃəsnɪs] n. 意识;知觉;觉悟;感觉 E.g. T. S Eliot’s poem “Gerontion” is heavily indebted to James Joyce in terms of the stream-of-consciousness technique, also a prelude to The Waste Land. “小老头”一诗 很大程度上效仿了乔伊斯的意识流手法，而且艾略特在以后的创作中也大量运用了意识 流, 并且为《荒原》一书开篇。
25. contemporary n. 同时代的人;同时期的东西 adj. 当代的;同时代的 E.g. Bernard Shaw wrote quite a few history plays, in which he kept an eye on the contemporary society. The important plays of this group are Caesar and Cleopatra and St. Joan. 萧伯纳写了不少历史剧，其中他密切关注当代社会。比较重要的有《凯 撒和克莉奥帕特拉》(1898)和《圣女贞德》(1923).
26. physical ['fɪzɪk(ə)l] adj. [物] 物理的;身体的;物质的
27. spiritual ['spɪrɪtʃʊəl] n. 圣歌(尤指美国南部黑人的)adj. 精神的，心灵的 E.g. T.S. Eliot’ s The Waste Land not only presents a panorama of physical disorder and spiritual desolation in the modern Western world, but also reflects the prevalent mood of disillusionment and despair of a whole post-war generation. T.S. Eliot 的 《荒原》不仅全面展现了现代西方社会物质上的错乱和精神上的颓败，而且也反映出战 后一代人中盛行的幻灭与绝望。
28. disillusion [,dɪsɪ'l(j)uːʒ(ə)n] vt. 使醒悟;使不再抱幻想 n. 幻灭;醒悟
29. generation [dʒenə'reɪʃ(ə)n] n. 一代;产生;一代人
30. oppression [ə'preʃ(ə)n] n. 压抑;镇压;压迫手段;沉闷;苦恼 E.g. Written in 1893 but published 5 years later, Mrs. Warren’ s Profession is a play about the economic oppression of women. 萧伯纳的戏剧《华伦夫人的职业》，写于 1893，但却在 5 年以后出版，主题是对妇女们经济上的压迫。
31. prostitution n. [,prɒstɪ'tjuːʃn] 卖淫;滥用 E.g. Mrs. Kitty Warren convinces herself that prostitution is not a bad life for a woman and that she is truly helping the women she employs to better themselves. 华伦夫人说服自己当妓女对女人来讲并不是糟糕的人生并且她也确实帮助了她所雇佣的 妇女们改善了自己的生活。
32. sterile ['steraɪl] adj. 不育的;无菌的;贫瘠的;不毛的;枯燥乏味的 E.g. T.S. Eliot’ s The Waste Land is often regarded as being primarily a reflection of the 20th-century people’s disillusionment and frustration in a sterile and futile society. T.S. Eliot 的《荒原》被认为是反映 20 世纪人们在一个贫瘠荒凉社会中的幻灭与绝望。
34. conventional [kən'venʃ(ə)n(ə)l] adj. 符合习俗的，传统的;常见的;惯例的
35. theoretical [θɪə'retɪk(ə)l] adj. 理论的;理论上的;假设的;推理的 E.g. Much of Shavian drama is constructed around the inversion of a conventional theoretical situation. 萧伯纳的大部分戏剧都是通过颠覆传统理论而构思出来的。
36.contradiction [kɒntrə'dɪkʃ(ə)n] n. 矛盾;否认;反驳
37. reflect [rɪ'flekt] vt. 反映;反射，照出;表达;显示;反省 vi. 反射，映现;深 思 E.g. As a critic of music and drama, George Bernard Shaw held that art should serve social purposes by reflecting human life, revealing social contradictions and educating the common people. 作为一名音乐和戏剧评论家，萧伯纳主张艺术应该为社会服务，反映人的生活与社会矛 盾并教育寻常百姓。
38. meditation [medɪ'teɪʃ(ə)n] n. 冥想;沉思，深思 E.g. “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, Eliot’s most striking early achievement, presents the meditation of an aging young man over the business of proposing marriage. 他的第一首重要诗作“J·阿尔弗瑞德·普鲁弗洛克的情歌”于 1915 年问世，描 述的是一位羞涩的中年男人对求婚的思考。
39. thematic [θɪ'mæ tɪk] adj. 主题的，主旋律的;题目的;语干的 T. S. Eliot’ s The Hollow Men bearing a strong thematic resemblance to The Waste Land, is generally regarded as the darkest of Eliot’ s poems. 《空洞的人》在主题上十 分近似《荒原》，是艾略特最黑暗的诗。