《英语诗歌欣赏指南》何功杰，许庆红编著|(epub+azw3+mobi+pdf)电子书下载

图书名称：《英语诗歌欣赏指南》

【作　者】何功杰，许庆红编著

【丛书名】21世纪高等院校英语专业系列规划教材

【页 数】 240

【出版社】 合肥：安徽大学出版社 , 2019.01

【ISBN号】978-7-5664-1654-4

【价 格】45.00

【分 类】英语-阅读教学-高等学校-教材

【参考文献】 何功杰，许庆红编著. 英语诗歌欣赏指南. 合肥：安徽大学出版社, 2019.01.

图书封面：

图书目录：

《英语诗歌欣赏指南》内容提要：

本书分为12章，分别阐述了诗歌的本质和定义、诗歌语言问题、诗中的比喻、诗歌的音乐性、诗的韵律等内容。附录解释了英国诗歌中的部分术语。每章分为数个部分，分重点介绍、讲解脍炙人口的英国名诗，每部分均由原诗、译文和导读组成。

《英语诗歌欣赏指南》内容试读

Poetry and Poetry Reading

1.1 Poetry Defined

Poetry differs from common prose in a number of aspects.It is not likeordinary speech or writing,but an object,an art,specially made in words.

The word“poetry'”derives from a Greek verb that means“to make”.So it isthe art of words.But what poetry is eludes simple definition.Robert Frostwas once pressed for an answer to the question "what is poetry"and hereplied,"Poetry is the kind of thing poets write".The answer seemscertainly unsatisfactory,and elusive as well,yet,most probably Frost wasnot merely trying to evade the question but to urge his questioner to thinkand form the idea for himself.

There are varied definitions,or better to say,descriptions of poetry.

Following are some of the descriptions by poets and critics about whatpoetry is:

Poetry is the honey of all flowers,the quintessence of allsciences,the marrow of wit,and the very phrase of angels.

Thomas Nashe

(Poetry is)not the assertion that something is true,but themaking of that truth more fully real to us.

-T.S.Eliot

Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of thehappiest and best minds.

-P.B.Shelley

Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings:ittakes its origin from emotions recollected in tranquility.

William Wordsworth

2

A Guide to the Appreciation of English Poetry

(Poetry is)the clear expression of mixed feelings.

-W.H.Auden

(Poetry is)speech framed...to be heard for its own sake andinterest even over and above its interest of meaning.

-Gerard Hopkins

Poetry:the best words in the best order.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth by callingimagination to the help of reason.

-Samuel Johnson

I could define poetry this may:it is that which is lost out ofboth prose and verse in translation.

-Robert Frost

At bottom (poetry is)a criticism of life.

-Matthew Arnold

If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no firecan ever warm me,I know that is poetry.If I feel physically as ifthe top of my head were taken off,I know it is poetry.

Emily Dickinson

We can cite more descriptions of what poetry is,and some poets evendescribe poetry by means of writing poems.Here are two poems on poetry:

Poetry

Eleanor Farjeon (1881~1965)

What is Poetry?Who knows?

Not a rose,but the scent of the rose:

Not the sky,but the light in the sky;

Not the fly,but the gleam of the fly;

Not the sea,but the sound of the sea;

Not myself,but what makes me

See,hear,and feel something that prose

Cannot:and what it is,who knows?

Ars Poetica

Archibald MacLeish (1892~1982)

A poem should be palpable and mute

As a globed fruit,

1.Poetry and Poetry Reading

3

Dumb

As old medallions to the thumb.

Silent as the sleeve-worn stone

Of casement ledges where the moss has grown-

A poem should be wordless

As the flight of birds.

A poem should be motionless in time

As the moon climbs,

Leaving,as the moon releases

Twig by twig the night-entangled trees,

Leaving,as the moon behind the winter leaves.

Memory by memory the mind

A poem should be motionless in time

As the moon climbs.

A poem should be equal to:

Not true.

For all the history of grief

An empty doorway and a maple leaf.

For love

The leaning grass and two lights above the sea-

A poem should not mean

But be.

Each description of poetry cited above touches upon only one aspect ofpoetry,but anyhow those descriptions are helpful for us to have some ideasof what poetry is.A poem is the dawning ideas,spontaneous overflow ofpowerful feeling,framed speech,musical thought,and the art of putting thebest words in best order.In the poems by Farjeon and Macleish,an

4

A Guide to the Appreciation of English Poetry

abstract poem has been made concrete and perceptible as a physical object.

Their poems on poetry also suggest that in reading a poem,our five senseorgans as well as our minds should all take part.

Then what is a poem?A poem involves several elements that worktogether.The definition in Longman Modern English Dictionary might betaken as a terse answer,poetry is:"...a type of discourse which achieves itseffects by rhythm,sound patterns and imagery.Most characteristically,thepoetic form evokes emotions or sensations,but it may also serve to conveyloftiness of tone or to lend force to ideas.

Here we have to point out that it is useless to become obsessed merelywith definitions of poetry.The descriptions cited above are worth ourattention simply because they are helpful in our reading and appreciating apoem.To know what poetry is at all,the best way is to experience poems,that is,to live and acquaint us with poems,and let them grow and form theidea in our minds.

1.2 Experiencing Poems

Now let us read three poems and experience for ourselves what a poemis:

In A Mirror

Li Bai(701~762)

My whitening hair would make a long rope,

Yet could not fathom all my depth of woe:

Though how it comes within a mirror's scope

To sprinkle autumn frosts,I do not know.

(Translated by Herbert A.Giles)

This is a classical Chinese pentasyllabic quatrain in which the poet givesa clear expression of the mixed feelings of grief over his growing old withoutknowing it.The poet expressed his sorrow (woe)that was too deep to bemeasured (fathomed).The poem's force comes from a number of elements.

Firstly,it comes from the poet's strong passion of woe-he found himselfgrowing old suddenly when he looked into the mirror.Secondly,instead offlatly stating his woe in abstract terms,the poet made an imaginativestatement through concrete images.Thirdly,the language used in the poemis not factual but exaggerated.Fourthly,the poem was written in the"patterned language"with musical quality.The original Chinese version of

I.Poetry and Poetry Reading

5

the poem is made up of only four five-Chinese-character lines with a rhymescheme of aaba and a tonal pattern“仄仄平平仄，平平仄仄平，平平平仄仄，仄仄仄平平”.①It is owing to the concrete imagery and the musical qualitythat enable this short poem easily to be chanted and memorized.

It Is Not Growing like a Tree

BenJ0nson(1572~1637)

It is not growing like a tree

In bulk doth make Man better be:

Or standing long an oak,three hundred year,

To fall a log at last,dry,bald,and sere:

A lily a day

Is fairer in May,

Although it fall and die that night-

It was the plant and flower of light.

In small proportions we just beauties see:

And in short measures life may perfect be.

This poem is an extraction from the seventh stanza of the ode "To

Immortal Memory and Friendship of That Noble Pair,Sir Lucius Cary and

Sir Henry Morison"by Ben Jonson,printed in a poem collection entitled

Underwoods(1640).The poem conveys a lofty idea that life should bemeasured by its excellence,not by its length.

The quoted stanza is perfect not only in idea,but also in imagery,form,rhythm and the subtle combination of sound and sense.The image ofthe short-lived lily contrasts the image of the long-lived oak,thushighlighting the theme of this poem.The oak grows in size and lives as longas three hundred years,but falls in the end merely as a piece of dry wood,"bald and sere";while a lily in spring,though lasting perhaps for only aday,lives in full bloom and offers the beauty of flower.Apparently,"lily ofaday”represents“just beauty'”of life and is worth recommendation.

The stanza form matches the idea wonderfully.The 10-line stanza is

①The pronunciation of Chinese characters involves four tones:the high and level tone(阳平)，the rising tone(阴平)，the falling-rising tone(上声)and the entering tone(人声).The firsttwo tones are generally called“the level tone'”(平声)，and the latter two“oblique tone'"(仄

)In the prosody of Chinese classical poetry,poets pay great attention to the arrangementof the rhythm of a poem by interlacing the level tone and oblique tone of the characters.

6

A Guide to the Appreciation of English Poetry

divided into two symmetrical parts by two shorter lines in the middle:

A lily of a day

Is fairer far in May.

These two lines are short and terse,representing the "small proportions"and "short measures"that Jonson speaks of in the last two lines.Theycontrast with the previous two long lines about the long-lived but "dry,baldand sere'”oak:

Or standing long an oak,three hundred year.,

To fall a log at last,dry.bald.and sere.

In comparison,we come to see that the sounds of each couplet match itssense respectively in a wonderful way.The two short lines about the lily areeasy,smooth and melodious in sound,while the two lines concerning thelong-lived oak are lengthy and tedious,and the sound is harsh and jaw-breaking.

Moreover,even the rhyme scheme fits the idea in a perfect manner.

This poem was written in couplets,and there is a circularity of rhymescheme with the rhyming sounds of the first and the last couplets being thesame.The circularity is complete in idea in the shift from "better be"to"perfect be".The last couplet is actually an epigram that can be taken as ourlife motto.

The Sick Rose

William Blake (1757~1827)

O Rose,thou art sick,

The invisible worm,

That flies in the night

In the howling storm:

Has found out thy bed

Of crimson joy:

And his dark secret love

Does thy life destroy.

At first,the poem seems to mean that a natural rose is destroyed by anatural caterpillar,but it is far more than that,simply because the poet usesfigurative language.In the poem the meanings of two words,"rose"and"worm",are central to the interpretations of this poem.These two wordsare two images.The first one is "rose"whose literal or denotative meaning

···试读结束···