2016年10月5日 星期三

CHAPTER 2: ISSUES AND DUNDAMENTAL CHANGE IN CHILDREN'S LITERATURE

Harold Bloom (born July 11, 1930) is an American literary critic and Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University.[1]Since the publication of his first book in 1959, Bloom has written more than 20 books of literary criticism, several books discussing religion, and a novel. He has edited hundreds of anthologies concerning numerous literary and philosophical figures for the Chelsea House publishing firm.[2][3] Bloom's books have been translated into more than 40 languages.
Bloom came to public attention in the United States as a commentator during the canon wars of the early 1990s.[4]

Personal life

Bloom married Jeanne Gould in 1958.[14] In a 2005 interview his wife said that she regarded him and herself as both atheists while he denied being an atheist saying "No, no I'm not an atheist. It's no fun being an atheist."[15]

Writing career[edit]

Defense of Romanticism[edit]

Bloom began his career by defending the reputations of the High Romantics through a sequence of highly regarded monographs beginning with his Doctoral Dissertation on Percy Bysshe Shelley, (Shelley's Myth-making, Yale University Press), W. B. Yeats, (Yeats, Oxford University Press), and Wallace Stevens, (Wallace Stevens: The Poems of Our Climate, Cornell University Press) against neo-Christian critics influenced by such writers as T. S. Eliot, who became a recurring intellectual foil. He had a contentious approach: his first book, Shelley's Myth-making, charged many contemporary critics with sheer carelessness in their reading of Shelley.

Influence theory[edit]

After a personal crisis in the late sixties, Bloom became deeply interested in Emerson, Sigmund Freud, and the ancient mystic traditions of Gnosticism, Kabbalah, and Hermeticism. In a 2003 interview with Bloom, Michael Pakenham, the book editor for The Baltimore Sun, writes that Bloom has long referred to himself as a "Jewish Gnostic". Bloom explains: "I am using Gnostic in a very broad way. I am nothing if not Jewish... I really am a product of Yiddish culture. But I can't understand a Yahweh, or a God, who could be all-powerful and all knowing and would allow the Nazi death camps and schizophrenia."[16] Influenced by his reading, he began a series of books that focused on the way in which poets struggled to create their own individual poetic visions without being overcome by the influence of the previous poets who inspired them to write.
The first of these books, Yeats, a magisterial examination of the poet, challenged the conventional critical view of his poetic career. In the introduction to this volume, Bloom set out the basic principles of his new approach to criticism: "Poetic influence, as I conceive it, is a variety of melancholy or the anxiety-principle." A new poet becomes inspired to write because he has read and admired the poetry of previous poets; but this admiration turns into resentment when the new poet discovers that these poets whom he idolized have already said everything he wishes to say. The poet becomes disappointed because he "cannot be Adam early in the morning. There have been too many Adams, and they have named everything."
In order to evade this psychological obstacle, the new poet must convince himself that previous poets have gone wrong somewhere and failed in their vision, thus leaving open the possibility that he may have something to add to the tradition after all. The new poet's love for his heroes turns into antagonism towards them: "Initial love for the precursor's poetry is transformed rapidly enough into revisionary strife, without which individuation is not possible."[17] The book that followed Yeats, The Anxiety of Influence, which Bloom had started writing in 1967, drew upon the example of Walter Jackson Bate's The Burden of the Past and The English Poet and recast in systematic psychoanalytic form Bate's historicized account of the despair felt by seventeenth- and eighteenth-century poets about their ability to match the achievements of their predecessors. Bloom attempted to trace the psychological process by which a poet broke free from his precursors to achieve his own poetic vision. He drew a sharp distinction between "strong poets" who perform "strong misreadings" of their precursors, and "weak poets" who simply repeat the ideas of their precursors as though following a kind of doctrine. He described this process in terms of a sequence of "revisionary ratios," through which each strong poet passes in the course of his career. A Map of Misreading picked up where The Anxiety of Influence left off, making several adjustments to Bloom's system of revisionary ratios. Kabbalah and Criticism attempted to invoke the esoteric interpretive system of the Lurianic Kabbalah, as explicated by scholar Gershom Scholem, as an alternate system of mapping the path of poetic influence. Figures of Capable Imagination collected odd pieces Bloom had written in the process of composing his 'influence' books. He capped off this period of intense creativity with another monograph, a full-length study of Wallace Stevens, with whom he identified more than any other poet at this stage of his career, as he told an interviewer in the early 1980s.[who?]
Bloom continued to write about influence theory throughout the seventies and eighties, and he has written little since that does not invoke his ideas about influence.

Novel experiment[edit]

Bloom's fascination with the fantasy novel A Voyage to Arcturus by David Lindsay led him to take a brief break from criticism in order to compose a sequel to Lindsay's novel. This novel, The Flight to Lucifer, remains Bloom's only work of fiction.[18] Though reviews were very positive,[citation needed] he soon disowned this book. He believed his self-consciousness weighed it down too heavily. He has said that he would remove every copy of the book from every library if he could.

Religious criticism[edit]

Bloom then entered a phase of what he called "religious criticism", beginning in 1989 with Ruin the Sacred Truths: Poetry and Belief from the Bible to the Present.
In The Book of J (1990), he and David Rosenberg (who translated the Biblical texts) portrayed one of the posited ancient documents that formed the basis of the first five books of the bible (see documentary hypothesis) as the work of a great literary artist who had no intention of composing a dogmatically religious work (see Jahwist). They further envisaged this anonymous writer as a woman attached to the court of the successors of the Israelite kings David and Solomon—a piece of speculation which drew much attention. Later, Bloom said that the speculations didn't go far enough, and perhaps he should have identified J with the Biblical Bathsheba.[19] In Jesus and Yahweh: The Names Divine (2004), he revisits some of the territory he covered in The Book of J in discussing the significance of Yahweh and Jesus of Nazareth as literary characters, while casting a critical eye on historical approaches and asserting the fundamental incompatibility of Christianity and Judaism.
In The American Religion (1992), Bloom surveyed the major varieties of Protestant and post-Protestant religious faiths that originated in the United States and argued that, in terms of their psychological hold on their adherents, most shared more in common with gnosticism than with historical Christianity. The exception was the Jehovah's Witnesses, whom Bloom regards as non-Gnostic. He elsewhere predicted that the Mormon and Pentecostal strains of American Christianity would overtake mainstream Protestant divisions in popularity in the next few decades. In Omens of Millennium (1996), Bloom identifies these American religious elements as on the periphery of an old – and not inherently Christian – gnostic, religious tradition which invokes a complex of ideas and experiences concerning angelology, interpretation of dreams as prophecy, near-death experiences, and millennialism.[20]
In his essay in The Gospel of Thomas, Bloom states that none of Thomas' Aramaic sayings have survived to this day in the original language.[21] Marvin Meyer generally agreed and further confirmed that the earlier versions of that text were likely written in either Aramaic or Greek.[22] Meyer ends his introduction with an endorsement of much of Bloom's essay.[23] Bloom notes the other-worldliness of the Jesus in the Thomas sayings by making reference to "the paradox also of the American Jesus."[24]

The Western Canon[edit]

In 1994, Bloom published The Western Canon, a survey of the major literary works of Europe and the Americas since the 14th century, focusing on 26 works he considered sublime and representative of their nations[25] and of the Western canon.[26] Besides analyses of the canon's various representative works, the major concern of the volume is reclaiming literature from those he refers to as the "School of resentment", the mostly academic critics who espouse a social purpose in reading. Bloom believes that the goals of reading must be solitary aesthetic pleasure and self-insight rather than the goal held by "forces of resentment" of improving one's society, which he casts as an absurd aim, writing: "The idea that you benefit the insulted and injured by reading someone of their own origins rather than reading Shakespeare is one of the oddest illusions ever promoted by or in our schools." His position is that politics have no place in literary criticism: a feminist or Marxist reading of Hamlet would tell us something about feminism and Marxism, he says, but probably nothing about Hamlet itself.
In addition to considering how much influence a writer has had on later writers, Bloom proposed the concept of "canonical strangeness" (cf. uncanny) as a benchmark of a literary work's merit. The Western Canon also included a list—which aroused more widespread interest than anything else in the volume—of all the Western works from antiquity to the present that Bloom considered either permanent members of the canon of literary classics, or (among more recent works) candidates for that status. Bloom has said that he made the list off the top of his head at his editor's request, and that he does not stand by it.[27]


Work on Shakespeare[edit]

Bloom has a deep appreciation for Shakespeare[28] and considers him to be the supreme center of the Western Canon.[29] The first edition of The Anxiety of Influence almost completely avoided Shakespeare, whom Bloom considered, at the time, barely touched by the psychological drama of anxiety. The second edition, published in 1997, adds a long preface that mostly expounds on Shakespeare's debt to Ovid and Chaucer, and his agon with his contemporary Christopher Marlowe, who set the stage for him by breaking free of ecclesiastical and moralizing overtones.
In his 1998 survey, Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, Bloom provides an analysis of each of Shakespeare's 38 plays, "twenty-four of which are masterpieces." Written as a companion to the general reader and theatergoer, Bloom declares that bardolatry "ought to be even more a secular religion than it already is."[30] He also contends in the work (as in the title) that Shakespeare "invented" humanity, in that he prescribed the now-common practice of "overhearing" ourselves, which drives our changes. The two paragons of his theory are Sir John Falstaff of Henry IV and Hamlet, whom Bloom sees as representing self-satisfaction and self-loathing, respectively. Throughout Shakespeare, characters from disparate plays are imagined alongside and interacting with each other; this has been decried by numerous contemporary academics and critics as hearkening back to the out of fashion character criticism of A.C. Bradley and others, who happen to gather explicit praise in the book. As in The Western Canon, Bloom criticizes what he calls the "School of Resentment" for its failure to live up to the challenge of Shakespeare's universality and instead balkanizing the study of literature through various multicultural and historicist departments. Asserting Shakespeare's singular popularity throughout the world, Bloom proclaims him as the only multicultural author, and rather than the "social energies" historicists ascribe Shakespeare's authorship to, Bloom pronounces his modern academic foes – and indeed, all of society – to be "a parody of Shakespearian energies."




Nathaniel Hawthorne



Nathaniel Hawthorne (/ˈhɔːˌθɔːrn/; born Nathaniel Hathorne; July 4, 1804 – May 19, 1864) was an American novelist, Dark Romantic, and short story writer.
He was born in 1804 in Salem, Massachusetts, to Nathaniel Hathorne and the former Elizabeth Clarke Manning. His ancestors include John Hathorne, the only judge involved in the Salem witch trials who never repented of his actions. Nathaniel later added a "w" to make his name "Hawthorne" in order to hide this relation. He entered Bowdoin College in 1821, was elected to Phi Beta Kappa in 1824,[1] and graduated in 1825. Hawthorne published his first work, a novel titled Fanshawe, in 1828; he later tried to suppress it, feeling it was not equal to the standard of his later work.[2] He published several short stories in periodicals, which he collected in 1837 as Twice-Told Tales. The next year, he became engaged to Sophia Peabody. He worked at the Boston Custom House and joined Brook Farm, a transcendentalist community, before marrying Peabody in 1842. The couple moved to The Old Manse in Concord, Massachusetts, later moving to Salem, the Berkshires, then to The Wayside in Concord. The Scarlet Letter was published in 1850, followed by a succession of other novels. A political appointment as consul took Hawthorne and family to Europe before their return to Concord in 1860. Hawthorne died on May 19, 1864, and was survived by his wife and their three children.
Much of Hawthorne's writing centers on New England, many works featuring moral allegories with a Puritan inspiration. His fiction works are considered part of the Romantic movement and, more specifically, Dark romanticism. His themes often center on the inherent evil and sin of humanity, and his works often have moral messages and deep psychological complexity. His published works include novels, short stories, and a biography of his college friend Franklin Pierce.

Writings[edit]


Statue of Hawthorne in Salem, Massachusetts
Hawthorne had a particularly close relationship with his publishers William Ticknor and James Thomas Fields.[84] Hawthorne once told Fields, "I care more for your good opinion than for that of a host of critics."[85] In fact, it was Fields who convinced Hawthorne to turn The Scarlet Letter into a novel rather than a short story.[86] Ticknor handled many of Hawthorne's personal matters, including the purchase of cigars, overseeing financial accounts, and even purchasing clothes.[87] Ticknor died with Hawthorne at his side in Philadelphia in 1864; according to a friend, Hawthorne was left "apparently dazed".[88]

Literary style and themes[edit]

Hawthorne's works belong to romanticism or, more specifically, dark romanticism,[89] cautionary tales that suggest that guilt, sin, and evil are the most inherent natural qualities of humanity.[90] Many of his works are inspired by Puritan New England,[91]combining historical romance loaded with symbolism and deep psychological themes, bordering on surrealism.[92] His depictions of the past are a version of historical fiction used only as a vehicle to express common themes of ancestral sin, guilt and retribution.[93] His later writings also reflect his negative view of the Transcendentalism movement.[94]
Hawthorne was predominantly a short story writer in his early career. Upon publishing Twice-Told Tales, however, he noted, "I do not think much of them," and he expected little response from the public.[95] His four major romances were written between 1850 and 1860: The Scarlet Letter (1850), The House of the Seven Gables (1851), The Blithedale Romance (1852) and The Marble Faun (1860). Another novel-length romance, Fanshawe, was published anonymously in 1828. Hawthorne defined a romance as being radically different from a novel by not being concerned with the possible or probable course of ordinary experience.[96] In the preface to The House of the Seven Gables, Hawthorne describes his romance-writing as using "atmospherical medium as to bring out or mellow the lights and deepen and enrich the shadows of the picture".[97]
Critics have applied feminist perspectives and historicist approaches to Hawthorne's depictions of women. Feminist scholars are interested particularly in Hester Prynne, who realized that she herself could not be the "destined prophetess," but that "angel and apostle of the coming revelation" must be a woman." [98] Camille Paglia saw Hester as mystical, "a wandering goddess still bearing the mark of her Asiatic origins ... moving serenely in the magic circle of her sexual nature".[99] Lauren Berlant termed Hester "the citizen as woman [personifying] love as a quality of the body that contains the purest light of nature," her resulting "traitorous political theory" a "Female Symbolic" literalization of futile Puritan metaphors.[100] Historicists view Hester as a protofeminist and avatar of the self-reliance and responsibility that led to women's suffrage and reproductive emancipation. Anthony Splendora found her literary genealogy among other archetypally fallen but redeemed women, both historic and mythic. As examples, he offers Psyche of ancient legend; Heloise of twelfth-century France's tragedy involving world-renowned philosopher Peter Abelard; Anne Hutchinson (America's first heretic, circa 1636), and Hawthorne family friend Margaret Fuller.[101] In Hester's first appearance, Hawthorne likens her, "infant at her bosom", to Mary, Mother of Jesus, "the image of Divine Maternity". In her study of Victorian literature, in which such "galvanic outcasts" as Hester feature prominently, Nina Auerbach went so far as to name Hester's fall and subsequent redemption, "the novel's one unequivocally religious activity".[102] Regarding Hester as a deity figure, Meredith A. Powers found in Hester's characterization "the earliest in American fiction that the archetypal Goddess appears quite graphically," like a Goddess "not the wife of traditional marriage, permanently subject to a male overlord"; Powers noted "her syncretism, her flexibility, her inherent ability to alter and so avoid the defeat of secondary status in a goal-oriented civilization".[103]
Aside from Hester Prynne, the model women of Hawthorne's other novels — from Ellen Langton of Fanshawe to Zenobia and Priscilla of The Blithedale Romance, Hilda and Miriam of The Marble Faun and Phoebe and Hepzibah of The House of the Seven Gables — are more fully realized than his male characters, who merely orbit them.[104] This observation is equally true of his short-stories, in which central females serve as allegorical figures: Rappaccini's beautiful but life-altering, garden-bound, daughter; almost-perfect Georgiana of "The Birthmark"; the sinned-against (abandoned) Ester of "Ethan Brand"; and goodwife Faith Brown, linchpin of Young Goodman Brown's very belief in God. "My Faith is gone!" Brown exclaims in despair upon seeing his wife at the Witches' Sabbath.[citation needed].
Hawthorne also wrote nonfiction. In 2008, Library of America selected Hawthorne's "A Collection of Wax Figures" for inclusion in its two-century retrospective of American True Crime.[citation needed]

Criticism[edit]

Edgar Allan Poe wrote important, and somewhat unflattering, reviews of both Twice-Told Tales and Mosses from an Old Manse. Poe's negative assessment was partly due to his own contempt of allegory and moral tales, and his chronic accusations of plagiarism, though he admitted,
The style of Hawthorne is purity itself. His tone is singularly effective—wild, plaintive, thoughtful, and in full accordance with his themes ... We look upon him as one of the few men of indisputable genius to whom our country has as yet given birth.[105]
Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, "Nathaniel Hawthorne's reputation as a writer is a very pleasing fact, because his writing is not good for anything, and this is a tribute to the man."[106] Henry James praised Hawthorne, saying, "The fine thing in Hawthorne is that he cared for the deeper psychology, and that, in his way, he tried to become familiar with it."[107] Poet John Greenleaf Whittier wrote that he admired the "weird and subtle beauty" in Hawthorne's tales.[108] Evert Augustus Duyckinck said of Hawthorne, "Of the American writers destined to live, he is the most original, the one least indebted to foreign models or literary precedents of any kind."[109]
Contemporary response to Hawthorne's work praised his sentimentality and moral purity while more modern evaluations focus on the dark psychological complexity.[110] Beginning in the 1950s, critics have focused on symbolism and didacticism.[111]
The critic Harold Bloom has opined that only Henry James and William Faulkner challenge Hawthorne's position as the greatest American novelist, although he admits that he favors James as the greatest American novelist.[112][113] Bloom sees Hawthorne's greatest works to be principally The Scarlet Letter, followed by The Marble Faun and certain short stories, including "My Kinsman, Major Molineux", "Young Goodman Brown", "Wakefield", and "Feathertop".[113]

Selected works[edit]


The Midas myth, from A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys. Illustration by Walter Crane for the 1893 edition.
The "definitive edition" of Hawthorne's works [114] is The Centenary Edition of the Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne, edited by William Charvat and others, published by The Ohio State University Press in twenty-three volumes between 1962 and 1997.[115]Tales and Sketches (1982) was the second volume to be published in the Library of America, Collected Novels (1983) the tenth.[116]

Novels[edit]

Short story collections[edit]

Selected short stories[edit]


Nikolai Gogol

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Gogol
Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol (/ˈɡoʊɡəl, -ɡɔːl/;[4] Russian: Никола́й Васи́льевич Го́голь, tr. Nikolay Vasilievich Gogol; IPA: [nʲɪkɐˈlaj vɐˈsʲilʲjɪvʲɪtɕ ˈgogəlʲ]; 31 March [O.S. 19 March] 1809 – 4 March [O.S. 21 February] 1852) was a Ukrainian-born Russian[5][6][7][8][9] dramatist, novelist and short story writer whose work was strongly influenced by Ukrainian culture.[6][10][11][12][13]

Although Gogol was considered by his contemporaries one of the preeminent figures of the natural school of Russian literary realism, later critics have found in his work a fundamentally romantic sensibility, with strains of surrealism and the grotesque ("The Nose", "Viy", "The Overcoat," "Nevsky Prospekt"). His early works, such as Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka, were influenced by his Ukrainian upbringing, Ukrainian culture and folklore.[14][15] His later writing satirised political corruption in the Russian Empire (The Government Inspector, Dead Souls). The novel Taras Bulba (1835) and the play Marriage (1842), along with the short stories "Diary of a Madman", "The Tale of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich", "The Portrait" and "The Carriage", round out the tally of his best-known works.

Literary development[edit]


Cover of the first edition of The Government Inspector (1836).
In 1831 Gogol brought out the first volume of his Ukrainian stories (Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka), which met with immediate success.[17] He followed it in 1832 with a second volume, and in 1835 by two volumes of stories entitled Mirgorod, as well as by two volumes of miscellaneous prose entitled Arabesques. At this time Russian editors and critics such as Nikolai Polevoy and Nikolai Nadezhdin saw in Gogol the emergence of a Ukrainian, rather than Russian, writer, using his works to illustrate supposed differences between Russian and Ukrainian national characters.[18] The themes and style of these early prose works by Gogol, as well as his later drama, were similar to the work of Ukrainian writers and dramatists who were his contemporaries and friends, including Hryhory Kvitka-Osnovyanenko and Vasily Narezhny. However, Gogol's satire was much more sophisticated and unconventional.[19]
At this time, Gogol developed a passion for Ukrainian history and tried to obtain an appointment to the history department at Kiev University. Despite the support of Pushkin and Sergey Uvarov, the Russian minister of education, his appointment was blocked by a Kyivan bureaucrat on the grounds that Gogol was unqualified.[20] His fictional story Taras Bulba, based on the history of Ukrainian cossacks, was the result of this phase in his interests. During this time he also developed a close and lifelong friendship with another Ukrainian, the historian and naturalist Mykhaylo Maksymovych.[21]
In 1834 Gogol was made Professor of Medieval History at the University of St. Petersburg, a job for which he had no qualifications. He turned in a performance ludicrous enough to warrant satiric treatment in one of his own stories. After an introductory lecture made up of brilliant generalizations which the 'historian' had prudently prepared and memorized, he gave up all pretense at erudition and teaching, missed two lectures out of three, and when he did appear, muttered unintelligibly through his teeth. At the final examination, he sat in utter silence with a black handkerchief wrapped around his head, simulating a toothache, while another professor interrogated the students."[22] This academic venture proved a failure and he resigned his chair in 1835.

Commemorative plaque on his house in Rome
Between 1832 and 1836 Gogol worked with great energy, and though almost all his work has in one way or another its sources in these four years of contact with Pushkin, he had not yet decided that his ambitions were to be fulfilled by success in literature. During this time, the Russian critics Stepan Shevyrev and Vissarion Belinsky, contradicting earlier critics, reclassified Gogol from a Ukrainian to a Russian writer.[18] It was only after the presentation at the Saint Petersburg State Theatre, on 19 April 1836, of his comedy The Government Inspector (Revizor)[23] that he finally came to believe in his literary vocation. The comedy, a violent satire of Russian provincial bureaucracy, was staged thanks only to the intervention of the emperor, Nicholas I.
From 1836 to 1848 Gogol lived abroad, travelling through Germany and Switzerland. Gogol spent the winter of 1836–37 in Paris,[24]among Russian expatriates and Polish exiles, frequently meeting the Polish poets Adam Mickiewicz and Bohdan Zaleski. He eventually settled in Rome. For much of the twelve years from 1836 Gogol was in Italy. He studied art, read Italian literature and developed a passion for opera. He mingled with Russian and other visitors, and in 1838 met Count Joseph Vielhorskiy, the 23-year-old son of the official who had brought Gogol's Government Inspector to the attention of the emperor. Vielhorsky was travelling in hopes of curing his tuberculosis. Gogol and Vielhorsky fell in love, a relationship which was soon severed as Vielhorsky died in 1839. Gogol left an account of this time in his Nights at the Villa: "if my death could restore him to health, with what readiness I would have rushed toward it!"[25]
Pushkin's death produced a strong impression on Gogol. His principal work during years following Pushkin's death was the satirical epic Dead Souls. Concurrently, he worked at other tasks – recast Taras Bulba and The Portrait, completed his second comedy, Marriage (Zhenitba), wrote the fragment Rome and his most famous short story, "The Overcoat".
In 1841 the first part of Dead Souls was ready, and Gogol took it to Russia to supervise its printing. It appeared in Moscow in 1842, under the title, imposed by the censorship, of The Adventures of Chichikov. The book instantly established his reputation as the greatest prose writer in the language.

Style[edit]


Among the illustrators of Dead Souls was Pyotr Sokolov.
D. S. Mirsky characterized Gogol's universe as "one of the most marvellous, unexpected – in the strictest sense, original[32] – worlds ever created by an artist of words".[33]
The other main characteristic of Gogol's writing is his 'impressionist' vision of reality and people.[citation needed] He saw the outer world romantically metamorphosed, a singular gift particularly evident from the fantastic spatial transformations in his Gothic stories, "A Terrible Vengeance" and "A Bewitched Place". His pictures of nature are strange mounds of detail heaped on detail, resulting in an unconnected chaos of things. His people are caricatures, drawn with the method of the caricaturist – which is to exaggerate salient features and to reduce them to geometrical pattern. But these cartoons have a convincingness, a truthfulness, and inevitability – attained as a rule by slight but definitive strokes of unexpected reality – that seems to beggar the visible world itself.[34][need quotation to verify]

The aspect under which the mature Gogol sees reality is expressed by the Russian word poshlost', which means something similar to "triviality, banality, inferiority", moral and spiritual, widespread in some group or society. Like Sterne before him, Gogol was a great destroyer of prohibitions and of romantic illusions. He undermined Russian Romanticism by making vulgarity reign where only the sublime and the beautiful had reigned.[35] "Characteristic of Gogol is a sense of boundless superfluity that is soon revealed as utter emptiness and a rich comedy that suddenly turns into metaphysical horror."[36] His stories often interweave pathos and mockery, while "The Tale of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich" begins as a merry farce and ends with the famous dictum, "It is dull in this world, gentlemen!"

Influence and interpretations[edit]

Even before the publication of Dead Souls, Belinsky recognized Gogol as the first realist writer in the language and the head of the Natural School, to which he also assigned such younger or lesser authors as Goncharov, Turgenev, Dmitry Grigorovich, Vladimir Dahl and Vladimir Sollogub. Gogol himself seemed to be skeptical about the existence of such a literary movement. Although he recognized "several young writers" who "have shown a particular desire to observe real life", he upbraided the deficient composition and style of their works.[37] Nevertheless, subsequent generations of radical critics celebrated Gogol (the author in whose world a nose roams the streets of the Russian capital) as a great realist, a reputation decried by the Encyclopædia Britannica as "the triumph of Gogolesque irony".[38]
The period of modernism saw a revival of interest in and a change of attitude towards Gogol's work. One of the pioneering works of Russian formalism was Eichenbaum's reappraisal of "The Overcoat". In the 1920s, a group of Russian short story writers, known as the Serapion Brothers, placed Gogol among their precursors and consciously sought to imitate his techniques. The leading novelists of the period – notably Yevgeny Zamyatin and Mikhail Bulgakov – also admired Gogol and followed in his footsteps. In 1926, Vsevolod Meyerhold staged The Government Inspector as a "comedy of the absurd situation", revealing to his fascinated spectators a corrupt world of endless self-deception. In 1934, Andrei Bely published the most meticulous study of Gogol's literary techniques up to that date, in which he analyzed the colours prevalent in Gogol's work depending on the period, his impressionistic use of verbs, expressive discontinuity of his syntax, complicated rhythmical patterns of his sentences, and many other secrets of his craft. Based on this work, Vladimir Nabokov published a summary account of Gogol's masterpieces in 1944.

The house in Moscow where Gogol died. The building contains the fireplace where he burned the manuscript of the second part of Dead Souls.
Gogol's impact on Russian literature has been enduring, yet his works have been appreciated differently by various critics. Belinsky, for instance, berated his horror stories as "moribund, monstrous works", while Andrei Bely counted them among his most stylistically daring creations. Nabokov especially admired Dead Souls, The Government Inspector, and "The Overcoat" as works of genius, proclaiming that "when, as in his immortal 'The Overcoat', Gogol really let himself go and pottered happily on the brink of his private abyss, he became the greatest artist that Russia has yet produced."[39] "The Overcoat" was traditionally interpreted as a masterpiece of "humanitarian realism", but Nabokov and some other attentive readers argued that "holes in the language" make the story susceptible to interpretation as a supernatural tale about a ghostly double of a "small man".[40] Of all Gogol's stories, "The Nose" has stubbornly defied all abstruse interpretations: D.S. Mirsky declared it "a piece of sheer play, almost sheer nonsense".
Gogol's oeuvre has also had a large impact on Russia's non-literary culture, and his stories have been adapted numerous times into opera and film. Russian Composer Alfred Schnittke wrote the eight part Gogol Suite as incidental music to The Government Inspector performed as a play, and composer Dmitri Shostakovich set "The Nose" as his first opera in 1930, despite the peculiar choice of subject for what was meant to initiate the great tradition of Soviet opera.[41] Most recently, to celebrate the 200th anniversary of Gogol's birth, Vienna's renowned Theater an der Wien commissioned music and libretto for a full-length opera on the life of Gogol from Russian composer and writer Lera Auerbach.[42]
Some attention has also been given to the apparent anti-Semitism in Gogol's writings, as well as those of his contemporary, Fyodor Dostoyevsky.[43] Felix Dreizin and David Guaspari, for example, in their The Russian Soul and the Jew: Essays in Literary Ethnocentricis discuss "the significance of the Jewish characters and the negative image of the Ukrainian Jewish community in Gogol's novel Taras Bulba, pointing out Gogol's attachment to anti-Jewish prejudices prevalent in Russian and Ukrainian culture."[44] In Leon Poliakov's The History of Antisemitism, the author mentions that "The 'Yankel' from Taras Bulba indeed became the archetypal Jew in Russian literature. Gogol painted him as supremely exploitative, cowardly, and repulsive, albeit capable of gratitude. But it seems perfectly natural in the story that he and his cohorts be drowned in the Dniper by the Cossack lords. Above all, Yankel is ridiculous, and the image of the plucked chicken that Gogol used has made the rounds of great Russian authors."[45]
Despite his problematic portrayal of Jewish characters, Gogol left a powerful impression even on Jewish writers who inherited his literary legacy. Amelia Glaser has noted the influence of Gogol's literary innovations on Sholem Aleichem, who "chose to model much of his writing, and even his appearance, on Gogol... What Sholem Aleichem was borrowing from Gogol was a rural East European landscape that may have been dangerous, but could unite readers through the power of collective memory. He also learned from Gogol to soften this danger through laughter, and he often rewrites Gogol's Jewish characters, correcting anti-Semitic stereotypes and narrating history from a Jewish perspective."[46]


Ivan Turgenev




Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev (/tɜːrˈɡɛnjəf, -ˈɡeɪn-/;[1] Russian: Ива́н Серге́евич Турге́нев; IPA: [ɪˈvan sʲɪrˈɡʲeɪvʲɪtɕ tʊrˈɡʲenʲɪf]; November 9 [O.S. October 28] 1818 – September 3, 1883) was a Russian novelist, short story writer, and playwright.
His first major publication, a short story collection entitled A Sportsman's Sketches (1852), was a milestone of Russian Realism, and his novel Fathers and Sons (1862) is regarded as one of the major works of 19th-century fiction.

Legacy[edit]


Turgenev late in his career.
Turgenev's artistic purity made him a favorite of like-minded novelists of the next generation, such as Henry James and Joseph Conrad, both of whom greatly preferred Turgenev to Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. James, who wrote no fewer than five critical essays on Turgenev's work, claimed that "his merit of form is of the first order" (1873) and praised his "exquisite delicacy", which "makes too many of his rivals appear to hold us, in comparison, by violent means, and introduce us, in comparison, to vulgar things" (1896).[8] Vladimir Nabokov, notorious for his casual dismissal of many great writers, praised Turgenev's "plastic musical flowing prose", but criticized his "labored epilogues" and "banal handling of plots". Nabokov stated that Turgenev "is not a great writer, though a pleasant one", and ranked him fourth among nineteenth-century Russian prose writers, behind Tolstoy, Gogol, and Anton Chekhov, but ahead of Dostoyevsky.[9] His idealistic ideas about love, specifically the devotion a wife should show her husband, were cynically referred to by characters in Chekhov's "An Anonymous Story".

Bibliography[edit]

Public Domain This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "article name needed". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.

Selected novels[edit]

  • 1857 – Rudin (Рудин), English translation: Rudin
  • 1859 – Dworyanskoe Gnezdo (Дворянское гнездо), English translations: A Nest of Gentlefolk (Coulson), A House of Gentlefolk (Garnett), Home of the Gentry (Freeborn). Also known as Liza.
  • 1860 – Nakanune (Накануне), English translation: On the Eve
  • 1862 – Otcy i Deti (Отцы и дети); English translation: Fathers and Sons
  • 1867 – Dym (Дым); English translation: Smoke
  • 1872 – Veshnie Vody (Вешние воды); English translation: Torrents of Spring
  • 1877 – Now (Новь); English translation: Virgin Soil

Selected shorter fiction[edit]


Ivan Turgenev hunting (1879) by Nikolai Dmitriev-Orenburgsky (private collection)
  • 1850 – Dnevnik Lishnego Cheloveka (Дневник лишнего человека); novella, English translation: The Diary of a Superfluous Man
  • 1852 – Zapiski Ohotnika (Записки охотника); collection of stories, English translations: A Sportsman's Sketches, The Hunter's Sketches, A Sportsman's Notebook
  • 1854 – Mumu (Муму); short story, English translation: Mumu
  • 1855 – Yakov Pasynkov (Яков Пасынков); novella
  • 1855 – Faust (Фауст); novella
  • 1858 – Asya (Aся); novella, English translation: Asya or Annouchka
  • 1860 – Pervaia Liubov (Первая любовь); novella, English translation: First Love
  • 1870 – Stepnoy Corol' Lir (Степной король Лир); novella, English translation: King Lear of the Steppes
  • 1881 – Pesn' Torzhestvuyuschey Liubvi (Песнь торжествующей любви); novella, English translation: The Song of Triumphant Love
  • 1883 – Klara Milich (Клара Милич); novella, English translation: The Mysterious Tales

Selected plays[edit]

  • 1843 – Neostorozhnost (Неосторожность); A Rash Thing to Do
  • 1847 – Gde Tonko, Tam i Rwyotsya (Где тонко, там и рвётся); It Tears Where It is Thin
  • 1849/1856 – Zavtrak u Predvoditelia (Завтрак у предводителя); Breakfast at the Chief's
  • 1850/1851 – Razgovor na Bol'shoy Doroge (Разговор на большой дороге); A Conversation on the Highway
  • 1846/1852 – Bezdenezhie (Безденежье); Lack of Money
  • 1851 – Provincialka (Провинциалка); English translation: A Provincial Lady
  • 1857/1862 – Nahlebnik (Нахлебник); English translation: The Hanger-On; Fortune's Fool; The Family Charge
  • 1855/1872 – Mesiats v Derevne (Месяц в деревне); English translation: A Month in the Country
  • 1882 – Vecher v Sorrento (Вечер в Сорренто); An Evening in Sorrento


The Red Shoes (fairy tale)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Red_Shoes_(fairy_tale)



"The Red Shoes" (Danish: De røde sko) is a fairy tale by Danish poet and author Hans Christian Andersen first published by C.A. Reitzel in Copenhagen 7 April 1845 in New Fairy Tales. First Volume. Third Collection. 1845. (Nye Eventyr. Første Bind. Tredie Samling. 1845.). Other tales in the volume include "The Elf Mound" (Elverhøi), "The Jumpers" (Springfyrene), "The Shepherdess and the Chimney Sweep" (Hyrdinden og Skorstensfejeren), and "Holger Danske" (Holger Danske).[1]
The tale was republished 18 December 1849 as a part of Fairy Tales. 1850. (Eventyr. 1850.) and again on 30 March 1863 as a part of Fairy Tales and Stories. Second Volume. 1863. (Eventyr og Historier. Andet Bind. 1863.).[2] The story is about a girl forced to dance continually in her red shoes. "The Red Shoes" has seen adaptations in various media including film.


Plot summary[edit]

A peasant girl named Karen is adopted by a rich old lady after her mother's death and grows up vain and spoiled. Before her adoption, Karen had a rough pair of red shoes; now she has her adoptive mother buy her a pair of red shoes fit for a princess. Karen is so enamored of her new shoes that she wears them to church, but the old lady scolds her: it's highly improper and she must only wear black shoes in church from now on. But next Sunday, Karen cannot resist the urge to put the red shoes on again. As she is about to enter the church, she meets a mysterious old soldier with a red beard. "Oh, what beautiful shoes for dancing," the soldier says. "Never come off when you dance," he tells the shoes, and he taps the sole of each with his hand. After church, Karen cannot resist taking a few dance steps, and off she goes, as though the shoes controlled her, but she finally manages to take them off. One day, after her adoptive mother becomes ill, Karen leaves her alone and goes off to a ball in town in her red shoes. She begins to dance, but this time the shoes won't come off. They continue to dance, night and day, rain or shine, through fields and meadows, and through brambles and briers that tear at Karen's limbs. She can't even attend her adoptive mother's funeral. An angel appears to her, bearing a sword, and condemns her to dance even after she dies, as a warning to vain children everywhere. Karen begs for mercy but the red shoes take her away before she hears the angel's reply. Karen finds an executioner and asks him to chop off her feet. He does so but the shoes continue to dance, even with Karen's amputated feet inside them. The executioner gives her a pair of wooden feet and crutches, and teaches her the criminals' psalm. Thinking that she has suffered enough for the red shoes, Karen decides to go to church so people can see her. Yet her amputated feet, still in the red shoes, dance before her, barring the way. The following Sunday she tries again, thinking she is at least as good as the others in church, but again the dancing red shoes bar the way. Karen gets a job as a maid in the parsonage, but when Sunday comes she dares not go to church. Instead she sits alone at home and prays to God for help. The angel reappears, now bearing a spray of roses, and gives Karen the mercy she asked for: her heart becomes so filled with sunshine, peace, and joy that it bursts. Her soul flies on sunshine to Heaven, where no one mentions the red shoes.

Background[edit]

Andersen explained the origins of the story in an incident he witnessed as a small child. By his report, his father was sent a piece of red silk by a rich lady customer, to make a pair of dancing slippers for her daughter. Using red leather along with the silk, he worked very carefully on the shoes, only to have the rich lady tell him they were trash. She said he had done nothing but spoil her silk. "In that case," he said, "I may as well spoil my leather too," and he cut up the shoes in front of her.[citation needed]



The Pleasures of Children's Literature

You can check it from the website https://www.pearsonhighered.com/mykits/myeducationkit/index.html.






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