Transcript The Nightingale and the Rose

The Nightingale and
the Rose
Oscar Wilde
Lesson 4
Background
 Author:
 Oscar Wilde’s early school years
In 1871, Oscar was awarded a Royal
School Scholarship to Trinity College in
Dublin. Again, he did particularly well in
Classics, earning first in his examinations in
1872 and earning the highest honor the
College could bestow on an undergraduate a Foundation Scholarship.
 In 1874, Oscar crowned his successes at
Trinity with two final achievements. He
won the College's Berkeley Gold Medal for
Greek and was awarded a scholarship to
Magdalen College, Oxford.
1874-1878, He had a brilliant career at
Oxford, where he won the Prize for English
verse for a poem. Even before he left the
University in 1878 Wilde had become
known as one of the most affected of the
professors of the aesthetic craze, and for
several years it was as the typical aesthete
that he kept himself before the notice of the
public.
Oscar Wilde’s works
 Poems 1881
 The Happy Prince And Other Tales
 Dorian Gray
1890
 The House Of Pomegranates
(石榴)
1891
 The Ballad of Reading Goal 1898
1888
 Plays:




Lady Windermere's Fan
1892.
A Woman of No Importance 1893.
An Ideal Husband 1895
The Importance of Being Earnest 1895
Criticism
a man of far greater originality and power
of mind than many of the apostles(使徒) of
aestheticism
undoubted talents in many directions as a
typical aesthete that he kept himself before
the notice of the public
a poet of graceful diction
playwright of skill and subtle humor

 a dramatist whose plays had all the
characteristics of his conversations

All these pieces had the same qualities-a paradoxical humour and a perverted (反常
的) outlook on life being the most
prominent. They were packed with witty
sayings, and the author's cleverness gave
him at once a position in the dramatic world
Oscar Wilde’s belief
 Art for art’s sake
 The only purpose of the artist is art, not
religion, or science, or interest. He who
paints or writes only for financial return
or to propagandize political and
economic interests can only arouse feeling
of disgust.
Quotes from Oscar Wilde’s
Works:
 Quotes on Men
 Men become old, but they never become
good. Lady Windermere's Fan.
 Rich bachelors should be heavily taxed. It
is not fair that some men should be happier
than others. In Conversation.
 Men are horribly tedious when they are
good husbands, and abominably conceited
when they are not. A Woman of No
Importance.
 Lady Windermere: ...I don't like
compliments, and I don't see why a man
should think he is pleasing a woman
enormously when he says to her awhile
heap of things that he doesn't mean. Lady
Windermere's Fan.
Quotes on Woman
 One should never trust a woman who tells
one her real age. A woman who would tell
one that, would tell one anything.
A Woman of No Importance.
 Crying is the refuge of plain women but the
ruin of pretty ones.
Lady Windermere's Fan.
 Women know life too late. That is the
difference between men and women.
A Woman of No Importance.
 Women are meant to be loved, not to be
understood.
The Sphinx Without a Secret.
Quotes on Love
 One should always be in love. That is the
reason one should never marry. In
Conversation.
 To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance. Phrases and Philosophies for
the Use of the Young.
 Young men want to be faithful and are not;
old men want to be faithless and
cannot. The Picture of Dorian Gray.
Genre of this story and its
characteristics:
 Fairy tales (10 min.)
 - fairies play a part
 - contain supernatural or magical elements
 - children’s stories
 - full of veiled comments on life
Characteristics:

1) personification of birds, insects,
animals and trees

2) vivid, simple narration --- typical
of the oral tradition of fairy tales

3) repetitive pattern
Post-class work:
 1. Please write down the characters’
different attitudes toward love:
 (1) The Student’s
 (2) The Lizard’s, the Butterfly’s and the
Daisy’s
 (3) The Nightingale’s
 2. Is love better than life, as the Nightingale
believed? Please write down your opinion
on this.
Vocabulary to work on.
Please bear in your mind this question while
we go through the text:
What are the symbolic meanings of
“Red rose”, “Lizard” “Butterfly” and
“Nightingale” in the text?
Text analysis--structure
 Nightingale struck by the “the mystery of
love”
 Nightingale looking for a red rose to
facilitate the love
 Nightingale sacrificing her life for a red
rose
 Student discarding the red rose
Language Points
1. jewels (gems): emeralds（绿宝石）, ruby（红
宝石）, sapphire（蓝宝石）, jade（翡翠）
diamond
plants: daisy（雏菊）, rose （玫瑰花）,
oak-tree（橡树）， daffodil （水仙
花）
 animals: nightingale, lizard（蜥蜴）, butterfly
 subjects: philosophy, metaphysics（形而上
学）, logic
 stringed instruments: harp（竖琴）, violin
2. want:
1)the condition or quality of lacking something usual
or necessary
for /from want of 由于缺少
The plants died for/from want of water.
2) pressing need; 贫困
to live in want = to live in poverty
3) something desired:
in want of = in need of
Are you in want of money?
He’s a person of few wants and needs.
3. fling
1）to throw violently, with force
Don’t fling your clothes on the floor.
2) to move violently or quickly
She flung herself down on the sofa.
She flung back her head proudly.
3) to devote to
He flung himself into the task.
4. ebb
n. 1).The tide is on the ebb.
2).The financial resources have reached
its lowest ebb.
vi. 1) fall back from the flood stage
The tide will begin to ebb at 4 o’clock.
2) to fall away or back; decline or recede
The danger of conflict is not ebbing there.
see
 see about doing: attend to, make
arrangements for, deal with安排，处
理
 It is time for me to see about cooking
the dinner.
 see something out: to last until the end
of 熬过，度过
 Will our supplies see the winter out?
 It was such a bad play we couldn’t see
out the performance and we left early.
see through sb./ sth
The paper is too thick to see
though.
It was a hard time for us, but we
managed to see it through.
see to something: to attend to, take
care of负责，留意
 If I see to getting the car out, will
you see to closing the windows?
Symbolic meanings:

Red rose --- true love, which needs constant

nourishment of passions of the

lovers.
 Lizard --- cynic (cynical people)

cynic: a person who sees little or no good in
anything and who has no belief in human progress;
person who shows this by sneering and being
contemptuous.
 Nightingale --- a truthful, devoted pursuer
of love, who dares to sacrifice his own
precious life
 Student --- not a true lover, ignorant of love,
not persistent in pursuing love
Wilde’s comments in a letter to one of
his friends(May 1888): (5 min.)
The nightingale is the true lover, if there is
one. She, at least, is Romance, and the student
and the girl are, like most of us, unworthy of
Romance. So, at least, it seems to me, but I like
to fancy that there may be many meanings in
 the tale, for in writing it I did not start with an
idea and cloth it in form, but began with a form
and strove to make it beautiful enough to have
many secrets and many answers.
 Figurative speeches used in the text: (10
min.)
 v Personification
 v Simile and Metaphor
 Writing techniques:
 v Climax and Anticlimax
Personification
 give human forms or feelings to animals, or
life and personal attributes to inanimate
objects, or to ideas and abstractions.
 E.g. Time, you old gypsy man!
Simile
 (the use of) an expression comparing one
thing with another, always including the
words 'as' or 'like':
 The lines 'She walks in beauty, like the
night...' from Byron's poem contain a simile.
 …her voice was like water bubbling from a
silver jar.
 …as white as the foam of the sea…
Metaphor:
 an expression which describes a
person or object in a literary way by
referring to something that is
considered to possess similar
characteristics to the person or object
you are trying to describe:
 'The mind is an ocean' and 'the city is a
jungle' are both metaphors.
Climax

--derived from the Greek word
“ladder,” implies the progression of
thought at a uniform or almost uniform
rate of significance or intensity
 e.g. I came, I saw, I conquered.

Some books are to be tasted, others to
be swallowed, and some few to be chewed
and digested.
Anti-climax:
 --- stating one’s thoughts in a descending
order of significance or intensity, often
used to ridicule or satire.
 eg. 1. As a serious man, I loved
Beethoven, Keats, and hot dogs.

2. For God, for America, for Yale.

3. You manage a business, stocks,
bonds, people. And now you can manage
your hair.
Syntactic device

Inversion
 …yet for want of a red rose is my life made
wretched.
(for emphasis)
 …Crimson was the girdle of petals, and
crimson as ruby was the heart.
 … She passed through the grove like a shadow
and like a shadow she sailed across the garden.
 Night after night have I sung of him.