新视野大学英语4读写教程Unit1背景知识.pptVIP

Unit One, Book Four 1. Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) As one of the most famous American novelists, short story writers and essayists, Hemingway was awarded the 1954 Nobel Prize for Literature. His deceptively simple prose style has influenced a wide range of writers. His serious novel The Sun Also Rises appeared in 1926. It became his first great success as a novelist. The Old Man and the Sea, published in 1952, again restored his fame. On July 2, 1961, Hemingway committed suicide with his favorite shotgun at his home. 2. Robert Frost (1874-1963) As one of America’s leading 20th-century poets and a four-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Frost wrote poems whose philosophical dimensions transcend any region. His poetry is thus both traditional and experimental, regional and universal. He unquestionably succeeded in realizing his life’s ambition: to write “a few poems where they will be hard to get rid of.” 3. Pierre Auguste Renoir (1841-1919) Renoir was a famous French painter, and one of the founders and exponents of the Impressionist Movement. His works are characterized by an extraordinary richness of feelings, warmth of response to the world and the people in it. Renoir once said: “Why shouldn’t art be pretty? There are enough unpleasant things in the world.” 4. Steven Spielberg (1946-) He has ever been perhaps Hollywood’s best-known director and one of the wealthiest filmmakers in the world, and also one of the most influential film personalities in the history of film. Spielberg has directed or produced many of the top-grossing films in Hollywood history, including E.T.: The Extra-Terrestria, Schindler’s List, Saving Private Ryan, etc. 5. Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) Beethoven is a German composer, universally recognized as one of the greatest composers of the Western European music tradition. Beethoven’s works crowned the classical period and also effectively initiated the romantic era in music. His astonishing Third Symphony (1803) was the thunderclap