勃朗特姐妹专辑.docVIP

Reading sisters imagination “The Young Men’s Magazine” MCT 品读勃朗特姐妹的想象世界。 词数 499 建议阅读时间 8分钟 Imagine four little children: three sisters and a brother. They are alone in a large old house, miles from anywhere. The weather outside is stormy, or “wuthering” (呼啸的) as local people call it. There’s no one home but a servant in the kitchen below. Their mother is dead and their father, a priest (牧师), is out seeing the people who go to his church. But even when he is at home, he is distant and serious. They play, like all children play, but with a passion (热情) and imagination that is rare and remarkable. The children’s names were Charlotte, Emily and Anne; their brother was called Branwell. They lived 200 years ago in a little place called Haworth in West Yorkshire in the north of England. Three of them became famous as adults, and even more after their (sadly early) deaths. The Bronte sisters, as they are known, made a mark on the literature of their country. Their two most famous novels, Charlotte’s Jane Eyre and Emily’s Wuthering Heights, have been copied by a thousand other writers and read by millions in almost every language that people speak. April 21 marked the 200th anniversary of Charlotte’s birth. In 2011, an amazing discovery was made that takes us back to the large creaky (破旧的) house that stood 200 years ago. It is a very small notebook called “The Young Men’s Magazine”. The auctioneer (拍卖商) who sold it said that it was half the size of a credit card (信用卡). On its 19 pages there are thousands of words – 4,000 of them to be exact. The “magazine” has made-up advertisements (广告), news items, poems and stories in it. It shows the imagination of those children who, cut off from the world, were forced to invent their own. When they get together, all young children play at inventing their own worlds. For most, these worlds are rather normal: doctors and nurses, soldiers and the like. This 200-year-old document (文件) shows that this was not the case with the Brontes. Th