英语选修7外研版Module3Section1阅读背景素材.docVIP

英语选修7外研版Module 3 Section 1阅读背景素材 Module 3 Literature-Section 1 Background readings素材 Part Two Teaching Resources Section 1 Background readings for Module 3 Literature I. Charles Dickens Dickenss novels combine brutality with fairy-tale fantasy; sharp, realistic, concrete detail with romance, farce, and melodrama.; the ordinary with the strange. They range through the comic, tender, dramatic, sentimental, grotesque, melodramatic, horrible, eccentric, mysterious, violent, romantic, and morally earnest. Though Dickens was aware of what his readers wanted and was determined to make as much money as he could with his writing, he believed novels had a moral purpose–to arouse innate moral sentiments and to encourage virtuous behavior in readers. It was his moral purpose that led the London Times to call Dickens the greatest instructor of the Nineteenth Century in his obituary. Always concerned to make money with his writings, Dickens took seriously?the negative response many readers had to his darker novels.? He deliberately addressed their discontent (不满) when he wrote Great Expectations, which he affirmed was written in a most singular and comic manner. During his lifetime, Charles Dickens was the most famous writer in Europe and America. When he visited America to give a series of lectures, his admirers followed him, waited outside his hotel, peered in windows at him, and harassed him in railway cars. In their enthusiasm, Dickenss admirers behaved very much like the fans of a superstar today. II. Dickens’ assessment of human affairs (from A Tale of Two Cities) It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other wa