英国文学选读unit6.pptVIP

;Unit6 Romantic Poets (I);William Blake (1757-1827);;Robert Burns, the greatest Scottish peasant poet, was born in a clay cottage at Alloway, Scotland, in the winter of 1759. His father was an excellent Scottish peasant who toiled from dawn till dark to wrest a living for his family from the barren soil. Burns was the eldest of the seven sons. He had only two and a half years of regular schooling and after that he was chiefly taught by his father while he helped with the work on the farm. He did a lot of reading and became quite familiar with the old Scottish songs and ballads and also some French. At 13, Burns a full peasant’s labour; at 16, he was a chief labourer on his father’s farm. While working in the fields, Burns often sang to himself, composing new lines in his mind to the old popular Scottish tunes which he knew.;In 1784, the father died. They buried him ，moved to Mossgiel, and began the hard struggle with poverty. In spite of his prudence(节俭) and industry(勤劳), he couldn’t support his family. In 1786, bankruptcy threatened the family. Burns decided to go abroad in search of a living. He collected some of his early poems, hoping to sell them to get some money for the journey. The poems were published in July, 1786, under the title of Poems Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect, which was well received. Burns got 20 pounds for this. He had already bought the ticket for the journey and was ready to leave when a letter from the publisher reached him. The letter encouraged him to issue a second edition of his poems. Burns gave up his plan and went to Edinburgh to arrange for another edition of his work. But at Edinburgh, he felt himself quite an alien(外乡人) in the aristocratic circle who despised him as a ploughman-poet. So he left the city in anger and disappointment and went back to the soil, where he felt more at home. The last few years of Burns’ life were a sad story. His public support of the French Revolution both in speech and writing brought him into confro