Spring Sowing 现代大学英语教材.ppt

Lesson 7 Spring Sowing by Liam O’Flaherty Questions to Think Over: 1.What do you think of the title? What were they sowing? How did they sow it? 2.What were the life ambition of the young couple? Is there any difference between the husband and the wife? What? 3. How is the story developed? Do you find any vivid descriptions in the story? What? ? II. Introductions 1. About the author (see P. 204 of the Student’s Book) 2. Brief Introduction to the Text Liam O’ Flaherty is considered one of the most important modern Anglo-Irish authors together with James Joyce. He was born in 1896 on an island in Ireland, which must have had very big influence on his character as well as on his writing. “Spring Sowing” is taken from his first collection of short stories which bears the same title published in 1924. The story describes the first day of the first spring planting of a newly-wedded couple against the background of a traditional agricultural country. In Ireland at that time, most people still depended on farming for a living, and the main crop was the potato. Modern science and technology had not yet caught up with the land. There was little machinery. Practically everything was still done by hand. A typical farmer believed in traditional virtues: hard work, simple living, discipline, and above all, a strong sense of responsibility, responsibility for the happiness of your wife/husband, parents, and children. In spite of their almost primitive living and working conditions, however, they also had their joys and love, and their longings for the future as does the newly-married couple described here. For Mary and Martin Delaney, this was an extremely important day, because it not only would determine the crop they would harvest in autumn, but would also show what kind of wife and husband they would prove to each The story here does not have much of a plot. But the author has seized a very dramatic moment in the young couple’s life and has shown their li