英国文学简史教案（免费）.doc

PAGE 英国文学简史教案 Introduction Literature in the widest sense is just about anything written. But in the more specialized sense, it is the art that uses language as a medium. Literature contains fiction and non-fiction. Under fiction there are four genres: novels, short stories, plays, and poems. Fiction is referred to as creative or figurative expression of life. Non-fiction is called a literal expression of life or discursive writing. Non-fiction is essay, which has traditionally been classified into 4 categories: description, narration, exposition and argumentation. Robert Frost says literature is a performance in words. It is the work of men who are specially sensitive to the language of their time and who use the skill of language to make their vision of life. Literature helps us to better understand the nature of the real. And it also makes us readers take delight in the way that the work has been constructed, take delight in the performance in words. Literature offers both pleasure and illumination. It enriches our lives and increases our capacities for understanding and comprehension. For the first-level readers, literature is read for emotional satisfaction, for excitement as well as for entertainment. For The second-level readers, literature is read for its didactic function. Advanced readers of literature have a distinctive concern over matters beyond didacticism. They look for “how it is said”. In other words, sophisticated readers do not allow themselves to be passively manipulated by either moving plots or fascinating characters. Instead, they have an awareness of how authors manipulate readers, of what the mode of narration is, of whom the speaker is and what the benefit of the choice is. For them, Literature can be read as rhetoric and philology. Readers at this level are also aware of artistic weakness. They even read texts closely as texts and do not move into the general context of human experience or history. The aim in teaching literature is to