Jane AustenA Transitional Writer in the English Literature.docx

1、Jane AustenA Transitional Writer in the English LiteratureJane Austen,A Transitional Writer in the English Literature【摘 要】简奥斯汀是英国文学史上18世纪末新古典主义过渡到19世纪初浪漫主义的重要代表作家。本文重点从两方面探讨她的过渡性：一方面从作品的主题看，大部分奥斯汀的小说都反映了人们对婚姻态度及观念的变化；另一方面，从写作风格上看，她的作品以喜剧的形式讽刺社会，令人深思。【关键词】简奥斯；过渡时期As we all know, it is not until the s

2、econd half of the 18th century that women novelists began to appear in England. And some gifted women from the end of the 18th century to 19th century made some contributions to the development of the English novel, which even won their places in the front ranks of some realists like Charles Dickens

3、, William Makepeace Thackeray, etc. Jane Austen (1775-1817) was just such a great woman writer in this period. She brought the English novel to its maturity and her satirical fictions marked the transition from the 18th-century neoclassicism to the 19th-century romanticism in the English literature.

4、Jane Austen was born at Steventon and the seventh child of a country clergyman family. She was educated at home and passed all her life in doing small domestic duties in the countryside. She wrote six complete famous novels, including Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfie

5、ld Park (1814), Emma (1816), Northanger Abbey (1818), and Persuasion (1818).She lived and worked at the turn of the century, which witnessed a great change of the English society. Since the Industrial Revolution in the second half of the 18th century, the English social structure underwent rapid cha

6、nges. The industrial capitalists began to control not only the economic but also the political power and thus the struggle between the workers and capitalists also became more and more sharp. Consequently, people started to doubt and even lose hope to the enlightening thoughts that was popular in th

7、e first half of the 18th century. Literature, as a “barometer” of the social life, also experienced great change. One of the most remarkable changes was in the literary taste. That is to say, people started to dislike Swifts brutality, Defoes frank realism, and even Fieldings masculine satire. So th

8、e works with the rational tone began to give way to the works full of sentiments.Under such a social and literary environment, Jane Austen exerted her transitional role in English literature. We can see it from two aspects.Firstly, in theme, most of Jane Austens novels reflect the process of the cha

9、nge of the attitude towards the marriage. As we all know, in Austens novel Sense and Sensibility, one of the heroine, Elinor Dashwood, is quite sensible. She thinks very highly of a man whose worthiness in her eyes only increases when she learns why he cannot marry her. However, another heroine, Mar

10、ianne Dashwood, is very sentimental at the beginning. So she trusts her senses and falls in love with a man who in truth is not as good as he seems and finally is abandoned. Through the different fates of these two sisters, Jane Austen shows us her early attitude towards the marriage that to marry a

11、ccording to sense will end in failure while with ration will succeed. Such a theme reflects that at first Jane Austen inherits the traditional enlightening thoughts. However, her minds change in her later novels, especially in her novels Pride and Prejudice and Persuasion. In these novels, sentiment

12、 becomes upper hand and attains success in the end. For example, at the very beginning of the novel Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen wrote, “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.”1 And the hero and theroine are the very s

13、ensible people. Mr. Darcy, from a noble family, has a strong sense of family status and turns up his nose at the vulgarity of Bennet family. And Elizabeth Bennet is also very sensitive to her family background and becomes instantly prejudiced against Mr. Darcy, despite his good looks and great wealt

14、h. However, with the gradual deep intercourse and understanding between these two people, they fall in love with each other and finally smash the bonds of the ration and social pressure and marry. So this novel shows the victory of the sentiment, for it is just thanks to the deep love that makes the

15、se two people from different class status successfully marry. This reflects that Jane Austens creating thoughts begins to change from the rationalism to the romanticism. Her last novel Persuasion also displays such a change. Therefore, we can say that it is just through the conflict between the rati

16、on and sentiment in the novels that Jane Austen accomplishes the transition from the rational literature to the romantic literature.Moreover, her development from rationalism to the romanticism also reflects in her new concept of marriage. That is she advocates the only base of marriage should be th

17、e true love, not the family backgrounds and economic base. This vividly reflects in the scene of Elizabeth Bennet refusing Mr. Collins proposal. When Mr. Collins proposes to Elizabeth, she answers, “I thank you again and again for the honor you have done me in your proposals, but to accept them is a

18、bsolutely impossible. My feelings in every respect forbid it.”1 These words show Elizabeth the determination that she prefers to keep single in all her life rather than to marry to Mr. Collins without love, and therefore, establish a romantic character.Secondly, her transitional role also displays i

19、n her writing style. That is to say, on the one hand, she inherited some characteristics of the neoclassicism in style and painted the world she knew; so it is foolish to expect from her the high-flown sentiment; but on the other hand, to some degree, her style is also different from the previous en

20、lightening writers, like Fielding, just as she herself claimed that she not only painted the world she lived in with fidelity, but also with sympathy; with a sensitive sense of its blemishes, but also with a true insight into its redeeming virtues. So her characters evolve themselves without any gre

21、at dramatic episodes. And although her language sparkles with wit and irony, they are moderate. Her novel Pride and Prejudice provides a good example for this point. We know that Mr. Collins is a clergyman in this novel. When he sings high praise for his patroness, he says,“Lady Catherine was reckon

22、ed proud by many people, he knew, but he had never seen anything but affability in her. She had always spoken to him as she would to any other gentleman; she made not the smallest objection to his joining in the society of the neighborhood, nor to his leaving his parish occasionally for a week or tw

23、o to visit his relations.”2It is true that these words are also the satire to Mr. Collins snobbery. But different from the traditional satire, Jane Austen is too conscious of peoples snobbery to be angry with them, and thus gives her criticism a flavor of humor. Therefore, we say that in style she i

24、s also a transitional writer at the turn of the century, just as one of the most important neoclassicist, Sir Walter Scott, comments on her,“The big bow-wow strain I can do myself, like any now going; but the exquisite touch which renders ordinary commonplace things and characters interesting from t

25、he truth of the description and the sentiment is denied me.”3To sum up, through the above analysis, we can make such a summary that Jane Austen plays a transitional role in the English literature from the 18th neoclassicism to the 19th romanticism. Trained in the enlightening tradition, she displays

26、 the feeling moderately; influenced by the coming romanticism, she satirizes the society in comedy. So it might be an error to say that Jane Austen is incapable of sentiment, because nobady can create a true comedy of life without romance and passion that is even in the humblest existence.【Notes】1Au

27、sten, Jane, 1997, Pride and Prejudice, Bei Jing: Foreign Language Teaching & Research Press & OxfordUniversity Press, p.1.2Austen, Jane, 1997, Pride and Prejudice, Bei Jing: Foreign Language Teaching & Research Press & OxfordUniversity Press, p.48.3Craik, W. A. 1965, Jane Austen: The Six Novels, New

28、 York: Barnes & Noble Inc., p.56.【References】1Austen, Jane, 1997, Pride and Prejudice, Bei Jing: Foreign Language Teaching & Research Press & Oxford University Press.2Craik, W. A. 1965, Jane Austen: The Six Novels, New York: Barnes & Noble Inc., p.56.3Rubinstein, Annette T. 1953, The Great Tradition

29、 in English Literature from Shakespeare to Shaw, New York: The Citadel Press.4朱红编写，1985，奥斯丁研究，北京：中国文联出版公司。英语专业毕业论文的写作方法Introduction: 毕业论文或学士学位论文（thesis）是每个本科生在毕业之前最重要的一项学习任务。写作毕业论文是总结、检验、深化所学专业知识的过程，同时也可以训练学生分析和解决问题的实际能力，从而为毕业后继续学习和运用所学专业知识进行更高层次的研究奠定基础。因此，每个本科生都必须认真对待，努力写好毕业论文。 完成毕业论文，需要一定的专业知识，也需要

30、正确的写作方法。毕业论文或学士论文是一种研究性论文（research paper）。它的语气、格调和格式不同于非正规文体，如技术报告、随笔等。毕业论文也讲究一定的学术性，但其要求与目的不同于在学术期刊上发表的学术论文。毕业论文是一种正规作文，必须遵循正规作文的规范。完成一篇毕业论文，一般要经过选择方向（论题）、确定论文题目、收集资料、研究分析参考资料、整理论据、拟订参考书目、拟订论文提纲、构思、拟写初稿、修改润色、校对和定稿等步骤。1.1选择论题和确定论文题目 选择论题和确定论文题目，应当考虑论题的学术研究价值，并力求有自己的见解，还必须考虑自己的专业水平、写作能力以及资料来源、写作时间等客观

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32、当在一个易于操作的小范围里去考虑。因为题目涉及的范围越小，越容易写得全面、深刻，从而使论文更有说服力。另外，每个领域都有各自的具体内容和特点。因此，在考虑具体论题之前，先要了解特定领域的一般性知识，然后逐渐将自己的注意力集中于某个论题。1.2收集资料、分析资料、拟定参考书目从某种意义上说，选择与确定论题的过程首先是收集和阅读资料的过程。资料的来源主要是学校的图书馆和资料室，以及Internet的相关网站。查找、收集资料，必须熟悉掌握查阅资料的有关知识与方法。同时，在查阅资料的过程中应适时地做些记录。记录内容包括：作者名、书名能够、版本、出版单位、出版地点、出版日期和参考资料的页码等。参考资料若出自期刊，则应包括：刊物名称、期刊号、资料所在页码、文章作者、文章标题等。Internet为写作毕业论文提供了极大的方便，但网上充斥着各种各样的信息，须注意甄别是专家权威的东西还是业余爱好者的东西，在引进论文时还须说明是否是专家权威的观点，并须注明出处，以免抄袭之嫌。确定论题之后，就是研究分析资料和拟定参考书目（working bibliography）。写毕业论文需要利用各种参考资料，但写作毕业论文决不仅仅时收集资料，或简单的“剪刀加浆糊”的工作。通常我们收集的资料都会多于实际写进论文里去的资料，论文作者必须对自己收集到的资料加以筛选和分析整理，并结合自己预想的