综合英语教程(第三版)5电子教案unit7section1课件.ppt-(课件无音视频)

1、ReportCultureAdvanced English5Unit 71Elements of poetry 231234Poem by Walt WhitmanLecture about WhitmanWork on the table below in small groups,filling in the first two columns,and then read the lecture.After reading,return to this table to finish the last column.Things I already known about Whitman:

2、Things Im not quite clear about him:Things I learned after readingabout him:A professor of American literature is giving a lecture to his students.A Poetic Tramp:A Lecture about Walt Whitman 1My last lecture covered poets and their poems before the middle of the nineteenth century.Today,we are going

3、 to study modern American poets and poems.We will start with Walt Whitman.I will first talk briefly about his major contributions to modern American poetry,giving you a short account of his life story.After that,we will read one of his most important poems.When Walt Whitman began publishing his poem

4、s in the mid 1800s,he forever changed peoples sense of what a poet could be,and what a poem could look and sound like.12For Whitman,poetry was no schoolroom or parlor exercise 2.It wasnt an“indoor”activity at all.Instead,poetry had to breathe the open air.It had to start in the earth,just as a tree

5、sets its roots deep in the soil,and then take flight,just as the tree shoots its branches into the sky.Sure,this is actually what I am going to talk about today.Whitman liked to think of the poet as a kind of tramp:someone who traveled far and wide,meeting new people along the way,constantly seeking

6、 out new experiences and new encounters.He also liked to think of himself as the poet of the common man and woman.He admired people who worked hard,especially people who worked with their hands,and he often even made them the subject of his poems.More than anything else,though,he loved the diversity

7、 of life:so many different people,so 34many different kinds of plants and animals,cities and farms,dreams and visions.As a kind of poetic tramp,Whitman set out to encounter all this variety of life and to make it all hang together 3 in his poems.Nobody had ever before tried to put so much into a poe

8、m.Take a quick look at any of his poems just look at it,without even reading it.Whitmans lines almost seem to run right off the page.Before Whitman,the true mark of a poem was its regular pattern of meter and rhyme:the poet sought to shape his emotions and ideas into an organized form.Whitmans long

9、lines are not usually structured in this way.In fact,they often seem to flow across the page in what looks like an uncontrollable flood of words.This happens because he is always trying to get so much of the detail of his world into his poems.5Read his poems aloud.Try to catch the sound of Whitmans

10、voice in them.Whitman is said to have recited poetry aloud as he walked along the seashore,and you can sometimes almost hear the rhythm of the surf in his poems.You can also sometimes hear the voice of a prophet,as when he cries out,“Unscrew the locks from the doors!Unscrew the doors themselves from

11、 the jambs!”4 Whitman loved the sound of the human voice,in speech and in song,and always imagined himself“singing”aloud in his poems.Walt Whitman was born at West Hills,Long Island,in New York non May 31,1819.His father,Walter Whitman 5,was a carpenter and a house builder,and a staunch supporter of

12、 the ideals of the American Revolution.Walt attributed his creativity to the influence of his mother,Louisa Van Velsor Whitman.Walt eventually had seven brothers and sisters,of which he was the second oldest.67When Walt was not quite four years old,the Whitmans moved to Brooklyn,New York,where Walts

13、 father continued to build and sell houses.It was a difficult time economically,and Whitmans father suffered many losses selling the houses he built.Walt managed to attend public schools for six years,until the age of eleven,but was forced to go to work as an office boy to earn money for the family

14、after that.This was all the formal education he ever received.At the age of eleven,Whitman went to work at a law office where he learned writing from work and a local lending library.This was the beginning of Walts lifelong love of literature.Among his earliest favorites were the Arabian Nights,the

15、historical novels and poems of Sir Walter Scott 6,and the adventure novels of89of another ground breaking American writer,James Fenimore Cooper 7.After working in several law offices,he worked as assistant in a physicians office.And finally,Walt went to work for a newspaper.He began as an apprentice

16、 compositor 8,setting type for various local newspapers.Eventually,beginning in his mid teens,he also began writing short pieces that appeared in the papers.Like many well-known authors,Whitman began his literary career as a journalist,reporting on a wide variety of topics.He was often asked to revi

17、ew books,operas,and plays during these years,a task that allowed him to indulge in his favorite pastimes:reading and attending the theater,especially opera.Several years later,Whitman became a schoolteacher on Long Island.From his late teens into his twenties,Whitman alternated1112working as a teach

18、er and as a compositor/journalist,depending on the kind of work he could find.Whitman was not his average mid nineteenth century schoolteacher.For one thing,he refused to hit his students,which made many local residents suspicious of his“lax”methods as a teacher!By 1841,Whitman was back again in New

19、 York City,writing stories for the papers.It was at this time that he was assigned to cover the New York City lectures of a visiting New England speaker already famous throughout the country,Ralph Waldo Emerson9.Emerson would have a tremendous impact on Whitmans sense of what he could do as a writer

20、.Emerson encouraged his audience to follow their inner promptings in all things.In one of the talks Whitman heard,Emerson called for a new kind of poet,one who would set free the imagination and,by doing so,transform the world.13Around 1841,Whitman did a brief stint 10 at a New Orleans paper,a perio

21、d most notable for Whitmans journey to and from New Orleans.He traveled by train to Cumberland,then by horse-drawn stage11 to Wheeling,West Virginia,where he caught the steamboat that sailed the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers to New Orleans;he returned a little over two months later by steamboat up the

22、 Mississippi and across the Great Lakes,where,after taking the train to Niagara and Albany,he caught another steamboat that took him down the Hudson River to Manhattan.Whitmans fascination with American places was energized by these trips.Whitman began to work on his first collection of poems,Leaves

23、 of Grass when he was 36 years old,in 1855.Whitman even assisted in typesetting the volume.Early responses to Whitmans first book were often very critical.1415The Boston Intelligencer printed a scathing12 review,stating that Whitman“must be some escaped lunatic,raving in pitiable delirium.”This was

24、not an uncommon attitude at the time.Whitman was writing an entirely new kind of poetry.Who had ever seen poems about runaway slaves or about the miracles of everyday life,or a poem that began so boldly as“I celebrate myself?”Many readers disapproved of Whitmans subject matter and his style,neither

25、of which seemed to them“refined”or“lofty”enough.But Whitman also had his supporters.One of them was none other than Ralph Waldo Emerson,who had done so much to inspire Whitman in the first place.Emerson wrote Whitman a letter calling the book“the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that Ameri

26、ca has yet contributed.”“I greet you at the beginning of1617A great career,”Emerson wrote,perhaps recognizing in Whitman the very poet he had called for in his lecture“The Poet.”Well,unfortunately,a little,not very much.His father died on July 11,1855,just days after Leaves of Grass appeared,leaving

27、 Walt to provide for his mother and siblings.Whitman would suffer financial difficulties for much of the rest of his life.He borrowed money and worked when he could as a newspaper editor.In 1860,a Boston publisher offered to print a third edition of Leaves of Grass.Whitman earned an impressive$1,000

28、 from this edition,but the publishers went bankrupt shortly after publishing the book,and once again Whitman was strapped for money.Over the years,Whitman published several editions of 181920Leaves of Grass in his lifetime.Soon after Whitman prepared the 1860 edition,his brother George was wounded f

29、ighting in the battle of Fredericksburg in the Civil War 13.Whitman went to Washington,D.C.to be with George,who was recovering in a field hospital from a wound to the cheek.In Washington,Whitman was drawn into the orbit of the war,not as a soldier,but as a volunteer nurse.He worked as a clerk at a

30、government office in the morning and visited the wounded in the Washington hospitals in the afternoon.He assisted these soldiers in any way he could,bringing them small gifts,talking with them,and occasionally writing out letters to family members that the soldiers would dictate to him.The Civil War

31、 from 1861 to 1865 proved to be a crucial period in Whitmans life.Long a vocal opponent of slavery,he was also,2122like Abraham Lincoln,a determined supporter of the Union.Lincoln became another great hero to Whitman.He admired Lincolns force of character and his effort to bring an end to slavery an

32、d preserve the Union.Devastated when the President was assassinated in 1865 Whitman called it the“crowning crime of the Rebellion”he wrote some of his best poems to mourn the passing of Lincoln.After working as an office clerk in Washington,D.C.for several years,Whitman suffered a stroke in 1873.He

33、moved to Camden,New Jersey soon after the stroke,where his mother died within three days of his arrival.Whitman would spend the rest of his days,apart from occasional travel,in Camden,often receiving visitors,with whom he was always happy to pass an afternoon in conversation.He made an extraordinary

34、 impression on his visitors,confirming his informal title as“The Good Gray Poet.”23Whitman did not marry.And he is generally believed never to have had any children.By the time he died in 1892,he was widely regarded as one of the most important and accomplished,and one of the best-loved writers Amer

35、ica had yet produced._Comprehension tasksComplete the tasks below.1.Illustrate your knowledge about Walt Whitman and his life by completing the pre-reading task.2.Report to the class about the following aspects of Whitman:(1)Whitmans life Birth and family:Education:Work:?_did many jobs as office boy

36、,teacher,compositor,journalist etc.KEYSborn in a builders family with 7 brothers and sisters,living in poverty6 years in elementary school_(2)His major poetry collection Leaves of Grass:(3)His final days:?KEYSHis most famous work,receiving scathing reviews at the beginning,but hailed as the work of

37、a poet of the new generation by Emerson_living his final days alone,unmarried,but receiving friends and visitors,enjoying his days as being a respected,best-loved writer,nicknamed“Good Gray Poet”_Questions for discussion 1.What are Whitmans major contributions to modern American poetry?2.His poetry

38、collection Leaves of Grass was not well received at the beginning.Why?3.What makes Whitmans poems different from the poets before him?He changed Americans sense of poem and poetry.That is,a poet does not need to be an especially talented person;anyone with rich experiences of life,with a passion for

39、 life and diversity of human beings and the world,with a desire to express his passions and emotions,can be a poet.Poems dont have to conform to the traditional requirements of meter and rhyme.Poems could be just the songs of life one wishes to sing.For this reason,Walt Whitman is often acclaimed as

40、 father of free verse.1keysWhen Whitman tried to write his poem in free verse,Americans were not ready yet to receive this new form.This is why critics gave a scathing review,calling it“raving in delirium”(talking nonsense in madness).This shows the fate of the first,creative person whose ideas were

41、 often turned down by the world at the beginning.2keysHe was an ordinary person,of poor family origin.He did not receive much education at school,but his education was given in the school of life.He did not follow the trodden route of writing poems.He dared to write them in new forms.He dared to arg

42、ue for his new beliefs about poetry.It should be about“life,diversity of the world,active,lively”,not to be treated like“schoolroom or parlor exercise”.Encourage Ss to extend the list based on their understanding.3keysStudying creative metaphorsIn small groups,put a check mark in the small box befor

43、e the statement if you think it is likely to be said by Walt Whitman.Explain why you think so.1.Poetry is schoolwork and classroom activities.2.Poetry is schoolwork and classroom activities.3.Poetry is a flush of green shadows under huge trees.4.Poetry is nonsense from a crazy person.5.Poetry is bre

44、athing fresh air,drinking fresh water and enjoying bright sunshine.6.Poetry is a painful deliberation of words and expressions.boulder on the seashore.?7.Poetry is bamboo shoots taking flight up after spring rain.8.Poetry is ocean waves and flying foams flapping on the9.Poetry is a board game.10.Poe

45、try is human beings of diverse colors and personalities.11.Poetry is colorful pebbles and golden sand on the beach.12.Poetry is sickness of thought in delirium.What is poetry in your opinion?Try to write your version using a metaphor.?_KEYS?Encourage Ss to explain why certain metaphors are possibly

46、or not possibly said by Whitman based on the evidence from the reading passage.Answers for reference Poetry is schoolwork and classroom activities.Poetry is a flush of green shadows under huge trees.Poetry is nonsense from a crazy person.Poetry is breathing fresh air,drinking fresh water and enjoyin

47、g bright sunshine.Poetry is a painful deliberation of words and expressions.Poetry is bamboo shoots taking flight up after spring rain.?Poetry is ocean waves and flying foams flapping on the boulder on the seashore.Poetry is a board game.Poetry is human beings of diverse colors and personalities.Poe

48、try is colorful pebbles and golden sand on the beach.Poetry is sickness of thought in delirium.Word TasksExplain the words and phrases below according to the context in which they are used in the lecture.sets its roots deep in the soil:take flight:shoots its branches into sky:12345Trees grow their r

49、oots deep in the ground.(Trees/Grass etc.)grow up quickly(Trees)grow up very quickly run right off the page:travel far and wide:and extend their branches into the airtravel extensively(when talking about a widely-traveled person)(when talking about ones writing)active,vivid,interesting,attractive,fu

50、ll of lifeKEYS678910open the locksa determined person who holds an adamant faith or belief in support of somethingunscrew the locks:a staunch supporter:attribute creativity to the influence:a ground-breaking writer:“lax”method:owe ones creativity to theinfluence of/claim that one is creative because