Chapter 93 Session 4 "Advanced English" Lessons and Revolutionary Feelings

Another cornerstone of my return to National Taiwan University is the "Advanced English" course jointly offered by the Department of Chinese and the Department of History from 1970 to 1988. It is the most stable and powerful course for me. The challenge is also the challenge I am most willing to take on. At that time, almost all the students of the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Research Institute had ambitions for further study, except for the Department of Literature, which was slightly better. The foreign language ability of the Department of Chinese and History was not enough for in-depth study of culture, so the reading range, depth and speed had to be strengthened.In 1970, when I started teaching the first class, in order to measure their thinking and English proficiency, I first mimeographed some single English articles on world culture, read them to them and answered some of my questions.I was surprised to find that the first-year students of these graduate schools seldom read works with Western cultural concepts, let alone have the experience of struggling with English original works.I think that in order to reach the depth of any language, you must read a complete book to get a more complete view, and you can't just read sporadic selections, so I hope to read at least two books in the last semester and three or four books in the next semester.When I said this plan, there was a soft exclamation: "What? Do I need to read five or six original texts?" However, I understand that the graduate students of National Taiwan University will not admit what is "difficult".

I have been reading since I was a child, and I love books that make me think over and over again.Studying in the United States or visiting Europe, pay attention to the field of comparative literature, and look at the speculative culture of the West with the mentality of an Easterner; and then look at the rich and beautiful Chinese literature from a Western point of view. There are a lot of serious discussions among the students in this class, which is worthy of my careful planning.It is not a problem for me to choose a book with rich content and beautiful writing. My biggest challenge is how to speak to people from different fields at the same time.The Department of Chinese and the Department of History are professional fields that I respect. They take different courses at school, and their goals for future study and work are also very different. How can I arouse their common interests and reach the level of "advanced" English? The only one The feasible way, perhaps, is to appeal to a common literary soul.

At that time, the United States and the Soviet Union dominated the world, and the Cold War was in full swing. After Taiwan’s anti-communist and anti-Russian 20 years ago, the list of banned books was very long, and most of the English data that could be used as teaching materials came from the United States. Nearby, several bookstores such as Ouya, Futaba, etc., took photos and copied cultural, psychological or philosophical books with very simple bindings.Fortunately, Time magazine, which is in circulation, has a list of the top ten best-selling works in each issue, divided into two kinds of fiction and non-fiction.Photo books can often be bought in several bookstores on Zhongshan North Road. It is said that some American soldiers in the Vietnam War needed them, so I often go to Zhongshan North Road to look for books.I often go to the Dunhuang Bookstore. You can buy reprints after the book list comes out. The "efficiency" is extremely high, and it is also a grand occasion.I still remember that I walked on the sidewalk of Zhongshan North Road with a new foreign book in my hands, and read it all night when I went home.The books I use as teaching materials must have something to say, can arouse the interest of young people, the writing is beautiful and clear, the political stance is not the crazy right or the crazy left that was popular at the time, it can't be too thick, it can't be too thin, and it must be bought by students The Taiwanese version.

Although I didn't keep track of the details by year.However, based on what we can collect today, the textbooks we use can reflect to some extent the changes in Western cultural concerns during those two decades. They were reprinted and read in Taiwan, which also had a considerable impact. The first book I taught was Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, the original text that had to be read in a few weeks for most of my students to be about their "troubled new world".In the book, the science and technology plan to control the world of human nature and the story of how to destroy the natural existence inevitably use some scientific and technological terms, which is frightening.But after I read the first two chapters in detail, they overcame the language barrier and gradually entered into the various assumptions and doubts about the future world in the book.The author's grandfather Huxley was a scientist. In order to defend Darwin's theory of evolution, in the 19th century, he had a long-term and fierce literary battle with Bishop Weberforce and the poet Arnold on religious and scientific education. Reading it a hundred years later, they are life-threatening The debate of origins and development is still exciting! And almost all literary histories end with a reference to Huxley Sr.'s two grandsons: the biologist Julien Huxley and the critic The author of this book, Aldous Huxley, is a playwright.Although they continued the old Huxley's debate in two ways: but their works continued the belief that the old Huxley insisted on in the debate, that is: although human beings are animals, they are born with moral consciousness and free will.

When "Brave New World" was written, Hitler and Stalin were not yet raging. The author could lay out the macro layout of the great cultural conflict quite calmly, quote classics, and sometimes even elegantly lay out a utopia controlled by technology. The son John is at the center, writing about the struggles and failures of human nature.John is a handsome young man who grew up in an Indian tribe, and is called a barbarian by people in the New World, but the world he sees following the sun, moon, stars, and seasons is the most beautiful chapter in the book. When reading "Brave New World", you must read Orwell at the same time.These two novels are only about 200 pages long, and are quite different in terms of story material and writing style, but they are often read and discussed together with the most successful anti-totalitarian or anti-communist literary works.It was written by Orwell, who worked as a policeman in the British colony of Burma, participated in the Spanish Civil War, was betrayed collectively, returned to England as a reporter, and observed the thoughts and sufferings of the low-level society with socialist sympathy.Therefore, he wrote "Why I Write" after World War II (1939-1945) and said: "Every word of my works discussing serious issues is not directly or indirectly opposing totalitarianism and supporting democratic socialism." The prophecy of the Big Brother government (Big BrOther, generally considered to be directed at Stalin's totalitarian rule) is the use of punishment, and the fear of punishment.

In 1959 Huxley published "Brave New World Revisited".Examining the changes and hidden worries in the world in the past 27 years, he points out that in his new world, the government is not controlled by violence, but uses science and technology to systematically achieve totalitarianism over the whole people. Yin Haiguang's review article "1984) ("The Complete Works of Yin Haiguang" page 23｜121, Taipei Laurel Publishing House), mentioned the three slogans of the totalitarian government: "War is peace, freedom is slavery , Ignorance is power", among which the saying "Ignorance is power" is really an earth-shattering great discovery, which has attracted the attention of intellectuals.In Taiwan in 1970, I brought these twenty or so young people to the seashore of this debate, pushed them into the ocean full of advanced thoughts in English, and let them gradually discover the depth of the ocean.The different styles of literature, like the way of swimming, are ever-changing and worthy of study and consideration.

"Brave New World" has always been on my textbook list, sometimes for students to read by themselves.But since 1983, I have explained these two books in class again, because the real 1984 has come. It is a wonderful thing that the author of this famous political prophecy was written in 1948 and died.He thought it would be far enough away to presuppose that terrible world more than 30 years later, but the years passed in a flash. In the two years around 1984, the whole world was enthusiastically comparing, evaluating, and Reviewing this prophecy and the actual world situation, a flood of discussion articles is really a great event in the history of culture.I've been able to follow the details for years, and there's so much to talk about, it's such an exciting time to be there.

Since 1974, I have been the editor-in-chief of the Chinese translation series of Mark Twain's novels at the National Institute of Compilation and Translation.I think Mark Twain's "Phantom Journey to the Ancient Country" is very suitable for this class of students to study.Mark Twain placed a 19th-century American Yankee in Camelot, the Arthurian court of the legend of a heroic beauty in the Middle Ages in England, with his unique humorous technique. It also highlights the vulgarity and superficiality of the emerging modern society in the United States.His most successful satire is the deconstruction of the magic of the legendary court wizard (prophet), poor Merlin, who was dismissed by the modern scientific knowledge of the nineteenth-century American Yankees as a jester and a liar.This book and Mark Twain's "Old Man's Expedition to the Foreign Countries" both use sharp contrasts to create a kind of American literature that is very different from European literature. Pursue self-confidence in your own culture.Mark Twain's succinct and powerful humor has a rare charm, and it is also a great inspiration to the cartoon culture of later generations.I use this book once every three to five years, and it is quite popular with students.

I have taught for more than 30 years, and I have no yellowed lecture notes. The history of English literature is constantly revised, and the lessons must be re-prepared. In addition to the core selection, new selections, new comments, and new theories are added every year; I never use textbooks for more than three years in a row.With such hopes, I am also diligent in preparing lessons such as preparing for battles.I have used Thomas Mann's and the French philosopher Heville's No Marx or Jesus.Reading these two books, the background culture that students need to make up is too heavy. I often feel anxious when I lead the way in the classroom. After using it for two years, I dare not use it as a textbook again.In the late period of the Vietnam War, "Time" magazine introduced "Fire on the Lake", which was interviewed and researched by an American female reporter.A well-analyzed book.

Soon there was a reprint in Taipei. I bought a copy and thought it was useful. A student told me the next week that the book was banned in Taiwan because it opposed the US government. In 1977, I began to teach Philip Slater's "The Pursuit of Loneliness". This is a small book with rich meanings, only 150 pages, and uses some interesting American social phenomena to review modern people's pursuit of loneliness .For the Chinese who have lived in the big family system for many years, and even grew up under the shroud of imperial power, excitement and mutual involvement are a manifestation of a sense of security.Nowadays, it is a strange concept to pursue loneliness while letting go of this kind of life.There is also a price to pay for being alone. The concept of "loneliness" has attracted me for many years. As early as my high school period, I began to have my own thoughts, and often had the desire to escape from the eighteen-bed dormitory.Sleeping on that bed, turning left and right to face others.Little joys and sorrows have nowhere to hide.I lived in a dormitory for four years in college, and later got married and had children. I never had a space to be alone, and only at the age of fifty did I have a small study room, where I put a heart that indulged in reading and forgetting to think.

I pay attention to the cultural theme of loneliness.It began in the 1960s when I was teaching at Chung Hsing University, and I borrowed "The Lonely Crowd" co-written by Lawyer Lischmann and a law school professor from the U.S. News Service. It was a rather sensational book at the time , very well received by the cultural circles. I introduced this book to Cai Yuanhuang, who was studying at the National Taiwan University Institute of Foreign Languages ​​at the time. His Chinese translation was first published by Taipei Guiguan Book Company in 1974.This book discusses the relationship between personal character and society in the prosperous American society after the world wars.The three typical types of social personality are adaptive type, divorced type and self-disciplined type.Self-disciplined behavior has the ability to obey, can freely decide whether to obey, and has enough self-awareness to recognize one's own thoughts and abilities. You don't have to always rely on a large group of people to get rid of loneliness, and you can reserve space for thinking and living alone. This kind of "loneliness" in pursuit of independent thinking is common in literature.There are many classic lines in Chinese poetry, such as Qian Qi's "Provincial Examination of Xiangling Guse" in the Tang Dynasty: "The flowing water flows through Xiaopu, and the sad wind passes through Dongting. At the end of the song, no one can be seen, and there are several green peaks on the river." Yiren's melancholy was blurred, and the music of Xiangling drums echoed over the vast Xiangshui River, and disappeared in an instant.This is the desolation and loneliness of Chinese poetry and literature, which Mr. Zhu Guangqian talked about in his English poetry class.Lu Xun once criticized his aesthetic interpretation of this poem, saying that he did not know the sufferings of the people.But the modern West.Even Thoreau's collection of essays is also regarded as a book far away from the hustle and bustle, lonely and lonely, and there is a criticism of society hidden behind it.The works we often use as teaching materials, such as Woolf's "A Room of One's Own", her famous line is: "A woman who wants to engage in literary creation must have money and a room of her own." Another example is Doris.In Lessing's "Room Nineteen", the protagonist Susan has always wanted to keep some of her own space, but she couldn't break free from family responsibilities and social constraints and stereotypes, and couldn't find a better way spiritually, so she ended up in a privately rented hotel. Room "Room Nineteen" committed suicide.These works with a strong feminine consciousness are pursuing personal space, which is the so-called "loneliness", and want to confirm that a woman also has the value of her own independent mind, the injustice, anxiety and lifelong longing hidden in the predicament. The textbooks that really sustain this class are actually works of pure literature. The best and most effective are novels. An easy-to-use explanation of short stories for the classroom.The earliest I used was Sherwood.Anderson's "A Small Town Story", James Joyce's "Dubliners" and his "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man".Later, I bought two books of American short stories, some of which were excellent works, writing various stories about modern life from very broad and different angles.Soon Taiwan obtained the copyright again, and published an authoritative anthology "Modern Tradition" (selecting 49 novels by 23 writers, one-third of which are Europeans, such as Chekhov, Conrad, Joyce , Kafka, etc., are the most original and influential. Among them, Qi Keyao (sorrowful), tells the story of a Russian sled driver who was rewarded for the death of his son, but no one paid attention to him. Telling about his sadness. My reading experience is: a good novel is the most effective Chinese teaching material. It has a plot and a situation, as well as a development and an ending. Most good prose, from a modern point of view, actually has the structure of a novel. "Sorrow" can also be regarded as a very good prose. It has almost no obvious plot. For many years, it has been voted by my students in the last class. favorite novel. However, I also hope that students in the "Advanced English" course will recognize important novels" so every year the guide Read several classics, such as Conrad's "Heart of Darkness", Woolf's "Lighthouse Walk", Willa Cather's two "Antonia" and "The Death of the Archbishop", Foster "A Journey to India", Faulkner's "The Bear" and other excellent works in English. In the second half of the second semester, I began to teach some English and American poetry.I printed lecture notes in the first few years, and later bought Perry's edited "Sound and Meaning". This book was first published in 1956, and new editions were published every few years, with many additions and deletions over time.The book has fourteen chapters, starting with "What is Poetry", discussing how to read poetry chapter by chapter, and the last chapter is "What is Bad Poetry or Good Poetry".There are examples to illustrate the artistic conception, symbolism, simile and metaphor, allegory, irony, implicitness, allusion, meaning and concept, sound and rhyme, meaning and form of poetry.In particular, it takes nearly one-third of one hundred pages to illustrate "good poems and important poems" and "deep reading of poems". This may be the most concise and reliable English poetry course for graduate students of Chinese and history.This book is very suitable for classroom use. It not only helps to read poems, but also helps to read all critical articles of Western literature in the future, and has a long-term reference for them. Those students who took the "compulsory" "Advanced English" course of my liberal arts college for eighteen years were forced by me to study the original text and had to answer countless "Why" ("Why") in my random quiz.Those questions can only be answered in English after reading the entire book. There is no way to escape or use tricks. In a year, nearly a hundred questions were asked and answered.For eighteen years, I devoted myself to making this course as "advanced" as possible.Those more than 400 youths are all about fifty years old now.According to the natural phenomenon of planting and harvesting, most of them become the backbone of society.Today they are jokingly called "Whampoa Phase I" students. Most of them serve in the academic, educational, and cultural circles. There are many outstanding achievements in the field of literature and history. Lin Xinqin, Zhou Bokan, Ye Qizhong, Lin Ruiming, etc. have been in frequent contact for more than 30 years. Yan Juanying and Chen Fangmei have written monographs on cultural and artistic assets for the PEN English Quarterly Magazine edited by me for more than ten years.Li Xiaoti assisted me greatly when I edited "Mr. Qi Shiying's Interview Record".Chen Xinghui has been drinking tea and talking with me for many years.In 2004, I went to the United States to live for a while. She worked hard to edit in Taipei and Yindi, and published my collection of essays "A Day in My Life". After 1980, Zheng Yuyu, Hong Shuling, and Mei Jialing helped me write The selection of materials for the quarterly magazine is really the most authentic and beautiful example of "disciples who have something to do".At the latest, the class of Chen Changming, Kang Yunmei, and Zhang Junli finished teaching. Just as I was in a car accident, they kept visiting me at the Tri-Service General Hospital on Tingzhou Road, which made the young doctors very envious.Now they are the backbone of society.Even the students in my last class have achieved their own achievements.In the past eighteen years, no matter how different people's circumstances, political positions, etc. are.Between us teachers and students, what they call "revolutionary feelings" is constant. After leaving my classroom, they plunged into real life. Among those young people, there must be a few who are my bosom friends. In their middle-aged joys, sorrows and joys, I can remember some sentences and some thoughts, which seem to be in different fallen leaves. Voices heard in the woods.