Advanced English (2)

Lecturer:Yang Chengyangchenghn@yahoo.com.cn

2012.2 – 2012.6

The Libido for the Ugly

H.L. Mencken

Teaching Aims

•1. To know the author, Henry L. Mencken

•2. To learn the writing technique of description

•3. To appreciate the language features

Important and Difficult points

• Language: difficult new words

• Style: biting, sharp

Background information

Henry Louis Mencken

Living period

1880--1956

Who is he?

American educator, author, criticAmerican educator, author, critic

Did he make you think of any writer in

China?

柏杨

Presentation

•Try your best to make your classmates understand and remember the following new vocabulary. Each group have no more than 5 minutes.

Group 1

• libido lucrative hideous

• forlorn macabre computation abominable alley filth alludeappalling desolation dreadfully

• intolerably bleak

Group 2

• monstrousness lacerate pretentious linger downright dormer leprous rat—trap misshapen uncomely revolting

• horrible hideousness•

Group 3

• shabby grime gully chalet highpitched dingy clapboard

• preposterous pier cemetery swinish decaying perpendicular precarious

Group 4

• eczematous patina shocking uremia

• loathsome laborious • incessant decompose • malarious hamlet incompara

ble titanic aberrant unlovely decomposing

Group 5

• gloomy God-forsaken, uncompromising inimical

• ingenuity grotesquery retrospect diabolical concoct insensate brute abomination putrid deface

•

Group 6

• inadvertence obscene disgusting unfathomable frightful horror

• ghastly enigmatical dogmatic edifice depravity penthouse lust etiology pathological

Structure

•How many parts are there in the text?

Structure

• Section I (para 1~2) -- the general impression of Westmoreland (rich and ugly)

• Section II (para 3~5) -- the description of the design and color of the houses

•Section III (para 6~8) -- the reason and cause why the people in Westmoreland love ugly houses

•Section IV (para 9) -- Conclusion

Observe the pictures carefully and choose one and try to d

escribe it.Use at least 15 words or phra

ses you got from the

text in your description.

•Detailed study of the text

• Section I (para 1~2) -- the general impression of Westmoreland (rich and ugly)

Detailed study of the text

•Libido ---–Do you think it is a general word?

–No. It is a specific word used in psycho-analysis

– It is a technical term in psychology. (Freudian)

Libido ---

• Why does the writer choose

this term?

– -- in order to give his subject scientific coloring.

Pittsburgh –

A city in southwest Pennsylvania , It is one of the most important industrial cities of America, and a center of rail and river transportation. Termed the “Steel City” of “Smoky City”, it is the center of rich bituminous-coal region, producing also natural gas, oil and limestone, a large part of US steel and iron is produced here.

http://www.gettyimages.cn/index/showmid/photoid/322277.html

http://www.gettyimages.cn/index/showmid/photoid/886471.html

http://belcanto.yculblog.com/post.2890981.html

• How is para 1 developed? What effect does the powerful contrast in the last two sentences of para 1 have on the reader?

•How many buildings did the writer describe in details?

• Section II (para 3~5) -- the description of the design and color of the houses

•How do people build the house on the hillside?

•What impression can you get?

• What’s the main concern of para 4?

• What places were mentioned in para 5? What do they look like?

•Why did the author mention all these places?

• Section III (para 6~8) -- the reason and cause why the people in Westmoreland love ugly houses

•Why does Mencken refer to the villages of Europe?

The Parthenon

• A beautiful doric temple built in honor of the virgin goddess Athena on the Acropolis in Athens around 5h century B.C.

http://okok.org/forum/viewthread.php?tid=37752

http://www.86art.net/sj/kj/jz/200705/20070506150035.html

http://www.enet.com.cn/article/2005/1009/A20051009460322_6.shtml

http://www.scuec.edu.cn/waiy/detail.php?id=414

•Why did the author mention the Parthenon?

•Does Mencken believe that these people built such ugly houses because they were just ignorant? What is his explanation for the ugliness in America?

• Section IV (para 9) -- Conclusion

• Is the writer serious in his suggestions for research in psychology and pathological sociology in the final paragraph?

•What is description? How to describe a place/ a person / a thing? (order, any suggestions?)

•Your presentation

Description

•Description is painting a

picture in words of a person,

place, object and scene.

The soul of description:

– minute details, specific concrete words to appeal to the reader's senses of

– sight– smell– taste– hearing– touch

•What is objective description and what is subjective description? When should we use the objective description and when, subjective?

•Your presentation

Objective \ impersonal

–realistic–When topic is viewed from an objective point of view, the writer paints a verbal picture of the realistic world, like a camera.

–factual words

Subjective \ personal

– impressionistic \ emotional– The writer wants to share with the readers a kind of dominant impression. The dominant impression may be a sense impression or an emotion

Objective \ impersonal

•To show your fairness

Subjective \ personal

•Indicate your opinion

•Serve the further development of the article

•Take a photo of an ugly building and bring it to the class, then try to describe it both objectively and subjectively. I’d like 3 groups to do this presentation, 2 persons for each group.

Notice

•1. The choice of words, the choice of images

•2. What are you going to say next (the dominant impression)?

•Is the text an objective or subjective description? Why?

Subjective \ personal

•emotional words– In this lesson, Mencken is very s

ubjective and personal. His description is strongly impressionistic and highly emotional.

Subjective \ personal

• The dominant impression --- ugliness–Westmoreland is the ugliest pla

ce not only in the US but also in the world.

•The author makes full use of figures of speech to create nauseating and dreadful images to reinforce his verbal attack. What are the most frequently-used rhetorical devices in this text?

•metaphor, simile, hyperbole

•sarcasm, ridicule and irony

Antithetical contrast ( 反衬对比 )

• 1.Here was the very heart of industrial America, the center of its most lucrative and characteristic activity, the boast and pride of the richest and grandest nation ever seen on earth—and here was a scene so dreadfully hideous, so intolerably bleak and forlorn that it reduced the whole aspiration of man to a macabre and depressing joke.

Antithetical contrast ( 反衬对比 )

• 2.Here was wealth beyond computation, almost beyond imagination ---- and here were human habitations so abominable that they would have disgraced a race of alley cats

• (repetition, antithesis, parallelism)

• The richest and grandest nation vs. hideous, bleak,forlorn p1﹙ ﹚

• Wealth beyond computation vs. So abominable that they would

have disgraced a race of alley cats p1﹙ ﹚

litotes﹙ 反叙法﹚

• It is a figure of speech in which, rather than making a certain statement directly, a speaker expresses it even more effectively, or achieves emphasis, by denying its opposite

litotes

•e.g. "He was not unfamiliar with the works of Dickens."

• rather than merely saying that a person is quite attractive (or even very attractive), one might say that he or she is "not unattractive".

•The country itself is not uncomely p3﹙ ﹚

General introduction: contrast (rich & ugly)

Detailed description: shape, color

(possible choice)

Why: libido for the ugly

Conclusion

Not poor

Having choice

Elimination( 排除法）

Possible reason for the ugly buildings foreigners, poverty, lack of other

choices, positive libido foreigners× poverty× lack of other choices× positive libido

Libido for ugly

Example

“I love you.”Possible reason:• your money ו your rich and powerful familyו your help to date with your roommate×………So I love you, truly.

choice of words “adv+adj” structure:

•dreadfully hideous, •intolerably bleak

Use two adjectives together

• eg: bleak and forlorn; • macabre and depressing;• unbroken and agonizing

Images:

1.Leprous hill2.rat trap3.Swinishly4.An egg long past all hope or car

ing5.Uremic yellow6.A fat woman with a black eye7.A Presbyterian grinning

Image

• Far out at the sea ， the water is as blue as the bluest cornflower( 矢车菊） , and as clear as the clearest crystal.

• All the trees and bushes were polyps, half animal and half plant, they looked like hundred-head snakes growing out of the sand, the branches were long slimy arms, with tentacles( 触角） like wriggling worms.

•

• The witch has a face of a horse, ears of a donkey , eyes of a toad ( 癞蛤蟆 ), a mouth

• of a hippopotamus ( 河马） .

•How to make effective use of images?

•1. Choose an image that can convey your meaning and feeling exactly

•2. Choose an image that most readers are familiar with or it can bring a lot of imagination to the readers

His Style

–He is well-known for his

bombastic style and acid

tongue

Group activity

•Choose one building/ place you like/hate most on our campus and make a description with at least 3 images.

•Do you like the article? Why or why not? What do you appreciate most in this writing? What do you hate most?