. Moje zkušenost s britskou a americkou literaturou

Ernest Hemingway

He is the most important author in lost generation. Ernest Miller Hemingway was born in 21^st July 1899 in Oah Park, in Chicago as the second of six children. At school he was good at sports and at english. He wrote for the school newspaper and he graduated in 1917. After high school he worked as a sports reporter for the Kansas City Star. When USA entered the First World War he left his job. During WWI he was ambulance driver. Shortly before his 19^th birthday he was badly injured by enemy fire and spent several weeks in a hospital in Milano. Then he lived in Paris where worked with Gertrude Stein. In Paris he met a group of artists who felt alienated from their country. They considered themselves as Lost generation. In the 1930 he became a war correspondent in the Spanish Civil War and World War II. Many of his books were about war. His most successful book “For Whom the Bell Tolls” was written in 1940 and it is about Spanish Civil War. Another novel “ A Farewell to Arms” is about the futility of war. Hemingway married four times in his life. With his second wife he moved to Key West in Florida where he enjoyed hunting, fishing and drinking. Hemingway’s health wasn’t good and he had many accidents. After his fourth divorce he began to drink heavily. In 1954 was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature but he was too ill to receive it in person. In 1961 Hemingway killed himself with a shotgun as his father.

Works: Man without Woman,  Winner Takes Nothing,  Fiesta,  Sun also Rises, Farewell to Arms,  Green Hills of Africa,  Have and not Have,  The fifths Column, Whom the Bell Tolls,  Across the River,  Into the Trees,  Island in the Stream,  The Snow of Kilimanjaro,  A Moveable Feast,  The Old Man and the Sea (1952) – he got a NP for this work

Charles Dickens

He is one of the greatest English realistic novelists. He was born in Landport and lived in London and his father was a clerk in an office. He was second of eight children. He was very clever as a child, but his family was the poor. Dickens worked in a factory as a child, where he washed bottles. When he was 16, he started work for newspaper and soon he was one of the best journalists. He devoted work for theatre. He wrote short stories for magazines. Much of his life spent writing, editing, touring to read his novels and promoting many charities to help the poor. His books became popular in many countries. He spent a lot of time abroad in America, Italy, Switzerland. He had 10 children, but he didn’t have happy family life. He died very suddenly on 9^th, June 1870.

Works: The Pickwick Papers,  Oliver Twist,  Nicholas Nickleby,  The Old Curiosity Shop,  David Copperfield,  Hard Times,  Little Dorrist,  A Tale of Two Cities,  Great Expectations,  A Christmas Carol,  Americans Notes,  Pictures from Italy

William Shakespeare

He is considered to be the greatest of all dramatics all over the world. He was born in Stratford-upon-Avon. He was the son of a glove maker John Shakespeare and his wife Mary Arden. He was their youngest son (he had one sister and one brother). William attended the local grammar school. In 1582 he married Anne Hathaway from a nearby village Shottery. She was 8 years older than William and they had two daughters – Susan and Judith. Judith had a twin Hamnet but he died at the age of 11. In 1599 he bought the Globe Theatre. After acting and writing and after his son’s death he went back to Stratford and lived a quiet live with his family. He died on the same day as he was born (on 23^rd April). He is buried at local Trinity Church. There are only two portraits of Shakespeare which are authentic and one of them in the bust in Stratford at Trinity Church.

Works:

Comedies: The Comedy of Errors, The Taming of the Shrew, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, A Midsummer-Night’s Dream, Merry Wives of Windsor, As You Like It, Twelfth Night

History plays: Henry IV, Henry V, Henry VI, Richard III, Richard II, Julius Caesar

Tragedies: Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, Hamlet, King Lear, Othello

Hamlet

Hamlet is prince of Denmark. Hamlet’s father dies. Hamlet suspects his brother of murder. Father’s ghost tells Hamlet who murders him. Hamlet thinks about sense of his life. Hamlet wants to commit a suicide. Hamlet murders Ophelia’s father. Ophelia is his sweetheart. Ophelia goes mad and she drowns. Hamlet is to provoke on the fight. Hamlet dies in this fight.

Přehled literatury:

1. The Middle Ages
   Beowulf
   John Wyclife
2. The Renaissance and Humanism
   Geoffrey Chaucer
   William Shakespeare
3. 17^th Century
   John Milton: Paradise Lost

4. 18^th Century
   Jonathan Swift: Gulliver’s Travel
   Daniel Defoe: Robinson Crusoe

5. Romanticism
   Sir Walter Scott: he is founder historical novels. Waverley, Kenilworth
   Lord George Gordon Byron
   Percy Bysshe Shelley
6. Victorian Age (Critical realism) – 19^th Century
   Brontë Sisters: Emily and Charlotte: Jane Eyre
   Jane Austen: Mousetrap
   Charles Dickens
7. The 1^st Half of the 20^th Century
   Oscar Wilde: The Picture of Dorian Gray
   Rudyard Kipling: The Jungle Book
   George Bernard Shaw: Irish: Pygmalion, You Never Can Tell

8. Contemporary Literature
   Agatha Christie: Ten Little Niggers, Sleeping Murder
   George Orwell: Animal Farm, 1984
   R.R. Tolkien: Hobbit, The Lord of The Rings
   Arthur C. Clarke: 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Fountains of Paradise

bust – poprsí, bysta

alienate – odcizit, zcizit

considered – považoval, uvážil, uvážili

futility – marnost, nicotnost, bezvýslednost

devoted – oddaný, věnovaný, zasvěcený, věrný, odsouzený ke zkáze

suspect – podezřelý (osoba, člověk), tušit, podezříva

sense – smysl

commit – spáchat

suicide – sebevražda

mad – bláznit, šílený

drown – topit, utopit se

provoke-vyzván