Choose to Be Alone on Purpose 背景知识(background info)

1. Henry David Thoreau: U.S. thinker, essayist, and naturalist (1817—1862). Born in Concord, Mass., Thoreau graduated from Harvard University and taught school for several years before deciding to become a poet of nature. Back in Concord, he came under the influence of R. W. Emerson and began to publish pieces in the Transcendentalist magazine The Dial. In the years 1845—1847, to demonstrate how satisfying a simple life could be, he lived in a hut beside Concord's Walden Pond; essays recording his daily life were assembled for his masterwork, Walden (1854). His A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849) was the only other book he published in his lifetime. He reflected on a night he spent in jail protesting the Mexican-American War in the essay Civil Disobedience (1849), which would later influence such figures as M. Gandhi and M. L. King. In later years his interest in Transcendentalism waned and he became a dedicated abolitionist. His many nature writings and records of his wanderings in Canada, Maine, and Cape Cod display the mind of a keen naturalist. After his death his collected writings were published in 20 volumes, and further writings have continued to appear in print. Check out the websites at http://www.eserver.org/thoreau/thoreau.html and http://nanosft.com/walden/ for more detailed information (including pictures) about Thoreau and his works.


2. John Milton: English poet (1608—1674). Milton attended Cambridge University (1625—1632), where he wrote poems in Latin, Italian, and English; these included L'Allegro and Il Penseroso, both published later in Poems (1645). During 1632—1638 he engaged in private study — writing the masque Comus (1637) and the extraordinary elegy Lycidas (1638) — and toured Italy. Concerned with the Puritan cause in England, he spent much of 1641—1660 pamphleteering for civil and religious liberty and serving in Oliver Cromwell's government. His best-known prose is in the pamphlets Areopagitica (1644), on freedom of the press, and Of Education (1644). He lost his sight in the year of 1651, and thereafter dictated his works. His disastrous first marriage ended with his wife's death in 1652; two later marriages were more successful. After the Restoration he was arrested as a noted defender of the Commonwealth, but was soon released. In Paradise Lost (1667), his epic masterpiece on the Fall of Man written in blank verse, he uses his sublime “grand style” with superb power; his characterization of Satan is a supreme achievement. He further expressed his purified faith in God and the regenerative strength of the individual soul in Paradise Regained (1671), an epic in which Christ overcomes Satan the tempter, and Samson Agonistes (1671), a tragedy in which the Old Testament figure conquers self-pity and despair to become God's champion. Considered second only to W. Shakespeare in the history of English-language poetry, Milton had an immense influence on later literature; though attacked early in the 20th century, he had regained his place in the Western canon by mid-century. Please visit http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/milton/ for further introduction to John Milton and his works.


3. William Wordsworth: English poet (1770—1850). Orphaned at 13, Wordsworth attended Cambridge Univ., but remained rootless and virtually penniless until 1795, when a legacy made possible a reunion with his sister D. Wordsworth. He became friends with S. T. Coleridge, with whom he wrote Lyrical Ballads (1798), the collection often considered to have launched the English Romantic Movement. Wordsworth's contributions include “Tintern Abbey” and many lyrics controversial for their common, everyday language. Around 1798 he began writing the epic autobiographical poem that would absorb him intermittently for the next 40 years, The Prelude (1850). His second verse collection, Poems, in Two Volumes (1807), includes many of the rest of his finest works, including Ode: Intimations of Immortality. His poetry is perhaps most original in its vision of the almost divine power of the creative imagination reforging the links between man and man, between humankind and the natural world. The most memorable poems of his middle and late years were often cast in elegiac mode; few match the best of his earlier works. By the time he became widely appreciated by the critics and the public, his poetry had lost much of its force and his radical politics had yielded to conservatism. In 1843 he became England's poet laureate. He is regarded as the central figure in the initiation of English Romanticism. Check out http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/wordswor.htm and http://www.victorianweb.org/previctorian/ww/wwov.html to find out more about Wordsworth and his works. His complete works can be found at http://www.bartleby.com/145/. Criticism of his works can be found at http://www.ipl.org/div/litcrit/bin/litcrit.out.pl?au=wor-43.