第24章战后文学1.What is Graham Greene’s understanding of sin and sinner?How does thisunderstanding express itself in his major novels?Key:In Greene’s understanding,only with a full recognition of our own as well as other people’s evil can we really understand life and God’s grace.Indeed,in many of his novels,Greene seems to be confirming the Christian idea that a morally imperfect man may enjoy a better chance of religious understanding and spiritual depth,since,in a way,the struggles of these tainted souls bear a closer resemblance to the passion of Christ.For example,in his novel The Power and The Glory,Greene’s Christian understanding of human failings and religious passion are translated into the unconventional image of the priest in this novel.Contrasting to the whiskey priest’s imperfect character was the hagiographical stories that a Mexican mother read to her son.The sentimental perfection of these saints’lives had a negative effect upon the boy,religion-wise,which made him help the Lieutenant in his hunt for the priest.It was the death of the priest,a not so impeccable sacrifice that restored the boy’s faith in God.pare the three major women novelists of postwar English Literature, Murdoch,Spark,and Lessing.Key:Owing to her education in philosophy,Murdoch’s novels exhibit an intenseengagement with theoretical and metaphysical thinking.She believed in the revelation that art could bring to oblique truth.In most of her novels,Murdoch demonstrated her repulsion at the kind of“scientific and anti-metaphysical”“dryness”of the age,when popular works took only a shallow and “journalistic”interest in realityDifferent from the thickly-woven texts and philosophic depth of Iris Murdoch, Muriel Spark(1918-2006)delights in a combination of light comedy and weird Gothic in composing her stories,most of which are set in female institutions—a girls’school,or a convent.Though seriously engaging with tricky moral issues, Spark never loses her ironic distance from her characters.Compared to her fellow female writers of the time,Lessing had an extra identity as a political activist.But what distinguishes Lessing most as a writer with acute feminist and political awareness is The Golden Notebook(1962),this novel has been hailed by British and American feminists as a landmark of women’s liberation movement.In this work,Lessing seems to suggest,that the individual self of woman can find its particular but not purely subjective existence.This is in fact a solution to the conflicts between individual identity and the“collective”raised by the author in the Martha Quest sequence.3.In what ways did John Osborne and the Angry Young Men revolutionise the English stage?Key:The impact of Look Back in Anger(1956)was mostly due to its content ratherthan the novelty of form.In the1940s and1950s,and actually for a long time before that,the English traditional stage was dominated by middle-class domestic drama.It was John Osborne’s much celebrated breakthrough in Look Back in Anger,which was produced in the spring of1956,that marked a decided departure from the mannerism of middle-class drama.Osborne made the ironing board,together with the flat with its littering Sunday newspapers,an image of the time.The term“kitchen-sink realism”was thus coined to describe the ungenteel setting of the new theatreThis“New Wave”,ushered in by plays with similar import and style to Look Back in Anger.Following the breakthrough of Osborne,Wesker focused on working-class reality and urban“low life”.Another playwright sharing Osborne’s class consciousness is David Mercer.His Belcher’s Luck(1966), meant to provide“a metaphor for England and its class structure”4.Absurd is another departure from theatrical traditions.Take Waiting for Godot as an example,how would the play shock its contemporary audience?Key:Waiting for Godot is nothing like what theatregoers would usually see in London’s West End.Two major characters,Vladimir and Estragon,occupy the stage for the most of the time.They seem to be waiting for the arrival of a certain Godot.But whoever he is,he doesn’t arrive.Nothing actually happens.No plan ever materialises.When action is minimised,language is given an unusual prominence.Most of the time,Vladimir and Estragon sit under a bare tree,engaged in inconsequential conversations,making fun of each other,taking off and putting on their boots.The short,fragmentary conversation,the monotony of action,the bareness of stage set give readers and audiences few hints about the meaning underlying the apparent lack of meaning.All these things shirked the contemporary audience.。