英语选修8人教版新课标Unit 4第7课时教案（文化背景知识）
I. Pygmalion
Two old gentlemen meet in the rain one night at Covent Garden. Professor Higgins is a scientist of phonetics, and Colonel Pickering is a linguist of Indian dialects. The first bets the other that he can, with his knowledge of phonetics, convince high London society that, in a matter of months, he will be able to transform the cockney speaking Covent Garden flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, into a woman as poised and well-spoken as a duchess. The next morning, the girl appears at his laboratory on Wimpole Street to ask for speech lessons, offering to pay a shilling, so that she may speak properly enough to work in a flower shop. Higgins makes merciless fun of her, but is seduced by the idea of working his magic on her. Pickering goads him on by agreeing to cover the costs of the experiment if Higgins can pass Eliza off as a duchess at an ambassador’s garden party. The challenge is taken, and Higgins starts by having his housekeeper bathe Eliza and give her new clothes. Then Eliza’s father Alfred Doolittle comes to demand the return of his daughter, though his real intention is to hit Higgins up for some money. The professor, amused by Doolittle’s unusual rhetoric, gives him five pounds. On his way out, the dustman fails to recognize the now clean, pretty flower girl as his daughter.
For a number of months, Higgins trains Eliza to speak properly. Two trials for Eliza follow. The first occurs at Higgins’ mother’s home, where Eliza is introduced to the Eynsford Hills, a trio of mother, daughter, and son. The son Freddy is very attracted to her, and further taken with what he thinks is her affected “small talk” when she slips into cockney. Mrs Higgins worries that the experiment will lead to problems once it is ended, but Higgins and Pickering are too absorbed in their game to take heed. A second trial, which takes place some months later at an ambassador’s party (and which is not actually staged), is a resounding success. The wager is definitely won, but Higgins and Pickering are now bored with the project, which causes Eliza to be hurt. She throws Higgins’ slippers at him in a rage because she does not know what is to become of her, thereby bewildering him. He suggests she marry somebody. She returns him the hired jewelry, and he accuses her of ingratitude.
The following morning, Higgins rushes to his mother, in a panic because Eliza has run away. On his tail is Eliza’s father, now unhappily rich from the trust of a deceased millionaire who took to heart Higgins’ recommendation that Doolittle was England’s “most original moralist.” Mrs. Higgins, who has been hiding Eliza upstairs all along, chides the two of them for playing with the girl’s affections. When she enters, Eliza thanks Pickering for always treating her like a lady, but threatens Higgins that she will go work with his rival phonetician, Nepommuck. The outraged Higgins cannot help but start to admire her. As Eliza leaves for her father’s wedding, Higgins shouts out a few errands for her to run, assuming that she will return to him at Wimpole Street. Eliza, who has a lovelorn sweetheart in Freddy, and the wherewithal to pass as a duchess, never makes it clear whether she will or not.
Ⅱ. My Fair Lady
The musical was based on George Bernard Shaw’s 1913 play “Pygmalion”. The following is the plot of the play.
We find Eliza Doolittle (Audrey Hepburn) selling flowers and spewing out the most dreadful words in a Cockney accent. It is really almost unbearable, but don’t turn the movie off as it doesn’t last too long. Audrey Hepburn is perhaps the most beautiful actress to ever grace the screen in my humble opinion. Here, she shines and is only a wall flower for the first part of the movie. Later she blossoms into an exquisite woman who could win the heart of any man. It is truly her best acting.
Professor Henry Higgins (Rex Harrison) and Colonel Pickering discover her selling flowers and after Professor Higgins throws money into her flower basket we expect the two will never meet again. Eliza has other ideas and proudly marches up to the professor’s home and demands to be taught to speak like a lady.
Colonel Pickering then makes a bet with Professor Higgins and says that if he can turn this uncultured “gutter snipe” with a “simply ghastly” accent into a sophisticated, elegant duchess, he will pay for all the expenses. (Reminiscent of “Trading Places” to give a modern example). It is just irresistible to the professor and so he takes on a challenge for six months.
Higgins’ arrogant attitude will make you laugh. He is humorously as unaware of other’s feelings as he is of his own. He is at first very unlikable, yet made me laugh through the whole movie. You will enjoy his eccentric view of life and cunning attitude as he tempts Eliza with chocolates.
When you hear “I Could Have Danced All Night,” you will know why this will become one of your favorite musicals. “On the Street Where You Live” always makes me cry. The script is superb and humorous in so many places. You will find yourself crying, laughing, and becoming increasingly enchanted as the movie progresses. I love this line: “The great secret in life is not a question of good manners or bad manners, or any particular sort of manners, but having the same manner for all human souls.”—Professor Higgins
Higgins and Eliza have quite a few passionate verbal exchanges which are quite amusing. Eliza says: “I want a little kindness.” and we immediately know that love is the only aspect missing from this relationship. Higgins has to learn to love and that to me is the undercurrent in this movie. While Eliza learns to speak well, Higgins learns to love well.
Ⅲ. George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
Irish dramatist, literary critic, a socialist spokesman, and a leading figure in the 20th century theater. Shaw was a freethinker, defender of women’s rights, and advocate of equality of income. In 1925 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Shaw accepted the honour but refused the money.
George Bernard Shaw was born in Dublin, where he grew up in something close to genteel poverty. “I am a typical Irishman; my family came from Yorkshire,” Shaw once said. His father, George Carr Shaw, was in the wholesale grain trade. Lucinda Elisabeth (Gurly) Shaw, his mother, was the daughter of an impoverished landowner. She was 16-years younger than her husband. George Carr was a drunkard — his example prompted his son to become a teetotaler. When he died in 1885, his children and wife did not attend his funeral. Young Shaw and his two sisters were brought up mostly by servants. Shaw’s mother eventually left the family home to teach music, singing, in London. When she died in 1913, Shaw confessed to Mrs. Patrick Campbell: “I must write to you about it, because there is no one else who didn’t hate her mother, and even who doesn’t hate her children.”
In 1866 the family moved to a better neighborhood. Shaw went to the Wesleyan Connexional School, and then moved to a private school near Dalkey, and from there to Dublin’s Central Model School. Shaw finished his formal education at the Dublin English Scientific and Commercial Day School. At the age of 15, he started to work as a junior clerk. In 1876 he went to London, joining his sister and mother. Shaw did not return to Ireland for nearly thirty years.
Most of the next two years Shaw educated himself at the British Museum. He began his literary career by writing music and drama criticism, and novels, including the semi-autobiographical IMMATURITY, without much success. A vegetarian, who eschewed alcohol and tobacco, Shaw joined in 1884 the Fabian Society, served on its executive committee from 1885 to 1911. The middle-class socialist group attracted also H. G. Wells. The both writers send each other copies of their new books as they appeared. “You are, now that Wilde is dead, the one living playwright in my esteem,” wrote Wells after receiving Shaw’s THREE PLAYS FOR PURITANS (1901).
In 1895 Shaw became a drama critic for the Saturday Review. Articles written for the paper were later collected in OUR THEATRES IN THE NINETIES (1932). Music, art, and drama criticism Shaw wrote for Dramatic Review (1885-1886), Our Corner (1885-1886), The Pall Mall Gazette (1885-1888), The World (1886-1894), and The Star (1888-1890). His music criticism was collected in SHAW’S MUSIC (1981). During this period he wrote CAESAR AND CLEOPATRA (1901) and THE PERFECT WAGNERITE (1898).
Pygmalion was originally written for the actress Mrs. Patrick Campbell. Later the play became the basis for two films and a musical. (Shaw’s correspondence with the actresses Ellen Terry and Stella Campbell is available in book form.) Shaw’s popularity declined after his essay ‘Common Sense about the War’ (1914), which was considered unpatriotic. With SAINT JOAN (1924), his masterpiece, Shaw was again accepted by the post-war public. Now he was regarded as ‘a second Shakespeare’, who had revolutionized the British theatre. Shaw did not portray Joan of Arc, his protagonist, as a heroine or martyr, but as a stubborn young woman. And as in classic tragedies, her flaw is fatal and brings about her downfall. Uncommonly Shaw showed some sympathy to her judges. The play was written four years after Joan was declared a saint.
In his plays Shaw combined contemporary moral problems with ironic tone and paradoxes, “Shavian” wit, which has produced such phrases as“He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches”, “England and America are two countries divided by a common language”, “Christianity might be a good thing if anyone ever tried it”, and “I never resist temptation because I have found that things are bad for me do not tempt me.” Discussion and intellectual acrobatics are the basis of his drama, and before the emergence of the sound film, his plays were nearly impossible to adapt into screen. During his long career, Shaw wrote over 50 plays. He continued to write them even in his 90s. George Bernard Shaw died at Ayot St. Lawrence, Hertfordshire, on November 2, 1950. He was cremated and it was his wish that his ashes be mixed with those of his wife, Charlotte — she had died seven years before, “an old woman bowed and crippled, furrowed and wrinkled,” as Shaw depicted her in a letter to H.G. Wells.
Since the days of the silent films, Shaw had been a fan of motion-picture. He also played in the film Rosy Rapture — The Pride of the Beauty (1914). Shaw did not like much of the German film version of Pygmalion (1935), and the penniless producer and director Gabriel Pascal persuaded the author to give him the rights to make films from his plays. “Mr Pascal, you’re the first honest film producer I have ever met,” Shaw told him at their first meeting and gave him a pound note. Pygmalion, produced by Pascal and directed by Anthony Asquith and David Lean (uncredited), was a great success. In one article, Pascal was picked with the Pope and Hitler as one of the ten most famous men of 1938, but his career ended in the financial fiasco of the spectacle Caesar and Cleopatra (1945). Among several other films inspired by Shaw’s plays were Saint Joan (1927), How He Lied to Her Husband (1931), Arms and the Man (1932), Major Barbara (1941), and My Fair Lady (1964). Pascal’s co-director in Major Barbara was David Lean, but for thousand pounds Lean agreed to give the full credit to Pascal.
Ⅳ. Quotations from Bernard Shaw
Behind every successful man, there is a woman and behind every unsuccessful man, there are two.
每个成功的男人后面都有一个女人；每个不成功的男人后面都有两个女人。
I was born intelligent — education ruined me. 我生下来时很聪明的——教育把我给毁了。
Practice makes perfect... But nobody’s perfect... so why practice?
完美无缺苦练来……但没有一个人是完美无缺的……所以干吗要苦练呢？
If it’s true that we are here to help others, then what exactly are the others here for?
有人说我们来到这个世上就是要帮助别人的，倘若此话非虚，那么请问，别人来到这个世界又是干什么的？
Since light travels faster than sound, people appear bright until you hear them speak.
由于光速比音速快，所以在我们听到人们开口之前，个个都显得很聪明。
Money is not everything. There’s Mastercard & Visa. 金钱并非一切，还有信用卡呢。
One should love animals. They are so tasty.
人们应该喜爱动物，它们好吃来着呢。
Every man should marry. After all, happiness is not the only thing in life.
每一个男人都应该结婚。毕竟，幸福不是人生中惟一的东西。
The wise never marry and when they marry they become otherwise.
明白人从不结婚，结了婚就不明白了。
Success is a relative term. It brings so many relatives.
成功是一个相对的概念，就看你怎么看，无怪乎成功人士大家都拿他当自家亲戚看。
“Your future depends on your dreams.” So go to sleep.
“未来取决于梦想。”所以赶紧睡觉去。
There should be a better way to start a day than waking up every morning.
开始新的一天，应该有比每天早上一觉醒来更好的方式。
“Work fascinates me”, I can look at it for hours. “工作令我着迷”，我可以一看好几个小时。
God made relatives; Thank God we can choose our friends.
上帝造就了亲戚；感谢上帝给了我们选择朋友的机会。
The more you learn, the more you know. The more you know, the more you forget. The more you forget, the less you know. So why learn?
学得越多，知道得越多。知道得越多，忘得越多。忘得越多，知道得越少。那么何必学呢？
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