Disappearing Through the Skylight ----Osborne Bennet Hardison Jr. Group members: 魏萍 (captain) 王琦 卢琴 李尚蓉

Disappearing Through the Skylight Content Theme of the Passage Stylistic Features Background Information

About the author Osborne Bennet Hardison Jr. was born in San Diego,California in 1928.He was educated at University of North Carolina and the University of Wisconsin.He was taught at Princeton,the University of North Carolina and Georgetown University.He is the author of Lyrics and Elegies (1958),The Enduring Monument (1962),Disappearing Through the Skylight (1980) and so on.He is a professor of English,a Shakespeare scholar and an amateur physicist.

Pablo Picasso ( ) Spanish artist one of the recognized masters of 20th century art. most famous as the founder of CubismCubism

Cubism （立体派） A nonobjective school of painting and sculpture developed in Paris in the early 20th century, characterized by the reduction and fragmentation of natural forms into abstract, often geometric structures usually rendered as a set of discrete planes. 20 世纪初出现于巴黎的一个绘画和雕刻抽象流派，其特征是把各种 自然形态简化并分裂成抽象的、通常为几何形状的结构，并常被描绘 成一系列互不相联的平面

Demoiselles d’Avignon( 亚维农的少女）

Guernica( 格尔尼卡 )

Leonardo da vinci Italian artist & scientist He dabbled in sculpture, architecture,,engineerin g,geology,hydraulics & the military arts,all with success. He also made detailed drawings of human anatomy

The last supper Mona lisa

Dada 达达主义运动 A European artistic and literary movement ( ) that flouted conventional aesthetic and cultural values by producing works marked by nonsense, travesty, and incongruity. Mechanical Head (The Spirit of Our Age), was meant to symbolize the empty spirit of the post-World War I era

About Ford Ford Motor Company:a global company Two business sectors : Automobile sector : sells cars and trucks ;2→3segments Financial Services sector: the operations of Ford Motor Credit Company(Ford Credit);provider

About Structuralism Structuralism is a mode of thinking and a method of analysis practiced in 20 th -century social sciences and humanities ( 社会科学和人文科学 ).  Examining the relations and functions of the smallest constituent elements.  Model:Ferdinand de Saussure’ work

postmodernism Its view is cool, ironic, and accepting of the fragmentation of contemporary existence It concentrate on surface rather than depths, to blur the distinctions between high and low culture. It challenge a wide variety of traditional culture values.

Neomodernism Universalism and critical thinking are the two essential elements of human rights Human rights create a superiority of some cultures over others. Equality and relativism are “mutually contradictory”

Theme of the Passage  The central theme of this passage is “disappearance”.  Another important idea is the universalizing tendency of science and technology.  The third concept is, “if man creates machines, machines in turn shape their creators.”  Finally, the disappearance of history is a form of liberation and this feeling of liberation is often expressed through play.

Stylistic Features Scientific English. The simple present tense. The language of this passage is clear, concise, objective and logical. figurative language to make his ideas more vivid and forceful.

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