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William Somerset Maugham






 

 

Учебно-методическое пособие по домашнему чтению

 

 

Казань


Печатается по решению заседания кафедры английского языка

Казанского государственного университета

 

Составители:

Ст.преподаватель Даминова Э.Р.,

Кандидат филологических наук, доцент Н.В.Аржанцева

 

 

Научный редактор:

Доктор филологических наук, профессор Г.А.Багаутдинова

 

Данное пособие предназначено для студентов Института Востоковедения, а также для широкого круга лиц, интересующихся творчеством английского писателя В.С.Моэма.

 

 

W.S.Maugham “Moon and Sixpence” – Москва, 2004 – 245 с.


William Somerset Maugham was born in Paris in 1874. His parents died when he was very little, and the boy was brought up by his uncle, a clergyman. In his book “The summing up” (1938) Maugham recollects: “My parents died when I was so young, my mother when I was eight, my father when I was ten, that I know so little of them but from hearsay. My father, I don’t know why unless he was drawn by some such restlessness for the unknown as was consumed his son, went to Paris and became a solicitor to the British Embassy. … He was a great traveller for those days. He had been to Turkey, Greece, and Asia Minor and in Morocco… He had a considerable library of travel books…”

Evidently, William took after his father. It was his cherished desire from childhood to see different continents and as soon as he got the opportunity he set out to realize his dream.

After his parents’ death the boy was taken away from the French school he had attended, and went daily for his lessons to the apartment of the English clergyman attached to Embassy. At the age of ten the boy was sent to England to attend school. In 1980 he went abroad and studied at the University of Heidelberg, from which he returned in 1892. As his parents had destined him for the medical profession, he became a medical student as St. Thomas’s hospital in London. He writes: “All this was a valuable experience to me. I don’t know a better training for a writer than to spend some years in medical profession”. Although he had taken a degree in medicine and become a fully qualified doctor, he decided to devote his life to literature.

Soon after the publication of his first novel (“Liza of Lambeth” - 1897) Maugham went to Spain and then traveled to all parts of the world. He visited Russia, America, Africa, Asia and the Polynesian Islands, and wherever he was he always sought material for his books. He was a keen observer of life and individuals.

W.S.Maugham wrote twenty-four plays, nineteen novels and a large number of short stories, in addition to travel works and an autobiography. Few of the plays have stood the test of time. He is primarily a short-story writer and a novelist. The most mature period of his career began in 1915, when he published one of his most popular novels “Of human bondage”. It was started in 1905, abandoned for a time and taken up again.

The revolt of the individual against the accepted conventions of society is the theme which always fascinated Maugham. It inspired his next novel “The moon and sixpence” (1919), which makes use of some outstanding incidents in the life of the artist Paul Gauguin (though it cannot be regarded as his biography). Other prominent works by Maugham are the novels “Cakes and Ale” (1930), “Theatre” (1937) and the “Razor’s Edge” (1944).

W.S.Maugham triumphed not only as a novelist but as a short0story writer as well. He produced some of the finest stories in modern English literature. They are usually very sincere, interesting, well-constructed and logically developed. Many of Maugham’s stories are set in foreign lands where the author was as easily at home as he was in the native England. They were inspired by his travels in China, Malaya, Borneo, Siam, etc. His rich experience of life and his acute insight into human nature gave Maugham an analytical and critical quality which found its expression in the vivid depiction of characters and situations.

W.S.Maugham was strongly influenced by De Maupassant and Chekhov in his story-writing. Like his great predecessors, he shows us people in various occupations and belonging to different social groups. His most popular stories are “Rain”, “The Unconquered”, “Gigolo and Gigolette”, “The Man with the Scar”, “The Luncheon”.

A realistic portrayal of life, keen character observations, absorbing plots with beautiful, expressive language and a simple and lucid style, all place W.S.Maugham on a level with the greatest English writers of the 20th century.







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