逃避主义文学...
First of all, one would like to apologize for writing this piece of review in English, quite inexcusable, of course, but I’d take it that the people who can or willing to read this book, since no Chinese translation exists, are perfectly comfortable with reading the review in English as well.
The genre of public-school stories is something rather peculiar to England. Certainly, there are some French and German imitations, yet they’ve never secured a place in the national psyche as secure as the English novels. It is interesting, for many of us who are Anglophiles, to know a bit more about this distinctly English phenomenon, like Cricket, Oxbridge and many other goodies.
Yet, the genre is also fading away in England as well, due to the advent of co-education and the homogenizing effects of popular culture. But it might be useful to historians to understand more about the educational and mental upbringing of our colonial oppressors a century ago, since many of them, even after years of expatriate life, remained perfects and sixth-formers in their own ways, as testified by EM Forster’s famous gobbets.
As for the narrative, the nearest comparison one can think of is Wei Yang Ge, with their visions of idealized, cardboard characters and large extracts of poesy, sometimes quite a mouthful. Still, one wouldn’t mind to live a life in either of these novels. Also, the quiet confidence of those late Victorians, in considering a public-school educated Englishmen to be on top of the food chain and everything else, is rather an eye-opener in many ways. And rather stupid it is too, since much of it will be gunned down amidst Flemish mud (and poppies, to use that deplorable cliché).
Of course, it is worthwhile to consider before sniggering about the all-male cast, that those middle-upper-class boys of good family (barring Scaife) couldn’t get near a pair of clean knickers, even if they wanted to. Therefore most of them must divert their affections for a few years, in games of ‘pashes’ (such a jejune term) , before marriages and families. It’s not quite the same thing as the post-Stonewall liberations of libidos.
So, if one would like to get an idea about what escapist fiction is for some Brits, this might not be a bad place to start. Or you can just send your sons there.
The genre of public-school stories is something rather peculiar to England. Certainly, there are some French and German imitations, yet they’ve never secured a place in the national psyche as secure as the English novels. It is interesting, for many of us who are Anglophiles, to know a bit more about this distinctly English phenomenon, like Cricket, Oxbridge and many other goodies.
Yet, the genre is also fading away in England as well, due to the advent of co-education and the homogenizing effects of popular culture. But it might be useful to historians to understand more about the educational and mental upbringing of our colonial oppressors a century ago, since many of them, even after years of expatriate life, remained perfects and sixth-formers in their own ways, as testified by EM Forster’s famous gobbets.
As for the narrative, the nearest comparison one can think of is Wei Yang Ge, with their visions of idealized, cardboard characters and large extracts of poesy, sometimes quite a mouthful. Still, one wouldn’t mind to live a life in either of these novels. Also, the quiet confidence of those late Victorians, in considering a public-school educated Englishmen to be on top of the food chain and everything else, is rather an eye-opener in many ways. And rather stupid it is too, since much of it will be gunned down amidst Flemish mud (and poppies, to use that deplorable cliché).
Of course, it is worthwhile to consider before sniggering about the all-male cast, that those middle-upper-class boys of good family (barring Scaife) couldn’t get near a pair of clean knickers, even if they wanted to. Therefore most of them must divert their affections for a few years, in games of ‘pashes’ (such a jejune term) , before marriages and families. It’s not quite the same thing as the post-Stonewall liberations of libidos.
So, if one would like to get an idea about what escapist fiction is for some Brits, this might not be a bad place to start. Or you can just send your sons there.
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