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El Dorado
Robert Louis Stevenson
Background Information
Historical background: Neo-Romanticism
Protesting against the ugly social reality of their day but taking no positive steps about it led some writers to pursue the path of neo-romanticism at the end of the 19痛风病的症状th was the chief reprentative figure century. Robert Louis Stevenson is a writer of this new trend of romanticism which in a n was just another form of escapism. Of cour a Neo-romanticist like Stevenson was dissatisfied with his contemporary reality, but it was a mild sort of dissatisfaction at best, while fundamentally he tried to find his interest or enjoyment out of sheer imagination and fancy by creating exciting events and romantic characters that can hardly exist in the world of reality but he did his best to describe them with all vividness and colour in his world of fiction. The result is to indulge in the description of exciting advent
ures in distant lands to deal only with the heroic or the bizarre, to lay emphasis not so much on rational character portrayal as on the complexity and nsationalism of story material. In this respect it is possible to compare the intentions and the practices of Stevenson with the descriptions of the exotic in Byron’s Oriental Tales or to Coleridge’s attempt in a poem like The Rime of the Ancient Mariner which was to create what he called the ‘‘willing suspension of disbelief” on the part of the reader. And it is this narration of a gripping tale that makes Stevenson’s novels so fascinating to the common reader.
（《英国文学史》第三册， 陈嘉编， 商务印书馆，1986）
New Romanticism was a 1iterary trend prevailing at the end of the 19th century. New Romantic writers oppo the idea that life reflects life reality. They thought that the task of art should nourish the reader’s imagination and dissatisfied with the ugly Social reality, they retu to write about it. They did not admit any connection between art and morality. They thought that the artist should not teach the reader but create interesting pictures and tell pleasing adventures. Stevenson is the reprentative of New Romanticism in no
vel written at the end of 19th century.
（《英国文学新编 英文版》，郭群英主编，外语教学与研究出版社，2001）
About the author
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850—1894) was a Scotchman, the son of an engineer of lighthous. Born and educated at Edinburgh, he studied 1aw and became a 1awyer in 1875, but he was more interested in literature. From his early days he had delicate health and his lung trouble made him travel extensively in arch of health. His early writings, besides an interesting essay on the Pentland Rising of 1666 were records of his travels: An Inland Voyage存在歌词 (1878) and Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes储存空间 (1879) both of which deal with his journeys in different countries of Europe. Later he travelled to America and was married. Upon his return to England he published his collection of essays: Virginibus Puerisque (1881) and Familiar Studies of Meil and Books (1882), in which he a1ready displayed his excellent pro style as well as his light, romantic treatment of fairly rious themes. He distinguished himlf as a story-teller with the publication of his
collection of short stories, New Arabian Nights (1882), which included some of his best known short stories of adventure. Next came Treasure Islandn1火箭 (1883), a long story of treasure-hunting on an island far away, which brought the author fame and has become the most widely read of all his books. Then he wrote a number of novels and stories on strange adventures, frequently of the far away and the long ago. Among the better known of the books are: The Strange Ca of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886), Kidnapped (1886) and its quel Catriona (1893), The Black Arrow (1888) and he Master of Ballantrae (1889). In 1888 he travelled to the South Seas to recuperate from tuberculosis and ttled in Samoa, one of the islands there, and lived there till his death in 1894. During his stay in Samoa he showed his great sympathy and admiration for the natives there, respecting the Samoans in their struggle for independence and exposing the cruel rule of the German colonialists on the island. His pro works, On the South Seas (1896) and especially A Foot note to History (1892), not only revealed his sympathetic attitude toward tho island people but also his anti-imperialist, anti-colonialist stand. He is also known for some of the poetry he wrote. 茶的历史
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Stevenson had his own literary theory, which he revealed in his critical essays included in the collections Familiar Studies of Men and Books and Memories and Portraits (1887). He stood for the romantic art that transcended the ordinary things in everyday life, and this showed quite definitely his dissatisfaction with the absorbing interest in practical matters of personal wealth and fame that was so prevalent in bourgeois society. But, similar to the school of art for art’s sake, he refud to recognize any relations between art and morality, but frankly advocated amument or entertainment for the reading public (instead of any attempt to instruct them) as the primary aim of art and literature (in the essay The Art of Writing ). From this major premi it follows necessarily that the writer has to choo the most interesting story and the most exciting episodes arranged in the most attractive way, in order to provide pleasure to the reader. Here we find some remblance to Walter Pater’s view of new hedonism which advocates the provision of enjoyment to the reader, but Pater’s classicism and his high riousness in philosophical outlook differed fundamentally from Stevenson’s lightness of thought and his delight in fancy for fancy’s sake, which last led naturally to the exotic and the extraordinary. Howev
er, Stevenson also had his own philosophical basis for his love of the exotic, for to him a man’s real life does not exist in his actual everyday existence but it exists in his fancy or fantasy. And in order to tell his story vividly and effectively Stevenson naturally thought it necessary to make a careful lection of his material, and this lection of extraordinary incidents and extraordinary persons made Stevenson go on an entirely different path from that of the naturalists, but neo-romanticism is just as unrealistic as naturalism.
The story in Treasure Island is placed in the 18th century, and the theme is that of mysterious fortune—hunting on an island far away, amidst all sorts of accidents and villainy. The tale begins in a small town on the west coast of England, at an inn kept by the mother of the lad Jim Hawkins, the narrator of the story. From a box of an old buccaneer, a map is found which gives information about the whereabouts of Captain Kidd’s treasure hidden on a certain island. The old confederates of the captain try to get the treasure and, led by a sinister blind beggar Pew, they come to the inn to gather information. Jim outwits the men and delivers the map to Squire Trelawney, and Trelawney and his friend Dr. Livey organize an expeditionary group to go to the Treasur
e Island. They t off in the schooner ‘‘Hispaniola” and take Jim along with them. On the voyage, while some of the crew remain faithful to Trelawney, the majority of them are old pirates recruited by a one-legged villain, Long John Silver and they scheme to ize the ship and kill Trelawney and his group. Their design is discovered in time by Jim, and after a ries of thrilling fights and adventures upon their arrival on the island, the pirates are completely routed, and Trelawney and his group, with the help of the marooned pirate, Ben Gunn, finally obtains the treasure.
The story is superbly told. The novelist only lects the most necessary but important details, arranges them in a cloly knit plot, and tells them in a quick, breathtaking way. There is no careful delineation of character; the persons in the story are either a hundred per cent good or a hundred per cent bad; and there are 110 psychological analys to speak of. The incidents, mostly accidental and some of them highly improbable, are yet narrated in a most vivid way, and all atmosphere of great mystery is created around most of the characters and most of their actions, stimulating to the highest degree the reader’s curiosity as to what will happen next. The total result of this sort of story-telling is a maste
rpiece of an exciting tale of adventure, though it is thoroughly unrealistic and therefore falls short of a truly great work of art.
