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英国文学史梗概
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英国文学史梗概
I. Anglo-Saxon period
A. History
a. 5th century B. C.: The earliest inhabitants of the British islands —Celtics, one
tribe of which, Bretons, invaded the Great Britain and settled there for nearly 500
years.
b. 55 B.C.: Roman conquest by Julius Caesar brought the ancient romantic culture.
c. The Anglo-Saxons—a branch of the Germanic tribe expelled the Celtics to the remote
areas of the north and the west. Their mother tongue was the prototype of
the modern English. England means the dwellings of the Anglos.
d. The latter half of the 7th century: The first poet of the Britain—Caedman was
born.
e. Around 8th century: The first well-preserved epic—Beowulf emerged.
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9th century King Alfred?s reign greatly enhanced the development of the English
culture.
f 1057 Scottish king Macbeth died. Several hundreds years later, Shakespeare created
the
famous
tragedy
with
him
as
the
prohttp://doc.xuehai.net/bc83beead6fb41964facffae4.htmltagonist.
g. 1066: Norman Conquest. As a result, French replaced English as the official
language and dominated the literary creation. The resumption of the English as the
mainly used language was after the English and French Centurial War 300 years
later.
B. Literature
a. Epic: “Beowulf”—Beowulf, a hero, killed Grendel, a sea monster (thought to be
the offspring of Cain, first murderer in the Genesis. Its artistic forms, such as
kenning and alliteration had a great influence upon the poets that followed.
b. Layamon?s “Brut” recorded the legends of King Arthur and it was also an important
sign of the resumption of the English language.
II. Medieval period.
A. Geoffrey Chaucer: “The Canterbury Tales”, a collection of short stories
depicting realistically the panorama of 14th century England. His style of writing
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was fluent
and humorous, and his thhttp://doc.xuehai.net/bc83beead6fb41964facffae4.htmloughts
even surpassed his contemporaries. His sharp
perception of human nature is the basic cause of his permanent charm and
popularity.
B. Some major events in the 15th century contributing to the Renaissance:
a. Religious reform led by Martin Luther in Germany and John Calvin in France broke
the dark clouds of the medieval Europe and destroyed the manacles of
religion on people?s thoughts and spirits.
b. The demise of the Easter Roman Empire, as a result of the fall of the Constantinople,
forced many Greek scholar flee to the Italy with the remnant
antiques. These artistic treasures of the ancient Greece and Roman acted a vital role
in the renaissance of the culture represented by them.
c. Typography promoted the study of the classic literature in Italy and Germany. The
then English businessman William Caxton brought this technique to England
ahttp://doc.xuehai.net/bc83beead6fb41964facffae4.htmls he
traded in Europe, and it also greatly speeded up the English renaissance.
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d. Henry 8th was a tyrant but his divorce with wife ended up in the split of the
Anglican Church with the Roman Catholic Church and resulted in the religious
reform of the Anglicanism. He killed Thomas Moore, the author of Utopia.
(iambic pentameter
III. Elizabethan period.
A. Poetry initiated by 4men
a. Thomas Wyatt: introduced the sonnets from Italy to England.
b. Earl of Surrey: reformed the feet of sonnets and introduced the blank verse (with
no rhyme).
c. Philip Sidney: the first work on the theory of classic literary criticism “The
Apologie for Poetrie” (诗辩) and romance “Arcadia”.
d. Edmund Spenser: called “the poet?s poet”, spenserian stanza, “The Shepherd?s
Calendar”(牧人日记), “The Faerie Queene”（仙后）.
B. Drama.://doc.xuehai.net/bc83beead6fb41964facffae4.htmlr
a. University wits: John Lyly, “Euphues”, “Euphuism”(尤非依斯体), artificial and
ornate.
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b.
University
wits:
Robert
Greene
had
a
jealousy
for
Shakespeare.
“Tamburlaine the Great” “Edward II”
c. Christopher Marlowe: most gifted of the University wits. “Doctor Faustus” “The
Jew of Malta”
d. Shakespeare: master of drama. Keen perception of life.
C. Prose.
Francis Bacon: The founder of modern science. “Essays”, “New
Instrument”(Novum Organum), “Advancement of learning”.
D. Ben Jonson: prolific dramatist, “ Every Man in His Humor ”, “Volpone”. Poet
Laureate of James I.
IV. 17th Century (The Glorious Revolution, the Restoration)
A. Drama: bold depiction of the extravagant life of the nobles.
B. Poetry: John Dryden, Metaphysical poet John Donne, John Milton
a.
John
Dryden:
Poet
Laureate,
Founder
of
Englhttp://doc.xuehai.net/bc83beead6fb41964facffae4.htmlish literary criticism.
Following the
standards of classicism, he established the heroic couplet as the principal English
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verse forms, clarified the English prose and made it precise, concise, and flexible,
and raised the English literary criticism to a new level. Poem, “Absalom and
Achitophel”, Prose, “An Essay of Dramatic Poesy”.
b. Metaphysical Poetry and John Donne. Characterized by mysticism in content
and fantasticality in form. Called by Samuel Johnson. “ The Flea”, “Meditations”,
imaginative, philosophical and meditative.
c. John Milton: spokesman of the revolution. “Paradise Lost”, “Paradise
Regained”,
“Samson Agonistes”.
C.
John Bunyan: “The Pilgrim?s Progress”, a religious allegory criticizing the
social trend of the restoration period and also a disclosure of the evilness of every
society,
with
a
popular
speech
thttp://doc.xuehai.net/bc83beead6fb41964facffae4.htmlhe
ennobled
solemn
dignity
by
and
simplicity of the language of the English Bible. Thackeray?s “Vanity Fair” named
after a place mentioned in this book.
V. 18th century (Age of Reason and Enlightenment)
A. Theorist: John Locke:
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a. “Concerning Human Understanding”, emphasizing the importance of the sense as
a means of gaining knowledge and the significance of reason in understanding the
world.
b. Men are born kind. They have the right to pursue happiness and the obligation to
bring benefits to the society.
Men are naturally equal and they can protect their right by social contract. Nation
is a kind of social contract.
B. Poetry: two trends: classicism (major) and pre-romanticism (minor).
Classicism
a. Alexander Pope: student of Dryden, inherited from John Dryden, advocated
classicism and imitation of the work of ancient Greece and Rome, proposed that poets
should depict graciohttp://doc.xuehai.net/bc83beead6fb41964facffae4.htmlus and
beautiful things and have an elegant taste. “Essay on Criticism”, gave a detailed
exposition of the principles of the classic poems. Culmination in classicism and
heroic couplet. “Essay on Man”, “The Rape of the Lock”, full of reason without
the expression of emotion.
b. William Cowper: “The Task”, forerunner of the natural poems. with romantic
feelings.
c. George Crabbe: employing the classic forms to depict the miserable rural life.
“The Village”.
Pre-romanticism (paved the way for the romantic period)
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a. Edward Young: “The Complaints or Night Thoughts, on life, Death, and
Immortality.”
b. James Thomson: “The Seasons”, a pure love for nature.
c. Thomas Gray: “An Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”, sad in tone and refined
in style.
d. McPherson: “The Poems of Ossian”
e.
William
Blake:
“The
Tiger”,
“Songs
of
Innocence”
and
Experienceshttp://doc.xuehai.net/bc83beead6fb41964facffae4.html”.
“Songs
of
mysticism,
revolutionary passion. a strong likeness between Shelly and Blake in the imagery and
symbolism.
f. Robert Burns: using Scottish dialect to express his feelings. “Poems, Chiefly
in the Scottish Dialect”, “A Red, Red Rose”, “For A? That and A? That”(穷得
有志气), “John Barley Corn”, “My Heart?s in the Highlands”. (including Goldsmith
as the poet “sentimentalist”)
C. Prose: Joseph Addison and Richard Steele: “The Tatler”, “The Spectator”,
making a great contribution to the cultivation of good manners of the English nation.
D. Fiction:
a. Daniel Defoe: The father of the European and English fiction, vivid language.
“Robinson Crusoe”, “Moll Flanders”, “Roxana”.
b. Jonathan Swift: most ruthless in satirical and ironic writing. “Tale of a Tub”,
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lashing the deviation of the Bible by the Roman Catholic Church and Lutheranism and
Calvinism.
“A
Modest
Proposal”,
disclosing
the
Bhttp://doc.xuehai.net/bc83beead6fb41964facffae4.htmlritish
cruelty
of
government
the
toward
Irish people. “Gulliver?s Travels”, masterpiece, giving an unparalleled satirical
depiction of the vices of his age.
c. Henry Fielding: systematically proposed the theory of realistic novel writing and
put it into practice, presenting the true facts of the 18th century English society.
as fiction writer, “Tom Jones”, “Joseph Andrews”, “Amelia”, “Jonathan Wild”,
elevating the author, as the narrator to the level of God and also displaying optimism.
as playwright, “Historical Register”.
d. Samuel Richardson: father of the epistolary novel, “ Pamela”, based on
“Arcadia”, “Clarissa”, and “Sir Charles Grandison”.
e. Tobias George Smollett: “picaresque novels”, humorous and refined. “Roderick
Random”, “Peregrine Pickle”,“Humphry Clinkper”.
f. Laurence Sterne: “The Tristram Shandy”, mainly arguments and fantasies about
philosophy
and
moral,
original
in
that
the
technihttp://doc.xuehai.net/bc83beead6fb41964facffae4.htmlque
author
like
used
“steam
a
of
consciousness”.
E. Drama
a. Oliver Goldsmith: though called “poor goldy” by peers, he had a romantic spirit
which also earned him a name “sentimentalist”. poems, “The Deserted Village”,
“The Traveller”. masterpiece novel, “The Vicar of Wakefield”, drama, “The
Good-Natured Man”, “She Stoops to Conquer”.
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b. Richard Brinsley Sheridan: “The Rivals”, “The School for Scandal”, repudiating
the high society for its vanity has been regarded as the best play since Shakespeare.
F. Essay
Samuel Johnson: lexicographer, poet and great critic. “A Dictionary of the English
Language”. “London”, “The Vanities of Human Wishes”, “Life of Richard Savage”,
“Irene”, “Rasselas”. edited two periodicals “The Rambler” and “The Idler”.
became “the great cham of literature”, and founded the famous Literary Club.
VI. Romantic period (French revolution, “Lyrical Ballads”抒情歌谣集 as the sign,
utilitarianismhttp://doc.xuehai.net/bc83beead6fb41964facffae4.html 功利主义.)
A. Poetry:
a. William Wordsworth (Lake Poets): has a strong worship for nature, simplicity and
purity of the language,“Lyrical Ballads” with Coleridge , “Intimations of
Immortality”永生悟颂, “Tintern Abbey”, “The Daffodils”, “We Are Seven”, “The
Excursion”, “The Prelude”, （autobiographical）.
b. Samuel Taylor Coleridge (Lake Poets): has made reforms in the form of English poems,
in musicality and rhythm, “Christabel” “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”, “Kubla
Khan”.
c. Robert Southey (Lake Poets): “The Inchcape Rock” ,“The Battle of Blenheim”,
“My Days among the Dead are Passed”.
d. George Gordon Byron: revolutionary zeal and democratic ideas, spirit of rebellion.
“Childe Harold?s Pilgrimage”, “When We Two Parted”, “She Walks in Beauty”,
“The Isles of Greece”, “Don Juan”(masterpiece). “Byronic Hero”.
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e.
Percy
Bysshe
Shelley:
revolutionary
in
ideas,
philosophyhttp://doc.xuehai.net/bc83beead6fb41964facffae4.html.
religion
poems,
and
“Queen
Mab”, “Alastor”, “The Revolt of Islam”, “Hellas”. “Prometheus Unbound”,
“Cenci”, “A Defence of Poetry”. Single poems, “The Cloud”, “Ode to the West
Wind”, “To a Skylark”.
f. John Keats: exploits the ancient Greek heritage. “Ode on a Grecian Urn” ,proposed
the principle of “truth beauty, beauty is truth. “Endymion”, “Hyperion”, “Ode
on a Nightingale”, “To Autumn”, “On the Grasshopper and Cricket”, “The Eve of
St. Agnes”.
g. Walter Scott: poet, “Minstrel of the Scottish Border”, “The Lady of the Last
Minstrel”, “Marmion”, “The lady of the lake”, “The Lord of the Isles”,
“Rokeby”.
B. novelist,
a. Walter Scott the fountainhead of historical novel of the Europe, “Waverley”,
“Ivanhoe”, “Woodstock”, “The Talisman”, “Count Robert of Paris”, “Quentin
Durward”.
b. Jane Austen: paved a way for the latter women writers, pre-realist. best at
describing
young
girls.
“Pride
Prejudice”,http://doc.xuehai.net/bc83beead6fb41964facffae4.html
and
“Sense
and
Sensibility”, “Emma”, “Mansfield Park” “Persuasion”, “Northanger Abbey”.
C. Essay:
a. Charles Lamb: the romanticist of the city, “The Essay of the Elia” b. William
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Hazlitt, c. Leigh Hunt, d. De Quincey.
VII. Victorian period [divided into three trends: Critical Realism; Aestheticism;
Neo-Romanticism] and the beginning of the 20th century [Edwardian period and the
Georgian poets] (industrial revolution, Darwinism, utilitarianism further, crisis
of belief)
A.
Critical Realism
a. Charles Dickens: a radical. The greatest literature was literature for the people.
character portrayal. humor and satire, also powerful in painting pictures of pathos.
“Pickwick Papers” “Oliver Twist”, “Dombey and Son”, “David Copperfield”,
“Bleak House”, “Hard Times”, “Little Dorrit”, “A Tales of Two Cities”,
“Great Expectations”, “Our Mutual Friend”.
b.
William
Makepeace
Thackeray:
strict
realihttp://doc.xuehai.net/bc83beead6fb41964facffae4.htmlsm. moralizing. making
heroes occur in different novels and narrating their origin, thus adding a peculiar
truthfulness to the story. “Vanity Fair”
c. Bronte sisters: Charlotte Bronte: “Jane Eyre”, autobiographical. “Shirley”,
“Villette”, “The Professor” Anne Bronte: “Agnes Grey”, “The Tenant of the
Wildfell Hall”. Emily Bronte: “Wuthering Heights” against the moral standards of
the Victorian period, surpasses her time to show the instinctive impulse of human
being with consummate techniques.
d. Mrs. Gaskell: “The Hungary Forties”, a first describing the class struggle
between workers and capitalist. d. George Elliot: forerunner of psychological novel,
believe in the “religion of humanity” and fatalism, “Adam Bede”, “The Mill on
the Floss”,
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“Silas Marner”.
e. George Meredith: “The Egoist”, further developing the skills of writing people?s
mind.
B.
Aestheticism:
Beginning
at
the
middle
of
thhttp://doc.xuehai.net/bc83beead6fb41964facffae4.htmle 19th century. The French
poet Theophile Gautier first put the theory of “art for art?s sake” (L?art pour
L?art”) forward. Its gist is that art should be separated from any social needs.
A cultural phenomenon of “fin de siecle” in Europe. It was a kind of escapism in
essence.
a. John Ruskin: forerunner of aestheticism, “Beauty should be a organic
part of the whole life of human being”, “Modern Painters”, “The Seven Lamps of
Architecture”, “Stone of Venice”, all express a disappoint for capitalist culture
and a longing for the creating freedom of the medieval and pre-renaissance period.
b. Walter Pater: Put forward the manifesto of “art for art?s sake” in his
“Renaissance” and his belief is the pursuit of beauty as the sole “success of life”.
“Marius the Epicurean”, “Imagery Portraits”, “Appreciation”.
c. Oscar Wilde: decadent period. Declare that art does not reflect life but life
imitates
art,
so
that
art
should
nhttp://doc.xuehai.net/bc83beead6fb41964facffae4.htmlot begin with the study of
life but with what is untrue and does not exist. essay, “The Decay of Lying”, novel,
“The Picture of Dorian Gray”, tragedy, “Salomé”, fairy stories, “Happy Prince
and Other Tales”, “A House of Pomegranates”, 4 comedies, “Lady Windermere?s Fan”,
“A Woman of No Importance”, “An Ideal Husband”, “The Importance of Being
Earnest”.
d. Algernon Charles Swinburne: A pious admirer of “pure beauty” at the early period.
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“Atlanta in Calydon”, “Poems and Ballads”, marked by free choice of subjects and
frank treatment of passion, were meant to be a expression of defiance to the hypocrisy
and philistinism(庸俗) of the Victorian England. Later he changed.
C. Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood: similar to Aestheticism, revolting against the
material and spiritual ugliness.
Dante Gabriel Rossettis: painter and poet, founder of P-R B. “the fleshy school of
poetry”,
“The
Blessed
Damozel”,
“The
House
of
Life”.://doc.xuehai.net/bc83beead6fb41964facffae4.htmlar
D. Other important poets:
a. William Morris: “The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems” became a impetus to
the Aesthetic movement. Poem, “The Earthly Paradise”. Since 70?s, he became a
socialist poet, prose, “A Dream of John Ball”, “News from Nowhere”.
b. Alfred Tennyson: poem as a means to express the principles of ethic and philosophy,
and the handmaid of the bourgeois “duty and faith”, “two voices”, one echoes the
social need, another echoes the personal emotion, “The Lady of Shalott”, “Lotus
Eaters”(食忘忧果者)， “In Memorial”, “Maud”, “The Princess”, “Locksley
Hall”, “Idylls of the King”(masterpiece).
c. Robert Browning: interested in the rare known anecdotes in the past and introduced
the dramatic monologue into the English poetry. He is well known for buoyant optimism.
Poem, “Paracelus”, “Pippa Passes”, “Fra Lippo Lippi”, “Abt Vogler”, “The
Ring and the Book”, essay, “Parleyings”.
d.
Matthhttp://doc.xuehai.net/bc83beead6fb41964facffae4.htmlew
Arnold:
great
literary critics and “the lonely Victorian poet”. Essay, “Essay in Criticism”,
“Essay in Criticism, Second Series”, “Culture and Anarchy”, poem, “Lines Written
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in Kensington Gardens”, “Stanzas from the Grande
Chartreuze”, “Dover Beach,” “Knowledge and truth, in the full sense of the words,
are not attainable by the great mass of the human race at all”. He placed his hopes
on “the thinking few”.
e. Gerard Manley Hopkins: poet, “inner scene”, “inner response”, “jumping
rhythm”, “The Wreck of the Deutschland”.
E. Neo-Romanticism: laid emphasis on the invention of exciting adventures and
fascinating stories to entertain the reading public and led the novel back to
story-telling and to romance.
Robert Louis Stevenson: “Treasure Island”(金银岛). He insisted upon skills in
handling material rather than upon the value of ideas in literary creation.
F. Playwright:
George
Bernahttp://doc.xuehai.net/bc83beead6fb41964facffae4.htmlrd
Shaw:
the
creator of a new publicist drama. Exposure of the capitalist society and support the
socialists. “Plays: Unpleasant”, “Plays: Pleasant”, “Three Plays for the
Puritans”, “Man and Superman”, “Major Barbara”, “Pygmalion”, “Heartbreak
House”, “Arms and Man”, “Mrs. Warren?s Profession”, “The Apple Cart”, “Too
Good to be True”.
G. Novelist:
a. Anthony Trollope: his works reflect a spirit of “order and quietness”. “The
Barset Series”, “The Warden”(教区委员), “The Last Chronicle of Barset”.
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b. Thomas Hardy: transitional novelist and poet, “Wessex Novels”, “Under the
Greenwood Tree”, “Far From the Madding Crowd”, “The Return of the Native”, “Tess
of D?urberviles”, “Jude the Obscure”, his novels, full of despair and pessimism,
gave reader a feeling that “disaster is inevitable”. Poem, “Poems of the Past and
the Present”, “The Dynasts”(列国).
H. Edwardian period:
a.
Rudyard
Kipling:
born
Indhttp://doc.xuehai.net/bc83beead6fb41964facffae4.htmlia,
in
imperialism
and
chauvinism in his works, mainly short stories, “The Jungle Book”, “The Second
Jungle Book”, allegory of human life and full of imagination.
b. John Galsworthy: heritor of the realistic tradition, “The Man of Property”, “The
Forsyte Saga”, “In Chancery”, “To Let”.
c. Joseph Conrad: born in Poland but written with excellent English. Writing technique
and content of his works are modern: different narrators telling stories interwoven
with each other; stories in stories; endless digressions. Similar to Impressionism.
“Almayer?s
Folly”,
“The
Outcast
of
the
Islands”,
“The
Nigger
of
The ?Narcissus?”, “Lord Jim”, “The Heart of Darkness”.
d. E. M. Forster: “Aspects of the Novel”, has a keen perception of the changes of
the novels from a story-telling manner to a modern one but he is a transitional figure.
His subjects chosen are modern, “Passage to India”, a reflection of nihilism;
symbolic; intrihttp://doc.xuehai.net/bc83beead6fb41964facffae4.htmlcate plots.
e. Herbert George Wells: science fiction writer successfully predicting the two World
Wars, “The Time Machine”.
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f. Sommerset Maugham: exotic stories of the east colonies of the British Empire. “The
Complete Short Stories”. g. Arnold Bennet: “The ?Five Town? Stories”, “The Old
Wives? Tale”, was written in the manner of naturalism and laden with minute
details.
I. “Poets of George Period” (on nature, idyllic life and love)
a. Edward Marsh: “Georgian Anthologies”,
b. Robert Brooke: regarded war as purificant and death heroic; full of innocence.
“Poems”, “1914 and Other Poems”, “The Soldier”.
c. Edward Thomas: on the relieving effect of nature, “Adlestrop”, “The Owl”,
“Rain”. d. Robert Graves: “The White Goddess”.
e. Charles Sorley: “Such, Such is Death”, “Return”, “All the Hills and Vales
Along”.
f. David Jones: “In Parenthesis”.
g. Wilfred Owenhttp://doc.xuehai.net/bc83beead6fb41964facffae4.html, h. Isaac
Rosenberg,
i. Siefried Sasson,
j. T. E. Hulme.
VIII. Novelists in 20’s of the 20th century (new concepts of time by Henri Bergson:
a flow inner consciousness; Freud?s psychological analysis: unconsciousness)
A. Stream of Consciousness: the flux of conscious and subconscious thoughts and
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impression moving in the mind at any given time independently of the person?s will,
developed from interior monologue, “fleeting image”.
a. VirginiaWoolf: good literary critic, “The Modern Novel”, an attack on the malady
of the Edwardian novelist; an innovator of novel writing technique, depicting
“experiences of moments” and eliminating the intervention of the author as narrator
and commenter, “Mrs. Dalloway”, “The Waves”, “To the Lighthouse”, “The
Years”.
b. James Joyce: original in language and writing technique, “Dubliners”, “A
Portrait
of
Artist
as
a
Young
Man”,
autobiographical,
“Fihttp://doc.xuehai.net/bc83beead6fb41964facffae4.htmlnnegans Wake”, greatest
enigma in 20th century literature. “Ulysses”, a novel in which stream of
consciousness is best employed.
c. David. Herbert Lawrence: son of miner. novelist, poet and critic. He advocated
the principle of saving the decaying civilization which he hated so much through a
rearrangement of personal relationships, esp. between women and men, sex. “The White
Peacock”, “Sons and Lovers”, autobiographical, “Oedipus Complex”, “The
Rainbow”, “Women in Love”, “Aaron?s Rod”, “Kangaroo”, “Lady Chatterley?s
Lover”, most controversial.
IX. Poets in 20’s of the 20th century (same background)
a. William Butler Yeats: symbolist poets, greatest of our age, “The Wild Swans at
Coole”, “Michael Robartes and the Dancer”, “The Tower”, “The Winding Stair”.
b. T. S. Eliot (as American peers) influenced by imagism in his later years. “The
Waste Land”.
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（中古英语时期的名词解释）
1. Old English phttp://doc.xuehai.net/bc83beead6fb41964facffae4.htmleriod (the
Anglo-Saxon period): The Old English Period, extended from the invasion of Celtic
England by Germanic tribes (the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes) in the first half of the
fifth century to the conquest of England in 1066 by the Norman French under the
leadership of the seventh century did the Anglo-Saxons, whose earlier literature had
been oral, begin to develop a written literature.
2. Alliteration: Alliteration is the repetition of a speech sound in a sequence of
nearby words. The term is usually applied only to consonants, and only when the
recurrent sound begins a word or a stressed syllable within a word.
3. Prose: Prose is an inclusive term for all discourse, spoken or written, which is
not patterned into the lines either of metric verse or free verse.
4. Couplet: A couplet is a pair of rhymed lines that are equal in length.
5.
Meter:
Meter
is
the
recurrence,
in
regular
units,
prominhttp://doc.xuehai.net/bc83beead6fb41964facffae4.htmlent
feature
of
in
a
the
sequence of speech-sounds of a language.
6. Foot: A foot is the combination of a strong stress and the associated weak stress
or stresses which make up the recurrent metric unit of a line. The relatively
stronger-stressed syllable is called, for short, “stressed”; the relatively
weaker-stressed syllables are called “light,” or most commonly, “unstressed”.
The four standard feet distinguished in English are: (1) Iambic (the noun is “iamb”):
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an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. (2) Anapestic (the noun is
“anapest”): two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed syllable. (3)Trochaic
(the noun is “trochee”): a stressed syllable. (4) Dactylic (the noun is “dactyl”):
a stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables.
A metric line is named according to the number of feet composing it:
Monometer: one foot
Dimeter: two feet
Trimesterhttp://doc.xuehai.net/bc83beead6fb41964facffae4.html: three feet
Tetrameter: four feet
Pentameter: five feet
Hexameter: six feet
Heptameter: seven feet
Octameter: eight feet
7. Ballad (popular ballad): Ballad is also known as the folk ballad or traditional
ballad. It is a song, transmitted orally, which tells a story. Ballads are thus the
narrative species of folk songs, which originate, and are communicated orally, among
illiterate or only partly literate people.
8. Arthurian legend: It is a group of tales (in several languages) that developed
in the Middle Ages concerning Arthur, semi-historical king of the Britons and his
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knights. The legend is a complex weaving of ancient Celtic mythology with later
traditions around a core of possible historical authenticity.
9. Courtly love: It is a doctrine of love, together with an elaborate code governing
the
relations
betwe4en
aristocratic
lovers,
which
was
widely
represehttp://doc.xuehai.net/bc83beead6fb41964facffae4.htmlnted in the lyric poems
and chivalric romances of Western Europe during the Middle Ages.
10. Romance: It is a literary genre popular in the Middle Ages (5th century to 15th
century), dealing, in verse or prose, with legendary, supernatural, or amorous
subjects and characters. The name refers to Romance languages and originally denoted
any lengthy composition in one of those languages. Later the term was applied to tales
specifically concerned with knights, chivalry, and courtly love. Romances were
written by court musicians, clerics, scribes, and aristocrats for the entertainment
and moral edification of the nobility. Popular subjects for romances included the
Macedonian King Alexander the Great, King Arthur Charlemagne. Later prose and verse
narratives, particularly those in the 19th-century romantic tradition, are also
referred to as romances; set in distant or mythological places and times, like most
romances
they
ahttp://doc.xuehai.net/bc83beead6fb41964facffae4.htmldventure
stress
and
supernatural
elements.
课外拓展（伊利莎白时期的名词解释）
1. Renaissance: Renaissance (“rebirth”) is the name commonly applied to the period
of European history following the Middle Ages; it is usually said to have begun in
Italy in the late fourteenth century and to have continued, both in Italy and other
countries. In this period the European arts of painting, sculpture, architecture,
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and literature reached an eminence not exceeded in any age. The development came late
to England in the sixteenth century, and did not have its flowering until the
Elizabethan and Jacobean periods. It also has been described as the birth of the modern
world out of the ashes of the dark ages; as the discovery of the world and the discovery
of man; and as the era of the emergence of untrammeled individualism in life, thought,
religion, and art.
2. Elizabethan period (Elizabethan age): Strictly speaking, it refers to the
http://doc.xuehai.net/bc83beead6fb41964facffae4.htmlperiod
of
the
reign
of
Elizabeth I (1558~1603). The term
“Elizabethan,” however, is often used loosely to refer to the late sixteenth and
early seventeenth centuries, even after the death of Elizabeth. This was a time of
rapid development in English commerce, maritime power, and nationalist feeling-the
defeat of the Spanish armada occurred in 1588. It was a great (in drama the greatest)
age of English literature—the age of Sir Philip Sidney, Christopher Marlowe, Edmund
Spenser, Shakespeare, Sir Walter Raleigh, Francis Bacon, Ben Jonson, and many other
extraordinary writers of prose and of dramatic, lyric, and narrative poetry.
3. Drama: It is the form of composition designed for performance in the theater, in
which actors take the roles of the characters, perform the indicated action, and utter
the written dialogue. (The common
alternative name for a dramatic composition is a play.) In poetic drama the
dialohttp://doc.xuehai.net/bc83beead6fb41964facffae4.htmlgue is written in verse,
which in English is usually bland verse. Almost all the heroic dramas of the English
restoration period, however, were written in heroic couplets (iambic pentameter lines
rhyming in
pairs). A closet drama is written in dramatic form, with dialogue, indicated settings,
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and stage directions, but is intended by the author to be read rather than to be
performed.
4. Jacobean age: It is the reign of James I (1603~1625), which followed that of Queen
Elizabeth. This was the period in prose writings of Francis bacon, John Donne’s
sermons, Robert Burton’s anatomy of melancholy, and the King James’s translation
of the Bible. It was also the time of Shakespeare’s greatest tragedies and
tragicomedies, and of major writings by other notable poets and playwrights including
john Donne, Ben Jonson, Michael Drayton, lady Mary wroth, sir Francis Beaumont and
john
Fletcher,
john
Webster,
George
Chapman,
Thomas
Mhttp://doc.xuehai.net/bc83beead6fb41964facffae4.htmliddleton, Philip Massinger,
and Elizabeth Cary, whose notable biblical drama The Tragedy of Mariam, The Faire
Queene of Jewry was the first long play by an Englishwoman to be published.
5. Sonnet: It is a lyric poem consisting of a single stanza of fourteen iambic
pentameter lines linked by an intricate rhyme scheme. There are two major patterns
of rhyme in sonnets written in the English language:
(1) the Italian or Petrarchan sonnet (named after the fourteenth century Italian poet
Petrarch) falls into two main parts: an octave (eight lines) rhyming abbaabba followed
by a sestet (six lines) rhyming cdecde or some variant, such as cdccdc. (2) The earl
of surrey and other English experimenters in the sixteenth century also developed
a stanza form called the English sonnet, or else the Shakespearean sonnet, this sonnet
falls into three quatrains and a concluding couplet: abab cdcd efef gg. There was
one
notable
variant,http://doc.xuehai.net/bc83beead6fb41964facffae4.html
the
Spenserian sonnet, in which Edmund Spenser linked each quatrain to the next by a
continuing rhyme: abab bcbc cdcd ee.
6. Essay: It is any short composition in prose that undertakes to discuss a matter,
express a point of view, persuade us to accept a thesis on any subject, of simply
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entertain. The essay discusses its subject in nontechnical fashion, and often with
a liberal use of such devices as anecdote, striking illustration, and humor to augment
its appeal. A useful distinction is that between the formal and informal essay. The
formal essay, or article, is relatively impersonal: the author writes as an authority,
or at least as highly knowledgeable, and expounds the subject in an orderly way. In
the informal essay(or “familiar” or “personal essay”), the author assumes a tone
of intimacy with his audience, tends to deal with everyday things rather than with
public
affairs
or
specialized
topics,
and
writes
in
s
relaxedhttp://doc.xuehai.net/bc83beead6fb41964facffae4.html, self-revelatory, and
sometimes whimsical fashion.
7. Soliloquy: Soliloquy is the act of talking to oneself, whether silently or aloud.
In drama it denotes the convention by which a character, alone on the stage, utters
his or her thoughts aloud.
8. Hymn: The term derives from the Greek Hymnos, which originally
signified songs of praise that were for the most part addressed to the gods, but in
some instances to human heroes or to abstract concepts. In current usage it denotes
a song that celebrates god or expresses religious feelings and is intended primarily
to be sung as part of a religious service.
9. Spenserian stanza: It is a longer form devised by Edmund Spenser for the Faerie
Queene (1590~1996) —nine lines, in which the first eight lines are iambic pentameter
and the last iambic hexameter, rhyming ababbcbcc.
10. Miracle play: The miracle play had as its subject either a story from
thttp://doc.xuehai.net/bc83beead6fb41964facffae4.htmlhe bible, or else the life and
martyrdom of a saint. In the usage of some historians, however, “miracle play”
denotes only dramas based on saints’ lives, and the term “mystery play” is applied
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only to dramas based on the bible.
11. Morality play: Morality plays are medieval allegorical plays in which personified
human qualities acted and disputed, mostly coming from the 15th century. They
developed into the interludes, from which it is not always possible to distinguish
them, and hence had a considerable influence on the development of Elizabethan drama
12. Interlude: Interlude (Latin, “between the play”) is a term applied to a variety
of short stage entertainments, such as secular farces and witty dialogues with a
religious or political point. In the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries,
these little dramas were performed by bands of professional actors; it is believed
that
they
were
often
put
on
between
thehttp://doc.xuehai.net/bc83beead6fb41964facffae4.html courses of a feast or
between the acts of a longer play.
13. Euphuism: Euphuism takes its name from the moralistic prose romance Euphues
written by John Lyly in 1578. The style is sententious (that is, full of moral maxims),
relies persistently on syntactical balance and antithesis, reinforces the structural
parallels by heavy and elaborate patterns of alliteration and assonance, exploits
the rhetorical question, and is addicted to long similes and learned allusions which
are often drawn from mythology and the habits of legendary animals.
14. Revenge tragedy: Revenge tragedy is a dramatic genre that flourished in the late
Elizabethan and Jacobean period, sometimes known as “the tragedy of blood”. Common
ingredients include: the hero’s quest for vengeance, often at the prompting of the
ghost of a murdered kinsman or loved one; scenes of real or feigned insanity; a
play-within-a-play;
scenes
in
graveyards,
severed
limhttp://doc.xuehai.net/bc83beead6fb41964facffae4.htmlbs, scenes of carnage and
mutilation, etc. in revenge tragedy violence was not reported but took place on stage.
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15. Comedy: In the most common literary application, a comedy is a fictional work
in which the materials are selected and managed primarily in order to interest and
amuse us: the characters and their
discomfitures engage our pleasurable attention rather than our profound concern, we
are made to feel confident that no great disaster will occur, and usually the action
turns out happily for the chief characters.
16. Dirge: Dirge is a versified expression of grief on the occasion of a particular
person’s death, but differs from the elegy in that it is short, is less formal, and
is usually represented as a text to be sung.
17. Farce: Farce is a type of comedy designed to provoke the audience to simple, hearty
laughter-”belly laughs,” in the parlance of the theater. to do so it commonly
employshttp://doc.xuehai.net/bc83beead6fb41964facffae4.html highly exaggerated or
caricatured types of characters, puts them into improbable and ludicrous situations,
and makes free use of sexual mix-ups, broad verbal humor, and physical bustle and
horseplay. Farce was a component in the comic episodes in medieval miracle plays.
In the English drama, farce is usually an episode in a more complex form of comedy.
18. Tragedy: The term is broadly applied to literary, and especially to dramatic,
representations of serious actions which eventuate in a disastrous conclusion for
the protagonist (the chief character).
19. Tragicomedy: It is a type of Elizabethan and Jacobean drama which intermingled
both the standard characters and subject matter and the standard plot-forms of tragedy
and comedy. Tragicomedy represented a serious action which threatened a tragic
disaster to the protagonist, yet, by an abrupt reversal of circumstance, turned out
happily.
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20.
History
play:
Thhttp://doc.xuehai.net/bc83beead6fb41964facffae4.htmle
Elizabethan chronicle plays are sometimes called history plays. This latter term,
however, is often applied more broadly to any drama based mainly on historical
materials, such as
Shakespeare’s roman plays Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra.
课外拓展（17 世纪的名词解释）
1. Elegy: In Greek and Roman times, the term elegy was used to refer to any poem
composed in elegiac meter. Since the 17th century, elegy has typically been used to
refer to reflective poems that lament the loss of something or someone, or loss or
death more generally, although in Elizabethan times it was also use to refer to certain
love poems. Elegies written in English frequently take the form of the pastoral elegy.
2. Pamphlet: Originally a pamphlet was a sort of treatise or tract. It then came to
mean a short work written on a topical subject on which an author feels strongly.
Many
outstanding
writers
have
used
the
pamphlet
http://doc.xuehai.net/bc83beead6fb41964facffae4.htmlvigorous
to
express
political
or
religious views.
3. Assonance: Assonance is the repetition of identical or similar vowels-especially
in stressed syllables-in a sequence of nearby words.
4. Stanza: A stanza is a grouping of the verse lines in a poem, often set off by a
space in the printed text. Usually the stanzas of a given poem are marked by a recurrent
pattern of rhyme and are also uniform in the number and length of the component lines.
5. Folktale: Folktale, strictly defined, is a short narrative in prose of unknown
authorship which has been transmitted orally; many of these tales eventually achieve
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written form. The term, however, is often extended to include stories
invented by a known author which have been picked up and repeatedly narrated by word
of mouth as well as in written form.
6. Hyperbole: It is bold overstatement, or the extravagant exaggeration of fact or
possibility.
7. Phttp://doc.xuehai.net/bc83beead6fb41964facffae4.htmlrose poems: Prose poems
are densely compact, pronouncedly rhythmic, and highly sonorous compositions which
are written as a continuous sequence of sentences without line break.
8. Conceit: From the Italian concetto (meaning idea or concept), it refers to an
unusually far-fetched or elaborate metaphor or simile presenting a surprisingly apt
parallel between two apparently dissimilar things or feeling. Poetic conceits are
prominent in Elizabethan love sonnets and metaphysical poetry. Conceits often employ
the devices of hyperbole, paradox and oxymoron.
9. Pastoral: The originator of the pastoral was the Greek poet Theocritus, who in
the third century B.C. wrote poems representing the life of Sicilian shepherds.
(Pastor is Latin for “shepherd.”) It is a deliberately conventional poem expressing
an urban poet?s nostalgic image of the peace and simplicity of the life of shepherds
and
other
rural
folk
in
an
idealihttp://doc.xuehai.net/bc83beead6fb41964facffae4.htmlzed natural setting.
10. Diction: The term diction signifies the types of words, phrases, and sentence
structures, and sometimes also of figurative language, that constitute any work of
literature. A writer?s diction can be analyzed under a great variety of categories,
such as the degree to which the vocabulary and phrasing is abstract or concrete, Latin
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or Anglo-Saxon in origin, colloquial of formal, technical or common.
11. Metaphysical poetry: It is a term that can be applied to any poetry that deals
with philosophical or spiritual matters but that is generally limited to works written
by a specific group of 17th century poets who are linked by style and modes of poetic
organization. Common elements include the following: (1) an analytical approach to
subject matter; (2) colloquial language ;( 3) rhythmic patterns that are often rough
or irregular, and (4) the metaphysical conceit, a figurative device used to
capthttp://doc.xuehai.net/bc83beead6fb41964facffae4.htmlure thought and emotion as
accurately as possible.
12. Fable: A fable is also called an apologue. It is short narrative, in prose or
verse, which exemplifies an abstract moral thesis or principle of human behavior;
usually, at its conclusion, either the narrator or one of the characters states the
moral in the form of an epigram.
13. Parable: A parable is a very short narrative about human beings presented so as
to stress the tacit analogy, or parallel, with a general thesis or lesson that the
narrator is trying to bring home to his audience. The parable was one of Jesus?
favorite devices as a teacher.
14. Masques (or Masks): The masque was inaugurated in Renaissance Italy and flourished
in England during the reigns of Elizabeth I. It was an elaborate form of court
entertainment that combined poetic drama, music, song, dance, splendid costuming,
and
stage
spectacle.
A
plot—often
slight,
and
mythologichttp://doc.xuehai.net/bc83beead6fb41964facffae4.htmlal
mainly
and
allegorical—served to hold together these diverse elements. The speaking
characters, who wore masks (hence the title), were often played by amateurs who
belonged to courtly society. The play concluded with a dance in which the players
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doffed their masks and were joined by the audience.
课外拓展（18 世纪名词解释）
1. Three unities: Principles of dramatic structure proposed by critics
ththand dramatists of the 16 and the 17 centuries, claiming the authority
of Aristotle’s Poetics. The three unities are the unity of action (all the action
of the work must occur within one continuous plot without extraneous subplot), the
unity of time (all the action of the work must occur within 24 hours, or one whole
day), and the unity of place (all the action of the work must occur in one place or
city).
2. Didactic literature: Literary works that are designed to expound a branch of
knowledge,http://doc.xuehai.net/bc83beead6fb41964facffae4.html or else to embody,
in imaginative or fictional form, a moral, religious, or philosophical doctrine or
them. Alexander Pope’s Essay on Criticism and Edmund Spencer’s The Queene are good
example of didactic poetry.
3. Satire: It is a literary art of diminishing or derogating a subject by making it
ridiculous and evoking toward it attitudes of amusement, contempt, scorn, or
indignation. Satire uses laughter as a weapon, and against a butt that exists outside
the work itself. That butt may be an individual, or a type of person, a class, an
institution, a nation or even the entire human race (as in much of Jonathan Swift’s
Gulliver’s Travels).
4. Mock epic: It is a poem employing the lofty style and the conventions of epic poetry
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to describe a trivial or undignified series of events; thus a kind of satire that
mocks its subject by treating it in an inappropriately grandiose manner, usually at
some length. The outstandinghttp://doc.xuehai.net/bc83beead6fb41964facffae4.html
examples in English literature are Alexander Pope’s The Rape of the Lock and Dunciad.
5. Farce: It is a type of low comedy that employs improbable or otherwise ridiculous
situations and mix-ups, slapsticks and horseplay, and crude and even bawdy dialogue.
It smacks the audience full-force in the face, aiming simply to entertain and evoke
guffaws from the audience.
6. Picaresque novel: Derived from the Spanish word picara, meaning “rogue” or
“rascal”, the term generally refers to a basically realistic and often satire work
of fiction chronicling the career of an engaging, lower-class rogue-hero, who takes
to the road for a
sidekick. A well-known example of the picaresque novel is Cervantes’ Don Quixote
(165). Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is another classic example
7. Melodrama: Originally, any drama accompanied by music which was used to enhance
the
emotional
impact
and
thhttp://doc.xuehai.net/bc83beead6fb41964facffae4.htmle
mood
performance.
of
The
term
derived from the Greek melos, which means “song”. In early
nineteenth-century London, melodramas became increasingly popular, which came to
emphasize the conflict between pure good and evil. Its heroes and heroines were
inevitably completely moral and uypright, but terrorized, harassed, or otherwise
troubled by thoroughly despicable villains. The chief concern of melodrama was to
elicit the desired emotional response from the audience.
8. Persona: The assumed identity or fictional “I” (literary a “mask”) assumed
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by a writer in a literary work; thus the speaker in a lyric poem, or the narrator
in a fictional narrative. Although the persona often serves as the “voice” of the
writer, it nonetheless should not be confused with the writer, for the persona may
not accurately reflect the writer’s personal opinions, feelings, or perspectives
on a subject.
9.
Epigram:
The
term
is
now
used
for
http://doc.xuehai.net/bc83beead6fb41964facffae4.htmla statement, whether in verse
or prose, which is terse, pointed and witty. The epigram may be on any subject, amatory,
elegiac, meditative,
complimentary, anecdotal, or most often satiric.
10. Gothic novel: An alternative term is Gothic romance. It is a story of terror and
suspense, usually set in a gloomy old castle of monastery. Following the appearance
of Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto (1764), the Gothic novel flourished in
Britain from the 1790s to the 1820s, dominated by Ann Radcliffe, whose The Mysteries
of Udolpho had may imitators.
11. Graveyard school of poetry: It refers to a group of eighteen-century English poets
who emphasized subjectivity, mystery, and melancholy. Death, mortality (immortality),
and gloom were frequent subjects of elements of their meditative poem, which were
often actually set in graveyards. Thomas Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country
Churchyard”
is
the
most
famous
example.://doc.xuehai.net/bc83beead6fb41964facffae4.html
12. Neoclassicism: It is a style of Western literature that flourished from the
mid-seventeenth until the end of the eighteenth century and the rise of Romanticism.
The neoclassicists looked to the great classical writers for inspiration and guidance,
considering them to have mastered the noblest literary forms, tragic epic and the
epic. Neoclassical writers shared several beliefs. They believed that
literature should both instruct and delight, and the proper subject of art was
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humanity. Neoclassicism stressed rules, reason, harmony, balance, restraint, decorum,
order, serenity, realism, and form—above
all, an appeal to the intellect rather than emotion. The Restoration in 1660 marked
the beginning of the Neoclassical Period in England, whose writers included John
Dryden, Alexander Pope, Samuel Johnson, etc.
13. Fiction: In an inclusive sense, fiction is any literary narrative, whether in
prose
or
vershttp://doc.xuehai.net/bc83beead6fb41964facffae4.htmle,
which
is
invented instead of being an account of events that in fact happened. In a narrow
sense, however, fiction denotes only narratives that are written in prose (the novel
and the short story).
14. Antihero: It is a protagonist in a modern work who does not exhibit the qualities
of the tradition hero. Instead of being a grand and admirable figure—brave, honest,
and magnanimous, for example—an antihero is all too ordinary and may even be petty
or downright dishonest. The use of nonheroic protagonist occurs as early as the
picaresque novel of the sixteenth century, and the heroine of Defoe’s Moll Flanders
is a thief and a prostitute.
15. Foreshadowing: The use of hints or clues in a narrative to suggest what will happen
later. Writers use foreshadowing to create interest and to build suspense. Sometimes
foreshadowing also prepares the reader for the ending of the story.
课外拓展（浪漫主义时期名词解释）
://doc.xuehai.net/bc83beead6fb41964facffae4.htmlar
1. Romanticism: It is a term applied to literary and artistic movements of the late18th
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and early19th century. It can be seen as a rejection of the precepts of order, calm,
harmony, balance, idealization, and
rationality that typified classicism in general and late18th-century neoclassicism
in particular. It was also to some extent a reaction against the Enlightenment and
against 18th-century rationalism and physical materialism in general. Inspired in
part by the libertarian ideals of the French Revolution, the romantics believed in
a return to nature and in the innate goodness of humans, as expressed by Jean Jacques
Rousseau. They emphasized the individual, the subjective, the irrational, the
imaginative, the personal, the spontaneous, the emotional, the visionary, and the
transcendental. They also showed interest in the medieval, exotic, primitive, and
nationalistic.
Critics
date
English
rohttp://doc.xuehai.net/bc83beead6fb41964facffae4.htmlmanticism
literary
from
the
publication of William Wordsworth and S. T. Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads in1798 to
the death of Sir Walter Scott and the passage of the first reform bill in the Parliament
in1832.
2. Ode: It is an elaborately formal lyric poem, often in the form of a lengthy
ceremonious address to a person or abstract entity, always serious and elevated in
tone. It aims at praising and glorifying an individual,
commemorating an event, or describing nature intellectually rather than emotionally.
Odes originally were songs performed to the accompaniment of a musical instrument.
There are two different classical models: Pindar’s Greek choral odes devoted to
public praise of athletes
(5thcenturyBC), and Horace’s more privately reflective odes in Latin (c.23~13BC).
John Keats wrote many celebrated odes such as “Ode on a Grecian Urn” and “Ode to
a Nightingale” (both1820).
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3.
Byronic
hero:
It
is
a
stereothttp://doc.xuehai.net/bc83beead6fb41964facffae4.htmlyped character created
by Byron. This kind of hero is usually a proud, mysterious rebel figure of noble origin.
With immense superiority in his passions and powers, he would carry on his shoulders
the burden of righting all the wrongs in a corrupt society. He would rise
single-handedly against any kind of tyrannical rules either in government, in
religion, or in moral principles with unconquerable wills and inexhaustible energies.
The conflict is usually one of
rebellious individuals against outworn social systems and conventions.
4. Ottava rima: It is a form of verse stanza consisting of eight lines rhyming abababcc,
usually employed for narrative verse but sometimes used in lyric poems. In its
original Italian form (“eighth rhyme”), pioneered by Boccaccio in the14th century
and perfected by Ariostointhe16th.
version
uses
iambic
It used hendecasyllables, but the English
pentameters.
It
was
introduced
into
English
bhttp://doc.xuehai.net/bc83beead6fb41964facffae4.htmly Thomas Wyatt in the 16th
century, and later used by Byron in Don Juan as well as by Keats, Shelley, and Yeats.
5. Terza rima: It is a verse form consisting of a sequence of interlinked tercets
rhyming aba bcb cdc ded etc. Thus the second line of each tercet provides the rhyme
for the first and third lines of the next, the sequence closes with one line (or in
a few cases, two lines) rhyming with the middle line of the last tercet: yzy z (z).
The form was invented by Dante Alighieri for his Divina Commedia (c.1320), using the
Italian hendecasyllabic line. It has been adopted by several poets in English
pentameters, notably by P. B. Shelley in his “Ode to the West Wind”.
6. Irony: It is a contrast or an incongruity between what is stated and what is really
meant, or between what is expected to happen and what actually happens. Three kinds
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of irony are: (1) verbal irony, in which a writer or speaker says one thing and
http://doc.xuehai.net/bc83beead6fb41964facffae4.htmlmeans
something
entirely
different;
(2) dramatic irony, in which a reader or an audience perceives something that a
character in the story or play does not know; (3) irony of situation, in which the
writer shows a discrepancy between the expected results of some action or situation
and its actual results.
7. Lyric: It is a poem, usually a short one that expresses a speaker’s personal
thoughts or feelings. The elegy, ode, and sonnet are all forms of the lyric. As its
Greek name indicates, a lyric was originally a poem sung to the accompaniment of a
lyre, and lyrics to this day have retained a melodic quality. Lyrics may express a
range of emotions and reflections. Robert Herrick’s “To the Virgins, to Make Much
of Time” reflects on
the brevity of life and the need to live for the moment, while T. S. Eliot’s
“Preludes” observes the sordidness and depression of modern life.
8.
Motif:
It
is
a
recurring
fhttp://doc.xuehai.net/bc83beead6fb41964facffae4.htmleature (such as a name, an
image, or a phrase) in a work of literature. A motif generally contributes in someway
to the theme of a short story, novel, poem, or play. For example, a motif used by
D. H. Lawrence in his story “The Rocking-Horse Winner” is the word luck. The main
character of the story, a boy named Paul, discovers that he has the power to predict
the winner in a horse race. However, this becomes an ironic kind of luck, for Paul
grows obsessed with his power and is finally destroyed by it. At times, motif is used
to refer to some commonly used plot or character type in literature. The “ugly
duckling motif” refers to a plot that involves the transformation of a
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plain-looking person into a beauty. Two other commonly used motifs are the “Romeo
and Juliet motif” (about doomed lovers) and the “Horatio Alger motif” (about the
office clerk who becomes the corporation president).
9.
Theme:
It
is
the
general
idea
http://doc.xuehai.net/bc83beead6fb41964facffae4.htmlor insight about life that a
writer wishes to express in literary work. All the elements of a literary work—plot,
setting, characterization, and figurative language contribute to the development of
its theme. A simple theme can often be stated in a single sentence. But sometimes
a literary work is rich and complex, and a paragraph or even an essay is needed to
state the theme. Not all literary works have a controlling theme. For example, the
purpose of some simple ghost stories is to frighten the reader, and some detective
stories seek only to thrill.
10. Symbol: It is any object, person, place, or action that has a meaning in itself
and that also stands for something larger than itself, such as a quality, an attitude,
a belief, or a value. A rose is often a symbol of love and beauty; a skull is often
a symbol of death; spring and winter often symbolize youth and old age.
11.
Imagery:
It
is
a
rather
vague
critical
tehttp://doc.xuehai.net/bc83beead6fb41964facffae4.htmlrm covering those uses of
language in a literary work that evoke sense-impressions by literal or figurative
reference to perceptible or “concrete” objects, scenes, actions, or states as
distinct from the language of abstract argument or exposition. The imagery of a
literary work thus comprises the set of images that it uses; these need not be mental
“pictures” but may appeal to senses other than sight.
12. Foil: It is a character whose qualities or actions serve to emphasize those of
the protagonist (or of some other character) by providing a strong contrast with them.
Thus in Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, the passive obedience of Jane’s school-friend
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Helen Burns makes her a foil to the rebellious heroine.
13. Synaesthesia: It is a blending or confusion of different kinds of sense-impression,
in which one type of sensation is referred to in terms more appropriate to another.
Common
synaesthetic
expressions
include
thhttp://doc.xuehai.net/bc83beead6fb41964facffae4.htmle descriptions of colours as
“loud” or “warm”, and of sounds as “smooth”. This effect was cultivated
consciously by the French
Symbolists, but is often found in earlier poetry, notably in Keats.
14. Character: Characters are the persons represented in a dramatic or narrative work,
who are interpreted by the reader as being endowed with particular moral, intellectual,
and emotional qualities by inferences from what the persons say and their distinctive
ways of saying it—the dialogue—and from what they do—the action. The grounds in
the
characters’ temperament, desires, and moral nature for their speech and actions are
called their motivation. A character may remain essentially “stable”, or unchanged
in outlook and disposition, from beginning to end of a work (Prospero in
Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Micawber in Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield, or may
undergo
a
radical
change,
either
through
http://doc.xuehai.net/bc83beead6fb41964facffae4.htmlof
a
gradual
development
(the
process
title
character in Jane Austen’s Emma) or as the result of a crisis (Shakespeare’s King
Lear, Pip in Dickens’ Great Expectations).Whether a character remains stable or
changes, the reader of a traditional and realistic work expects “consistency”—the
character should not suddenly break off and act in a way not plausibly grounded in
his or her temperament as we have already come to know it.
15. Flat character: A flat character (also called a type, or
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“two-dimensional”) is built around “a single idea or quality” and is presented
without much individualizing detail, and therefore can be fairly adequately described
in a single phrase or sentence.
16. Round character: A round character is complex in temperament and motivation and
is represented with subtle particularity; such a character therefore is as difficult
to describe with any adequacy as a person in real life, and like real persons, is
http://doc.xuehai.net/bc83beead6fb41964facffae4.htmlcapable of surprising us.
17. Negative capacity: It is the phrase used by the English poet John Keats to describe
the quality of self lesser captivity necessary to a true poet. By negative capability,
Keats seems to have meant a poetic capacity to efface one’s own mental identity by
immersing it sympathetically and spontaneously within the subject described, as
Shakespeare was thought to have done.
课外拓展（维多利亚时期名词解释）
1. English critical realism: English critical realism o f the 19th century flourished
in the forties and in the early fifties. The critical realists described with much
vividness and artistic skill the chief traits of the English society and criticized
the capitalist system from a democratic
view point. The greatest English realist of the time was Charles Dickens. With
striking force and truthfulness, he pictures bourgeois civilization, showing the
misery
and
sufferings
http://doc.xuehai.net/bc83beead6fb41964facffae4.htmlcommon
of
people.
the
Another
critical realist, William Makepeace Thackeray, was a no less severe exposer of
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contemporary society. Thackeray’s novels are mainly a satirical
portrayal of the upper strata of society. Other adherents to the method of critical
realism were Charlotte and Emily Bronte, and Elizabeth Gaskell. In the fifties and
sixties the realistic novel as represented by Dickens and Thackeray entered a stage
of decline. It found its reflection in the works of George Eliot. Though she described
the life of the laboring people and criticized the privileged classes, the power of
exposure became weaker in her works. She seemed to be more morally than socially minded.
The English critical realists of the 19th century not only gave a satirical portrayal
of the bourgeoisie and all the ruling classes, but also showed profound sympathy for
the common people.
2.
Victorian
period:
It
refers
to
the
era
of
Queen
Victoria’s
rhttp://doc.xuehai.net/bc83beead6fb41964facffae4.htmleign (1837~1901). The period
is sometimes dated from 1832 (the passage of the first Reform Bill), a period of
intense and prolific activity in
literature, especially by novelists and poets, philosophers and essayists.
Dramatists of any note are few. Much of the writing was concerned with contemporary
social problems: for instance, the effects of the industrial revolution, the
influence of the theory of evolution, and movements of political and social reform.
The following are among the most not able British writers of the period: Thomas Carlyle,
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Alfred Tennyson, Charles Darwin, W. M. Thackeray, Robert
Browning, Edward Lear, Charles Dickens, Anthory Trollope, Charlotte Bronte, Emily
Bronte, Anne Bronte, George Eliot, John Ruskin, Matthew Arnold, George Meredith,
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Christina Rossetti, William Morris, Samuel Butler, Swinburne,
Thomas
Hardy,
Robert
Louis
Stevenson,
Henry
Arthur
Johttp://doc.xuehai.net/bc83beead6fb41964facffae4.htmlnes, Oscar Wilde.
3. Autobiography: It is an account of a person’s life by him or herself. The term
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appears to have been first used by Southey in 1809. In Dr. Johnson’s opinion no man
was better qualified to write his life than himself, but this is debatable. Memory
may be unreliable. Few can recall clear details of their early life and most are
therefore dependent on other people’s impressions, of necessity equally unreliable.
Moreover,
everyone tends to remember what he or she wants to remember. Disagreeable facts are
sometimes glossed over or repressed, truth may be distorted for the sake of
convenience or harmony and the occlusions of time may obscure as much as they reveal.
4. Regional novel: A regional writer is one who concentrates much
attention on a particular area and uses it and the people who inhabit it as the basis
for
his
or
her
stories.
Such
a
locale
is
likely
to
be
rural
or
provinciahttp://doc.xuehai.net/bc83beead6fb41964facffae4.htmll. Once established,
the regional novel began to interest a
number of writers, and soon the regions described became smaller and more specifically
defined. For example, the novels of Mrs. Gaskell (1810~1865) and George Eliot
(1819~1880) centered on the Midlands, and those of the Bronte sisters were set in
Yorkshire. There were also “urban” or “industrial” novels, set in a particular
town or city, some of which had considerable fame in the 19th century. Notable
instances are Mrs. Gaskell’s Mary Barton (1848), Charles Dickens’s Hard Times (1854)
and George Eliot’s Middlemarch (1871~1872).
5. Dramatic monologue: Dramatic monologue is a kind of poem in which a single fictional
or historical character other than the poet speaks to a silent “audience” of one
or more persons. Such poems reveal not the poet’s own thoughts but the mind of the
impersonated
character,
whose
personality
is
revealed
unwittingly;
distinguishehttp://doc.xuehai.net/bc83beead6fb41964facffae4.htmls
a
this
dramatic
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monologue from a lyric, while the implied presence of an auditor
distinguishes it from a soliloquy. Major examples of this form in English are
Tennyson’s “Ulysses” (1842), Browning’s “Fra Lippo Lippi” (1855), and T. S.
Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” (1917). Some plays in which only
one character speaks, in the form of a monologue or soliloquy, have also been called
dramatic monologues; but to avoid confusion it is preferable to refer to these simply
as monologues or as monodramas.
6. Psychological novel: It is a vague term to describe that kind of fiction which
is for the most part concerned with the spiritual, emotional and mental lives of the
characters and with the analysis of characters rather than with the plot and the action.
Many novelists during the last two hundred years have written psychological novels.
7.
Künstlerroman:
It
is
a
novel
which
has
an
artist
(in
any
creativhttp://doc.xuehai.net/bc83beead6fb41964facffae4.htmle art) as the central
character and which shows the development of the artist from childhood to maturity
and later. In English literature the most famous example of a Künstlerroman is James
Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
8. Aestheticism: The term aesthetic has come to signify something which pertains to
the criticism of the beautiful or to the theory of taste. An aesthete is one who pursues
and is devoted to the “beautiful” in art, music and literature. And aestheticism
is the term given to a movement, a cult, a mode of sensibility (a way of looking at
and feeling about things) in the 19th century. Fundamentally, it entailed the point
of view that art is self-sufficient and need serve no other purpose than its own ends.
In other words, art is an end in itself and need not be (or should not be) didactic,
politically committed, propagandist, moral or anything else but itself; and it should
not
be
judged
by
anyhttp://doc.xuehai.net/bc83beead6fb41964facffae4.html
non-aesthetic criteria (e.g. whether or not
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it is useful).
9. Naturalism: Naturalism is a post-Darwinian movement of the late 19th century that
tried to apply the” laws” of scientific determinism to fiction. The naturalist went
beyond the realist’s insistence on the objective presentation of the details of
everyday life to insist that the materials of literature should be arranged to reflect
a deterministic universe in which a person is a biological creature controlled by
environment and heredity. Major writers include Crane, Dreiser, Norris, and O’Neill
in America; Zola in France; and Hardy and Gissing in England. Crane’s “The Blue
Hotel” (1898) is perhaps the best example in this text of a naturalistic short story.
课外拓展（现代主义时期名词解释）
1. Modernism: It is a general term applied retrospectively to the wide range of
experimental
and
avant-garde
trends
in
literature
20thhttp://doc.xuehai.net/bc83beead6fb41964facffae4.html
of
century,
the
early
including
Symbolism, Futurism, Expressionism, Imagism, Vorticism, Dada, and Surrealism, along
with the innovations of the unaffiliated writers. Modernism takes the irrational
philosophy and the theory of psycho-analysis as its theoretical base. It is a reaction
against realism. It rejects rationalism which is the theoretical base of realism;
it excludes from its major concern the external, objective, material world, which
is the only creative source of realism; by advocating a free experimentation on new
forms and new techniques in literary creation, it casts away almost all the
traditional elements in literature such as story, plot, character, chronological
narration, etc., which are essential to realism. As a result, the works created by
the modernist writers can often be labeled as anti-novel, anti-poetry or anti-drama.
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2. Epiphany: It is a moment of illumination, usually occurring at or near the end
of a work. Ihttp://doc.xuehai.net/bc83beead6fb41964facffae4.htmln James Joyce’s
story “Araby”, the epiphany occurs when the narrator realizes, with sudden clarity,
that his dream of visioning the splendid bazaar has resulted only in frustration and
disillusion.
3. Interior monologue: It refers to the written representation of a character’s inner
thoughts, impressions, and memories as if directly “overheard” without the apparent
intervention of a summarizing and selecting narrator. The term is often loosely used
as a synonym for stream-of-consciousness.
4. Fragmentation: Not only is the world fragmented, falling apart, but also life.
To depict a fragmented life modernists use fragmentation in their writings. The
framework in its traditional sense is gone, usual connective patterns are missing,
and coming in their place are unrelated
pieces or dissociated fragments. Consequently, a sense of discontinuity or chaos is
projected.
The
reader
has
to
create
meaning
out
of
the
chhttp://doc.xuehai.net/bc83beead6fb41964facffae4.htmlaos.
5. Non-linear, discontinuous narratives: Traditional or realist fiction usually
follows the order of time and cause-and-effect in telling a story, but in modernist
fiction we see less of this. Most modernists adopt a psychological view of time in
which time is treated as “duration”. They come to see that time is not an object,
something that can be described, reported and referred to in a constative utterance.
One part of this “something other than itself” is stream-of-consciousness. Constant
flashbacks into the past are a second, and story beginning where it ends is a third.
6. Feminist criticism: It is a development and movement in critical theory and in
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the evaluation of literature which was well underway by the late 1960s and which has
burgeoned steadily since. It is an attempt to describe and interpret and reinterpret
women’s experience as depicted in various kinds of literature-especially the novel;
and,
thttp://doc.xuehai.net/bc83beead6fb41964facffae4.htmlo
a
lesser
extent,
poetry and drama. It questions the long-standing, dominant, male, heliocentric
ideologies, a patriarchal attitudes and male interpretations in
literature. It attacks male notions of value in literature and challenges traditional
and accepted male ideas about the nature of women and about how women feel, act and
think, or are supposed to feel, act and think, and how in general they respond to
life and living. It thus questions numerous prejudices and assumptions about women
made by male writers, not least any tendency to cast women in stock character roles.
7. Reader-response criticism: It is a general term for those kinds of modern criticism
and literary theory that focus on the response of readers to literary works, rather
than on the works themselves considered as self-contained entities. It is not a single
agreed theory so much as a shared concern with a set of problems involving the extent
and
http://doc.xuehai.net/bc83beead6fb41964facffae4.htmlnature
of
readers’
contribution to the meanings of literary works, approached from various positions
including those of structuralism, psychoanalysis, phenomenology, and hermeneutics.
The common factor is a shift from the description of texts in terms of their inherent
properties to a discussion of the production of meanings within the reading process.
8. Epigraph: It is a quotation or motto at the beginning of a chapter, book, short
story, or poem that makes some point about the work. One of the epigraphs preceding
T. S. Eliot’s “The Hollow Men” is a reference to Guy Fawkes Day, when English
children carry stuffed effigies, or likenesses, of the traitor Fawkes. The epigraph
serves as a motif throughout the poem for the in effectuality Eliot identifies with
his generation of “stuffed men”.
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9. Epilogue: It is a short addition or conclusion at the end of a literary work. In
the
Epilogue
to
Pygmalion,
tellshttp://doc.xuehai.net/bc83beead6fb41964facffae4.html
Bernard
Shaw
his
what
readers
happened to his characters after the conclusion of the play.
10. Post-modernism: It is a term referring to certain radically
experimental works of literature and art produced after World War II. Post-modernism
is distinguished from modernism, which generally refers to the revolution in art and
literature that occurred during the period 1910-1930, particularly following the
disillusioning experience of World War I. Much of post-modernist writing reveals and
highlights the
alienation of individuals and the meaninglessness of human existence. Postmodernists
break away from traditions through experimentation with new literary devices, forms,
and styles.
11. Post-structuralism: A term referring to the general attempt to contest and subvert
structuralism and to formulate new theories regarding interpretation and meaning.
It was initiated particularly by
deconstructors
but
ahttp://doc.xuehai.net/bc83beead6fb41964facffae4.htmlssociated
also
with
certain
aspects and practitioners of psychoanalytic, Marxist, cultural, feminist, and gender
criticism. Post-structuralists claim that in the grand scheme of signification, all
“signifieds” are also signifiers, for each word exists in a complex web of language
and has such a variety of denotation and connotations that no one meaning can be said
to be final, stable, and invulnerable to reconsideration and substitution. Leading
post-structuralists include French philosophers Derrida, Lacan, Foucault, etc.
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12. Theatre of the absurd: Theatre of the absurd emerged around 1950, a name given
by the critic Martin Esslin to describe the works of the dramatists, including Beckett,
Pinter, etc. These authors have in common the sense that human existence is nihilistic.
This vision is reflected in the form as well as the content of the plays, through
rejecting
logical
construction,
and
creating
meaningless
speeches
and
silehttp://doc.xuehai.net/bc83beead6fb41964facffae4.htmlnces.
13. meta-fiction: A term applied to fictional writing which questioned the
relationship between reality and fiction through deliberately and self-consciously
drawing attention to its own status as a linguistic construct. Examples contain John
Fowles’s The French Lieutenant’s Woman.
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