126. What are the major contributions made by the 19th century critical realists? (The major contribution is their
perfection of the novel. Like the realists of the 18th century, the 19th century critical realist made use of the form of novel of full and detailed representations of social and political events, and of the fate of individuals and of whole social classes. However, the realistic novels of the 19th century went a step further than those of the 18th century in that they not only pictured the conflicts between individuals who stood for definite social strata, but also showed the broad social conflicts over and above the fate of mere individuals. Their artistic representation of vital social movements such as Chartism, and their vivid description of the dramatic conflicts of the time make the 19th century realistic novel “the epic of the bourgeois society”.)
127. What does the subtitle “A Pure Woman” of the novel Tess of the D’Urbervilles mean?
答：To show what Hardy thought of his heroine, who is seduced, abandoned, and finally driven to murder for
which she is hanged. Through it all she remains his most lovable woman character, cruelly tormented by fate and innocent of any intention to sin.
IV. Explain the following terms from the aspects of social background, main characteristics, representatives,
influences, etc 131. Alliterative verse:
132. Popular ballads: a story hold in 4-line stanzas with second and fourth line rhymed. Ballads are anonymous narrative songs that have been preserved by oral transmission.
134. Enlightenment: Enlightenment is an intellectual movement in Europe in 18th century. It was an expression of the
struggle of the bourgeoisie against feudalism. The enlighteners fought against class inequality, stagnation, prejudices and other feudal survivals. It was so called because it considered the chief means for the betterment of the society was the “enlightenment” or “education” of the people.
135. Sentimentalism: it came into being as a result of a bitter discontent on the part of certain enlighteners in social reality. (The representatives of sentimentalism continued to struggle against feudalism but they vaguely sensed at the same time the contradictions of bourgeois progress that brought with it enslavement and ruin to the people. ) The philosophy of the enlighteners, through rational and materialistic in its essence, did not exclude sences, or sentiments, as a means of perception and learning. Moreover, the cult of nature and , a cult of a \man\display themselves in a most human and natural manner, contrary to the artful and hypocritical aristocrats.
136. Neo-classicism: It was initiated by Dryden, culminated in Pope and continued by Johnson. Neo-classicists
modeled themselves on classical, ancient Greek and Latin authors. They wanted to achieve perfect form in literature. They general tended to look at social and political life critically. They emphasize on intellect rather than imagination. They observed fixed laws and rules in literary creation. Poets preferred heroic couplet. In drama, they adhered to three unities, time, place and action. They emphasized on the didactic function of literature.
137. (Critical) Realism: Realism is a mode of writing that gives the impression of recording or “reflecting” faithfully
an actual way of life. The term refers, sometimes confusingly, both to a literary method based on detailed accuracy of description (i. e. verisimilitude) and to a more general attitude that rejects idealization, escapism, and other extravagant qualities of romance in favor of recognizing soberly the actual problems of life.
138. Gothic novel: Gothic novel, a type of romantic fiction that predominated in the late eighteenth century, was one phase of the Romantic movement. It is futile to struggle against one's fate.The mysterious element plays an enormous role in the Gothic novel;it is so replete with bloodcurdling scenes and unatural feelings that it is justly called \horror\
139. Lake poets: refer to the first generation of romanticism including Wordsworth Coleridge and Southey. They once
lived around the lake districts and traversed the similar attitude toward literature, politics and society, beginning as radicals and ending in conservatives.
140. Pre-romanticism: In the latter half of the 18th century, a new literary movement arose in Europe, called the
Romantic Revival. It was marked by a strong protest against the bondage of Classicism, by a recognition of the claims of passion and emotion, and by a renewed interest in medieval literature. In England, this movement showed itself in the trend of Pre-Romanticism in poetry, which was ushered in by Percy, Macpherson and Chatterton, and represented by Blake and Burns.
11
141. Romanticism is a movement that flourished in literature, philosophy, music and art in Western culture during most
of the nineteenth century, beginning as a revolt against classicism. There have been many varieties of Romanticism in many different times and places. Many of the ideas of English romanticism were first expressed by the poets William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
The Qualities of Romanticism: the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings; the creation of a world of imagination; the return to for material; sympathy with the jumble and glorification of the common place; emphasis upon the expression of individual genius; the return to Milton and the Elizabethans for literary models; the interest in old stories and medieval Romances; a sense of melancholy and loneliness; the rebellious spirit.
142. Dramatic monologue is a type of poem writing style in which a character, at some specific and critical moment,
addresses an identifiable but silent audience, thereby unintentionally revealing his or her essential temperament and personality.
143. Aestheticism: The basic theory of the Aesthetic movement is “art for art’s sake”. Aestheticism places art above
life, and holds that life should imitate art, not art imitate life. According to the aesthetes, all artistic creation is absolutely subjective as opposed to objective. Art should be free from any influence of egoism. Only when art is for art’s sake, can it be immortal. This was one of the reactions against the materialism and commercialism of the Victorian industrial era, as well as a reaction against the Victorian convention of art for morality’s sake, or art for money’s sake. The representatives are Oscar Wilde and Walter Pater.
144. Stream of consciousness: a kind of style with a carefully modulated poetic flow and brought into prose fiction
something of the rhythms and the imagery of lyric poetry.
V. Answer the following questions briefly based on your understanding of the texts studied.
145. (1)“I wander thro’ each charter’d street,/(2)Near where the charter’d Thames does flow,/ (3)And mark in every
face I meet/ (4)Marks of weakness, marks of woe.”
1) Who was the writer of the quoted part? William Blake 2) What is the name/ title of the poem? Lodon
3) What do you mean by “each charter’d street” and “charter’d Thames” in (1) and (2)? (私有化的，暗指富人的) 4) How do you understand “mark in every face” in (3)? (notice 穷人的面孔，与前面富人占有的街道和泰晤士河形成对
此)
5) What does “Marks of weakness, marks of woe” in (4) mean? (暗指穷人的痛苦)
147. …For who would bear the whips and scorns of time …The insolence of office and the spurns That patient merit of the unworthy takes,But that the dread of something after death,The undesicover’d country, from whose bourn No traveler returns, puzzles the will, And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others that we know not of.
1) Who was the writer? William Shakespeare 2) What is the name/ title of the poem? Hamlet
3) How do you understand “the spurns/That patient merit of the unworthy takes”? 4) How do you understand “The undesicover’d country”? 5) What does “whose” refer to? 6) What does “those ills” mean?
7) How do you understand “…And makes us rather bear those ills we have/Than fly to others that we know not of”?
8) What does the quoted part imply about the speaker of these lines?
149. She lived unknown, and few could know
When Lucy ceased to be;
But she is in her grave, and oh, The difference to me!
1) Who was the writer? William Wordsworth
2) What is the name/ title of the poem? She Dwelt among the Untrodden Ways 3) What does “and oh, /The difference to me!” imply?
4) Why the writer use “unknown” and “know” in the same line?
151. I wander thro’ each charter’d street, / Near where the charter’d Thames does flow, /And mark in every face I meet/
12
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.同145
1) How do you understand “each charter’d street” and “charter’d Thames”? 2) What does “Marks of weakness, marks of woe” mean?
152. —That time is past,/ And all its aching joys are now no more, / And all its dizzy raptures.
1) Why does the poet say “That time is past”? 1793年作者第一次来这里，现在已经过去五年了
2) How do you understand “aching joys”?refers to the post-adolescent's aching, dizzy and equivocal passion --a love which is more like a dread.
153. The mountains look on Marathon—And Marathon looks on the sea;And musing there an hour alone,I dream’d that Greece might still be free;For standing on the Persians’ grave,I could not deem myself a slave.
1) Who was the writer? Lord Byron 2) What is the name/ title of the poem?The Isles of Greece 3) What does “For standing on the Persians’ grave, /I could not deem myself a slave.” mean?
★172. What are the characteristics of John Donne’s poems? Use example poems to illustrate the characteristics. 答：a. The inherently theatrical impression: John Donne is the leading figure of the \poems give a more inherently theatrical impression.
b. The poetic mode: The mode is dynamic rather than static, with ingenuity of speech, vividness of imagery and vitality of rhythms.
c. The Stylistic features:The most striking feature of Donne's poetry is precisely its tang of reality, in the sense that it seems to reflect life in a real rather than a poetical world.
1. Most of it purports to deal with life, descriptive or experimentally, and the first thing to strike the reader is Donne’s extraordinary and penetrating realism.
2. The next is the cynicism which marks certain of the lighter poems and which represents a conscious reaction from the extreme idealization of woman encouraged by the Patrarchan tradition.
Example：Donne holds that the nature of love is the union of soul and body. This thought is quite contrary to the medieval love idea. What is more, idealism and cynicism about love coexist in Donne's love poetry. He sometimes expresses the futility and instability of love in his poems.
When eulogizing a woman, Donne tells us very little about her physical beauty. Instead, Donne's interest lies in dramatizing and illustrating the state of being in love.
173. In Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Titern Abbey, William Wordsworth used many “and”and other
conjunctions; one typical example is “a sense sublime/Of something far more deeply interfused, /Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, /And the round ocean and the living air, /And the blue sky, and in the mind of man…” In your pinion, what purpose did Wordsworth have (or What contributions did the conjunctions make to the theme of the poem)? Better to use examples from the poem (and his other poems, if possible) and the “Notes” at the end of the poem.
133. Metaphysical poetry: Metaphysical poetry is a kind of realistic, often ironic and witty, verse combining intellectual ingenuity and psychological insight written partly in reaction to the conventions of Elizabethan love poetry by such seventeenth-century poets as John Donne, George Herbert, Richard Crashaw, Thomas Traherne, and Andrew Marvell. One of its hallmarks is the metaphysical conceit, a particularly arresting and ingenious type of metaphor. The features of the school玄学派: philosophical poems, complex rhythms and strange images.
The features of Charles Dickens 1.His critical realism: While sticking to the principle of faithful representation of the 18th-century realist novel, he carried the duty to the criticism of the society and the defense of the mass. 2. He is a master storyteller. With his first sentence, he engages the reader’s attention and holds it to the end. 3. What he writes is mainly the middle and lower-middle class life in London. 4. He is a master of language with a large vocabulary and adeptness with the vernacular. 5. He is a great humorist as well as a great painter of pathos. He always mingles the two to make his fictional world realistic. 6. His characters are not only true to life but also large than life. There are both individual characters and type characters.
III. Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Height 1. The novel is an extraordinary moving love story: the passion between Heathcliff and Catherine is the most intense, beautiful, and the most horrible passions ever found among human beings. 2. It is also a work of critical realism. Heathcliff is abused, rejected and distorted by the society only because he is a poor orphan of obscure parents. He suffers all kinds of inhuman treatment after the death of his benefactor. He loves Catherine dearly but forced to be separated from her. So, Heathcliff’s cruel revenge upon his enemies is justified in a way. 3. The author makes clear that it is wrong to discriminate on the basis of social status, and it
13
is cruel and destructive to break genuine, natural human passions. Although Catherine and Edgar’s marriage is ideal in the eyes of the whole neighborhood, her love for Heathcliff is hard and everlasting.
14
英国文学史及选读(学校考试库)
