[问题详解]英国文学史名词解释

由天下分享时间：2024/10/7 13:21:58 加入收藏我要投稿点赞

The Anglo-Saxon Period I.

1. _________________ can be termed England’s national epic and its hero Beowulf

—one of the national heroes of the English people.

2. The literature of Anglo-Saxon period falls naturally into two divisions,

--______ and ________. The former represents the poetry which the Anglo-Saxons probably brought with them in the form of _______, --the crude material out of which literature was slowly developed on English soil; the latter represents the _________ developed under teaching of the monks.

3. The Song of Beowulf reflects events which took place on the ______ approximately

at the beginning of the 6 century, when the forefathers of the ____lived in the southern part of the _________.

4. The old English poetry can be divided into two groups: the __________poetry and

the ______ poetry. (secular, religious)

5. ___________ is the oldest poem in the English language, and also the oldest

surviving epic in the English language. (Beowulf) II.

1. _______ is the first important religious poet in English literature.

A. John Donne B. George Herbert C. Caedmon D. Milton 2. In Anglo-Saxon period, Beowulf represented the ________ poetry.

A. pagan B. religious C. romantic D. sentimental

III. Define the literary terms 1. Epic

It is, originally, an oral narrative poem, majestic both in theme and style. Epics deal with legendary or historical events of national or universal significance, involving action of broad sweep and grandeur. Most epics deal with the exploits of a single individual. The characteristics of the hero of an epic are national rather than individual. Typically, an epic includes several features: the introduction of supernatural forces that shape the action; conflict in the form of battles or other physical combat; and stylistic conventions such as a n invocation to the Muse, a formal statement of the theme, long lists of the protagonist involved, and set speeches couched in elevated language. Examples include the ancient Greek epics by Homer, Iliad and Odyssey, The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser and The Paradise Lost by John Milton. 2. Alliteration

A repeated initial consonant to successive words.

The Anglo-Norman Period I.

1. In the year ________, at the battle of ______________, the Normans headed by William, Duke of Normandy, defeated the Anglo-Saxons.

2. The literature which Normans brought to England is remarkable for its bright, romantic tales of _____ and ______, in marked contrast with the ___________ and ___________ of Anglo-Saxon poetry.

3. The literature of the Anglo –Norman period was of three classes: the matter of _________; matter of __________________; matter of ___________.

4. after the __________ Conquest, feudal system was established in English society. (Norman)

5. The most prevalent kind of literature in feudal England was ___________. It was a long composition, sometimes in verse, sometimes in prose, describing the life and adventure of a noble hero. (romance)

Geoffrey Chaucer I. 1. Geoffrey Chaucer, the “____________________” and one of the greatest narrative poets of England, was born in London in or about the year 1340. 2. Being specially fond of the great ____________ writer Boccaccio, Chaucer composes a long narrative poem____________, based upon Boccaccio’s poem __________.

3. Chaucer greatly contributed to the founding of the English literary language, the basis of which was formed by the _________ dialect, so profusely used by the poet.

4. Chaucer’s masterpiece is _____________, one of the most famous works in all literature.

5. The Prologue is a splendid masterpiece of ___________ portrayal, the first of its kind in the history of English literature. 6. In his greatest work, The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer created a strikingly brilliant and picturesque panorama of his ________________ and his _____________.

7. Chaucer’s work is permeated with buoyant free-thinking, so characteristic of the age of _____________ whose immediate forerunner Chaucer thus becomes.

II. Define the literary terms 1. Romance

It is a literary genre popular in the Middle Ages, dealing, in verse or prose, with legendary, supernatural, or amorous subjects and characters. The term was applied to tales specifically concerned with knights, chivalry, and courtly love. Popular subjects for romances included the Macedonian King Alexander the Great, King Arthur of Britain and the knights of the Round Table, and Emperor Charlemagne. 2. Ballad

It is a lyric poem generally of three eight-line stanzas with a concluding stanza of four lines called an envoy. With some variations, the lines of a ballad are iambic or anapestic tetrameter rhyming ababbcbc; the envoy, which forms a personal dedication to some person of importance or to a personification. The ballad became

popular in England in the late 14 century . Renaissance

I. Complete the following statements with a proper word or a phrase according to the textbook.

1. The 16th century in England was a period of the breaking up of ________ relations and the establishing of the foundations of ____________. 2. The 16th century was a time when, according to Thomas More, “_________”. 3. The term ____ originally indicated a revival of classic Greek and Roman arts and sciences after the dark ages of obscurantism. (Renaissance) 4. ________ broke off with the Pope, dissolved all the monasteries and abbeys in the country, confiscated their lands and proclaimed himself head of ___________.

5. The old English aristocracy having exterminated in the course of _________, a new nobility, totally dependent on the king’s power, came to the fore.

6. At the beginning of the 16th century the outstanding humanist ________ wrote his Utopia in which he gave a profound and truthful picture of the people’s sufferings and put forward his ideal of a future happy society.

7. Edmund Spenser was the author of the greatest epic poem of the time, ______.

8. The greatest of the pioneers of English drama was _________ who reformed that genre in England and perfected the language and verse of dramatic works.

9. William Shakespeare was born on the 23rd of April, _____, in _______, Warwickshire.

10._________ speaks the famous “To be, or not to be”

11.Shakespeare’s sonnets fall into two series: The first 126 sonnets are addressed to a young man, and the rest (except the last two ones) are addressed to _____. (dark lady)

12.The four great tragedies in Shakespeare’s mature period are _____, __________, _______ and __________. (Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth) 13.Pope describe ______ as “the wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind”. 14.Of Bacon’s literary works, the most important are the _________.

II. Define the literary terms listed below.

1. Renaissance: Renaissance, meaning “rebirth” or “revival”, marks a transition from the medieval to the modern world. Generally, it refers to the period between the 14th and mid-17th centuries. It first started in Italy, with the flowering of painting, sculpture, architecture, and literature. From Italy the movement spread to the rest of Europe. It is a movement

stimulated by a series of historical events, such as the rediscovery of ancient Roman and Greek culture, the new discoveries in geography and astrology, the religious reformation and the economic expansion.

Humanism is the essence of the Renaissance. The Renaissance humanist thinkers found that human beings were glorious creatures capable of individual development in the direction of perfection, and that the world they inhabited was theirs not to despise but to question, explore, and enjoy. To them, nothing was impossible to accomplish. Thus, by emphasizing the dignity of human beings and the importance of the present life, they voiced their beliefs that man did not only have the right to enjoy the beauty of this life, but had the ability to perfect himself and perform wonders.

2. Sonnet

It is a lyrical poem of fourteen lines that follows a strict rhyme scheme. Traditionally, when writing sonnets, English poets usually employ iambic pentameter.One of the best-known sonnet writers is Shakespeare, who wrote 154 of them. A Shakespearean sonnet consists of 14 lines, and each line is written in iambic pentameter. The rhyme scheme in a Shakespearean sonnet is ABAB CDCD EFEF GG, in which the last two lines are a rhymed couplet.

3. Allegory: a tale in verse or prose in which characters, or settings represent abstract ideas or moral qualities. An allegory is a story with two meanings : a literal meaning and a symbolic meaning

4. Humanism: Humanism is the essence of the Renaissance. It emphasizes the dignity of human beings and the importance of the present life. Humanists voiced their beliefs that man was the center of the universe and man did not only have the right to enjoy the beauty of the present life, but had the ability to perfect himself and perform wonders

III. Literary Comprehension and Analysis

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate: Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer's lease hath all too short a date: Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, And often is his gold complexion dimmed, And every fair from fair sometime declines, By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed: But thy eternal summer shall not fade, Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st, Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st, So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. Questions:

1. By means of what comparison does the author achieve this movement from tangible to intangible? Trace his logic to show his movement 2. What does “this” refer to in the last line? What is the speaker’s purpose in writing his “eternal lines” and what conditions are necessary for his purpose to be carried out?

1. The author first compares the youth with a summer day, but then says that the youth is more gentle than a summer day. He explains that the summer can be imperfect with the destructive wind and the hot sun, which will be dimmed by overcast and clouds. Then he announces that the youth will possess eternal beauty and perfection, thus achieves his movement from the tangible natural objects to the intangible youth.

2. “This” refers to the poem written by the author. He wants to dedicate this poem to the person described in the poem. The condition is that as long as humans live and breathe on earth with eyes that can see, this is how long these verses will live. And these verses celebrate the youth and continually renew the youth’s life.

IV. Answer the following questions briefly.

1. Can you say something about Shakespeare’s characterization?

Shakespeare is particularly good at character portrayal. During his long dramatic career, he has created a variety of lifelike characters. The major characters in his plays are not simply type ones representing certain group or class of people, but are individuals with strong and distinct personalities. To achieve this, Shakespeare makes frequent use of comparisons and contrasts by portraying the characters in pairs or setting them against one another. He also individualizes his characters by emphasizing each one’s dominant and unique qualities, such as the melancholy of Hamlet, the wickedness of Claudius, the honesty of Othello, the ambition of Macbeth, and the beauty and wit of Portia. In addition, Shakespeare had made profound psycho-analytical studies of his characters by revealing the intricate inner workings of their minds through the full use of soliloquies, from which we can see the breadth and depth of the characters’ thoughtful feelings.

2. What is the central theme of The Merchant of Venice?

The central theme of the play is the triumph of love (between Portia and Bassanio) and friendship (between Antonio and Bassanio) over insatiable greed and brutality (as represented by Shylock). And the play exalts the ingenious heroine Portia and the two great friends who she eventually saves from the barbarous clutches of the villain (Shylock). A completely happy ending is brought about when the villain is punished, the merchant’s ships all come about home and the three pairs of lovers live happily ever after. Such a conclusion was natural for the playwright as well as for his Elizabethan audience, when anti-semitic sentiments was prevailing in London. Yet even in such an environment, in Shylock’s vociferous complaints of his sufferings resulting from racial discrimination and religious persecution, we can hear quite unmistakably Shakespeare’s own voice speaking on the Jew’s behalf, and with great vehemence sympathizing with the oppressed Shylock while condemning racial persecution in general. That Shakespeare should sometimes condemn Shylock and sometimes sympathize with him has led to much confusion for Shakespearean scholars and critics and the general reading public, and hence the play has been regarded as not a pure comedy but a tragic-comedy.

3. What do the four heroes in Shakespeare’s great tragedies have in common?

All of them face the injustice of human life and are caught in a difficult situation and their fate is closely connected with the fate of the whole nation. Each hero has his weakness of nature: Hamlet, the melancholic scholar-prince, faces the dilemma between action and mind; the old King Lear who is unwilling to totally give up his power makes himself suffer from treachery and infidelity; Macbeth’s lust for power stirs up his ambition and leads him to incessant crimes; and Othello was a brave man, but outside the battlefield he had insecurities.

4. The Renaissance period of British Literature.

The English Renaissance was a cultural and artistic movement in England dating from the early 16th century to the 17th century. It is associated with the pan-European Renaissance that many cultural historians were believed originated in northern Italy in the 14th century. The essence of the Renaissance is humanism, which sprang from the endeavor to restore a medieval reverence for the ancient authors. It is frequently taken as the beginning of the Renaissance on its conscious, intellectual side, for the Greek and Roman civilization was based on such a conception that man is the measure of all things.

This era in English cultural history is sometimes referred to as “the Age of Shakespeare” or “the Elizabethan Era”. Playwrights, such as Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare, composes theatrical

representations of the English. Poets such as Edmund Spenser and John Milton produces works that demonstrates an increased interest in understanding English Christian beliefs, such as the allegorical representation of the Tudor Dynasty in The Faerie Queene and the retelling of mankind’s fall from paradise in Paradise Lost. Nearing the end of the Tudor Dynasty, philosophers like Sir Thomas More and Sir Francis Bacon published their own ideas about humanity and the aspects of perfect society, pushing the limits of metacognition at that time.

The 17th century Exercise

I. Complete the following statements with a proper word or a phrase according to the textbook.

1. The 17th century was a period when absolute monarchy impeded the further development of _____________ in England and the bourgeoisie could no longer bear the sway of __________.

2. There are religious division and confusion and a long bitter struggle between the people’s Parliament and the Throne--________fighting against the ________ who helped the king. 3. In 1653, Oliver Cromwell imposed a military dictatorship on the country; after his death monarchy was again restored. It was called the period of the __________.

4. in _____, the Glorious Revolution took place.

5. The Glorious Revolution meant three things: the supremacy of _____________, the beginning of _________, and the final triumph of the principle of ________.

6. The puritans believed in _____ of life.

7. Restoration created a literature of its own, that was often __________ and _____________, but on the whole __________ and __________. The most popular genre was that of __________ whose chief aim was to entertain the licentious aristocrats. 8. The first thing to strike the reader is Donne’s extraordinary frankness and penetrating _____________. The next is the _________ which marks certain of the lighter poems and which represents a conscious reaction from the extreme __________ of woman encouraged by the Petrarchan tradition.

9. The poems of John Donne belong to two categories: the youthful love lyrics, and the latter________. (sacred verses)

10.Milton opposed the ________ and gave all his energies to the writing of ___________ dedicated to the people’s liberties.

11.Paradise Lost tells how ____ rebelled against God and how Adam and Eve were driven out of _________.

12.Paradise Lost presents the author’s views in an _________ form.

13.Paradise Lost consists of ________ books. It is based on the ________ legend of the imaginary progenitors of the human race--__________ and _________.

14.John Milton’s Paradise Lost ends with the departure of _________ from the Garden of Eden. (Adam and Eve) 15.Paradise Lost is a long epic divided into 12 books, the stories of which are taken from ______. (The Old Testament)

16.Milton gave us the only __________ since Beowulf, and Bunyan gave us the only great _________. 17.Bunyan’s most important work is _______, written in the old-fashioned, medieval form of ___________ and _________.

18._________ is the most successful religious allegory in the English language. (The Pilgrim’s Progress)

19.The Pilgrim’s Progress begins with a man called _______ setting out with a book in his hand a great load on his back from the city of _________. 20._________is famous for his metaphysical conceit, that is, a comparison between the two strikingly resembling objects. (John Donne) 21.Samson Agoniste was written by ______. (John Milton)

22.“If thou be’est he—but oh how fallen! How unchanged /From him!—who in the happy realms of light,/clothed with transcendent brightness,/did’st outshine/Myriads, though bright…” are the lines from Milton’s ________ spoken to Beelzebub by ______. (Paradise Lost, Satan)

II. Define the literary terms listed below

1. Metaphysical poetry

The term “metaphysical poetry” is commonly used to designate the works of the 17th century writers who wrote under the influence of John Donne. Pressured by harsh, uncomfortable, and curious age, the metaphysical poets sought to shat the traditions and replace them with new philosophies, new sciences, new worlds and new poetry. Thus, with a rebellious spirit, they tried to break away from the conventional fashion of Elizabethan love poetry, in particular the Petrarchan tradition, which is full of refined language, polished rhyming schemes and eulogy to ideal love, and favored in poetry for a more colloquial language and tone, a tightness of expression and the single-minded working out of a theme or argument. Their poetry offers logical reasoning of the objects, psychological analysis of the emotions of love and religion, prefers the novel and the shocking, uses the metaphysical conceits, and ignores the conventional metric devices. Since John Donne links up a wide range of ideas, explores a complex attitude of the mind, and uses his wit and ingenious conceits to put human experiences into poetry, he is generally regarded as the leading member of the school.

2. Carpe Diem; A tradition dating back to classical Greek and Latin poetry and particularly popular among English Cavalier poets. Carpe Diem means literally “seize the day”, that is, “live for today”

3. Genre: A literary species or form, e.g., tragedy, epic, comedy, novel, essay, biography, lyric poem.

III.

IV. Answer the following questions. 1. Comment on John Donne’s style.

Most of Donne’s poems employ a central speaker who takes effort to argue, to persuade, to analyze or to confess. His voice resembles that of stage character’s in the sense that the messages are conveyed in conversations, though in most cases, only the voice of one talker can be heard. Take The Flea as an example, the man’s crafty persuasion, the woman’s growing anger, the killing of the flea, and the man’s cunning response are vividly and immediately shown through the man’s part in the dramatic conversation. Daily used language is exploited to a great extent, capable of describing a large scale of human experiences and feelings, from passions most sensual and earthly to religious devotion, from mellifluous love to black sorrow of love’s lost, from mischievous mockery to serious moral satire. The colloquial style of talking, together with Donne’s incomparable wit in edifice and language, fills his poetry with mobile images and moods, which can be easily felt and touched. The tone of the central speaker varies from sweet pleading to scornful disparagement, from bold bragging to plain confession, from self-meditation in tranquility to cold philosophical analysis of an observer. Usually, it is not hard to find an argumentative speaker who makes a full use of his dialectic and erudition to persuade himself, his lady, God, the sun, the moon, etc. The various tones and roles taken by Donne’s poetic speakers secure his poetry form monotony. Actually, Donne’s dramatic conversation style enables him to devour all kinds of experiences in life and to put them into poetry.

2. What is the central theme of Paradise Lost? Give a brief analysis of Satan.

The central theme of Paradise Lost is taken from the Bible and deals with the Christian story of “the fall of man”, that is, how the first man and woman in the world, Adam and Eve, were tempted by Satan to disobey God by eating the forbidden fruit from the Tree of Knowledge, and how they were consequently punished by God and driven out of paradise, with the prospect nevertheless of the eventual redemption of mankind by Jesus

Christ. The purpose of the epic is, as the poet himself makes clear in the first book, to “justify the ways of God to man”. The essentially religious nature of the poem comes naturally from Milton’s fervent belief in Christianity as a Puritan, but this belief is itself a revolt against the established doctrines of the Catholics and of the Anglican Church as he insisted on the freedom of each individual to interpret the Bible for himself.

The epic seems to be a purely religious poem, both from its biblical story content and from its purpose as declared by the author, but actually the poem contains much revolutionary content, which is revealed chiefly through the poet’s apparently sympathetic treatment of the revolt of Satan and his followers against God. And here we see in the poem Milton’s inner contradiction, between Milton the Puritan and Milton the republican or bourgeois revolutionist, for in the former capacity the poet was or should be wholly on the side of God but because of his revolutionary sympathies he showed himself frequently uttering his own fiery words of rebellion against tyranny through the speeches of Satan and his adherents. Especially in Book I and II which have been generally been considered as the best parts of the epic on account of the powerful poetry in the umcompromising speeches of the devil and his followers, the contradiction becomes most obvious as Satan and his mates in their cries for freedom and against tyranny directly attack God for holding “the tyranny of heaven” and the poet as a rebel against tyranny seems to show tacitly but quite definitely his sympathy for and even approval of such rebellious and sacrilegious sentiments.

The 18th Century Exercise I. Filling the blanks

1. The enlighteners repudiate the false religious doctrines about the _______ of

human nature, and prove that man is born _______ and ________, and if he becomes depraved, it is only due to the influence of _________ social environment. 2. We study eighteenth century writings in three main divisions: the reign of

so-called, the revival of ________ poetry, and the beginnings of the modern ________.

3. The 18 century England is known as the Age of Enlightenment or the Age of _______. 4. “If the censure of Yahoos could any way affect me, I should have great reason

to complain that some of them are so bold as to think my book of travels a mere fiction out of mine own brain.” This quotation is selected from _____________.(Gulliver’s Travels)

5. The Yahoos are attacked by the writer named _________in his fantasy work bearing

the title ________. (Jonathan Swift , Gulliver’s Travels) 6. The image of an enterprising Englishman of the 18th century was created by Daniel

Defoe in his famous novel ______.

7. Henry Fielding has been regarded as “______” , for his contribution to the

establishment of the form of the modern novel. (Father of the English Novel)

8. In his world-famous novel______ Jonathan Swift typified the bourgeois world,

drew ruthless pictures of the depraved aristocracy and satirically portrayed the whole of the English State system.

9. The exciting tale of Robinson Crusoe is largely _____ story, rather than the

study of ______.

10. Jonathan Swift was born of English parents in ________.

11. Of all the romantic poets of the 18 century, Blake is the most ______ and the

most______.

12. ____________ are in marked contrast with The Songs of Innocence. The brightness

of the earlier work gives place to a sense of _____ and mystery, and of the power of _________.

13. Robert Burns’ poetry is bone of the bone and flesh of the flesh of the ________

common people.

14. Elegy Witten in a Country Churchyard by ________ is taken as a model of

sentimentalist poetry, esp. the Graveyard School 15. Friday is a character in the novel _________.

16. Auld Lang Syne written by __________ deals with friendship and has long become

a universal parting song of all the English-speaking countries (Robert Burns) II. Define the literary terms: 1. Enlightenment:

The eighteenth-century England is known as the Age of Enlightenment or the Age of Reason. The Enlightenment was a progressive intellectual movement going on throughout Europe at the time, as France in the vanguard. The Enlightenment celebrated reason (rationality), equality, science and human being’s ability to perfect themselves and their society. The movement was based on the basic theories provided by the philosophers of the age, for example, John Locke’s materialism, David Hume’s skepticism. Whatever philosophical beliefs they might have, they held the common faith in human rationality and the possibility of human perfection through education. They believed that when reason served as the yardstick for the measurement of all human activities and social relations, superstition, injustice, privilege and oppression were to yield place to “eternal truth”, “eternal justice”, and “natural equality” or inalienable rights of men. The belief provided theory for the French Revolution in 1789 and the American War of Independence in 1776. Alexander Pope, Joseph Addison, Richard Steele, Jonathan Swift, Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding, and Samuel Johnson were the famous enlighteners in England.

2. Gothic novel:

The term “Gothic” derived from the frequent setting of the tales in the ruined, moss-covered castles of the Middle Ages, but it has been extended to any novel which exploits the possibilities of mystery and terror in gloomy, craggy landscapes, decaying mansions with dark dungeons, secret passages, instruments of torture, ghostly visitations, ghostly music or voices, ancient drapes and tapestries behind which lurks no one knows what, and often, as the central story, the persecution of a beautiful maiden by an obsessed and haggard villain. These novels, in rebellion

against the increasing commercialism and rationalism, opened up to later fiction the dark, irrational side of human nature—the savage egoism, the perverse impulses, and the nightmarish terror that lie beneath the controlled and ordered surface of the conscious mind.

Horace Walpole’s Castle of Otranto originated the mode. Some of the most powerful and influential writings are Mysteries of Udolpho by Mrs. Ann Radcliffe, and Frankenstein by Mary Shelley.

3. Irony It refers to some contrast or discrepancy between appearance and reality. Irony takes a number of special forms: in verbal irony there is a contrast between what is literally said and what is actually meant.; in dramatic irony the state of affairs known to the reader is the reverse of what its participants suppose it to be; in situational irony a set of circumstances turns out to be the reverse of what is expected or is appropriate.

4. Character

It is an individual within a literary work. Characters may be complex and well developed (round characters) or undifferentiated and one-dimensional (flat characters), they may change in the course of the plot (dynamic characters) or remain essentially the same (static characters).

5. The Graveyard School: The Graveyard Scholl refers to a school of poets of the

18 century whose poems are mostly devoted to a sentimental lamentations or meditation on life, past and present, with death and graveyard as themes. Thomas Gray is considered to be the leading figure of this school and his Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard is his representative work.

6. Neoclassicism: A revival in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries of

classical standards of order, balance, and harmony in literature. John Dryden and Alexander Poe were major exponents of the neoclassical school.

7. Mock epic: a comic literary form that treats a trivial subject in the grand,

heroic style of the epic. A mock epic is also referred to as a mock heroic poem III. Literary Comprehension and Analysis

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright In the forest of the night What immortal hand or eye

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies Burnt the fire of thine eyes? On what wings dare he aspire?

What the hand dare seize the fire?

And What shoulder, and what art,

Could twist the sinews of thy heart? And when thy heart began to beat,

What dread hand? and what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain? In what furnace was thy brain? What the anvil? what dread grasp Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears, And watered heaven with their tears, Did he smile his work to see?

Did he who made the lamb make thee?

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye

Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

Questions:

1. Identify the author and the book where the poem is taken from 2. comment on the poem

1. William Blake; It is The Tyger from Songs of Experience 2. The poem is comprised of six quatrains in rhymed couplets. The meter is regular and rhythmic; its hammering beat is suggestive of the smithy that is the poem’s central image. The simplicity and neat proportions of the poems form perfectly suit its regular structure, in which a string of questions all contribute to the articulation of a single, central idea.

The tiger initially appears as a strikingly sensuous image. However, as the poem progresses, it takes on a symbolic character, and comes to embody the spiritual and moral problem the poem explores: Perfectly beautiful and yet perfectly destructive, Blake’s tiger becomes the symbolic center for an investigation into the presence of evil in the world

The Tyger consists entirely of unanswered questions, and the poet leaves us to awe at the complexity of creation, the sheer magnitude of God’s power, and the inscrutability of divine will

The open awe of The Tyger contrasts with the easy confidence, in The Lamb, of a child’s innocent faith in a benevolent universe.

III. Give brief answers to the following questions: 1. Give a brief analysis of Robinson Crusoe.

The book is an immediate and permanent success. It is generally acknowledged as Defoe’s most deeply original as well as representative book. It is supposedly based on the real adventure of a Alexander Selkirk who once stayed alone on an uninhabited

island for five years.

The novel is about the adventures of Robinson Crusoe, son of a middle-class English family, who has an insatiable thirst for the sea. It tells of his first misfortune at the sea, his life as a planter in South America, the fateful shipwreck that cast him ashore on uninhabited island, and his twenty four years of isolated life there. It devotes the greater space to the minute account of what happens there on the island, how, with the help of a few stores and utensils saved from the wrecked ship and by the exercise of infinite ingenuity, Crusoe builds himself a house, domesticates goats, grows corn, barley and rice, and makes himself a boat. It describes the cannibal savages to the island, and his rescue of the poor savage Friday from death; his rescue of Friday’s father and a Spaniard, and finally his own rescue when he saves the captain of an English ship from a mutinous crew.

The book is rich enough to contain a number of overlapping meanings. If it is an adventure story, it is also a moral tale, a commercial account and a Puritan fable. It is one of the great myths of modern civilization. It celebrates the eighteenth century Western civilization’s material triumph and the strength of human rational will to conquer the natural environment. Robinson is cast as a typical eighteenth century middle- class tradesman. He is the very prototype of the empire builder, the pioneer colonist. His success in building up a comfortable living environment and later a private colony, is shown as due to the sturdy qualities in his character, to hi sown unaided efforts, to his courage and patience, to his practical skill, and to this intelligent persistence. In another sense, Robinson is Everyman, struggling with patience and fortitude through persistent work to conquer or master nature. His adventures reflect different stages of civilization in our human world. Thus, Robinson is the embodiment of private enterprise and colonization. 2. What is the theme of Gulliver’s Travels. As a popular fancy story, the novel never loses its charm with children. The wonderful stories about Gulliver’s travels into some strange places, the pigmies, the giants, the island that floats in the air, the intelligent horses, the despicable man-like animals called Yahoos, and many other impossible situations have found their way into many a child’s dreams.

But it is more that a travel story. It is a satire on the eighteenth century English society, touching upon the political, religious, legal, military, scientific, philosophical as well as literary institutions, about almost every aspect of the society. Bitterly satirical, the book takes great pains to bring to light the wickedness of the English society, with its tyranny, its political intrigues and corruption, its aggressive was and colonialism, its religious deputes and persecution, and its ruthless oppression and exploitation of the common people. The ugliness of the eighteenth century English society is no elsewhere so thoroughly and forcefully exposed and condemned as in this single book. And, the satire, as its is, is not only of practical significance in its own day in England and Europe

but its exposure is also true of all countries, all ages. Its satires are applicable to any class, any society, anywhere in the word and in any period of history. The Romantic Period

Complete the following statement with a proper word or a phrase according to the textbook.

1. Romanticism as a literary movement came into being in England early in the latter half of the ________century

2. _______and _______ represented the spirit of what is usually called Pre-Romanticism.

3. With the publication of William Wordsworth’s _________ in collaboration with S. T. Coleridge, romanticism began to bloom and found a firm place in the history of English literature.

4. The Romanticism was generally influenced by the Industrial Revolution and ________.

5. ________, __________, and ________ were the watchwords of the French Revolution.

6. The eighteenth century was distinctively an age of ________. The Age of Wordsworth—like the Age of Shakespeare—was decidedly an age of _________.

7. in 1798, ________and Samuel Taylor Coleridge published a joint volume of poetry entitled Lyrical Ballads, which became a landmark in English poetry. (William Wordsworth)

8. Many of Wordsworth’s poems in the Lyrical Ballads were devoted to the position of _______ and _____ peasants.

9. In his poems Wordsworth aimed at ______ and ______ of the language, fighting against the conventional forms of the 18th century poetry. 10.The definition that “all good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” was written by ________ in ________. (William Wordsworth, Lyrical Ballads)

11.‘Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty,” –that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

This quotation is selected from ___________ by ________.

12.Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage is a _________ narrated by a melancholy, passionate, well-read and very eloquent tourist. 13.Byron chose for his poems the _______ stanza.

14._______, Byron’s greatest work, was written in the prime of his creative power, in the years 1818-1823.

15.As a leading Romanticist, Byron’s chief contribution is his creation of the “________”, a proud, mysterious rebel figure of noble origin. (Byronic Hero)

16.The long narrative poem the story of Endymion, the Latmian shepherd beloved by the moon-goddess, ______, was published in 1818.

17.The English Romantic period produced two major novelists: Scott and _______.

18.In all Austen’s novels the love-making of her young people, though serious and ________, is subdued by ______ to the ordinary plane of emotion on which most of us live.

19.Austen’s style is ______ and ______.

20.The Bennets were speedily pronounced to be the luckiest family in the world, though only a few weeks before when Lydia had first run away, they had been generally proved to be marked out for misfortune. This quotation is selected from __________ by _________. (Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen)

II. Define the literary terms listed below 1. Free verse

A type of poetry that deliberately seeks to free itself from the restrictions imposed by traditionally fixed conventions of meter, rhyme, and stanza. Free verse is now often called poetry in open forms. 2. Spenserian Stanza

In The Faeire Queene, Spenser, a poet in the 16th century, originated a nine-line verse stanza, now known as the Spenserian stanza—the first eight lines are iambic pentameter, and the ninth, iambic hexameter; the rhyme scheme is ababbcbcc. For example, George Byron used this verse form in his Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. 3. Symbol

Literally, something that stands for something else. In literature, any word, object, action, or character that embodies and evokes a range of additional meaning and significance. In Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, for example, the journey up the Congo River into the jungle is obviously a symbol of a parallel journey into the recesses of the human heart and back into the bleakest corners of civilization. 4. Archetype

It is used in literary analysis to describe certain basic and recurrent patterns of plot, character, or theme. 5. Byronic Hero:

Byronic Hero refers to 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, and 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. 6. Lake Poets:

Romantic poets such as poets William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey who lived in the Lake District came to be known as the Lake School or Lake poets

III. Literary Comprehension and Analysis

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of wife

However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighborhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered as the rightful property of someone or other of their daughters. Questions:

1. From which novel is this passage taken from? 2. who is the author of this novel?

3. what is the literary style of this novel 4. what is this story about?

1. Pride and Prejudice 2. Jane Austen 3. Realism

4. It is a humorous story of love and life among English gentility during the Georgian era. Mr. Bennet is an English gentleman with his overbearing wife. The Bennet’s five daughters: the beautiful Jane, the clever Elizabeth, the bookish Mary, the immature Kitty and the wild Lydia. Unfortunately for the Bennets, if Mr. Bennet dies, their house will be inherited by a distant cousin whom they have never met. The family’s future happiness and security is dependent on the daughter’s making good marriages. The main plot is about the five daughters, especially the main character Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy as they deal with matters of upbringing, marriage, moral rightness and education in her aristocratic society. IV. Answer the following questions

1. Give a general description of the Romanticism in England

English Romanticism, as a historical phase of literature, is generally said to have begun in 1798 with the publication of Wordsworth and Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads and to have ended in 1832 with Sir Walter Scott’s death and the passage of the first Reform Bill in the Parliament. The movement was provoked by two important revolutions: the French Revolution and the English Industrial Revolution.

modes of thinking of the 18th-century writers and philosophers. Where their predecessors saw man as a social animal, the Romantics saw him essentially as an individual in the solitary state. Where the Augustans emphasized those features that men have in common, the Romantics emphasized the special qualities of each individual’s mind. Thus, we can say that Romanticism actually constitutes a change of direction from attention to the outer world of social civilization to the inner world of the human spirit. In essence, it designates a literary and philosophical theory which tends to see the individual as the very center of all life and all experience. It places the individual at the center of art.

The literary output of the Romantic Movement appeared as early as the

thth

nid-18 century. But it was not until the very last years of the 18 century and the first two decades of the 19th century that romanticism as a literary movement in England reached its full flowering, especially in the realm of poetry. Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley and Keats are the major Romantic poets. They started a rebellion against the neoclassical literature, which was later regarded as the poetic revolution. Wordsworth and Coleridge were the major representatives of this movement. They explored new theories and innovated new techniques in poetry writing. In their separate ways, they saw poetry as a healing energy; they believed that poetry could purify both individual souls and the society.

The Romantics extol the faculty of imagination. And nature is not only the major source of poetic imagery, but also provides the dominant subject matter. To escape from a world that had become excessively rational, as well as excessively materialistic and ugly, the Romantics would turn to other times and places. The medieval or renaissance world were particularly favored. There one could allow free play to the supernatural without arousing feelings of incongruity. Romantics also tend to be nationalistic, defending the great poets and dramatists of their own national heritage against the advocates of classical rules who tended to glorify Rome and rational Italian and French neoclassical art as superior to the native tradition.

2. According to Wordsworth, what are the essential to poetry?

Wordsworth’s deliberate simplicity and refusal to decorate the truth of experience produced a kind of pure and profound poetry which no other poet has ever equaled. In defense of his unconventional theory of poetry, Wordsworth wrote a “Preface” to the second edition of the Lyrical Ballads, which acts as a manifesto for the new poetic school and sets forth his own critical creed.. His premise was that the source of poetic truth is the direct experience of the senses. Poetry, he defined, as “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings, which originates in emotion

recollected in tranquility”. Rejecting the contemporary emphasis on form and an intellectual approach that drained the poetic writing of strong emotion, he maintained that the scenes and events of everyday life and the speech of ordinary people were the raw material of which poetry could and should be made.

3. What are Keats’s poetry’s features? Keats’s poetry is sensuous, colorful and rich in imagery, which expresses the acuteness of his senses. Sight, sound, scent, taste and feeling are all taken in to give an entire understanding of an experience. He has the power of entering the feelings of others—either human or animal. He declared once that when he saw a bird on the lawn, he entered imaginatively into the life of the bird. Keats draws diction, style and imagery from works of Shakespeare, Milton and Dante. He delights to dwell on beautiful words and phrases which sound musical. With vivid and rich images, he paints poetic pictures full of wonderful color.

4. What is Austen’s chief interest?

Jane Austen’s main concern is about human beings in their personal relations, human beings with their families and neighbors. Because of this, her novels have a universal significance. Austen shows a human being not at the moment of crisis, but in the most trivial incidents of everyday life. Life is made up of little things, and human nature reveals itself in them as fully as in big ones. A picnic in the woods shows up selfishness, kindness, vanity and sincerity as much as a battle on the front.

As for her interest in the study of human beings in their relations with other people, Jane Austen is particularly preoccupied with the relationship between men and women in love. Stories of love and marriage provide the framework for all her novels and in them women are always taken as the major characters. In their pursuit of a happy marriage, they are usually categorized into three types: those who marry for money, position and property, those who marry just for passion and those who marry for love which is based on consideration of the person’s personal merit as well as his economical and social status. In another word, it is wrong to marry just for money, but it is also wrong to marry without money. Money is not the only thing in our consideration of marriage. It is nonetheless an important factor. Proofs of this are to be found in all her novels.

The Victorian Period Exercise I. Complete the following statements

1. The precisian may limit the Victorian period to the years between the Queen’s accession in _____ and her death in _______, but a new era

really began with the passage of the Reform Bill in _____ and closed at the end of the Boer War in -_______.

2. The awakened ________ is the predominant theme in Early Victorian literature.

3. The picture in _______ (1838) by Dickens is of the typical workhouse in the years before experience and protests introduced ameliorating modifications in the administration of the law.

4. The repeated upsurge of ______ agitation forced the ruling classes in England to make certain concessions, resulting in the Repeal of the Corn Law in 1846 and the passage of the Ten Hours Act in 1847.

5. Though it failed, Chartism signified the first great political movement of the _____ in English history.

6. The greatest English realist of the Victorian time was _______. 7. The greatness of the English realists lies in their satirical portrayal of _______ and in the exposure of the greed and hypocrisy of ________, but also in their profound ________ which is revealed in their sympathy for the laboring people.

8. In the fifties and sixties the realistic novel enters a stage of ________. 9. Charles Dickens’s first and best Christmas book, ______, 1843, failed to sell as well as he expected.

10._______, 1860-1861, is told in the first person by Pip, a young man who learns through adversity to discard his own superficial snobbishness.

11.Thackeray’s best work, _______, borrowed the name from ________ by ______.

12.Both Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights brought to the novel an introspection and an intense concentration on the _______ which before them had been the province of poetry alone. 13.Wuthering Height was written by __________

14.Of the four novels that Charlotte Bronte wrote, _________has achieved lasting fame. (Jane Eyre)

15.In the Idylls of the King, Tennyson painted the character of the first English national hero, _____, and give new meaning to the legends.

II. Define the following terms 1. Dramatic monologue:

Dramatic monologue is a lyric poem which reveals “a soul in action” through the conversation of one character in a dramatic situation. The character is speaking to an identifiable but silent listener at a dramatic moment in the speaker’s life. The circumstances surrounding the conversation, one side of which we “hear” as the dramatic monologue, are made clear by implication in the poem, and a deep insight into the character of the speaker is given. It is in the hands of Robert Browning

that this poetic form reaches its maturity and perfection. The best time to choose for a dramatic monologue may be a time when the character is thrown suddenly into a situation in which he will be stirred into speech to defend himself, and in defending reveal himself. Sympathy is the primary law of dramatic monologue and the moral judgment is the purpose. The effect is created by the tension between sympathy and moral judgment. “Pippa Passes”, “My Last Duchess” are examples.

2. Feminist Criticism

Literary criticism written from the perspective of women, reflecting female attitudes, concerns, and values. Feminist criticism is concerned both with how the meaning of a literary work is affected when read from a woman’s perspective and how female characters and women in general are treated within the work. This literary movement grows out of and is part of the feminist movement which since the lat 1960s has attempted to improve equal rights and equal opportunities for women by identifying and removing the political, social, and psychological obstacles that prevent them from achieving their full possibilities as human beings. 3. Allusion:

A reference to a person, a place, an event or a literary work that a writer expects the readers to recognize and respond to. An allusion may be drawn from history, geography, literature or religion. 4. Critical Realism:

The Critical Realism of the 19th century flourished in 1840s and in the beginning of the 1850s. the realists first and foremost set themselves the task of criticizing capitalist society from a democratic viewpoint and delineated the crying contradictions of bourgeois reality. But they did not find a way to eradicate social evils. Charles Dickens is the most important critical realist. 5. Point of View:

The perspective from which the story is told. The most obvious point of view is probably the first person or “I”. the omniscient narrator knows everything, may reveal the motivations, thoughts, and feelings of the characters, and gives the reader information. With a limited omniscient narrator, the material is presented from the point of view of a character, in the third person. The objective point of view presents the action and the character’s speech, without comment or emotion. The reader has to interpret them and uncover their meanings. A narrator may be trustworthy or untrustworthy, involved or uninvolved.

III. Answer the following questions

1. What are the symbols and images used in Great Expectations?

Great Expectations is heavily symbolic. The notable images here are the graveyard which symbolizes the underworld with its violence and threat

and danger, the huge rotten wedding cake of Miss Havisham’s which is the very symbol of the corrupted and corrupting society, and the journeys Pip makes from the country to Miss Havisham’s and then London, and his return to the country and the ruined site of Satis House, and finally his meeting Estella there. The journeys indicate his way of growth and his inability to stay in the country gives the final touch to the realistic depiction of the author: innocence once lost is forever lost; paradise lost is never to be regained. Besides, the characters’ names also carry symbolic significance. The name of Estella suggests an ideal as well as something beautiful and always visible but never to be gotten, and that of Miss Havisham gives an impression that what she wishes for or what she has is sham, false and illusory, and the name of the criminal Magwitch indicates mysterious magician capable of witchcraft. Even the name of the hero Pip carries the implication of trivialness and humbleness of his origin and foretells his final disappointment in his great expectation.

2. What are the themes of Wuthering Heights?

Wuthering Heights is a riddle which has meant so many things to so many people. Even today it is still hard for people to come to a universally accepted understanding of the book.

One way of reading is to treat it as a romantic story, as a tale of love and revenge. As such, it is superb. Every character in the novel is in one way or another connected with the triangular love between Heathcliff and Catherine and Edgar, as is shown clearly in the carved letters of “Catherine Linton” and “Catherine Heathcliff” on the window sill of Catherine’s bedroom. While Edgar seems to have the approval of all the people as the best partner of Catherine, Heathcliff ahs to overcome great hindrance to get his union with her. He regards Catherine as his life, his only meaning of life, but he has first to make up for his poverty, and his lack of education, taste and manners; he also has to get rid of all his enemies in order to reach his heart’s desire. The pity is that he can’t accomplish all this in a conventional society. Such love affairs will usually end in tragedy. And yet, the stormy love between Heathcliff and Catherine, with their strong desire of mutual possession and torment, with their mutual belonging in life and in death, makes it a most terrible yet wonderful tale of love. As for Heathcliff, readers find it hard not to sympathize with this unfortunate, lonely waif when he is maltreated by Hindley, jeered at by the Lintons, betrayed by Catherine, and tormented by the unobtainable love, and yet they are abhorred by his mad, heartless and almost inhuman revenge on all those around, whether responsible or not for his suffering. In him, we see a most terrible picture of love scorned turning into desperate hatred and revenge that is destructive to both the avenger an the revenged.

From the social point of view, the story is a tragedy of social inequality. Heathcliff, a waif, of the lowest order in society, is eager for love and friendship but is forever looked down upon and rejected by the two families. The Lintons never allow him into their house until he becomes a “gentleman’. Hindley treats him brutally and inhumanely after the death of the father. He is deprived of every right of a decent human being. What is more, he loves Catherine dearly but he can’t have her just because of the disparity between their social status. Hope and love denied turn into humiliation and result in the brutal revenge and the horrible tragedy. In a way, the tragedy of Heathcliff is a social tragedy.

At some deeper level, however, the story is more than a mere copy of real life. To many people it is an illustration of the workings of the universe, a book about the cosmic harmony of the universe and the destruction and re-establishment of this harmony.

3. What are the strength and weakness of English Critical Realism? The works belonging to the critical realism are usually faithful to reality. In these works, the English critical relists of 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. The critical realists used humor and satire to expose the greed and hypocrisy of the upper class and to praise the honesty and good-heartedness of the lower-classes. Humor is often used to describe the positive characters while satire is used to criticize the seamy side of the bourgeoisie.

Though the critical realists realized and ferociously criticized the sordidness of the society, they did not find out ways to get rid of the seamy side of the society. What they suggested is just reformism rather than getting rid of them by ways of revolution. So in their works, they often start with a powerful exposure of the ugliness of the bourgeois world, but usually end them with happy endings and impotent compromise

History and Anthology of English Literature

Terms

1. Iambic pentameter

Iambic pentameter is the most common English meter, which means a poetic line consisting of five feet with each foot containing an unaccented/unstressed syllable followed by an accented/a stressed syllable.

2. Alliteration

The repetition of similar sounds, usually consonants or consonant, in a group of words. When alliteration occurs at the beginning of words,

it is called initial alliteration; when it occurs within words, it is called internal or hidden alliteration. It usually occurs on stressed syllables.

3. Ballad

A story told in verse and usually meant to be sung. In many countries, the folk ballad was one of the earliest forms of literature. Folk ballads have no known authors. They were transmitted orally from generation to generation and were not set down in writing until centuries after they were first sung. The subject of matter of folk ballads stems from the everyday life of the common people. The most popular subjects, often tragic, are disappointed love, jealousy, revenge, sudden disaster, and deeds of adventure and daring. Devices commonly used in ballads are the refrain, incremental repetition, and code language.

4. Medieval romance

Romance is a fictional story in verse or prose that relates improbable adventures of idealized characters in some remote or enchanted setting; or, more generally, a tendency in fiction opposite to that of realism/ medieval romance is distinguished from epic by its concentration on courtly love rather than warlike heroism. The importance of medieval romance can be seen as a means of showing medieval aristocratic men and women in relation of their idealized view of the world. It reflects a chivalric age.

5. Blank verse

Verse written in unrhymed iambic pentameter. Blank verse is the verse form used in some of the greatest English poetry, including that of William Shakespeare and John Milton.

6. Quatrain

Usually a stanza or poem of four lines. A quatrain may also be any group of four lines unified by a rhyme scheme. Quatrains usually follow an abab, abba, or abcb rhyme scheme.

7. Rhyme

The repetition of sounds in two or more words or phrases that appear close to each other in a poem. For example: river/shiver, song/long, leap/deep. If the rhyme occurs at ends of lines, it is called end rhyme. If the rhyme occurs within a line, it is called internal rhyme. A rhyme scheme is the pattern of rhymes in a poem. Interlocking rhyme is a rhyme scheme in which an unrhymed line in one stanza rhymes with a line in the following stanza. Interlocking rhyme occurs in an Italian verse

form called terza rima.

8. Terza rima

An Italian verse form consisting of a series of thee-line stanzas in which the middle line of each stanza rhymes with the first and third lines of the following stanza, as follows: aba bcb cde, etc. Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind” is written in tenza rima.

9. Sonnet

A fourteen-line lyric poem, usually written in rhymed iambic pentameter. A sonnet generally expresses a single theme or idea. Sonnets vary in structure and rhyme scheme, but are generally of two types: the Petrarchan or Italian sonnet, and the Elizabethan or Shakespearean sonnet.

The Italian sonnet is a form that originated in Italy in the 13th century. The Italian sonnet has two parts, an octave( eight lines) and a sestet (six lines). Its rhyme scheme is usually abbaabba cdecde.

The Shakespearean sonnet consists of three quatrains and a concluding couplet, with the rhyme scheme abab cdcd efef gg.

10. Conceit

kind of metaphor that makes a comparison between two startlingly different things. A conceit may be a brief metaphor, but it usually provides the framework for an entire poem. An especially unusually and intellectual kind of conceit is the metaphysical conceit, used by certain 17th century poets, such as John Donne.

11. Heroic Couplet

A heroic couplet is an iambic pentameter couplet. Couplet means two consecutive lines of poetry that rhyme.

12. Dramatic monologue

A kind of narrative poem in which one character speaks to one or more listeners whose replies are not given in the poem. The occasion is usually a crucial one in the speaker’s life, and the dramatic monologue reveals the speaker’s personality as well as the incident that is the subject of the poem. An example of a dramatic monologue is “ My Last Duchess” by Robert Browning.

13. Elegy

A poem of mourning, usually over the death of an individual. It may also be a lament over the passing of life and beauty or a meditation on the nature of death. An elegy is a type of lyric poem, usually formal in language and structure, and solemn or even melancholy in tone. Some

greatest elegies in English are Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s In Memoriam, Thomas Gray’s Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard. 14. Ode

A complex and often lengthy lyric poem, written in a dignified formal style on some lofty or serious subject. Odes are often written for a special occasion, to honor a person or a season or to commemorate an event. Two famous odes are Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind” and John Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn.”

15. Point of view

The vantage point from which a narrative is told. There two basic points of view: first person narration and third-person. In the first-person point of view, the story is told by one of the characters in his or her own words. The first-person point of view is limited, since the reader is told only what this character known and observes. Here is an example of the first-person point of view form Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. In the third-person point of view, the narrator is not a character in the story. The narrator may be an omniscient, or “all-knowing,” observer who can describe and comment on all the characters and actions in the story. Thomas Hardy’s “ The Three Strangers” is written from the third-person omniscient point of view.

16. Protagonist

The central character of a drama, novel, short story, or narrative poem. The protagonist is the character on whom the action centers and with whom the reader sympathizes most. Usually the protagonist strives against an opposing force, or antagonist, to accomplish something. The protagonist can be either heroic or ordinary, good or bad. For example, Beowulf is brave and good. Macbeth is noble and honorable at first, but becomes increasingly hateful.

17. Antagonist

A person or force opposing the protagonist in a narrative, a rival of the hero or heroine. Famous antagonists in literature include professor Moriarty, Sherlock Holmes’s antagonist in Arthur Conan Doyle’s detective stories, and the monster Grendel, Beowulf’s antagonist in the Anglo-Saxon epic poem Beowulf.

18. Theme

The general idea or insight about life that a writer wishes to express in a 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. 19. Stream of consciousness

The style of writing that attempts to imitate the natural flow of a character’s thoughts, feeling, reflections, memories and mental images as the character experiences them.

20. Tone

The attitude a writer takes toward his or her subject, character, or audience. Tone is found in every kind of writing. It is created through the choice of words and details. For example, in writing about his childhood in his poem Fern Hill, Dylan Thomas’s tone is nostalgic. In Preface to Shakespeare, Samuel Johnson’s tone is serious and admiring.

21. Naturalism

An extreme form of realism. Naturalistic writers usually depict the sordid side of life and show characters who are severely, if not hopelessly, limited by their environment or heredity.

22. Humanism

Humanism is the essence of Renaissance. Humanism see that human beings were glorious creatures capable of individual development in the direction of perfection, and that the world they inhabited was their not to despise but to question, explore, and enjoy. They also believe that man did not only have the right to enjoy the beauty of this world, but had the ability to perfect himself and to perform wonders.

23. Neoclassicism

With the introduction of the Enlightenment Movement into England, a revival of interest in the old classical works of the tendency is known as neoclassicism. According to the neoclassicists, all forms of literature were to be modeled after the classical works of the ancient Greek and Roman writers and those of the contemporary French ones. They believe that the artistic ideals should be order, logic, restrained emotion and accuracy, and that literature should be judged in terms of its service to humanity. John Dryden and Alexander Pope were major exponents of the neoclassical school.

24. Sentimentalism

Sentimentalism is a literary tradition followed by some poets and novelists of the 18th century. Indulged in emotion and sentiment, which were used as a sort of relief for the griefs and heart-aches felt toward the world’s wrongs, and a kind of mild protest against the social injustice, the writers who followed this tradition criticized the cruelty of the capitalist relations and the gross social injustices brought about the bourgeois revolutions and Industrial Revolution. They yearned for the return of the patriarchal times. They thought the bourgeois society was founded on the principle of reason, so they began to react against anything rational and to advocate that sentiment should take the place of reason.

25. Symbolism

A literary movement that arose in France in the last half of the 19th century and that greatly influenced many English writers, particularly poets, of the 20th century. To the symbolist poets, an emotion is indefinite and therefore difficult to communicate. Symbolist poets tend to avoid any direct statement of meaning. Instead, they work through emotionally powerful symbols that suggest meaning and mood.

26. Symbol

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.

27. Romanticism

Romanticism is a literary trend. It prevailed in England during the period 1789-1832. Romanticists expressed the ideology and sentiment of those classes and social strata who were discontent with and opposed to the development of capitalism. They split into two groups because of the different attitudes toward the capitalist society.

28. Epic

introduction of supernatural forces that shape the action; conflict in the form of battles or other physical combat; and stylistic conventions such as a n invocation to the Muse, a formal statement of the theme, long lists of the protagonist involved, and set speeches couched in elevated language. Examples include the ancient Greek epics by Homer, Iliad and Odyssey, The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser and The Paradise Lost by John Milton.

29. Renaissance

Renaissance, meaning “rebirth” or “revival”, marks a transition from the medieval to the modern world. Generally, it refers to the period between the 14th and mid-17th centuries. It first started in Italy, with the flowering of painting, sculpture, architecture, and literature. From Italy the movement spread to the rest of Europe. It is a movement stimulated by a series of historical events, such as the rediscovery of ancient Roman and Greek culture, the new discoveries in geography and astrology, the religious reformation and the economic expansion.

30. Feminist criticism

31. Metaphysical poetry The term “metaphysical poetry” is commonly used to designate the works of the 17th century writers who wrote under the influence of John Donne. Pressured by harsh, uncomfortable, and curious age, the metaphysical

poets sought to shat the traditions and replace them with new philosophies, new sciences, new worlds and new poetry. Thus, with a rebellious spirit, they tried to break away from the conventional fashion of Elizabethan love poetry, in particular the Petrarchan tradition, which is full of refined language, polished rhyming schemes and eulogy to ideal love, and favored in poetry for a more colloquial language and tone, a tightness of expression and the single-minded working out of a theme or argument. Their poetry offers logical reasoning of the objects, psychological analysis of the emotions of love and religion, prefers the novel and the shocking, uses the metaphysical conceits, and ignores the conventional metric devices. Since John Donne links up a wide range of ideas, explores a complex attitude of the mind, and uses his wit and ingenious conceits to put human experiences into poetry, he is generally regarded as the leading member of the school.

Questions

1. What is Chaucer’s contribution to English language?

Chaucer’s language is vivid and exact. His verse is smooth and his words are easy to understand. He introduced from French the rhymed stanzas of various types. Especially the rhymed couplet of iambic pentameter which was later called the “heroic couplet” to English poetry. Though drawing influence French, Italian and Latin models, he is the first important poet to write in current English language. Chaucer did much in making the dialect of London the foundation for modern English language.

2. What is the social significance of “The Canterbury Tales”?

In his masterpiece “The Canterbury Tales”, Chaucer gives us a true-to-life picture of the society of his time. Taking the stand of the rising bourgeoisie, he affirms men and opposes the dogma of asceticism preached by the church. As a forerunner of humanism, he praised man’s energy, intellect, quick wit and love of life. His tales expose and satirize the evils of his time. They attack the degeneration of the noble, the heartlessness of the judge, the corruption of the Church and so on.

Living in a transitional period, Chaucer is not entirely devoid of medieval prejudices. He is religious himself. There is nothing revolutionary in his writing, though he lived in a period of peasant uprisings. While praising man’s right to earthly happiness, he sometimes likes to crack a rough joke and paint naturalistic pictures of sexual life. Those are Chaucer’s weak points. But these are, however, of secondary importance compared with his achievement as a great poet and story-teller.

3. What is the theme of “ Hamlet”?

The story of the play comes from an old Danish legend. It is very likely that Shakespeare borrowed something from Thomas Kyd’s “The Spanish Tragedy” / The whole play shows how Hamlet, hero of the play, who represents good and justice, fights against his uncle in whom all the evil things of the time can be seen. Hamlet’s father, the old King has been poisoned to death by his own brother. The new King, that is. Hamlet’s uncle, has married the Queen, Hamlet’s mother. Hamlet wants to revenge for his father. He is not a weak-minded young man. He loves his people and is loved by them. He shows his bravery in running after the Ghost of his father, in killing the king’s minister, Plonius, in fighting with pirates on the sea, and with Laertes. He has seen through the wicked and unjust world which he lives in. he observes that “Denmark is a prison”. He is determined to do away the evils in the society. Finally he kills all the enemies and avenge his father. He dies a heroic death. Shakespeare showed his great creative abilities in writing this play. Hamlet is made a hero of the Renaissance period and the representative of humanism. Through him Shakespeare expressed his own humanist ideas. This play is usually regarded as the summit of Shakespeare’s art.

4. What are the features of Milton’s poetry?

Milton is a great revolutionary poet of the 17th century. He is also an outstanding political pamphleteer of the Revolution Period. He dedicated himself to the revolutionary cause. He made a strong influence on the later English poetry. Every progressive English poet since Milton has drawn inspiration from him.

Milton is a great stylist, his poetry has a grand style. That is because he made a life-long study of classical and Biblical literature. His poetry is noted for sublimity of thought and majesty of expression.

Milton is a great master of blank verse. He is the glorious pioneer to introduce blank verse into non-dramatic poetry. He has used it as the main tool in his masterpiece “ Paradise Lost”. His blank verse is rich in every poetic quality and never monotonous.

5. Robinson Crusoe is often identified as a critical step toward the development of the English novel, but is not always categorized as a itself. Discuss how Robinson Crusoe compares to modern novels, in terms of structure, voice, characterization, and the theme.

Robinson Crusoe is arranged according to chronological order. In this novel, Robinson Crusoe, narrates in the first person how he goes to sea, gets shipwrecked and landed on a lonely island, struggles to live for twenty-four years and finally gets relieved and returns to

England. As Daniel Defoe wrote in the preface to Robinson Crusoe, ‘The editor believes the thing [his novel] to be a just history of fact; neither is there any appearance of fiction in it’. The realistic account of the successful struggle of Robinson single-handedly against the hostile nature forms the best part of the novel, the all-powerful influence of material circumstances or social environment upon eighteenth-century English middle-class man, with a great capacity for work, in exhaustible energy, courage, patience and persistence in overcoming obstacles, in struggling against the hostile natural environment. He is the very prototype of the empire builder, the pioneer colonist. In describing Robinson’s life on the island, Defoe glorifies human labor and the Puritan fortitude, which save Robinson from despair and are a source of pride and happiness. He toils for the sake of subsistence, and the fruits of his labor are his own. The major theme in the play is that sin has its retribution, but peace can be found through forgiveness and belief.

The modernist writers concentrate more on the private than on the public, more on the subjective than on the objective. These authors differ widely in content and technique, but they are essentially alike in their purpose: to present human motivation from the inside, form the point of view of the mind concerned, rather than from the point of view of an external observer. They agree, however, that it is inside the human brain that significant battles of life take place, and that mental conflicts have a subtlety, and intensity and an importance far beyond what might be expected from mere external examination of a human being. Therefore the material may not be presented in chronological order, as in the conventional novel. Instead the data is given in the disordered state in which it comes into consciousness through the operation of sensory stimuli, memory, association, fantasies, reveries, contemplation, and dreams. By advocating a free experimentation on new forms and new techniques in literary creation, modern novels cast away almost all the traditional elements in literature such as story, plot, character, chronological narration, etc., which are essential to realistic novels, just as Robinson Crusoe. The major themes of the modern novels are the distorted, alienated and ill relationships between man and nature, man and society, man and man, and man and himself.

6. What is the literary significance of Shelley’s poem “Ode to the West Wind”?

“Ode to the West Wind” is Shelley’s best-known lyric piece. It can be ranked as the best of the well-known lyric pieces; here Shelley’s rhapsodic and declamatory tendencies find a subject perfectly suited to them. It is divided into five stanzas.

In the first stanza, the poem describes the wind’s activity on the earth. The second stanza describes the wind’s activity on the clouds in the sky. The third stanza describes the west wind’s activity

on the waves in the sea. In the 4 stanza, Shelley longs to identify himself with the objects of the wind’s power. In the 5th stanza, the poet shows his active and optimistic spirit. By words of poetry, he will be the wind’s active cooperative instrument, scattering his words among mankind. The celebrated final line of the poem can best express Shelley’s optimistic belief in the future in face of the cold winter, that is the cold hard social reality.

The autumn wind buries the dead year and prepares for a new spring. It actually represents an image of Shelley himself in its freedom, its destructive-constructive potential and its universality. By “I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!” Shelley expresses that it is unbearable to be fettered to the humdrum realities of everyday. The whole poem has a logic of feeling, a not easily analyzable that leads to the triumphant, hopeful and convincing conclusions: “If winter comes, can spring be far behind?”

The poem is written in the terza-rima form which owes to Shelley’s reading of Dante. The nervous thrill of Shelley’s response to nature is here transformed through the power of art and imagination into a longing to be united with a force at once physical and prophetic. Here is no conservative reassurance, no comfortable mysticism, but the primal morality of nature itself, with its mad fury and its pagan ruthlessness. Shelley’s ode is an invocation to a primitive deity, a plea to exalt him in its fury and to trumpet the radical prophecy of hope and rebirth.

7. What’s the contributions William Wordsworth made to the development of the English poetry.

Wordsworth’s Lyrical Ballads, written with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped launch the English Romantic Movement. His preface to the second edition of Lyrical Ballads, is which he described poetry as “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings,” became the manifesto of the English Romantic Movement in poetry. He saw nature and man with new vision, “ it [good poetry] takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.” His poetry is distinguished by the simplicity and purity of his language. He advocated that the language used must be “ a selection of language really used by men; and, at the same time, to throw over them a certain coloring of imagination, whereby ordinary things should be presented to mind in a unusual way.” Here we may already see Wordsworth’s objections to what he later called the “poetic diction” of a number of his predecessors in the Neo-classical tradition. He also affirmed the

significant role of the poet and the poetry played in the history of English literature. He said: “Poetry is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge---it is as immortal as the heart of man.”

8. Make a comment on Keats.

Keats learned the art of poetry, mainly from the poets of the English Renaissance, such as Spenser and Shakespeare, from Milton and from Dante, the national poet of Italy. The artistic aim in his poetry was always to create a beautiful world of imagination as opposed to the sordid reality of his day. He sought to express beauty in all of his poems. His leading principle is “ Beauty is truth, truth beauty.” He is a voice through which beauty expresses itself. He is part of the nature which he describes. He expresses the delight which comes not only through the eye and the ear but through the senses of touch, taste and smell. His poetry is distinguished by sensuouseness and the perfection of form. So Keats has always been known as a sensuous poet. His ability to appeal to the senses through language is virtually unrivaled.

Some of his poems touch upon the burning political problems of his day. He showed his dissatisfaction with the capitalist society and described the sufferings of the poor people.

9. Why is Jane Eyre a successful novel?

Jane Eyre is one of the most popular and important novels of the Victorian age. It is noted for its sharp criticism of the existing society, e.g. the religious hypocrisy of charity institutions, the social discrimination and the false social convention as concerning love and marriage. At the same time, it is an intense moral fable. Jane, like Mr. Rochester, has to undergo a serious of physical and moral tests to grow up and achieve her final happiness. The success of the novel is also due to its introduction to the English novel the first governess heroine. Jane Eyre is a completely new woman image. She represents those middle-class working women who are struggling for recognition of their rights and equality as a human being. The vivid description of her intense feelings and her thought and inner conflicts bring her to the heart of the audience.

10. How do you understand that Dickens is the greatest critical realist writer of the Victorian Age?

Dickens is one of the greatest critical realist writers of the Victorian Age. It is his serious intension to expose and criticize in his works all the poverty, injustice, hypocrisy and corruptness he sees around him. With first sentence, Dickens engages the reader’s attention and holds it to the end. The settings of his stories have

an extraordinary vividness. In language, he is often compared with Shakespeare for his adeptness with the vernacular and large vocabulary. Character-portrayal is the most distinguishing feature of his works. Dickens’s works are also characterized by a mingling of humor and pathos.

11. Why is Hardy considered as a transitional writer?

Living at the turn of the century, Hardy is often regarded as a transitional writer because is him we see the influence from both the past and the modern.

He is intellectually advanced and emotionally traditional. In his Wessex novels, there is an apparent nostalgic touch in his description of the simple and beautiful though primitive rural life, which was gradually declining and disappearing as England marched into an industrial country. And with those traditional characters he is always sympathetic.

The intense impact of scientific discoveries and modern philosophic thoughts upon him is quite obvious, too. Darwin’s The Origin of Species made great influence on him; he accepted the idea of survival of the fittest/ he was also influenced by Spencer’s The First Principle, which led him to the belief that man’s fate is predominated tragic, driven by a combined force of nature, both inside and outside. In his works, man is shown inevitably bound by his own inherent nature and hereditary traits which prompt him to go and search for some specific happiness or success and set him in conflict with the environment. The outside nature---the natural environment or nature herself is shown as some mysterious supernatural force, very powerful but half-blind, impulsive and uncaring to the individual’s will, hope, passion, or suffering. It likes to play practical jokes upon human beings by producing a series of mistimed actions and unfortunate coincidences. Man proves impotent before fate. However he tries, he seldom escapes his ordained destiny. This pessimistic view of life predominates most of Hardy’s later works and earns him a reputation as a naturalistic writer.

12. What is the characteristic of “Byronic Hero”? In Byron’s poems, the “Byronic hero” is a proud, mysterious rebel figure of noble origin. With immense superiority in his passions and powers, this Byronic hero would fight alone against any type 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 conversations. Such a hero first can be found in Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, and further developed in later works such

as the Oriented Tales, Manfred, and Don Juan in different guises. To some extent, the figure is created according to the life and personality of Byron himself, and makes Byron famous both at home and abroad.

13. What are the strength and weakness of English Critical Realism?

The works belonging to the critical realism are usually faithful to reality. In these works, the English critical relists of 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. The critical realists used humor and satire to expose the greed and hypocrisy of the upper class and to praise the honesty and good-heartedness of the lower-classes. Humor is often used to describe the positive characters while satire is used to criticize the seamy side of the bourgeoisie.

14. Give a general description of Romanticism in British literature

The Romantic Movement expressed a negative attitude toward the existing social and political conditions that came with industrialization and the growing importance of the bourgeoisie. The Romantics saw both the corruption and injustice of the feudal societies and the fundamental inhumanity of the economic, social and political forces of capitalism. They felt that the society denied people their essential human needs. So under the influence of the leading romantic thinkers like Kant and the Post-Kantians, they demonstrated a strong reaction against the dominant modes of thinking of the 18th-century writers and philosophers. Where their predecessors saw man as a social animal, the Romantics saw him essentially as an individual in the solitary state. Where the Augustans emphasized those features that men have in common, the Romantics emphasized the special qualities of each individual’s mind. Thus, we can say that Romanticism actually

constitutes a change of direction from attention to the outer world of social civilization to the inner world of the human spirit. In essence, it designates a literary and philosophical theory which tends to see the individual as the very center of all life and all experience. It places the individual at the center of art.

The literary output of the Romantic Movement appeared as early as the nid-18th century. But it was not until the very last years of the 18th century and the first two decades of the 19th century that romanticism as a literary movement in England reached its full flowering, especially in the realm of poetry. Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley and Keats are the major Romantic poets. They started a rebellion against the neoclassical literature, which was later regarded as the poetic revolution. Wordsworth and Coleridge were the major representatives of this movement. They explored new theories and innovated new techniques in poetry writing. In their separate ways, they saw poetry as a healing energy; they believed that poetry could purify both individual souls and the society.

[问题详解]英国文学史名词解释

TheAnglo-SaxonPeriodI.1._________________canbetermedEngland’snationalepicanditsheroBeowulf—oneofthenationalheroesoftheEnglishpe

推荐度：

点击下载文档文档为doc格式

[问题详解]英国文学史名词解释

[问题详解]英国文学史名词解释

相关推荐文档

精选图文

热门排序

推荐文章

热门标签

相关文章列表