（0091）《英国文学史》复习思考题答案
I. Write out the authors’ names of the following works. (20)
1 William Shakespeare《Romeo and Juliet》 2 Henry Fielding《Tom Jones》 3 Charlotte Bronte《Jane Eyre》 4 Daniel Defoe《Robinson Crusoe》
5 Robert Burns《A Red Red, Rose》 6 Oscar Wilde《The Importance of Being Earnest》 7 George Bernard Shaw 《Mrs. Warren’s Profession》8 Virginia Woolf《To the Lighthouse》 9 Lord Byron《Don Juan》
10 John Keats《Ode to the Nightingale》 12 Jonathan Swift《Gulliver’s Travels》 14 Emily Bronte《Wuthering Heights》 16 Thomas Hardy《Tess of the D’Urberviles》 18 George Eliot《Silas Marner》
20 Percy Shelley《Ode to the West Wind》
11 William Shakespeare 《Macbeth》 13 William Thackery《Vanity Fair 》
15 Charles Dickens 《A Tale of Two Cities》 17 James Joyce《Ulysses》 19 Lord Byron《Don Juan》
II. Define the following literary terms. (20)
1、Iambic pentameter is a meter in poetry, consisting of an unrhymed line with five iambs or
feet (hence pentameter), felt by many to be the most powerful of all metrical forms in English poetry. Shakespeare excelled in the use of iambic pentameter (as in his famous Sonnet XVIII, beginning \”
2、Heroic couplet: a rhyming couplet in iambic pentameter. It is also called riding rhyme,
rhymed 5-beat lines, or rhymed decasyllables. It is one of the most popular metrical forms in English poetry. Though its origin is uncertain, heroic couplet is generally assumed to be introduced by Chaucer. Characteristics exhibited by heroic couplet include epigrammatic expression, balanced sentences, parallel construction, concise diction, use of antithesis, and medial pause. Two types of heroic couplets can be distinguished: closed heroic couplet and open heroic couplet. The former is a complete sentence with a full stop at the end of the second rhyme. The latter is one in which a sentence extends from one couplet to another.
3、Courtly love: an idealized love in some medieval literature and chivalric society. It has its
origin in the works of Plato, in Ovid’s Ars Amatoria, and in Andreas Capellanus’s De Arte Honeste Amandi. It owes its development to the medieval devotion to the Virgin Mary. Courtly love celebrates the beauty, virtues and ennobling power of women. It adds to the rise of women’s
position and offers a philosophical and religious interpretation of love and its function. Apart from noble passions and persistent pursuit, courtly love aims at the moral perfection of the lover. Love is essentially treated as a motivating power, directing the lover toward moral progress and spiritual development. Other elements of courtly love are humility and courtesy on the part of the lover, adultery between the man and his beloved mistress, and a great respect for the lady. Courtly love was popular first in France among the troubadours of the 12th and 13th centuries. In England, those who wrote in this tradition were Chaucer, Sidney, Spenser and Shakespeare. Examples are Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde and the sonnets written by Shakespeare and Spenser.
4、Literature of the Absurd: a term associated with modern literature, criticism, and
philosophy. It is applied to describe the meaninglessness of human existence in a world that is alien and incomprehensible. Deprived of their old beliefs and cut off from their past, human beings are in a state of complete isolation and confusion. Literature of the absurd has Existentialism as its philosophical background and is most fruitful in drama and novel. The idea that man and his existence are absurd is best illustrated in the works of Camus, Beckett, Ionesco, Adamov, Albee, Heller, Pynchon, and Vonnegut.
5、Ballad: a narrative poem in short stanzas about heroic or tragic deeds; or a song that tells a
romantic or sentimental story. There are mainly two kinds of ballads: the folk ballad and the literary ballad. The folk or popular ballad is without authorship and is of oral tradition. It might be composed by an individual or a community. It is intended to be sung or recited before the public. Ballads of oral tradition are not written down until many years later. And its language is simple and even unliterary. Folk ballad belongs to the Middle Ages. The literary or art ballad is with known authorship and has a definite moral purpose. Ballads of this type are usually imitations of medieval popular ballads. They are written down at the start. Many Romantic poets of the 19th century wrote literary ballads. Both folk and literary ballads share the following similarities: (a) simple and familiar language; (b) having adventure, love or war as the subject matter; (c) telling story through dialogue; (d) little description; (e) strong supernatural elements; (f) frequent use of repetition and parallelism; (g) having rhyme, assonance and the like; (h) impersonal narrator; (I) lyrical, romantic, sentimental or tragic qualities; and (j) the ballad writer getting his inspiration from folklore, local or national history. In England, many ballads are about the border conflicts between English and Scottish people, or about the legends of Robin Hood and his merry men.
Collections of ballads were once made by Bishop Percy who had Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, Walter Scott who wrote Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, and Child who compiled The English and the Scottish Popular Ballads. Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Wilde’s The Ballad of Reading Goal fall in the category of literary ballad. And there were more writers who wrote in the ballad style. They were Scott, Noyes, Macauley and Robert Service. Ballad as a poetic form is still alive today.
6、Blank verse: poetry that does not rhyme but has iambic pentameter lines. Though not
originated in England or America, it has been the most important and most widely used English verse form. Blank verse is popular because it is closest to the rhythm of daily English speech. Thus most English poems which are dramatic, reflective or narrative are in the form of blank verse. This verse was probably first used in England by Surrey who translated Aeneid, by Sackville and Norton who composed Gorboduc. It was developed and perfected by Marlowe, Shakespeare and Milton. In the 18th century, most poets favored heroic couplets. But Young and Thomson were able to write in the tradition of blank verse. The 19th century saw a renewed interest in this poetic form. Masters of blank verse included Wordsworth, Coleridge and Bryant. The fact that blank verse is still practiced by writers like T.S. Eliot, Yeats, Frost and Stevens shows how influential and favorable it really is.
7、Comedy: In its literary sense, three meanings may be distinguished: (a) drama that amuses,
written in the tradition of Greek and Roman comedy; (b) any work of literature in the Middle Ages and early Renaissance that has a happy ending; (c) by natural extension, works in every literary form that provoke laughter and smiles.
Generally speaking, comedy is thought to be a less important form than tragedy. Thus, dramatic theories concerning comedy are small in number. Aristotle in his Poetics briefly defines comedy as “an imitation of men worse than the average.” It seeks to entertain and deals with “some defect…that is not painful or destructive.” Plato in his “Philebus” explains that “When we laugh at the folly of our friends,” we experience “pleasure.” Our laughter is provoked by the harmless ignorance and absurdity of the comic character. Philip Sidney in Apologie for Poetrie says “Comedy is an imitation of the common errors of our life.” Walpole of the 18th century wrote: “This world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel.” And Byron had a famous statement: “All tragedies are finished by a death, / All comedies are ended by a marriage.” Other
英国文学史复习题之名词解释
