Epic refers to a long narrative poem telling about the deeds of a great hero and reflecting the values of the society from which it originated.
Romance refers to a long composition in verse or prose, describing the life and adventures of a noble hero.
Allegory寓言refers to a tale in verse or prose in which characters, actions, or settings represent abstract ideas or moral qualities. Thus, an allegory is a story with two meanings, a literal meaning and a symbolic meaning.
Heroic Couplet (英雄双行体)：It refers to lines of iambic pentameter which rhyme in pairs: aa, bb, cc, and so on. This verse form was introduced into English poetry by Geoffrey Chaucer (The Legend of women and most of The Canterbury Tales) and has been in constant use ever since. Ballad is a story told in song, usually in 4-line stanzas, with the second and fourth lines rhymed. Sonnet: A lyric poem of 14 lines, usually in iambic pentameter, restricted to a definite rhyme schemes. There are two kinds of sonnets: the Italian Sonnet and the English Sonnet.
Blank Verse: It refers to unrhymed lines of iambic pentameter. It was Marlowe who made blank verse the principal vehicle of expression in drama.
Spenserian Stanza: a form of poetry written in a 9-line stanza, rhyming scheme is abab bcbc c; the first eight are iambic pentameter lines, and the last an iambic hexameter line.
A soliloquy (from Latin “talking by oneself”) is a device often used in drama when a character speaks to himself or herself, relating thoughts and feelings, thereby also sharing them with the audience. Other characters, however, are not aware of what is being said.
Alliteration: The repetition of similar sounds, usually consonants or consonant clusters, in a group of words. Sometimes the term is limited to the repetition of initial consonant sounds. 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.
Enlightenment: Enlightenment is an intellectual movement that originates in Europe and comes to America in the 18th century. It stresses the power of human reason, the importance of methods and discoveries instead of God. Its purpose is to enlighten the whole world with the light of modern philosophical and artistic ideas. It celebrates reason or rationality, equality and science. It advocates universal education. Sentimentalism感伤主义：It appeared as a result of a bitter discontent with social reality among the enlightened people.
Neoclassicism: A revival in the 17th and 18th centuries of classical standards of order, balance, and harmony in literature. John Dryden and Alexander Pope were major exponents of the neoclassical school.
Realism: In literature, it is an approach that attempts to describe life without a idealization or romantic subjectivity.
Romanticism: A movement that flourished in literature, philosophy, music, and art in Western culture during most of the 19th century, beginning as a revolt against classicism. Romanticism gave primary concern to passion, emotion, and natural beauty. The English Romantic period is an age of poetry.
Symbol: A symbol is a sign which suggests more than its literal meaning.
English Critical Realism: English critical realism of the 19th century flourished in the forties and in the early fifties. The critical realists described with much vividness and artistic skill the chief traits of the English society and criticized the capitalist system from a democratic viewpoint. They
not only gave a satirical portrayal of the bourgeoisie and the ruling class, but also showed profound sympathy for the common people.
Byronic hero: It refers to a proud, mysterious rebel figure of noble origin in Byron’s poem. With immense superiority in his passions and powers, he would carry on his shoulders the burden of righting all the wrongs in a corrupt society. He would rise single-handedly against any kind of tyrannical rules wither in government, in religion, or in moral principles with unconquerable wills and inexhaustible energies. The conflict is usually one of rebellious individuals against outworn social systems and conventions.
Renaissance: It is a historical period in which European humanist thinkers and scholars made attempts to get rid of those feudalist ideas in medieval Europe to introduce new ideas that expressed the interests of the rising bourgeoisie and to recover the early church from the corruption of the Roman Catholic church.
Conceit: A 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 unusual and intellectual kind of conceit is the metaphysical conceit.
Comedy: In general, a literary work that ends happily with a healthy amicable armistice停战 between the protagonist and society.
Tragedy: In general, a literary work in which the protagonist meets an unhappy or disastrous end. Elegy: An elegy is a somber poem or song that praises or laments the dead.
Metaphysical school: They are a group of poets writing in the 1st half of 17th century. Its major members are John Donne, George Herbert and so on, whose work is notable for its ingenious use of intellectual and theological concepts in surprising conceits, strange paradoxes, and far-fetched imagery.
Cavalier school: Most of these poets were courtiers and soldiers. They sided with king against the revolution. They mostly wrote short songs on the flitting joys of the day. Their poetry expressed the spirit of pessimism.
Stream of consciousness: “Stream of Consciousness” or “interior monologue”, is one of the modern literary techniques. It is the style of writing that attempts to imitate the natural flow of a character’s thoughts, feelings, reflections, memories and mental images as the character experiences them.
University Wits: It refers to a group of scholars during the Elizabethan Age who graduated from either Oxford or Cambridge. They came to London with the ambition to become professional writers. Some of them later became famous poets and playwrights. They were called “University Wits”. Thomas Greene, Thomas Kyd, John Lyly and Christopher Marlowe were among them. They paved the way, to some extent, for the coming of Shakespeare.
Lake poets: Romantic poets such as 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.
Pre-romanticism: It originated among the conservative groups of men and letters as a reaction against Enlightenment and found its most manifest expression in the “Gothic Novel”. The term arose from the fact that the greater part of such romances were devoted to the medieval times. Comic epic in prose: employing the lofty style and the conventions of epic poetry to describe a trivial or undignified series of events, thus a kind of satire that mocks its subjects by treating it in an inappropriately grandiose manner, usually at some length.
英国文学史名词解释
