英美文学考试要点

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

----Robert Frost The woods are lovely, dark and deep.

But I have promises to keep.

And miles to go before I sleep.

And miles to go before I sleep.

Question: What kind of feeling does this stanza show?

It shows a kind of sad, sentimental but also strong and responsible feeling.

Question: How do you appreciate this poem?

It is one of the most quietly moving of Frost’s lyrics. On the surface, it seems to be simple, descriptive verses, records of close observation, graphic and homely pictures.

It uses the simplest terms and commonest words. But it is deeply meditative, adding far-reaching meaning to the homely music.

It uses the superb craftsmanship to come to a climax of responsibility: the promises to be kept, the obligation to be fulfilled. Few poems have said so much in so little.

Washington Irving ----The father of American literature;

-----The first one in American who won the

international fame.

James Cooper----The first American novelist. The Leatherstocking

Tales

T.S. Eliot ----One of the most influential poets of his time.

He was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1984 for his

work in modern poetry.

T.S. Eliot’s poem : The Waste Land.

Admiring fellow poets called him “a poet’s poet”. He received

the Bollinger Prize in poetry in 1950, and the Pulitzer Prize for

poetry in 1955.

William Faulkner: Representative writer of Southern literature.

Together with Hemingway, Faulkner is regarded as the most important novelist.

Faulkner wrote altogether 18 novels. The Sound and the Fury,

Absalom, Absalom, Absalom! And Go Down, Moses are

masterpieces by any standards.

Sinclair Lewis----The first American author to win the Nobel Prize for literature.

His representative works: Main Street and Babbitt.

The Great Depression of the 1930s greatly weakened the American nation’s self-confidence.

John Steinbeck was the foremost novelist of the American Depression of the 1930s. His masterpiece is The Grapes of Wrath.

Ernest Hemingway----Representative writer of the Lost Generation.

His four major novels: The Sun Also Rises, Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls, and The Old Man and the

Sea.

The ballad is the most important department of English folk literature. Of paramount importance are The Ballads of Robin Hood. Geoffrey Chauce r---- The founder of English poetry

----The founder of English relism.

The Canterbury T ales is Chaucer’s masterpiece and one of the monumental works in English literature.

He is the first great poet who wrote in the English language.

William Shakespeare Four Tragedies: Hamlet, Othello, King Lear and

Macbeth

Four Comedies:A Midsummer Night’s Dream,

The Merchant of Venice, As You Like It and

Twelfth Night.

John Bunyan The Pilgrim’s Progress

The representatives of the Enlightenment in English literature were Joseph

Addison and Richard Steele, the essayists,

and Alexander Pope, the poet.

Jonathan Swift Gulliver’s Travels

Alexander Pope He was an outstanding enlightener and the greatest

English poet of the classical school in the first

half of the 18th century.

Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe was one of the forerunners of the English realistic

novel. The character of Robinson Crusoe is

representative of the English bourgeoisie at the

earlier stages of its development.

Henry Fielding The History Tom Jones

Fielding is the founder of the English realistic novel and sets up

the theory of realism in literature creation. Samuel Richardson Pamela

Richard Brinsley Sheridan---- The most important English playwright of

18th century.

The School of Scandal is his masterpiece.

Oliver Goldsmith The Vicar of Wakefield

He is one of the representatives of English sentimentalism. Samuel Johnson Johnson’s Dictionary

Representatives of Active Romanticists: Byron, Shelley and Keats. Representatives of Passive Romanticists: Wordsworth, Coleridge and

Southey.

Byron Don Juan

Shelley Prometheus Unbound

Walter Scott He has been universally regarded as the founder and great

master of the historical novel.

Charles Dickens----The greatest representative of English critical realism.

Oliver Twist David Copperfield

The Bronte Sisters: Charlotte, Emily, and Anne

Charlotte Jane Eyre

Emily Wuthering Heights

The mid and late 19th century is sometimes called the Victorian Age

Robert Burns----The greatest Scottish poet in the late 18th century.

A Red, Red Rose

The Lake Poets: William Wordsworth, Samuel T aylor and Robert Southey. Shelley Ode to the West Wind

John Keats Ode to the Nightingale To Autumn

Jane Austen Sense and Sensibility Pride and Prejudice

术语解释（10’ *3）：

American Romanticism

Romanticism was originated in England and came to America early in the nineteenth century. It shared certain general characteristics: moral enthusiasm, faith in the value of individualism and intuitive perception, and a presumption that nature was a source of goodness and man’s societies a source of corruption.

Period: It stretches from the end of the eighteenth century through the outbreak of the Civil War (1861--1865).

Realism

Realism had originated in France. It was a literary doctrine that called for “reality and truth” in the description of ordinary life.

It offers and objective rather than idealistic view of human nature and human experience. The champion of American realism was William Dean Howells.

Representative writers: Howells, James, and Mark Twain.

Naturalism

Naturalism is a literary school that originated in France and came to American literature at the end of the 19th century. The naturalistic writers attempted to achieve extreme objectivity and frankness, presenting characters of low social and economic classes who were dominated by their environment and hereby.

Representative writers: Stephen Crane, Frank Norris, Jack London and Theodore Dreiser.

Stream of Consciousness

It is a narrative device with which the author makes an attempt to depict the exact process of mental workings of the character with all its illogical darts and dashes and sudden turns and free associations. Both Faulkner and Hemingway employed this literary device in some of their works.

The Beat Generation

The word “beat” represents a non-conformist, rebellious attitude toward conventional values concerning sex, religion and the American way of life, an attitude which result from the feeling of depression and exhaustion and the need to escape into an unconventional-communal-mode of living. “Beat” literature exhibits new form both in prose and poetry.

Allen Ginsberg was regarded as the spokesman of the Beat Generation.

The Enlightenment of America

Representative writer: Frankly

It is a literature movement in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. In America the humanistic ideas of the movement dealt a heavy blow to Puritanism in advocating science, knowledge and the power and ability of man.

Enlightenment Movement

It is a progressive intellectual movement which flourished in France and swept through the Western Europe at the time. The movement is a furtherance of 15th and 16th centuries. Its purpose is to enlighten the whole world with light of modern philosophical and artistic ideas. The enlighteners put emphasis on reason, education, equality, and science. Famous among the great enlighteners in England are Pope, Addison, Steels, Swift, Defoe, Sheridan, Fielding and others.

The Lost Generation

The Lost Generation is a literature school original in American in the twentieth century. Lost Generation refers to the generation after the World War I. Meanwhile, it also refers to the young writers who lived as expatriates in Western Europe for a short time. Besides Hemingway, there is Lewis Mumford, Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, Matthew, Sherwood Anderson, and many other novelists. The Lost Generation was a group of rebellious youth appeared in America after the First World War. The Lost Generation’s writers held many common p oints.