英国文学 名词解释 简答题 期末复习

Literary Terms

1.Epic: a long narrative celebrating the great deeds of one or more legendary heroes,

in a grand ceremonious style./ a long verse narrative dealing with important historical or legendary figures or events.

2.Alliteration: the repetition of the same sounds-usually initial consonants of words

or of stressed syllables-in any sequence of neighboring of words./ the use of the same letter or sound at the beginning of words in a line of a poem.

3.Middle English：The English language in the transitional stage from old English

to modern English through some four centuries (12-15) of development and change has been known as Middle English.

4.Blank verse: the unrhymed lines of iambic pentameter.

5.Renaissance: the ―rebirth‖of literature, art, and learning that progressively

transformed European culture from the mid-14th century in Italy to the mid-17th century in England, strongly influenced by the rediscovery of classical Greek and Latin literature, and accelerated by the development of printing. The Renaissance is commonly held to mark the close of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the modern Western world.

6.Humanism: a 19th century term for the values and ideal of the European

Renaissance, which placed a new emphasis on the expansion of human capacities.

Reviving the study of Greek and Roman history, arts, and philosophy, the Renaissance humanists developed an image of ―Man‖ more positive and hopeful than that of medieval ascetic Christianity: rather than a miserable sinner awaiting redemption from a pit of fleshly corruption.

7.Anglo-Norman Romance: 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. / ―Romance‖in this period refers to some verse narrative that sings of knightly adventures or other heroic deeds and usually emphasizes the chivalric love of the Middle Ages in England.

8.Allegory：a story in which the characters and events are used as symbols to

express some religious, political or moral idea.

9.Heroic Couplets: a rhymed pair of iambic pentameter lines. / lines of iambic

pentameter in rhyming couplets.

10.Ballads: are anonymous narrative songs that have been preserved by oral

transmission. They are most characteristic of primitive societies of the English –Scottish border region in the later Middle Ages. The story is told simply, briefly, impersonally, and often with vivid dialogue.

11.Ballad Meter: ballad meter contains 4- line stanzas, with the alternation of 4-and

3- feet verse to the odd and even numbered lines (sometimes all four lines are in octosyllabics), and rhyming on the second and fourth lines

12.Neoclassicism: as a rule, often employed against Romanticism, the term has also

been used to describe the characteristic world-view of the Age of Reason, denoting a preference fro rationality, clarity, restraint, order, and decorum, and for

general truths rather than particular insights.

13.Spenserian Stanza: an English poetic stanza of nine iambic lines, the first eight

being pentameters while the ninth is a longer line. The rhyme scheme is ababbcbcc. The stanza is named after Edmund Spenser. / a nine-line stanza with the rhyme scheme of ababbcbcc with the first eight lines in iambic pentameter and the last line in hexameter.

14.One- man tragedy: begins with the rise of the hero from his humble origin to the

zenith of his success and ends with his downfall or death.

15.Metaphysical Poets: the name given to a diverse group of 17th century English

poets whose work is notable for its ingenious use of intellectual and theological concepts in surprising conceits, strange paradoxes, and far-fetched imagery. The leading poet is John Donne.

https://www.360docs.net/doc/e811253065.html,edy of Manners: a kind of comedy representing the complex and

sophisticated code of behavior current in fashionable circles of society, where appearances count for more than true moral character. Its plot usually revolves around intrigues of lust and greed, the self-interested cynicism of the characters being masked by decorous pretence.

17.Gothic Novel: a story of terror and suspense, usually set in a gloomy old castle or

monastery.

18.Sonnet: a lyric poem comprising 14 rhyming lines of equal length, iambic

pentameters in English.

19.University Wits:a group of English poets and playwrights who established

themselves in London in the 1580s and 1590s after attending at either Oxford or Cambridge. The most important member of the group was Christopher Marlowe. A

1．Please make some comments upon the great significances and the progressive views on man in Geoffrey Chaucer’s ―The Canterbury Tales‖.

2. Please summarize ―Paradise Lost‖briefly and illustrate the importance of John Milton in the English literary history.

B

3. Please give a brief introduction of William Shakespeare and his Hamlet. It must contain a general comment on Shakespeare, a summary of the drama, the theme of the drama, and Shakespeare’s literary innovation in Hamlet.

4. Please summarize briefly the main literary characteristics in the age of Enlightenment.

A

1.Chaucer’s masterpiece, ―The Canterbury Tales’ is one of the most famous works in all literature. (2) It is characterized by the principle of realism and humanism.(3) In it, Chaucer created a strikingly brilliant and picturesque panorama of his time and his country, and irony and freedom of views reached such a high level of power that it had no equal in all the English literature up to the 16th century. (5) As a representative of a transitional period, Chaucer is not entirely devoid of medieval prejudices.(2) His work is permeated with free-thinking, so characteristic of the age of Renaissance whose immediate forerunner Chaucer thus becomes.(2) He believes in the right of

man to earthly happiness.(2) He is anxious to see man freed from superstitions and a blind belief in fate.(2) He is always keen to praise man’s energy, skills, intellect, quick wit and the love for life. (2)

2．The poem opens with the description of a meeting among the angels. The freedom-loving Satan and his followers are banished from heavenly domains and sequestered into the nether world. Satan and his adherents are not discouraged, and also strive for victory. Satan chooses the Garden of Eden as the battle-field, where there live in innocent bliss the first man and woman, Adam and Eve. Satan desired to tear them away from the influence of God and to make them instrumental in his struggle against God’s authority. (5) God learns of his intention, however, and sends the Archangel Raphael to warn Adam and Eve of Satan’s vile project. No sooner is he gone than Satan assumes the shape of a serpent and appears before Eve. By cunning and crafty speeches he persuades her to break God’s interdiction. (5) Eve eats an apple from the forbidden tree and plucks another one for Adam. God sees their misdemeanor and administrators his unwavering justice; they are deprived of immortality, exiled from Paradises and doomed to an earthly life full of privations and sufferings. The poem ends in Adam’s and Eve’s banishment from Paradise. (5)

John Milton's literary career cast a formidable shadow over English poetry in the 18th and 19th centuries; he was often judged equal or superior to all other English poets, including Shakespeare. The influence of Milton's poetry and personality on the literature of the Romantic era was profound. Aside from his importance to literary history, Milton's career has influenced the modern world in other ways. (5)

B:

3. The greatest of all English authors, William Shakespeare belongs to those rare geniuses of mankind who have become landmarks in the history of world culture. Meanwhile, he was one of the first founders of realism, a masterhand at realistic portrayal of human characters and relations. (5)Hamlet is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1599 and 1601. The play, set in Denmark, recounts how Prince Hamlet exacts revenge on his uncle Claudius, who has murdered Hamlet’s father, the King, and then taken the throne and married Hamlet’s mother.(5) The play vividly charts the course of real and feigned madness—from overwhelming grief to seething rage—and explores themes of treachery, revenge, incest, and moral corruption. (5) Under Shakespeare’s pen, Hamlet as a medieval story assumed new meaning and significance. Danish names could not hide from the spectators and readers the fact that it was English which the great writer described in his play. The whole tragedy is permeated with the spirit of Shakespeare’s own time. Hamlet is the profoundest expression of Shakespeare’s humanism and his criticism of contemporary life. (5)

4. It is simply for convenience that we study 18th century writings in three main divisions: the reign of so-called classicism, the revival of romantic poetry, and the beginning of the modern novel. As a whole, it is an age of prose rather than of poetry, and in this respect it differs from all preceding ages of English literature. (5)

The main representative of the classicism poetry is Alexander Pope (1688-1744), who was a man of extraordinary wit and extensive learning, and his contemporaries considered him as the highest authority in matters of literary arts. Among his other contributions, he elaborated certain regulations for the style of poetical works and made popular the heroic couplets in which he wrote the greater part of his poems. (5)

The image of an enterprising Englishman of the 18thcentury was created by Daniel Defoe in his famous novel Robinson Crusoe. It was one of the forerunners of the English 18th century realistic novel. But it was Henry Fielding and Tobias George Smollet who became the real founders of the genre of the bourgeois realistic novel in England and Europe. (5)

Another conspicuous trend in the English literature of the latter half of the 18th century was the pre-romanticism. It originated among the conservative groups of men of letters as a reaction against Enlightenment and found its most manifest expression in the ―Gothic novel‖. William Blake (1757-1821) and Robert Burns (1759-1796) serve as two forerunners of the Romanticism. (5)