英国文学发展史一览

英国文学发展史一览

1.English Literature of Anglo-Saxon Period

Time: about 7th century

Features: verse literature （唱诗）

two groups: pagan （非宗教性的）and religious

Main works:

“Beowulf”

poetry by Caedmon and Cynewulf

2.English Literature of Middle Centuries

Time: mid 11th Century – 15th Century

Features:

1.influence of the Norman Conquest

2.Main works and writers:

3.the Romances （骑士文学）

4.Chaucer’s “The Canterbury Tales”

3.English Literature of Renaissance

Time: early 16th Century—mid 17th Century

Features: the first glori ous period of English literary history, “ A nest of singing birds …” （百家争鸣，百花齐放）

Main writers:

1.Thomas More

2.Edmund Spencer

3.Francis Bacon

4.Shakespeare

4.English Literature during the Bourgeois Revolution

Time:1625—1688

The English Bourgeois Revolution begins from 1642

Features:

Puritan age represented by John Milton

Main literary form: Poetry

Main writers:

John Milton 1608--1674

5.English Literature of the 18th Century

Features:

Also as the Enlightenment Movement Period （启蒙时期）

It is divided into 3 stages:

1.“Glorious revolution” to the end of 1730’s;

2.The mature period (1740’s—1750’s);

3.The last period covers the rest decades of the 18th century.

Main authors:

（小说家）Daniel Defoe，Jonathan Swift, Henry Fielding

（诗人）Alexander Pope

6.Romanticism in England

Time: 1798--1832

Features:

1.是英国文学史上诗歌最为繁盛的时期；

2.分为消极和积极两组。

Main poets:

1.以William Wordsworth 为代表的消极派“湖畔派诗人”

2.以Shelley, Baron, Keats 为代表的积极派诗人。

7.English Literature of the Mid & Late 19th Century

Features:

又被称为“Critical Realism Period”即批判现实主义阶段；

以Charles Dickens 和William Thackeray 为代表的现实主义小说家；

作品集中反映19世纪英国的社会现实；

开始涌现一批女作家：有大家熟悉的Charlotte Bronte & Emily Bronte, 她们的代表作有《呼啸山庄》和《简爱》

8.English Literature of the 20th Century

Features:

二十世纪以来，英国在世界上的主导地位日渐趋淡，二战以后更是附属于美国；

国内女权运动高涨；

文学作品多反映中下层人民的生活，涉及诸多生活侧面；

抒情诗再领潮流。

Main writers:

1.Bernard Shaw 的戏剧；

2.D.H. Lawrence 的情爱小说；

3.James Joyce 的意识流小说，“Stream of Consciousness”

4.William Butler Yeats 的诗歌。

Appreciation of poetry from the aspect of Versification

Contents

Ⅰ. Meter

Ⅱ. Foot

Ⅲ. Rhythm

Ⅳ. Sound patterns

Ⅴ. Rhyme

Ⅵ. Rhyme Scheme

Ⅶ. Forms of poem

Ⅷ. Appreciations

Ⅰ.meter （格）

1.concept:the regular pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables.

2.types:

“︶” stands for unstressed syllable and “_” represents stressed syllable. “\” is used to separate different feet.

1．抑扬格（轻重格）Iambus：是最常见的一种格式，每个音步由一个非重读音节加一个重读音节构成。

As fair / art thou / my bon/nie lass,

So deep / in luve / am I :

And I / will luve / thee still,/ my dear,

Till a` / the seas / gang dry:

Robert Burns(1759-1796): My Luve Is like a Red, Red Rose

注:art=are luve=love bonnie=beautiful a`=all gang=go

上例中为四音步与三音步交叉，可标示为：

︶－／︶－／︶－／（︶－）

2．扬抑格（重轻格）Trochee：每个音步由一个重读音节加一个非重读音节构成。Tyger!/ Tyger!/ burning / bright

In the / forests / of the / night

William Blake: The Tyger

上例中为四音步扬抑格（少一个轻音节），可标示为：－︶／－︶／－︶／－3．抑抑扬格（轻轻重格）Anapaest foot: 每个音步由两个非重读音节加一个重读音节构成。

Like a child / from the womb,

Like a ghost / from the tomb,

I arise / and unbuild / it again.

三音步抑抑扬格︶︶－／︶︶－／︶︶－

4．扬抑抑格（重轻轻格）Dactylic foot: 每个音步由一个重读音节加两个非重读音节构成。

ˊTouch her not / ˊscornfully,

ˊThink of her / ˊmournfully.

-- Thomas Hood

两音步扬抑抑格－︶︶／－︶︶

5．抑扬抑格（轻重轻格）Amphibrach：每个音步由一个非重读音节加一个重读音节再加一个非重读音节构成。

如：三音步抑扬抑格︶－︶／︶－︶／︶－︶

下例中最后一个音步为抑扬格。

O ˊhush thee / my ˊbabie / thy ˊsire was / a knight.

注：在同一首诗中常会出现不同的格律，格律解析对朗读诗歌有一定参考价值。现代诗中常不遵守规范的格律。

Ⅱ. Foot （音步）

1. Concept: a unit of poetic meter of stressed and unstressed syllable

2.Types:

?Monometer: one foot; Pentameter: five feet ?Dimeter: two feet; Hexameter: six feet ?Trimeter: three feet; Heptameter: seven feet ?Tetrameter: four feet; Octameter: eight feet

Distinction between “foot” and “meter”

Foot is not to be confused with meter, though the names for feet end with

“-meter”. Meter is based on syllables, indicating how stressed and unstressed syllables are arranged. Foot is applied with a single line, indicating how many meters are employed in that line.

Note: Meter+foot =metrical rhythm/versification

Ⅲ. Rhythm （节奏/韵律）

concept: The passage of regular or approximately equivalent time intervals between definite events or the recurrence of specific sounds or kinds of sounds or the recurrence of stressed and unstressed syllables is called rhythm.

Twinkle, twinkle, little star,

How I wonder what you are!

Ⅴ.rhyme （押韵）

1.concept: the repetition of the stressed vowel sound and all succeeding sounds

e.g. Home, Foam; chair, there

2. types:

Ⅵ. Rhyme Scheme（韵式）

1.Concept: The arrangement of rhymes in a poem or stanza.

2.types:

1．end rhyme（尾韵）occurs at the end of a line.

1）联韵：“aabb”型。

I shot an arrow into the air, a

It fell to earth, I knew not wh ere a

For, softly it flew, the s ight b

Could not follow it in its fl ight. b

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: The Arrow and the Song

2）交叉韵：abab型。

Sunset and evening star, a

And one clear call for me! b

And may there be no moaning of the bar, a

When I put out to sea, b

Alfred Tennyson(1809-1892): Crossing the Bar

3）同韵：有的诗押韵，一韵到底，大多是在同一节诗中共用一个韵脚。

如下例就共用／i:p／为韵脚

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.

Robert Frost (1874-1963): Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

2. 头韵(alliteration)：是指一行（节）诗中几个词开头的辅音相同，形成押韵。

下例中运用／f／、／b／与／s／头韵生动写出了船在海上轻快航行的景象。

The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew,

The furrow followed free,

We were the first that ever burst

Into that silent sea.

T.S. Coleridge: Rime of the Ancient Mariner

3．内韵：指词与词之间原因的重复形成的内部押韵。

下面一节诗中／i／及／iη／重复照应，呈现出一派欢乐祥和的气氛。

Spring, the sweet spring, is the year’s pleasant king;

Then blooms each thing, then maids dance in a ring,

Cold dath not sting, the pretty birds do sing:

Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to-witta-woo!

Thomas Nashe(1567-1601): Spring, the Sweet Spring

Ⅶ.Forms of poem （诗体）

Form is the design of a poem, the particular pattern it takes when it is written on paper. In each poem, we usually find a number of similar units. Each unit may have three lines, four lines or more. This recurring unit of a

poem is called stanza.（诗节）

2. Forms of Poetry

1）.Blank verse （无韵诗体）

Blank verse: unrhymed iambic pentameter, a line consisting of five feet of unstressed and stressed syllables. （由不押韵的诗行组成的诗体，通常是抑扬格五音步）

Examples: Shakespeare's plays, Milton's Paradise Lost and Wordsworth's Prelude are written in blank verse. The following is from Shakespeare's As You Like It :

All the world's a stage,

And all the men and women merely players:

They have their exits and their entrances.

2）.Couplet （对偶句）

Couplet: a pair of rhymed lines which may or may not constitute a separate stanza in a poem. Popular in the eighteenth century, a couplet may be long or