整理英国文学史bysummer

Chapter1 Early and Medieval Literature

Three stages of English literary development:

The Roman Conquest（55BC——410AD）

The Anglo-Saxon Period（410——1066AD）

Three tribes：Jutes，the Angles，and the Saxons

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle盎格鲁撒克逊编年史

The greatest literary achievement during this period is Beowulf。Beowulf贝奥武甫——epic，alliteration

★Epic: a long narrative poem telling about the deeds of a great hero and reflecting the values of the society from which it originated. Many epics were drawn from an oral tradition and were transmitted by song and recitation before they were written down. ★The whole epic is divided into two parts and tells of two major events in the life of Beowulf.①He kills a monster;②He fights a dragon.

The Norman Conquest(1066-------1350AD)

下层：ballad民谣（ballads which are the most important parts of English folk literature）

上层：chivalry骑士文学：Sir Gawain and the Green Knight （alliteration verse）

★Most of the English romances deal with three major themes: Ⅰ.The Matter of Britain——which is about the adventures of King

Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table

Ⅱ.The Matter of France——which is about Emperor Charlemagne and his peers

Ⅲ.The Matter of Rome——which is about tales of antiquity

Geoffrey Chaucer

★The Father of English Poetry

时代：The Middle Ages

作品：Ⅰ.The Canterbury Tales坎特伯雷故事集（The prologue is a splendid masterpiece of realistic portrayal, the first of its kind in the history of English literature.The structure of the Canterbury Tales indebted to Boccaccio’s Decamer十日谈）

作品特点：Chaucer was one of the first English poets to use the five-stress line, a decasyllabic cousin to the iambic pentameter, in much of his work.The couplet:It refers to the poem which has the rhyme in pairs and each line in the iambic pentameter.

影响：Ⅰ.Chaucer praised man’s energy, intellect, wit and love of life.

Ⅱ.He exposed, satirized and lashed the evils of the time.

Ⅲ.He was the first great poet to write in the English language and exerted great influence on making the dialect of London the standard for modern English speech.

Ⅳ.He is one of the first English poets to use couplet and each line in

the iambic pentameter.

Chapter2 English Literature of the Renaissance

1.Humanism emphasized the dignity and potential of the individual and the worth of life in this world.

2.People no longer looked upon themselves as living only for God and they preferred life on the earth to life after death. Humanism expressed their admiration for human beauty and human achievement. Man could mould the world according to his will and attain happiness by removing the external checks.

3.Among the giants of the Renaissance were Thomas Moore, Francis Bacon,Edmund Spenser,Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare.

Thomas Moore

作品：Utopia乌托邦

Utopia：an ideal country. A dream “From whom according to whom according to his needs”按需分配。

Edmund Spenser

地位：poet's poet

作品：The Shephearde's Calender牧羊人日历

The Faerie Queene仙后

Christopher Marlowe

流派：university wits大学才子派

Drama：Tamburlaine（power）帖木儿大帝

The Jew of Malta（money）马尔它的犹太人

Doctor Faustus（knowledge）浮士德博士

作品意义：Three dramas stand for the three desires of the rising capitalists——power, money and knowledge.

特点：The works use beautiful blank verse and mighty line.

Francis Bacon

地位：Bacon was the founder of English materialist philosophy, as well as of modern science in England.He proposed a scientific way of gaining knowledge——learning through practice.

作品：essays著名的是Of Studies说学(Of Beauty, Of Truth) and On Reading

William Shakespeare

作品：

Historical plays: Henry VI ; Henry IV : Richard III ; Henry V ；Richard II；Henry VIII

②Four Comedies: As You Like It皆大欢喜; Twelfth Night第十二夜;

A Mid-summer Night’s Dream仲夏夜之梦; The Merchant Of Venice 威尼斯商人

③Four Tragedies: Hamlet哈姆莱特; Othello奥赛罗; King Lear李尔王; Macbeth麦克白

④Shakespeare Sonnet :154 The Sonnets

⑤Romeo and Juliet罗密欧和朱丽叶

※sonnet十四行诗：A fixed form of lyric poetry that consist of fourteen lines, usually written in iambic pentameter. There are two basic types of sonnets, the Italian and the English sonnet. The rhyme of English sonnet is abab,cdcd,efef,gg.

Ben Jonson

作品：Every Man in His Humor

Every Man out of His Humor

Chapter3 English Literature during the English Bourgeois Revolution and Restoration

John Milton

※作品：

①Epics: Paradise Lost失乐园

Santa:He is a hero and a freedom-loving ,ambitious and rebellious guy. He dares to question and challenges God’s authority.

God: He is a king. He likes being flattered and he is cruel and unjust. Adam and Eve:They are Milton’s belief in the power of man.

※回答“吃禁果是否值得”的问题：It is this longing for knowledge that makes mankind intelligent and live an active, meaning life.

Paradise Regained复乐园——New Testament

※Puritanism: A belief of puritans who is strict in moral and religion and consider fun and pleasure as sinful, believe people should work hard always.

It is a division of the protestant church which wanted simpler forms of church ceremony.

②Dramatic poem: Samson Agonistes力士参孙based on The Book of Judges（士师记）in the old Testament.

※He is a man of great strength fighting for the freedom of his country(Israel), but he was betrayed by his wife Dalilah.

John Bunyan班扬

作品：

allegory寓言体叙事：The Pilgrim's Progress天路历程

※Ⅰ.Allegory：A narrative technique in which characters representing things or abstract ideas are used to convey a message or teach a lesson. Allegory is typically used to teach moral, ethical, or religious lessons but is sometimes used for satiric or political purposes.

※Ⅱ.Vanity Fair: It is symbol of the sin, evil, greediness and dissipation of the upper-class in London in the period of Restoration, showing the idea of puritan.

Ⅲ.Christian:He is poor people. He pursues an ideal place where there’s no poverty.

Faithful:He is human’s good point

Celestial City: It is a vision of happy place dreamed by the poor through a veil of religion’s mist.

Chapter4 Eighteenth Century English Literature

※Enlightenment:An intellectual movement, especially in 18thc. That flourished in France and swept through the whole western Europe, and people believed reason (rationality) and science not religion would advance human progress.

The eighteenth century is known as “the Age of Reason”. The English Enlighteners are divided into two groups——the moderate and the radical. The most important writers of the moderate group include Alexander Pope, Daniel Defoe, Joseph Addison, Richard Steele and Samuel Richardson. The representatives of the radical include Jonathan Swift, Henry Fielding, Tobias Smollett, Richard Brinsley Sheridan and Oliver Goldsmith.

Alexander Pope亚历山大·蒲柏

His poem：Essay on Criticism批评论

“A little learning is a dangerous thing. Drink deep or taste not the Pierian Spring. Hills peep over hills and Alps on Alps arise”双押韵

例题：Among the representatives of the Enlightenment, who was one of the first to introduce rationalism to England? ( C )

A.John Bunyan

B. Daniel Defoe

C. Alexander Pope

D. Jonathan Swift

Ⅰ.Sentimental novel

Samuel Richardson塞缪尔·理查生

身份：Novelist, moralizer, a letter writer.

流派：Neo-classicism in the early eighteenth century

作品：①Pamela，or Virtue Rewarded帕米拉：好人好报（penetrating psychological study of the heroine）epistolary novel 书信体小说

②Dictionary：It marked an epoch in the study of English language and the end of English writers’reliance on the patronage of noblemen for support.

※A literary movement from the Restoration till the end of 18thc. Which emphasize order, reason, restraint, common, sense and conversation, not imagination, invention, experimentation. The representatives modeled after the ancient Greek and Latin authors.

Laurence Sterne斯坦恩

作品：The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy

特征：It detailed descriptions of the characters’ inner thought and feeling. Characters are ordinary person.

Oliver Goldsmith哥尔斯密

身份：novelist, essayist, dramatist, poet

诗歌：The Deserted Village

作品：The Vicar of Wakefield威克菲尔德牧师外传

喜剧：She Stoops to Conquer

The Good Natur'd Man(witty, lively)善性之人

Ⅱ. Sentimental poem

※Thomas Gray托马斯格雷

流派：Graveyard Poets墓园派诗人

诗歌：Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard墓园哀歌

They appealed to”sentiment”and”human heart”. Sentimentalism marks a transition from Neo-classicism to Romanticism in English Poetry.

Ⅲ. English Drama

Richard Brinsley Sheridan谢尔丹

※戏剧：The School for Scandal造谣学校

The Rivals

※影响：These two plays are often considered as the important links between the masterpieces of Shakespeare and those of George Bernard Shaw.

Daniel Defoe笛福

地位：a pioneer novelist of England, a prolific writer of books and pamphlets. He is the founder of realistic novel.

作品：Captain Singleton辛格顿船长

Colonel Jacque杰克上校

Moll Flanders摩尔弗兰德斯（It is written in an autobiographical form called memoir. Defoe introduces, for the first time, a lowly

woman as the subject of literature.）

Robinson Crusoe★

The realistic Charm of “Robinson Crusoe”

i.It is based on a nature story and a traditional picaresque novel. ii.It is first-person narration which makes it authentic.

iii.Realistic style: It narrated in a simple, straight forward style and used exact number and specific details.

iv.It portrays a successful figure of capitalist who is adventurous, commercial, strong-willed, practical, diligent, religious, and intelligent, . He is also an empire builder and colonizer.

v.The novel glorifies both physical and mental labour.

Jonathan Swift江奈生斯威夫特

国籍：Irishman

地位：master of satire novelist

作品：A Tale of a Tub一个浴盆的故事

Battle of the Books书的战争

Gulliver's Travels格列夫游记

The Drapier’s Letters布商的书信

A modest Proposal一个温和的建议（It was about his pity for the oppressed, ignorant,populous, and hungry Catholic peasants of Ireland. And he expressed his anger at the rapacious English absentee landlords.）

★Gulliver’s Travels

i. A voyage to Lilliput ——satirizes parties and religion.

●It makes a sharp comparison.

●It uses exact numbers such as six inches, mountain of flesh ●In Lilliput, there are a small king who is ambitious,

aggressive and believes himself as the delight and terror of the universe.※

●“Should eggs be broken at the big end or the small end?” It

satirizes the different churches——Roman Catholic, the Church of England and the Puritans.

●Low-heeled party is symbol of Tories and high-heeled party

is the Conservation. Whigs are the Liberals.

ii. A voyage to Brobdingnag which is an ideal country.

●Comparison:sixty feet high, a apple can kill him, a bowl of

milk can get him drowned. Europe is just like anthill.

●In this country, there is a king who is peaceful, hates the war.

He regards as the Odious Vermin who keeps fighting and starts the war order to expand colonies.

●It satirizes against English government and its executives

bodies through comparison between Brobdingnag way and England.

iii.A voyage to Laputa——which satirizes against philosophers iv.A voyage to Houyhnhnms慧马国游记

●It reveals the weakness of all the human beings.

●Houyhnhnms(horses) are rational, friendly, intelligent and

possess all the virtues.※

●The Yahoos(human-shaped beast) possesses every

conceivable evil. They are hairy, wild, low, reasonless, conscienceless, malicious, spiteful, envious, filthy and greedy.

※

※作品含义：Gulliver's Travels is a fantasy, and at the same time, a realistic work of fiction. They are told in a vivid and convincing way and include simple and straightforward descriptions.

Henry Fielding

地位：Henry Fielding was both the founder of the English realistic novel and one of the most artistic writers that England has ever produced.

作品：Amelia阿美利亚

Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great大为人江奈生威尔德传

Joseph Andrews约瑟夫安德鲁传（It began with the unmistakable purpose of burlesquing Samuel Richardson’s Pamela）

Tom Jones（masterpiece）汤姆琼斯(There are three part in novel——in the country, on the road, and in London. It gives us panoramic pictures of the 18-century English world. The author develops his narrative in the fullest, freest, clearest and most straightforward manner.)

★Tom Jones

i.Tom Jones is a symbol of nature and sentiment. He is frank,

open, kind, generous but quick-tempered by impulse not by reason. He easily is led to astray and commit mistakes.

GOOD-NATURED

ii.Sophia is a symbol of wisdom and reason. She is an ideal of an English girl who is tender courageous, determined, and insists on pursuing her own happiness. She is calm and courageous in face of difficulties.

iii.Blifill makes a sharp contrast with Tom. He is greedy and ready to flatter. He is also malicious and hypocritical. He likes back-biting others for his own benefits. His inner-nature is wholly corrupted. ILL-NATURED

William Blake

作品：Poetical Sketches诗的素描

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell天堂与地狱的结合

Songs of Innocence天真之歌（It is happy songs. It is about sun,

hill, streams, insects and flowers in the innocence of child. The symbol is the lamb. Everything is in harmony.）

Songs of Experience经验之歌(It is from songs of innocence to to experience. It shows a progression of the poet’s out look on life. Experience brings a fuller sense pf the power of evil, the great misery and pain of people’s life. The symbol is tiger. It s full of sadness, passion and hatred.)

★London(experience)

It is written in the rhyme pattern of ballad, four lines in a stanza. It consists of four quatrains of iambic tetrameter(四步抑扬格).

From the first stanza, we can see only the minority benefit from the prosperity of economy but the common people still live in the misery. The first two stanzas, from what ”I see” and what “I hear” , the poet gives us a general picture of the suffering of the poor in London. The next two stanzas describe a specific picture. It focused on the chimney sweepers, soldiers, which lashes the cruelty of child labor and the injustice of the colonial war. The third group is about the youthful harlots. Their curse utters the hatred of those who are in the bottom of London. So for the rich, London is haven, but for the poor, it is a hell.

Robert Burns

地位：The greatest Scottish poet in the late 18th century.

作品：Poem Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect苏格兰方言诗集

A Red, Red rose

The first group is about love and friendship, like “A Red, RedRose”,”Highland Mary”,”The Highland Lassie O” and “Auld Lang Syne”. The third group deals with the theme of patriotism. The fourth group reveals Burn’s attitude towards liberty, equality and fraternity under the impetus of the American War of Independence and the French Revolution. “The Tree of Liberty, A Revolutionary Lyric” is from Holy Willie’s Prayer(威利长老的祈祷).

Chapter5 English Literature of Early Nineteenth Century

※It was exclusively motivated by both the Industrial Revolution ad the French Revolution. In the second half of the 18th century, the Industrial Revolution made the country “the workshop of the world”. They exploited and oppressed the newly born proletariat. As the Parisian people stormed the Bastille on July 14, 1789, making the outbreak of the French Revolution. The influence of the French Revolution soon spread its watchwords “Liberty, Equality And Fraternity ” to almost every corner of the world. Among these great historic occurrences, Romanticism, a complex artistic, literary, and intellectual movement, came into existence in Western Europe. ※Romanticism in England began with the publication of William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads. The symbol end is the death of Walter Scott司各特.Poetry was certainly the best medium. To a great extent, the age of Romanticism of Britain was an age of poetry. ※Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southey are passive romanticists, while Byron, Shelley and Keats are active romanticists.

William Wordsworth

流派：the Lake Poet

作品：She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways

The Solitary Reaper

Tintern Abbey丁登寺

I Wondered Lonely as a Cloud我像一片云飘游在天际（theme: The poet’s mood is inspired by the natural scene. Nature serves as a means of self-expression, a good medicine to cure our gloomy and solitude.）

※★Preface to Lyrical Ballads

i.It appeals to individual sensation: “All good poetry is the

spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings, and takes it origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.”

ii. A poet’s emotion extends from human affairs to nature.

iii.The function is to give an unexpected splendor to common and familiar things.

iv.The language is simple, pure, especially peasant’s word.

v.The style is fresh, direct, ballad and it prefers blank verse.

※Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Gothic elements:①ancient prophecy；②mystery and suspense；③high emotion，sentimentalism；④supernatural events，⑤omens，dream，vision；⑥fainting，frightened women；⑦women threatened by powerful man；⑧the metonymy of gloom and terror.

流派：the Lake Poet

作品：Christabel克里斯塔贝尔

Kubla Khan（dream poem，after he takes opium）

Biographia Literaria

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner老船工(The poem supplies various religious ans supernatural images to depict a moving spiritual journey of doubt, renewal, and eventual redemption.) Wordsworth focuses on nature, while Coleridge on supernature.

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

●At Wordsworth’s suggestion, Coleridge composed “The Rime of

the Ancient Mariner”, which recounts a nightmare sea-voyage with powerful metaphysical overtones.

●The poem introduces the reader to a supernatural realm, but it

manages to create a sense of reality.

George Gordon Byron

身份：a distinctive poet, a romantic hero, a rebellious devil, a revolutionary.

※作品：House of Idleness闲散时光

She Walks in Beauty她走在美的光影里(One shade the more, one ray the less)

Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage恰尔德哈罗德游记：the beginning of Byronic heroes成名作（In these works, the so-called Byronic hero, an idealized but flawed character, made its appearance）

Don Juan唐璜（CantoⅢ”The Isles of Greece”哀希腊——代表作）