英美文学术语terms
英美文学专有名词术语解释
Literary Terms（文学术语解释）*Legend（传说）: A song or narrative handed down from the past, legend differs from myths on the basis of the elements of historical truth they contain.*Epic（史诗）: 1)Epic, in poetry, refers to a long work dealing with the actions of gods and heroes. 2)Beowulf is the greatest national epic of the Anglo-Saxons. John Milton wrote three great epics: Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes.*Romance（罗曼史/骑士文学）: 1)Romance is a popular literary form in the medieval England. 2)It sings knightly adventures or other heroic deeds. 3)Chivalry(such as bravery, honor, generosity, loyalty and kindness to the weak and poor) is the spirit of romance. *Ballad（民谣）: 1)Ballad is a story in poetic form to be sung or recited. 2)Ballads were passed down from generation to generation. 3)Robin Hood is a famous ballad singing the goods of Robin Hood. Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is a 19th century English ballad.*The Heroic Couplet（英雄对偶句）:1)It means a pair of lines of a type once common in English poetry, in other words, it means iambic pentameter rhymed in two lines. 2)The rhyme is masculine. 3)Use of the heroic couplet was first pioneered by Geoffrey Chaucer.*Humanism（人文主义）:1)Humanism is the essence of the Renaissance. It emphasizes the dignity of human beings and the importance of the present life. 2)Humanists voiced their beliefs that man was the center of the universe and man did not only have the right to enjoy the beauty of the present life, but had the ability to prefect himself and to perform wonders.*Renaissance（文艺复兴）:1)It refers to the transitional period from the medieval to the modern world. It first started in Italy in the 14th century. 2)The Renaissance means rebirth or revival. 3)It was stimulated by a series of historical events, such as the rediscovery of ancient Roman and Greek classics, the new discoveries in geography and astrology, the religious reformation and the economic expansion. 4)Humanism is the essence of Renaissance. 5)The English Renaissance didn’t begin until the reign of Henry Ⅷ. It was reg arded as England’s Golden Age, especially in literature. 6)The real mainstream of the English Renaissance is the Elizabethan drama. 7)This period produced such literary giants as Shakespeare, Spenser, Marlowe, Bacon, Donne and Milton, etc.*University Wits（大学才子）: 1)It refers to a group of scholars during the Elizabethan age who graduate from either Oxford or Cambridge. They came to London with the ambition to become professional writers. Some of them later become famous poets and playwrights. 2)Thomas Greene, John Lily and Christopher Marlowe were among them. 3)They paved the way, to some degree, for the coming of Shakespeare.*Blank verse（无韵体）:1)It is verse written in unrhymed iambic pentameter. 2)It is the verse form used in some of the greatest English poetry, including that of William Shakespeare and John Milton.*Spenserian Stanza（斯宾塞诗节）:1)It is the creation of Edmund Spenser. 2)It refers to a stanza of nine lines, with the first eight lines in iambic pentameter and the last line in iambic hexameter（六音步）,r hyming ababbcbcc. 3)Spenser’s The Faerie Queene was written in this kind of stanza.*Sonnet(十四行诗)1)It is the one of the most conventional and influential forms of poetry in English.2)A sonnet is a lyric consisting of 14 lines, usually in iambic pentameter, restricted to a definite rhyme scheme.3)Shakespeare’s sonnets are well-known. *Soliloquy(独白)1)Soliloquy, in drama, means a moment when a character is alone and speaks his or her thoughts aloud. 2)In the line “To be, or not to be, that is the question”, which begins the famous soliloquy from Act3, Scene1 of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. In this soliloquy Hamlet questions whether or not life is worth living and speaks of the reasons why he does not end his life.*Metaphysical Poets（玄学派诗人）：They refer to a group of religious poets in the first half of the 17th century whose works were characterized by their wit, imaginative picturing, compressions, often cryptic expression, play of paradoxes and juxtapositions of metaphor.*Enlightenment Movement(启蒙运动)1)It was a progressive intellectual movement which flourished in France and swept through Western Europe in the 18th century.2)The movement was a furtherance of the Renaissance from 14th century to the mid-17th century.3)Its purpose was to enlighten the whole world with the light of modern philosophical and artistic ideas.4)It celebrated reason or nationality, equality and science. It advocated universal education. Literature at the time became a very popular means of public education.5)Famous among the great enlighteners in England were those great writers like John Dryden, Pope, Johnson, Swift, Defoe, Fielding, Sheridan, etc.Neoclassicism(新古典主义)1)In the field of literature, the 18th century Enlightenment Movement brought about a revival of interest in the old classical works. This tendency is known as neoclassicism.2)The neoclassicists hold that forms of literature were to be modeled after the classical works of the ancient Greek and Roman writers such as Homer and Virgil and those of the contemporary French ones.3)They believed that the artistic ideas should be order, logic, restrained emotion and accuracy, and that literature should be judged in terms of its service to humanity*Sentimentalism(感伤主义文学)1)It is a pejorative term to describe false or superficial emotion, assumed feeling, self-regarding postures of grief and pain.2)In literature it denotes overmuch use of pathetic effects and attempts to arouse feeling by pathetic indulgence.3)The Vicar of Wakefield by Oliver Goldsmith is a case in point.*The Graveyard School(墓地派诗歌)1)It refers to a school of poets of the 18th century whose poems are mostly devoted to a sentimental lamentation or meditation on life, past and present, with death and graveyard as theams.2)Thomas Gray is considered to be the leading figure of this school and his Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard is its most representative work.*Epistolary novel(书信体小说)1)It consists of the letters the characters write to each other. The usual form is the letter, but diary entries, newspaper clippings and other documents are sometimes used.2)The epistolary novel’s reliance on subjective poi nts of view makes it the forerunner of the modern psychological novel.3)Samuel Richardson’s Pamela is typical of this kind.*Gothic Romance(哥特传奇)1)A type of novel that flourished in the late 18th and early 19th century in England.2)Gothic romances are mysteries, often involving the supernatural and heavily tinged with horror, and they are usually against dark backgrounds of medieval ruins and haunted castles.*Picaresque novel(流浪汉小说)1)It is a popular sub-genre of prose fiction which is usually satirical and depicts in realistic and often humorous detail the adventures of a roguish hero of low social class who lives by his or her wits in a corrupt society. 2)As indicated by its name, this style of novel originated in Spain, flourished in Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries, and continues to influence modern literature.*English Romanticism(英国浪漫主义文学)1)The English Romantic period is an age of poetry. Poets started a rebellion against the neoclassical literature, which was later regarded as the poetic revolution. They saw poetry as a healing energy; they believed that poetry could purify both individual souls and the society.2)The Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge in 1798 acts as a manifesto for the English Romanticism.3)The Romantics not only eulogize the faculty of imagination, but also stress the concept of spontaneity and inspiration, regarding them as something crucial for true poetry.4)The natural world comes to the forefront of the poetic imagination. Nature is not only the major source of poetic imagery, but also provides the dominant subject matter.*Ode(颂歌)1)Ode is a dignified and elaborately lyric poem of some length, praising and glorifying an individual, commemorating an event, or describing nature intellectually rather than emotionally.2)John Keats wrote great odes. His Ode on a Grecian Urn is a case in point.*Lake Poets(湖畔派诗人)They refer to such romantic poets as William Wordsworth, Samuel Coleridge and Robert Southey who lived in the Lake District. They came to be known as the Lake School or “Lakers”.*Byronic hero（拜伦式英雄）: It refers to a proud, mysterious rebel figure of noble origin. With immense superiority in his passions and powers, this Byronic hero would carry on his shoulders the burden of righting all the wrongs in a corrupt society, and would rise single-handedly against any kind of tyrannical rules either in government, in religion, or in moral principles withunconquerable wills and inexhaustible energies.Terza rima(三行体)1)It is an Italian verse that consists of a series of three-lines stanzas in which the middle line of each stanza rhymes with the first and third lines of the following stanza with the rhyming scheme ab a, bcb, cdc,ded, etc..2)Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind” is a case in point*Critical Realism(批判现实主义)1)The Critical Realism of the 19th century flourished in the forties and in the beginning of fifties.2)The realists first and foremost set themselves the task of criticizing capitalist society from a democratic viewpoint and delineated the crying contradictions of bourgeois reality. But they did not find a way to eradicate social evils.3)Charls Dickens is the most important critical realist.*Psychological novel(心理小说)1)A vague term to describe that kind of fiction which is for the most part concerned with the spiritual, emotional and mental lives of the characters and with the analysis of characters rather than with the plot and the action.2)Thackeray’s charac terization of Rebecca Sharp is very much psychological.*Narration(叙述)1)Like description, narration is a part of conversation and writing. Narration is the major technique used in expository writing, such as autobiography.2)Successful narration must grow out of good observation, to-the-point selection and clear arrangement of details in logical sequence, which is usually chronological.3)Narration gives an exact picture of things as they occur.*Narrator(叙述者)1)It refers to one who narrates, or tells, a story.2)A story may be told by a first-person narrator, someone who is either a major or minor character in the story. Or a story may be told by a third-person narrator, someone who is not in the story at all.3)The word narrator can also refer to a character in a drama who guides the audience through the play, often commenting on the action and sometimes participating in it.*Plot(情节)1)Plot is the first and most obvious quality of a story. Plot is what happens in a story.2)It consists of the phrases of action in a story that are linked together by a chain of casual relationships.Point of view(叙述角度)1)The event of a story may be told as they appear to one or more participants or observers. In first-person narration the point of view is automatically that of the narrator.2)More variation is possible in third-person narration, where the author may choose to limit his or her report to what could have been observed or known by one of the characters at any given point in the action—or may choose to report the observations and thoughts of several characters. The author might choose to intrude his or her own point of view.*Naturalism(自然主义)1)A post Darwinian movement of the late 19th century that tried to apply the laws of scientific determinism to fiction. 2)The naturalist w ent beyond the realist’s insistence on the objective presentation of the details of everyday life to insist that the materials of literature should be arranged to reflect a deterministic universe in which a person is a biological creature controlled by environment and heredity.3)Major writers include Crane, Dreiser in America; Zola in France ; and Hardy and Gissing in England.*The Aesthetic Movement(唯美主义运动)1)It is a loosely defined movement in literature, fine art, the decorative arts and interior design in later nineteenth-century Britain. 2)It belongs to the anti-Victorian reaction and had post-Romantic roots, and as such anticipates modernism. It took place in the late Victorian Period from around 1868 to 1901, and is generally considered to have ended with the trial of Oscar Wilde (which occurred in 1895).3)The aesthetes believed that art did not have any didactic purpose; it need only be beautiful.Dramatic Monologue(戏剧独白)1)In literature, it refers to the occurrence of a single speaker saying something to a silent audience.2)Robert Browning is My Last Duchess is a typical example in which the duke, speaking to a non-responding audience, reveals not only the reasons for his disapproval of the behavior of his former duchess, but some tyrannical and merciless aspects of his own personality as well.。
英美文学之文学术语
英美文学之文学术语文学术语汇编11.Literature of the absurd: (荒诞派文学) The term is applied to a number of works in drama and prose fiction which have in common the sense that the human condition is essentially absurd, and that this condition can be adequately represented only in works of literature that are themselves absurd. The current movement emerged in France after the Second World War, as a rebellion against essential beliefs and values of traditional culture and traditional literature. They hold the belief that a human being is an isolated existent who is cast into an alien universe and the human life in its fruitless search for purpose and meaning is both anguish and absurd.2.Theater of the absurd: (荒诞派戏剧) belongs to literature of the absurd. Two representatives of this school are Eugene Ionesco, French author of The Bald Soprano (1949) (此作品中文译名<秃头歌女>), and Samuel Beckett, Irish author of Waiting for Godot (1954) (此作品是荒诞派戏剧代表作<等待戈多>). They project the irrationalism, helplessness and absurdity of life in dramatic forms that reject realistic settings, logical reasoning, or a coherently evolving plot.3.Black comedy or black humor: (黑色幽默) it mostly employed to describe baleful, naïve, or inept characters in a fantastic or nightmarish modern world playing out their roles in what Ionesco called a “tragic farce”, in which the events are often simultaneously comic, horrifying, and absurd. Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 (美国著名作家约瑟夫海勒<二十二条军规>) can be taken as an example of the employment of this technique.文学术语汇编24. Aestheticism or the Aesthetic Movement（唯美主义）: it began to prevail in Europe at the middle of the 19th century. The theory of “art for art’s sake” was first put forward by some French artists. They declared that art should serve no religious, moral or social purpose. The two most important representatives of aestheticists in English literature are Walt Pater and Oscar Wilde.5. Allegory（寓言）: a tale in verse or prose in which characters, actions, or settings represent abstract ideas or moral qualities, such as John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress. An allegory is a story with two meanings, a literal meaning and a symbolic meaning.6. Fable（寓言）: is a short narrative, in prose or verse, that exemplifies an abstract moral thesis or principle of human behavior. Most common is the beast fable, in which animals talk and act like the human types they represent. The fables in Western cultures derive mainly from the stories attributed to Aesop, a Greek slave of the sixth century B. C.7. Parable（寓言）: is a very short narrative about human beings presented so as to stress analogy with a general lesson that the narrator is trying to bring home to his audience. For example, the Bible contains lots of parables employed by Jesus Christ to make his flock understand his preach.(注意以上三个词在汉语中都翻译成语言，但是内涵并不相同，不要搞混)8. Alliteration（头韵）: the repetition of the initial consonant sounds. In Old English alliterative meter, alliteration is the principal organizing device of the verse line, such as in Beowulf.9. Consonance is the repetition of a sequence of two or more consonants but with a change in the intervening vowel, such as “live and love”.10. Assonance is the repetition of identical or similar vowel, especially in stressed syllables, in a sequence of nearby words, such as “child of silence”.11. Allusion （典故）is a reference without explicit identification, to a literary or historical person, place, or event, or to another literary work or passage. Most literary allusions are intended to be recognized by the generally educated readers of the author’s time, but some are aimed at a special group.12. Ambiguity（复义性）: Since William Empson（燕卜荪）published Seven Types of Ambiguity（《复义七型》）, the term has been widely used in criticism to identify a deliberate poetic device: the use of a single word or expression to signify two or more distinct references, or to express two or more diverse attitudes or feeling.文学术语汇编313. Antihero（反英雄）：the chief character in a modern novel or play whose character is totally different from the traditional heroes. Instead of manifesting largeness, dignity, power, or heroism, the antihero is petty, passive, ineffectual or dishonest. For example, the heroine of Defoe’s Moll Flanders is a thief and a prostitute.14. Antithesis（对照）：(a figure of speech)An antithesis is often expressed in a balanced sentence, that is, a sentence in which identical or similar syntactic structure is used to express contrasting ideas. For example, “Marriage has many pains, but celibacy（独身生活）has no pleasures.” by Samuel Johnson obviously employs antithesis.15. Archaism（拟古）：the literary use of words and expressions that have become obsolete in the common speech of an era. For example, the translators of the King James Version of Bible gave weight and dignity to their prose by employing archaism.16. Atmosphere（氛围）: the prevailing mood or feeling of a literary work. Atmosphere is often developed, at least in part, through descriptions of setting. Such descriptions help to create an emotional climate to establish the reader’s expectations and attitudes.文学术语汇编417. Ballad（民谣）：it is a song, transmitted orally, which tells a story. It originated and was communicated orally among illiterate or only partly literate people. It exists in many variant forms. The most common stanza form, called ballad stanza is a quatrain in alternate four- and three-stress lines; usually only the second and fourth lines rhyme. Although many traditional ballads probably originated in the late Middle Age, they were not collected and printed until the eighteenth century.18. Climax：as a rhetorical device it means an ascending sequence of importance. As a literary term, it can also refer to the point of greatest intensity, interest, or suspense in a story’s turning point. The action leading to the climax and the simultaneous increaseof tension in the plot are known as the rising action. All action after the climax is referred to as the falling action, or resolution. The term crisis is sometimes used interchangeably with climax.19. Anticlimax（突降）：it denotes a writer’s deliberate drop from the serious and elevated to the trivial and lowly, in order to achieve a comic or satiric effect. It is a rhetorical device in English.20. Beat Generation（垮掉一代）：it refers to a loose-knit group of poets and novelists, writing in the second half of the 1950s and early 1960s, who shared a set of social attitudes – antiestablishment, antipolitical, anti-intellectual, opposed to the prevailing cultural, literary, and moral values, and in favor of unfettered self-realization andself-expression. Representatives of the group include Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs. And most famous literary creations produced by this group should be Allen Ginsberg’s long poem Howl and Jack Kerouac’s On the Road.文学术语汇编521. Biography（传记）：a detailed account of a person’s life written by another person, such as Samuel Johnson’s Lives of the English Poets and James Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson.22. Autobiography（自传）：a person’s account of his or her own life, such as Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography.23. Blank verse（无韵体）: Verse written in unrhymed iambic pentameter. It is the verse form used in some of the greatest English poetry, including that of William Shakespeare and John Milton.24. A parody（模仿）imitates the serious manner and characteristic features of a particular literary work, or the distinctive style of a particular author, or the typical stylistic and other features of a serious literary genre, and deflates the original by applying the imitation to a lowly or comically inappropriate subject.文学术语汇编625. Celtic Revival also known as the Irish Literary Renaissance （爱尔兰文艺复兴）identifies the remarkably creative period in Irish literature from about 1880 to the death of William Butler Yeats in 1939. The aim of Yeats and other early leaders of the movement was to create a distinctively national literature by going back to Irish history, legend, and folklore, as well as to native literary models. The major writers of this movement include William Butler Yeats, Lady Gregory, John Millington Synge and Sean O’Casey and so on.26. Characters（人物）are the persons represented in a dramatic or narrative work, who are interpreted by the reader as being endowed with particular moral, intellectual, and emotional qualities by inferences from the dialogues, actions and motivations. E. M. Forster divides characters into two types: flat character, which is presented without much individualizing detail; and round character, which is complex in temperament and motivation and is represented with subtle particularity.27. Chivalric Romance (or medieval romance) （骑士传奇或中世纪传奇）is a type of narrative that developed in twelfth-century France, spread to the literatures of other countries. Its standard plot is that of a quest undertaken by a single knight in order to gain a lady’s favor; frequently its central interest is courtly love, together with tournaments fought and dragons and monsters slain. It stresses the chivalric ideals of courage, loyalty, honor, mercifulness to an opponent, and elaborate manners.28. Comedy:（喜剧）in general, a literary work that ends happily with a healthy, amicable armistice between the protagonist and society.29. Farce （闹剧）is a type of comedy designed to provoke the audience to simple and hearty laughter. To do so it commonly employs highly exaggerated types of characters and puts them into improbable and ludicrous situations.30. Confessional poetry（自白派诗歌）designates a type of narrative and lyric verse, given impetus by Robert Lowell’s Life Studies, which deals with the facts and intimate mental and physical experiences of the poet’s own life. Confessional poetry was written in rebellion against the demand for impersonality by T. S. Elliot and the New Criticism. The representative writers of confessional school include Robert Lowell, Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath and so on.31. Critical Realism:（批判现实主义）The critical realism of the 19th century flourished in the fouties and in the beginning of fifties. The realists first and foremost set themselves the task of criticizing capitalist society from a democratic viewpoint and delineated the crying contradictions of bourgeois reality. But they did not find a way to eradicate social evils. Representative writers of this trend include Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray and so on.32. Drama:（戏剧）The form of composition designed for performance in the theater, in which actors take the roles of the characters, perform the indicated action, and utter the written dialogue. (The common alternative name for a dramatic composition is a play.)文学术语汇编733. Dramatic Monologue:（戏剧独白）a monologue is a lengthy speech by a single person. Dramatic monologue does not designate a component in a play, but a type of lyric poem that was perfected by Robert Browning. By using dramatic monologue, a single person, who is patently not the poet, utters the speech that makes up the whole of the poem, in a specific situation at a critical moment. For example, Robert Browning’s famous poem “My Last Duchess” was written in dramatic monologue. 34. Elegy（哀歌或挽歌）：a poem of mourning, usually over the death of an individual. An elegy is a type of lyric poem, usually formal in language and structure, and solemn or even melancholy in tone.35. Enlightenment（启蒙运动）：The name applied to an intellectual movement which developed in Western Europe during the seventeenth century and reached its height in the eighteenth. The common element was a trust in human reason as adequate to solve the crucial problems and to establish the essential norms in life, together with the belief that the application of reason was rapidly dissipating the remaining feudal traditions. It influenced lots of famous English writers especially those neoclassic writers, such as Alexander Pope.36. Epic（史诗）：it is a long verse narrative on a serious subject, told in a formal and elevated style, and centered on a heroic or quasi-divine figure on whose actions depends the fate of a tribe, a nation, or the human race.37. Epiphany:（顿悟）In the early draft of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce employed this term to signify a sudden sense of radiance and revelation that one may feel while perceiving a commonplace object. “Epiphany” now has become the standard term for the description, frequent in modern poetry and prose fiction, of the sudden flare into revelation of an ordinary object or scene.38. Epithet（移就）: as a term in criticism, epithet denotes an adjective or adjectival phrase used to define a distinctive quality of a person or thing. This method was widely employed in ancient epics. For example, in Homer’s epic, the epithet like “the wine-dark sea” can be found everywhere.39. Essay:（散文）any short composition in prose that undertakes to discuss a matter, express a point of view, persuade us to accept a thesis on any subject, or simply entertain. The essay can be divided as the formal essay and the informal essay (familiar essay).40. Euphemism（委婉语）: An inoffensive expression used in place of a blunt one that is felt to be disagreeable or embarrassing, such as “pass away” instead of “die”41. Expressionism（表现主义）：a German movement in literature and the other arts which was at its height between 1910 and 1925 – that is, in the period just before, during, and after WWⅠ. The expressionist artist or writer undertakes to express a personal vision – usually a troubled or tensely emotional vision – of human life and human society. This is done by exaggerating and distorting. We recognize its effects, direct or indirect, on the writing and staging of such plays as Arthur Miller’s Death ofa Salesman as well as on the theater of the absurd.42. Free verse（自由体诗）：Like traditional verse, it is printed in short lines instead of with the continuity of prose, but it differs from such verse by the fact that its rhythmic pattern is not organized into a regular metrical form – that is, into feet, or recurrent units of weak and strong stressed syllables. Most free verse also hasirregular line lengths, and either lacks rhyme or else uses it only occasionally. Walt Whitman is a representative who employed this poem form successfully.文学术语汇编843. Gothic novel:（哥特式小说）It is a type of prose fiction. The writers of this type of fictions mostly set their stories in the medieval period and in a Catholic country, especially Italy or Spain. The locale was often a gloomy castle. The typical story focused on the sufferings imposed on an innocent heroine by a cruel villain. This type of fictions made bountiful use of ghosts, mysterious disappearances, and other supernatural occurrences. The principle aim of such novels was to evoke chilling terror and the best of this type opened up to the fiction the realm of the irrational and of the perverse impulses and nightmarish terrors that lie beneath the orderly surface of the civilized mind. Some famous novelists liked to employ some Gothic elements in their novels, such as Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights.44. Graveyard poets（墓园派诗歌）: A term applied to eighteenth-century poets who wrote meditative poems, usually set in a graveyard, on the theme of human mortality, in moods which range from pensiveness to profound gloom. The vogue resulted in one of the most widely known English poems, Thomas Gray’s“Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”.45. Harlem Renaissance（哈莱姆文艺复兴）：a period of remarkable creativity in literature, music, dance, painting, and sculpture by African-Americans, from the end of the First World War in 1917 through the 1920s. As a result of the mass migrations to the urban North in order to escape the legal segregation of the American South, and also in order to take advantage of the jobs opened to African Americans at the beginning of the War, the population of the region of Manhattan known as Harlem became almost exclusively Black, and the vital center of African American culture in America. Distinguished writers who were part of the movement included Langston Hughes and Jean Toomer. The Great Depression of 1929 and the early 1930s broughtthe period of buoyant Harlem culture – which had been fostered by prosperity in the publishing industry and the art world – effectively to an end.46. Heroic Couplet（英雄双韵体）refers to lines of iambic pentameter which rhyme in pairs: aa, bb, cc, and so on. The adjective “heroic” was applied in the later seventeenth century because of the frequent use of such couplets in heroic poems and dramas. This verse form was introduced into English poetry by Geoffrey Chaucer. From the age of John Dryden through that of Samuel Johnson, the heroic couplet was the predominant English measure for all the poetic kinds; some poets, including Alexander Pope, used it almost to the exclusion of other meters.47. Hyperbole（夸张）:this figure of speech called hyperbole is bold overstatement, or the extravagant exaggeration of fact or of possibility. It may be used either for serious or ironic or comic effect.48. Understatement（轻描淡写）：this figure of speech deliberately represents something as very much less in magnitude or importance than it really is, or is ordinarily considered to be. The effect is usually ironic.49. Imagism（意象派）：it was a poetic vogue that flourished in England, and even more vigorously in America, between the years 1912 and 1917. It was planned and exemplified by a group of English and American writers in London, partly under the influence of the poetic theory of T. E. Hulme, as a revolt against the sentimental and mannerish poetry at the turn of the century. The typical Imagist poetry is written in free verse and undertakes to be as precisely and tersely as possible. Meanwhile, the Imagist poetry likes to express the writers’ momentary impression of a visual object or scene and often the impression is rendered by means of metaphor without indicating a relation. Most famous Imagist poem, “In a Station of the Metro”, was written by Ezra Pound. Imagism was too restrictive to endure long as a concerted movement, but it influenced almost all modern poets of Britain and America.50. Irony（反讽）：This term derives from a character in a Greek comedy. In most of the modern critical uses of the term “irony”, there remains the root sense of dissembling or hiding what is actually the case; not, however, in order to deceive, but to achieve rhetorical or artistic effects.51. Local Colorism（地方色彩）was a literary trend belonging to Realism. It refers to the detailed representation in prose fiction of the setting, dialect, customs, dress and ways of thinking and feeling which are distinctive of a particular region. After the Civil War a number of American writers exploited the literary possibilities of local color in various parts of America. The most famous representative of local colorism should be Mark Twain who took his hometown near the Mississippi as the typical setting of nearly all his novels.52. Lyric（抒情诗）：in the most common use of the term, a lyric is any fairly short poems consisting of the utterance by a single speaker, who expresses a state of mind or a process of perception, thought and feeling.。
英语专业英美文学文学词汇大全Literature terms
Literature terms1Epic : a long narrative poem telling about the deedsof 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.（史诗）2Romance:It was a long composition, sometimes in verse, sometimes in prose, describing the life and adventures of a noble hero.（传奇文学）3Heroic Couplet: the rhymed couplet of iambic pentameter. (英雄双韵体)4Iambic Pentameter: is the most common Englishmeter, in which each foot contains an unaccentedsyllable and an accented syllable. (五音步抑扬格)meter 格律foot音步5ballad:is a story told in song, usually in 4-line stanzas, with the second and fourth lines rhymed.（歌谣）6Sonnet: It is a lyric poem of 14 lines, usually in iambic pentameter, restricted to a definite rhyme scheme.（十四行诗）7Blank verse: is a type of poetry, distinguished by having a regular meter, but no rhyme.（无韵诗）8Soliloquy: an utterance or discourse by a person who is talking to himself/ herself or is disregardful of or oblivious to any hearers present (often used as a device in a drama to disclose a character’s innermost thoughts); 2. theact of talking while or as if alone(独白)9Classicism: Aesthetic attitudes and principles manifested in the art, architecture, and literature of ancient Greece and Rome and characterized by emphasis on form, simplicity, proportion, and restraint. Classicism was popular in Europe in the 18th century.（古典主义）10Neo-classicism: neo-classicism imitated the characteristics of Roman writers, including Horace, Virgil, Cicero, etc., in the days of Augustus. They tried to make English literature conform to rules and principles established by the great Roman and Greek classical writers. In writing plays, they used rhyme and couplet instead of blank verse, observed thetrinity --- the unity of time, place and action.（新古典主义）11An epistolary novel is a novel written as a series of documents. The usual form is letters, although diary entries, newspaper clippings and otherdocuments are sometimes used.（书信体小说）12Sentimentalism is one of the important trends in English literature of the middle and later decades of the 18th century. It justly criticized the cruelty of the capitalist relations and the gross social injustices brought about by the bourgeoisrevolutions. It embraces a pessimistic outlook and blames reason and the Industrial Revolution, marked by a sincere sympathy for thepoverty-stricken ,expropriated peasants.(感伤主义)Romanticism: Romanticism is a literary trend. It prevails in England during the period 1798-1832. romanticists expressed the ideology and sentiment of those classes and social strata who were discontent with and opposed to the development of capitalism. They split into two groupsbecause of the different attitudes toward the capitalist society.（浪漫主义）Ode is a lyric poem of some length that honors an individual, a thing, a trait dealing with a lofty theme in a dignified manner. The form dates back to classical times and is originally intended to be sung at festivals or in plays.Brief Outline of British Literature：works1. Early and Medieval English Literature1) The Anglo-Saxon Period (449-1066)National epic:The Song of Beowulf2) The Anglo-Norman Period (1066-1350)Arthurian Romance: Sir Gawain andGreen Knight3) Geoffrey Chaucer1340-1400：Messenger of HumanismThe first important realistic writer“Father” of English poetryThe Canterbury Tales the wife of Bath（巴斯夫人）,the Knight（骑士）,the Pardoner（卖赎罪卷者）,the Nun’s Priest（尼姑的教士）,the Prologue（序诗）.The Romaunt of the Rose 《玫瑰传奇》The Book of the Duchess 《悼公爵夫人》Troilus and Criseyde《特罗伊洛斯和克瑞西德》Thomas MaloryMorte d’Arthur (Death of Arthur)《亚瑟之死》William LanglandPiers the Plowman[Boccaccio薄伽丘：Decameron《十日谈》Ovid奥维德:《爱的艺术》《变形记》]2. The English Renaissance (16 century)Thomas MoreUtopiaChristopher Marlowe克里斯托弗·马洛First person used blank verseDeath of Arthur 《亚瑟之死》Tamburlaine the Great «帖木儿大帝»The Jew of Malta «马尔他岛的犹太人»The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus«浮士德博士的悲剧»Hero and Leander《海洛和利安得》The Passionate Shepherd to His Love《牧羊人的恋歌》William Shakespeareone of the founders of realism in world literature as well as in English literatureV enus and Adonis《维纳斯与安东尼斯》The Rape of Lucrece《鲁克里斯受辱记》Four tragedies：Hamlet《哈姆雷特》Othello《奥塞罗》King Lear《李尔王》Macbeth《麦克白》Four comedies：A Midsummer Night’s Dream《仲夏夜之梦》The Merchant of V enice《威尼斯商人》As You Like It《皆大欢喜》Twelfth Night《第十二夜》Ben Jonson本·琼森first poet- laureateafter Shakespeare the most eminent writer for the Elizabethan stagethe greatest dramatist after Shakespearethe founder of the so-called “Comedy of Humors”,Every Man in His Humor《人人高兴》Every Man Out of His Humor《人人扫兴》Volpone 《福尔蓬奈》the Fox《狐狸》The Alchemist《炼金术士》Sir Thomas Wyatt托马斯·怀亚特Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey 亨利·霍华德·萨里伯爵Sir Philip Sidney 西德尼Astrophel and Stella《爱星者和星星》Arcadia《阿卡狄亚》The Defence of Poetry《诗辩》Edmund Spenser埃德蒙·斯宾塞the Poet’s poet , a model of poetical artgreatest non-dramatic poet of his timefirst master of English verseThe Shepherd’s Calendar《牧人月历》Amoretti 《爱情小诗》The Fairy Queen《仙后》Francis Bacon 弗朗西斯·培根The father of experimental philosophyThe most important prose writer of the Elizabethan Agethe first English essayistthe founder of English materialist philosophy.The Advancement of Learning《学术的进展》The Novum Organum (The New Instrument)《新工具》The New Atlantis《新大西岛》The Essays 《散文集》(Of Studies)3. The Period of The English Bourgeois Revolution (17 century)John Milton约翰·弥尔顿the smartest man in Europea master of the blank verseParadise Lost《失乐园》Paradise Regained《复乐园》Samson Agonistes《力士参孙》Lycidas 《利西达斯》Comus《科玛斯》a masque《假面剧》John Bunyan约翰·班扬Pilgrim’s Progress《天路历程》Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinner 《功德无量》The Life and Death of Mr. Badman《恶人先生的生平和死亡》《贝德曼先生的一生》The Holy War《神圣战争》John Donne约翰·邓恩Founder of Metaphysical poetry选学派诗人Songs and Sonnets《歌与短歌》Holy sonnet《圣十四行诗》Divine poem《神圣诗歌》Elegies and Satire《挽歌与讽刺诗》Meditations《冥想》/《沉思》4. The Age of Enlightenment (18 century)Alexander Pope亚历山大·蒲柏Essay on Criticism《论批评》The Rape of the Lock《夺发记》Joseph Addison约瑟夫·艾狄生andRichard Steel理查德·斯蒂尔The Tatler and The SpectatorDaniel Defoe丹尼尔·笛福18世纪启蒙时期现实主义小说的奠基人Robinson CrusoeCaptain Singleton《辛格顿船长》Colonel Jacque《杰克上校》Moll Flanders《茉尔·弗兰德丝》A Journal of the Plague Year《瘟疫记事》Jonathan Swift乔纳森·斯威夫特One of the greatest masters of English prosea master satiristGulliver’s TravelsA Tale of a Tub 《一个木桶的故事》The Battle of Books《书的战争》The Drapier’s Letters《一个麻布商的书信》A Modest Proposal《一个小小的建议》Samuel Richardson 塞谬尔·理查逊Pamela 《帕美勒》Clarissa: Or the History of a Young Lady《克拉丽莎》The History of Sir Charles Grandison《查尔斯·葛兰底森爵士传》Henry Fielding亨利·菲尔丁最早的现实主义小说理论家现实主义小说奠基人Tom Jones《汤姆˙琼斯》Don Quixote in England《唐吉诃德在英国》Pasqin《巴斯昆》The Historical Register for the Year 1736《一七三六年历史记事》The Tragedy of Tragedies or The Life and Death of Tom Thumb the Great 《悲剧的悲剧：或伟人汤姆传》Joseph Andrews《约瑟夫˙安德鲁斯的经历》Jonathan Wild the Great《大伟人乔纳森˙魏尔德》Amelia《阿米丽亚》Samuel Johnson塞缪尔·约翰逊As Lexicographer or The Dictionary of the English Language英语词典Oliver Goldsmith戈德史密斯Ano velist and poet belongs to the school of Sentimentalism She Stoops to Conquer《屈伸求爱》The Vicar of Wakefield 《威克菲尔德牧师传》The Traveler and The Deserted VillageThe Citizen of the World《世界公民》Richard Brinsley Sheridan 谢里丹The School for Scandal 《造谣学校》Comedy of Manners风尚喜剧Thomas Gray 格雷-------- sentimentalismOn the Death of a Favorite Cat 《爱猫之死》Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard 《墓园挽歌》The Progress of Poetry 《诗的发展》The Correspondence of Thomas Gray《格雷书信集》William Blake威廉布莱克Tiger 《老虎》Songs of Innocence《天真之歌》Songs of Experience《经验之歌》The Marriage of Heaven and Hell《天堂与地狱的婚姻》Robert Burns-罗伯特彭斯--- pre-romanticismthe most famous poets of the peasants in the worldA red red rose《我的爱人像朵红红的玫瑰》5. Romanticism in England (19 century)PoetryWilliam Wordsworth华兹华斯The prelude《序曲》Lyrical Ballads《抒情歌谣集》I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud《我好似一朵流云独自漫步》To the 《咏水仙》S. T. Coleridge柯林律治The Rime of the Ancient Mariner《古舟子咏》《古水手谣》Kubla khan 《忽必烈汗》George Gordon Byron乔治戈登拜伦One of the most excellent representatives of English Romanticismone of the most influential poets of the timeHours of Idleness《闲暇时刻》Child Harold’s Pilgrimage《恰尔德·哈罗德游记》.Don Juan《唐璜》She Walks in BeautyPercy Bysshe Shelley雪莱Prometheus Unbound《解放了的普罗米修斯》Queen Mab 《仙后麦布》Address to the Irish People《告爱尔兰人书》The Revolt of Islam《伊斯兰的反叛》The Masque of Anarchy《暴政的行列》The Cenci《钦契一家》A Defence of Poetry《诗辩》The Necessity of Atheism《无神论的必要性》Ode to the West Wind10. To a Skylark《致云雀》John Keats济慈Lamia《莱米亚》Endymion《恩底弥翁》On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer《初读查普曼译荷马史诗》Isaabella 《伊莎贝拉》The Eve of St. Agnes《圣·爱格尼斯节前夕》Hyperion《赫坡里昂》On a Grecian Urn 《希腊古瓮颂》To Autumn《秋颂》On Melancholy《忧郁颂》To a Nightingale 《夜莺颂》Prose fictionWalter Scott司各特the first novelist to recreate the pastWaverleyOld MoralityRob RoyThe Heart of MidlothianIvanhoe《艾凡赫》Rob RoyNovelJane Austen 简·奥斯丁Northanger Abbey《诺桑觉寺》Sense and Sensibility《理智与情感》Pride and Prejudice《傲慢与偏见》Mansfield Park《曼斯菲尔德花园》Emma《爱玛》Persuasion 《劝告》Romantic essayCharles Lamb查尔斯·兰姆Tales from Shakespeare《莎士比亚戏剧故事集》Album VersesEssays of Elia《伊利亚随笔》William Hazlitt威廉·赫列特Thomas De Quincey托马斯·德·昆西6. The Victorian Age --- Critical Realism in England (19 century)NovelCharles Dickens查尔斯·狄更斯Oliver Twist《雾都孤儿》The Old Curiocity Shop《老古玩店》The Pickwick Papers《匹克威克外传》fill in the BlanksBeowulf is a folk legend brought to England by the Anglo-Saxons from their primitive Northern Europe.Beowulf was passed down from mouth to mouth.Beowulf was written down in the 10th century.Humanism refers to the literary culture in the Renaissance.Humanism became the central theme of English Renaissance. Thomas More and William Shakespeare are the best representatives of the English humanistsHumanism is the idea that man has a potential for culture which distinguishes him from lower orders of beings, and which he should strive constantly to fulfill.The Renaissance is actually a movement stimulated by a series of historical events, such as the rediscovery of ancient Roman and Greek culture, the new discoveries in geography and astrology, the religious reformation and the economic expansion.Early Plays in Middle Ages include The Miracle Play奇迹剧The Morality Play道德剧The Interlud幕间休息剧The Classical Drama古典剧The immediate predecessors of Shakespeare were a group of men from the two universities of Oxford and Cambridge, who were generally known as the University WitsThe key-note of Hamlet’s character is melancholy，and there can be no Hamlet without melancholyHamlet is a hero of the RenaissanceHamlet’s learning , wisdom, noble nature,limitation and tragedy are all representative of the humanists at the turn of the 17th and the 16th centuries.Shakespeare was skilled in many poetic forms: the song, the sonnet, the couplet, and the dramatic blank verse;He was a great master of English language;He was the summit of the English Renaissance and one of the great writers all over the world.Adam and Eve embody Milton’s belief in the powers of man, craving (longing) for knowledge.Satan is a rebel against tyranny and Satan and his followers resemble a republican ParliamentEnglish enlighteners believed in the power of reason. That is why the 18th century has often been called “the age of rea son” or “the kingdom of reason”.Most of the enlighteners believed that social problems could be solved by human intelligence.this period was characterized by the so-called neo-classicism of which theleading figure was Alexander Pope.The representative of Periodical Literature in Early 18th Century England: Addison and SteeleThe best part of Robinson Crusoe is the realistic account of the successful struggle of Robinson alone against the pitiless forces of nature on the island.A social fable consists of four books. The hero of the novel is Lemuel Gulliver, a doctor. telling about his fantastic visits to some unbelievable places, in which the inhabitants are Lilliputians,the giants Brobdingnagians, Yahoos, and Houyhnhnms.The features of the Romantic writings a dissatisfaction with the bourgeois society.Romantic writings are filled with strong-willed heroes or even titanic images, formidable events and tragic situations, powerful conflicting passions and exotic picturesThe romanticists paid great attention to the spiritual and emotional life of manPersonified nature plays an important role in the pages of Romantic writingsThe publication of the “Lyrical Ballads” marked the break with the conventional poetical tradition of the 18th centuryi wandered lonely contains four six-lined stanzas of iambic tetrameter.The poem is about The beauty of natureQuestion1What is Literature？Literature refers to the practice and profession of writing. It comes from human interest in telling a story, in arranging words in artistic forms, in describing in words some aspects of human experiences.2What is Renaissance?1. DefinitionThe Renaissance (14th – mid-17th century), which means rebirth and revival. The renaissance, therefore, in essence, is a historical period in which the European humanist thinkers and scholars tried to get rid of those old feudalist ideas in medieval Europe, to introduce new ideas that expressed the interests rising bourgeoisie, and to recover the purity of the early church from the corruption of the Roman Catholic Church(罗马天主教堂).It is characterized with the growth of a more scientific outlook, major development in art and literature, new invention and overseas discoveries and a general assertion of human value and emancipation(解放) of the human intellect and power.3Summarize the periods of Shakespeare’s literary career and achievements？Shakespeare’s Literary Career⏹Four successive periods with increasing maturity◆1588-1593, the Period of Experiment and Preparation●Richard III, a melodramatic chronicle-history play, largely imitative of Marlowe and yet showing striking power●At the end of this period Shakespeare issued two rather long narrative poems on classical subjects, Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece◆1594-1601, the second period Shakespeare’s work, filled with chronicle-history plays and comedies●Richard II, Henry IV, Henry V, etc.●Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Merchant of Venice, Much Ado about Nothing, As You Like It●Romeo and Juliet◆1601-1609, the third period of Shakespeare’s literary career, in which appeared Shakespeare’s great tragedies and certain cynical plays●In these plays, Shakespeare sets himself to grapple with the deepest and darkest problems of human characters and life●Shakespeare’s four great tragedies⏹Hamlet: the struggle of a perplexed and divided soul/self⏹Othello: the ruin of a noble life/ man by an evil one through the terrible power of jealousy⏹King Lear: unnatural ingratitude working its hateful will and yetthwarted at the end by its own excess and by faithful love⏹Macbeth: the destruction of a large nature by material ambition◆After 1609, the fourth period of Shakespeare’s literary career, a periodof romance-comedies●Shakespeare did not solve the insoluble problems of life, but having presented them as powerfully, perhaps, as is possible for human intelligence, he turned in his last period to the expression of the serene philosophy of life●Cymbeline, The Winter’s Tale, and The Tempest(1) Shakespeare is one of the founders of realism in world literature. He maintains that the purpose of dramatic performance is "to hold, as it were, the mirror up to nature". In his works, he paints the decline of the old feudal nobility and the vice of the new Tudor monarch. Besides,his plays have good plots and life-like characters too. His drama is an expression, a monument of the English Renaissance since he wrote about his own people for his own time.(2)Shakespeare is amazingly prolific Within 22 years, he produced 37 plays, 154 sonnets,and 2 long poems. No two of his play invoke the same feeling or image among the audience. He is a master-hand for every form of drama-comedy, tragedy, and historical plays. He gives us a world of full-blooded people who live and struggle, suffer and rejoice-representing all the complexitiesand implications of real life.(3)Shakespeare was skilled in many poetic forms: the song, the sonnet, the couplet, andthe dramatic blank verse. And he is a great master of the English language. He used a vocabulary larger than any other English writersMany of his new c oinage and turns of expressions havebecome every-day usage in English life. Shakespeare and the Authorized Version of the EnglishBible are the two great treasures of the English language.(4)Hence, Shakespeare has been universallyacknowledged to be the summit of theEnglish Renaissance, and one of the greatest writers the world over. 3Chaucer’s Contribution？1. He introduced from Italy and France the rhymed stanza of various types, especially the rhymed couplet of 5 accents in iambic meter (heroic couplet) to English poetry, instead of the old Anglo-Saxon alliterative verse.2. He was the first great poet who wrote in English language (Middle English), thus establishing English as the literary language.3. He did much in making the London dialect the foundation for modern English language4What is the Enlightenment Movement?The 18th century marked the beginning of an intellectual movement in Europe, known as the Enlightenment, which was, on the whole, an expression of struggle of the bourgeoisie against feudalism. The enlighteners fought against class inequality, stagnation, prejudices and other survivals of feudalism.What is romanticism? What about its feature?1. The general feature is a dissatisfaction with the bourgeois society.2. Their writings are filled with strong-willed heroes or even titanic images, formidable events and tragic situations, powerful conflicting passions and exotic pictures.3. The romanticists paid great attention to the spiritual and emotional life of man.Personified nature plays an important role in the pages of their works.文学赏析Beowulf:---national epic(1) Goodness conquers evil. (Beowulf stands for all that is good, brave and proper, while the monsters stand for evil.)(2) Men against nature (The poem presents a vivid picture of how the primitive people wage heroic struggles against the hostile forces of the natural world under a wise and mighty leader.)(3) Judge the greatness of a human being by the greatness of his deeds and his noble ancestry.(4) Help thy neighbor. (Beowulf risks his life to help a neighbor, King Hrothgar, in trouble.)(5) Forces of darkness—irrational, menacing—are always at work in society.The writing features of Beowulf1). The most important is in alliterative(头韵的) verse and in artistic form.2). Another is the frequent use of metaphors and understatements(暗含的意义) for ironical humor.The Faerie(Fairy) Queene and Commentsa long poem1 The dominating thoughts of it: nationalism, humanism and Puritanism2 The Spenserian stanza: a verse form consisting of 8 iambic pentameter lines followed by a ninth line of 6 iambic feet with the rhyme scheme ababbcbcc.3 The Faerie Queene is the first national epic of England in the age of the Renaissance. It expresses the poet’s patriotic feelings of national greatness, and voices the moral ideals of the English aristocracy as embodied in the noble, virtuous and brave knight.The Image of Hamlet1. He is a humanist free from medieval prejudice and superstition. He has love for the world rather than heaven, he cherishes a firm belief inman’s power and destiny.2. He loves good and hates evil. He adore his father, loves Ophelia and greets his school-fellows with hearty welcome, while he is disgusted with his uncle’s drunkenness and shocked by his mother’s shallowness3. His intellectual genius is outstanding. He is a close observer. He can easily see through people. His quick perception drives him to penetrate below the surface of things and question what others take for granted. He is scholar, soldier and statesman. His image reflects the versatility of the men of the Renaissance.The Merchant of VeniceThe traditional themeTo praise the friendship between Antonio and Bassanio, to idealize Portia as a heroine of great beauty, wit and loyalty, and to expose the insatiable greed and brutality of the Jew.The modern interpretationTo regard the play as a satire of the Christians’hypocrisy and their false standards of friendship and love, their cunning ways of pursuing worldliness and their unreasoning prejudice against Jews, here represented by ShylockParadise lost1. The theme of the poem is a revolt against God’s authority.2. God: selfish despot暴君,cruel, unjust3. Adam and Eve embody Milton’s belief in the powers of man, craving (longing) for knowledge4. God’s angels are foolish, resembling the court of an absolute monarch.5. Satan is a rebel against tyranny(专制，暴行) and Satan and his followers resemble a republican ParliamentThe Image of Satan1. Satan is the real hero of the poem.2. He is firmer than the rest of the angels.3. He has an invincible(战无不胜的) heart.4. Satan remains superior in nobility and welcomes his defeat and his torments as a glory, a liberty and a joy;5. Satan is the spirit questioning the authority of God.6. Milton makes Satan as his own mouthpiece(代言人).The Pilgrim’s ProgressB unyan’s language1.Bunyan’s language is chiefly plain and colloquial and quite modern in comparison with that of the writers of the Renaissance.2. His language is clear, vivid, natural, homely (朴实的), fluent, musical and powerful.3. He paved the way not only in language style but also in writing technique of novels, for the novelists of the 18th century as Swift and Defoe.The image of Robinson Crusoe1.One of the representative of the rising bourgeoisie2. An enterprising Englishman3. A laborer, a hard-working industrious and intelligent man.4. A typical colonizer, explorer, and a foreign trader.5.He is alert, vigorous and resourcefulBlake’s poems such as tiger 《老虎》and comments on Blank(1) Blake’s poems seem easy but difficult to understand for his m mysterious images and symbols, unless versed in ( skilled at )religious knowledge.(2) Blake’s poems are full of emotion and apparent presentation of his progressive democratic idea in symbolismComments1) Blake was opposed to the classicism of the 18th century.2) His poems were full of romantic spirit, imagery symbolism and revolutionary spirit.3) He was a Pre-Romanticist or forerunner of the romantic poetry of the 19th century.Comments on Burns & His Poems1. Burns was one of the most famous poetsof the peasants in the world.2. He obtained the characteristic of all old Scottish songs: simplicity, vividness, humor, directness and optimism, with anew spirit of romanticism.Explanation William Wordsworth poem i wandered lonely【赏析】：这首诗写于诗人从法国回来不久。
考研英美文学名词解释
英美文学名词解释T erms in English and American Literature1. Aestheticism/the Aestheticism Movement (唯美主义)A European phenomenon during the middle of the 19th century that had its chief headquarters in France. This movement was introduced to late Victorian England mainly Walter Pater as a reaction against the materialism and commercialism of an industrialized society. It was also a reaction against the Victorian convention of art for morality’s sake, or art for money’s sake. The major tenets of this movement include the belief in the autonomy of a work of art, the emphasis on craft and artistry--the theory of “art for art’s sake”. The most outstanding Victorian representatives of this movement included Oscar Wilde.2. Allegory（寓言）A tale in verse or prose in which characters, actions, or settings represent abstract ideas or moral qualities. An allegory is a story with two meanings, a literal meaning and a symbolic meaning.寓言：用诗歌或散文讲的故事，在这个故事中人物、事件或背景往往代表抽象的概念或道德品质。
英美文学terms
TermsRenaissance in European history refers to the period from 14th century to 17th century. “Renaissance” means “revival”, the revival of interest in Ancient Greek and Roman culture and getting rid of conservatism in feudalist Europe and introducing new ideas that express the interests of the rising bourgeoisie. It started in Italy and ended in England and Spain. Renaissance has two striking features. One is a thirsting curiosity for the classical literature; the other is the keen interest in the activities of humanity. Humanism is the key-note of the Renaissance. Thomas More and William Shakespeare are the best representatives of the English humanists.Passive Romanticism: English romanticism began when Lyrical Ballad was published in 1798 and ended in 1832. It in effect is a revolt of the English imagination against the neoclassical reason. The romanticists who saw both the corruption of the feudal societies and the inhumanity of capitalism and felt that the society denied people their essential human needs. They were discontented with, and opposed to the development of capitalism. Some romantic writers reflected the thinking of classes ruined by the bourgeoisie, and by way of protest against capitalism development turned to the feudal past, i.e., the “merry old English”, as their ideal, or, “frightened by the coming of industrialism and the nightmare towns of industry, they were turning to nature to nature for protection.” These were the elder and sometimes called passive or escapist romantics. It is represented by Wordsworth and Coleridge.English critical realism of the 19th century flourished in the forties and in the early fifties. Therealists first and foremost criticized the capitalist society from a democratic viewpoint anddelineated (portrayed) the crying (extremely shocking) contradictions of bourgeois reality. Thegreatness of the English realists lies not only in their satirical portrayal of bourgeoisie and in theexposure of the greed and hypocrisy of the ruling classes, but also in their sympathy for thelaboring people. Humor and satire are used to expose and criticize the seamy (dark) side of reality.The major contribution of the critical realists lies in their perfection of the novel. Charles Dickensand William Makepeace Thackeray are the most important representatives of English criticalrealism.The “stream of consciousness”is a psychological term indicating “the flux of conscious and subconscious thoughts and impressions moving in the mind at any given time independently of the person’s will.” In late 19th century, the literary device of “interior monologue” was originated in France as an application of modern psychological knowledge to literary creations. In the 20th century, under the influence of Freud’s theory of psychological analysis, a number of writers adopted the “stream of consciousness”method of novel writing. The striking feature of these novelists is their giving precedence to the depiction of the characters’mental and emotional reactions to external events, rather than the events themselves. In doing so, the novelists abandoned the conventional usages of realistic plot structure, characterization and description, and their works became successions of “fleeting images of the external world mingled with thoughts and half-thoughts and shadows of thought attached to the immediate present or moving back and forth in memory.” James Joyce and Virginia Woolf are the two best known novelists of the “stream of consciousness”Transcendentalism is the summit of the Romantic Movement in the history of American literature in the 19th century. Transcendentalism has been defined philosophically as “the recognition in man of the capacity of knowing truth intuitively”. Transcendentalists place emphasis on the importance of the Over-soul, the individual and Nature. The most important representatives are Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau.Imagism is a Movement in U.S. and English poetry characterized by the use of concrete language and figures of speech, modern subject matter, metrical freedom, and avoidance of romantic or mystical themes, aiming at clarity of expression through the use of precise visual images. It grew out of the Symbolist Movement in 1912 and was initially led by Ezra Pound, Amy Lowell, and others. The Imagist manifesto that came out in 1912 showed three Imagist poetic principles: direct treatment of the “thing”（no fuss, frill, or ornament）, exclusion of superfluous words（precision and economy of expression）, the rhythm of the musical phrase rather than the sequence of a metronome（free verse form and music）.The local color movement came into particular prominence in America after the Civil War, perhaps as an attempt to recapture the glamour of a past era, or to portray the sections of the reunited country. Local color as a literary school emphasizes its setting, being concerned withthe character of a district or of an era, as marked by its customs, dialects, costumes, landscapeor other peculiarities that have escaped standardizing cultural influences. In local color literature, one finds the dual influence of romanticism and realism since the author frequently looks away from ordinary life to distant lands, strange customs, or exotic scenes, but retains through minute detail a sense of fidelity and accuracy of description. Mark Twain is a representative of the American Local Colorism.The Lost Generation is applied to the American writers who fought in the First World War, voluntarily exiled to Paris, and associated with the informal literary saloon of Gertrude Stein's Paris home for a certain period of time. They were all disillusioned with the American Tradition of writing as well as the post-war American society. The most eloquent spokesman of the group is Earnest Hemingway. Other writers are Ezra Pound, Fitzgerald, etc..。
Literary terms英美文学黄钻有名词
Literary terms:1. Epic: long narrative poem, majestic both in theme and style. Epics deal with legendary or historical events of national or universal significance, involving action of broad sweep and grandeur. Most epics deal with the exploits of a single individual, thereby giving unity to the composition. Commonplace details of everyday life may appear, but they serve as background for the story and are described in the same lofty style as the rest of the poem.2. Blank Verse: in literature, unrhymed poetry, typically in iambic pentameter, and, as such, the dominant verse form of English dramatic and narrative poetry since the mid-16th century. Blank verse was adapted by Italian Renaissance writers from classical sources; and English playwright William Shakespeare transformed blank verse into a supple instrument, uniquely capable of conveying speech rhythms and emotional overtones. According to the English poet John Milton, only unrhymed verse could give English the dignity of a classical language. As he explained in the preface to his epic Paradise Lost, one of the greatest of all poems in blank verse:3.Sonnet:lyric poem of 14 lines with a formal rhyme scheme, expressing different aspects of a single thought, mood, or feeling, sometimes resolved or summed up in the last lines of the poem. Originally short poems accompanied by mandolin or lute music, sonnets are generally composed in the standard meter of the language in which they were written—for example, iambic pentameter in English, and the Alexandrine in French (see Versification).The two main forms of the sonnet are the Petrarchan, or Italian, and the English, or Shakespearean. The former probably developed from the stanza form of the canzone or from Italian folk song. The earliest known Italian sonneteer was Guittone d'Arezzo.4. 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, arecharacters; an aside is a (usually short) comment by one character towards the audience.Soliloquies in ShakespeareThe plays of William Shakespeare feature many soliloquies, the most famous being the "To be or not to be" speech in Hamlet. In Richard III and Othello, the respective villains use soliloquies to entrap the audience as they do the characters on stage. Macbeth's "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow" speech and Juliet's "O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?" are other famous examples of Shakespearean soliloquies. (Juliet's speech is overheard by Romeo, but because she believes herself to be alone, her speech is still considered a soliloquy.) There are also a few in Macbeth "is this a dagger I see before me?" is one of the many.mental thoughts aloud, though sometimes also to directly address anotherpoetry. Monologues share much in common with several other literary devicesbetween each of these devices.6. Couplet:, in poetry, term applied to two successive lines of verse that form a single unit because they rhyme; the term also is often used for lines that express a complete thought or form a separate stanza. Couplets in English are usually written in ten-syllable (decasyllabic) lines, a form first used by the14th-century poet Geoffrey Chaucer. This evolved into the so-called heroic couplet popular in the 17th and 18th centuries. The heroic couplet, two rhyming iambic pentameter lines, is also called a closed couplet because the meaning and the grammatical structure are complete within two lines. John Dryden and Alexander Pope employed this form with great effect,7. Romanticism: (literature), a movement in the literature of virtually every country of Europe, the United States, and Latin America that lasted from about 1750 to about 1870, characterized by reliance on the imagination and subjectivity of approach, freedom of thought and expression, and an idealization of nature. The term romantic first appeared in 18th-century English and originally meant “romancelike”—that is, resembling the fanciful character of medieval romances.The preface to the second edition of Lyrical Ballads (1800), by English poets William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge was also of prime importance as a manifesto of literary romanticism. Here, the two poets affirmed the importance of feeling and imagination to poetic creation and disclaimed conventional literary forms and subjects. Thus, as romantic literature everywhere developed, imagination was praised over reason, emotions over logic, and intuition over science—making way for a vast body of literature of great sensibility and passion. This literature emphasized a new flexibility of form adapted to varying content, encouraged the development of complex and fast-moving plots, and allowed mixed genres (tragicomedy and the mingling of the grotesque and the sublime) and freer style.8. Realism (art and literature), in art and literature, an attempt to describe human behavior and surroundings or to represent figures and objects exactly as they act or appear in life. Attempts at realism have been made periodically throughout history in all the arts; the term is, however, generally restricted to a movement that began in the mid-19th century, in reaction to the highly subjective approach of romanticism.In general, the work of these writers illustrates the main tenet of realism, that writers must not select facts in accord with preconceived aesthetic or ethical ideals but must set down their observations impartially and objectively. Concerned with the faithful representation of life, which frequently lacks form, the realists tended to downplay plot in favor of character and to concentrate on middle-class life and preoccupations, avoiding larger, more dramatic issues.9. Naturalism(literature), in literature, the theory that literary composition should be based on an objective, empirical presentation of human beings. It differs from realism in adding an amoral attitude to the objective presentation of life. Naturalistic writers regard human behavior as controlled by instinct, emotion, or social and economic conditions, and reject free will, adopting instead, in large measure, the biological determinism of Charles Darwin and the economic determinism of Karl Marx.Naturalism was first prominently exhibited in the writings of 19th-century French authors, especially Edmond Louis Antoine de Goncourt, his brother Jules Alfred Huot de Goncourt, and Émile Zola.10. Stream of consciousness is often confused with interior monologue, but the latter technique works the sensations of the mind into a more formal pattern: a flow of thoughts inwardly expressed, similar to a soliloquy. The technique of stream of consciousness, however, attempts to portray the remote, preconscious state that exists before the mind organizes sensations. Consequently, the re-creation of a stream of consciousness frequently lacks the unity, explicit cohesion, and selectivity of direct thought.Stream of consciousness, as a term, was first used by William James, the American philosopher and psychologist, in his book The Principles of Psychology (1890). Widely used in narrative fiction, the technique was perhaps brought to its highest point of development in Ulysses (1922) and Finnegans Wake (1939) by the Irish novelist and poet James Joyce11.elegy originally, in classical Greek and Roman literature, a poem composed of distichs, or couplets. Classical elegies addressed various subjects, including love, lamentation, and politics, and were characterized by their metric form. Ancient poets who used the elegiac form include the Alexandrian Callimachus and the Roman Catullus. In modern poetry (since the 16th century) elegies have been characterized not by their form but by their content, which is invariably melancholy and centers on death. The best-known elegy in English is Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (1751), by the English poet ThomasGray, which treats not just a single death but the human condition as well.12. Lyric, short poem that conveys intense feeling or profound thought. In ancient Greece, lyrics were sung or recited to the accompaniment of the lyre. Elegies and odes were popular forms of the lyric in classical times. The lyric poets of ancient Greece included Sappho, Alcaeus, and Pindar; the major Roman lyric poets included Horace, Ovid, and Catullus. Lyrical poetry was also written in ancient India and China; and the Japanese verse called haiku is a lyric.13. Enlightenment, Age of, a term used to describe the trends in thought and letters in Europe and the American colonies during the 18th century prior to the French Revolution. The phrase was frequently employed by writers of the period itself, convinced that they were emerging from centuries of darkness and ignorance into a new age enlightened by reason, science, and a respect for humanity.The precursors of the Enlightenment can be traced to the 17th century and earlier. They include the philosophical rationalists René Descartes and Baruch Spinoza, the political philosophers Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, and various skeptical thinkers in France such as Pierre Bayle. Equally important, however, were the self-confidence engendered by new discoveries in science and the spirit of cultural relativism encouraged by the exploration of the non-European world.14.Modernist literature has its origins in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, mainly in Europe and North America. Modernism is characterized by a self-conscious break with traditional styles of poetry and verse. Modernistsmaxim to "Make it new." The modernist literary movement was driven by a conscious desire to overturn traditional modes of representation and expressFormal/Stylistic characteristicsJuxtaposition, irony, comparisons, and satire are important elements found in modernist writing. Modernist authors use impressionism and other devices to emphasize the subjectivity of reality, and they see omniscient narration and fixed narrative points of view as providing a false sense of objectivity. They also employ discontinuous narratives and fragmented plot structures. Modernist works are also often reflexive and draw attention to their own role as creator. Juxtaposition is used for example in a way to represent something that would be oftentimes unseen, for example, a cat and a mouse as best friends. Irony and satire are important tools used by the modernist writer to comment on society.Thematic characteristicsFor the first-time reader, modernist writing can seem frustrating to understand because of the use of a fragmented style and a lack of conciseness. Furthermore the plot, characters and themes of the text are not always presented in a linear way. The goal of modernist literature is also not particularly focused on catering to one particular audience in a formal way. In addition modernist literature often forcefully opposes, or gives an alternative opinion, on a social concept. Common concerns of modernism are: the breaking down of social norms, rejection of standard social ideas, and traditional thoughts and expectations, rejection of religion and anger against the effects of the world wars. As well, modernists tend to reject history, social systems, and emphasize alienation in modern urban and industrial societies. 期末考试范围，考查以下作家含教材中作品 1. Shakespeare4. Defoe 8. Shelley 9.Wordsworth 10. Keats 11. Jane Austen 12. Charlotte Bronte 13. Dickens 18. D. H. Lawrence以下作家(不含教材里的作品)2. Bacon 3. Milton6. Blake 5. Swift 7. Byron 14 .Hardy 15. George Bernard Shaw 16. T.S. Eliot 17. Joyce 19. William Golding 20. Doris Lessing。
英美文学名词解释TermsinEnglishLiterature
1. Epic (史诗)An extended narrative poem in elevated or dignified language, celebrating the feats of a legendary or traditional hero.史诗：用严肃或庄重的语言写成的叙事长诗，歌颂传奇中或历史上英雄的丰功伟绩2. Romance (传奇故事)An imaginative literature that is set in an idealized world and that deals with heroic adventures and battles between good and devil.传奇故事：设定在想象世界中的以英雄冒险和善恶之间的斗争为题材的文学作品。
3. Humanism（人文主义）Humanism is the idea that man has a potential for culture which distinguishes him from lower orders of beings, and which he should strive constantly to fulfill.Rebellious spirit against the Medieval feudal value and blind faith in humbleness, servitude,and after-life. Belief in man’s divinity and capability of self-perfection. Emphasis of the importance of personal worth and enjoyment of the present life.4. Sonnet (十四行诗)A 14-line verse form usually written in iambic pentameter.十四行诗：一种由十四行组成的诗歌形式，通常以五步抑扬格为押韵形式。
英美文学之文学术语
英美文学之文学术语文学术语汇编11.Literature of the absurd: (荒诞派文学) The term is applied to a number of works in drama and prose fiction which have in common the sense that the human condition is essentially absurd, and that this condition can be adequately represented only in works of literature that are themselves absurd. The current movement emerged in France after the Second World War, as a rebellion against essential beliefs and values of traditional culture and traditional literature. They hold the belief that a human being is an isolated existent who is cast into an alien universe and the human life in its fruitless search for purpose and meaning is both anguish and absurd.2.Theater of the absurd: (荒诞派戏剧) belongs to literature of the absurd. Two representatives of this school are Eugene Ionesco, French author of The Bald Soprano (1949) (此作品中文译名<秃头歌女>), and Samuel Beckett, Irish author of Waiting for Godot (1954) (此作品是荒诞派戏剧代表作<等待戈多>). They project the irrationalism, helplessness and absurdity of life in dramatic forms that reject realistic settings, logical reasoning, or a coherently evolving plot.3.Black comedy or black humor: (黑色幽默) it mostly employed to describe baleful, naïve, or inept characters in a fantastic or nightmarish modern world playing out their roles in what Ionesco called a “tragic farce”, in which the events are often simultaneously comic, horrifying, and absurd. Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 (美国著名作家约瑟夫海勒<二十二条军规>) can be taken as an example of the employment of this technique.文学术语汇编24. Aestheticism or the Aesthetic Movement（唯美主义）: it began to prevail in Europe at the middle of the 19th century. The theory of “art for art’s sake” was first put forward by some French artists. They declared that art should serve no religious, moral or social purpose. The two most important representatives of aestheticists in English literature are Walt Pater and Oscar Wilde.5. Allegory（寓言）: a tale in verse or prose in which characters, actions, or settings represent abstract ideas or moral qualities, such as John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress. An allegory is a story with two meanings, a literal meaning and a symbolic meaning.6. Fable（寓言）: is a short narrative, in prose or verse, that exemplifies an abstract moral thesis or principle of human behavior. Most common is the beast fable, in which animals talk and act like the human types they represent. The fables in Western cultures derive mainly from the stories attributed to Aesop, a Greek slave of the sixth century B. C.7. Parable（寓言）: is a very short narrative about human beings presented so as to stress analogy with a general lesson that the narrator is trying to bring home to his audience. For example, the Bible contains lots of parables employed by Jesus Christ to make his flock understand his preach.(注意以上三个词在汉语中都翻译成语言，但是内涵并不相同，不要搞混)8. Alliteration（头韵）: the repetition of the initial consonant sounds. In Old English alliterative meter, alliteration is the principal organizing device of the verse line, such as in Beowulf.9. Consonance is the repetition of a sequence of two or more consonants but with a change in the intervening vowel, such as “live and love”.10. Assonance is the repetition of identical or similar vowel, especially in stressed syllables, in a sequence of nearby words, such as “child of silence”.11. Allusion （典故）is a reference without explicit identification, to a literary or historical person, place, or event, or to another literary work or passage. Most literary allusions are intended to be recognized by the generally educated readers of the author’s time, but some are aimed at a special group.12. Ambiguity（复义性）: Since William Empson（燕卜荪）published Seven Types of Ambiguity（《复义七型》）, the term has been widely used in criticism to identify a deliberate poetic device: the use of a single word or expression to signify two or more distinct references, or to express two or more diverse attitudes or feeling.文学术语汇编313. Antihero（反英雄）：the chief character in a modern novel or play whose character is totally different from the traditional heroes. Instead of manifesting largeness, dignity, power, or heroism, the antihero is petty, passive, ineffectual or dishonest. For example, the heroine of Defoe’s Moll Flanders is a thief and a prostitute.14. Antithesis（对照）：(a figure of speech)An antithesis is often expressed in a balanced sentence, that is, a sentence in which identical or similar syntactic structure is used to express contrasting ideas. For example, “Marriage has many pains, but celibacy（独身生活）has no pleasures.” by Samuel Johnson obviously employs antithesis.15. Archaism（拟古）：the literary use of words and expressions that have become obsolete in the common speech of an era. For example, the translators of the King James Version of Bible gave weight and dignity to their prose by employing archaism.16. Atmosphere（氛围）: the prevailing mood or feeling of a literary work. Atmosphere is often developed, at least in part, through descriptions of setting. Such descriptions help to create an emotional climate to establish the reader’s expectations and attitudes.文学术语汇编417. Ballad（民谣）：it is a song, transmitted orally, which tells a story. It originated and was communicated orally among illiterate or only partly literate people. It exists in many variant forms. The most common stanza form, called ballad stanza is a quatrain in alternate four- and three-stress lines; usually only the second and fourth lines rhyme. Although many traditional ballads probably originated in the late Middle Age, they were not collected and printed until the eighteenth century.18. Climax：as a rhetorical device it means an ascending sequence of importance. As a literary term, it can also refer to the point of greatest intensity, interest, or suspense in a story’s turning point. The action leading to the climax and the simultaneous increaseof tension in the plot are known as the rising action. All action after the climax is referred to as the falling action, or resolution. The term crisis is sometimes used interchangeably with climax.19. Anticlimax（突降）：it denotes a writer’s deliberate drop from the serious and elevated to the trivial and lowly, in order to achieve a comic or satiric effect. It is a rhetorical device in English.20. Beat Generation（垮掉一代）：it refers to a loose-knit group of poets and novelists, writing in the second half of the 1950s and early 1960s, who shared a set of social attitudes – antiestablishment, antipolitical, anti-intellectual, opposed to the prevailing cultural, literary, and moral values, and in favor of unfettered self-realization andself-expression. Representatives of the group include Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs. And most famous literary creations produced by this group should be Allen Ginsberg’s long poem Howl and Jack Kerouac’s On the Road.文学术语汇编521. Biography（传记）：a detailed account of a person’s life written by another person, such as Samuel Johnson’s Lives of the English Poets and James Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson.22. Autobiography（自传）：a person’s account of his or her own life, such as Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography.23. Blank verse（无韵体）: Verse written in unrhymed iambic pentameter. It is the verse form used in some of the greatest English poetry, including that of William Shakespeare and John Milton.24. A parody（模仿）imitates the serious manner and characteristic features of a particular literary work, or the distinctive style of a particular author, or the typical stylistic and other features of a serious literary genre, and deflates the original by applying the imitation to a lowly or comically inappropriate subject.文学术语汇编625. Celtic Revival also known as the Irish Literary Renaissance （爱尔兰文艺复兴）identifies the remarkably creative period in Irish literature from about 1880 to the death of William Butler Yeats in 1939. The aim of Yeats and other early leaders of the movement was to create a distinctively national literature by going back to Irish history, legend, and folklore, as well as to native literary models. The major writers of this movement include William Butler Yeats, Lady Gregory, John Millington Synge and Sean O’Casey and so on.26. Characters（人物）are the persons represented in a dramatic or narrative work, who are interpreted by the reader as being endowed with particular moral, intellectual, and emotional qualities by inferences from the dialogues, actions and motivations. E. M. Forster divides characters into two types: flat character, which is presented without much individualizing detail; and round character, which is complex in temperament and motivation and is represented with subtle particularity.27. Chivalric Romance (or medieval romance) （骑士传奇或中世纪传奇）is a type of narrative that developed in twelfth-century France, spread to the literatures of other countries. Its standard plot is that of a quest undertaken by a single knight in order to gain a lady’s favor; frequently its central interest is courtly love, together with tournaments fought and dragons and monsters slain. It stresses the chivalric ideals of courage, loyalty, honor, mercifulness to an opponent, and elaborate manners.28. Comedy:（喜剧）in general, a literary work that ends happily with a healthy, amicable armistice between the protagonist and society.29. Farce （闹剧）is a type of comedy designed to provoke the audience to simple and hearty laughter. To do so it commonly employs highly exaggerated types of characters and puts them into improbable and ludicrous situations.30. Confessional poetry（自白派诗歌）designates a type of narrative and lyric verse, given impetus by Robert Lowell’s Life Studies, which deals with the facts and intimate mental and physical experiences of the poet’s own life. Confessional poetry was written in rebellion against the demand for impersonality by T. S. Elliot and the New Criticism. The representative writers of confessional school include Robert Lowell, Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath and so on.31. Critical Realism:（批判现实主义）The critical realism of the 19th century flourished in the fouties and in the beginning of fifties. The realists first and foremost set themselves the task of criticizing capitalist society from a democratic viewpoint and delineated the crying contradictions of bourgeois reality. But they did not find a way to eradicate social evils. Representative writers of this trend include Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray and so on.32. Drama:（戏剧）The form of composition designed for performance in the theater, in which actors take the roles of the characters, perform the indicated action, and utter the written dialogue. (The common alternative name for a dramatic composition is a play.)文学术语汇编733. Dramatic Monologue:（戏剧独白）a monologue is a lengthy speech by a single person. Dramatic monologue does not designate a component in a play, but a type of lyric poem that was perfected by Robert Browning. By using dramatic monologue, a single person, who is patently not the poet, utters the speech that makes up the whole of the poem, in a specific situation at a critical moment. For example, Robert Browning’s famous poem “My Last Duchess” was written in dramatic monologue. 34. Elegy（哀歌或挽歌）：a poem of mourning, usually over the death of an individual. An elegy is a type of lyric poem, usually formal in language and structure, and solemn or even melancholy in tone.35. Enlightenment（启蒙运动）：The name applied to an intellectual movement which developed in Western Europe during the seventeenth century and reached its height in the eighteenth. The common element was a trust in human reason as adequate to solve the crucial problems and to establish the essential norms in life, together with the belief that the application of reason was rapidly dissipating the remaining feudal traditions. It influenced lots of famous English writers especially those neoclassic writers, such as Alexander Pope.36. Epic（史诗）：it is a long verse narrative on a serious subject, told in a formal and elevated style, and centered on a heroic or quasi-divine figure on whose actions depends the fate of a tribe, a nation, or the human race.37. Epiphany:（顿悟）In the early draft of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce employed this term to signify a sudden sense of radiance and revelation that one may feel while perceiving a commonplace object. “Epiphany” now has become the standard term for the description, frequent in modern poetry and prose fiction, of the sudden flare into revelation of an ordinary object or scene.38. Epithet（移就）: as a term in criticism, epithet denotes an adjective or adjectival phrase used to define a distinctive quality of a person or thing. This method was widely employed in ancient epics. For example, in Homer’s epic, the epithet like “the wine-dark sea” can be found everywhere.39. Essay:（散文）any short composition in prose that undertakes to discuss a matter, express a point of view, persuade us to accept a thesis on any subject, or simply entertain. The essay can be divided as the formal essay and the informal essay (familiar essay).40. Euphemism（委婉语）: An inoffensive expression used in place of a blunt one that is felt to be disagreeable or embarrassing, such as “pass away” instead of “die”41. Expressionism（表现主义）：a German movement in literature and the other arts which was at its height between 1910 and 1925 – that is, in the period just before, during, and after WWⅠ. The expressionist artist or writer undertakes to express a personal vision – usually a troubled or tensely emotional vision – of human life and human society. This is done by exaggerating and distorting. We recognize its effects, direct or indirect, on the writing and staging of such plays as Arthur Miller’s Death ofa Salesman as well as on the theater of the absurd.42. Free verse（自由体诗）：Like traditional verse, it is printed in short lines instead of with the continuity of prose, but it differs from such verse by the fact that its rhythmic pattern is not organized into a regular metrical form – that is, into feet, or recurrent units of weak and strong stressed syllables. Most free verse also hasirregular line lengths, and either lacks rhyme or else uses it only occasionally. Walt Whitman is a representative who employed this poem form successfully.文学术语汇编843. Gothic novel:（哥特式小说）It is a type of prose fiction. The writers of this type of fictions mostly set their stories in the medieval period and in a Catholic country, especially Italy or Spain. The locale was often a gloomy castle. The typical story focused on the sufferings imposed on an innocent heroine by a cruel villain. This type of fictions made bountiful use of ghosts, mysterious disappearances, and other supernatural occurrences. The principle aim of such novels was to evoke chilling terror and the best of this type opened up to the fiction the realm of the irrational and of the perverse impulses and nightmarish terrors that lie beneath the orderly surface of the civilized mind. Some famous novelists liked to employ some Gothic elements in their novels, such as Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights.44. Graveyard poets（墓园派诗歌）: A term applied to eighteenth-century poets who wrote meditative poems, usually set in a graveyard, on the theme of human mortality, in moods which range from pensiveness to profound gloom. The vogue resulted in one of the most widely known English poems, Thomas Gray’s“Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”.45. Harlem Renaissance（哈莱姆文艺复兴）：a period of remarkable creativity in literature, music, dance, painting, and sculpture by African-Americans, from the end of the First World War in 1917 through the 1920s. As a result of the mass migrations to the urban North in order to escape the legal segregation of the American South, and also in order to take advantage of the jobs opened to African Americans at the beginning of the War, the population of the region of Manhattan known as Harlem became almost exclusively Black, and the vital center of African American culture in America. Distinguished writers who were part of the movement included Langston Hughes and Jean Toomer. The Great Depression of 1929 and the early 1930s broughtthe period of buoyant Harlem culture – which had been fostered by prosperity in the publishing industry and the art world – effectively to an end.46. Heroic Couplet（英雄双韵体）refers to lines of iambic pentameter which rhyme in pairs: aa, bb, cc, and so on. The adjective “heroic” was applied in the later seventeenth century because of the frequent use of such couplets in heroic poems and dramas. This verse form was introduced into English poetry by Geoffrey Chaucer. From the age of John Dryden through that of Samuel Johnson, the heroic couplet was the predominant English measure for all the poetic kinds; some poets, including Alexander Pope, used it almost to the exclusion of other meters.47. Hyperbole（夸张）:this figure of speech called hyperbole is bold overstatement, or the extravagant exaggeration of fact or of possibility. It may be used either for serious or ironic or comic effect.48. Understatement（轻描淡写）：this figure of speech deliberately represents something as very much less in magnitude or importance than it really is, or is ordinarily considered to be. The effect is usually ironic.49. Imagism（意象派）：it was a poetic vogue that flourished in England, and even more vigorously in America, between the years 1912 and 1917. It was planned and exemplified by a group of English and American writers in London, partly under the influence of the poetic theory of T. E. Hulme, as a revolt against the sentimental and mannerish poetry at the turn of the century. The typical Imagist poetry is written in free verse and undertakes to be as precisely and tersely as possible. Meanwhile, the Imagist poetry likes to express the writers’ momentary impression of a visual object or scene and often the impression is rendered by means of metaphor without indicating a relation. Most famous Imagist poem, “In a Station of the Metro”, was written by Ezra Pound. Imagism was too restrictive to endure long as a concerted movement, but it influenced almost all modern poets of Britain and America.50. Irony（反讽）：This term derives from a character in a Greek comedy. In most of the modern critical uses of the term “irony”, there remains the root sense of dissembling or hiding what is actually the case; not, however, in order to deceive, but to achieve rhetorical or artistic effects.51. Local Colorism（地方色彩）was a literary trend belonging to Realism. It refers to the detailed representation in prose fiction of the setting, dialect, customs, dress and ways of thinking and feeling which are distinctive of a particular region. After the Civil War a number of American writers exploited the literary possibilities of local color in various parts of America. The most famous representative of local colorism should be Mark Twain who took his hometown near the Mississippi as the typical setting of nearly all his novels.52. Lyric（抒情诗）：in the most common use of the term, a lyric is any fairly short poems consisting of the utterance by a single speaker, who expresses a state of mind or a process of perception, thought and feeling.。
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英美文学术语terms
1.alliteration：It is the repetition of the same sound or sounds at the beginning of two or more
words that are next to or close to each other. It is a form of initial rhyme, or head rhyme.
2.caesura：a pause in a line of verse, often coinciding with a break between clauses or
sentences. It is usually placed in the middle of the line, but may appear near the beginning or towards the end.
3.Sonnet - a lyric poem of 14 lines, usually in iambic pentameter, with rhymes arranged according to certain definite patterns. It usually expresses a single, complete thought, idea, or sentiment.
4.Free verse: a kind of poetry that does not conform to any regular metre: the length of its lines is irregular, as is its use of rhyme.
5. heroic couplet: a traditional form for English poetry, commonly used for epic and narrative poetry; it refers to poems constructed from a sequence of rhyming pairs of iambic pentameter lines.
6. Paradox: a statement or expression so surprisingly self-contradictory as to provoke us into seeking another sense or context in which it would be true.
7. Conceit: An unusually far-fetched or elaborate metaphor or simile presenting a surprisingly apt parallel between two apparently dissimilar things or feelings.
8. Mock epic: a poem employing the lofty style and the conventions of the epic poetry to describe a trivial or undignified series of events; thus a kind of satire that mocks its subject by
treating it in an inappropriately grandiose manner, usually at some length. One of the outstanding examples in English is Alexander Pope’s The Rape of the Lock.
9. Satire: a mode of writing that exposes the failings of individuals, institutions or societies to ridicule and scorn. Satire is often an incidental element in literary works that may not be wholly satirical, especially in comedy. Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal is a bitter satire on the policy of the English government towards the Irish people.
10. Epigram：a short poem with a witty turn of thought, or a wittily condensed expression in prose. Originally a form of monumental inscription in ancient Greece, the epigram was developed into a literary form by poets.
11. Allegory:Allegory is a story or visual image with a second distinct meaning partially hidden behind its literal or visible meaning. The principal technique of allegory is personification, whereby abstract qualities are given human shape.
12. Simile:A figure of speech in which two things, essentially different but thought to be alike in one or more respects, are compared using “like,” “as,” “as if,” or “such” for the purpose of
explanation, allusion, or ornament.
13. metaphor: the most important and widespread figure of speech, in which one thing, idea, or action is referred to by a word or expression normally denoting another thing, idea, or action, so as to suggest some common quality shared by the two. In metaphor, this resemblance is assumed as an imaginary identity rather than directly stated as a comparison.
14. verbal irony: it involves a discrepancy between what is said and what is really meant, as in its crude form, sarcasm..
15. dramatic irony:the audience knows more about a character’s situation than the character does, foreseeing an outcome contrary to the character’s expectations, and thus ascribing a sharply different sense to some of the character’s own statements.。