英国文学名词解释

The Old EnglishAlso known as Anglo-Saxon English, mainly used during the period of Anglo-Saxon Conquest. Foundation of English language and literature(Foundation of England in 5th century - the Norman invasion in 1066)The Middle EnglishUsed to describe the language from the Norman Conquest(1066) to about 1500, a period during which London English gradually became the dominant dialect.The larger proportion of Middle English literature is religious. The church had a virtual monopoly(事实上的垄断) on literacy during much of the Middle Ages. Christianity teaching was primarily concerned with the issue of personal salvation. EpicA long verse narrative on a serious subject, told in a formal and elevated style, and centred in a heroic or quasi-divine figure whose actions depend on the fate of a tribe, a nation, or the human race.Romance(a.k.a Chivalric romance / Medieval romance)It is the most prevailing form of literature in the feudal England. A type of narrative that developed in 12th-century France. It represents a courtly and chivalric age, often one of highly developed manners and civility. Love, chivary and religion make the main content of romance.It is a long composition, in verse or in prose. It describes the life and adventures of a noble hero. The central theme is loyalty to king and Lord. The code of manners and morals of a knight is Chivalry. The most important romance is king Arthur and his knights of the Round Table.AlliterationCertain accented words in a line begin with the same consonant sound.KenningA poetic compound made up of two or three nouns standing for another noun. E.g: Beowulf-- bee-wlof-- bearUnderstatementsTo give an impression of reverse and at times a tinge of ironical humour. A characteristic of the English language. E.g: Not troublesome-- welcome; Not praise-- A right to condemnHeroic CoupletA traditional form for English poetry, commonly used for epic and narrative poetry; it refers to poems constrcted from a sequence of rhyming pairs of iambic pentameter lines. iambic pentameter means a line consisting of five iambic feet and one foot comprises of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable.BalladIt is a poem usually set to music, thus, it often is a story told in a song. Any myth form may be told as a ballad, such as historical accounts or fairy tales in verse form. It usually has foreshortened, alternating four-stress lines("ballad metre") and simple repeating rhymes, often with a refrain. If it is based on a political or religious theme, a ballad may be a hymn.The Elizabethan AgeIt is an age of economic development and cultural prosperity at home, and of expansion and exploration abroad.A period of drama and poetry. The Elizabethan drama is the real mainstream of the English Renaissance.English RenaissanceIt is a cultural and intellectual movement which first flourished in the 14th century in Italy and later spread to France, Spain, the Netherlands, and England in the 15th and 16th centuries. The French word "renaissance" means "rebirth" in English.The central ideal of the Renaissance was humanism. In all, the Renaissance could be viewed as an attempt by intellectuals to study and improve the secular and worldly, both through the revival of ideas from antiquity, and through novel approaches to thought. The invention of the pringting press allowed the rapid transmission of these new ideas. As it spread, its ideas diversified and changed, being adapted to local culture.Renaissance:the activity, spirit, or time of the great revival of art, literature, and learning in Europe beginning in the 14th century and extending to the 17th century, marking the transition from the medieval to the modern world.English dramaSpenserian stanzaBlank verse(无韵体): consists of lines of unrhymed iambic pentameter. Of all English metrical forms it is closest to the natural rhymes of English speech, and at the same time flexible and adaptive to diverse levels of discourse. It becomes the standard metre for Elizabethan and later poetic drama.SonnetEclogueUtopia (no place)A description of an imaginary land, written by Sir Thomas More(1516). It's about the search for the beast possible form of government, and serves as a critique of European social, political, and religious institutions and practices.EssayA piece of writing which is often written from an author's personal point of view. Essays can consist of a number of elements, including: literary criticism, political manifestos, learned arguments, observations of daily life, recollections, and reflections of the author. The definition of an essay is vague, overlapping with those of anarticle and a short story. Almost all modern essays are written in prose, but works in verse have been dubbed essays.ElegyMetaphysical poetsCavalier poetsCarpe diemAllegoryA narrative, in which the characters and actions, and sometimes the setting as well, are contrived to make coherent sense on the literal level of signification, and at the same time to signify a second, correlated order of signification.Paradise LostIt is Milton's masterpiece, an epic poem in blank verse and one of the greatest epic poem in world literature.To justify the ways of God to ManThe EnlightenmentIt refers to the intellectual movement from the 1680s to 1789, which advocated reason as the primary basis of authority. Developing in France, Britain and Germany, its sphere of influence included the whole Europe.Neoclassicism(新古典主义)It dominated English literature from the last decades of the 17th century to the early 18th century. Neoclassicism is the name given to Western movements in the decorative and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that draw inspiration from the "classical" art and culture of Ancient Greece or Ancient Rome. The rise of English novelIt was another important phenomenon of the period. With the wide audience from the middle class, the literary tendency of the period was moving away from the conventional romance, stories about the life of aristocratic class, to works of accounts of the common people. The novelists combined the allegorical tradition of the moral fables with the picaresque tradition of the folk stories and achieved a writing of both realistic accounting and moral teaching.Gothic Novel(哥特小说)As a literary genre, it combines elements of both horror and romance. Sentimentalityin poetry and fiction it appeared together withe the rise of the English novel, as a partial reaction against that cold and logic rationalism.SatireIt is a composition in verse or prose, in which human or individual vices, follies, or shortcomings are held up to be censured by means of ridicule, derision, burlesque, irony, or other methods, with an intent to bring about improvement. Simply speaking, satire seeks to expose the moral excesses by means of laughter.Three Dramatic UnitiesRobinson Crusoe。