英国文学史笔记

英国文学史笔记The Anglo-Saxon period (the 11th~14thcenturies)Beowulf : the most important piece ;forming period of English literatureBeowulf is the national epic(史诗) of Anglo-Saxon period, while Beowulf is the great warrior of …Beowulf is the oldest surviving epic in British literature. A rich fabric(结构) of fact and fancy.“I shall perform the deeds of hero or I have passed my last day in this mead hall.”The 14th century-the age of Chaucer Geoffrey Chaucer, the writer of The Canterbury Tales. While most of his contemporaries are busy writing with French(the language of court) and Latin( the language of church), Chaucer is experimenting with the vernacular(本国的) English.The Arthurian LegendsGeoffrey Chaucer: father of English literature and poetry, a great master of English language.Anthology 诗选The 15th century-the transitional periodThe transitional period between the age of Chaucer and the age of Shakespeare with the popular ballad, Robin Hood Ballad, as the most representative form of literature.Rabin Hood ballads are popular ballads dealing with the famous outlaw……Thomas MoreThomas More – Utopia (written in 1515) This book contains (1) a realistic picture of early 16th century England: social evils are exposed and attacked (2) the first sketch of the ideal commonwealth by an English writer. Limitations of the book: Utopia(1)His dream world did not have its soundpolitical, economic and social bases. (2)His indifferent attitude toward slaveryand his actual contempt for physicallabor.(3)Contradictions in his world outlook.The Elizabethan AgeEdmund Spenser – The Faerie QueenEnglish poet, born in LondonChristopher Marlowe – Doctor FaustusPlaywright, greatest dramatist before ShakespeareDr. Faustus is a play based on the German legend of a magician aspiring for knowledge and finally meeting his tragic end as a result of selling his soul to the Devil.Ben JonsonWilliam Shakespeare (1564-1616)He is English playwright and poet, and is recognized in much of the world as the greatest dramatist.Dramatic Works:William Shakespeare has 37 plays to his credit. First built in 1935, then rebuilt in 1959, Ashland’s Elizabethan Theatre is one of several venues for plays in the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.Love’s Labor’s Lost 爱的徒劳The Merchant of VeniceThe Comedy of Errors 错误的喜剧Julius Caesar 凯撒The Two Gentlemen of VeronaPeriod of Romantic Comedies (1595-1600) Four great comedies:The Merchant of Venice – PortiaAs You Like It – RosalindMuch Ado About Nothing – Beatrice Twelfth Night – ViolaThe Taming of the Shrew 驯悍记Merry Wives of WindsorA Midsummer-Night’s DreamMature Period (1601-1609)This is the period of tragedies. Four great tragedies:Othello ; King Lear ; Hamlet ; Macbeth Shakespeare’s Contribution to Drama(1)themes of progressive significance(2)masterful character portrayal(3)adroit plot construction(4)great freedom and ease in the use oflanguageThe Jacobean AgeBen Jonson (1573-1637)The most important playwright among Shakespeare’s contemporariesEvery Man in His Humor“comedy of humors”The Jacobean Prose:Francis Bacon (1561-1626)Francis Bacon was an important scientist, philosopher and essayist.“Real founder of English materialism and experimental sciences of modern times in general.”– Marx 唯物主义从他开始(1)New InstrumentIn this work Bacon introduced the inductive method to the science.(2)The New AtlantisIn this book Bacon described a utopian society – a fictitious land where his principles of collaborative research have been put into effect in a great agricultural and mechanical experimental station called Solomon’s House.(3)Essays:T hese essays reflect the author’s views on political, social and personal problems and in turn the bourgeois ideals and limitations of a man.*Conciseness of expression and simplicity of dictions are the two chief characteristics of Bacon’s style. Bacon’s essays exerted important influence on the development of English prose. They are the first “essays”in English.Of StudiesThe English Revolution Period Metaphysical poets: 玄学派诗人(1) John Donne(2) John MiltonMilton is often considered the greatest English poet after William Shakespeare.1)Paradise Lost : greatest epic poem of MiltonIt deals with the fall of man, Satan’s revolt against God and man’s loss of Paradise. The first three lines of Paradise Lost:Of Man’s first disobedience, and the first fruitOf that forbidden tree whose mortal tasteBrought death into the World, and all our woe2)Paradise Regained :Another epic dealing with the redemption of man by Christ3)Samson Agonistes(3)John BunyanSpoke for common people; “the Immortal Tinker”Most famous one “Pilgrim’s Progress”天路历程has become a world classic.Vanity Fair 名利场The Life and Death of Mr. Badman(4)John DrydenThe most prominent poet, dramatist, translator, literature critic of Revolution Period, the greatest neoclassicist of the Restoration Period, the age of DrydenIntroduced “heroic play”–drama in epic mode; grand, rhetorical and declamatory; its themes being love and honorBest-known piece of literary criticism isAn Essay of Dramatic Poesy, written in the form of a dialogue.Three Unities “三一律”The EnlightenmentTwo groups of English Enlighteners(1)Those in favor of partial reform :Pope, Defoe, Addison and Steele and Richardson(2)The more radical wing :Swift, Fielding, Smollett, Sheridan and GoldsmithAlexander PopeHis most famous poem, “The Rape of the Lock”–夺发记An ingenious mock(1)Enlightener (2) neo-classicist (3) satirist (4) brilliant poet (5) had a great influenceChief Works:1. An Essay on Criticism:A manifesto of neo-classicismAncient poets are highly praised and rules are laid down to be observed.2. An Essay on Man:The best known and the most quoted of all Pope’s works.3. Moral EssaysA good style as “proper words in proper places” is defineThe names of Joseph Addison and Richard Steele have always been linked with the literary periodicals –The Tattler and The Spectator..Daniel Defoe (1660-1731) English novelist and journalistProlific 多产的Defoe’s first and most famous novel, “The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe”–Alexander Selkirk (原型)Poems: The True-Born Englishman; A Hymn to the PilloryPicaresque Novel 流浪汉式小说Earliest English picaresque novel is believed to have been The Unfortunate Traveler or, The Life of Jack Wilton (1594) by Thomas.Jonathan SwiftAnglo-Irish satirist and political pamphleteer, considered one of the greatest masters of English prose. He was born in Dublin.A Modest ProposalSwift’s masterpiece Travel into Several Remote Nations of the World, more popularly titled Gulliver’s Travels. It was an instant success. It was an attack on human society. It is at once a fantasy and a realistic work of fiction.Prose: The Battle of Book; A Tale of a TubSamuel RichardsonHis novels are in epistolary form (a series of letters).A founder of the English modern novel and an outstanding novelist.(1)PamelaThe first epistolary novel in the English language; sometimes called the first modern English novel because of its “penetrating”psychological analysis.(2) ClarissaIt is the longest novel in Britain and generally considered Richardson’s masterpiece. Significance:1.s ympathy for women2.p sychological study *3.e xposure of the moral hypocrisyHenry FieldingHe has been considered the real founder of modern fiction.Fielding’s masterpiece:The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling (1749)1)one of the great English novels2)is in the picaresque traditionTobias George SmollettA versatile and prolific writerThe comic inventiveness of character and incident greatl y influenced the work of English novelist Charles Dickens.He has three important novels:1.R oderick Random:The first sea novel in English literature, written more or less in the picaresque tradition and narrated in the first person.2.P eregrine Pickle:A picaresque novel3. Humphrey ClinkerWritten in the epistolary formLaurence Sterne1. Tristram ShandyMeditation 沉思,冥想The novel is considered a precursor to the modern novel and the technique of “stream ofconsciousness.”2. A Sentimental Journey:Sterne enjoys a European fame. He not only has his far-reaching influence upon English writers of later days, especially on Byron and Thackeray, but also upon Diderot(狄德罗) and Rousseau(卢梭) and V oltaire(伏尔泰).The Gothic RomancesThe Castle of Otranto (1764)Considered the first Gothic novel in English Mary Shelley 这一时期的代表Shelley’s wife 雪莱之妻Frankenstein: the first and most important workThe Domestic Novels:1)Fanny Burney: Evelina2)Jane Austen: Pride and PrejudiceThe former described the fashionable society in London, while the latter the life of landed gentry in provincial England.Richard SheridanComedy: The Rivals and The School for ScandalThe 18th– Century ProseSamuel JohnsonEnglish writer and lexicographer,a major figure in 18th–century literature. In 1755, Johnson published his Dictionary of the English Language, which took him eight years to complete. The dictionary contains about 40,000 entries with vivid, idiosyncratic definitions and an extraordinary range of examples. The Dictionary of the EnglishLanguage is the first kind of English dictionary.Thomas GrayBest known poem: Elegy Written in a Country ChurchyardRobert BurnsHe is Scottish poet and writer of traditional Scottish folk songs, whose works are known and loved wherever the English language is read.He has been considered the greatest Scottish poet. His love songs are unsurpassed.He is a many-sided genius:Poet: A Red, Red RoseWilliam BlakeHe is an important English poet at the turn of the 19th century.Blake should be remembered chiefly for his bitter social criticism, for his fight for freedom, and for his lyricism.The Songs of Experience is certainly the most important of all Blake’s poetry.Poem: The Chimney SweeperLondonThe TigerWilliam Wordsworth (1770-1850)1. English poet, one of the most accomplished and influential of England’s romantic poets.2. Themes: freedom, folk, mature3. The DaffodilsI wandered lonely as a cloud,That floats on high o’er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd,A host of golden daffodils;Beside the lake, beneath the trees,Byron was notorious for his love affairs and unconventional lifestyle⏹H e died while working to secure Greek independence from the Turks.⏹T he “Byronic hero”— lonely, rebellious, and brooding—first appeared in Manfred (1817).Among his other works are Childe Harold (1812-1818), The Prisoner of Chillon (1816), and the epic satire Don Juan (1819-1824).⏹S ince the 1920s, his poetry has exerted considerable influence upon the Chinese poets, and with the translation of some of his poems into the Chinese language, his name has become well known to the general reading public in China.●I n 1822, shortly before his 30th birthday, Shelley was drowned in a storm while sailing.●I n the final stanza—which ends with the now famous line “If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?”—Shelley appeals to the wind to help him spread the moral and political messages of his work.●A Defense of Poetry lays emphasis on thesocial educative role of poetry●. Byron only attacked political tyranny, but Shelley also saw the cruel relations of economic exploitation in the feudal-bourgeois world.Shelley had faith in the collective strength of the people and worked for the interests of the masses while Byron thought more of one’s personal happiness and sorrow and he believed chiefly in the might of individual heroes but had contempt for the common people.●M arx once said, “The real differencebetween Byron and Shelley is this: those who understand them and love them rejoice that Byron died at 36, because if he had lived he would become a reactionary bourgeois, they grieve that Shelley died at 29, because he was essentially a revolutionist and he would always have been one of the advanced guard of socialism.”•John Keats (1795-1821), English poet, and an influential figure of the romantic movement.Ode to a Nightingale is possibly one of the most poignant expressions of Keats’ intensepersonal yearning for freedom from human misery as he fell under the magic of the nightingale’s song.•John Keats is remembered for his melodious, rich verse, and is considered one of the greatest English poets.Scottish writer Sir Walter Scott is considered the first major European historical novelist.●Scott’s historical novels may beconveniently divided into three main groups which coincided with the three periods in his creative career:●(1) The history of Scotland●(2) English history●(3) European history●Novels on English history● e.g. Ivanhoe: the struggle ofAnglo-Saxon peasantry against their oppressors the Norman lords, in the last part of the 12th century.●Jane Austen (1775-1817), majorEnglish novelist, whose brilliantly witty, elegantly structured satirical fiction marks the transition in English literature from 18th-century neoclassicism to 19th-century romanticism. Austen was born near Basingstoke.●In her first period, from 1796 to1798, she wrote Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice(1813), and Northanger Abbey(1818); these novelsdid not find a publisher for several years after their composition.●Austen's second period of productivity began in 1811 after the publication of Sense and Sensibility.●She produced in quick succession her last three novels: Mansfield Park(1814), Emma(1816), and Persuasion (1818).It is a truth universally acknowledged that。