英国文学总结(很好的)

1. Chaucer(1340-1400): The founder of English Poetry, and the founder of English realism, and buried in Westminster Abbey, thus founding the “Poets’Corner”. He was against Catholicism. Language: Middle English.代表作: The Canterbury Tales(1387-1400),其中有故事：Wife of Bath，owner of a cloth factory, lighthearted, merry, somewhat vulgar, and exceedingly talkative。

Married five times and expected to one or two more.2. Thomas More(1478-1535)代表作：Utopia, an ideal communist society, meaning “no place”. 全文分两部分，第一部分：a picture of contemporary England with forcible exposure of the poverty among the laboring classes, the greed and luxury among the rich, and an eagerness for war on the part of the rulers.第二部分：we have a sketch of an ideal commonwealth in some unknown ocean, where property is held in common and there is no poverty.3. Christopher Marlowe(1564-1593)代表作：Tamburlaine(1587)-------帖木儿大帝The Jew of Malta(1592)----马耳他岛的犹太人Doctor Faustus(1588)-------浮士德重点介绍：The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus, the hero is a young and brilliant scholar. Feature: an insatiable thirst for knowledge.影响力：1.show the spirit of the rising bourgeoisie;2.the theme of his plays is the praise of individuality, the conviction of the boundless possibility of human efforts in conquering the universe, and soaring aspiration after power and knowledge and beauty in their ideal forms. Marlowe：It is Marlowe who first made blank verse(rhymeless iambic pentameter) the principal instrument of English drama.4.Shakespeare: he was born on April 23, 1564, in Stratford-on-Avon. And he died on April 23, 1616, buried in Stratford Church.一. The great comedies: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Merchant of Venice, As You Like It and Twelfth Night剧情介绍：it is a beautiful fairy-tale combined with the story of the struggle for happiness of two pairs of lovers: Hermia and Lysander, Helena and Demetrius. 特色：the most lyrical of all his plays, in which elements of Greek mythology and fancifully combined with those of British folklore.2. 威尼斯商人It is a “grave comedy”. It takes its plot from an Italian story. 人物：Bassanio borrowed money from Shylock, and Antonio is Bassanio’s friend. Portia is one of Shakespeare’s ideal women---beautiful, cultured, courteous and capable of rising to an emergency.3.As You Like It.人物：Frederick, Rosalind, Celia, Orlando, Oliver。

4. Twelfth Night. The scene is laid in Illria, on the coast of the Adriatic Sea. ：Sebastian and Viola, Orsino, the young Duke of Illyria. Countess Olivia, Maria, Malvolio二. The great tragedies: Hamlet, Othello, King Lear and Macbeth.剧情介绍：1. Othello: It is based on an Italian tale.2. King Lear：the subject is taken from an old English legend.3.Macveth: the plot of Macbeth is based on Holinshed’s Chronicle of Scottish History.The play is a tragedy of ambition, which drives a brave soldier and national hero to degenerate into a bloody murderer and despot right to his doom.4. Hamlet: the summit of Shakespeare’s art. The story comes from an old Danish legend.人物性格：a. Hamlet is a humanist, a man who is free from medieval prejudices and superstitions. It shows the humanists of the Renaissance.b. His democratic tendency is based on his humanist thought.c. His intellectual genius is outstanding.d. His character is melancholy.e. Hamlet is a hero of the Renaissance. His learning, wisdom, noble nature, limitation and tragedy are all representative of the humanists at the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries.莎士比亚：1.Shakespeare is one of the founders of realism in world literature.2.Shakespeare’s dramatic creation often used the method of adoptation.5. John Milton(1608)代表作: Paradise Lost: it is a long epic in 12 books, written in blank verse. 主旨：a revolt against God’s authority. Adam and Eve embody Milton’s belief in the powers of man. Satan is the real hero.弥尔顿：1. Milton was political in both his life and his art, the greatest English revolutionary poet.2. Milton wrote the greatest epic in English literature. He and Shakespeare have always been regarded as two patterns of English verse.3. Milton is a master of the blank verse，and he is a great stylist; he is famous for his grand style.ton has been admired for his sublimity of thought and majesty of expression.6. Jonathan Swift(born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1667) 代表作：A Tale of a Tub(一只澡盆的故事)The Battle of the Books（书战）Bickerstaff Almanac(1708 历书)Gulliver’s Travels(greatest work)The Drapier’s Letters(1724published)A Modest Proposal(1729 climax)剧情介绍：a. The first part Gulliver describes his shipwreck in Lilliput where the tallest people were six inches high. This part is full of references to current politics.b. The second part, the voyage to Brobdingnag is described, men there were sixty feet in height.c. The third part is a satire on philosophers and projectors, who were given to dwelling in the air, like the inhabitants of the Flying Island.d. The last part Gulliver was now in a country where horses were possessed of reason, and were the governing class, while the Yahoos, though in the shape of men, were brute beasts with such vices as stealing and lying.Swift总结：In simple, direct and precise prose, and he is a master satirist.7.Daniel Defoe(1660-1731)代表作： a. The Trueborn Englishman-ASatire(1701), it is a best-known pamphlet, which contained a caustic exposure of the aristocracy and the tyranny of the church.b. Robinson Crusoe(1719)----novel of adventurec. Captain Singleton(1720)---novel of adventured. Moll Flanders(1722)—form of autobiographye. Colonel Jacque(1722)剧情介绍：人物：Robinson, Friday.Wherever there was a Bible, there was a copy of Robinson Crusoe.The character of Robinson Crusoe is representative of the English bourgeoisie at the earlier stages of its development. He is most practical and exact, always religious and at the same time mindful of his own profit.7. Samuel Richardson(1689-1761)代表作：Pamela, or, Virtue Rewarded.Clarissa Harlowe(1747-1748)Sir Charles Grandison(1753-1754)剧情介绍: Pamela Andrews is a little waiting-maid of 15, whose mistress had just died when the storyopens. The lady’s son, Mr. B, takes a dishonorable advantage of her position. The novel is the first English psycho-analytical novel.8. Henry Fielding(1707-8 October, 1754)代表作: Joseph Andrews(1742);Jonathan WildTom Jones(the greatest)Amelia(last novel 1751)V oyage to Lisbon剧情介绍：Joseph Andrews: 因为Fielding鄙视Richardson的感伤主义文学，所以针对Richardson的Pamela, 写了这篇小说。