英国文学史习题第二、三部分

PartIIThe Renaissance

I．Fill in the blanks.

1.The 16th century in England was a period of the breaking up of _____________relations and

the establishing of the foundations of _______________.

2.____________ broke off with the Pope, dissolved all the monasteries and abbeys in the

country, confiscated their lands and proclaimed himself head of ______________________.

3.The old English aristocracy having been exterminated in the course of the War of ________,

a new nobility, totally dependent on King’s power, come to the fore.

4.Absolute monarchy in England reached its summit during the reign of __________.

5._____________was the first to introduce the sonnet into English literature. In Elizabethan

time, the three greatest sonnet writers are William Shakespeare, __________________ and _________________.

6.Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and ___________ are generally regarded as Shakespeare’s four

great tragedies.

7.During the twenty-two years of his literary work, Shakespeare produced ______plays,

_____narrative poems and ______ sonnets.

8.The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus is one of ______________’s best plays. And it is him

who made __________ the principal vehicle of expression in drama.

9._____________ is often referred to as the poets’ poet.

10.Pope described Francis Bacon as the ___________, ___________, _____________ of

mankind. Bacon’s works may be divided into three classes, the __________, the __________, the _________ works.

II.Find out the match from column B for each item in column A.

(I)Find out the author and his work.

A B

1. ( ) Thomas Morea. Gorge Green

2. ( ) Edmund Spenser b. Eupheus

3. ( ) John Lyly c. The Fairy Queen

4. ( ) Marlowe d. Utopia

5. ( ) Robert Greene e.The Jew of Malta

(II). The relationship with Hamlet.

A B

1. ( ) Ghost a. friend

2. ( ) Claudius b. mother

3. ( ) Queen Gertrude c. father

4. ( ) Horatio d. girlfriend

5. ( ) Polonius e. girlfriend’s father

6. ( ) Ophelia f. uncle

(III). The character in the play.

A B

1. ( ) The Merchant of Venice a. Desdemona

2. ( ) As You Like It b. Cordelia

3. ( ) Hamlet c. Juliet

4. ( ) King Lear d. Ophelia

5. ( ) Othello e. Portia

6. ( ) Romeo and Juliet f. Rosalind

III. Define the literary terms listed below.

1.Renaissance:

1)The word, meaning “rebirth”, is commonly applied to the movement or period which

marks the transition from the medieval to the modern in Western Europe.

2)In the usual sense of the word, Renaissance suggests especially the 14th, 15th, 16th, and

early 17th centuries, the dates differing for different countries.

3)(It is best to regard the Renaissance as the result of a new emphasis upon and a new

combination of tendencies and attitudes already exiting, stimulated by a series of historical events. )

The new humanistic learning resulted from the rediscovery of classical literature is frequently taken as the beginning of the Renaissance on its conscious, intellectual side, since it was to the treasures of classical culture and to the authority of classical writers that the people of the Renaissance turned for inspiration.

2.sonnet:

1)It is a lyric poem of 14 lines with 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.

2)The form originated from medievalItaly in about 1230-1240, and reached its peak with

the Italian poet Petrarch. In the first half of the 16th century, Thomas Wyatt introduced the Italian sonnet into England and established English sonnet. The most famous English sonnet sequences appeared in Elizabethan times, including Sir Philip Sidney’s Astrophil and Stella(1591), Edmund Spenser’s Amoretti(1595) and Shakespeare’s Sonnets (1593-1598).

3)The two main forms of the sonnet are the Patrarchan, or Italian, and the English, or

Shakespearean. The former consists of an octave, or eight-line stanza, and a sestet, or six-line stanza. The octave has two quatrains, rhyming abba, abba; the first quatrain presents the theme, the second develops it. The sestet is built on a few different rhymes, arranged cddcee, cdecde, cdccdc, or cdedce; the first three lines exemplify or reflect on the theme, and the last three lines bring the whole poem to a unified close. Philip Sidney’s sonnets are excellent examples of this style in the English language.

4)The English sonnet consists of three quatrains, each rhymed differently, with a final,

independently rhymed couplet that makes an effective, unifying climax to the whole.

The rhyme scheme is abab, cdcd, efef, gg.

3.humanism:

1)Broadly, this term suggests any attitude which tends to exalt the human elements or

stress the importance of human interests, as opposed to the supernatural, divine elements —or as opposed to the grosser, animal elements.

2)In a more specific sense, humanism suggests a devotion to those studies supposed to

promote human culture most effectively—in particular, those dealing with the life, thought, language, and literature of ancient Greece and Rome. In literary history the most important use of the term is to designate the revival of classical culture which accompanied the Renaissance.

4.tragedy:

1)Tragedy is concerned with the harshness and apparent injustice of life.

2)It usually recounts an important and causally related series of events in the life of a

person of significance. The events would culminate in trials and catastrophes of a hero, who falls down from power and whose eventual death leads to the downfall of others.

Often the hero’s fall from happiness is due to a weakness in his character, a weakness such as the excessive pride of Faustus, the overweening ambition of Macbeth, or the uncontrolled jealousy of Othello, which brings self-destruction.

3)The tragic action aroused feelings of awe in the audience, who often leave the theatre

with a renewed sense of the seriousness and significance of human life. The word catharsis is often used to describe the audience’s feelings. It means the purging from the mind of the feelings of pity and fear the play has aroused.

5.essay:

1)The term refers to literary composition devoted to the presentation of the writer’s own

ideas on a topic and generally addressing a particular aspect of the subject. Often brief in scope and informal in style, the essay differs from such formal expository forms as the thesis, dissertation, or treatise.

2)The development of the form may be considered a result of the Renaissance emphasis on

the individual, which fostered exploration of one’s inner self in relation to the outside world.

6.classicism:1) As a critical term, classicism is a body of doctrine thought to be derived from

or to reflect the qualities of ancient Greek criticism. Classicism stands for certain definite ideas and attitudes, mainly drawn from the critical utterances of the Greeks and Romans or developed through an imitation of ancient art and literature. These include restraint, restrictedscope, dominance of reason, sense of form, unity of design and aim, clarity, simplicity, balance, attention to structure and logical organization, chasteness in style, severity of outline, moderation, self-control, intellectualism, decorum, respect for tradition, imitation, conservation, and good sense.

IV. Answer the following questions.

1.Give a summary about the English literature during the Renaissance period.

Answer: