英国文学简史复习重点

1.Byronic hero: with immense superiority in his passions and powers, this Byronichero would carry on his shoulders the burden of righting all the wrongs in a corrupt society, and would rise single-handedly against any kinds of tyrannical rules either in government, in religion, or in moral principles with unconquerable wills and inexhaustible energies. The conflict is usually one of rebellious individuals against outworn social systems and conventions. E.g. George Byron “Don Juan”2.Conceit: In literature, a conceit is an extended metaphor with a complex logic thatgoverns a poetic passage or entire poem.In English literature the term is generally associated with the 17th century metaphysical poets, an extension of contemporary usage. In the metaphysical conceit, metaphors have a much more purely conceptual, and thus tenuous, relationship between the things being compared. E.g. John Donne “The Flea”3.English renaissance: The English Renaissance was a cultural and artisticmovement in England dating from the late 15th to the early 17th century.The beginning of the English Renaissance is often taken, as a convenience, to be 1485.Renaissance style and ideas, however, were slow to penetrate England, and the Elizabethan era in the second half of the 16th century is usually regarded as the height of the English Renaissance. E.g. Thomas More “Utopia”William Shakespeare “Hamlet”4.Romanticism in English poetry: at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuriesromanticism appeared in England as a new trend in literature. It rose and grew under the impetus of the Industrial Revolution and French Revolution. In 1798 Coleridge and William Wordsworth jointly published the “Lyrical Ballads”, which marked the beginning of romanticism in England. (Romanticism was an artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that originated in Europe toward the end of the 18th century and in most areas was at its peak in the approximate period from 1800 to 1850.) E.g. William Blake “The Lamb”Robert Burns “A Red, Red Rose”5.Dramatic monologue: in literature, it refers to the occurrence of a single speakersaying something to a silent audience. Robert Browning‟s“My Last Duchess” is a typical example in which the duke, speaking to a non-responding audience reveals the reasons for his disapproval of the behavior of his former duchess and some tyrannical and merciless aspects of his own personality.6.Streams of consciousness: it is a psychological term indicating “the flux ofconscious and subconscious thoughts and impressions moving in the mind at any given time independently of the person‟s will.”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. E.g. Virginia Woolf Mrs. Dalloway7.Epiphany(顿悟): Deep thoughts that might be gained through incidents andcircumstances which seem outwardly insignificant. It‟s Joyce‟s theory. E.g. James Joyce Dubliners8.Critical realism in English: English critical realism of the 19th century flourishedin the forties and in the early fifties. The critical realists described with much vividness and great artistic skill the chief traits of the English society and criticized the capitalist system from a democratic viewpoint. E.g. Charles Dickens Great Expectations David CopperfieldWilliam Blake “The Tyger”“Songs of Experience”Theme: God‟s creativityTone: rationalRhythm: blacksmithingImage: mysterious augustSix quatrains in rhymed couplets; the meter is regular and rhythmic; from the perspective of a more experienced personGeorge Bernard Shaw: He was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Shaw was against “art for art‟s sake.” He wrote, “For art‟s sake I will not face the toil of writing a sentence.”Shaw was a friend of progressive mankind. He supported the forces of revolution and democracy in their struggle against imperialism and reaction.Mrs. Warren‟s Profession is one of the Plays Unpleasant. Unpleasant it is to the bourgeois public because Shaw attacked in it the vices of capitalist society. He shows that under the guise of bourgeois respectability horrible crimes and corruption are concealed. In this play Shaw accuses the bourgeois of making profit by fostering prostitution. Mrs. Warren‟s own life experience as a whole cannot represent that of the ordinary, suffering poor women in capitalist society.“I wondered lonely as a cloud”—William WordsworthA lyric poem; four stanzas of six lines;alliteration;Masculine rhyme in “a, b, a, b, c, c”; rhythm scheme:ababcc, efefgg, hihikk, lmlmnn He also achieves musical quality by the management of alliteration (e.g. “That floats on high o‟er vales and hills” in line 2 and “Beside the lake, beneath the trees” in line 5) and assonance (e.g. “beneath the trees in line 5” and “ They stretched in never-ending line” in line 9) and consonance (e.g. “ vales and hills” in line 2 ). He arranges his poem in lines of iambic tetrameter in the main with alternation of iambic trimeter.“I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” is a poem about nature. With his pure and poetic language, Wordsworth brings us into a beautiful world where there are daffodils, trees and breeze. We follow the poet at every turn of his feelings. We share his melancholy when he “wandered lonely as a cloud” and his delight the moment his heart “with pleasure fills”. We come to realize the great power of nature that may influence our life deeply as revealed in the poem.Wordsworth, in the poem, also employs figurative language to evoke not only the visual effect but also the emotional response. (E.g. in line 1, the poet makes a comparison between “I wandered lonely” and “a cloud” by the use of simile, thus conveys to us his lonely and melancholy mood with the image of “cloud”. In line 7, he also amplifies the visual effect by the use of another simile “Continuous as the stars that shine…” to evoke our sense of “daffodils” with the image of “stars” twinkling on the milky way which is familiar to us all. He goes further to impress us with the image of countless daffodils with an overstatement in line 9 “They stretched in never-ending line”). Besides, natural things are also endowed with human being‟s characters by the poet‟s subtle use of personification. (e.g. “Tossing their heads in sprightly dance” “The waves beside them danced”) therefore, as we read the poem,we become aware of the poet‟s deep love toward nature through his lovely and vivid description about natural things with his figurative language.Term: relaxed, positive“Ode to the West Wind”—Percy Bysshe ShelleyThe ode is a lyric poem dealing with the soft theme. The poem expresses his desirefor freedom and his resolution to sacrifice for the struggle for freedom.Rhythm scheme: aba bcb cdc ded ee written in iambic pentameter.The first stanza begins with the alliteration …wild West Wind’ (1.1). The form of the apostrophe makes the wind also a personification. In the last line of this canto the west wind is considered the …Destroyer’ because it drives the last signs of life from the trees, and the …Preserver’ for scattering the seeds which will come to life in the spring.That may be why he is looking forward to the spring and asks at the end of the last canto …If Winter comes, can Sp ring be far behind?’. This is of course a rhetorical question because spring does come after winter, but the "if" suggests that it might notcome if the rebirth is strong and extensive enough and if it is not, another renewal—spring—will come anyway. Thus the question has a deeper meaning and does not only mean the change of seasons, but is a reference to death and rebirth as well. It also indicates that after the struggles and problems in life, there would always be a solution. It shows us the optimistic view of the poet about life which he would like the world to know.An adventure storyQuality: a sense of reality lifelikenessTheme: glorifies human labor. Labor is the source of pride and happiness Robinson is an individual laborer, then became a master, until at last a colonizer. He is the prototype of the pioneer colonist; is a typical 18th century English middle-class man. He is capable, energetic, courageous, self-reliant, and persistent.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. Robinson‟s every voyage is connected with some commercial enterprise. He owns a plantation where colored slaves are exploited. Defoe‟s bourgeois outlook manifests itself in the fact that he does not condemn Negro-slavery in his book. Though Robinson labors for his own existence, yet as soon as a native makes his appearance on the island, Robinson assumes the role of a master. “Master” is the first word Friday learns from Robinson. Here lies colonization in germ.The best part of the novel is the realistic account of the successful struggle of Robinson alone against the pitiless forces of nature on the island.。