英美文选重要知识点集锦.doc

Old English 450-1066 Medieval English 1066 - middle 14th centuryGeoffrey Chaucer - the father of English poetry first time to use heroic couplet The Renaissance - rebirth or revivalThe essence: HumanismBest representatives of the English humanists:Thomas More, Christopher Marlowe, William ShakespeareThe real mainstream:The Elizabethan dramaThe most famous dramatists: Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare,Ben JonsonEdmund Spenser - the poets poet ArthurThe Spenserian stanza:9-line verse stanzaChristopher Marlowe :based on German legend of a magician aspring for knowledge and finally meeting his tragic end as a result of selling his soul to the Devil. pastoral lifeWilliam Shakespeare38 plays,154 sonnets and 2 long poems“Four tragedies”: Hamlet, Othello, King Lear ,MacbethIn the second period:his style and approach became highly individualized.Two long poems:Venus and Adonis,The Rape of Lucrece eternal or immortal beauty;eulogizes the power of Nature to praise the friendship between Antonio and Bassanio, to idealize Portia a heroine of great beauty, wit and loyalty, to expose the insatiable greed and brutality hesitate between fact and fiction, language and action, too sophisticated to degrade his nature to the conventional role of a stage revenger “To be, or not to be”Soliloquy or monologue - fully reveal the inner conflict of the characters:a typical example of his pessimistic view towards human life and society in his late years.Francis Bacon - brevity, compactness and powerfulness. uses and benefits of study - studies serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability. How studies exert influence over human character: reading makes a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man.John Donne metalphysical poetry In his poetry,he frequently applies conceits,extended metaphors involving damatic cintrastsThe songs and sonnets,love is basic theme. :give compliments to the mistress and her power of beauty. whatever you are, you can not escape from death. When you are living, you are always in the shadow of death. Death only lasts a moment, our life after death is eternal. Though death is usually considered powerful, it actually provides a rest for a mans body and a birth for his soul.John Milton the only generally acknowledged epic in English literature since Beowulf.The story is taken from the Old Testament.The conflict is between human love and spiritual duty. In heaven, Satan led a rebellion against God with his unconquerable will. the most perfect example of the verse drama after the Greek style in English.Milton borrows his story from the Bible.Samson is Milton Neoclassicism The Age of Enlightenment or the Age of Reason :a progressive intellectual movement, reason (rationality), equality and science Artistic ideals: order, logic, restrained emotion and accuracyJohn Bunyan from , a religious allegory, pursue the truth. Urge people to abide by Christian Doctrines and seek salvationThe main character of :Christian,Pliable,FaithfulAlexander Pope:the first to introduce rationalism to England:his best satiric work,10 years for completion a poem written in heroic couplets, criticize the present poem lack of true taste & call on people to turn to the old Greek and Roman writers for guidance, true wit is best set in a plain style.Daniel Defoe,:the first literary works devoted to study of the lower-class peopleJonathan Swift: a master satirist Proper words in proper places:a perfect model of powerful satire four parts:Lilliput, Brobdingnag, Flying Island , Houyhnhnm Henry Fielding : Father of English Novel, “Prose Homer” Comic epic in proseHis language is easy,unlaboured and familiar,but extremely vivid and vigorous Samuel Johnson first combine an English dictionary, last neoclassicist enlightenerRichard Brinsley Sheridanthe only important English dramatist of the 18th century and are regarded as important links between the masterpieces of Shakespeare and those of Bernard Shaw. 主人公:Joseph Surface,Charles Surface,Sir Benjamin Backbite,Lady SneerwellThomas GrayRomantic Perid :began in 1798 with the publication of Wordsworth and Coleridges An age of poetry William Blake “The Chimney Sweeper”: childhood , :tyger suggests fear William Wordsworth :poems about nature and poems about human lifeLake Poets -William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge , Robert Southey.the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings “emotion recollected in tranquillity”Masterpieces on nature: ,Samuel Taylor Coleridge , George Gordon Byron.:the luddites fefer to the workers who destroyed the machines in their protest against unemployment from (the masterpiece of ByronPercy Bysshe ShelleyHis greatest achievement:four-act poetic drama If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?John Keats odes!4 great odes : , , , the contrast between the permanence of art and the transience of human passion,“Beauty is truth, truth beauty”Jane Austen The Victorian Period Charles Dickens one of the greatest critical realist writers of the Victorian AgeThe most distinguishing feature of his works:Character-portrayal his works are also characterized by a mingling of humor and pathos The Bronte Sisters Charlotte,Anne,Emily Alfred Tennyson :invents dramatic monologue, Poet Laureate 桂冠诗人, a real artistRobert Browning - the most original poet, who improve and mature the dramatic monologue his masterpiece this dramatic monologue is the dukes speech addressed to the agent who comes to negotiate the marriage, the duke is a self-conceited, cruel and tyrannical manGeorge Eliot:D.H.Lawrence regarded Eliot as the first novelist that started putting all the actions inside. Thomas Hardy - both a naturalistic and a critical realist writer., are known as Hardys “novels of character and environment”. experience is as to intensity, and not as to duration The Modern PeriodGeorge Bernand Shaw:the best known English dramatist since shakespeare estabilished his position as the leading playwright of his time :about economic oppression of womenHis plays can be regarded as social problem playsJohn Galsworthy:cetres itself on the Sonames-Irene-Boisinney triangleWilliam Butler Yeats“In Leda and the Swan”,you found the allusion to Hellen and the Trojan WarT.S.Eliot it hailed as a landmark and and a model of the 20th centuryD.H.Lawrence:starts with the marriage of Pauls parents.The plot:the disillusion in her husband maks her lavish all the affectins upon her sons James Joyce:famous for stream of consciousness.:autobiographical novel:Araby A boy makes a quest of his idealied childish love through painful experience up to the point of losing his innocence and coming to see the drabness and harshness of the adult world.:his encyclopedia-like masterpiece American Romantic PeriodStreches from the 18th century to the outbreak of the Civil War,also called “the American Renaissance”Free expression of emotion, escapes from society, and return to nature New England TranscendentalismWashington Irving father of the American short stories, “the American Goldsmith”Perfected the best classic style that American literature ever producedFirst novel contains German folk tales , Ralph Waldo Emerson -the spokesman of New England Transcendentalism movement is regarded as the Bible of New England TranscendentalismNathaniel HawthorneInterior of the heart, there is evil in every human heart, which may remain latent, perhaps, through the whole life, but circumstances may rouse it to activityHawthornes attitude towards Puritanism is mixed.The name of Goodman Browns wife is faith.Goodman Brown returns home,but since then lives a dismal and gloomy life.Walt Whitman Openness, freedom, individualism Free verse how a child is greatly influenced by his growing environments :a scene of the American Civil War:reflects the authors belief in the singularity and equality of all beings in value. Herman Melville A master of allegory and symbolism,like Hawthorne.The narrtive point of view of the first person is adopted in .Realistic period - the Gilded Age, the poor poorer and the rich richer, peoples attention was now directed to the interesting features of everyday existenceMark Twain - the true father of American literatureLocal colorist, vernacular, simple sentence,humor. The Gilded AgeHis 3 boyhood books: Hucks inner conflict about whether or not he should write a letter to tell Miss Watson where Jim is a conflict between society and conscience in Huck.Henry Jamesstream of consciousnessinner life of human being highly refined and insightful language Daisy is the most innocent girl. Daisy Miller has ever since become the American Girl in Europe,acelebrated cultural type who embodies the spirit of the New World.Emily DickinsonBased on her own experiences, her sorrows and joys express Dickinsons anxiety about her communication with the outside world. description of a moment of death Dickinson makes the train part of nature by animalizing it, like a horse. personify death and immortality so as to make her message strongly feltTheodore DreiserEmphrasize heredity and environment. “survival of the fittest” , The modern period -the second American Renaissance, the expatriate movement. the Lost GenerationImagist movement, Jazz AgeAlen Ginsberg,whose“Howl”became the manifesto of the Beat Movement.Ezra Pound - a leading spokesman of the “Imagist Movement” agreement with Whitmans free versePound began working for the Italian government during WW.Robert Lee Fros