英文学术语.doc

Useful Literary Terms for English LiteratureEpicEpic is a long narrative poem in which action, characters, and language are on a heroic level and style is exalted and majestic. Major characteristics of an epic are 1) a vast setting remote in time and place, 2) a noble and dignified objective, 3) a simple plot, 4) a central incident (or series of incidents) dealing with legendary material, 5) theme involving universal human problems, 6) a towering hero of great stature, 7) superhuman strength of body, character, or mind, 8)supernatural forces such as gods, angels, and demons, intervening from time to time. Among noted epics are Homers Iliad and the Odyssey, the Old English Beowulf and Miltons Paradise Lost.AlliterationThe repetition of similar sounds, usually consonants or consonant clusters, in a group of words. Sometimes the term is limited to the repetition of initial consonant sounds. When alliteration occurs at the beginning of words, it is called initial alliteration; when it occurs within words, it is called internal or hidden alliteration. It usually occurs on stressed syllables.Although alliteration sometimes appears in prose, it is mainly a poetic device. Like other forms of sound repetition, alliteration in poetry serves two important purposes: it is pleasing to the ear, and it emphasizes the words in which it occurs. Alliteration is an important poetic device in Anglo-Saxon poetry where it generally occurs on three of the four stressed syllables in line. Something of the alliterative effect can be seen in Beowulf. UnderstatementIt deliberately represents something as very much less in magnitude or importance than it really is or is ordinarily considered to be. A special form of understatement is litotes, the assertion of an affirmative by negating its contrary: “ He is not the brightest man in the world” meaning “He is stupid”. The figure is frequent in Anglo-Saxon poetry, where the effect is usually one of grim irony. In Beowulf, after Hrothgar has described the ghastly mere where the monster Grendel dwells, he comments, “That is not a pleasant place”. Not troublesome for very welcome; need not praise for a right to condemn.Chivalric Romance (Medieval Romance)It is a type of narrative that developed in twelfth-century France, spread to the literatures of other countries, and displaced the earlier epic and heroic forms. (“Romance” originally signified a work written in the French language, which evolved from a dialect of the Roman language, Latin.) Romances were at first written in verse, later in prose as well. The romance is distinguished from the epic in which it does not represent a heroic age of tribal wars, but a courtly and chivalric age, often one of highly developed manners and civility. Its standard plot is that of a quest undertaken by a single knight in order to gain a ladys favor; frequently its central interest is courtly love, together with tournaments fought and dragons and monsters slain for the damsels sake; it stresses the chivalric ideals of courage, loyalty, honor, mercifulness to an opponent, and elaborate manners; and it delights in wonders and marvels. Supernatural events in the epic had their causes in the will and actions of the gods; romance shifts the supernatural to this world, and makes much of the mysterious effect of magic, spells and enchantments.The BalladIt is the most important branch of folk literature. A ballad is a story told in song, usually in 4-line stanza, with the second and fourth lines rhymed. When it was chanted by ballad-singers, the audience joined in a refrain which usually followed each stanza. The ballads are in the various English and Scottish dialects. Typically, the ballad is dramatic, condensed, and impersonal: the narrator begins with the climactic episode, tells the story tersely by means of action and dialogue and tells it without self-reference or the expression of personal attitudes or feelings. The subject matter of the ballads is of great variety, from war and bloodshed and superstition to domestic affairs and outlawry. A group of ballads dealing with blood strife on the English and Scottish border are known as “border ballads”.There are twelve months in all the year. As I hear many men say,But the merriest month in all the year Is the merry month of May.Now Robin Hood is to Nottingham gone, With a link-a-down and a-day,And there he met a silly old woman, Was sweeping on the way.Iambic pentameterA poetic line consisting of five verse feet with each foot an iamb(iambus)- that is , an unstressed syllable(/) followed by a stressed syllable(/). Iambic pentameter is the most common verse line in English poetry. At once as far as angels ken he viewThe dismal situations waste and wild:A dungeon horrible on all sides round As one great furnace flamed, yet form those flamesNo light, but rather darkness visible-Heroic CoupletLines of iambic pentameter, which rhyme in pairs: aa, bb, cc, and so on. The adjective “heroic” was applied in the later seventeenth century because of the frequent use of such couplets in heroic (that is, epic) poems and in heroic dramas. This verse form was introduced into English poetry by Geoffrey Chaucer in the most of The Canterbury Tales and has been in constant use ever since. From the age of John Dryden through that of Samuel Johnson, the heroic couplet was the predominant English measure for all the poetic kinds; some poets, including Alexander Pope, used it almost to the exclusion. As soon as April pierces to the rootThe drought of March, and bathes each bud and shootThrough every vein of sap with gentle showersFrom whose engendering liquor spring the flowers;When zephyrs have breathed softly all aboutInspiring every wood and field to sprout,RenaissanceRenaissance means “rebirth,” and is applied to the activity, spirit, and time of he revival of art, learning and literature in Europe extending over a period of 300 years (about 1350-1650), marking a transition from the medieval to the modern world. In medieval society peoples interests as individual were subordinated to their function as elements in a social unit; in medieval theology peoples relations to the world about them were largely reduced to a problem of adapting or avoiding the circumstances of earthly life in an effort to prepare their souls for a future life. But Renaissance people had caught from their glimpses of classical culture a vision of human life quite different from these attitudes. They started to see human beings, far from being groveling worms, as glorious creatures capable of individual development in the direction of perfection. In literature, the period was notable for a revival of interest in the humanities and a rediscovery of classic works of Greek and Roman origin. The Renaissance, however, was a many-pronged era that included vigorous new trends in art, science, religion, and politics. Also, the Renaissance ushered in the growth of cities and commerce, as well as increased travel throughout Europe and resolute colonization in the New World. Great writers of the time in England include Spenser, Sidney, Shakespeare and John Milton.HumanismHumanism is referred to the system of thought or action in which human interests, values, and dignity are held to be dominant. Humanism implies devotion to the concerns of mankind; it is an attitude of mind that concentrates upon the activities of man rather than upon the supernatural world, the divine, the world of nature, or the so-called animal kingdom. Historically, humanism was a Renaissance doctrine, born in fourteenth-century Italy, which stressed the essential worth, dignity, and potential of man as contrasted with an older view that man was wicked, worthless, and doomed to destruction both in this life and in that to come. Renaissance humanists, deriving their beliefs from study of ancient poets, historians, and philosophers, came to believe that man was indeed the center of he universe and that he was capable of living a life of reason, dignity, morality, and even happiness.AllegoryA work of art in which a deeper meaning underlines the superficial or literary meaning, or the representation of one meaning by another in this way. It is often referred to a work of fiction in which the author intends characters and their actions to be understood in terms rather than their surface appearances and meanings, and the implied or intended meanings involve moral or spiritual concepts more significant than the actual narrative itself. Bunyans Pilgrims Progress and Goldings Lord of Flies are two examples of this kind.Spenserian StanzaIt is a 9-line stanza rhymed in ababbcbcc. The first eight lines are written in iambic pentameter; the last line is written in iambic hexameter. Because of its rare beauty, this verse form was much used by nearly all the later poets, especially imitated by the Romantic poets of the 19th century. For example, Spenserian stanza was used in Byrons Childe Harolds Pilgrimage. University WitsAmong the first dramatists to write for the popular playhouses was a group of young men called “University Wits”, because they had studied at the universities of Oxford or Cambridge, and then set up as professional writers, selling their learning and “wits” to the London public of playgoers, and to the reading public as well. John Lyly, Thomas Lodge, George Peele were at Oxford; Robert Greene, Thomas Nashe and Christopher Marlowe came from Cambridge. Thomas Kyd was not strictly a University Wit since he seems not to have attended a university but he belonged to the same school, and after Marlowe, he became the most influential playwright of them all. The Miracle PlayIt is a simple play based on Bible stories, covering from creation to the last judgment. They were at first performed in the churches. But after the actors introduced secular and even comical elements into the performance, the priests forbade plays inside the church. Then the players went into the market place, usually performing on a wagon stopping at chosen places. People enjoyed them very much. Miracle plays, together with other kinds of early plays, keeps alive the English dramatic tradition, and paved the way for the flourishing of drama in the English Renaissance period.The Morality PlayA morality presents the conflict of good and evil with the introduction of allegorical personages, such as Mercy, Peace, Hate, Folly and so on. These characters, as their names indicate, represent different abstraction in order to illustrate certain immoral and religious doctrines. Prevailing in the Middle Ages, Morality plays contribute to the flowering of English drama in the Renaissance England.SoliloquyIn drama, an extended speech delivered by a character alone onstage. The character reveals his or her innermost thoughts and feelings directly to the audience, as if thinking aloud.SonnetSonnet is the one of the most conventional and influential forms of poetry in Europe. A sonnet is a lyric invariably of fourteen lines, usually in iambic pentameter, restricted to a definite rhyme scheme.Sonnets were highly popular in Renaissance Italy, and thereafter in Spain, Portugal and other European countries. German and English Romantics revived the form, which remains popular. Among the notable sonneteers are, besides Petrach and Shakespeare, Dante, Edmund Spenser, Philip Sidney, John Keats, Elizabeth Barrett Browning and etc.There are three prominent types of sonnet, all named after their founders or perfecters.Shakespearean SonnetAlso called Elizabethan sonnet or English sonnet, this sonnet form is perfected by Shakespeare. It is structured of three quatrains and a terminal couplet in iambic pentameter with the rhyme pattern abab cdcd efef gg.Petrarchan SonnetAlso called Italian sonnet, this sonnet form originated in Italy in the 13th century and was consummated by Francesco Petrarch, a crowned laureate. This form contains an octave with the rhyme pattern abbaabba and a sestet of various rhyme patterns such as cdecde or cdcdcd.Spenserian SonnetA Spenserina sonnet form comprises three quatrains and a couplet in iambic pentameter with the rhyme scheme abab bcbc cdcd ee. This sonnet form is considered by some a variation of Shakespearean sonnet. Some poets write sonnets on a single subject or under one controlling idea and thus create a sonnet sequence or sonnet cycle.EnlightenmentEnlightenment is another term for the Age of Reason, a philosophical movement of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, which stressed the powers of human reason and was marked by political, religious, and educational unrest. The movement was the outgrowth of a number of seventeenth-century intellectual attainments and currents: the discoveries of Isaac Newton, the Rationalism of Descartes and Pierre Bayle, and the empiricism of Francis Bacon and John Locke. Leading figures in the Enlightenment were Voltaire and Buffon of France, Swift, Pope, Edward Gibbon of Britain, and Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine, and Thomas Jefferson of America.NeoclassicismNeoclassicism is a style of writing developed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that rigidly adhered to canons of form derived from classical antiquity. Neoclassicism was notable for emotional restraint, elegance and exactness of diction, strict observance of the three unities, common sense, rationalism, and logic. The “modern” writers cited under the entry classicism are neoclassicists. Romanticism According to Victor Hugo (1802-1885), romanticism emphasized the “liberalism of literature”, freed artists from restraints and rules imposed by classicists and encouraged revolutionary political ideas. A later English writer suggested that the adding of strangeness to beauty constituted the romantic spirit of the age. Other writers have insisted that the so-called romantic mood is a desire to escape from reality, especially unpleasant reality. In fact, the widespread movement of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries exhibited each of these characteristics. Generally speaking, romanticism cultivates the individual ego, esp. in the rare gifted person, and brings that ego into opposition with a formalistic, unimaginative, or sordidly materialist society. It may be called a literary attitude in which imagination is considered more important than formal rules and reason and than a sense of fact. Major literary figures of this period are Bryant, Irving, Cooper, Hawthorne, Melville, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Poe, Longfellow and Whitman in America, and Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Keats, Byron, Tennyson, and Scott in England.Ottava Rima An Italian stanza of eight lines, each of eleven syllables (or, in the English adaption, of ten or eleven syllables), the first six lines rhyming alternately and the last two forming a couplet with a different rhyme: used in Byrons Don Juan and Keats Isabella. (See the following example: abababcc)Tis pity learned virgins ever wed With persons of no sort of educationOr gentleman, who, though well born and bredGrow tired of scientific conversation;I dont choose to say much upon this head,Im a plain man, and in a single stationBut-Oh! ye lords of ladies intellectual,Inform us truly, have they not hen-pecked you all?OdeAn ode, in ancient literature, is an elaborate lyrical poem composed for a chorus to chant and to dance; in modern use, it is a rhymed lyric expressing noble feelings, often addressed to a person or celebrating an event.Terza Rima It was used by Dante (1265-1321) in The Divine Comedy. The first and third lines rhyme, and the second line is in rhyme with the fourth and sixth lines, the rhyme scheme being aba, bcb, cdc, ded, ee. This linked chain gives a feeling of onward motion. The metrical pattern of each line is basically iambic pentameter.Simile A comparison made between tow things through the use of a specific word of comparison, such as like, as than, or resemblePersonificationA figure of speech in which something nonhuman is given human qualitiesRealismRealism is, in its broadest sense, simply fidelity to actuality in its representation in literature. Realistic movement arose in the nineteenth century, at least partially in reaction against Romanticism, which was centered on the novel and dominant in France, England, and America from roughly mid-century to the closing decade, when it was replaced by Naturalism. Realism defines a literary method, a philosophical and political attitude, and particular range of subject matter. It depicts the familiar, ordinary aspects of life in a matter-of-fact, straightforward manner designed to reflect life as it actually is, and treats the subject matter in a way that presents careful descriptions of everyday life. The surface details, the common actions, and the minor catastrophes of a middle-class society constituted the chief subject matter of the movement. Authors like Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Balzac, Tolstoi, Mark Twain, John Galsworthy, Sinclair Lewis, and John OHara are considered as realistic writers.Critical RealismThe term is commonly referred to realistic fiction in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, particularly in Britain, France and America. It is also used to refer to the practice of writers and intellectuals in the period between 1875-1920 who applied the methods of realistic fiction to the criticism of society and the examination of social issues. Representative writers are Balzac of France (1799-1850), Dickens of Britain (1812-1870) and Dreiser of America (1871-1945).ModernismModernism is a general term that is applied to writing marked by a strong and conscious break with traditional forms and techniques of expression in the first half of twentieth century. Modern when applied to literature is commonly t