英国文学简史复习重点.doc

1. Byronic hero: with immense superiority in his passions and powers, this Byronic hero 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: Inliterature, aconceitis anextended metaphorwith a complexlogicthat governs a poetic passage or entirepoem. InEnglish literaturethe term is generally associated with the 17th centurymetaphysical poets, an extension of contemporary usage. In themetaphysicalconceit, metaphors have a much more purelyconceptual, and thus tenuous, relationship between the things being compared. E.g. John Donne “The Flea” 3. English renaissance: TheEnglish Renaissancewas aculturalandartistic movementin 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 theElizabethan erain 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 centuries romanticism 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 speaker saying something to a silent audience. Robert Brownings “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 of conscious and subconscious thoughts and impressions moving in the mind at any given time independently of the persons will.” In the 20th century, under the influence of Freuds 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 and circumstances which seem outwardly insignificant. Its Joyces theory. E.g. James Joyce Dubliners8. Critical realism in English: English critical realism of the 19th century flourished in 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: Gods 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 anIrishplaywrightand a co-founder of theLondon School of Economics. Shaw was against “art for arts sake.” He wrote, “For arts 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. Warrens 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. Warrens 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,lmlmnnHe also achieves musical quality by the management of alliteration (e.g. “That floats on high oer 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 beings characters by the poets 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 poets 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 desire for 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 thealliterationwild 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 Preserverfor 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 Spring be far behind?. This is of course a rhetorical question because spring does come after winter, but the if suggests that it might not come if the rebirth is strong and extensive enough and if it is not, another renewalspringwill 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.The Life and Surprising Adventures of Robinson CrusoeDaniel DefoeAn adventure storyQuality: a sense of reality lifelikenessTheme: glorifies human labor. Labor is the source of pride and happinessRobinson 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 midd