英语专八——人文知识专题训练[1].doc

UNIT 4人文知识专题训练1.英国文学史纲要总结Outline of the History of the English Literature5thcentury B.C. The earliest inhabitants of the British islands Celtics, one tribe of which, Bretons, invaded the Great Britain and settled there for nearly 500 years.55B.C. Roman conquest by Julius Caesar brought the ancient romantic culture. The Anglo-Saxonsa branch of the Germanic tribe expelled the Celtics to the remote areas of the north and the west. Their mother tongue was the prototype of the modern English. England means the dwellings of the Anglos.The latter half of the 7th century The first poet of the BritainCaedman was born.Around 8th century The first well-preserved epicBeowulf emerged.9th century King Alfreds reign greatly enhanced the development of the English culture.1057 Scottish king Macbeth died. Several hundreds years later, Shakespeare created the famous tragedy with him as the protagonist.1066 Norman conquest. As a result, French replaced English as the official language and dominated the literary creation. The resumption of the English as the mainly used language was after the English and French Centurial War 300 years later.I. Anglo-Saxon period.Epic: “Beowulf”Beowulf, a hero, killed Grendel, a sea monster (thought to be the offspring of Cain, first murderer in the Genesis. Its artistic forms, such as kenning and alliteration had a great influence upon the poets that followed. Layamons “Brut” recorded the legends of King Arthur and it was also an important sign of the resumption of the English language. II. Medieval period.A. Geoffrey Chaucer: “The Canterbury Tales”, a collection of short stories depicting realistically the panorama of 14th century England. His style of writing was fluent and humorous, and his thoughts even surpassed his contemporaries. His sharp perception of human nature is the basic cause of his permanent charm and popularity.B. Some major events in the 15th century contributing to the Renaissance: a. Religious reform led by Martin Luther in Germany and John Calvin in France broke the dark clouds of the medieval Europe and destroyed the manacles of religion on peoples thoughts and spirits.b. The demise of the Easter Roman Empire, as a result of the fall of the Constantinople, forced many Greek scholar flee to the Italy with the remnant antiques. These artistic treasures of the ancient Greece and Roman acted a vital role in the renaissance of the culture represented by them.c. Typography promoted the study of the classic literature in Italy and Germany. The then English businessman William Caxton brought this technique to England as he traded in Europe, and it also greatly speeded up the English renaissance.d. Henry 8th was a tyrant but his divorce with wife ended up in the split of the Anglican Church with the Roman Catholic Church and resulted in the religious reform of the Anglicanism. He killed Thomas Moore, the author of Utopia. (iambic pentameter a. Thomas Wyatt: introduced the sonnets from Italy to England. with no rhyme) III. Elizabethan period. b. Earl of Surrey: reformed the feet of sonnets and introduced the blank verse. A. Poetry initiated by 4men c. Philip Sidney: the first work on the theory of classic literary criticism “The Apologie for Poetrie”(诗辩) and romance “Arcadia”.atheism 1st blank verse in drama d. Edmund Spenser: called “the poets poet”, spenserian stanza, “The Shepherds Calendar”(牧人日记), “The Faerie Queene”（仙后）.B. Drama. a. John Lyly, “Euphues”, “Euphuism”(尤非依斯体), artificial and ornate. University wits. b. Robert Greene had a jealousy for Shakespeare. “Tamburlaine the Great” “Edward II”c. Christopher Marlowe: most gifted of the University wits “Doctor Faustus” “The Jew of Malta” d. Shakespeare: master of drama. Keen perception of life. C. Prose. Francis Bacon: The founder of modern science. “Essays”, “New Instrument”(Novum Organum), “Advancement of learning”.D. Ben Jonson: prolific dramatist, “ Every Man in His Humor ”, “Volpone”. Poet Laureate of James I.IV. 17th century ( the Glorious Revolution, the Restoration)A. Drama: bold depiction of the extravagant life of the nobles. B. Poetry: John Dryden, Metaphysical poet John Donne, John Miltona. John Dryden: Poet Laureate, Founder of English literary criticism. Following the standards of classicism, he established the heroic couplet as the principal English verse forms, clarified the English prose and made it precise, concise, and flexible, and raised the English literary criticism to a new level. Poem, “Absalom and Achitophel”, Prose, “An Essay of Dramatic Poesy”.b. Metaphysical Poetry and John Donne. Characterized by mysticism in content and fantasticality in form. Called by Samuel Johnson. “ The Flea”, “Meditations”, imaginative, philosophical and meditative.c. John Milton: spokesman of the revolution. “Paradise Lost”, “Paradise Regained”, “Samson Agonistes”.C. John Bunyan: “The Pilgrims Progress”, a religious allegory criticizing the social trend of the restoration period and also a disclosure of the evilness of every society, with a popular speech ennobled by the solemn dignity and simplicity of the language of the English Bible. Thackerays “Vanity Fair” named after a place mentioned in this book.V. 18th century (age of reason and enlightenment)A. Theorist: John Locke: a. “Concerning Human Understanding”, emphasizing the importance of the sense as a means of gaining knowledge and the significance of reason in understanding the world. b. Men are born kind. They have the right to pursue happiness and the obligation to bring benefits to the society.Men are naturally equal and they can protect their right by social contract. Nation is a kind of social contract.B. Poetry: two trends: classicism (major) and pre-romanticism (minor).classicism a. Alexander Pope: student of Dryden. weak in body. Advocated classicism and imitation of the inherited from work of ancient Greece and Rome. Proposed that poets should depict gracious and beautiful John Dryden things and have an elegant taste. “Essay on Criticism”, gave a detailed exposition of the principles of the classic poems. Culmination in classicism and heroic couplet. “Essay on Man”, “The Rape of the Lock”, full of reason without the expression of emotion. b. William Cowper: “The Task”, forerunner of the natural poems. with romantic feelings.c. George Crabbe: employing the classic forms to depict the miserable rural life. “The Village”.pre-romanticism a. Edward Young: “The Complaints or Night Thoughts, on life, Death, and Immortality.”paved b. James Thomson: “The Seasons”, a pure love for nature.the way c. Thomas Gray: “An Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”, sad in tone and refined in style.for the d. McPherson: “The Poems of Ossian” romantic e. William Blake: “The Tiger”, “Songs of Innocence” and “Songs of Experiences”. mysticism, period revolutionary passion. a strong likeness between Shelly and Blake in the imagery and symbolism. f. Robert Burns: using Scottish dialect to express his feelings. “Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect”, “A Red, Red Rose”, “For A That and A That”(穷得有志气), “John Barley Corn”, “My Hearts in the Highlands”. (including Goldsmith as the poet “sentimentalist”)C. Prose: Joseph Addison and Richard Steele: “The Tatler”, “The Spectator”, making a great contribution to the cultivation of good manners of the English nation.D. Fiction: a. Daniel Defoe: The father of the European and English fiction. vivid language. “Robinson Crusoe”, “Moll Flanders”, “Roxana”. b. Jonathan Swift: most ruthless in satirical and ironic writing. “Tale of a Tub”, lashing the deviation of the Bible by the Roman Catholic Church and Lutheranism and Calvinism. “A Modest Proposal”, disclosing the cruelty of the British government toward Irish people. “Gullivers Travels”, masterpiece, giving an unparalleled satirical depiction of the vices of his age. c. Henry Fielding: systematically proposed the theory of realistic novel writing and put it into practice, presenting the true facts of the 18th century English society. as fiction writer, “Tom Jones”, “Joseph Andrews”, “Amelia”, “Jonathan Wild”, elevating the author, as the narrator to the level of God and also displaying optimism. as playwright, “Historical Register”.d. Samuel Richardson: father of the epistolary novel, “ Pamela”, based on “Arcadia”, “Clarissa”, and “Sir Charles Grandison”.e. Tobias George Smollett: “picaresque novels”, humorous and refined. “Roderick Random”, “Peregrine Pickle”,“Humphry Clinkper”.f. Laurence Sterne: “The Tristram Shandy”, mainly arguments and fantasies about philosophy and moral, original in that the author used a technique like “steam of consciousness”.E. Drama a. Oliver Goldsmith: though called “poor goldy” by peers, he had a romantic spirit which also earned him a name “sentimentalist”. poems, “The Deserted Village”, “The Traveller”. masterpiece novel, “The Vicar of Wakefield”, drama, “The Good-Natured Man”, “She Stoops to Conquer”.b. Richard Brinsley Sheridan: “The Rivals”, “The School for Scandal”, repudiating the high society for its vanity has been regarded as the best play since Shakespeare.F. Essay a. Samuel Johnson: lexicographer, poet and great critic. “A Dictionary of the English Language”. “London”, “The Vanities of Human Wishes”, “Life of Richard Savage”, “ Irene”, “Rasselas”. edited two periodicals “The Rambler” and “The Idler”. became “the great cham of literature”, and founded the famous Literary Club.VI. Romantic period (French revolution,“Lyrical Ballads”抒情歌谣集as the sign, utilitarianism功利主义.) A. Poetry: a. William Wordsworth: has a strong worship for nature, simplicity and purity of the language,“Lyrical Ballads” with Coleridge , “Intimations of Immortality”永生悟颂, “Tintern Abbey”, “The Daffodils”, “We Are Seven”, “The Excursion”, “The Prelude”, （autobiographical）.Lake b.Samuel Taylor Coleridge: has made reforms in the form of English poems, in musicality and rhythm, “Christabel” “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”, “Kubla Khan”.Poets c. Robert Southey: “The Inchcape Rock” ,“The Battle of Blenheim”, “My Days among the Dead are Passed”.d. George Gordon Byron: revolutionary zeal and democratic ideas, spirit of rebellion. “Childe Harolds Pilgrimage”, “When We Two Parted”, “She Walks in Beauty”, “The Isles of Greece”, “Don Juan”(masterpiece). “Byronic Hero”.e. Percy Bysshe Shelley: revolutionary in ideas, religion and philosophy. poems, “Queen Mab”, “Alastor”, “The Revolt of Islam”, “Hellas”. “Prometheus Unbound”, “Cenci”, “A Defence of Poetry”. Single poems, “The Cloud”, “Ode to the West Wind”, “To a Skylark”.f. John Keats: exploits the ancient Greek heritage. “Ode on a Grecian Urn” ,proposed the principle of “truth beauty, beauty is truth. “Endymion”, “Hyperion”, “Ode on a Nightingale”, “To Autumn”, “On the Grasshopper and Cricket”, “The Eve of St. Agnes”.g. Walter Scott: poet, “Minstrel of the Scottish Border”, “The Lady of the Last Minstrel”, “Marmion”, “The lady of the lake”, “The Lord of the Isles”, “Rokeby”. B. novelist, a. Walter Scott the fountainhead of historical novel of the Europe, “Waverley”, “Ivanhoe”, “Woodstock”, “The Talisman”, “Count Robert of Paris”, “Quentin Durward”. b. Jane Austen: paved a way for the latter women writers, pre-realist. best at describing young girls. “Pride and Prejudice”, “Sense and Sensibility”, “Emma”, “Mansfield Park” “Persuasion”, “Northanger Abbey”.c. C. Essay: a. Charles Lamb: the romanticist of the city, “The Essay of the Elia” b. William Hazlitt, c. Leigh Hunt, d. De C. Essay: a. Charles Lamb: the romanticist of the city, “The Essay of the Elia” b. William Hazlitt, c. Leigh Hunt, d. De Quincey. VII. Victorian period divided into three trends: Critical Realism; Aestheticism; Neo-Romanticism and the beginning of the 20th centuryEdwardian period and the Georgian poets (industrial revolution, Darwinism, utilitarianism further, crisis of belief)Realism a.Charles Dickens: a radical. The greatest literature was literature for the people. character portrayal.humor and satire, also powerful in painting pictures of pathos. “Pickwick Papers” “Oliver Twist”, “Dombey and Son”, “David Copperfield”, “Bleak House”, “Hard Times”, “Little Dorrit”, “A Tales of Two Cities”, “Great Expectations”, “Our Mutual Friend”. Including George Bernard ShawVictorian b. William Makepeace Thackeray: strict realism. moralizing. making heroes occur in different novels and narrating their origin, thus adding a peculiar truthfulness to the story. “Vanity Fair”period c. Bronte sisters: Charlotte Bronte: “Jane Eyre”, autobiographical. “Shirley”, “Villette”, “The Professor” Anne Bronte: “Agnes Grey”, “The Tenant of the Wildfell Hall”. Emily Bronte: “Wuthering Heights” against the moral standards of the Victorian period, surpasses her time to show the instinctive impulse of human being with consummate techniques. d. Mrs. Gaskell: “The Hungary Forties”, a first describing the class struggle between workers and capitalist. d. George Elliot: forerunner of psychological novel, believe in the “religion of humanity” and fatalism, “Adam Bede”, “The Mill on the Floss”, “Silas Marner”. e. George Meredith: “The Egoist”, further developing the skills of writing peoples mind.Aestheticism: Beginning at the middle of the 19th century. The French poet Theophile Gautier first put the theory of “art for arts sake”(Lart pour Lart”) forward. Its gist is that art should be separated from any social needs. A cultural phenomenon of “ fin de siecle” in Europe. It was a kind of escapism in essence. a. John Ruskin: forerunner of aestheticism, “Beauty should be a organic part of the whole life of human being”, “Modern Painters”, “The Seven Lamps of Architecture”, “Stone of Venice”, all express a disappoint for capitalist culture and a longing for the creating freedom of the medieval and pre-renaissance period.b. Walter Pater: Put forward the manifesto of “art for arts sake” in his “Renaissance” and his belief is the pursuit of beauty as the sole “success of life”. “Marius the Epicurean”, “Imagery Portraits”, “Appreciation”.c. Oscar Wilde: decadent period. Declare that art does not reflect life but life imitates art, so that art should not begin with the study of life but with what is untrue and does not exist. essay, “The Decay of Lying”, novel, “The Picture of Dorian Gray”, tragedy, “Salom”, fairy stories, “Happy Prince and Other Tales”, “A House of Pomegranates”, 4 comedies, “Lady Windermeres Fan”, “A Woman of No Importance”, “An Ideal Husband”, “The Importance of Being Earnest”.d. Algernon Charles Swinburne: A pious admirer of “pure beauty” at the early period. “Atlanta in Calydon”, “Poems and Ballads”, marked by free choice of subjects and frank treatment of passion, were meant to be a expression of defiance to the hypocrisy and philistinism(庸俗) of the Victorian England. Later he changed.Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood: similar to Aestheticism, revolting against the material and spiritual ugliness.a. Dante Gabriel Rossettis: painter and poet, founder of P-R B. “the fleshy school of poetry”, “The Blessed Damozel”, “The House of Life”. Other important poets:a. William Morris: “The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems” became a impetus to the Aesthetic movement. Poem, “The Earthly Paradise”. Since 70s, he became a socialist poet, prose, “A Dream of John Ball”, “News from Nowhere”.d. Alfred Tennyson: poem as a means to express the principles of ethic and philosophy, and the handmaid of the bourgeois “duty and faith”, “two voices”, one echoes the social need, another echoes the personal emotion, “The Lady of Shalott”, “Lotus Eaters”(食忘忧果者)， “In Memorial”, “Maud”, “The Princess”, “Locksley Hall”, “Idylls of the King”(masterpiece).c. Robert Browning: interested in the rare known anecdotes in the past and introduced the dramatic monologue into the English poetry. He is well known for buoyant optimism. Poem, “Paracelus”, “Pippa Passes”, “Fra Lippo Lippi”, “Abt Vogler”, “The Ring and the Book”, essay, “Parleyings”.d. Matthew Arnold: great literary critics and “the lonely Victorian poet”. Essay, “Essay in Criticism”, “Essay in Criticism, Second Series”, “Culture and Anarchy”, poem, “Lines Written in Kensington Gardens”, “Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuze”, “Dover Beach,” “Knowledge and truth, in the full sense of the words, are not attainable by the great mass of the human race at all”. He placed his hopes on “the thinking few”.e. Gerard Manley Hopkins: poet, “inner scene”, “inner response”, “jumping rhythm”, “The Wreck of the Deutschland”. Neo-Romanticism: laid emphasis on the invention of exciting adventures and fascinating stories to entertain the reading public and led the novel back to story-telling and to romance.a. Robert Louis Stevenson: “Treasure Island”(金银岛). He insisted upon skills in handling material rather than upon the value of ideas in literary creation.90s:Playwright: George Bernard Shaw: the creator of a new publicist drama. Exposure of the capitalist society and support the socialists. “Plays: Unpleasant”, “Plays: Pleasant”, “Three Plays for the Puritans”, “Man and Superman”, “Major Barbara”, “Pygmalion”, “Heartbreak House”, “Arms and Man”, “Mrs. Warrens Profession”, “The Apple Cart”, “Too Good to be True”.Novelist: a. Anthony Trollope: his works reflect a spirit of “order and quietness”. “The Barset Series”, “The Warden”(教区委员), “The Last Chronicle of Barset”.b. Thomas Hardy: transitional novelist and poet, “Wessex Novels”, “Under the Greenwood Tree”, “Far From the Madding Crowd”, “The Return of the Native”, “Tess of Durberviles”, “Jude the Obscure”, his novels, full of despair and pessimism, gave reader a feeling that “disaster is inevitable”. Poem, “Poems of the Pas