英美文学史考试名词解释

1 Epic An epic is a long oral narrative poem that operates on a grand scale and deals with legendary or historical events of national or universal significance Most epics deal with the exploits of a single individual and also interlace the main narrative with myths legends folk tales and past events They summarize and express the nature of ideals of an entire nation and reflect the values of the society from which it originated Beowulf is the first surviving epic written in the English language As the national epic of the English people Beowulf is a folk legend brought to England by Anglo it describes the exploits of a hero and is structurally built around three fights or adventures each of which involves a battle between the hero Beowulf and a monster 2 Allegory The word derives from the Greek allegoria It loosely describes any writing in verse or prose in which persons abstract ideas or events represent not only themselves on literal level but also stand for something else on the symbolic level An allegorical reading usually involves moral or spiritual concepts that may be more significant than the actual literal events described in a narrative Probably the most famous allegory in English literature is John Bunyan s Pilgrim s Progress a prose narrative symbolically concerning the human soul s pilgrimage through temptation and doubt to reach salvation 3 Sonnet Sonnet is a kind of poem which became popular in Italian During the Renaissance this kind of poem had been widely used A sonnet consisting of 14 lines with rhymes arranged according to one or other of certain definite schemes of which the Petrarchan and Shakespearean are the principal namely 1 abba abba followed by two or three other rhymes in the remaining six lines with a pause in the thought after the octave 2 abab cdcd efef gg The sonnets of Shakespeare are in the latter form Most sonnets are amatory in nature and contain a certain narrative development The famous poets are Shakespeare Sidney Daniel Spenser and so on 4 Humanism Broadly this term suggests any attitude which tends to exalt the human element or stress the importance of human interests as opposed to the supernatural divine elements or as opposed to the grosser animal elements The most important use of the term is to designate the revival of classical culture which accompanied the Renaissance Humanism suggest a devotion to those studies supposed to promote human culture most effectively in particular those dealing with the life thought language and literature of ancient Greece and Rome Humanists emphasized the value of human beings and the important of the present life They proclaimed that man not only have the right to enjoy the beauty of this life but have the ability to perfect themselves and create wonders 5 Novel of Initiation The initiation novel begins at the 18th century first in Germany and then prevails in Europe in the 19th century it comes to America The initiation novel is to show after suffering a lot of traumas both in physical and mental the young hero changes his previous world view or transfigures his disposition or he changes the both this change makes him get rid of his innocent childhood and will finally leads him to the complicated adult society In the initiation novels although the people and the stories may be very different the formations are similar the story always starts with the young hero s sufferings or observations of the villainy and losing his innocence these experiences would inevitably shock his little heart so the youth could transform from a nave child to an adaptable and mature man The typical works are Nathaniel Hawthorne s the Scarlet Letter and Young Mr Brown Herman Melville s Moby Dick and J D Salinger s The Catch in the Rye 6 Quest In mythology and literature a quest a journey towards a goal serves as a plot device and frequently as a symbol Quests appear in the folklore of every nation and also figure prominently in non national cultures In literature the objects of quests require great exertion on the part of the hero and the overcoming of many obstacles typically including much travel The aspect of travel also allows the storyteller to showcase exotic locations and cultures The typical works are Homer s Odyssey Herman Melville s Moby Dick and so on 7 Byronic Hero Byronic hero is a proud and mysterious rebel figure of noble origin in Byron s poems With immense superiority in his passions and powers the Byronic hero would carry on his shoulders the burden of righting all the wrongs in an evil society and would fight single handedly against any kind of tyrannical rules either in government in religion or in moral principles with unconquerable will and inexhaustible energies The conflict is usually one of rebellious individuals against outworn social systems and convention Such a hero appears first in Childe Harold s pilgrimage and then further developed in later works such as Manfred and Don Juan 8 Gothic Fiction Gothic Fiction means a style of writing popular in the late 18th century which produced stories set in lonely frightening places Gothic Fiction invariably exploits ghosts and monsters and setting such as castles dungeons and graveyards which imparts a suitably sinister and terrifying atmosphere The Gothic Fiction have opened up to later fictions the dark irrational side of human nature the savage egoism the perverse impulses and the nightmarish terror that lie beneath the controlled and ordered surface of the conscious mind Gothic Fiction has exerted significant influence on the literature of later generations The first Gothic Fiction is Horace Walpole s The Castle of Otranto 9 Naturalism The word used to describe works of literature which use realistic methods and subjects to convey a philosophical form of naturalism that is a belief that everything existed is a part of nature and can be explained by natural and material cause and not by supernatural spiritual or paranormal causes Unlike realism which focuses on literary technique naturalism implies a philosophical position for naturalistic writers Those in favor of s naturalistic approach to and interpretation of life concentrated on depicting the social environment dwelt particularly on its deficiencies and on the shortcoming of human beings One of those significant works of naturalism is Theodore Dreiser s Sister Carrie 10 Graveyard Poets A term applied to eighteenth century poets who wrote meditative poems usually set in a graveyard on the theme of human mortality death religion and melancholy Their poems made frequent use of funereal or gloomy imagery they were often very Christian writers who used the imagery of night death and gloom in spiritual contemplation of human mortality and our relation to the divine Edward Young and Thomas Gray are famous poets of the Graveyard school 11 Metaphysical Poets The metaphysical poets refer to a group of religious poets in the first half of the seventeenth century whose works were characterized by their wit imaginative picturing compressions often cryptic expression and play of paradoxes and juxtapositions of metaphor They were against the convention of Elizabethan love poetry They used contemporary scientific discoveries and theories the topical debates on humanism faith and eternity colloquial speech based rhythms and innovative verse forms to examine the relationship between the individual his God and the universe The typical metaphysical poets are John Donne Andrew Marvell 12 The Lost Generation a group of U S writers who came of