英国文学史与选读讲义1

British Literature By Wenting Liu British literature Lecture 1 About the authors Social background Life experience Point of view political literary Poet novelist dramatist playwright essayist prose writer Achievement contribution Social status position Representative works About the works Synopsis the plots stories Theme Characters heroes protagonist antagonist Social significance importance Artistic features techniques figures of speech 修辞 Simile metaphor personification symbol irony paradox metonymy synecdoche overstatement understatement alliteration and so on Find the definition of the above terms The period of English Literature I Early and Medieval English Literature II The English Renaissance 14th 16th century III The Period of Bourgeois Revolution and Restoration 17th C IV Neoclassical Period The Age of Reason and Enlightenment 18th C V Romantic period early 19th wwII VI Critical Realism Victoria Period the second half of the 19th C VII Modern Period 20 th C 2 Early and Medieval Literature Questions 1 The literature forms of Anglo Saxon period 2 what s the England national epic 3 The story of Beowulf 4 What are the three battles of Beowulf 5 The definition of epic 6 The literature forms of Anglo Norman period British Literature By Wenting Liu 7 What is romance 8 The class feature of the Romance Epic Heroic Poetry This term is applied to great and lengthy narrative poems describing some important national enterprise or the adventures of distinguished heroes 史诗 eg Homer Odyssey 奥德赛 Dante s Divine Comedy 十日谈 Milton Paradise Lost 失乐园 Romance it was a long composition sometimes in verse sometimes in prose describing the life and adventures of a noble hero Class Feature of the Romance the theme of loyalty to king and lord was repeatedly emphasized in romances as loyalty was the corner stone of feudal morality without which the whole structure of feudalism would collapse Sir Gawain and Green Knight 高文爵士和緑衣骑士 3 Chaucer Life Born in a middle class family in London Is said to have studied at Oxford and Cambridge Became a man of affaires undertaking various diplomatic missions to the Continent as courtier diplomat and civil servant Died in 1400 buried in Westminster Abbey there established the poets corner Westminster Abbey 西敏寺 An Abbey of monk on the bank of the Thames The state church in England It was destroyed and rebuilt several times Chaucer was first buried in the Abbey then established Poets corner It is an honor for a poet or his monument to be buried there Literary Career His experience gave him chance to obtain a good knowledge of Latin French and Italian Three periods The first period consists of works translated from French as The Romaunt of the Rose The second consists of works adapted from the Italian as Troilus and Criseyde based on Boccacio s poem Filostrato The third includes The Canterbury Tales which is purely English Translator The father founder of English poetry John Dryden Founder of English realism Gorky The first short story teller and first morden poet in E L Forerunner of humanism The City Canterbury British Literature By Wenting Liu Canterbury is a city and metropolitan district in Kent England and an important Roman town The capital of the Saxon Kingdom of Kent The Canterbury Tales 坎特伯雷故事集坎特伯雷故事集 A collection of stories Pilgrim pilgrimage The Tabard Inn a tavern in Southwark near London A gigantic plan of 124 stories but only 24 were written The verse models Boccaccio s Decameron in form The Prologue 楔子 楔子 A prologue is an introduction or preface often in verse to a literary work esp a play The prologue provides a framework for the tales There is an intimate connection between the tale and the prologue both complementing each other The Gneral Prologue the original version Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote The droghte of March hath perced to the roote And bathed every veyne in swich licour Of which vertu engendred is the flour Whan zephirus eek with his sweete breeth Inspired hath in every holt and heeth The tendre croppes and the yonge sonne Hath in the Ram his halve cours yronne And smale foweles maken melodye Heroic Couplet Iambic pentameter 英雄双韵体英雄双韵体 A pair of rhymed lines of verse of equal length in the form of ten syllables and five stresses in each line It was first used by Chaucer Its master is Alexander Pope Alliteration 头韵 头韵 An alliterative verse certain accented words in a line begin the same consonants sound Alliteration is the opposite of rhyme by which the similar sounds occur at the end of the syllables Contribution He presents a panoramic picture of English life in the Middle Ages He brought a realistic tone to English literary creation All his characters are true to life He introduced Rhymed stanzas instead of the old Anglo Saxon alliterative verse He first wrote in the current English form of the time His poetry is acknowledged as the literary language of the country which is usually called middle English The language of Chaucer Middle English is closer to Old English the language of the Anglo Saxons and Norman French the language of William the Conqueror Features in Chaucer s writing Rhymed stanzas of various type Simplicity