北外专英 大四英国文学—吴樯版.docx

英国文学吴樯版 An outline of the history of British Literature 1. The Anglo-Saxon period (5th century-1066)2. The Anglo-Norman period (1066-15th century)3. The Renaissance (16th century-early 17th century)4. The period of the English bourgeois revolution and Restoration(1625-1688)5. The age of Enlightenment or Neo-classical period(18th century)6. The Romantic period(1798-1832)7. The Victorian period(1837-1901)8. The Modern period(1901-1945)9. The Postmodern period(1945 to present)The early history of British A history of invasion Celts: the native people Romans: invaded and occupied Britain in 43A.D. Anglo-Saxon: in the mid-5th century migrated to England from western Denmark and northern coast of Germany, they settled down there and soon ruled over the whole of England Normans: from Normandy in northern France came to invade England in 1066.Christianization of England A heathen people In A.D. 597 the first missionaries led by St. Augustine came to England from Rome and converted King Ethelbert of Kent. Within a century the whole of England was Christianized. The heathen mythology was gradually replaced by the Christian religion. The heathen concept if nature and the supernatural persisted for a considerable of time and often were curiously mixed with Christian views and expressions. This mixture of pagan tradition and Christian tradition finds its expression in the representative work of this period Beowulf, the only important single poem of and oral tradition that has been reserved to this day more or less its entirely.Anglo-Saxon Period (Old English Period) “Old English” literary work:1) Beowulfthe national epic of the English people;2) Anonymous3) Oral form: 6th century, written form:7th or 8th century;4) The extant manuscript: 10th century, written in the Wessex tongue; preserved in the British Library5) Consisting of 3183 lines of alliterative verse;6) Its story based on part-historical, part-legendary material homes on the European by the Angle-Saxons from their original homes on the European Continent. So Beowulf the hero of the poem and his adventures are placed on Denmark and southern Sweden rather than in England.7) Plot and Characters, King Hrothgar, King Hygelac, Beowulf. Grendel, Grendels mother.Epic A long narrative poem celebrating the great deeds of one or more legendary heroes, in a grand ceremonious style. The hero, usually protested by or even descended from gods, performs superhuman exploits in battle or in marvelous voyages, often saving or founding a nation as in Virgils Aeneid(30-20BC) or the human race itself in Miltons Paradise Lost(1667); Secondary or literary epic Primary epic: Homers Iliad and Odyssey(c. 8th century BC), Beowulf (8th century AD), Mahabharata (3rd or 4th century AD), Nibelungenlied (c.1200) In Renaissance, epic poetry, also known as heroic poetry, was regarded as the highest form of literature.Alliteration The repetition of similar sounds, usually consonants. Sometimes the term is limited to the repetition if initial consonant sounds. (bread and butter, brown and brittle, lean and leather. Fringed and flowered, fest and gesture) Although alliteration sometimes appears in prose, it is mainly a poetical 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. A well-known example is this line from Samuel Taylor Coleridges “Kubla Khan”: Five miles meandering with a mazy motion. Alliteration is an important poetic device in Anglo-Saxon poetry where it generally occirs on three of the four stressed syllables in a line. Something of the alliterative effect can be seen in this line from Beowulf: “And the heathens only hopes, Hell.”Anglo-Norman Period (Middle-England Period) In t1066, William of Normandy defeated King Harold, the English king in the battle of Hastings and conquered England consequently. (The Norman Conquest) Languages used in the Anglo-Norman period:1. The native English tongue, as descended from Anglo-Saxon or Old English: the common speech of the majority of the people, esp. of the peasants in the countryside and the lower ranks of the trade4s-people and artisans in the towns.2. French: prevailed at the kings court, in the big manors, in the law courts and in the bigger schools3. Latin: taught in bigger schools, was made use of by scholars and the clergy in the churches, monasteries and ecclesiastical courts. The legend of King Arthur:1. History of the Kings of Britain by Geoffrey of Monmouth in Latin (1137)2. Burt by Layamon in England (1205): an alliterative poem with occasional rhymes.3. In the late 12th century and early 13th century, the Arthurian legend became popular in France and Germany.4. By 1300, most if the legendary material woven around the story of King Arthur and his Round Table knights had been treated of either in chronicle or in romance, in verse or in prose, in English or in Latin, in French or in Latin.5. The Arthurian romances written in English were most metrical usually dealing with one particular knight of another, of which the most outstanding one is the anonymous “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight”.6. Le Morte DArthur (Death of Arthur) by Thomas Malory in English(1470). The most important Middle English literary work:1. The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer (1340-1400);2. Geoffrey Chaucer: family background: early days and connections in court; his varied career (court page, soldier, diplomat, customs officer, MP. Clerk of Kings works); the first poet buried in the Poets Corner in Westminster Abbey, London and designated as the Father if English Poetry, the first court poet in the Middle Ages to write in English.3. The Canterbury Tales : in comparison with Boccacios Decameron: a frame narrativestories within a story, a collection of stories told by pilgrims to entertain each other on their way to the important Christian Church at Canterbury in southeast England; original plan includes 120 tales but the dialect of London the standard for the modern English speech.4. “The Wife of Baths Tale”Heroic couplet Rhymed iambic pentameter Iambic pentameter: a poetic consisting of five verse feet with each foot an iambthat is, an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. Iambic pentameter is the most common verse line in English poetry. The following line from “Ulysses” by Tennyson is s typical example: “Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.” An example of heroic couplet form Canto 3 of The Rape of the Lock by Alexander Pope“Steel could the labor of the Gods destroy. And strike to dust the imperial towers of Troy.”The English RenaissanceHistorical background:“The Renaissance” (rebirth):1. Politically, the feudal nobility lost their power and with the establishment if the great monarchies there was the centralization of power necessary for the development of bourgeoisie; (The War of Roses 1455-1485)2. The Catholic Church was either substituted by Protestantism as a result of the so-called Reformation or weakened in its dictatorship over mens minds; (the establishment of Anglican Church through Henry VIIIs Act of Supremacy 1531)3. Geographical discoveries opened up colonial expansion and trade routes to distant parts of the world and brought back gold and silver and other wealth and also broadened mens mental horizon;4. In the countryside the peasants were terribly exploited and they either rose in uprisings or ran away and flocked to the cities and added to the proletariat there.5. In the cities the merchants and the mater artisans grew in wealth and in power and became the bourgeoisie6. Culturally, as the interest in God and in the life after death was transformed into exaltation of man and an absorption in earthly life and as materialistic philosophy and scientific thought gradually replaced the church dogmas and religious mysticism of the Middle Ages, a totally new culture rose out of the revival of the old culture of ancient Greece and Rome and out of the a new philosophy and science and art and literature through the exploration of the infinite capabilities of man.Literature of Renaissance4th century Italy: Petrarch, Boccaccio15th century Italy: Ariosto, Tasso16th century France: Rabelais, The Pleiade, Moutaigne16th century Germany: Martin Luther16th century Spain: Cervantes16th century England：Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, Thom as MooreStages of English Renaissance Literature Stage I: Last years of the 15th centurythe first half of the 16th century Thomas More, Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard Stage II: Elizabeth Age(1558-1603)Philip Sidney, Edmund Spenser, Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, John Donne Stage III: The first quarter of the 17th century Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Francis BaconPoetry Poems in pastoral mode (exalt country life over city life by presenting a simple and idealized world inhabited by shepherds and shepherdesses who are chiefly concerned to tend their flocks, fall in love and engage in friendly poetry contests. Eg. Edmund Spensers The Shepherds Calender ) Poems in satirical mode Poems in lyric mode( are comparatively brief and usually concerned with praises of various kinds, with love in its various moods, or with celebrations of nature, the good life, etc; odes ,hymns, sonnets. Eg. Spensers Epithalamion) Poems in mythological-erotic mode (are derived mainly from the Metamorphoses of Ovid, concerned with lush and elaborate descriptions of physical beauty, of delight in the pleasure of senses and of frank eroticism. Eg. Shakespeares Venus and Adonis, Marlowes Hero and Leander) Poems in heroic mode (are concerned with values of honor, battle courage, loyalty, leadership , and glorification of nation or people. The chief genre was the epic, conventionally a long, exalted poem the high style, based on a heroic story from the nation and specific topics. Eg. Spensers Faerie Queen.Sonnet The most important poetic genre in 16th century England The height of its vogue occurs in 1590s. Petrarch (1304-1374) Introduced into England by Thomas Wyatt(1503-1542) and Henry Howard (Earl of Surrey)(1517-1547) in the reign of Henry VIII Two types of sonnet: the Italian or Petrarchan sonnet and the English and Shakespearean sonnet. The Italian sonnet is a form originated in the 13th century Italy. The Italian sonnet has two parts, and octave (an 8-line stanza) and a sestet (6-line stanza). Its rhyme scheme is usually abbaabba cdecde. The English sonnet consists of three quatrains (a 4-line stanza) and a concluding couplet, with the rhyme scheme abab cdcd efef gg.Sonnet 18Shall I compare thee to a summers day?Thou art more lovely and more temperate;Rough winds do shake the darling buds of MayAnd summers lease hath all too short a date;Sometimes too hot the eye of heaven shinesAnd often is his gold complexion dimmed;And every fair from fair sometimes decline; By chance or natures changing course untrimmed; But thy eternal summer shall not fade,Nor lose possession of that fair thou owst; Nor shall death brag thou wanderst in his shade,When in eternal lines to time thou growstSo long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.Sonnet A group of sonnets related in some is called a sonnet sequence. In Renaissance, it usually explores the contrary states of feeling a lover experiences as he desires and idolizes an unattainable lady: some conventional themes concern the ladys great beauty, her power over him, her cruelty to him, his sleeplessness, the pain absence, the renunciation of love, the eternity and originality of his poems. Examples: Edmund Spensers Amoretti (1595), Sir Philip Sidneys Astrophel and Stella (1591), Shakespeares Sonnet (154in total) (1608) Later, John Donne (1572-1631) introduced religious themes into sonnet as he did in his Holy Sonnets and John Milton (1608-1674) added public and political themes to the composing of sonnet.Elizabethan Drama British drama: one of the most successful and long-lasting expressions of the development of Renaissance in British culture. Notable playwrights of this period include Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare and Ben Johnson. Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593): the most prominent figure among the University Wits; his life ( the son of a shoemaker at Canterbury, educated at Cambridge University, different stories about his untimely death, a member of a radical literary circle-Sir Walter Raleighs group, an active atheist, his important plays: Tamburlaine the Great, Part I & II (1587-1588), The Tragic History of Dr. Faustus (1589) , The Jew of Malta (1590) and Edward the Second (1592-93); written in blank verse. William Shakespeare (1564-1616)1) Stratford-upon-Avon;2) Globe Theatre;3) 37 plays, 2 long narrative poems and 154 sonnets4) Types of his plays: history plays; tragedy; comedy; tragic-comedy5) His four greatest tragedies: 6) “Soul of the age! The applause, delight, the wonder of our stage!”“He was not of an age, but for all time!”(from Ben Johnsons “To the Memory of My Beloved, The Author, Mr. William Shakespeare and What He Hath Left Us”)Blank Verse Verse written in unrhymed iambic pentameter Thomas Norton (1532-1584) and Thomas Sackville ( 1536-1608) were the first English poets who employed blank verse in tragedy. Gorboduc (1561) which they co-wrote was the first English tragedy written in blank verse and in this way anticipated the numerous great tragedies in the late 16th century in England written in the same verse form, such as Christopher Marlowes tragedies and William Shakespeares. The latter two poets established blank verse as the chief medium for English poetry. John Miltons great epic work Paradise Lost is also written in blank verse.Jacobean literature (early 17th century) Ben Johnson (1572-1637)1) From 1605 on, wrote and produced a great number of masques (a type of dramatic entertainment, emphasizing scenery and costuming and music above other things, merely for the amusement of the decadent aristocracy of the time), and brought this genre to its height.2) The first poet laureate appointed in 16163) Volpone, the Fox (1605)4) The Alchemist (1610)5) The comedy of humors, as exemplified in two of his earlier comedies Every Man in His Humour (1598) and Every Man out of His Humour (1599), in which each of the characters in the drama has something dominating passion or peculiar quality such as jealousy or greed or credulity. Francis Bacon (1561-1626)1) Essays (1597);2) The Advancement of Learning (1605): the only philosophical work of Bacons that was written in the English language; knowledge acquired by divine revelation vs. knowledge acquired by the exercise of human faculties without revelation.3) The Novum Organum (1620): outling of the new scientific method of inductive reasoning, as against the principle of deduction that was employed by the medieval scholasticists.4) The New Atlantis (1627) a utopian novelLiterature during English Civil War and Restoration (17th century)Historical background: The strained relationship between the monarch and Parliament, which began with James I (1603-25), got worse in the reign of Charles I (1625-49), who, like his father, James I, believed on the divine right of kings and wanted to exercise absolute political power. While James I repeatedly dissolved Parliament which refused to pass bills for new taxes for his degenerate and extravagant life, Charles I, after his dissolution of the House of Commons in 1629, ran the country without any parliament for 11 years. English civil war, or the English bourgeois revolution, broke out 1642, between the parliamentarians and the royalists. In 1649, Charles I was tried and beheaded, which marked the end of the civil war and the beginning of a republic. In 1653, England was proclaimed a protectorate in place of the republic, with Cromwell as Lord Protestor. Cromwell died on 1658 and his son succeeded as Lord Protector, who proved to be too weak to deal with the internal troubles. In1660, the son of the beheaded king, then in exile in France, was welcomed back as King Charles II, and this has been known as the Restoration. In 1688, the Glorious Revolution took place when James II fled to France and his daughter Mary and her husband William Duke of Orange, both Protestants, were welcomed to England to become the joint rulers of the country. In 1689, Parliament passed the Bill of Right which ensured that the King would never be able to ignore Parliament and marked the beginning of the so-called “constitutional monarchy”. Two poetical tradition: 1. Cavalier poetry followed in the main tradition of court poetry of the Renaissance in the second half of the 16th century, with earthly and sensual love as its dominant theme treated in the spirit of hedonism. Most of the poems were written under the influence either of the classical polish of Ben Johnson or the “metaphysical” artifice of John Donne and served as the expression of the extravagance and moral laxity and cynicism of the Cavaliers at the court of Charles I.2. Puritan poetry stands for a whole of poems written in sympathy with the Puritan parliamentarians and against the Stuart kings. Among the puritan poets, the most famous one is John Milton.Metaphysical poets The name given to a diverse group of 17th century English poets whose work is notable for ingenious use of intellectual and theological concept in surprising conceits, strange paradoxes, and far-reaching imagery. The leading