英国文学Literary Terms.docx

Literary TermsAlliteration ,ltren 头韵The repetition of consonant sounds in words that are close to one another. Alliteration occurs most often at the beginning of words, as in “rough and ready.” But consonants within words sometimes alliterate, as in “baby blue.”The echoes that alliteration creates can increase a poems rhythmic and musical effects and make its lines especially memorable. Alliteration is an essential feature of Anglo-Saxon poetry; in most lines, two or three of the four stressed syllables alliterate. Frame Story An introductory narrative within which one or more of the characters proceed to tell a story. Perhaps the best-known example of stories contained in a frame story is the Persian collection called The Thousand and One Nights. In English literature, Geoffrey Chaucers The Canterbury Tales uses a frame story involving a group of people on a pilgrimage; within the narrative frame, each of the pilgrims then tells his or her own story. Giovanni Boccaccios Decameron contains another notable example of the frame-story device.Couplet kplt 对句, 对联Two consecutive lines of poetry that rhyme. The couplet has been widely used since the Middle Ages, especially to provide a sense of closure. A couplet that presents a completed thought is called a closed couplet. Shakespeare used closed couplets to end his sonnets, as in Sonnet 18.A couplet written in iambic pentameter is called a heroic couplet. Although the heroic couplet has been used in English literature since Chaucer, it was perfected during the eighteenth century.CharacterAn individual in a story or play. A character always has human traits, even if the character is an animal, like the March Hare in Lewis Carrolls Alices Adventures in wonderland; or a god, as in the Greek and Roman myths; or a monster, as in Beowulf. A character may also be a godlike human, like Superman. But most characters are ordinary human beings, like Geoffrey Chaucers colorful pilgrims in The Canterbury Tales.Characterization krktrazen特性描述; 性格描述The process by which the writer reveals the personality of a character is called characterization. A writer can reveal a character in the following ways:1. By telling us directly what the character is like: humble, ambitious, impetuous, easily manipulated, and so on2. By describing how the character looks and dresses3. By letting us hear the character speak4. By revealing the characters private thoughts and feelings5. By revealing the characters effect on other people showing how other characters feel or behave toward the character6. By showing the characters actionsThe first method of revealing a character is called direct characterization. The other five methods of revealing a character are known as indirect characterization. Classification of CharactersCharacters can be classified as static or dynamic. A static character is one who does not change much in the course of a story. A dynamic character, on the other hand, changes in some important way as a result of the storys action. Characters can also be classified as flat or round. Flat characters have only one or two personality traits. They are one-dimensional they can be summed up by a single phrase. In contrast, round characters have more dimensions to their personalities they are complex, solid, and multifaceted, like real people.End-stopped and Run-on LinesAn end-stopped line is one in which the grammatical unit, be it clause or sentence, is coterminous with the line. Thus, there is the satisfaction of finding the line and the sense ending together.A run-on line (sometimes called an enjambed line) is where the grammar, and thus the sense, is left unfinished at the end of the line.Run-on lines create pleasurable feelings of expectation, as the reader has to look further for the full sense of what is being said.Oxymoron ksmrn 矛盾修饰法A figure of speech that combines apparently contradictory or incongruous ideas. “Bitter sweet,” “cruel kindness,” and “eloquent silence” are oxymorons. The classic oxymoron “wise fool” is almost a literal translation of the term from the Greek oxys means “sharp” or “keen,” and moros means “foolish.”A famous oxymoron in literature is John Miltons description of Hell in Paradise Lost:A dungeon horrible, on all sides roundAs one great furnace flamed; yet from those flameNo light, but rather darkness visible. . .Soliloquy sllkw 独白A long speech in which a character who is usually alone onstage expresses his or her private thoughts or feelings. The soliloquy is an old dramatic convention that was particularly popular in Shakespeares day. Perhaps the most famous soliloquy is the “To be or not to be” speech in Shakespeares play Hamlet.A soliloquy can be public, in which case the character directly addresses the audience, or private, in which case the audience overhears the character talking to himself or herself.In Shakespeare, soliloquies are usually only given to important character.For instance, Hamlet has a number of private soliloquies, and Iago a number of public ones.Characters very rarely tell lies in soliloquies, so you should pay particular attention to them.O brawling love, O loving hate,O anything of nothing first create!O heavy lightness, serious vanity,Misshapen chaos of well-seeming forms,Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health,Still-waking sleep, that is not what it is!This love feel I, that feel no love in this. Romeo, Act I Scene IPoetic ComparisonsPoetic comparisons may take a variety of forms: simile, metaphor, conceit, synecdoche, metonymy, and juxtaposition.Each form of comparison, however, serves the same basic set of purposes.Poets generally use comparisons to express abstract ideas in imagistic language, thereby stimulating the readers imagination, providing additional information, and opening up endless opportunities for entertainment and persuasion.In the poem “The Flea” the speaker tries to seduce a young woman by comparing the consequences of their lovemaking with those of an insignificant flea-bite.ConceitA fanciful and elaborate figure of speech that makes a surprising connection between two seemingly dissimilar things. Although a conceit may be a brief metaphor, it usually forms the framework of an entire poem.One of the most important kinds of conceits is the metaphysical conceit, so called because it was widely used by the seventeenth century metaphysical poets.Eg. 金缕衣(The Gold-Threaded Robe) To the Virgins, to Make Much of TimeUnfortunate CoincidenceOn My First Son_ by Ben Jonson-Background: This poem is about Jonsons son, Benjamin, who died of the plague on his seventh birthday. (Jonson and his wife also lost a daughter, Mary, in infancy.)The name Benjamin in Hebrew means “a child of the right hand” and, ironically, connotes “a lucky, clever child.”Dr. Johnson and Dryden on the Metaphysical PoetsJohnson: “Their courtship was void of fondness and their lamentation of sorrow.” （他们的求婚缺乏爱情，他们的悼亡缺少悲伤。） “Their wish was only to say what they hoped had been never said before.” （他们一心只想说前人所未说。）Dryden on Donne: “He affects the metaphysics, not only in his satires, but in his amorous verses, where nature only should reign; and perplexes the minds of the fair sex with nice speculations of philosophy, when he should engage their hearts, and entertain them with the softness of love.他喜弄玄学，不仅在他的讽刺诗中如此，在爱情诗中也如此。爱情诗本应言情，他却用哲学的微妙的思辨，把女性们的头脑弄糊涂了。(爱略特)Eliot: The Metaphysical PoetsJohnson, who employed the term “metaphysical poets,” apparently having Donne, Cleveland, and Cowley chiefly in mind, remarks of them that “the most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together.”(“将杂七杂八的思想硬拉一处，全凭蛮力”。)The force of this impeachment lies in the failure of the conjunction, the fact that often the ideas are yoked but not united; and if we are to judge of styles of poetry by their abuse, enough examples may be found in Cleveland to justify Johnsons condemnation. But a degree of heterogeneity of material compelled into unity by the operation of the poets mind is omnipresent in poetry. The difference is something which had happened to the mind of England between the time of Donne or Lord Herbert of Cherbury and the time of Tennyson and Browning; it is the difference between the intellectual poet and the reflective poet.Tennyson and Browning are poets, and they think; but they do not feel their thought as immediately as the odor of a rose. A thought to Donne was an experience; it modified his sensibility. When a poets mind is perfectly equipped for its work, it is constantly amalgamating disparate experience; the ordinary mans experience is chaotic, irregular, and fragmentary. The latter falls in love, or reads Spinoza, and these two experiences have nothing to do with each other, or with the noise of the typewriter or the smell of cooking; in the mind of the poet these experiences are always forming new wholes.爱略特反对的是dissociation of sensibility （思想与情感分离），欣赏的是邓恩的unified sensibility（思想与情感溶为一体）。The Metaphysical PoetsThe poets who belong to this group are:John Donne (1572 1631), George Herbert (1593 1633), Andrew Marvell (1621 1678), Richard Crashaw (1612 1649), Henry Vaughan (1622 1695), Abraham Cowley (1618 1667), John Cleveland (1613 1658).The Cavalier PoetsThe other group prevailing in this period was that of Cavalier poets. They were often courtiers who stood on the side of the king, and called themselves “sons” of Ben Johnson.The Cavalier poets wrote light poetry, polished and elegant, amorous and gay, but often superficial. Most of their verses were short songs, pretty madrigals, and love fancies characterized by lightness of heart and of morals.Cavalier poems have the limpidity of the Elizabethan lyric without its imaginative flights. They are lighter and neater but less fresh than the Elizabethans.The chief representatives of this group are:Robert Herrick (1591 1674), Thomas Carew (1598 1639), Sir John Suckling (1609 1642), Richard Lovelace (1618 1658), Edmund Waller (1606 1687), William Davenant (1606 1668).Satire讽刺文学:A kind of writing that ridicules human weakness, vice, or folly in order to bring about social reform. Satires often try to persuade the reader to do or believe something by showing the opposite view as absurd or even more forcefully vicious and inhumane.Among the most brilliant and scathing satirists in English literature are Geoffrey Chaucer, Alexander Pope, John Dryden, Jonathan Swift, Jane Austen, George Bernard Shaw, and Evelyn Waugh.Irony：A contrast or discrepancy between expectation and reality between what is said and what is really meant, between what is expected and what really happens, or between appears to be true and what is really true.Verbal irony occurs when a writer or speaker says one thing but really means something quite different often the opposite of what he or she has said. If you tell your friend that you “just love being kept waiting in the rain,” you are using verbal irony.A classic example of verbal irony is Jonathan Swifts suggestion in A Modest Proposal that the Irish solve their poverty and overpopulation problems by selling their babies as food to their English landlords.Situational irony occurs when what actually happens is the opposite of what is expected or appropriate. In James Joyces story “Araby”, the boy hears about a bazaar called Araby and imagines that it will be a splendid, exotic place. Yet when he arrives, he finds that in reality Araby is cheap and commonplace. Dramatic irony occurs when the audience or the reader knows something important that a character in a play or story does not know, as in Shakespeares Macbeth.Dramatic irony is also a powerful device in William Blakes “The Chimney Sweeper” from Songs of Innocence.The speaker is a child who believes what he has been told that “if all do their duty they need not fear harm.” But the reader, who is not so innocent, realizes that this is not so.What Does “Romantic” Mean?The word romantic comes from the term romance, one of the most popular genres of medieval literature.Later, Romantic writers self-consciously used the elements of romance in an attempt to go back beyond the refinements of neoclassical literature to older types of writing that they saw as more “genuine.”The romance genre also allowed writers to explore new, more psychological and mysterious aspects of human experience.Today, the word romantic is often a negative label used to describe sentimental writing, particularly those best-selling paperback “romances” about love a subject that many people mistakenly think the Romantic poets popularized.As a historical term, however, romantic has at least three useful meanings, all of them relevant to the Romantic poets.First, the term romantic signifies a fascination with youth and innocence, with “growing up” by exploring and learning to trust our emotions and our sense of will and identity.Second, the term romantic is applied to a stage in the cyclical development of societies: This is the stage when people need to question tradition and authority in order to imagine better that is, happier, fairer, and healthier ways to live. Romantic in this sense is associated with idealism.And third, in the so-called Romantic period of the first half of the nineteenth century, Western societies reached the conditions necessary for industrialization. This demanded that people acquire a stronger and stronger awareness of change and that they try to find ways to adapt to it. In this sense we still live with the legacy of the Romantic period.Lyrical BalladsThe publication of a collection of poems called Lyrical Ballads (1798), a collaboration between William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, began the Romantic period in England.RomanticismRomanticism is characterized by these general features:1. Romanticism turned away from the eighteenth-century emphasis on reason and artifice. Instead, the Romantics embraced imagination and naturalness.2. Romantic-era poets rejected the public, formal, and witty words of the previous century. They preferred poetry that spoke of personal experiences and emotions, often in simple, unadorned language.3. The Romantics each used the lyric as the form best suited to expressions of feeling, self-revelation, and the imagination.4. Wordsworth urged poets to adopt a democratic attitude toward their audiences; though endowed with a special sensibility, the poet was always “a man speaking to men.”5. Many Romantics turned to a past or an inner dream world that they felt was more picturesque and magical than the ugly industrial age they lived in.6. Most Romantics believed in individual liberty and sympathized with those who rebelled against tyranny.7. The Romantics thought of nature as transformative; they were fascinated by the ways nature and the human mind “mirrored” the others creative properties.Two Generations of PoetsIn the period from 1786 to 1830, seven major poets emerged who permanently affected the nature of English language and literature.Burns, Blake, Wordsworth, and Coleridge may be regarded as the first generation of Romantic poets, writing most of their major works from 1786 to 1805.Byron, Shelley, a