英国文学史名词解释

1、英国文学史名词解释Romance: The romance was a long composition, sometimes in verse, sometimes in prose, describing the life and adventures of a noble hero. The medieval romances were tales of chivalry or amorous adventure occurring in King Arthur's court. "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" is an

2、example of a medieval romance.Ballad: It is a story in poetic form, often about tragic love and usually sung. Ballads were passed down from generation to generation by singers. The medieval ballads are ballads of Robin Hood. Coleridge s "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" is a 19th century E

3、nglish ballad.Heroic couplet : They are poetry composed in iambic pentameter. In this form of poetry, lines consisting of five iambic feet rime together in pairs. The rime scheme :aa bb c c .Renaissance: Renaissance marks the transition from the medieval to the modern world. It first started in Ital

4、y in the 14 th century and gradually spread all over Europe. The word“ Renaissance ” means rebirth or revival. In essence, it is a historicaleriodp in which the European humanist thinkers and scholars made attempts to get rid of those old feudalist ideas in medieval Europe and introduce new ideas th

5、at expressed the interests of the rising bourgeoisie, and to lift the restriction in all areas placed by the Roman Catholic Church authorities. Two features of renaissance: It is a thirsting curiosity for the classical literature. People learned to admire the Greek and Latin works as models of liter

6、ary form. It is the keen interest in the activities of humanity.Sonnet: A lyric poem of fourteen lines whose ryhme scheme is fixed. The rhyme scheme in theItalian form as typified in the sonnets of Petrarch is abbaabba cdecde. The Petrarchian sonnethas two divisions: the first is of eight lines (the

7、 octave), and the second is of six lines (thesestet). The rhyme scheme of the English, or Shakespearean sonnet is abab cdcd efef gg. Thechange of rhyme in the English sonnet is coincidental with a change of theme in the poem.The meter is iambic pentameter.Blank verse: A poem written in unrhymed iamb

8、ic pentameter.Spenserian Stanza: Spenser invented a new verse form for his poem. The verse form has beencalled "Spenserian Stanza" since his day. Each stanza has nine lines, each of the first eightlines is in iambicpentameter form,and the ninth lineis an iambic hexameter line. Therhythm sc

9、heme is abab bcbc c.Enlightenment: TheEnlightenment wasa progressiveintellectualmovementthroughoutWestern Europe inthe 18th century. Itwas an expression of struggleof the bourgeoisieagainst feudalism. The enlighteners fought against class inequality, stagnation, prejudices andother survivalsoffeudal

10、ism. Theythought the chiefmeans for bettering the society was"enlightenment"or"education" forthe people. TheEnglish enlighteners werebourgeoisdemocratic thinkers. They set no revolutionary aim before them and what they strove for wasto bring it to an end by clearing away the feud

11、al ideas with the bourgeois ideology.Sentimentalism:Sentimentalism appeared in the middle of the 18 th century, as a reaction againstcommercialism and the cold rationalism. Sentimentalists emphasize“ the human heart”show sympathy to the poor. This trend marks thetransitionformneoclassicism toromanti

12、cismin English poetry. Thomas Gray is one ofthe models. Another sentimentalist精品文库poet is Oliver Goldsmith (The Disserted Village). The most outstanding figure of English sentimentalism is Laurence Sterne.Pre-romanticism: The Romantic Movement was marked by a strong protest against the bondage of Cl

13、assicism, by a renewed interest in medieval literature. In England, this movement showed itself in the trend of Pre-romanticism in poetry. It was represented by Blake and Robert Burns. They struggled against the neoclassical tradition of poetry.Romanticism : Romanticism was in effect a revolt of the

14、 English imagination against the neoclassical reason, which prevailed from the days of Pope to those of Johnson. The Romantic Movement expressed a more or less negative attitude toward the existing social and political conditions that came with industrialization and the growing importance of the bou

15、rgeoisie. Romantics saw men essentially as an individual in the solitary state andemphasized the special qualities of each individual's mind. In essence it designates a literary and philosophical theory which tends to see the individual as the very center of all life and all experience. It also

16、places the individual at the center of art, making literature most valuableas an expression of his or her unique feelings and particular attitudes, and valuingitsaccuracy in portraying the individual'sexperiences. The romantics extol the facultyof theimagination, write about nature and they get

17、inspiration form nature, turn to the humble people and the common everyday life for subjects andturn to other times and places, where the qualities they valued would be convincingly depicted.Neo-classicism: A revival in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries of classical standards oforder, balance

18、 and harmony in literature. John Dryden was the first person who started the movement at the end of the 17th century, while Alexander Pope brought it to its culmination.Elegy : it seeks for "lament". It is a poem on death or on a serious loss; characteristically a sustained meditation expr

19、essing sorrow and, frequently, an explicit or implied consolationRealism: A term used in literature and art to present life as it really is without sentimentalizingor idealizing it. Realistic writing often depicts the everyday life and speech of ordinary people. This has led, sometimes to an emphasi

20、s on sordid details.Allegory : A story illustrating an idea or a moral principle in which objects take on symbolic meanings. In Dante Alighieri's "Divine Comedy," Dante, symbolizing mankind, is taken by Virgil the poet on a journey through Hell, Purgatory and Paradise in order to teach

21、 him the nature of sin and its punishments, and the way to salvation.Lake Poets: Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southey have often been mentioned as the "Lake Poets"because they lived in the lake district in the northwestern part of England. The three traversed the same path in politics and in

22、poetry, beginning as radicals and closing as conservatives.Metaphysical Poetry: The poetry of John Donne and other seventeenth-century poets who wrotein a similar style. Metaphysical poetry is characterized by verbal wit and excess, ingenious structure, irregular meter, colloquial language, elaborat

23、es imagery, and a drawing together of dissimilar ideas.Humanism: it refers to the main literary trend and is the keynote of English Renaissance. Humanists took interest in human life and human activities and gave expression to the new feeling of admiration for human beauty, human achievement. They t

24、hink that man has a欢迎下载2精品文库potential for culture which distinguishes him from lower orders of beings, and which he should strive constantly to fulfill.Mystery play: The Mystery plays of the Middle Ages were based on the bible and were particularly concerned with the stories of man screation, Fall a

25、nd Redemption. They antedate Miracle Plays.Mystery Plays developed out of the Liturgy of the church and inparticular out of the Quem Quaeritis trope of Easter Day. The earlier dramatizations werepresented on the greater festivals of the church: Christmas, Easter, Pentecost and CorpusChristi. At firs

26、t they were in Latin and performed by the clergy in the church. There then came an increasing admixture of the vernacular, and lay folk also performed in them. This gradual secularization of the religions drama was accompanied by a corresponding physicalmove. The drama moved out of the church throug

27、h the west door. Thus, what had been sacred drama became, literally, profane. From the church yard to the market place was the next logical step.Iambic Pentameter:A poetic line consisting of five verse feet, which each foot an iamb_ thatis, an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one. Iambic p

28、entameter is the most commonverse line in English poetry.Lyric:A poem, brief and discontinuous, emphasizes sound and pictorial imagery rather thannarrative or dramatic movement.MiraclePlay: A popular religious drama of medieval England. Miracleplays were based onstories of the saints or on sacred hi

29、story.MoralityPlay: A formofreligious allegoricaldrama dates from15th century. Moralitiesdiffered from mystery plays in that whereas the latter dramatized known episodes from theBible or from the lives of the saints, the former dramatized the life of man by personifying the forces of good and evil,

30、such as the seven deadly sins and the corresponding virtues or some representative crisis in his life such as his encounter with the fact of death.Neo-classicism: it is a revival in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries of classical standardsof order, balance and harmony in literature. John Dryden was the fi