英国文学史重难点概括

1、Main Points for English Literature一、Old English : 450-1066Beowulf二、Medieval English : 1066 - middle 14th centuryGeoffrey Chaucer - the father of English poetryThe Canterbury Tales first time to use heroic couplets三、The Renaissance - rebirth or revivalHumanism - the essence of the Renaissance, the di

2、gnity of human being & the importance of the present life1.Edmund Spenser - the poetspoetThe Shepherds Calendar ; The Faerie Queene2.Christopher Marlowe - University Wits, the pioneer of English drama Blank verse, hyperbole夸张The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus: the human passion for knowledge, p

3、ower and happinessThe Passionate Shepherd to His Love: pastoral life3.William Shakespeare - above all writers in the past and in the present time Four tragedies - Hamlet, Othello, King Lear & MacbethSonnet 18: eternal or immortal beautyThe Merchant of Venice :to praise the friendship between Ant

4、onio and Bassanio, to idealize Portia a heroine of great beauty, wit and loyalty, to expose the insatiable greed and brutality.Hamlet: hesitate between fact and fiction, language and action, too sophisticated to degrade his nature to the conventional role of a stage revenger. To be, or not to be - t

5、o live on in this world or to die; to suffer or to take action. Soliloquy or monologue - fully reveal the inner conflict of the characters4.Francis Bacon - brevity, compactness & powerfulness, his essays is animportant landmark in the development of English rose.Inductive method is in place of d

6、eductive method.Of Studies : uses and benefits of study - studies serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability. Studies perfect nature, and are perfected by experience. Different ways adopted by different people to pursue studies - studies and experience are complementary to each other. The corr

7、ect attitude to reading books - to weigh and consider. How studies exert influence over human character - reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man.5.John DonneMetaphysical poetry - break away from love poetry, a seemingly unfocused diversity of experiences and atti

8、tudes, and a free range of feelings andmoods.Donne frequently applies conceits and syllogistic forms.The Sun Rising: the busy sun is always ready to interfere with other things and everywhereDeath, Be Not Proud: whatever you are, you can not escape from death. When you are living, you are always in

9、the shadow of death. Death only lasts a moment, our life after death is eternal. The more pleasure the death gives people, not only the pleasure of the rest & the sleep, because “whom the gods love die young”. Though death is usually considered powerful, it actually provides a rest for a mans bo

10、dy and a birth for his soul.6.John MiltonParadise Lost: the only generally acknowledged epic in English literature since Beowulf. The conflict is between human love and spiritual duty. In heaven, Satan led a rebellion against God with his unconquerable will.Paradise RegainedSamson Agonistes: the mos

11、t perfect example of the verse drama after the Greek style in English.四、Neoclassicism - a revival of interest in the old classical works, order, logic, restrained emotion & accuracyEnlightenment - a progressive intellectual movement, reason (rationality), equality & scienceGothic novel - mys

12、tery, horror & castles1.John BunyanThe Vanity Fair from The Pilgrims Progress：a religious allegory, pursue the truth2.Alexander PopeAn Essay on Criticism：a poem written in heroic couplets, criticize the present poem lack of true taste & call on people to turn to the old Greek and Roman write

13、rs for guidance, “true wit”is best set in a plain (simple & clear) style.3.Daniel Defoe - the first writer study of the lower-class peopleRobinson Crusoe： praise the human labor and the Puritan fortitude.4.Jonathan Swift - a master satirist. In his opinion, human nature is seriously and permanen

14、tly flawed.A Modest ProposalGullivers Travels, four parts - Lilliput, Brobdingnag, Flying Island &Houyhnhnm5.Henry Fielding - Father of English novel,Prose Homer,Comic epic in prose The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling6.Samuel Johnson - first combine an English dictionary, last neoclassicist en

15、lightenerA Dictionary of the English LanguageTo the Right Honorable the Earl of Chesterfield7.Richard Brinsley Sheridan - the only important English dramatist of the 18th centuryThe Rivals and The School for Scandal are regarded as important links between the masterpieces of Shakespeare and those of

16、 Bernard Shaw.8.Thomas Gray- The Graveyard SchoolElegy Written in a Country Churchyard五、The romantic period -began with the publication of Wordsworth and Coleridges Lyrical BalladsRomantic - emotion over reason, spontaneous emotion, a change from the outer world of social civilization to the inner w

17、orld of the human spirit, poetry should be free from all rules, imagination, nature, commonplace1. William Blake engraverThe Chimney Sweeper from Songs of Innocence a happy and innocence world from childrens eyeThe Chimney Sweeper from Songs of Experience a world of misery, poverty, disease, war and

18、 repression with a melancholy tone from men eyes Childhood, paradoxes, a pairing of oppositesThe Tyger2.William Wordsworth - the leading figure of the English romantic poetry,simple, spontaneous, worshiper of nature “Lake Poets” - William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge & Robert Southey. He

19、defines the poet as a “manspeaking to men”, and poetry as “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings”, which originates in “emotion recollected in tranquility”.I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud the poet is very cheerful with recalling thebeautiful sights. In the poem on the beauty of nature, the read

20、er is presented a vivid picture of lively and lovely daffodils and poets philosophical ideas and mystical thoughts.Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802 the sonnet describes a vivid picture of a beautiful morning in London, silent, bright, glittering,smokeless & mildly. It is so to

21、uching a sight that the poet expressed his religion piety for nature.She Dwelt Among the Untrodden WaysThe Solitary Reaper thanks to poets rich imagination, the mass of associations, this commonplace happening becomes a striking event, the poet succeeds in making the readers share his emotion. The p

22、oem also shows the poetspassionate love of nature.3.Samuel Taylor Coleridge - supernatural, remote Poet can be divided into two groups - the demonic (supernatural) & the conversational.The demonic group includes 3 masterpieces - The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Chrisabel, Kubla Khan4.George Gord

23、on Byron-“Byronic hero” is a proud, mysterious rebel figure of noble origin, against tyrannical rules or moral principles. Such a hero appears first in Childe Harolds Pilgrimage.Song for the Luddites “will die fighting, or live free”the Luddites destroyed the machines in their protest against unempl

24、oyment. The poets great sympathy of the workers in their struggle against the capitalists is clearly shown.The Isles of Greece from Don Juan (the masterpiece of Byron, a long satirical poem), song by a Greek singer at the wedding of Don Juan and Haidee. “Fill high the bowl with Samian wine”?5.Percy

25、Bysshe ShelleyMen of EnglandOde to the West Wind: terza rima, destructive-constructive potential, hopeful, I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!, If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?6.John Keatsfour great odes - Ode on Melancholy, Ode on a Grecian Urn, Ode to a Nightingale, Ode to PsycheOde

26、 on a Grecian Urn the contrast between the permanence of art and thetransience of human passion, “Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter”, “Beauty is truth, truth is beauty”.7.Jane AustenPride and Prejudice六、The Victorian Period: Critical realistsDarwins The Origin of Species and Th

27、e Descent of Man shook the traditional faith, everything is created by God. Utilitarianism was widely accepted and practiced Critical realists were all concerned about the fate of the common people1.Charles Dickens - one of the greatest critical realist writers of the Victorian AgeCharacter-portraya

28、l is the most distinguishing feature of his works. A mingling of humor and pathos.A Tale of Two Cities, Oliver Twist2.The Bronte Sisters - Charlotte, Emily & Anne Emily, a rather reserved and simple girl, was very much a child of nature.Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights3.Alfred Tennyson - invents dra

29、matic monologue, Poet Laureate, a real artist Break, Break, Break: the death of his best friend, his sadness feeling arecontrasted with the carefree, innocent joys of the children and the unfeeling movement of the ship and the sea wavesCrossing the Bar: we can feel his fearlessness towards death, hi

30、s faith in God and an afterlife. Crossing the bar means leaving this world and entering the next worldUlysses: not endure the peaceful commonplace everyday life, old as he is, he persuades his old followers to go with him and to set sail again to pursue a new world and new knowledge, dramatic monolo

31、gue, Myself not least, but honourd of them all means I am not the least important, but honoured by all of them4.Robert Browning - the most original poet, who improve and mature the dramatic monologueThe Ring and the Book: his masterpieceMy Last Duchess: this dramatic monologue is the dukes speech ad

32、dressed to the agent who comes to negotiate the marriage, the duke is a self-conceited, cruel and tyrannical manMeeting at Night /Parting at Morning5.George Eliot:As a woman of exceptional intelligence and life experience, she shows a particular concern for the destiny of womenMiddlemarch: a sharp c

33、ontrast is set between the cold, lifeless, dull house and Dorothea who is full of youthful life and vigor6.Thomas Hardy - both a naturalistic and a critical realist writer. Local-colored, Wessex novels of character and environmentTess of the DUrbervilles: experience is as to intensity, and not as to

34、 duration七、The Twentieth Century: ModernismThe writer concentrated on the private than on the public, more on thesubjective than on the objective. They are mainly concerned with the inner being of an individual.1.“The Angry Young Men” with lower-middle-class or working classbackground. Kingsley Amis, John Wain, John Braine and Alan Sillitoe were the major novelists in this group. Osborne, the first “Angry Young Man”2.James Joyce is the most outstanding stream-of-consciousness novelist;All have the same setting: Ireland, especially Dublin, and the same subj