英國(guó)文學(xué)名詞解釋復(fù)習(xí)要點(diǎn)

1、精品文檔 1、 romance Romance, which uses narrative verse or prose to sing knightly adventures or other heroic deeds, is a popular literary form in the medieval period. It has developed the characteristic medieval patterns of the quest, the test, the meeting with the evil giant and the encounter with the

2、beautiful beloved. The hero is usually the knight who sets out on a journey to accompany some missions to protect the church, to attack infidelity, to rescue a maiden, to meet a challenge, or to obey a knightly command. There is often a liberal use of the improbable, sometimes even supernatural, thi

3、ngs in romance such as mysteries and fantasies. Romantic love is an important part of the plot in romance. Characterization is standardized so that heroes, heroines and wicked stewares can be easily moved from one romance to another. While the structure is loose and episodic, the language is simple

4、and straightforward. The importance of the romance itself can be seen as a means of showing medieval aristocratic men and women in relation to their idealized view of the world. If the epic reflects a heroic age, the romance reflects a chivalric one. 2. epic An epic is a long narrative poem telling

5、about the deeds of a great hero and reflecting the values of the society from which it originated. The earlier ones concern the history and legends of a country or a region and include stories and information from many anonymous sources. These were oral or folk epics of which some were later written

6、 down. The epics of the ancient Greek poet Homers Iliad and Odyssey, and Beowulf, written in old English and found in the late 10th century, are good examples. Later epics were deliberately composed by one author and written down. The ancient Roman Virgil is regarded as the first composer of such ep

7、ics. 3、folk ballad The folk ballad is a popular literary form; it comes from unlettered people rather than from professional mintrels or scholarly poets. As the main form of medieval folk literature, the folk ballad has an oral tradition which makes it easier to remember and memorize. Therefore, all

8、 the stylistic features of the folk ballad have derived from their oral nature. The first is its simple language; the simplicity is reflected both in the verse form and the colloquial expressions. So far as the verse form is concerned, ballads are compose mainly in quatrains, which are known as the

9、ballad stanza, rhyming abcb, with the first and third lines carrying 4 accented syllables and the second and fourth carrying 3. By making use of a simple, plain language or dialect of the common people with colloquial and, sometimes, idiomatic expressions in its narration or dialogues, the ballad le

10、aves a strong dramatic effect to the reader. The second is its wonderful story which deals only with the culminating incident or climax of a plot. Most of the ballads have a romantic or tragic dimension, with a tragic incident, often a murder or an accidental death, as their subject. Like classical

11、tragedy, ballads have an inevitability, which reflects the folk belief that people are lured into the fatally attractive traps just because all human life is shaped by fate. It is a common pattern of romantic tragic balladry that if one lover dies the other must follow suit. So usually the hero woul

12、d die of his wound, and the heroine of her sorrow. The third is its dominant mood or tone, either tragic like “Sir Patric Spens”, which tells a story of treachery, or comic like “Get up and Bar the Door”, which presents a funny scene of the domestic life. Furthermore, to strengthen the dramactic eff

13、ec of the narrative, ballads also make full use of hyperbole; actions and events are much exggerated. This hyperbolic style partly comes from a desire to astonish, for the poor folk would be delighted to hear of the large-than-life exploits of ballad people. Music has an important formative influenc

14、e on ballads, too. Another impresdsive feature of the ballad is the use of refrains 精品文檔精品文檔 and other kinds of repetitions. Poetically the refrains are decorative; musically they are absolutely essential. Through refrains and repetitions, the narration is lent a quantity of liturgy, or of incantati

15、on. Magic or supernatural force, the perpetual presence of impossibility, is a rich narrative source of balladry. In the ballad world, things happen suddenly and without warning; only the help of magicv or supernatural force can overcome the fatal powers of destruction. Love, adventure, courageous f

16、eats of daring, and sudden disaster are frequenly topic of folk ballads. 4. Renaissance (P12) 5. sonnet A Sonnet is a lyric poem comprising 14 rhyming lines of equal length: iambic pentameters in English, alexandrines in French, hendecasyllables in Italian. The rhyme schemes of the sonnet follow two

17、 basic patterns. The Italian sonnet (also called the Petrarchan sonnet after the most influential of the Italian sonneteers) comprises an 8-line octave of two quatrains, rhymed abbaabba, followed by a 6-line sestet usually rhymed cdecde or cdcdcd. The English sonnet (also called the Shakespearean so

18、nnet after its foremost practitioner) comprises three quatrains and a final couplet, rhyming ababcdcdefefgg. Originating in Italy, the sonnet was established by Petrarch in the 14th century as a major form of love poetry, and came to be adopted in Spain, France and England in the 16th century and in

19、 Germany in the 17th. The standard subject-matter of early sonnets was the torments of sexual love (usually within a courtly love convention), but in the 17th century John Donne extended the sonnets scope to religion, while Millton extended it to politics. 6. Enlightenment (P44) 7. Neoclassicism (P4

20、5) 8. Romanticism (P81) 9. Gothic novel (P83) 10. Modernism (P136-137) 11. Stream of consciousness Stream of consciousness is one of the modern literary techniques. It is the style of writing that attempts to imitate the natural flow of a characters thoughts, feelings, reflections, memories, and men

21、tal images as the character experiences them. It was first used in 1922 by the Irish novelist James Joyce. Those novels broke through the bounds of time and space, and depicted vividly and skillfully the unconscious activity of the mind fast changing and flowing incessantly, particularly the hesitan

22、t, misted, distracted and illusory psychology people had when they faced reality. The modern American writer William Faulkner successfully advanced this technique. In his stories, action and plots were less important than the reactions and inner musings of the narrators. Time sequences were often di

23、slocated. The reader feels himself to be a participant in the stories, rather than an observer. A high degree of emotion can be achieved by this technique. 13. Blank verse Blank verse is a type of poetry, distinguished by having a regular meter, but no rhyme. In English, the meter most commonly used

24、 with blank verse has been iambic pentameter. Blank verse was introduced into English verse by Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, who along with his older friend Sir Thomas Wyatt also introduced the sonnet and other Italian poetic forms into English poetry in the sixteenth century. It soon became the sta

25、ndard metre for dramatic poetry and a widely used form for narrative poems. Much of the finest verse in English-by Shakespeare, Milton, 精品文檔精品文檔 Wordsworth-has been written in blank verse. 14. The Spenserian stanza The Spenserian stanza is a fixed verse form invented by Edmund Spenser for his epic p

26、oem The Faerie Queen. Each stanza contains nine lines in total: eight lines in iambic pentameter followed by a single line in iambic hexameter. The rhyme scheme of these lines is ababbcbcc. 15. 16. Iambic pentameter Iambic pentameter is a poetic line consisting of five verse feet, with each foot an

27、iambthat is, an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. Iambic pentameter is the most common verse line in English poetry. 16 Lake Poets Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southey were also called the Lake Poets, because they lived and knew one another in the last few years of the 18th century i

28、n the district of the great lakes in Northwestern England, and shared a community of literary and social outlook in their work. All three of them had radical inclinations in their youth but later turned conservative. 17. Heroic Couplet Heroic Couplet refers to iambic pentameter lines rhymed in pairs

29、. It is called “heroic” because in England, it is usually used in heroic poems. 18. Morality play The Morality plays or Moralities sprang up in England in the 15th century alongside of the Mystery and Miracle plays. They are different in that the morality play doesnt tell stories from the Bible nor about the lives of the saints, but is a dramatized allegory in which abstract virtues and vices such as Mercy, Conscience and Shame, appear in personified form, in order to illustrate moral or religious doctrines. 19. Theatre of the Absurd The Theatre of the A