英国文学名词解释.doc

1 Epic: It is, originally, an oral narrative poem, majestic both in theme and style. Epics deal with legendary or historical events of national or universal significance, involving action of broad sweep and grandeur. Typically, an epic includes several features: the introduction of supernatural forces that shape the action; conflict in the form of battles or other physical forces combat; and stylistic conventions such as an invocation to the Muse, and set speeches couched in elevated language. They summarize and express the nature or ideals of an entire nation at a significant or crucial period of its history. Eg: Iliad 伊利亚特，Odyssey奥德赛 Paradise Lost 失乐园，The Divine Comedy神曲。 2 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 Arthurs court. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is an example of a medieval romance.3 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. Coleridges The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is a 19th century English ballad. 4 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 cc . 5 Renaissance: Renaissance marks the transition from the medieval to the modern world. It first started in Italy in the 14th century and gradually spread all over Europe. The word “Renaissance” means rebirth or revival. In essence, it is a historical period 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 that 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 literary form. It is the keen interest in the activities of humanity.6 Sonnet: A lyric poem of fourteen lines whose ryhme scheme is fixed. The rhyme scheme in the Italian form as typified in the sonnets of Petrarch is abbaabba cdecde. The Petrarchian sonnet has two divisions: the first is of eight lines (the octave), and the second is of six lines (the sestet). The rhyme scheme of the English, or Shakespearean sonnet is abab cdcd efef gg. The change of rhyme in the English sonnet is coincidental with a change of theme in the poem. The meter is iambic pentameter. 7 Blank verse: A poem written in unrhymed iambic pentameter.8 Spenserian Stanza: Spenser invented a new verse form for his poem. The verse form has been called Spenserian Stanza since his day. Each stanza has nine lines, each of the first eight lines is in iambic pentameter form, and the ninth line is an iambic hexameter line. The rhythm scheme is abab bcbc c. 9 Enlightenment : The Enlightenment was a progressive intellectual movement throughout Western Europe in the 18th century. It was an expression of struggle of the bourgeoisie against feudalism. The enlighteners fought against class inequality, stagnation, prejudices and other survivals of feudalism. They thought the chief means for bettering the society was enlightenment or education for the people. The English enlighteners were bourgeois democratic thinkers. They set no revolutionary aim before them and what they strove for was to bring it to an end by clearing away the feudal ideas with the bourgeois ideology.10 Classicism: A movement or tendency in art, music, and literature to retain the characteristics found in work originating in classical Greece and Rome. It differs from Romanticism in that while Romanticism dwells on the emotional impact of a work, classicism concerns itself with form and discipline. 11 Sentimentalism: Sentimentalism appeared in the middle of the 18th century, as a reaction against commercialism and the cold rationalism. Sentimentalists emphasize “the human heart” and show sympathy to the poor. This trend marks the transition form neoclassicism to romanticism in English poetry. Thomas Gray is one of the models. Another sentimentalist poet is Oliver Goldsmith (The Disserted Village). The most outstanding figure of English sentimentalism is Laurence Sterne.12 Pre-romanticism: The Romantic Movement was marked by a strong protest against the bondage of Classicism, 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. 13 Romanticism : Romanticism was in effect a revolt of the 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 bourgeoisie. Romantics saw men essentially as an individual in the solitary state and emphasized the special qualities of each individuals 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 places the individual at the center of art, making literature most valuable as an expression of his or her unique feelings and particular attitudes, and valuing its accuracy in portraying the individuals experiences. The romantics extol the faculty of the imagination, write about nature and they get inspiration form nature, turn to the humble people and the common everyday life for subjects and turn to other times and places, where the qualities they valued would be convincingly depicted.14 Aestheticism: Aestheticism is a term given to a movement, a cult, a mode of sensibility in the 19th century. Fundamentally, it expressed the point of view that art is self-sufficient and need serve no other purpose than its own ends. The major implication of the new aesthetic standpoint was that art had no reference to life, and therefore had nothing to do with morality. Many poets of the period strove for beautiful musical effects in their verses rather than for sense. They aspired to sensuousness and revived archaistic modes and archaic language. They also revived an extensive use of classical mythology as a framework for expressing ideas. It opposes the democratic and socialist ideals and upholds bourgeois individualism. Their slogan is art for arts sake. They can see the social evils, but they dont think it possible to remove those evils and make life fair and just. They think that the world is suffering from an incurable disease. Their writings are like groans of desperate patients. Oscar Wilde is the representative among the writers of aestheticism.15 Gothic novel: The term Gothic derived from the frequent setting of the tales in the ruined, moss-covered castles of the Middle Ages. Gothic novel exploits the possibilities of mystery and terror. These novels, in rebellion against the increasing commercialism and rationalism, opened up to later fiction the dark, irrational side of human nature - the savage egoism, the perverse impulses, and the nightmarish terror that lie beneath the controlled and ordered surface of the conscious mind. The gothic novel exhibits the gothic qualities of doom and gloom as well as an emphasis on chivalry and magic. Gothic heroes and heroines tend to the equally mysterious, with dark histories and secrets of their own. Exaggeration and emotional language are frequently employed by gothic writers, who typically emphasize story line and setting over character and characterization. They seek to evoke an atmosphere of terror, often from an unidentifiable source.16 Stream-of-consciousness: Stream of consciousness, which presents the thoughts of a character in the random, seemingly unorganized fashion in which the thinking process occurs, has the following characteristics. First, it reveals the action or plot through the mental processes of the characters rather than through the commentary of an omniscient author. Second, character development is achieved through revelation of extremely personal and often typical thought processes rather than through the creation of typical characters in typical circumstances. Third, the action of the plot seldom corresponds to real, chronological time, but moves back and forth through present time to memories of past events and drams of the future. Fourth, it replaces narration, description, and commentary with dramatic interior monologue and free association.17 Puritanism: The term is used in a narrow sense of religious practice and attitudes, and in a broad sense of an ethical outlook, which is much less easy to define. 1. In its strict sense, Puritan was applied to those Protestant reformers who rejected Queen Elizabeths religious settlement of 1560. This settlement sought a middle way between Roman Catholicism and the extreme spirit of reform of Geneva. The Puritans, influenced by Geneva, Zurich, and other continental centers, objected to the retention of bishops and to any appearance of what they regarded as superstition in church worship-the wearing of vestments by the priests, and any kind of religious image. Apart from their united opposition to Roman Catholicism and their insistence on simplicity in religious forms, Puritans disagreed among themselves on questions of doctrine and church organization. Puritans were very strong in the first half of 17th century and reached its peak of power after the Civil War of 1642-6, a war, which was ostensibly religious, although it was also political. 2. In the broad sense of a whole way of life, Puritanism has always represented strict obedience to the dictates of conscience and strong emphasis on the virtue of self-denial. The word Puritan is often thought to imply hostility to arts, but this is not necessarily true.18 Alliteration: It is used for poetic effect, a repetition of the initial sounds of several words in a group. e.g. 1.To his kin the kindest, keenest for praise. 2.Sing a song of southern singer19 Neo-classicism: A revival in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries of classical standards of order, balance 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. 20 Augustan Age: A period in history of a literature when it reaches its highest standards in certain early identified qualities: refinement, clarity, elegance, and balance of judgments. This coincided in Roman literature with the reign of the Emperor Augustus ( 27 BC-AD 14). Generally speaking, Augustan age can be extended back to Dryden and forward to include the work of Pope and Samuel Johnson; in fact, to include all those English writers who shared the literary ideas of the reign of Anne. This period of English culture was indeed one in which there was an especially high admiration for the classical Augustan age, the age of Virgil, Horace, and Ovid, and for the standards of criticism prescribed by Horace in his Art of Poetry. 21 Elegy: it seeks for lament. It is a poem on death or on a serious loss; characteristically a sustained meditation expressing sorrow and, frequently, an explicit or implied consolation 22 Realism: A term used in literature and art to present life as it really is without sentimentalizing or idealizing it. Realistic writing often depicts the everyday life and speech of ordinary people. This has led, sometimes to an emphasis on sordid details.23 Allegory: A story illustrating an idea or a moral principle in which objects take on symbolic meanings. In Dante Alighieris Divine Comedy, Dante, symbolizing mankind, is taken by Virgil the poet on a journey through Hell, Purgatory and Paradise in order to teach him the nature of sin and its punishments, and the way to salvation.24 Characterization: The method a writer uses to reveal the personality of a character in a literary work: Methods may include (1) by what the character says about himself or herself; (2) by what others reveal about the character; and (3) by the characters own actions.25 Comedy: A literary work which is amusing and ends happily. Modern comedies tend to be funny, while Shakespearean comedies simply end well. Shakespearean comedy also contains items such as misunderstandings and mistaken identity to heighten the comic effect. Comedies may contain lovers, those who interfere with lovers, and entertaining scoundrels. In modern Situation Comedies, characters are thrown into absurd situations and are forced to deal with those situations, all the while reciting clever lines for the amusement of a live or television or movie audience. 26 Conceit: A far-fetched simile or metaphor, a literary conceit occurs when the speaker compares two highly dissimilar things. In the following example from Act V of Shakespeares Richard II, the imprisoned King Richard compares his cell to the world in the following line: I have been studying how I may comparethis prison where I live unto the world:27 Euphemism: A mild word of phrase which substitutes for another which would be undesirable because it is too direct, unpleasant, or offensive. The word joint is a euphemism for the word prison. W. C. is a euphemism for bathroom.28 Fable: A brief tale designed to illustrate a moral lesson. Often the characters are animals as in the fables of Aesop. 29 Free Verse: Unrhymed Poetry with lines of varying lengths, and containing no specific metrical pattern.30 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 poetry, beginning as radicals and closing as conservatives.31 Naturalism: it first appeared in France, there naturalists including Zola turned especially to “slum life”, in England flourished in the 2nd half of 19th century; naturalists argued that literature reflect life, be “true to life”, writer must reproduce in his writings life exactly as it is, (including all details without any selection), theory of “a slice of life”; However, a fallacy, for impossible to include all the details in real life; only give the appearance of life but not its essence. In England, two outstanding writers in the last decades: George Gissing, George Moore.32 Neo-Romanticism: it appeared at the end of 19th century and represented by Robert Louis Stevenson; it protests against the ugly social reality of their day but taking no positive steps about it，in a sense another form of escapism; dissatisfied with the contemporary reality, but at best a mild dissatisfaction; tried to find interest or enjoyment out from sheer imagination and fancy by creating exciting events and romantic characters that can hardly exist in reality，indulge in the description of exciting adventures in distant lands to deal with the heroic, to lay emphasis on the complexity and sensationalism of the material, Treasure Island, the representative in this school. 33 Symbolism: Symbolism works under the surface to tie the storys external action to the theme. It was often produced through allegory, giving the literal event and its allegorical counterpart a one-to-one correspondence. William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), the well-known symbolic poet (who studied Blakes symbolism). T.S. Eliot (1887-1965), poet, playwright, critic, an American, later a British citizen, important as the representative of modern symbolistmetaphysical school. The Waste Land, his representative.34 Imagism: A literary movement launched by British and American poets early in the 20th century in reaction against Victorian sentimentalism that advocated the use of free verse, common speech patterns, and clear concrete images.In modern poetry, an Anglo-American venture; Ezra Pound, one of the founders, Hilde Doolittle, another one. (to be discussed in detail in American Lit)35 Modernism: Around the two world wars, many writers and artists began to suspect and be discontent with the capitalism. They tried to find new ways to express their understanding of the world. It was a movement of experiments in techniques in writing. It flourished in the 20s and 30s in English literature.They turned their interest to describing what was happening in the minds of their characters. Because of their emphasis on the psychological activities of the characters, their writings are also called psychological novels. The Representatives are W.B. Yeats and T.S. Eliot,D.H. Lawrence, E.M. Foster, James Joyce and Virginia Woolf.36 Metaphysical Poetry: The poetry of John Donne and other seventeenth-century poets who wrote in a similar style. Metaphysical poetry is characterized by verbal wit and excess, ingenious structure, irregular meter, colloquial language, elaborates imagery, and a drawing together of dissimilar ideas.37 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 think that man has a potential for culture which distinguishes him from lower orders of beings, and which he should strive constantly to fulfill.38 Mystery play: The Mystery plays of the Middle Ages were based on the bible and were particularly concerned with the stori