英国文学简史复习重点.docx

1、1. Byronic hero: with immense superiority in his passions and powers, this Byronic hero would carry on his shoulders the burden of righting all the wrongs in a corrupt society, and would rise single-handedly against any kinds of tyrannical rules either in government, in religion, or in moral princip

2、les with unconquerable wills and inexhaustible energies. The conflict is usually one of rebellious individuals against outworn social systems and conventions. E.g. George Byron “Don Juan”2. Conceit: Inliterature, aconceitis anextended metaphorwith a complexlogicthat governs a poetic passage or entir

3、epoem. InEnglish literaturethe term is generally associated with the 17th centurymetaphysical poets, an extension of contemporary usage. In themetaphysicalconceit, metaphors have a much more purelyconceptual, and thus tenuous, relationship between the things being compared. E.g. John Donne “The Flea

4、” 3. English renaissance: TheEnglish Renaissancewas aculturalandartistic movementin England dating from the late 15th to the early 17th century. The beginning of the English Renaissance is often taken, as a convenience, to be 1485. Renaissance style and ideas, however, were slow to penetrate England

5、, and theElizabethan erain the second half of the 16th century is usually regarded as the height of the English Renaissance. E.g. Thomas More “Utopia” William Shakespeare “Hamlet” 4. Romanticism in English poetry: at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries romanticism appeared in England as a new tr

6、end in literature. It rose and grew under the impetus of the Industrial Revolution and French Revolution. In 1798 Coleridge and William Wordsworth jointly published the “Lyrical Ballads”, which marked the beginning of romanticism in England. (Romanticism was an artistic, literary, and intellectual m

7、ovement that originated in Europe toward the end of the 18th century and in most areas was at its peak in the approximate period from 1800 to 1850.) E.g. William Blake “The Lamb” Robert Burns “A Red, Red Rose” 5. Dramatic monologue: in literature, it refers to the occurrence of a single speaker sayi

8、ng something to a silent audience. Robert Brownings “My Last Duchess” is a typical example in which the duke, speaking to a non-responding audience reveals the reasons for his disapproval of the behavior of his former duchess and some tyrannical and merciless aspects of his own personality. 6. Strea

9、ms of consciousness: it is a psychological term indicating “the flux of conscious and subconscious thoughts and impressions moving in the mind at any given time independently of the persons will.” In the 20th century, under the influence of Freuds theory of psychological analysis, a number of writer

10、s adopted the “stream of consciousness” method of novel writing. E.g. Virginia Woolf Mrs. Dalloway7. Epiphany(顿悟): Deep thoughts that might be gained through incidents and circumstances which seem outwardly insignificant. Its Joyces theory. E.g. James Joyce Dubliners8. Critical realism in English: E

11、nglish critical realism of the 19th century flourished in the forties and in the early fifties. The critical realists described with much vividness and great artistic skill the chief traits of the English society and criticized the capitalist system from a democratic viewpoint. E.g. Charles Dickens

12、Great Expectations David CopperfieldWilliam Blake “The Tyger”“Songs of Experience”Theme: Gods creativityTone: rationalRhythm: blacksmithingImage: mysterious augustSix quatrains in rhymed couplets; the meter is regular and rhythmic; from the perspective of a more experienced personGeorge Bernard Shaw

13、: He was anIrishplaywrightand a co-founder of theLondon School of Economics. Shaw was against “art for arts sake.” He wrote, “For arts sake I will not face the toil of writing a sentence.” Shaw was a friend of progressive mankind. He supported the forces of revolution and democracy in their struggle

14、 against imperialism and reaction. Mrs. Warrens Profession is one of the Plays Unpleasant. Unpleasant it is to the bourgeois public because Shaw attacked in it the vices of capitalist society. He shows that under the guise of bourgeois respectability horrible crimes and corruption are concealed. In

15、this play Shaw accuses the bourgeois of making profit by fostering prostitution. Mrs. Warrens own life experience as a whole cannot represent that of the ordinary, suffering poor women in capitalist society.“I wondered lonely as a cloud”William WordsworthA lyric poem; four stanzas of six lines; alli

16、teration;Masculine rhyme in “a, b, a, b, c, c”; rhythm scheme: ababcc,efefgg,hihikk,lmlmnnHe also achieves musical quality by the management of alliteration (e.g. “That floats on high oer vales and hills” in line 2 and “Beside the lake, beneath the trees” in line 5) and assonance (e.g. “beneath the trees in line 5” and “ They stretched in never-endin