英国文学复习笔记整理.docx

1、英国文学复习笔记整理1 Although Geoffrey Chaucer was essentially a medieval writer, he bore marks of humanism and anticipated a new era of literature to come.2 Romance, which uses narrative verse or prose to tell stories of Knightly adventures or other heroic deeds, is a popular literary form in the medieval p

2、eriod.The Renaissance PeriodEdmund Spencer / Christopher Marlowe / William ShakespeareFrancis Bacon / John Donne / John Milton1. Renaissance: between 14th and mid-17th century.2. Renaissance means rebirth or revival is actually a movement stimulated by a series of historical events, such as: The red

3、iscovery of ancient Roman and Greek culture, The new discoveries in geography and astrology, The religious reformation and the economic expansion.3. The Renaissance, therefore in essence is a historical period in which the European humanist thinkers and Scholars made attempt to get rid of those old

4、feudalist ideas in Medieval Europe, to introduce new ideas that expressed the purity of the rising bourgeoisie, and to recover the purity of the early church from the corruption of the Roman Catholic Church.The religious reformation in the early 16th-century England was a reflection of the class str

5、uggles waged by the rising bourgeoisie against the feudal class and its ideology4. Humanism is the essence of the RenaissanceThe essence of humanism is to emphasize human qualities(1) Capable of individual development in the direction of perfection.(2) They inhabited was theirs not to despise by to

6、question, explore and enjoy.(3) Tomas More, Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare are the best representative of the English humanist.5 Metaphysical poetry: Metaphysical is characterized by passionate thought succession of concentrated image, exercise of elaborate ingenuity and “wit”, John Don

7、ne was the famous of the Metaphysical poet. The Metaphysical Poets were men of learning and to show their learning was their endeavor.Edmund SpenserMasterpiece: The Faerie Queene (allegory)Christopher Marlowe （University wits）1 Important plays: Tambulaine, Dr.Faustus, The Jew of Malta 2 Marlowe voic

8、ed the supreme desire of the man of the Renaissance of infinite powers and authority(1) Perfected the blank verse.(2) Creation of the Renaissance hero to English drama, it embodies Marlowes ideal of human dignity and capacity.3Dr.Faustus: aspiring for knowledge, the plays dominant moral is human rat

9、her than religious, it celebrates the human passion for knowledge, power and happiness, it also reveals mans frustration in realizing the high aspiration in a hostile moral order and the confinement to time is the cruelest fact of mans condition.4 The statement that a man gained the whole world but

10、lost his own soul makes a good summary of the main plot of The Tragic History of Doctor FaustusWilliam Shakespeare1. Works: 154 sonnets, 38 plays, 2 long poemsComedy: Merchant of Venice.2 4 great tragedies: Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, MacbethEach portrays some noble hero, who face the injustice of h

11、uman fate is closely connected with the fate of the whole nation; each hero has his weakness of nature.Hamlet, the melancholic scholar-prince, faces the dilemma between action and mind:Othellos inner weakness is made use of by the outside evil force; old King Lear who is unwilling to totally give up

12、 his power makes himself suffer from treachery(背叛) and infidelity(失真)Macbeths lust for power stirs up his ambition and leads him to incessant crime.3 statements best illustrates the theme of Shakespeares Sonnet 18 :The speaker praises the power of artistic creation.Francis Bacon1 Masterpiece: Essay;

13、 Novum Organum.(新工具)2 Novum Organum: most impressive display of Beacons intellect. The argument is for the use of inductiveness of reason in scientific study.3 Beacon suggests the inductive reasoning, i.e. proceeding from the particular to the general, in place of the Aristotelian method, the deduct

14、ive reasoning, i.e. proceeding from the general to the particular.4 Beacons essays are famous for their brevity, compactness and powerfulness.John DonneMetaphysical poetry The most striking feature of Donnes poetry is precisely its tang of reality, in the sense that it seems to reflect life in a rea

15、l rather than a poetical world.Donne frequently applies conceits.John MiltonThree major poetical works:Paradise lost, Paradise Regained, Samson AgonistsThe freedom of the will is the key tone of Miltons creed.Paradise LostThe epic is the masterpiece of John MiltonThe story is drawn from the Old Test

16、ament of the Bible, which tells how Satan, after being defeated in his rebel against God, tempts Adam and Eve to eat the apples for the Forbidden Tree, and causes the Fall of Man.The Neoclassic PeriodJohn Bunyan / Alexander Pope / Daniel Defoe / Jonathan SwiftHenry Fielding / Samuel Johnson / Richar

17、d Brinsley SheridanTomas Gray1 Between the return of the Stuarts to the English throne in 1660 and the full assertion of Romanticism which came with the publication of lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge in 17982 Enlightenment or the Age of reasonThe Enlightenment movement was a progressive

18、intellectual movement, which flourished in France and swept the whole Western Europe at the timeIts propose was to enlighten the whole world with the light of modern philosophical and artistic ideas. The enlightenment celebrated reason or rationality, equality and science. They called for a referenc

19、e to order, reason and rule, yield place to “eternal truth” “eternal justice” and “natural equality”They believed that human beings were limited, dualistic and imperfect literature at the time, heavily didactic and moralizing.They believed in self-restraint, self-reliance and hard work. To work, to

20、economize and to accumulate wealth constitutes the whole meaning of their life. This aspect of social life is best-formed in the realistic novels of the 18th century.3 In the field of literature, they believed that the artistic should be order, logic, restrained emotion and accuracy. Seek proportion

21、, unity, harmony and grace in literary expression, in an effort to delight, instruct and correct human beings.4 Neoclassicism. In English literature and, the stylistic trend between the Restoration and the advent of romanticism at the beginning of the 19th century is referred to as Neoclassicism.5 H

22、eroic: It is a pair of rhymed lines of iambic pentameter. The form was introduced into English by Chaucer and widely used subsequently.John Bunyan1. Masterpiece: The pilgrims progress2. The “vanity fair” symbolizes human world; for all that comth is vanity everything and anything in this world is va

23、nity, having no value and no meaning. 3. In The Pilgrims Progress, John Banyan describes The Vanity Fair in a satirical tone.The phrase to urge people to abide by Christian doctrines and to seek salvation through constant struggles with their own weaknesses and all kinds of social evils may well sum

24、 up the implied meaning ofThe Pilgrims ProgressAlexander Pope1 Pope, a very sensitive man, would strike back hard, and in the constant verbal battles he developed a style of biting satire.2 He was one of the first to introduce rationalism to England, but was not entirely blind to the rapid moral, po

25、litical and cultural deterioration.3 For him the supreme values were order-cosmic order, political order, social order, aesthetic order, and this emphasis an order expression in all of his works. Pope made his name as a great poet with the publication of an Essay on Criticism in 1711.4 Pope strongly

26、 advocated Neoclassicism, emphasizing that literary works should be judged by classical rule of order, reason, logic, restrained emotion, good taste and decorum.Daniel DefoeMasterpiece: Robinson CrusoeHis language is smooth, easy, colloquial (口语的)and most vernacular. Defoe glorifies human labor and

27、the puritan fortitude. It refers the enterprising sprit of the middle class.Jonathan Swift1. Chief works: A Tale of a Tub, The battle of the books, The Drapiers letters, Gullivers Travel and a modest proposal.2. Swift is almost unsurpassed in the writing of simple, direct, precise prose. He defined

28、a good style as “proper words in proper places” clear, simple, concrete, diction, uncomplicated sentence structure and economy and concise use of language mark all his writing-essay, poems and novels.3. As a whole, the book is one have the most effective and devastating criticism and satires of all

29、aspects in the then English and European life socially, politically, religiously, philosophically, scientifically and morally.Henry Fielding1. Masterpiece: A History of Tom Jones, a Foundling2. Fielding has been regarded by some as “Father of the English Novel” for his contribution to the establishm

30、ent of the form of the modern novel.3. Fieldings language is easy, unlabored and familiar but extremely vivid and vigorous.4. Of all the 18th century novelist, he was the first to set out both in theory and practice. To write specially a “comic epic in poem” the first to give the modern novels its s

31、tructure and story; he use epistolary form and “the third-person narration”.5. In planning his stories, he tries to retain the grand, epical of the classical works but at the same time keeps faithful to his realistic presentation of common life as it is.Samuel Johnson1. Lexicographer: the author of

32、the first English dictionary by an English man-A Dictionary of the English Language (1755)2. To the Right Honorable the Earl of-Chesterfield3. He was particularly fond of moralizing, and didacticism. His language in characteristically general, often Latinate and frequently polysyllabic.Richard Brinsley Sheridan1 Masterpiece: The school for scandal.2 Sheridan has the only important English dramatist of the 18th century; import