英国文学 名词解释 复习资料

Stream-of-Consciousness: it is a literary technique that presents the thoughts and feelings of a character as they occur without any clarification by the author. It is a narrative mode.

Epic: a long narrative poem telling about the deeds of a great hero and reflecting the values of the society from which it originated

The Enlightenment: The Enlightenment Movement was a progressive intellectual

movement which flourished in France and swept through the whole Western Europe at the time .The movement was a furtherance of the Renaissance of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Its purpose was to enlighten the whole world with the light of modern philosophical and artistic ideas. It celebrated reasons or rationality, equality and science.

Romance: the most popular literary form in the Middle Ages in Europe; A tale (in verse or prose) that deals with knightly adventures or other heroic deeds or supernatural or amorous subjects, and usually emphasizes the chivalric love.

Ballad: A folk song or orally transmitted poem telling in a direct and dramatic manner some popular story usually derived form a tragic incident in local history or legend. Ballad are normally composed in quatrains with alternating four-stress and three- stress lines ,the second and fourth lines rhyming.

Couplet(双行体)a pair of rhyming verse lines of the same length. Chauser established the use of couplet in his Canterbury Tales, using rhymed iambic pentameters later known as heroic couplet Renaissance: a revival or rebirth of the artistic and scientific revival which originated in Italy in the 14th century and gradually spread all over Europe. It has two features: a thirsting curiosity for the classical literature and keen interest in activities of humanity.

Humanism: it stands for devotion to human values represent in classical literature. it is the keynote or the dominate ideology during the Renaissance

Sonnet：A lyric of fourteen lines usually in iambic pentameter. 1. Shakespearean sonnet: Also called English sonnet or Elizabethan Sonnet. It is structured of 3 quatrains and a final couplet with the rhyme scheme: abab cdcd efef gg2. Petrarchan Sonnet: Also called Italian sonnet. It contains an octave with the rhyme pattern abba abba and a sestet of various rhyme Patterns such as cdecde or cdcdcd.

3. Spenserian sonnet: comprising 3 quatrains and a couplet in iambic pentameter with the rhyme scheme abab bcbc cdcd ee

Ode is a dignified and elaborately structured lyric poem of some length, praising and glorifying an individual, commemorating an event or describing nature intellectually rather than emotionally.

Elegy Formal lyric poem lamenting the death of a friend or a public figure, or reflecting seriously on a solemn subject.

Realism: The attempt in literature and art to represent life as it really is, without

sentimentalizing or idealizing it. Realistic writing often depicts the everyday life and speech of ordinary life. This has led, sometimes, to an emphasis on sordid details.

Sentimentalism: is a literal movement in the middle of the 18th century in England which concentrates on the distressed of the poor unfortunate and virtuous people and demonstrates that effusive emotion was evidence of kindness and goodness. It reveals grief, pains and tears. It came into being as a result of a better discontent on the part of certain enlighteners in social reality. Pre-romanticism: In the latter half of the 18th century, a new literary movement arose

in Europe, called the Romantic Revival. It was marked by a strong protest against the bondage of Classicism, by a recognition of the claims of passion and emotion, and by a renewed interest in medieval literature. In England, this movement showed itself in the trend of Pre-Romanticism in poetry, which was ushered in by Percy, Macpherson and Chatterton, and represented by Blake and Burns.

Romanticism: imagination, emotion and freedom are certainly the focal points of romanticism. The particular characteristics of the literature of romanticism include: subjectivity and an emphasis on individualism; freedom from rules; solitary life rather then life in society; the beliefs that imagination is superior to reason; and love of and worship of nature.

Lake poets: refer to the first generation of romanticism including Wordsworth

Coleridge and Southey. They once lived around the lake districts and traversed the similar attitude toward literature, politics and society, beginning as radicals and ending in conservatives.