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英国文学术语British Literature The Renaissance Period 1. Allegory: As a rule, an allegory (also defined as an extended metaphor) is a story in verse or prose with a double meaning: a primary or surface meaning, and a secondary or under-the-surface meaning. It is a stor...

英国文学术语
British Literature The Renaissance Period 1. Allegory: As a rule, an allegory (also defined as an extended metaphor) is a story in verse or prose with a double meaning: a primary or surface meaning, and a secondary or under-the-surface meaning. It is a story that can be read, understood and interpreted at two levels ( in some cases at three or four levels). It is closely related to the fable and the parable, which are didactic, comparatively short and simple allegories. The form may be literary or pictorial or both. An allegory has no definite length. The higher levels of meaning are usually concerned with moral, religious, political, symbolic or mythical ideas. In an allegory, characters or personifications represent something other than themselves---virtues, vices, causes or issues. There are two kinds of allegory: those that use personifications, as in Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress and Spenser’s The Faerie Queene; and those that use a special kind of symbolism, as in Dante’s Divine Comedy. 2.Blank verse: Blank verse is unrhymed poetry, typically in iambic pentameter, and, as such, the dominant verse form of English dramatic and narrative poetry since the mid-16th century. Blank verse is not written in stanza form. Instead, the poem is developed in verse paragraphs that vary in length. Blank verse is a flexible form of expression that gives the poet a choice of many variations within the metrical pattern. Because of its flexibility, blank verse is especially appropriate for narrative and dramatic poetry and other longer kinds of poetry. Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, adapted blank verse from Italian poetry to English in the early 1500’s. Christopher Marlowe and Shakespeare used this form with great power and variety in their plays. Many poets of the 1800’s and 1900’s wrote in blank verse. They include William Wordsworth, William Cullen Bryant, John Keats, Lord Tennyson, Edwin Arlington Robinson, Robert Frost, and Wallace Stevens. 3.Humanism: Broadly, this term suggests any attitude, which tends to exalt the human element or stress the importance of human interests, as opposed to the supernatural, divine elements—or as opposed to the grosser, animal elements. In a more specific sense, humanism suggests a devotion to those studies supposed to promote human culture effectively---in particular, those dealing with the life, thought, language, and literature of ancient Greece and Rome. In literary history the most important use of the term is to designate the revival of classical culture that accompanied the Renaissance. 4.Renaissance: It is the rebirth of artistic, literary and academic interest and creativity that marks the transition from Medieval Europe to the modern world. Generally dated from the 14th to the mid-17th century, the renaissance emerged in Italy and spread to the rest of Europe. In outlook the renaissance brought new importance to individual expression, self-consciousness, and worldly experience; culturally it was a time of brilliant accomplishments in scholarship, literature, science, and the arts. More generally, it was an era of emerging nation-states and exploration, and the beginning of a revolution in commerce. It is best to regard the renaissance as the result of a new emphasis upon and a new combination of tendencies and attitudes already existing, stimulated by a series of historical events. The new humanistic learning that resulted from the rediscovery of classical literature is frequently taken as the beginning of the Renaissance on its conscious, intellectual side. The influence of the Renaissance on future generations was to prove immense in many fields—from art and literature to education, political science, and history. For centuries, most scholars have agreed that the modern era of human history began with the Renaissance. 5.Sonnet: It is a basic lyric form, consisting of 14 lines of iambic pentameter rhymed in various patterns. The Italian or Petrarchan sonnet is divided clearly into octave and sestet, the first rhyming abba abba and the second in a pattern such as cdc dcd. The Shakespearean sonnet consists of three quatrains followed by a couplet: abab cdcd efef gg.In late 16th- century England, sonnets were written either independently as short epigrammatic forms, or grouped in sonnet sequence, i.e. collections of upwards of a hundred poems, in imitation of Petrarch, purportedly addressed to one central figure or muse—a lady usually with a symbolic name like “Stella” or “Idea”. Milton made a new kind of use of the Petrarchan form, and the romantic poets continued in the Miltonic tradition. Several variations have been devised, including the addition of “tails” or extra lines, or the recasting into 16 lines, instead of 14. 6. A soliloquy: A speech in which a character, alone on the stage, addresses himself or herself; a soliloquy is a “ thinking out aloud,” a dramatic means of letting an audience know a character’s thoughts and feelings. The Period of Revolution and Restoration The 17th Century 6.Metaphysical:It refers to the school of poets that appeared in the revolutionary period in England by using quite unconventional and often surprising conceits; the metaphysical poets wrote poems full of wit and humor. Nut sometimes the logic argument and conceits become pervasive, going to preposterous dimensions. The language is colloquial but very powerful, creating unorthodox images on the reader’s mind. John Donne and Andrew Marvell are the representative metaphysical poets. 7.Conceit:奇想;别出心裁的比喻。(爱情比作坟墓、太阳、海洋等) From the Italian concetto, “concept” or “idea”; used in renaissance poetry to mean a precise and detailed comparison of something more remote or abstract with something more present or concrete, and often detailed through a chain of metaphors or similes. In Petrarchan poetry, certain conceits became conventionalized and were used again and again in various versions. The connection between the Lady’s eyes and the Sun, so typical of these, was based on the proportion her gaze: love’s life and day; sun’s shining; world’s life and daylight. Conceits were closely linked to emblems, to the degree that verbal connection between the emblem picture and its meaning, was detailed in an interpretative conceit. 8. Wit: Just like conceit, wit is not the invention of Donne, but his innovation. Actually, wit is the mainspring of his poetic method, and central to his poetic statement. Wit lashes through Donne’s love lyrics, satires, epigrams, religious poems and sermons; wit kindles Donne’s edifices, conceits and subjects; wit also helps build up tensions and movements in his poems. The dialectical arrangement of a poem, the habitual casting of an address in the form of reasoning processes, sets up an overall mental tension and gives strength and sinew to the intimate movement. The dramatic plot takes on a tighter-screwed cohesion in the pattern of premise and resolution. Donne’s wit is so vigorous and mobile that it devours all human experiences of ins and outs, ups and downs into poetic expressions. Out of Donne’s wit born a goo d deal of paradox. A confidence gained is at once seemingly betrayed, disturbing one’s mind only to strengthen the final triumphant vindication. And witty extravagance often seems to turn back on itself, such as the comic extremes of the advances to love in Loves Exchange, and the grotesque disparity between the solemn urgency of the expostulations and the trivial object in The Flea. Even in his love lyrics, his wit is not limited to cunning sweet utterances between lovers. The poet’s philosophical ingenio us often adds to the simple sweetness of love a deep sarcastic twist. However it does not mean that it is just to read Donne’s poetry as witty plays of words, though he was eager to startled delight his reader by the fertility and audacity of his wit and h e did play on words occasionally. Donne’s interest is his theme, love and woman, and he uses words not for their own sake but to communicate his consciousness of these surprising phenomena in all their varying and conflicting aspects, and beyond adroitness, wit is the nervous life of moving intelligence, and a sentience which is at once warm, and quick. On observing the many disparate styles of wit in literary history, Samuel Coleridge defined Donne’s unique wit as “ wonder-exciting vigor, intenseness and peculiarity of thought, using at will the almost boundless stores of a capacious memory, and exercised on subjects, where we have no right to expect it-this is the wit of Donne.” 9. Stanza: A group of lines forming a structural unit or division of a poem. Stanzas may be units of form established through similarity in the number of lines, length of lines, meter and rhyme scheme; or stanzas may exist as logical units determined by their thought or content. The Period of Enlightenment The Enlightenment:The Enlightenment was a progressive intellectual movement throughout Western Europe in the 18th century and in Russia in the 19th century. It was a European movement as if prevailed not only over England but also over Russia and Germany and esp. France where there were such giants as Montesquieu, Pidero, Voltaire and Rousseau, writing on the eve of the French Revolution in 1789. The Enlightenment in England was different from that in other European countries. Appeared in an epoch not preceding but after the bourgeois revolution. They did not call for the launching of a revolution but urged the carrying on of the revolution to system, at the foundation of which was the compromise between the upper strata of the old ruling class the aristocrats and upper strata of the new ruling class the bourgeoisie and the English Enlightenment come after this compromise. The enlighteners considered the chief means for the betterment of the society was “enlightenment” or “education” for the people. They believed in the power of reason. Reason served as the yardstick for the measure of all human activities and social relations. Superstition and injustice; Privilege and oppression were to yield place to “eternal truth”, “eternal justice” natural equality and inalienable sight of man. But this right of reason is nothing other than the idealized reign of the bourgeoisie. The Neoclassicism:The term mainly applies to the classical tendency that dominated English literature during the last decades of the 17th century and the first half of the 18th century. It was at least in part, the result of a reason against the fires of passion, which had blazed in the late Renaissance, especially in the metaphysical poetry. It found its artistic models in the classical literature of the ancient Greek and Roman writers like Homer, Virgil, Horace, Ovid, etc. and in the contemporary French writers such as V oltaire and Diderot. In literary creation, it emphasized the classical artistic ideals of order, logic, proportion, restrained emotion, accuracy, good taste and decorum. It had a lasting wholesome influence upon literature of the coming generations in its clarifying and chastening effect upon English prose style and in its establishing in English literature the importance of certain classical graces, such as order, good form, unified structure, clarity, conciseness, and restraint. Poetic techniques as developed by Pope, too, had become a permanent heritage. Gothic Novel: It is a form of novel in which magic, mystery and supernatural elements are the chief characteristics. It invariably exploits ghosts, monsters and settings such as old castles, dungeons and graveyards, which impart a suitably sinister and terrifying atmosphere. Horace Walpoles Castle of Otranto(1764) was the first important gothic novel. However, it was Mrs. Anne Radcliff that made gothic novel popular. The better-known gothic novels are The Mystery of Udolpho ,Frankenstein( Mary W. Shelley). Heroic Couplet: It is a pair of rhymed lines of verse of equal length. Each line consists of ten syllables and five stresses. It was first used in Chaucer’s Legend of Good Women. The heroic couplet was the most prevalent form of verse between 1660and 1790 when most major poets from Dryden to Crabbe used it; but it was Pope that was the acclaimed master of the heroic couplet. Romantic Period Romanticism:It is a term applied to literary and artistic movements of the late 18th and early 19th century. It can be seen as a rejection of the precepts of order, calm, harmony, balance, idealization, and rationality that typified classicism in general and late 18th-century neoclassicism in particular. It was also to some extent a reaction against the enlightenment and against 18th-century rationalism and physical materialism in general. Inspired in part by the libetarian ideals of the French Revolution, the romantics believed in a return to nature and in the innate goodness of humans, as expressed by Jean Jacques Rousseau. They emphasized the individual, the subjective, the irrational, the imaginative, the personal, the spontaneous, the emotional, the visionary, and the transcendental. They also showed interest in the medieval, exotic, primitive, and nationalistic. Critics date English literary romanticism from the publication of William Wordsworth and S.T.Coleridge’s Lyrical ballads in 1798 to the death of Sir Walter Scott and the passage of the first reform bill in the parliament in 1832. Byronic Hero:Byronic Hero: “Byronic Hero”is a stereotyped character created by Byron. This kind of hero is usually a proud, mysterious rebel figure of noble origin. With immense superiority in his passions and powers, he would carry on his shoulders the burden of righting all the wrongs in a corrupt society. He would rise single-handedly against any kind of tyrannical rules either in government, in religion, or in moral principles with unconquerable wills and inexhaustible energies. The conflict is usually one of rebellious individuals against outworn social systems and conventions Free verse: non-metrical verse. Poetry written in free verse is arranged in lines, may be more or less rhythmical, but has no fixed metrical pattern or expectation. Such poetry may seem formless, nut it does have a form or pattern, often largely based on repetition and parallel structure. W alt Whitman’s poems are typical examples. The Victorian Period Chartism Movement: It is an English working class movement, beginning in 1837, to secure the political reforms, more basic rights, social recognition and improved living and working conditions for the lower classes. In the People’s Charter(1838), the workers demanded manhood suffrage, vote by ballot, payment of members of parliament, equal electoral districts, the abolition of the property qualification for parliamentary members, and annual parliaments. But again and again the petitions were rejected by the parliament. The movement collapsed in 1848 after repeated rejections of the petitions, but all its aims, except the last, were wholly or partially achieved and working people’s living and work ing conditions were more or less improved. Utilitarianism: It is a theory formulated in England in the 18th century by Jeremy Bentham who believed that the test of ethical concerns was their usefulness to society. He defined utility as “ the greatest happiness for the greatest number”. The theory was advanced and modified in the 19th century by his disciples. It was widely accepted and practiced. Almost everything was put to test by the criterion of utility, that is, by the extent to which it could promote the material benefit. It held a special appeal to the middle-class industrialists who used it as an excuse for their exploitation of the vast working class men, women and children. Dramatic Monologue:It is a lyrical poem reveals “ a soul in action” throug h the conversation of one character in a dramatic situation. The character is speaking to an identifiable but silent listener at a dramatic moment in the speaker’s life. The circumstances surrounding the conversation are made by implication in the poem, and a deep insight into the character of the speaker is given. Although quite an old form, it was brought to a very high level by Robert Browning. His poems. “ My Last Duchess”, “ Pippa Passes”, and T.S. Eliot’s “ The Love Song of Prufrock” are in this form too. Determinism:It refers to the belief or theory that human actions and events are controlled by and result from causes that determine them. According to Karl Marx, a man’s economic environment determines his actions and life; according to Charles Darwin, it is the scientific laws governing evolution; according to Sigmund Freud it is the human unconsciousness; and according to some religious and theologians it is the will of a god or gods. Fictional characters that illustrate determinism usually act with their free will not in accordance with forces beyond their control. George Eliot’s determinism is made up of two factors: the inside and the outside. She believes that one’s destiny is determined by the combined forces of his own character and the social circumstances. If one fails in life, he himself is as much to blame as the society. Besides, vulnerability in human character and limitation of the social environment is inevitable; failures, disappointments or tragedies must be the natural result. Naturalism: A post-Darwinian movement in the late 19th century that tried to apply the “laws” of scientific determinism to fiction. The naturalists went beyond the realists’ insistence on the objective presentation of the details of everyday life and insisted that materials of literature should be arranged to reflect a deterministic universe in which a person is a biological creature controlled by his environment and heredity. There is an emphasis of chance or coincidence and the character’s passivity in natura listic works, and the tone is rather pessimistic. Major writers include Crane, Dreiser, Norris and O’Neil in America, Zola in France, and Hardy and Gissing in England. Crane’s “ The Blue Hotel” ( !898) is perhaps the best example of naturalistic fiction. The Modern Period Modernism: 1)The rise Of modernism movement Modernism rose out of skepticism and disillusionment of capitalism, which made writers and artists search for a new ways to express their understanding of the world and the human nature. The French symbolism was the forerunner of modernism. The First World War quickened the rising of all kinds of literary trends of modernism, which, toward the 1920s, converged into a mighty torrent of modernist movement. The major figures associated with the movement were Kafka, Picasso, Pound, Eliot, Joyce, and Virginia Woolf. Modernism was somewhat curbed in the 1930s. but after World War II, Varieties of modernism, or post-modernism, rose again with the spur of Sarter’s existentialism. However, they gradually disappeared or diverged into other kinds of literary trends in the 1960s. 2)The characteristics of modernism ●Modernism marks a strong and conscious break with the past, by rejecting the moral, religious and cultural values of the past. ●Modernism emphasizes on the need to move away from the public to the private, from the objective to the subjective. ●Modernism upholds a new view of time by emphasizing the psychic time over the chronological one. It maintains that the past, the present and the future are one and exist at the same time in the consciousness of individual as a continuous flow rather than a series of separate moments. ●Modernism is, in many respects, a reaction against realism. It rejects rationalism, which is the theoretical base of realism; it excludes from its major concern the external, objective, material world, which is the only creative source of realism; it casts away almost all the traditional elements in literature like story, plot, character, chronological narration, etc., which are essential to realism. As a result, the works created by the modernist writers can often be labeled as anti-novel, anti-poetry or anti-drama Stream of consciousness Stream of consciousness is a phrase coined by W.James in his Principles of Psychology(1890) to describe the flow of thoughts of the human mind. Now it is widely used in a literary context to describe the narrative method whereby certain novelists describe the unspoken thoughts and feelings of their characters without resorting to objective description or conventional dialogue. Among English writer, James Joyce and Virginia Woolf are two major advocates of the technique. The ability to represent the flux of a characters thoughts, impressions, emotions, or reminiscences, often without logical sequence or syntax, marked a revolution in the from of novel. The related phrase “interior monologue”is also used to describe the inner movement of consciousness of characters mind: celebrated examples are the opening pages of Mrs.Dalloway, and Molly Blooms reflections in the closing pages of Ulysses. Literary Criticism: The term refers to analysis, interpretation, and evaluation of works of literature in light of existing standards of taste, or with the purpose of creating new standards. There are two approaches to literary criticism. Theoretical criticism is the study of the principles governing fiction, poetry, and drama with the aim of defining the distinct nature of literature. Practical criticism is the threefold act of reading and experiencing a literary work, judging its worth, and interpreting its meaning. Feminist Criticism:Literary criticism written from the perspective of women, reflecting female attitudes, concerns, and values. Feminist criticism is concerned both with how the meaning of a literary work is affected when read from a woman’s perspective and how female characters and women in general are treated within the work. This literary movement grows out of ( and is part of) the feminist movement which since the late 1960s has attempted to improve equal rights and equal opportunities for women by identifying and removing the political, social, and psychological obstacles that prevent them from achieving their full possibilities as human beings.
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