Terms_for_English_Literature

Terms for English Literature1.epic 史诗a long narrative poem, grand in style, about heroes and heroic deeds, embodyingheroic ideals of a nation or race in the making. Beowulf is the English national epic that was passed from mouth to mouth and written down by many unknown hands.2.caesura 停顿a break or pause in a line of poetry, dictated by the natural rhythm of the languageand sometimes enforced by punctuation. In Old English verse, such as Beowulf, the caesura is used rather monotonously to indicate the half line.3.alliteration 头韵the repetition of the same sound or sounds at the beginning of two or more words that are close to each other. It is a feature of Beowulf and other Old English poems.4.alliterative verse 头韵诗poetry written in alliteration. Nearly all Old English verse, including Beowulf, is heavily alliterative, and the pattern is fairly standard –with either two or three stressed syllables in each line alliterating.5.accentual verse 重音诗In this verse only the beat of the strong stresses counts in the scanning, while the number of intervening light syllables is highly variable. Usually there are four strong-stressed syllables in a line, whose beat is emphasized by alliteration. This is the meter of Old English poetry and many Middle English poems, for example, Beowulf.6.kenning 隐喻语a metaphor usually composed of two words and used for description andassociation. Beowulf is full of kennings, such as “helmet bearer” for “warrior” and “swan road” for “sea”.7.protagonist 主角the principal character of a drama or fiction. Hamlet is the protagonist of William Shakespeare’s drama Hamlet.8.antagonist 反角In drama or fiction the antagonist opposes the hero or protagonist. In Hamlet Claudius is antagonist to Hamlet.9.romance 传奇a type of literature that was popular in the Middle Ages, usually containingadventures and reflecting the spirit of chivalry. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a great verse romance, but its author remains unknown.10.poet’s corner 诗人角a part of Westminster Abbey, London, which contains the tombs or monuments ofsome famous English poets, such as Geoffrey Chaucer and John Milton.11.heroic couplet 英雄偶句诗two successive lines of rhymed poetry in iambic pentameter. Geoffrey Chaucer’s masterpiece The Canterbury Tales is written in heroic couplet.12.ballad meter 民谣体traditionally a four-line stanza containing alternating four-stress and three-stress lines, usually with a refrain and the rhyme scheme of abcb. Robert Burns’ “A Red, Red Rose” is a great love ballad.13.refrain 叠句，副歌a phrase, line or lines repeated at intervals during a poem and especially at the endof a stanza. It is very often found in English ballads, such as Robert Burns’ “A Red, Red Rose”.14.English Renaissance 英国文艺复兴the literary flowering of England in the late 16th century and early 17th century, with humanism as its keynote. William Shakespeare’s Hamlet is considered the summit of this renaissance.15.Elizabethan literature 伊丽莎白时代的文学the English literature produced during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1558-1603).The Elizabethan era saw a great flourishing of literature, especially in the field of drama. William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet is a masterpiece of this period.16.sonnet 十四行诗a fixed form consisting of fourteen lines of 5-foot iambic verse. It first flourishedin Italy in the 14th century. William Shakespeare is a great English sonnet writer famous for his 154 sonnets.17.meter 格律the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in verse. In English verse a line may have a fixed number of syllables and yet have a varying number of stresses;the commonest meter is iamb. William Shakespeare’s sonnets are written in iamb.18.foot 音步a group of syllables forming a metrical unit. We measure feet in terms of syllablevariation: long and short syllables, stressed and unstressed. The commonest foot in English verse is iamb; the commonest line is five-foot line, called pentameter.William Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 18” contains fourteen iambic pentameter lines. 19.iambic pentameter 五步抑扬格the basic line in English verse, with five feet in a line, usually an unaccented syllable followed by an accented syllable. It was probably introduced by Geoffrey Chaucer and certainly established by him in The Canterbury Tales.20.rhyme scheme 押韵格式the pattern of end-thymes in a stanza or poem, generally described by using letters of the alphabet to denote the recurrence of rhyming lines. For example, heroic couplets are “aabbcc” and so on.21.quatrain 四行诗节a stanza of four lines, rhymed or unrhymed. It is the commonest of all stanzaicforms in English poetry. Robert Burns’ “A Red, Red Rose” has four quatrai ns.22.image 意象a mental picture made out of words to represent an object or sensory experience.Images are either “literal” or “figurative”. Literal images are especially concrete and involve little or no extension of the obvious meaning of the words used to express them. Figurative images do not follow the literal meaning of the words exactly. Images in literature are usually visual. The rose in Robert Burns’ poem “A Red, Red Rose” is a n image of love and beauty.23.symbol 象征a word or phrase that signifies something beyond itself, i.e., the scales, the dove,the rose, the Cross, the Stars and Stripes. A literary symbol combines an image with a concept. A symbol can be public or private, universal or local. In the poem “A Red, Red Rose” by Robert Burns, the poet wrote the image of the rose into a symbol of passionate love.24.poetic license 诗的破格the liberty allowed to the poet to wrest the language according to his needs in the use of figurative speech, archaism, rhyme, strange syntax, etc. An example is the last se ntence of “A Red, Red Rose” by Robert Burns –“Tho’ it were ten thousand mile!”25.verse drama 诗剧drama written in the form of verse. It was most widely used in the Elizabethan Age. William Shakespeare’s dramas are all verse dramas, Hamlet being the most famous.26.blank verse 无韵诗，素体诗unrhymed iambic pentameter, the most widely used of English verse forms and usually used in English dramatic and epic poetry. William Shakespeare’s play Hamlet is written in blank verse.27.Globe Theatre 环球剧场one of the most famous of all theatres in history, it was built in 1599, with three stories. The roof was thatched, with the centre open to the sky. Many of William Shakespeare’s plays were performed in it. It was destroyed by fire in 1613, rebuilt the next year and finally demolished in 1644. Again it was rebuilt in 1997.28.essay 散文，随笔a composition, usually in prose, which may be of only a few hundred words or ofbook length and which discusses, formally or informally, a topic or a variety of topics. It is one of the most flexible and adaptable of all literary forms. Francis Bacon is a great essayist; his “Of Studies” is a model of good essay.29.English Romanticism 英国浪漫主义a literary trend that aimed at free expression of the writer’s ideas and feelings andprevailed in England during the period 1798-1832. The English Romantics expressed a revolt against or an escape from the sordid daily life. A great representative of the movement is Percy Bysshe Shelley, the author of “Ode to the West Wind”.ke poets 湖畔诗人the three romantic poets who lived in the Lake District of England and wrote poems about nature. William Wordsworth is the most famous of the lake poets, his famous poems being “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud”, etc.31.poet laureate 桂冠诗人a poet honored for his artistic achievement or selected as most representative ofhis country or era; in England, a court official appointed by the sovereign to compose odes in honor of the sovereign’s birthday and in celebration of state occasions of importance. William Wordsworth became poet laureate in 1843. 32.Victorian literature 维多利亚时代的文学the English literature produced during the reign of Queen Victoria (1837-1901). In the Victorian era the novel became the leading form of English literature. William Makepeace Thackeray’s Vanity Fair is a masterpiece of this period.33.English Critical Realism 英国批判现实主义a literary trend that flourished in the mid-19th century England, aiming at aportrayal of life with fidelity and without idealization. The English critical realists powerfully exposed the ugliness of the bourgeois world and showed sympathy for the common people. The greatest representative of the movement is Charles Dickens, the author of David Copperfield.。