英美文学考点

一、文学术语*4
1.Epic叙事诗，史诗
A long narrative poem telling about the deeds of a great hero and reflecting the values of the society from which it originated. Many epics were drawn from an oral tradition and were transmitted by song and recitation before they were written down. Two of the most famous epics of Western civilization are Homer' s Iliad and Odyssey. The great epic of the Middle Ages is The Divine Comedy (神曲) by the Italian poet Dante. The two most famous English epics are the Anglo- Saxon Beowulf and John Milton' s Paradise Lost, which employ some of the conventions of the classical epic.
2.Naturalism 自然主义(文学、艺术以反映现实为宗旨)
Naturalism is a term of literary history, primarily a French movement in prose fiction and the drama during the final third of the 19th century, although it is also applied to similar movements or groups of writers in other countries in the later decades of the 19th and early years of the 20th cents. In France Emile Zola (1840-1902) was the dominant practitioner(习艺者，专业人员) of Naturalism in prose fiction and the chief exponent (鼓吹者，倡导者，拥护者;能手，大师) of its doctrines. The emergence of Naturalism does not mark a radical (彻底的) break with Realism, rather the new style is a logical extension of it. Broadly speaking, Naturalism is characterized by a refusal to idealize experience and by the persuasion that human life is strictly subjected to natural laws. The Naturalists shared with
the earlier Realists the conviction that the everyday life of the middle and lower classes of their own day provided subjects worthy of serious literary treatment. Emphasis was laid on the influence of the material and economic environment on behavior, and on the determining effects of physical and hereditary factors in forming the individual temperament. Famous American Naturalistic writers would include Jack London, Stephen Crane and Frank Norris, who were deeply influenced by Charles Darwin's evolution theory which believe that one's heredity and social
situation limit one's character.
3. Modernism现代派(盛行于20世纪的文学风格)
Modernism was a complex and diverse international movement in all the creative arts, originating about the end of the 19th century and prosperity in the 20th century. The major themes of the modernist literature are the distorted, alienated and ill relationships between man and nature, man and society, man and man, and man and himself. The modernist writers concentrate more on the private than on the public, more on the subjective than on the objective They are mainly concerned with the inner being of an individual. In their writings, the past, the present and the future are mingled (混合) together and exist at the same time in the consciousness of an individual.
4.Transcendentalism 超验主义
It was a reaction to the 18th century Newtonian concept of the universe.
The major features of New England Transcendentalism can be summarized as follows.
1 The Transcendentalists placed emphasis on spirit, or the Oversoul, as the most important thing in the universe.
2. The Transcendentalists stressed the importance of the individual. To them the individual
was the most important element of society.
3. The Transcendentalists offered a fresh perception of nature as symbolic of the Spirit
or God Nature was, to them, not purely matter. It was alive, filled with God' s overwhelming presence.
I. Major Literary Terms in The Anglo-Norman Period
1.Romance: Any imaginative literature that is set in an idealized world and that deals with heroic adventures and battles between good characters and villains or monsters. Originally, the term referred to a medieval tale dealing with the loves and adventures of kings and queens, knights and ladies, and including unlikely or supernatural happenings. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is the best of the medieval romances. John Keats' s The Eve of St. Agnes is one of the greatest metrical (格律) romances ever written.
2. Ballad(民谣，叙事歌谣): A story told in verse and usually meant to be sung. In many centuries, the folk ballad was one of the earliest forms of literature. Folk ballads have n0 known authors. They were transmitted
orally from generation to generation and were not set down in writing until centuries after they were first sung. The subject matter of folk ballads stems from the everyday life of the common people. The most popular subjects, often tragic, are disappointed love, jealousy, revenge, sudden disaster and deeds of adventure and daring. Devices commonly used in ballads are the refrain (叠词) , incremental repetition (叠句) and code language (特定语言) . A later form of ballad is the literary ballad which imitates the style of the folk ballad. The most famous English literary ballad is Samuel Taylor Coleridge' s The Rime of the .Ancient Mariner (老水手之歌) ，
二、选择&填空
The Anglo-Norman Period
The literature which Normans brought to England is remarkable for its---tales of--- and---, in marked contrast of____ and---of Anglo-Saxon poetry.
● romantic, love , adventure, strength, somberness (昏暗;冷静) Geoffrey Chaucer
1. The Canterbury Tales contains in fact a General Prologue and only--tales, of which two are left unfinished.
●24
2. The--provides a framework for the tales in The Canterbury Tales and it comprises a group of vivid pictures of various medieval figures.
●Prologue 序言
3. The Canterbury Tales is Chaucer' s greatest work and the greater part of
it was written in--Couplets.
●Heroic (英雄双韵体)
4. The pilgrims in The Canterbury Tales are on their way to the shrine of St. Thomas a Becket at the place named---
●Canterbury
5. In The Canterbury Tales, from the character of---，we may see a very vivid sketch of a woman of the middle class, and a colorful picture of the domestic life of that class in Chaucer' s own day.
●the Wife of Bath (巴斯夫人: 齐叟笔下一个结过5次婚等待第六位丈夫的女人)
Renaissance
1 Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and---are generally regarded as Shakespeare' s four great tragedies.
●Macbeth
2. Absolute monarchy in England reached its summit during the reign of---
●Queen Elizabeth
3.---wrote his---in which he gave a profound and truthful picture of people' s sufferings and put forward his ideal of a future happy society.
●Thomas More, Utopia
The literature of the 17th century
1 After---' s death, monarchy was again restored in 1660. It was called the
period of---
●Oliver Cromwell; Restoration
2. The Glorious Revolution took place in the year of---
●1688.
3. Paradise Lost tells how---rebelled against God and how---and---were driven out of Eden.
●Satan; Adam, Eve.
4. Bunyan' s most important work is---，written in the form old-fashioned medieval form of---and dream.
●The Pilgrim' s Progress; allegory寓言
The 18th century literature
1. The image of an enterprising Englishman of the 18th century was created by Daniel Defoe in his famous novel---.
●Robinson Crusoe
2. The 18th century in English literature is an age of---
●prose
3. Jonathan Swift s masterpiece is---
●Gulliver' s Travels
4. William Blake' s work.--- (1794) are in marked contrast with the Songs of Innocence天真之歌
●The Songs of Experience经验之歌
5. The greatest of --- poets in the 18th century is Robert Burns.
●Scottish
The 19th century literature
1. With the publication of William Wordworth' s ---with S. T Coleridge, ---began to bloom and found a firm place in the history of English literature.
●Lyrical Ballads抒情歌谣集，Romanticism
2.The Romantic Age came to an end in 1832 when the last Romantic writer___ died.
●Walter Scott
3. The greatest historical novelist---was produced in the Romantic Age.
●Walter Scott
4.The glory of the Romantic age is in the poety of---, ---, ---, ---, ---, and ---.
●Scott, Wordsworth, Coleridge科尔里奇，Byron, Shelley, Keats ,Moore, Southey索西.
5.The English Romantic Period produced two major novelists. They are---
●Scott and Austen
6. In his poems Wordsworth aimed at the--- and ---of the language.
●simplicity, purity
7. Byron is chiefly known for his two long poems, one is Childe Harold' s Pilgrimage, and the other is ---.
●Don Juan
8.“Ode to a Nightingale” was written by---.
●John Keats
9.Jane Austen' s literary concern is about human beings in their---relationships.
●personal
Victorian Age
1.In the 19th century English literature, a new literary trend--- appeared after the romantic poetry, and flourished in the time of---.
●Critical realism, 1840s and 1850s.
2.Critical realism reveals the corrupting influence of the rule of cash upon human nature. Here lies in the essentially--- and---character of critical realism.
●Democratic, humanitarian
3.In A tale of Iwo Cities, the two cities are---and ---in the time of revolution.
●London, Paris .
4.In 1847, Thackeray published his masterpiece---, which marks the peak of his literary career.
●Vanity Fair
5.It is Robert Browning who developed the literary form---.
●Dramatic monologue戏剧独白
20th century British Literature
1__ had its outstanding advocate in Kipling, who with drum and trumpet, called upon England to “take up the Whiteman' s burden” by dominating
all “lesser breeds without the law."
●lmperialism
2.Those “novels of character and environment” by Thomas Hardy are the lost representative of him as both a---and a critical realist writer.
●Naturalistic
3. It took Galsworthy twenty- two years to accomplish the monumental work, his masterpiece---.
●The Forsyte Saga福尔赛世家
4. Lawrence finished---, the autobiographical novel at which he had been working off and on for years, which was positively taken as a typical example and lively manifestation of the “Oedipus Complex' 'in fiction.
●Sons and Lovers
5.---and--- are the most outstanding stream of consciousness novelist.
●James Joyce, Virginia Woolf.
6.--- is generally regarded as Virginia Woolf s most remarkable work.
●To the Lighthouse
Exercises on American Literature
1.In the 17th century, the English settlements in---and---began the main stream of what we recognize as the American national history.
●Virginia, Massachusetts
2. Washington Irving' s____ became the first work by an American writer to win financial success on both sides of the Atlantic.
●Sketch Book
3.Cooper' s enduring fame rests on his frontier stories, especially the five novels that comprise the---.
●Leatherstocking Tales
4.____ was responsible for bringing Transcendentalism to New 1and---.
●Ralph Waldo Emerson
5. A superb book entitled---came out of Henry David Thoreau' s two-year experiment at Walden Pond.
●Walden
6.The book---is a tremendous chronicle of a whaling voyage in pursuit of
a seemingly supernatural white whale.
●Moby Dick
Book two chapter one
1. In his cluster of poems called Leaves of Grass, ---gave America its first genuine epic poem.
●Walt Whitman
2. As the founder of American Critical Realism, ---enjoys the fame as “Lincoln of American literature?
●Mark Twain
3.---was considered the founder of psychological realism in America.
●Henry James
4.The identification of potency (影响) with money is at the heart of Dreiser'
s greatest and most successful novel,---
●An American Tragedy
The 20th century
1 Pound was the leader of a new movement in poetry which he called the---“Movement
●Imagist
2.The most significant American poem of the 20th century was---
●The Waste Land
3.---of the 1920s characterized by frivolity and carelessness is brought vividly to life in The Great Gatsby.
●The Jaz Age
4. Hemingway' s novel---painted the image of a whole generation, the Lost Generation.
●The Sun Also Rises
5.---wrote about the disintegration (瓦解) of the old social system in the American southern states, and the lives of modern people, both black and white.
●William Faulkner
三、True or False
1. In 1066, Alexander the Great led the Norman army to invade England. It was called the Norman Conquest.
●F (William the Conqueror)
2. The Story of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is the culmination (顶点) of the romances about Charles the Great.
●F(King Arthur and his knights)
3. Robinson named Saturday to the saved victim.
●F(Friday)
4.“A Modest Proposal is made to Irish government to relieve the poverty of English people. F(Irish)
5. It was Henry Fielding and Tobias Gorge Smollet who became the real founders of the genre of the bourgeois realistic novel in England and Europe.
6. Of all the romantic poets of the 18th century, Blake is the most in dependent and the most original. T
7. George Eliot produced the remarkable novels including Adam Bede, The Mill on the Floss and Silas Marner. (true)
8.The Bronte sisters are Charlotte Bronte, Emily Bronte and Anne Bronte. (true)
9. The Victorian Age was largely an age of prose, especially of the novel. (true)
10 David Copperfield is Thackeray' s masterpiece. F(Dickens)
11.The title of the novel Vanity Fair is taken from Bunyan' s Pilgrim' s progress. (true)
12 In 1907, John Galsworthy received the Nobel Prize for “idealism in
literature. Kim is his long novel. F (Kipling)
13. George Bernard Shaw was strongly against the credo of“ art for art' s sake
14. The Importance of Being Earnest is written by Oscar Wilde. T
15.Hester Prynne is the heroine in Nathaniel Hawthome' s novel The Scarlet Letter.
16 In 1828, Noah Webster published his An American Dictionary of the English Language.
17.5tirred by the teachings of transcendentalism, writers of Boston and nearby towns produced a New England literary renaissance. T
18. The Fall of the House of Usher is one of Edgar Allan Poe' s poems. F(novels)
19 Most of the poems in Leaves of Grass are about man and nature. T
20 Emily Dickinson is a democratic poet. F(modernist)
21.“The Cop and the Anthem” was written by Jack London. F (O Henry)
22 While embracing the socialism of Marx, Jack London also believed in the triumph of the strongest individuals. This contradiction is most vividly projected in the patently autobiographical novel The Call of the Wild. F Martin Eden)
23. Between the mid-19th and the first decade of the 20th century, there had been a big flush of new theories and new ideas in both social id natural sciences, as well in the field of art in Europe, which played an
indispensable role in bringing about modernism and the modernistic writings in the United States. T
24. The decade of the 1910s, American literature achieved a new diversity and reached its greatest heights. F(1920s)
、。