名词解释_英国文学史与选读

名词解释

Allegory: It is a fictional narrative or artistic expression that conveys a symbolic meaning parallel to but distinct from, and more important than, the literal meaning. The symbolic meaning is usually expressed through personifications and other symbols. Related forms are the fable and the parable, which are didactic, comparatively short and simple allegories. The art of allegory reached its height during the Middle Ages, (especially in the works of the Italian poet Dante and the English poet Geoffrey Chaucer) and during the Renaissance. In The Faerie Queene the English poet Edmund Spenser conceals, beneath a surface of chivalric romance, a commentary on religious and ethical doctrines and on social conditions in 16th-century England. One of the greatest of all allegories is Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan, a prose narrative symbolically concerning the search for spiritual salvation. Although modern authors generally favor less abstract, more personal symbolism, allegories are still written. Animal Farm is a popular example, which was written by the English writer George Orwell.

Alliteration: A repeated initial consonant to successive words. In Old English verse, any vowel alliterates with any other, and any alliteration is not an unusual or expressive phenomenon but a regularly recurring structural feature of the verse, occurring on the first and third, and often on the first, second, and third, primary-stressed syllables of the the four-stressed line. Thus, from The Seafarer: hreran mid hondum hrincaelde sae

(“to stir with his hand the rime-cold sea”)

In later English verse tradition, alliteration becomes expressive in a variety of ways. Spener uses it decoratively, or to link adjective and noun, verb and object, as in the line: “much daunted with t hat dint, her sense was dased.” In the 18th and 19th centuries it becomes even less systematic and more “musical”.

Ballad: It is a lyric poem generally of three eight-line stanzas with a concluding stanza of four lines called an envoy. With some variations, the lines of a ballad are iambic or anapestic tetrameter rhyming ababbcbC; the envoy, which forms a personal dedication to some person of importance or to a personification, rhymes bcbC. The last line (C) of the stanza is repeated as a refrain throughout. Another pattern often employed consists of a ten of five lines rhyming ccdcD. The ballad became popular in England in the late 14th century and was adopted by Geoffrey Chaucer, who wrote several notable examples, including the Complaint…to His Empty Pur se.

Blank Verse: Blank verse is unrhymed poetry, typically in iambic pentameter, and the dominant verse form of English dramatic and narrative poetry since the mid-16th century. Blank verse was adapted by Italian Renaissance writers from classical sources; it became the standard form of dramatists. Christopher Marlowe used blank verse for dramatic verse; William Shakespeare transformed blank verse into a supple instrument, uniquely capable of conveying speech rhythms and emotional overtones. According John Milton, only unrhymed verse could give English the dignity of a classical language.

Classicism: As a critical term, a body of doctrine thought to be derived from or to reflect the qualities of ancient Greek and Roman culture, particularly in literature, philosophy, art, or criticism. Classicism stands for certain definite ideas and attitudes, mainly drawn from the critical