英国文学简史复习资料

A SHORT HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE

1. the Angles, Saxons and Jutes were three tribes from Northern Europe.

2.English literature began with the Anglo-Saxon settlement in England. It is Beowulf, the national epic of the English people.

3.Features of Beowulf 贝奥武普: the most striking feature in its poetical form is the use of alliteration头韵.（definition）In alliterative verse, certain accented words in a line begin with the same consonant sound. Other features of Beowulf are the use of metaphors and of understatements.

4. The French-speaking Normans under Duke William came in 1066.(the Norman Conquest)

5. The Romance 罗曼司---the most prevailing kind of literature in feudal England. It was a long composition, sometimes in prose, describing the life and a adventures of a noble hero.

Adventures of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table

6. The Class Nature of the Romance

The theme of loyalty to king and lord was repeatedly emphasized in romance , as loyalty was the corner-stone of feudal morality, without which the whole structure of feudalism would collapse.

They were composed for the noble, of the noble, and in most cases by the poets patronized by the noble.

7.the Ballads 民谣The most important department of English folk literature is the ballad. A ballad is a story told in song; usually in 4-line, with the second and fourth lines rhymed.

8. The Robin Hood Ballad --- the various ballads of Robin Hood are gathered into a collection called The Geste of Robin Hood.绿林好汉罗宾汉的故事

9. The founder of English poetry is Geoffrey Chaucer. 乔叟

The Canterbury Tales ---(1) a collection of 24 stories (2)close links---stories are closely connected to each other (3)stories into groups on different subjects -- story-tellers, from ranks, professions, religions (4)variation in form

三大著名教堂：Westminster Cathedral 西敏寺大教堂Saint Pail’s Cathedral 圣保罗大教堂Canterbury Cathedral 坎特布雷大教堂

10.The Renaissance and Humanism

The rise of the bourgeoisie soon showed its influence in the sphere of cultural life. The result is an intellectual movement known as the Renaissance, or, the rebirth of letters. It spang first in Italy in the 14th century and gradually spread all over Europe. Two features are striking of this movement. The one is a thirsting curiosity for the classical literature. Old manuscripts were dug out. There arose a current for the study of Greek and Latin authors. While people learned to admire the Greek and Latin works as models of literary form, they caught something in spirit very different from the medieval Catholic dogma. So the love of classics was but an expression of the generation dissatisfaction at the Catholic and feudal ideas.

Another feature of the Renaissance is the keen interest in the activities of humanity. Humanism is the key-note of the Renaissance.Humanism reflected the new outlook of the rising bourgeois class. According to the humanists, both man and world are hindered only