专八英美文化大纲

8.Jonathan Swift (1667-1745): Gulliver’s Travels
9.Daniel Defoe (1660-1731): 1) Robinson Crusoe 2) Captain Singleton 3) Moll Flanders 4) Colonel Jacque
urence Sterne (1713-1768): 1) Tristram Shandy 2) A Sentimental Journey
14.Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816), a playwright: The School for Scandal
Appendix:
Classicism: it is a literary trend that dominated French literature in the 17thand 18thcenturies, with a significant influence on English writing, especially from 1660 to 1780. The classicists modeled themselves on Greek and Latin authors, and tried to control literary creation by some fixed laws and rules drawn from Greek and Latin works.
6.Joseph Addison (1672-1719), another representative of the Enlightenment in English literature, the founder of “The Spectator” (a daily paper)
7.Alexander Pope (1688-1744), the most important poet and classicist in the first half of the 18thcentury. 1) Essay on Criticism (didactic poem in heroic couplets) 2) The Rape of the Lock 3) Pope’s Homer (his translation of “Illiad” and half of “Odyssey” in heroic couplets)
4William Shakespeare
Four Tragedies: 1) Hamlet 2) Othello 3) King Lear 4) Macbeth
Celebrated comedies: 1) The Merchant of Venice 2) The Taming of the Shrew 3) A Midsummer Night’s Dream 4) All’s Well That Ends Well other celebrated ones: 1) Titus Andronicus 2) Romeo and Juliet 3) Henry V 4) Twelfth Night 5) Julius Caesar 6) Timon of Athens 7) The Tempest 8) Antony and Cleopatra
2.Thomas More, the greatest of the English humanists, “Utopia”
3.Poets in this period: (The sonnet, an exact form of poetry in 14 lines of iambic pentameter intricately rhymed, was introduced to England from Italy by Sir Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard)
3.Metaphysical Poets (mysticism in content and fantasticality in form): 1) John Donne (1572-1631), the founder of the Metaphysical school of poetry. 2) George Herbert (1593-1633), “the saint of the Metaphysical school”, sings the glory of God 3) Andrew Maevell, a Puritan
10.Samuel Richardson (1680-1761): Pamela, or, Virtue Rewarded
11.Henry Fielding (1707-1754): 1) Tom Jones 2) Joseph Andrews
12.Tobias Smollett (1721-1771): Roderick Random
An Outline of British Literary History
Early and Medieval English Literature
1.Beowulf, epic in old Briton
2.Romance
3.Ballads
4.Geoffrey Chaucer, the founder of English poetry, “The Canterbury Tales”
2.Robert Burns (1759-1796): 1) The Scots Musical Museum 2) Selected Collection of Original Scottish Airs
The English Renaissance (16th—first half of 17th)
1.Characteristic of Renaissance: 1) a thirsting curiosity for the classical literature; 2) keen interest in the activities of humanity (humanism)
1.Thomas Gray (1716-1771): Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
2.William Cowper (1731-1800): The Task (a long poem)
Pre-Romanticism:
1.William Blake (1757-1827): 1) Songs of Innocence 2) Songs of Experience
4.John Dryen (1631-1700): 1) All for Love (a tragedy) 2) An Essay of dramatic Poesy (It established his position as the leading critic of the day.)
5.Richard Steele (1672-1729), a representative of the Enlightenment in English literature, the founder of “The Tatler” (a newspaper)
15.Samuel Johnson (1709-1784), a lexicographer critic and poet: Dictionary
16.Oliver Goldsmith (1730-1774): The Vicar of Wakefield
17.Edward Gibbon, historian: The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
1Sir Philip Sidney (1554-86), love sonnets: “Astrophel and Stella”
2Walter Raleigh (1552-1618), “Discovery of Guiana”
3Edmund Spenser (1552-99), “The Shepherd’s Calendar” (a pastoral poem in 12 books); “The Faerie Queene” (his masterpiece dedicated to Queen Elizabeth). He is the first master to make Modern English the natural music of his poetic effusions.
The Neoclassical Period
1.John Milton (1608-1674): 1) Paradise Lost 2) Paradise Regained 3) Samson Agonistes
2.John Bunyan (1628-1688): The Pilgrim’s Progress
5.Drama (the highest glory of English Renaissance)
1university wits: Lyly, Peele, Marlowe, Greene, Lodge and Nash. They made rapid progress in dramatic technique because they had a close contact with the actors and audience.
Sentimentalism and Pre-Romanticism in Poetry
Sentimentalist poetry marks the midway in the transition from classicism to its opposite Romanticism in English poetry. Dissatisfied with reason, which classicists appealed to, sentimentalism appealed to sentiment, “to the human heart”. Sentimentalism turned to the countryside for its material, and so is in striking contrast to classicism, which had confined itself to the clubs and drawing-rooms, and to thesocial and political life of London.