英美文学导论重点

What is Literature：

14th century: It means polite learning through reading. A man of literature or a man of letters = a man of wide reading, ―literacy‖18th century: practice and profession of writing

19th century: the high skills of writing in the special context of high imagination。

My definition:

In the widest sense it is just about anything written. In the more specialized sense, it is the art that use language as a medium and characterized by beauty of expression and form and by universality of intellectual and emotional appeal.

What is poetry?

A literary form Written in lines

Compressed content

Rich imagery

Beautiful harmony

Great artistic appeal Sonnet十四行诗：

an exact form of poetry in 14 lines of iambic pentameter intricately rhymed.

玄学派诗歌：

The term ―metaphysical poetry‖ is commonly used to name the work of the 17th –century writers who wrote under the influence of John Donne. Metaphysical poets tried to break away from the conventional fashion of the Elizabethan love poetry.

Ode颂:an elaborately formal lyric poem, often in the form of a lengthy ceremonious address to a person or abstract entity, always serious and elevated in tone. Imagism and Ezra Pound

An image is ―that which

presents an intellectual and

emotional complex in an

instan t of time‖.

(1) Direct treatment of the

‗thing‘ whether subjective

or objective.

(2) To use absolutely no

word that does not

contribute to the

presentation.

(3) As regarding rhythm:

to compose in the sequence

of the musical phrase, not

in the sequence of a

metronome.

什么是小说：

A work of fiction is a

narrative that originates in

the imagination of the

author.

Sometimes the stories are

―true‖, but more often they

are not.

Some fiction—historical or

autobiographical fiction, for

example—may focus on

real people and the plot

may be grounded in actual

events, but the way

characters interact and how

the plot unfolds are the

author‘s own invention.

The purpose of fiction are

mainly for entertainment,

instruction, and aesthetic

pleasure of the reader

小说要素：Plot Setting

Point of view Theme

Tone Irony Style

Lost Generation垮掉的一代：

applied to the disillusioned

intellectuals and aesthetes

of the years following the

First World War, who

rebelled against former

ideals and values;

代表人物：

Francis Scott Fitzgerald

Ezra Pound

Sherwood Anderson

William Faulkner

Ernest Hemingway

什么是戏剧：

A drama is a work of

literature or a composition

which delineates life and

human activity by means of

presenting various actions

of, and dialogues between a

group of characters. And it

is designed for theatrical

presentation

戏剧要素：

Plot Character Thought

Diction Music Spectacle

戏剧分类：

Tragedy

Comedy

Tragicomedy

Melodrama

Problem play

Farce

Fatancy