英国文学赏析整理

Alexander PopeAn Essay on Man （know then thyself）The poem is written in iambic tetrameter, every two line have the same thyme at the last word.The poem is important in the sense that it embodies the 18th century concepts of the universe and man’s place in it, that is man is made in the shape of God, and occupies a middle position in the Great Chain of Being. As the poet says sometimes we have too much knowledge and feel suspect about everything, but sometimes we have too much weakness and can not be as pride as Stotic, sometimes we seem to have the power to rule all things but sometimes we seem prey to all. We are in the middle place and sometimes we are confused about whether to act or rest. The poet perfectly describes man’s feeling about ourselves and about the world.Although Pope is never profound in thought but he is very adapt in voicing the idea of his contemporaries in a beautiful and clever way.Robert BurnsA Red, Red, RoseThe metrical pattern of the poem is basically in the ballad form, i.e. each stanza consisting of four lines, with four stressed syllables in the odd-numbered lines and three stressed syllables in the even-numbered lines, and with rhymes occurring on the even-numbered lines.The image of rose evokes traditional associations of beauty, love and romance. Its simple lyrics and straight form and expression of feeling make it a favorite choice for poetry anthologies and a most appreciated poem for readers. Incorporating various elements from folk songs, the poem is supposed to be a song sung by an Irish sailor to his sweet heart before his ship sailed off to sea, the exaggerated declaration of love “till theseas are gone dry and till the rock melts” can remind us of a well known Chinese oath. There is no tearful parting. But determined hope of reunion: the sailor will come back to his sweet heart” though it were ten thousand miles.”William BlakeThe LameThe poem is written in rhyming couplets with alternating iambic and anapestic feet. it’s one of the poems that collected in Songs of Innocence which express the poet’s delight in life, even in the face of sorrow and suffering.The poem is a child song, in the form of a question and answer. The first stanza is rural and descriptive, while the second focuses on abstract spiritual matters and contains explanation and analogy. The child’s question is both na?ve and profound. “who made thee” is a simple question, but the child is also tapping into the deep and timeless questions that all human beings have, about their own origins and the nature of creation. The situation of a child talking to an animal is a believable one. Yet by answering his own question the child coverts it into a rhetorical one, thus counteraction the initial spontaneous sense of the poem, and also reveals his confidence in his simple Christian faith and his innocent acceptance of its teachings.The lamb symbolizes Jesus, as Jesus has a traditional image as a lamb. The image of the child is also associated with Jesus: in the Gospel, Jesus displays a special concern for children. This poem, like many of the poems in Songs of Innocence, accepts that Blake saw as the most positive aspects of conventional Christian belief.William WordsworthI wandered lonely as a cloud(四步抑扬)The form of the poem: it consists of four six-line stanzas following the rhyme scheme: ababcc. Each line is metered (音步) in iambic tetrameter.One of the themes of the poem is about the soothing effect of memories on human thoughts, as we know the song was written 2 years later when Wordsworth saw the flowers, so memories are really important.It’s a typical poem of Romanticism; it incorporates the ideas and aspects that are essential in romantic poetry. This simple poem also revisits the familiar subject of the unity between human and nature in a simple style and musical eloquence.The poem’s main brilliance lies in the reverse personification in its early stanzas. The speaker is metaphorically compared to a natural subject—a cloud, and the daffodils are continually personified as human beings, dancing and tossing their heads. This technique is a very effective method for instilling in the reader the similar feeling, by which words worth implies an inherent unity between man and nature and signs of the harmony between things in nature and the harmony between nature and the poet himself.The Solitary Reaper(四步抑扬)The four eight-line stanzas of this poem are written in a tight iambic tetrameter. Each follows a rhyme scheme of ababccdd.In this poem, the beauty of the song is presented to the reader through two well organized comparisons in the second stanza.The poem’s structure: the first stanza sets the scene, the second offers two bird comparisons for the music, the third wonders about the content of the songs, and the fourth describes the effect of the songs on the speaker. The final two lines of the poem return its focus to the familiar theme of memory and the soothing effect of beautiful memories on human thoughts and feelingsTo an extent, this poem ponders the limitations of language, as it does in the third stanza, but the ultimate intention of the poem is to praise the beauty of music and its fluid expressive beauty.George Gordon ByronShe Walks in Beauty (四步抑扬)The poem contains three stanzas of iambic tetrameter, with an unaccented syllable followed by an accented syllable. Its rhyme scheme: abababByron wrote the poem for his young cousin when they first met at a party, at that time she was wearing a black gown and Byron was struck by her beauty.In the poem, the first two lines demonstrate both the opposing qualities of darkness and light that pass through the three verses[（诗或歌的）句, 节.].By reading the poem, the reader can look deeper into the contents of Byron’s poem and discover both internal and external beauty in the lady.Don Juan (the isles of Greece) (四步抑扬)The poem is composed of 16stanzas, each stanza consisting of 6 lines of iambic tetrameter, with a rhyme scheme of ababcc.It’s a satirical epic and also Byron’s masterpiece. It consists of 16 cantos(长诗中的篇章) and remains unfinished.Don Juan was a great epic of the early 19th century, it was a time when Turkish people took control of Greece and brought the dreadful life to Greek people. European writers and scholars are mostly keen on the ancient Greek civilization, and Byron is also one of them, but he is more interested in calling upon the Greek people to rise up against their enslavement under the Turkish rule.Byron’s poems are full of revolutionary enthusiasm. The Isles of Greece portrays perfectly this character of spirit. In the poem, he speaks in the voice of a Greek poet, as he use expressions like “my country” and he writes about the past glories of Greece with the purpose of motivating the present-day Greeks to fight for freedom.Although the poem is about the adventures of a Spanish libertine(浪子), the real significance of the poem lies in the vivid description of the lives and manners of many lands, Byron’s fiery passions for the liberation of the Greek people and his bitter satire on the sham(假装) and hypocrisy(虚伪) in love, religion, and the social relations of his time.唐璜是一步未完成的长篇叙事讽刺诗，是拜伦最长的作品，《哀希腊》为六行诗体，四音步抑扬格，韵式为ababcc。