英美诗歌文学术语(全英)
英国文学诗歌术语解释
英国⽂学诗歌术语解释A Glossary of Poetic TermsAccent（重⾳）Another word for stress. The emphasis placed on a syllable. Accent is frequently used to denote stress in describing verse.Aestheticism（唯美主义）A literary movement in the 19th century of those who believed in “art for art?s sake” in opposition to the utilitarian doctrine that everything must be morally or practically useful. Key figures of the aesthetic movement were Walter Pater and Oscar Wilde.Alexandrine（亚历⼭⼤诗体）The most common meter in French poetry since the 16th century: a line of twelve syllables. The nearest English equivalent is iambic hexameter. The Alexandrine being a long line, it is often divided in the middle by a pause or caesura into two symmetrical halves called hemistiches. Alexander Pope?s “Essay on Criticism” offers a typical example.Allegory（讽喻）A pattern of reference in the work which evokes a parallel action of abstract ideas. Usually allegory uses recognizable types, symbols and narrative patterns to indicate that the meaning of the text is to be found not in the represented work but in a body of traditional thought, or in an extra-literary context.Rrepresentative works are Edmund Spenser?s The Faerie Queene, John Bunyan?s The Pilgrim’s Progress.Alliteration（头韵） A rhyme-pattern produced inside the poetic line by repeating consonantal sounds at the beginning of words. It is also called initial rhyme.Allusion（引喻） A passing reference in a work of literature to something outside itself. A writer may allude to legends, historical facts or personages, to other works of literature, or even to autobiographical details. Literary allusion requires special explanation. Some writers include in their own works passages from other writers in order to introduce implicit contrasts or comparisons. T.S. Eliot?s The Waste Land is of this kind.Analogy（类⽐）The invocation of a similar but different instance to that which is being represented, in order to bring out its salient features through the comparison.Anapest（抑抑扬格） A trisyllabic metrical foot consisting of two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed syllable.Apostrophe（顿呼） A rhetorical term for a speech addressed to a person, idea or thing with an intense emotion that can no longer be held back, often placed at the beginning of a poem or essay, but also acting as a digression or pause in an ongoing argument.Arcadia（阿卡狄亚）A mountainous region of Greece which was represented as the blissful home of happy shepherds. During the Renaissance Arcadia became the typical name for an idealized rural society where the harmonious Golden Age still flourished. Sir Philip Sidney?s prose romance is entitled Arcadia.Assonance（半谐⾳）The repetition of accented vowel sounds followed by different consonant sounds.Aubade（晨曲） A song or salute at dawn, usually by a lover lamenting parting at daybreak, for example, J ohn Donne?s “The Sun Rising”.Augustan Age: may refer to 1) The period in Roman history when Caesar Augustus was the first emperor; 2) The period in the history of the Latin language when Caesar Augustus was emperor and Golden-age Latin was in use; 3) Augustan literature and Augustan poetry, the early 18th century in British literature and poetry, where the authors highly admired and emulated the original Augustan Age.Avant-garde (先锋派) A military expression used in literature refers to a group of modern artists and writers. Their main concern is deliberate and self-conscious experimentation in writing to discover new forms, techniques and subject matter in the arts.Ballad（民谣）A narrative poem which was originally sung to tell a story in simple colloquial language.Ballad metre (民谣格律）A quatrain of alternate four-stress and three-stress lines, usually roughly iambic.Ballad stanza（民谣体诗节） A quatrain that alternates tetrameter with trimeter lines, and usually rhymes a b c b.Blank verse（⽆韵诗）Verse in iambic pentameter without rhyme scheme, often used in verse drama in the sixteenth century and later used for poetry.Burlesque（诙谐作品）An imitation of a literary style, or of human action, that aims to ridicule by incongruity style and subject. High burlesque involves a high style for a low subject, for instance, Alexander Pope?s The Rape of the Lock. Byronic hero（拜伦式英雄）A character type portrayed by George Lord Gordon Byron in many of his early narrative poems, especially Child Harold’s Pilgrimage. The Byronic hero is a brooding solitary, who seeks exotic travel and wild nature to reflect his superhuman passions. He is capable of great suffering and guilty of some terrible, unspecified crime, but bears this guilt with pride, as it sets him apart from society, revealing the meaninglessness of ordinary moral values. He is misanthropic, defiant, rebellious, nihilistic and hypnotically fascinating to others.Canto（诗章）A division of a long poem, especially an epic. Dante?s Divine Comedy, Byron?s Don Juan and Ezra Pound?s The Cantos are all divided into these chapter-length sections.Carpe Diem（及时⾏乐）A poem advising someone to “seize the day” or “seize the hour”. Usually the genre is addressed by a man to a young woman who is urged to stop prevaricating in sexual or emotional matters.Cavalier poets（骑⼠诗⼈）English lyric poets during the reign of Charles I. Richard Lovelace, Sir John Suckling, Thomas Carew, EdmundWaller and Robert Herrick are the representatives of this group. Cavalier poetry is mostly concerned with love, and employs a variety of lyric forms.Cockney school of poetry （伦敦佬诗派） A derisive term for certain London-based writers, including Leigh Hunt, Percy Bysshe Shelley, William Hazlitt and John Keats. This term was invented by the Scottish journalist John Gibson Lockhart in an anonymous series of article on The Cockney School of Poetry, in which he mocked the supposed stylistic vulgarity of these writers.Complaint （怨诗） A poetic genre in which the poet complains, often about his beloved. Geoffery Chaucer?s “Complaint to His Purse”, Edward Young?s “The Complaint”, or “Night Thoughts”are examples.Conceit（奇思妙喻）Originally it meant simply a thought or an opinion. The term came to be used in a derogatory way to describe a particular kind of far-fetched metaphorical association. It has now lost this pejorative overtone and simply denotes a special sort of figurative device. The distinguishing quality of a conceit is that it should forge an unexpected comparison between two apparently dissimilar things or ideas. The classic example is John Donne?s The Flea and A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning.Didactic poetry（说教诗）Poetry designed to teach or preach as a primary purpose.Dirge （挽歌）Any song of mourning, shorter and less formal than an elegy. Shakespeare?s Full Fathom Five in The Tempest is a famous example..Dithyramb（酒神颂歌）A Greek choric hymn in honour of Dionysus. In general “dithyrambic” is applied to a wildly enthusiastic song or chant.Eclogue （牧歌）A pastoral poem, especially a pastoral dialogue, usually indebted to the Virgillian tradition.Elegy（挽诗）A poem of lamentation, concentrating on the death of a single person, like Alfred Tennyson?s “In Memoriam”, Thomas Gray?s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”, or W. B. Yeats?s “In Memory of Major Robert Gregory”.Epic（史诗） A long narrative poem in elevated style, about the adventures of a hero whose exploits are important to the history of a nation. The more famous epics in western literature are Homer?s Iliad, Virgil?s Aeneid, Dante?s Divine Comedy and John Milton?s Paradise Lost.Epigram（警句诗） A polished, terse and witty remark that packs generalized knowledge into short compass.Epigraph（铭⽂）A short quotation cited at the start of a book or chapter to point up its theme and associate its content with learning. Also an inscription on a monument or building explaining its purpose.Epitaph（墓志铭）An inscription on a tomb or a piece of writing suitable for that purpose, generally summing up someone?s life, sometimes in praise, sometimes in satire. John Keats wrote an Epitaph for himself. It says, “Here lies one whose name is writ in water.”Epithet（表述词语）From Latin epitheton, from Greek epitithenai meaning “to add”, an adjective or adjective cluster that is associated with a particular person or thing and that usually seems to capture their prominent characteristics. For example,“Ethelred the unready”, or “fleet-footed Achilles” in Alexander Pope?s version of The Iliad.Folk ballad（民间歌谣） A narrative poem designed to be sung, composed by an anonymous author, and transmitted orally for years or generations before being written down. It has usually undergone modification through the process of oral transmission.Foot（⾳步）a unit of measure consisting of stressed and unstressed syllables.Free verse（⾃由诗）Verse released from the convention of meter, with its regular pattern of stresses and line length.Georgian Poetry：the title of a series of anthologies showcasing the work of a school of English poetry that established itself during the early years of the reign of King George V of the United Kingdom. Edward Marsh was the general editor of the series and the centre of the circle of Georgian poets, which included Rupert Brooke. It has been suggested that Brooke himself took a hand in some of the editorial choices.Graveyard poets（墓园诗⼈）Several 18th century poets wrote mournfully pensive poems on the nature of death, which were set in graveyards or inspired by gloomy nocturnal meditations. Examples of this minor but popular genre are Thomas Parnell?s “Night-Piece on Death”, Edward Young?s “Night Thoughts” and Robert Blair?s “The Grave”. Thomas Gray?s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” owes something to this vogue.Haiku（俳句）A Japanese lyric form dating from the 13th century which consists of seventeen syllables used in three lines: 5/7/5. Several 20th century English and American poets have experimented with the form, including Ezra Pound.Heroic couplet（英雄双韵体） Lines of iambic pentameter rhymed in pairs. Alexander Pope brought the meter to a peak of polish and wit, using it in satire. Because this practice was especially popular in the Neoclassic Period between 1660 and 1790, the heroic couplet is often called the “neoclassic couplet” if the poem originates during this time period.Heroic quatrain（英雄四⾏诗）Lines of iambic pentameter rhymed abab, cdcd, and so on. Thomas Gray?s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” is a notable example.Hexameter（六⾳步） In English versification, a line of six feet. A line of iambic hexameter is called an Alexanderine.Iamb（抑扬格）The commonest metrical foot in English verse, consisting of a weak stress followed by a strong stress.Iambic-anapestic meter（抑扬抑抑扬格） A meter which freely mixes iambs and anapests, and in which it might be difficult to determine which foot prevails without actually counting.Iambic hexameter（六⾳步抑扬格）A line of six iambic feet.Iambic pentameter（五⾳步抑扬格）A line of five iambic feet. It is the most pervasive metrical pattern found in verse in English.Iambic tetrameter（四⾳步抑扬格）A line of four iambic feet.Idyll（⽥园诗）A poem which represents the pleasures of rural life.Image, imagery（意象） A critical word with several different applications. In its narrowest sense an …image? is a word-picture, a description of some visible scene or object. More commonly, however, …imagery? refers to figurative language in a piece of literature; or all the words which refer to objects and qualities which appeal to the senses and feelings.Imagism（意象派）A self-conscious movement in poetry in England and America initiated by Ezra Pound and T.E. Hulme in about 1912. Pound described the aims of Imagism in his essay “A Petrospect”as follows: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. Pound defined an …Image? as …that which presents an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time?. His haiku-like two-line poem In a Station of the Metro is often quoted as the quintessence of Imagism.Irony（反讽）The expression of a discrepancy between what is said and what is meant.Lake poets（湖畔派诗⼈） The three early 19th century romantic poets, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey, who lived in the Lake District of Cumbria in northern England. This term was often applied in a derogatory way, suggesting the provincialism of their themes and interests.Lyric（抒情诗） A poem, usually short, expressing in a personal manner the feelings and thoughts of an individual speaker. The typical lyric subject matter is love, for a lover or deity, and the mood of the speaker in relation to this love.Metaphysical poets （⽞学派诗⼈） Metaphysics is the philosophy of being and knowing, but this term was originally applied to a group of 17th century poets in a derogatory manner. The representatives are John Donne, George Herbert, Henry Vaughan and Richard Crashaw and John Cleveland, Andrew Marvell and Abraham Cowley. The features of metaphysical poetry are arresting and original images and conceits, wit, ingenuity, dexterous use of colloquial speech, considerable flexibility of rhythm and meter, complex themes, a liking for paradox and dialecticalargument, a direct manner, a caustic humor, a keenly felt awareness of mortality, and a distinguished capacity for elliptical thought and tersely compact expression. But for all their intellectual robustness the metaphysical poets are also capable of refined delicacy, gracefulness and deep feeling, passion as well as wit. They had a profound influence on the course of English poetry in the 20th century.Meter（格律）The regular pattern of accented and unaccented syllables. The line is divided into a number of feet. According to their stress pattern the feet are classed as iambic, trochaic, anapestic, dactylic, spondaic or pyrrhic.Metonymy（借代）A figure of speech: the substitution of the name of a thing by the name of an attribute of it, or something closely associated with it.Monometer（单⾳步诗⾏）A metrical line containing one foot.Monologue（独⽩） A single person speaking, with or without an audience, is uttering a monologue. The dramatic monologue is the name given to a specific kind of poem in which a single person, not the poet, is speaking.Dramatic Monologue（戏剧独⽩） A poem in which a poetic speaker addresses either the reader or an internal listener at length. It is similar to the soliloquy in theater, in that both a dramatic monologue and a soliloquy often involve the revelation of the innermost thoughts andfeelings of the speaker. Two famous examples are Browning?s “My Last Duchess”.Interior Monologue:A type of stream of consciousness in which the author depicts the interior thoughts of a single individual in the same order these thoughts occur inside that character's head. The author does not attempt to provide (or provides minimally) any commentary, description, or guiding discussion to help the reader untangle the complex web of thoughts, nor does the writer clean up the vague surge of thoughts into grammatically correct sentences or a logical order. Indeed, it is as if the authorial voice ceases to exis t, and the reader directly “overhears” the thought pouring forth randomly from a character?s mind. An example of an interior monologue can be found in James Joyce?s Ulysses. Here, Leopold Bloom wanders past a candy shop in Dublin, and his thoughts wander back and forth.The Movement：A term coined by J. D. Scott, literary editor of The Spectator, in 1954 to describe a group of writers including Kingsley Amis, Philip Larkin, Donald Davie, D.J. Enright, John Wain, Elizabeth Jennings, Thom Gunn, and Robert Conquest. The Movement was essentially English in character; poets in Scotland and Wales were not generally included. The Movement poets were considered anti-Romantic, but we find many Romantic elements in Larkin and Hughes. We may call The Movement the revival of the importance of form. To these poets, good poetry meant simple, sensous content, and traditional, conventional and dignified form.Neoclassicism（新古典主义）This word refers to the fact that some writers, particularly in the 18th century, modeled their own writing on classical, especially Roman literature. Neoclassicism is applied to a period of English literature lasting from 1660, the Restoration of Charles II, until about 1800. The following major writers flourished then, in poetry, John Dryden, Alexander Pope and Oliver Goldsmith; in prose, Jonathan Swift, Addition, Samuel Johnson. Neoclassical writers did not value creativity or originality highly. They valued the various genres, such as epic, tragedy, pastoral, comedy. The meter for most of Neoclassic writings was the heroic couplet.Octameter（⼋⾳步诗⾏）A metrical line containing eight feet; only occasionally attempted in English verse.Octave（⼋⾏体）An eight-line stanza or the first eight lines of a sonnet, especially one structured in the manner of an Italian sonnet.Ode（颂歌）A form of lyric poem, characterized by its length, intricate stanza forms, grandeur of style and seriousness of purpose, with a venerable history in Classical and post-Renaissance poetry.Onomatopoeia（拟声词）The use of words that resemble the sounds they denote, for example, …hiss?, …bang?, …pop? or …smack?.Oxford Movement: A movement of High Church Anglicans, eventually developing into Anglo-Catholicism. The movement, the members of which were often associated with the University of Oxford, argued for the reinstatement of lost Christian traditions of faith and their inclusion intoAnglican liturgy and theology. They conceived of the Anglican Church as one of three branches of the Catholic Church.Oxymoron（逆喻）A figure of speech in which contradictory terms are brought together in what is at first sight an impossible combination. It is a special variety of the paradox.Paradox（悖论）An apparently self-contradictory statement, or one that seems in conflict with all logic and opinion; yet lying behind the superficial absurdity is a meaning or truth. It is common in metaphysical poetry.Parody（嘲仿）An imitation of a specific work of literature or style devised so as to ridicule its characteristic features. Exaggeration, or the application of a serious tone to an absurd subject, are typical methods. Henry Fielding?s Shamela,Samuel Richardson?s Pamela,and Lewis Carroll?s version of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow?s Hiawatha are examples.Pastoral（⽥园诗）An artistic composition dealing with the life of shepherds or with a simple, rural existence. It usually idealizes shepherds? lives in order to create an image of peaceful and uncorrupted existence. More generally, pastoral describes the simplicity, charm, and serenity attributed to country life, or any literary convention that places kindly, rural people in nature-centered activities. The pastoral is found in poetry, drama, and fiction. Many subjects, such as love, death, religion, and politics, have been presented in pastoral settings.Pattern poetry（拟形诗）The name for verse which is written in a stanza form that creates a picture or pattern on the page. It is a precursor of concrete poetry. George Herbert?s “Easter Wings” is a typical example.Pentameter（五⾳步诗⾏）A poetic line of five feet and the most common poetic line in English.Personification（拟⼈） A figure of speech in which things or ideas are treated as if they were human beings, with human attributes and feeling.Poem（诗）An individual composition, usually in some kind of verse or meter, but also perhaps in heightened language which has been given some sense of pattern or organization to do with the sound of its words, its imagery, syntax, or any available linguistic element.Poet （诗⼈）Originally from the Greek poiein, a person who …makes?.Poet laureate （桂冠诗⼈） A laurel crown is the traditional prize for poets, based on the myth in which Apollo turns Daphne into a laurel tree. Poet laureates have been officially named by the British monarch since John Dryden?s appointment in 1668 by Charles II. T hey are supposed to stand as the figurehead of British poetry, but in the two centuries after John Dryden, with the exceptions of William Wordsworth and Alfred Tennyson, most were minor poets. Some indeed were poets of no significance whatever. The poets laureate in the 20th century have been less negligible. Ted Hughes is the present incumbent.Poetic licence（诗的破格）The necessary liberty given to poets, allowing them to manipulate language according to their needs, distorting syntax, using odd archaic words and constructions, etc. It can also refer to the manner in which poets, sometimes through ignorance, or deliberately, make mistaken assumptions about the world they describe.Pre-Raphaelites（前拉斐尔学派）Originally a group of artists (including John Millais, Holman Hunt and Dante Gabriel Rossetti) who organized the …Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood? in 1848. Their aim was a return to the …truthfulness? and simplicity of medieval art. The representatives include Christina Rossetti, Algernon Swinburne and William Morris. The typical aspects of their poetry are medievalism, archaism and lush sensuousness combined with religious feeling.Prosody（韵律学）The technical study of versification, including meter, rhyme, sound effects and stanza patterns.Psalm（赞美诗）A sacred song or hymn, especially one from the Book of Psalms in the Bible.Pun（双关语）A figure of speech in which a word is used ambiguously, thus, invoking two or more of its meanings, often for comic effect.Pyrrhic（抑抑格） A metrical foot consisting of two short or unstressed syllables. As with the spondee, from a linguistic point of view it is doubtful if the pyrrhic is necessary in English scansion, as two successive syllables are unlikely to bear exactly similar levels of stress.Quatrian（四⾏诗节） A stanza of four lines. A very common form in English, used with various meters and rhyme schemes..Refrain（叠句）Words or lines repeated in the course of a poem, recurring at intervals, sometimes with slight variation, usually at the end of a stanza. Refrains are especially common in songs and ballads.Rhyme（诗韵）The pattern of sound that established unity in verse forms. Rhyme at the end of lines is …end rhyme?; inside a line it is …internal rhyme?. End rhyme is clearly the most emphatic and usually relies on homophony between final syllables.Rhyme scheme（韵式）The pattern of rhymes in a stanza or section of verse, usually expressed by an alphabetical code.Rhythm（韵律）Rhythm refers to any steady pattern of repetition, particularly that of a regular recurrence of accented or unaccented syllables at equal intervals.Romance（传奇故事）Primarily medieval fiction in verse or prose dealing with adventures of chivalry and love. Notable English romances include Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Thomas Malory?s Le Morte d’Arthur.Romanticism（浪漫主义）A word used in an appallingly large number of different ways in different contexts.(1) Romantic in popular sense means idealized and facile love. (2) The Romantic Period.A term used to refer to the period dating from 1789 to about 1830 in English literature.Novelists of the period include Sir Walter Scott and Jane Austen; essayists such as Charles Lamb, William Hazlitt and Thomas De Quincey are notable for their contributions to the fast-developing literary magazines. There were two generations of Romantic poets: the first included William Blake, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southy; the second were George Gordon Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley and John Keats. (3) Romanticism. It was in contrast to neoclassical literature. Writers showed their concern for feeling and emotion rather than the human capacity to reason. William Wordsworth?s The Prelude is the foremost text of Romanticism. The romantic poets were interested in nature. They saw nature as a way of coming to understand the self and made use of their imagination to create harmony. They also showed their disapproval toward neoclassical rules of poetry.Scansion（韵律分析）Scansion is the process of measuring the stresses in a line of verse in order to determine the metrical pattern of the line. It starts with identifying the standard of its prevailing meter and rhythm.Sestet（六⾏诗）The last six lines of a Petrarchan sonnet which should be separated by rhyme and argument from the preceding eight lines, called the octave.Sestina（六节诗）A rare and elaborate verse form, consisting of six stanzas, each consisting of six lines of pentameter, plus a three-line envoi. The end words for each stanza are the same, but in a different order from stanza to stanza. An example is Ezra Pound?s Sestina, Altaforte.Song（歌） A short lyric poem intended to be set to music, though often such poems have no musical setting.Sonnet（⼗四⾏诗） A lyric poem of fixed form: fourteen lines of iambic pentameter rhymed and organized according to several intricate schemes. Three patterns predominate: (1) The Petrarchan or Italian sonnet is divided into an octave which rhymes abba abba, and a sestet usually rhymes cde cde, or cdc dcd. The sestet usually replies to the argument of the octave.(2) Spenserian sonnet is a nine-line stanza of iambics rhymed abab bcbc cdc dee. The first eight lines are pentameters; the final line is a hexameter; (3) Shakespearean sonnet has three quatrains and a final couplet which usually provides an epigrammatic statement of the theme. The rhyme scheme is abab cdcd efef gg.Spenserian Stanza（斯宾塞诗节）A nine-line stanza rhyming in an ababbcbcc pattern in which the first eight lines are iambic pentameter and the last line is an iambic hexameter line. The name Spenserian comes from the form?s most famous user, Spenser, who used it in The Fairie Queene. Other examples include Keat?s “Eve of Saint Agnes” and Shelley?s “Adonais.” The Spenserian stanza is probably the longest and most intricate stanza generally employed in narrative poetry.Spondee（扬扬格）A metrical foot consisting of two long syllables or two strong stresses, giving weight to a line.Stanza（诗节）A unit of several lines of verse. Much verse is split up into regular stanzas of three, four, five or more lines each. Examples of。
英美文学专有名词术语解释
Literary Terms（文学术语解释）*Legend（传说）: A song or narrative handed down from the past, legend differs from myths on the basis of the elements of historical truth they contain.*Epic（史诗）: 1)Epic, in poetry, refers to a long work dealing with the actions of gods and heroes. 2)Beowulf is the greatest national epic of the Anglo-Saxons. John Milton wrote three great epics: Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes.*Romance（罗曼史/骑士文学）: 1)Romance is a popular literary form in the medieval England. 2)It sings knightly adventures or other heroic deeds. 3)Chivalry(such as bravery, honor, generosity, loyalty and kindness to the weak and poor) is the spirit of romance. *Ballad（民谣）: 1)Ballad is a story in poetic form to be sung or recited. 2)Ballads were passed down from generation to generation. 3)Robin Hood is a famous ballad singing the goods of Robin Hood. Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is a 19th century English ballad.*The Heroic Couplet（英雄对偶句）:1)It means a pair of lines of a type once common in English poetry, in other words, it means iambic pentameter rhymed in two lines. 2)The rhyme is masculine. 3)Use of the heroic couplet was first pioneered by Geoffrey Chaucer.*Humanism（人文主义）:1)Humanism is the essence of the Renaissance. It emphasizes the dignity of human beings and the importance of the present life. 2)Humanists voiced their beliefs that man was the center of the universe and man did not only have the right to enjoy the beauty of the present life, but had the ability to prefect himself and to perform wonders.*Renaissance（文艺复兴）:1)It refers to the transitional period from the medieval to the modern world. It first started in Italy in the 14th century. 2)The Renaissance means rebirth or revival. 3)It was stimulated by a series of historical events, such as the rediscovery of ancient Roman and Greek classics, the new discoveries in geography and astrology, the religious reformation and the economic expansion. 4)Humanism is the essence of Renaissance. 5)The English Renaissance didn’t begin until the reign of Henry Ⅷ. It was reg arded as England’s Golden Age, especially in literature. 6)The real mainstream of the English Renaissance is the Elizabethan drama. 7)This period produced such literary giants as Shakespeare, Spenser, Marlowe, Bacon, Donne and Milton, etc.*University Wits（大学才子）: 1)It refers to a group of scholars during the Elizabethan age who graduate from either Oxford or Cambridge. They came to London with the ambition to become professional writers. Some of them later become famous poets and playwrights. 2)Thomas Greene, John Lily and Christopher Marlowe were among them. 3)They paved the way, to some degree, for the coming of Shakespeare.*Blank verse（无韵体）:1)It is verse written in unrhymed iambic pentameter. 2)It is the verse form used in some of the greatest English poetry, including that of William Shakespeare and John Milton.*Spenserian Stanza（斯宾塞诗节）:1)It is the creation of Edmund Spenser. 2)It refers to a stanza of nine lines, with the first eight lines in iambic pentameter and the last line in iambic hexameter（六音步）,r hyming ababbcbcc. 3)Spenser’s The Faerie Queene was written in this kind of stanza.*Sonnet(十四行诗)1)It is the one of the most conventional and influential forms of poetry in English.2)A sonnet is a lyric consisting of 14 lines, usually in iambic pentameter, restricted to a definite rhyme scheme.3)Shakespeare’s sonnets are well-known. *Soliloquy(独白)1)Soliloquy, in drama, means a moment when a character is alone and speaks his or her thoughts aloud. 2)In the line “To be, or not to be, that is the question”, which begins the famous soliloquy from Act3, Scene1 of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. In this soliloquy Hamlet questions whether or not life is worth living and speaks of the reasons why he does not end his life.*Metaphysical Poets（玄学派诗人）：They refer to a group of religious poets in the first half of the 17th century whose works were characterized by their wit, imaginative picturing, compressions, often cryptic expression, play of paradoxes and juxtapositions of metaphor.*Enlightenment Movement(启蒙运动)1)It was a progressive intellectual movement which flourished in France and swept through Western Europe in the 18th century.2)The movement was a furtherance of the Renaissance from 14th century to the mid-17th century.3)Its purpose was to enlighten the whole world with the light of modern philosophical and artistic ideas.4)It celebrated reason or nationality, equality and science. It advocated universal education. Literature at the time became a very popular means of public education.5)Famous among the great enlighteners in England were those great writers like John Dryden, Pope, Johnson, Swift, Defoe, Fielding, Sheridan, etc.Neoclassicism(新古典主义)1)In the field of literature, the 18th century Enlightenment Movement brought about a revival of interest in the old classical works. This tendency is known as neoclassicism.2)The neoclassicists hold that forms of literature were to be modeled after the classical works of the ancient Greek and Roman writers such as Homer and Virgil and those of the contemporary French ones.3)They believed that the artistic ideas should be order, logic, restrained emotion and accuracy, and that literature should be judged in terms of its service to humanity*Sentimentalism(感伤主义文学)1)It is a pejorative term to describe false or superficial emotion, assumed feeling, self-regarding postures of grief and pain.2)In literature it denotes overmuch use of pathetic effects and attempts to arouse feeling by pathetic indulgence.3)The Vicar of Wakefield by Oliver Goldsmith is a case in point.*The Graveyard School(墓地派诗歌)1)It refers to a school of poets of the 18th century whose poems are mostly devoted to a sentimental lamentation or meditation on life, past and present, with death and graveyard as theams.2)Thomas Gray is considered to be the leading figure of this school and his Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard is its most representative work.*Epistolary novel(书信体小说)1)It consists of the letters the characters write to each other. The usual form is the letter, but diary entries, newspaper clippings and other documents are sometimes used.2)The epistolary novel’s reliance on subjective poi nts of view makes it the forerunner of the modern psychological novel.3)Samuel Richardson’s Pamela is typical of this kind.*Gothic Romance(哥特传奇)1)A type of novel that flourished in the late 18th and early 19th century in England.2)Gothic romances are mysteries, often involving the supernatural and heavily tinged with horror, and they are usually against dark backgrounds of medieval ruins and haunted castles.*Picaresque novel(流浪汉小说)1)It is a popular sub-genre of prose fiction which is usually satirical and depicts in realistic and often humorous detail the adventures of a roguish hero of low social class who lives by his or her wits in a corrupt society. 2)As indicated by its name, this style of novel originated in Spain, flourished in Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries, and continues to influence modern literature.*English Romanticism(英国浪漫主义文学)1)The English Romantic period is an age of poetry. Poets started a rebellion against the neoclassical literature, which was later regarded as the poetic revolution. They saw poetry as a healing energy; they believed that poetry could purify both individual souls and the society.2)The Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge in 1798 acts as a manifesto for the English Romanticism.3)The Romantics not only eulogize the faculty of imagination, but also stress the concept of spontaneity and inspiration, regarding them as something crucial for true poetry.4)The natural world comes to the forefront of the poetic imagination. Nature is not only the major source of poetic imagery, but also provides the dominant subject matter.*Ode(颂歌)1)Ode is a dignified and elaborately lyric poem of some length, praising and glorifying an individual, commemorating an event, or describing nature intellectually rather than emotionally.2)John Keats wrote great odes. His Ode on a Grecian Urn is a case in point.*Lake Poets(湖畔派诗人)They refer to such romantic poets as William Wordsworth, Samuel Coleridge and Robert Southey who lived in the Lake District. They came to be known as the Lake School or “Lakers”.*Byronic hero（拜伦式英雄）: It refers to a proud, mysterious rebel figure of noble origin. With immense superiority in his passions and powers, this Byronic hero would carry on his shoulders the burden of righting all the wrongs in a corrupt society, and would rise single-handedly against any kind of tyrannical rules either in government, in religion, or in moral principles withunconquerable wills and inexhaustible energies.Terza rima(三行体)1)It is an Italian verse that consists of a series of three-lines stanzas in which the middle line of each stanza rhymes with the first and third lines of the following stanza with the rhyming scheme ab a, bcb, cdc,ded, etc..2)Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind” is a case in point*Critical Realism(批判现实主义)1)The Critical Realism of the 19th century flourished in the forties and in the beginning of fifties.2)The realists first and foremost set themselves the task of criticizing capitalist society from a democratic viewpoint and delineated the crying contradictions of bourgeois reality. But they did not find a way to eradicate social evils.3)Charls Dickens is the most important critical realist.*Psychological novel(心理小说)1)A vague term to describe that kind of fiction which is for the most part concerned with the spiritual, emotional and mental lives of the characters and with the analysis of characters rather than with the plot and the action.2)Thackeray’s charac terization of Rebecca Sharp is very much psychological.*Narration(叙述)1)Like description, narration is a part of conversation and writing. Narration is the major technique used in expository writing, such as autobiography.2)Successful narration must grow out of good observation, to-the-point selection and clear arrangement of details in logical sequence, which is usually chronological.3)Narration gives an exact picture of things as they occur.*Narrator(叙述者)1)It refers to one who narrates, or tells, a story.2)A story may be told by a first-person narrator, someone who is either a major or minor character in the story. Or a story may be told by a third-person narrator, someone who is not in the story at all.3)The word narrator can also refer to a character in a drama who guides the audience through the play, often commenting on the action and sometimes participating in it.*Plot(情节)1)Plot is the first and most obvious quality of a story. Plot is what happens in a story.2)It consists of the phrases of action in a story that are linked together by a chain of casual relationships.Point of view(叙述角度)1)The event of a story may be told as they appear to one or more participants or observers. In first-person narration the point of view is automatically that of the narrator.2)More variation is possible in third-person narration, where the author may choose to limit his or her report to what could have been observed or known by one of the characters at any given point in the action—or may choose to report the observations and thoughts of several characters. The author might choose to intrude his or her own point of view.*Naturalism(自然主义)1)A post Darwinian movement of the late 19th century that tried to apply the laws of scientific determinism to fiction. 2)The naturalist w ent beyond the realist’s insistence on the objective presentation of the details of everyday life to insist that the materials of literature should be arranged to reflect a deterministic universe in which a person is a biological creature controlled by environment and heredity.3)Major writers include Crane, Dreiser in America; Zola in France ; and Hardy and Gissing in England.*The Aesthetic Movement(唯美主义运动)1)It is a loosely defined movement in literature, fine art, the decorative arts and interior design in later nineteenth-century Britain. 2)It belongs to the anti-Victorian reaction and had post-Romantic roots, and as such anticipates modernism. It took place in the late Victorian Period from around 1868 to 1901, and is generally considered to have ended with the trial of Oscar Wilde (which occurred in 1895).3)The aesthetes believed that art did not have any didactic purpose; it need only be beautiful.Dramatic Monologue(戏剧独白)1)In literature, it refers to the occurrence of a single speaker saying something to a silent audience.2)Robert Browning is My Last Duchess is a typical example in which the duke, speaking to a non-responding audience, reveals not only the reasons for his disapproval of the behavior of his former duchess, but some tyrannical and merciless aspects of his own personality as well.。
(完整word版)英美文学术语(英文版)_literary_terms
Alliteration:押头韵repetition of the initial sounds（不一定是首字母)Allegory：寓言a story with two meanings, a literal meaning and a symbolic meaning. Allusion:典故a reference in a literary work to person, place etc. often to well-known characters or events。
Archetype：原型Irony：反讽intended meaning is the opposite of what is statedBlack humor：黑色幽默Metaphor: 暗喻Ballad：民谣about the folk logeEpic：史诗in poetry, refers to a long work dealing with the actions of gods and heroes. Romance：罗曼史/骑士文学is a popular literary form in the medieval England。
/Chivalry Euphuism: 夸饰文体This kind of style consists of two distinct elements。
The first is abundant use of balanced sentences，alliterations and other artificial prosodic means。
The second element is the use of odd similes and comparisons.Spenserian stanza: It refers to a stanza of nine lines，with the first eight lines in iambic pentameter and the last line in iambic hexameter. 斯宾塞诗节新诗体，每一节有9排,前8排是抑扬格五步格诗，第9排是抑扬格六步格诗。
英美文学常用术语及解释
英美文学常用术语及解释下面是店铺整理的一些英美文学常用术语及解释，希望对大家有帮助。
01. Allegory(寓言)Allegory is a story told to explain or teach something. Especially a long and complicated story with an underlying meaning different from the surface meaning of the story itself.2>allegorical novels use extended metaphors to convey moral meanings or attack certain social evils. characters in these novels often stand for different values such as virtue and vice.3>Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, Melville’s Moby Dick are such examples.02. Alliteration(头韵)Alliteration means a repetition of the initial sounds of several words in a line or group.2>alliteration is a traditional poetic device in English literature.3>Robert Frost’s Acq uainted with the Night is a case in point:” I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet”03. Ballad(民谣)Ballad is a story in poetic from to be sung or recited. in more exact literary terminology, a ballad is a narrative poem consisting of quatrains of iambic tetrameter alternating with iambic trimester.(抑扬格四音步与抑扬格三音步诗行交替出现的四行叙事诗)2>.ballads were passed down from generation to generation.3>Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is a 19th century English ballad.04. epic(史诗)Epic, in poetry, refers to a long work dealing with the actionsof goods and heroes.2>Epic poems are not merely entertaining stories of legendary or historical heroes; they summarize and express the nature or ideals of an entire nation at a significant or crucial period of its history.3>Beowulf is the greatest national Epic of the Anglo-Saxons.05. Lay(短叙事诗)It is a short poem, usually a romantic narrative, intended to be sung or recited by a minstrel.06. Romance(传奇)Romance is a popular literary form in the medic England.2>it sings knightly adventures or other heroic deeds.3>chivalry is the spirit of the romance.07. Alexandrine(亚历山大诗行)The name is derived from the fact that certain 12th and 13th century French poems on Alexander the Great were written in this meter.2>it is an iambic line of six feet, which is the French heroic verse.08. Blank Verse(无韵诗或素体广义地说)Blank verse is unrhymed poetry. Typically in iambic pentameter, and as such, the dominant verse forms of English dramatic and narrative poetry since the mid-16th century.09. Comedy(喜剧)Comedy is a light form of drama that aims primarily to amuse and that ends happily. Since it strives to provoke smile and laughter, both wit and humor are utilized. In general, the comic effect arises from recognition of some incongruity of speech, action, or character revelation, with intricate plot.10. Essay(随笔)The term refers to literary composition devoted to the presentation of the writer’s own ideas on a topic and generally addressing a particular aspect of the subject. Often brief in scope and informal in style, the essay differs from such fomal forms as the thesis, dissertation or treatise.11. Euphuistic style(绮丽体)Its principle characteristics are the excessive use of antithesis, which is pursued regardless of sense, and emphasized by alliteration and other devices; and of allusions to historical and mythological personages and to natural history drawn from such writers as Plutarch(普卢塔克), Pliny(普林尼), and Erasmus(伊拉兹马斯).2>it is the peculiar style of Euphues(优浮绮斯)12. History Plays(历史剧)History plays aim to present some historical age or character, and may be either a comedy or a tragedy. They almost tell stories about the nobles, the true people in history, but not ordinary people. the principle idea of Shakespeare’s history plays is the necessity for national unity under a mighty and just sovereign.13. Masques or Masks(假面剧)Masques (or Masks) refer to the dramatic entertainments involving dances and disguises, in which the spectacular and musical elements predominated over plot and character. As they were usually performed at court, often at very great expense, many have political overtones.14. Morality plays(道德剧)A kind of medic and early Renaissance drama that presents the conflict between the good and evil through allegorical characters. The characters tend to be personified abstractions of vices and virtues, which can be named as Mercy. Conscience, etc. unlike a mystery or a miracle play, morality play does notnecessarily use Biblical or strictly religious material because it takes place internally and psychologically in every human being.15.Sonnet(十四行诗)It is a lyric poem of 14 lines with a formal or recited and characterized by its presentation of a dramatic or exciting episode in simple narrative form.2>it is one of the most conventional and influential forms of poetry in Europe.3>Shakespeare’s sonnets are well-known.16. Spenserian Stanza(斯宾塞诗节)Spenserian Stanza is the creation of Edmund spenser.2>it refers to a stanza of nine lines, with the first eight lines in iambic pentameter(五音步抑扬格) and the last line in iambic hexameter(六音步抑扬格),rhyming ababbcbcc. 3>Spenser’s the Faerie Queen was written in this kind of stanza.17. Stanza(诗节)Stanza is a group of lines of poetry, usually four or more, arranged according to a fixed plan.2>the stanza is the unit of structure in a poem and poets do not vary the unit within a poem.18. Three Unities(三一原则)Three rules of 16th and 17th century Italian and French drama, broadly adapted from Aristotle’s Poetics<诗学>:2>the unity of time, which limits a play to a single day; the unity of place, which limits a play’s setting in a single location; and the unity of action, which limits a play to a single story line.19. Tragedy(悲剧)In general, a literary work in which the protagonist meets an unhappy or disastrous end. Unlike comedy, tragedy depicts the actions of a central character who is usually dignified or heroic.20.Conceit(奇特比喻)Conceit is a far-fetched simile or metaphor, a literary conceit occurs when the speaker compares two highly dissimilar things.2>conceit is extensively employed in John Donne’s poetry.21.Metar(格律)The word”meter” is derived from the Greek word”metron” meaning”measure”.2>in English when applied to poetry, it refers to the regular pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables.3>the analysis of the meter is called scansion(格律分析)22. University Wits(大学才子)University Wits refer to a group of scholars during the Elizabethan Age who graduated from either oxford or Cambridge. They came to London with the ambition to become professional writers. Some of them later became famous poets and playwrights. They were called” University Wits”23.Foreshadowing(预兆)Foreshadowing, the use of hints or clues in a novel or drama to suggest what will happen next. Writers use Foreshadowing to create interest and to build suspense.method used to build suspense by providing hints of what is to come.24. Soliloquy(独白)Soliloquy, in drama, means a moment when a character is alone and speaks his or her thoughts aloud..2>the line“to be, or no t to be, that is the question”, which begins the famous soliloquy from Shakespeare’s Hamlet.25.Narrative Poem(叙述诗)Narrative Poem refers to a poem that tells a story in verse,2>three traditional types of narrative poems include ballads,epics, metrical romances.3>it may consist of a series of incidents, as John Milton’s paradise lost.26.Robin Hood(罗宾.豪)Robin hood is a legendary hero of a series of English ballads, some of which date from at least the 14th century.2>the character of Robin Hood is many-sided. Strong, brave and intelligent, he is at the same time tender-hearted and affectionate.3>the dominant key in his character is his hatred for the cruel oppression and his love for the poor and downtrodden.4>another feature of Robin’s view is his reverence for the king, Robin Hood was a people’s hero.27. Beowulf(贝奥武甫)Beowulf, a typical example of old English poetry, is regarded as the greatest national epic of t he Anglo-Saxons. 2>the epic describes the exploits of a Scandinavian hero, Beowulf, in fighting against the monster Grendel, his revengeful nother, and a fire-breathing dragon in his declining years. While fight against the dragon, Beowulf was mortally wounded, however, he killed the dragon at the cost of his life, Beowulf is shown not only as a glorious hero but also as a protector of the people.28. Baroque(巴罗克式风格)This is originally a term of abuse applied to 17th century Italian art and that of other countries. It is characterized by the unclassical use of classical forms, in a literary context; it is loosely used to describe highly ornamented verse or prose, abounding in extravagant conceits.这原本是用来指17世纪的意大利艺术和其他国家艺术滥用的一个术语.这种风格主要是指对古典形式的非古典运用.在文学领域,这种风格松散地用来指十分雕饰的,大量运用奇思妙想的诗歌或散文.29. Cavalier poets(骑士派诗人)A name given to supporters of Charles I in the civil war. These poets were not a formal group, but all influenced by Ben Jonson and like him paid little attention to the sonnet. Their lyrics are distinguished by short lines, precise but idiomatic diction, and an urbane and graceful wit.30. Elegy(挽歌)Elegy has typically been used to refer to reflective poems that lament the loss of something or someone, and characterized by their metrical form.31. Restoration Comedy(复辟时期喜剧)Restoration Comedy, also the comedy of manners, developed upon the reopening of the theatres after the re-establishment of monarchy with the return of Charles II.. Its predominant tone was witty, bawdy, cynical, and amoral. Standard characters include fops, bawds, scheming valets, country squires, and sexually voracious young widows and older women. The principle theme is sexual intrigue, either for its own sake or for money.复辟时期的喜剧,又称社会习俗讽刺喜剧,是在查理二世君主复辟后剧院重新开业的基础上发展起来的,其主要的基调是诙谐,淫秽,挖苦和非道德.标准的角色包括花花公子,鸨母,诡计多端的仆人,乡绅,性欲旺盛的年轻寡妇和老女人.主要的主题是奸情,有的是为了性,有的是为了钱.。
英文诗歌术语名词解释
英文诗歌术语名词解释Poetry, like any other form of art, has its own set of unique terms and concepts that are used to describe and analyze various aspects of the craft. Here are some key English poetry terms and their explanations:1. Metaphor: A figure of speech that makes a comparison between two unrelated things, without using the words 'like' or 'as.' For example, 'Her smile is a ray of sunshine.'2. Simile: A figure of speech that compares two unlike things using the words 'like' or 'as.' For example, 'She sings like an angel.'3. Imagery: The use of vivid and descriptive language to create mental images in the reader's mind. It appeals to the reader's senses and helps them visualize the poet's words.4. Meter: The rhythmic pattern created by stressed and unstressed syllables in a line of poetry. Different meters, such as iambic pentameter or trochaic tetrameter, have specific patterns and contribute to the overall musicality of a poem.5. Rhy The repetition of similar or identical sounds at the end of lines in a poem. Rhyme can create a sense of musicality and unity within a poem, and various rhyme schemes exist, such as AABB or ABAB.6. Stanza: A group of lines that form a unit within a poem. Stanzas are often separated by white space on the page and can vary in length and structure.7. Alliteration: The repetition of consonant sounds at the beginning of words in close proximity. For example, 'Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.'8. Symbolism: The use of objects, characters, or actions to represent abstract ideas or qualities. Symbols can add layers of meaning and depth to a poem.9. Enjambment: The continuation of a sentence or thought from one line to the next without a pause. Enjambment can createa sense of flow and movement within a poem.10. The The central message or idea that a poet explores in a poem. It is a unifying concept that ties the various elements of a poem together.These terms are just a glimpse into the world of poetry, and there are many more techniques and concepts to explore. Learning about these terms can enhance our understanding and appreciation of poetry, as well as inspire us to create our own poetic masterpieces.。
英美文学名词解释
1.古英语：（Old English或Anglo-Saxon）是指从450年到1150年间的英语。
古英语和现代英语无论在读音、拼写、词汇和语法上都很不一样。
古英语的语法和德语比较相近，形态变化很复杂。
公元410年，罗马人结束了对英国的占领，随后，来自德国北部平原的三个日耳曼部落：昂格鲁人（Angles），撒克逊人，和朱尔特人开始到不列颠定居．英语就是盎格鲁_撒克逊的人的语言．语言史家一般把英语的历史分为三个时期：古英语，中英语，现代英语．古英语的名词有数和格的分别。
数分为单数、复数；格分为主格、所有格、与格、宾格。
因此一个名词加起来共有8种变化形式。
此外，名词还分阳性、中性和阴性。
但是比较奇怪的是，这些性的区分并不是以性别来判断的，而且没有性别的事物也未必是中性。
例如妇女就是阳性的。
2. 头韵(Alliteration)：是英语语言学分支文体学的重要术语。
头韵是英语语音修辞手段之一,它蕴含了语言的音乐美和整齐美,使得语言声情交融、音义一体,具有很强的表现力和感染力.从应用范围、结构特征以及审美价值三个方面对其进行分析讨论,将有助于我们理解和欣赏这一辞格. 头韵在英语里叫alliteration，又叫initial rhyme，或head rhyme，是从拉丁语短语ad literam (根据字母)转化而来的，指两个单词或两个单词以上的首字母相同，形成悦耳的读音，最常见的押头韵的短语有：first and foremost（首先）、（with）might and main (尽全力地)、saints and sinners （圣人与罪人）、（in）weal and (or) woe（无论是福是祸）。
若追本探源的话，恐怕押头韵手法可以上溯到古英语(Old English)时期。
大约五世纪时，盎格鲁萨克逊( Anglo-Saxons)入侵者给英国人带来了作为现代英语(Modern English)基础的盎格鲁萨克逊语，或许就在那时还带来一种新的诗歌形式，其主要特征就是频繁使用押头韵手法。
英美文学之文学术语
英美文学之文学术语文学术语汇编11.Literature of the absurd: (荒诞派文学) The term is applied to a number of works in drama and prose fiction which have in common the sense that the human condition is essentially absurd, and that this condition can be adequately represented only in works of literature that are themselves absurd. The current movement emerged in France after the Second World War, as a rebellion against essential beliefs and values of traditional culture and traditional literature. They hold the belief that a human being is an isolated existent who is cast into an alien universe and the human life in its fruitless search for purpose and meaning is both anguish and absurd.2.Theater of the absurd: (荒诞派戏剧) belongs to literature of the absurd. Two representatives of this school are Eugene Ionesco, French author of The Bald Soprano (1949) (此作品中文译名<秃头歌女>), and Samuel Beckett, Irish author of Waiting for Godot (1954) (此作品是荒诞派戏剧代表作<等待戈多>). They project the irrationalism, helplessness and absurdity of life in dramatic forms that reject realistic settings, logical reasoning, or a coherently evolving plot.3.Black comedy or black humor: (黑色幽默) it mostly employed to describe baleful, naïve, or inept characters in a fantastic or nightmarish modern world playing out their roles in what Ionesco called a “tragic farce”, in which the events are often simultaneously comic, horrifying, and absurd. Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 (美国著名作家约瑟夫海勒<二十二条军规>) can be taken as an example of the employment of this technique.文学术语汇编24. Aestheticism or the Aesthetic Movement（唯美主义）: it began to prevail in Europe at the middle of the 19th century. The theory of “art for art’s sake” was first put forward by some French artists. They declared that art should serve no religious, moral or social purpose. The two most important representatives of aestheticists in English literature are Walt Pater and Oscar Wilde.5. Allegory（寓言）: a tale in verse or prose in which characters, actions, or settings represent abstract ideas or moral qualities, such as John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress. An allegory is a story with two meanings, a literal meaning and a symbolic meaning.6. Fable（寓言）: is a short narrative, in prose or verse, that exemplifies an abstract moral thesis or principle of human behavior. Most common is the beast fable, in which animals talk and act like the human types they represent. The fables in Western cultures derive mainly from the stories attributed to Aesop, a Greek slave of the sixth century B. C.7. Parable（寓言）: is a very short narrative about human beings presented so as to stress analogy with a general lesson that the narrator is trying to bring home to his audience. For example, the Bible contains lots of parables employed by Jesus Christ to make his flock understand his preach.(注意以上三个词在汉语中都翻译成语言，但是内涵并不相同，不要搞混)8. Alliteration（头韵）: the repetition of the initial consonant sounds. In Old English alliterative meter, alliteration is the principal organizing device of the verse line, such as in Beowulf.9. Consonance is the repetition of a sequence of two or more consonants but with a change in the intervening vowel, such as “live and love”.10. Assonance is the repetition of identical or similar vowel, especially in stressed syllables, in a sequence of nearby words, such as “child of silence”.11. Allusion （典故）is a reference without explicit identification, to a literary or historical person, place, or event, or to another literary work or passage. Most literary allusions are intended to be recognized by the generally educated readers of the author’s time, but some are aimed at a special group.12. Ambiguity（复义性）: Since William Empson（燕卜荪）published Seven Types of Ambiguity（《复义七型》）, the term has been widely used in criticism to identify a deliberate poetic device: the use of a single word or expression to signify two or more distinct references, or to express two or more diverse attitudes or feeling.文学术语汇编313. Antihero（反英雄）：the chief character in a modern novel or play whose character is totally different from the traditional heroes. Instead of manifesting largeness, dignity, power, or heroism, the antihero is petty, passive, ineffectual or dishonest. For example, the heroine of Defoe’s Moll Flanders is a thief and a prostitute.14. Antithesis（对照）：(a figure of speech)An antithesis is often expressed in a balanced sentence, that is, a sentence in which identical or similar syntactic structure is used to express contrasting ideas. For example, “Marriage has many pains, but celibacy（独身生活）has no pleasures.” by Samuel Johnson obviously employs antithesis.15. Archaism（拟古）：the literary use of words and expressions that have become obsolete in the common speech of an era. For example, the translators of the King James Version of Bible gave weight and dignity to their prose by employing archaism.16. Atmosphere（氛围）: the prevailing mood or feeling of a literary work. Atmosphere is often developed, at least in part, through descriptions of setting. Such descriptions help to create an emotional climate to establish the reader’s expectations and attitudes.文学术语汇编417. Ballad（民谣）：it is a song, transmitted orally, which tells a story. It originated and was communicated orally among illiterate or only partly literate people. It exists in many variant forms. The most common stanza form, called ballad stanza is a quatrain in alternate four- and three-stress lines; usually only the second and fourth lines rhyme. Although many traditional ballads probably originated in the late Middle Age, they were not collected and printed until the eighteenth century.18. Climax：as a rhetorical device it means an ascending sequence of importance. As a literary term, it can also refer to the point of greatest intensity, interest, or suspense in a story’s turning point. The action leading to the climax and the simultaneous increaseof tension in the plot are known as the rising action. All action after the climax is referred to as the falling action, or resolution. The term crisis is sometimes used interchangeably with climax.19. Anticlimax（突降）：it denotes a writer’s deliberate drop from the serious and elevated to the trivial and lowly, in order to achieve a comic or satiric effect. It is a rhetorical device in English.20. Beat Generation（垮掉一代）：it refers to a loose-knit group of poets and novelists, writing in the second half of the 1950s and early 1960s, who shared a set of social attitudes – antiestablishment, antipolitical, anti-intellectual, opposed to the prevailing cultural, literary, and moral values, and in favor of unfettered self-realization andself-expression. Representatives of the group include Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs. And most famous literary creations produced by this group should be Allen Ginsberg’s long poem Howl and Jack Kerouac’s On the Road.文学术语汇编521. Biography（传记）：a detailed account of a person’s life written by another person, such as Samuel Johnson’s Lives of the English Poets and James Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson.22. Autobiography（自传）：a person’s account of his or her own life, such as Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography.23. Blank verse（无韵体）: Verse written in unrhymed iambic pentameter. It is the verse form used in some of the greatest English poetry, including that of William Shakespeare and John Milton.24. A parody（模仿）imitates the serious manner and characteristic features of a particular literary work, or the distinctive style of a particular author, or the typical stylistic and other features of a serious literary genre, and deflates the original by applying the imitation to a lowly or comically inappropriate subject.文学术语汇编625. Celtic Revival also known as the Irish Literary Renaissance （爱尔兰文艺复兴）identifies the remarkably creative period in Irish literature from about 1880 to the death of William Butler Yeats in 1939. The aim of Yeats and other early leaders of the movement was to create a distinctively national literature by going back to Irish history, legend, and folklore, as well as to native literary models. The major writers of this movement include William Butler Yeats, Lady Gregory, John Millington Synge and Sean O’Casey and so on.26. Characters（人物）are the persons represented in a dramatic or narrative work, who are interpreted by the reader as being endowed with particular moral, intellectual, and emotional qualities by inferences from the dialogues, actions and motivations. E. M. Forster divides characters into two types: flat character, which is presented without much individualizing detail; and round character, which is complex in temperament and motivation and is represented with subtle particularity.27. Chivalric Romance (or medieval romance) （骑士传奇或中世纪传奇）is a type of narrative that developed in twelfth-century France, spread to the literatures of other countries. Its standard plot is that of a quest undertaken by a single knight in order to gain a lady’s favor; frequently its central interest is courtly love, together with tournaments fought and dragons and monsters slain. It stresses the chivalric ideals of courage, loyalty, honor, mercifulness to an opponent, and elaborate manners.28. Comedy:（喜剧）in general, a literary work that ends happily with a healthy, amicable armistice between the protagonist and society.29. Farce （闹剧）is a type of comedy designed to provoke the audience to simple and hearty laughter. To do so it commonly employs highly exaggerated types of characters and puts them into improbable and ludicrous situations.30. Confessional poetry（自白派诗歌）designates a type of narrative and lyric verse, given impetus by Robert Lowell’s Life Studies, which deals with the facts and intimate mental and physical experiences of the poet’s own life. Confessional poetry was written in rebellion against the demand for impersonality by T. S. Elliot and the New Criticism. The representative writers of confessional school include Robert Lowell, Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath and so on.31. Critical Realism:（批判现实主义）The critical realism of the 19th century flourished in the fouties and in the beginning of fifties. The realists first and foremost set themselves the task of criticizing capitalist society from a democratic viewpoint and delineated the crying contradictions of bourgeois reality. But they did not find a way to eradicate social evils. Representative writers of this trend include Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray and so on.32. Drama:（戏剧）The form of composition designed for performance in the theater, in which actors take the roles of the characters, perform the indicated action, and utter the written dialogue. (The common alternative name for a dramatic composition is a play.)文学术语汇编733. Dramatic Monologue:（戏剧独白）a monologue is a lengthy speech by a single person. Dramatic monologue does not designate a component in a play, but a type of lyric poem that was perfected by Robert Browning. By using dramatic monologue, a single person, who is patently not the poet, utters the speech that makes up the whole of the poem, in a specific situation at a critical moment. For example, Robert Browning’s famous poem “My Last Duchess” was written in dramatic monologue. 34. Elegy（哀歌或挽歌）：a poem of mourning, usually over the death of an individual. An elegy is a type of lyric poem, usually formal in language and structure, and solemn or even melancholy in tone.35. Enlightenment（启蒙运动）：The name applied to an intellectual movement which developed in Western Europe during the seventeenth century and reached its height in the eighteenth. The common element was a trust in human reason as adequate to solve the crucial problems and to establish the essential norms in life, together with the belief that the application of reason was rapidly dissipating the remaining feudal traditions. It influenced lots of famous English writers especially those neoclassic writers, such as Alexander Pope.36. Epic（史诗）：it is a long verse narrative on a serious subject, told in a formal and elevated style, and centered on a heroic or quasi-divine figure on whose actions depends the fate of a tribe, a nation, or the human race.37. Epiphany:（顿悟）In the early draft of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce employed this term to signify a sudden sense of radiance and revelation that one may feel while perceiving a commonplace object. “Epiphany” now has become the standard term for the description, frequent in modern poetry and prose fiction, of the sudden flare into revelation of an ordinary object or scene.38. Epithet（移就）: as a term in criticism, epithet denotes an adjective or adjectival phrase used to define a distinctive quality of a person or thing. This method was widely employed in ancient epics. For example, in Homer’s epic, the epithet like “the wine-dark sea” can be found everywhere.39. Essay:（散文）any short composition in prose that undertakes to discuss a matter, express a point of view, persuade us to accept a thesis on any subject, or simply entertain. The essay can be divided as the formal essay and the informal essay (familiar essay).40. Euphemism（委婉语）: An inoffensive expression used in place of a blunt one that is felt to be disagreeable or embarrassing, such as “pass away” instead of “die”41. Expressionism（表现主义）：a German movement in literature and the other arts which was at its height between 1910 and 1925 – that is, in the period just before, during, and after WWⅠ. The expressionist artist or writer undertakes to express a personal vision – usually a troubled or tensely emotional vision – of human life and human society. This is done by exaggerating and distorting. We recognize its effects, direct or indirect, on the writing and staging of such plays as Arthur Miller’s Death ofa Salesman as well as on the theater of the absurd.42. Free verse（自由体诗）：Like traditional verse, it is printed in short lines instead of with the continuity of prose, but it differs from such verse by the fact that its rhythmic pattern is not organized into a regular metrical form – that is, into feet, or recurrent units of weak and strong stressed syllables. Most free verse also hasirregular line lengths, and either lacks rhyme or else uses it only occasionally. Walt Whitman is a representative who employed this poem form successfully.文学术语汇编843. Gothic novel:（哥特式小说）It is a type of prose fiction. The writers of this type of fictions mostly set their stories in the medieval period and in a Catholic country, especially Italy or Spain. The locale was often a gloomy castle. The typical story focused on the sufferings imposed on an innocent heroine by a cruel villain. This type of fictions made bountiful use of ghosts, mysterious disappearances, and other supernatural occurrences. The principle aim of such novels was to evoke chilling terror and the best of this type opened up to the fiction the realm of the irrational and of the perverse impulses and nightmarish terrors that lie beneath the orderly surface of the civilized mind. Some famous novelists liked to employ some Gothic elements in their novels, such as Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights.44. Graveyard poets（墓园派诗歌）: A term applied to eighteenth-century poets who wrote meditative poems, usually set in a graveyard, on the theme of human mortality, in moods which range from pensiveness to profound gloom. The vogue resulted in one of the most widely known English poems, Thomas Gray’s“Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”.45. Harlem Renaissance（哈莱姆文艺复兴）：a period of remarkable creativity in literature, music, dance, painting, and sculpture by African-Americans, from the end of the First World War in 1917 through the 1920s. As a result of the mass migrations to the urban North in order to escape the legal segregation of the American South, and also in order to take advantage of the jobs opened to African Americans at the beginning of the War, the population of the region of Manhattan known as Harlem became almost exclusively Black, and the vital center of African American culture in America. Distinguished writers who were part of the movement included Langston Hughes and Jean Toomer. The Great Depression of 1929 and the early 1930s broughtthe period of buoyant Harlem culture – which had been fostered by prosperity in the publishing industry and the art world – effectively to an end.46. Heroic Couplet（英雄双韵体）refers to lines of iambic pentameter which rhyme in pairs: aa, bb, cc, and so on. The adjective “heroic” was applied in the later seventeenth century because of the frequent use of such couplets in heroic poems and dramas. This verse form was introduced into English poetry by Geoffrey Chaucer. From the age of John Dryden through that of Samuel Johnson, the heroic couplet was the predominant English measure for all the poetic kinds; some poets, including Alexander Pope, used it almost to the exclusion of other meters.47. Hyperbole（夸张）:this figure of speech called hyperbole is bold overstatement, or the extravagant exaggeration of fact or of possibility. It may be used either for serious or ironic or comic effect.48. Understatement（轻描淡写）：this figure of speech deliberately represents something as very much less in magnitude or importance than it really is, or is ordinarily considered to be. The effect is usually ironic.49. Imagism（意象派）：it was a poetic vogue that flourished in England, and even more vigorously in America, between the years 1912 and 1917. It was planned and exemplified by a group of English and American writers in London, partly under the influence of the poetic theory of T. E. Hulme, as a revolt against the sentimental and mannerish poetry at the turn of the century. The typical Imagist poetry is written in free verse and undertakes to be as precisely and tersely as possible. Meanwhile, the Imagist poetry likes to express the writers’ momentary impression of a visual object or scene and often the impression is rendered by means of metaphor without indicating a relation. Most famous Imagist poem, “In a Station of the Metro”, was written by Ezra Pound. Imagism was too restrictive to endure long as a concerted movement, but it influenced almost all modern poets of Britain and America.50. Irony（反讽）：This term derives from a character in a Greek comedy. In most of the modern critical uses of the term “irony”, there remains the root sense of dissembling or hiding what is actually the case; not, however, in order to deceive, but to achieve rhetorical or artistic effects.51. Local Colorism（地方色彩）was a literary trend belonging to Realism. It refers to the detailed representation in prose fiction of the setting, dialect, customs, dress and ways of thinking and feeling which are distinctive of a particular region. After the Civil War a number of American writers exploited the literary possibilities of local color in various parts of America. The most famous representative of local colorism should be Mark Twain who took his hometown near the Mississippi as the typical setting of nearly all his novels.52. Lyric（抒情诗）：in the most common use of the term, a lyric is any fairly short poems consisting of the utterance by a single speaker, who expresses a state of mind or a process of perception, thought and feeling.。
英美文学术语
TERMS IN ENGLISH LITERATURE1.Allegory寓言；讽喻A narrative in which the characters and the setting stand for abstract qualities and ideas. The writer of an allegory is not primarily trying to make the characters and their actions realistic, but to make them representative of ideas or truths.2. Alliteration (头韵)The repetition of similar sounds, usually consonants or consonant clusters, in a group of words . Some-times the term is limited to the repetition of initial consonant sounds.3. Assonance（腹韵，半谐音）The repetition of similar vowel sounds , especially in poetry . Here is an example of assonance from John Keat s’s Ode on a Grecian Urn : “Thou foster ch i ld of s i lence and slow t i me .”4. Ballad民谣；叙事诗歌A story told in verse and usually meant to be sung .5. Blank Verse无韵诗，素体诗（不押韵的五音步诗行）Verse written in unrhymed iambic pentameter.6. Byronic Hero拜伦的，拜伦风格的，冷笑而浪漫的The hero with the characteristic of Lord Byron or the hero in his poetry, who is contemptuous of and rebelling against conventional morality, or defying fate, and who is a mixture of good and evil, selflessness and sin, isolated, rebellious, passionate and self-reliant, etc.7. Characterization特性描述；（对书或戏剧中人物的）刻画，塑造The personality a character displays; also, the means by which a writer reveals that personality. Generally, a writer develops a character in one or more of the following ways:1)through the character’s actions;2)through the character’s thoughts and speeches;3)through a physical description of the character;4)through the opinions others have about the character;5)through a direct statement about the character telling what the writer thinks of him or her.8. Classicism古典主义，古典风格A movement or tendency in art, literature, or music that reflects the principles manifested in the art of ancient Greece and Rome . Classicism emphasizes the traditional and the universal, and places value on reason, clarity, balance , and order . Classicism, with its concern for reason and universal themes, is traditionally opposed to Romanticism, which is concerned with emotions and personal themes .9. ClimaxThe point of greatest intensity, interest, or suspense in a narrative . The climax usually marks a story’s turning point.10. ComedyIn general, a literary work that ends happily with a healthy, amicable armistice between the protagonist and society.11. Comedy of MannersA term most commonly used to designate the realistic, often satirical comedy. In the stricter sense of the term, the type is concerned with the manners and conventions of an artificial, highly sophisticated society. The fashions, manners and outlook on life of this social group are reflected. The characters are more likely to be types than individualized personalities. Plot, though ofteninvolving a clever handling of situation and intrigue, is less important than atmosphere, dialogue and satire, The dialogue is witty and finished, often brilliant. Satire is directed against the deficiencies of typical characters.12. Conceit (文学中)巧妙的比喻，别出心裁的对比A kind of metaphor that makes a comparison between two startlingly different things.13. Consonance（谐辅音）The repetition of similar consonant sounds in a group of words . Sometimes the term refers to the repetition of consonant sounds in the middle or at the end of words, as in this line from Thomas Gray’s “ Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard ”: “ And a ll the air a so l emn sti ll ness ho l ds . ”Sometimes the term is used for slant rhyme (or partial rhyme) in which initial and final consonants are the same but the vowels different : l itter/l etter , gree n/groa n .14. Couplet相连并押韵的两行诗，对句Two consecutive lines of poetry that rhyme.15. Dramatic MonologueA poem in which there is an imaginary speaker, at some specific and critical moment, addressing an imaginary, silent but identifiable audience, thereby unintentionally revealing his or her essential personality or temperament. In Browning’s My Last Duchess,for example, he penetrates to the depth the psychology of his characters and through their own speeches, he analyzes and reveals the innermost secret of their lives.16. Heroic Couplet（两行相互押韵、每行分五音节的）英雄偶句诗An iambic pentameter couplet.17. Elegy悲歌;挽歌;挽诗A poem of mourning, usually over the death of an individual.18. Epic叙事诗；史诗；史诗般的作品A long narrative poem telling about the deeds of a great hero and reflecting the values of the society from which it originated.19. Fable寓言A story with a moral lesson, often employing animals who talk and act like human beings.20 The Graveyard SchoolA group of 18th-century poets, and among them are Thomas Gray, Robert Blair, Thomas Parnell, and Edward Young, who wrote on funeral subjects.21. Iambic Pentameter五音步抑扬格A poetic line consisting of five verse feet (penta-is from a Greek word meaning “five”), with each foot an iamb—that is, an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. Iambic pentameter is the most common verse line in English poetry.22. ImageryWords or phrases that create pictures, or images, in the reader’s mind .23. LyricA poem, usually a short one, that expresses a speaker’s personal thoughts or feelings. The elegy, ode, and sonnet are all forms of the lyric.24. Metaphysical PoetryThe poetry of John Donne and other seventeenth-century poets who wrote in a similar style. Metaphysical poetry is characterized by verbal wit and excess, ingenious structure, irregular meter, colloquial language , elaborate imagery , and a drawing together of dissimilar ideas .25. MeterA generally regular pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in poetry.26. Narrative PoemA poem that tells a story .One kind of narrative poem is the epic, a long poem that sets forth the heroic ideals of a particular society. Beowulf is an epic. The ballad is another kind of narrative poem.27. NarratorOne who narrates, or tells, a story. A story may be told by a first-person narrator, someone who is either a major or a minor character in the story. Or a story may be told by a third-person narrator, someone who is not in the story at all.28. NaturalismAn extreme form of realism. Naturalistic writers usually depict the sordid side of life and show characters who are severely limited by their environment or heredity, two forces beyond man’s control.29. NeoclassicismA revival in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries of classical standards of order, balance, and harmony in literature. John Dryden and Alexander Pope were major exponents of the neoclassical school.30. OctiveAn eight-line poem or stanza. Usually the term octave refers to the first eight lines of an Italian sonnet. The remaining six lines form a sestet.31. OdeA complex and often lengthy lyric poem, written in a dignified formal style on some serious subject.32. ParadoxA statement that reveals a kind of truth, although it seems at first to be self-contradictory and untrue .33. Point of viewThe vantage point from which a narrative is told. There are two basic points of view: first-person and third person. In the first-person point of view, the story is told by one of the characters in his or her own words. In the third-person point of view, the narrator is not a character in the story. The narrator may be an omniscient, or “all-knowing” observer.34. PunThe use of a word or phrase to suggest two or more meanings at the same time. Puns are generally humorous.35. RealismThe 19th century literary movement that reacted to romanticism by insisting on a faithful, objective presentation of the details of everyday life.36. The RenaissanceThe period in Europe between the 14th century and the 17th century. During this period, the classical arts and learning were discovered again and widely studied, so the term originally indicates a revival of classical(Roman and Greek) arts and learning after the dark ages of Medieval obscurantism, it also marked the beginning of the bourgeois revolution.In the Renaissance period, scholars and educators called themselves humanists and began toemphasize the capacities of the human mind and they held their chief interest in man’s values and his environment and doings. So humanism became the keynote of the English Renaissance.37. RomanceAny imaginative literature that is set in an idealized world and that deals with heroic adventures and battles between good characters and villains or monsters. Originally, the term referred to a medieval tale dealing with the loves and adventures of kings , queens , knights , and ladies , and including unlikely or supernatural happenings . Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is the best of the medieval romances.38. RomanticismRomanticism is a literary movement which came into being in England early in the latter half of the 18th century and prevailed in the first half of the nineteenth century . This literary trend began with the publication of Wordsworth’s Lyrical Ballads(抒情歌谣集) and ended with Walter Scott’s death. It is a reaction against the classicism or Neoclassicism of the 18th century. Romantic writing emphasizes emotions and feelings instead of reason and logic. It also focuses on the life of common people and encourages an appreciation of nature instead of society. The subject matters of Romanticism can be listed: sensibility, love of nature, interest in the past ,mysticism , individualism , exotic pictures , strong-willed heroes , sometimes resort to symbolism39. SestetA six-line poem or stanza. Usually the term sestet refers to the last six lines of an Italian sonnet . The first eight lines of an Italian sonnet form an octave.40. SentimentalismThe middle of the 18th century in England sees the inception of a new literary current---that of sentimentalism, which came into being as a bitter discontent in social reality on the part of certain enlighteners who found the power of reason to be insufficient in dealing with social injustices, and therefore, appealed to sentiment as a means of achieving happiness and justice.The term is used in two senses in the study of literature. The first is overindulgence in emotion, especially the conscious effort to induce emotion in order to analyze or enjoy it and the failure to restrain or evaluate emotion through the exercise of the judgement. The second is optimistic overemphasis of the goodness of humanity. Sentimentalism is concerned with the development of primitivism. In the first sense given above, sentimentalism is found in the melancholy verse of the Graveyard School.41. SoliloquyIn drama, an extended speech delivered by a character alone onstage. The character reveals his or her innermost thoughts and feelings directly to the audience, as if thinking aloud.42. SonnetA fourteen-line lyric poem, usually written in rhymed iambic pentameter.43. Stream of ConsciousnessA method of telling a story in which a writer lets the reader know every thought that enters a character’s mind. This method tries to imitate the way in which people actually think. Therefore , the character’s thoughts are presented in the order in which they occur , and this order is not necessarily logical . When the stream-of-consciousness technique is used, the story is always written from the first-person point of view.44. Spenserian StanzaA nine-line stanza with the following rhyme scheme: ababbcbcc. The first eight lines are written iniambic pentameter. The last line is written in iambic hexameter . The Spenserian Stanza was invented by Edmund Spenser for his epic poem The Fairie Queen.45. StyleAn author’s characteristic way of writing, determined by the choice of words, the arrangements of words in a sentence, and the relationship of sentences to one another. Style is the total qualities and characteristics that distinguish the writings of one writer from those of another.46. TragedyIn general, a literary work in which the protagonist meets an unhappy or disastrous end. Unlike comedy, tragedy depicts the actions of a central character who is usually dignified or heroic. Through a series of events, this main character, or tragic hero , is brought to a final downfall .47. ForeshadowingA device by means of which the author hints at something to follow.48. Understatement(轻描淡写的陈述)A figure of speech that consists of saying less than what one means, or of saying what one means with less force than the occasion warrants.49. University WitsA name given to a group of Elizabethan playwrights who had studied at the universities of Oxford or Cambridge. John Lyly and Thomas Lodge were at Oxford; Robert Greene, Thomas Nashe and Christopher Marlowe came from Cambridge.50. The Wessex NovelsThe Wessex Novels : novels by Hardy of describing the characters and environment of his native countryside. These novels have for their setting the agricultural region of the Southern counties of England. Hardy truthfully depicts the impoverishment and decay of small farmers who became hired fieldhands and roam the country in search of seasonal jobs. These laborers are mercilessly exploited by the rich landowners. The author is pained to see the decline of the idyllic life in rural England. This is one of the reasons for Hardy’s pessimistic tone throughout his novels. His pessimistic philosophy seems to show that mankind is subjected to human life. Determinism is a tendency in his writings. The major Wessex Novels include:1. Under the Greenwood Tree2. Far from the Madding Crowd3. The Return of the Native4. The Mayor of Casterbridge5. Tess of the D’Urbervilles6. Jude the Obscure。
英美文学术语,中英对照简洁版
1. Allegory （寓言）A tale in verse or prose in which characters, actions, or settings represent abstract ideas or moral qualities. 寓言，讽喻：一种文学、戏剧或绘画的艺术手法，其中人物和事件代表抽象的观点、原则或支配力。
2. Alliteration （头韵）Alliteration is the repetition of the same initial consonant sound within a line or a group of words.头韵：在一组词的开头或重读音节中对相同辅音或不同元音的重复。
3. Allusion （典故）A reference to a person, a place, an event, or a literary work that a writer expects the reader to recognize and respond to. 典故：作者对某些读者熟悉并能够作出反映的特定人物，地点，事件，文学作品的引用。
4. Analogy （类比）A comparison made between two things to show the similarities between them. 类比：为了在两个事物之间找出差别而进行的比较。
5. Antagonist （反面主角）The principal character in opposition to the protagonist or hero or heroine of a narrative or drama.反面主角：叙事文学或戏剧中与男女主人公或英雄相对立的主要人物。
6. Antithesis （对仗）The balancing of two contrasting ideas, words, or sentences. 对仗：两组相对的思想，言辞，词句的平衡。
英语诗歌简明术语表
英语诗歌简明术语表A Concise Glossary of English Poet ryAccent 重音Allegory 寓言Alliteration 头韵Allusion 典故Anapest 抑抑扬格Apostrophe 呼语Approximate rime 近韵Assonance 半韵Ballad 民谣Ballad stanza 民谣体诗节Blank verse 无韵诗，素体诗Cacophony 不和谐音Caesura 行停中顿Connotation 内涵，引申义Consonance 辅音韵Cosmic irony 命运反讽Couplet 对句Dactyl 扬抑抑格Denotation 本义Dimeter 二音步诗Doggerel 打油诗Dramatic irony 戏剧性反讽Dramatic monologue 戏剧性独白End rhyme 尾韵End-stopped line 行尾停顿诗行English or Shakespearean sonnet 英式/莎士比亚体十四行诗Enjambment 跨行连续Epic 史诗Euphony 谐音Exact rhyme 全韵Eye rhyme 视觉韵Feminine rhyme 阴韵Figure of speech 修辞手法Fixed form 固定诗体Foot 音步Free verse 自由诗Haiku 俳句Heroic couplet 英雄偶句体Heptameter 七音步诗行Hexameter 六音步诗行Hyperbole 夸张Iamb 抑扬格Imagery 意象Internal rhyme 行中韵Irony 反讽，反语Italian or Petrarchan sonnet 意式/比特拉克体十四行诗Limerick 五行打油诗Literary ballad 文人民谣Lyric 抒情诗Masculine rhyme 阳韵Metaphor 暗喻，隐喻Meter 格律，韵律Metonymy 换喻，转喻Monometer 单音步诗行Narrative poem 叙事诗Octameter 八音步诗行Octave 八行诗节Ode 颂诗Onomatopoeia 拟声法Open form 开放诗体Overstatement 夸张Oxymoron 矛盾形容法Paradox 悖论Pentameter 五音步诗行Personification 拟人法Picture poem 涂画诗Prose poem 散文诗Quatrain 四节诗行Refrain 叠句，副歌Rhyme or rime 押韵Rhyme scheme 押韵格式Rhythm 节奏，韵律，格律Run-on line 连续诗行Sarcasm 讥刺Satire 讽刺Scansion 韵律分析，韵律图示Sestet 六节诗行Simile 明喻Situational irony 情景反讽Sonnet 十四行诗Speaker 说话者Spondee 扬扬格Stanza 诗节Stress 重音Symbol 象征Synecdoche 提喻Tercet 三行诗节Terza rima 三行诗节隔行押韵法Tetrameter 四音步诗行Theme 主题Tone 语气，语调trimeter 三音步诗行Triplet 同韵三行联句Trochee 扬抑格Understatement 低调陈述，轻描淡写Verbal irony 言辞反讽Verse 散文诗Villanelle 维拉内拉体。
英语诗歌简明术语表[合集]
![英语诗歌简明术语表[合集]](https://img.taocdn.com/s3/m/5841afe3c0c708a1284ac850ad02de80d4d8060d.png)
英语诗歌简明术语表[合集]第一篇：英语诗歌简明术语表英语诗歌简明术语表A Concise Glossary of English Poetry Accent 重音 Allegory 寓言 Alliteration 头韵 Allusion 典故Anapest 抑抑扬格 Apostrophe 呼语Approximate rime近韵 Assonance 半韵 Ballad 民谣Ballad stanza 民谣体诗节Blank verse 无韵诗，素体诗Cacophony 不和谐音 Caesura 行停中顿Connotation 内涵，引申义 Consonance 辅音韵 Cosmic irony 命运反讽 Couplet 对句 Dactyl 扬抑抑格 Denotation 本义 Dimeter 二音步诗 Doggerel 打油诗Dramatic irony 戏剧性反讽Dramatic monologue 戏剧性独白 End rhyme 尾韵End-stopped line 行尾停顿诗行English or Shakespearean sonnet 英式/莎士比亚体十四行诗Enjambment 跨行连续 Epic 史诗 Euphony 谐音 Exact rhyme 全韵Eye rhyme 视觉韵 Feminine rhyme 阴韵Figure of speech 修辞手法 Fixed form 固定诗体 Foot 音步Free verse 自由诗 Haiku 俳句Heroic couplet 英雄偶句体 Heptameter 七音步诗行 Hexameter 六音步诗行 Hyperbole 夸张 Iamb 抑扬格 Imagery 意象Internal rhyme 行中韵Irony 反讽，反语Italian or Petrarchan sonnet 意式/比特拉克体十四行诗Limerick 五行打油诗 Literary ballad 文人民谣 Lyric 抒情诗Masculine rhyme 阳韵 Metaphor 暗喻，隐喻 Meter 格律，韵律 Metonymy 换喻，转喻 Monometer 单音步诗行 Narrative poem 叙事诗 Octameter 八音步诗行 Octave 八行诗节 Ode 颂诗Onomatopoeia 拟声法 Open form 开放诗体 Overstatement 夸张 Oxymoron 矛盾形容法 Paradox 悖论Pentameter 五音步诗行 Personification 拟人法 Picture poem 涂画诗 Prose poem 散文诗 Quatrain 四节诗行 Refrain 叠句，副歌Rhyme or rime 押韵Rhyme scheme 押韵格式Rhythm 节奏，韵律，格律Run-on line 连续诗行 Sarcasm 讥刺 Satire 讽刺Scansion 韵律分析，韵律图示 Sestet 六节诗行 Simile 明喻Situational irony 情景反讽Sonnet 十四行诗Speaker 说话者Spondee 扬扬格 Stanza 诗节 Stress 重音 Symbol 象征 Synecdoche 提喻 Tercet 三行诗节Terza rima 三行诗节隔行押韵法 Tetrameter 四音步诗行 Theme 主题Tone 语气，语调trimeter 三音步诗行Triplet 同韵三行联句Trochee 扬抑格Understatement 低调陈述，轻描淡写Verbal irony 言辞反讽Verse 散文诗Villanelle 维拉内拉体第二篇：简明英语句子成分分析简明英语句子成分分析一、句子的成分概说句子是包含主语部分和谓语部分的一组词。
英美文学术语,中英对照简洁版
1.Allegory (寓言)A tale in verse or prose in which characters, actions, or settings represent abstract ideas or moral qualities.寓言，讽喻：一种文学、戏剧或绘画的艺术手法，其中人物和事件代表抽象的观点、原则或支配力。
2.Alliteration (头韵)Alliteration is the repetition of the same initial consonant sound within a line or a group of words.头韵：在一组词的开头或重读音节中对相同辅音或不同元音的重复。
3.Allusion (典故)A reference to a person, a place, an event, or a literary work that a writer expects the reader to recognize and respond to.典故：作者对某些读者熟悉并能够作出反映的特定人物，地点，事件，文学作品的引用。
4.Analogy (类比)A comparison made between two things to show the similarities between them.类比：为了在两个事物之间找出差别而进行的比较。
5. Antagonist (反面主角)The principal character in opposition to the protagonist or hero or heroine of a narrative or drama.反面主角：叙事文学或戏剧中与男女主人公或英雄相对立的主要人物。
6. Antithesis (对仗)The balancing of two contrasting ideas, words, or sentences.对仗：两组相对的思想，言辞，词句的平衡。
英美文学专有名词及解释
1. What is poetry?(1) In general, a poem is a composition创作, a work of verse诗节, which may be in rhyme韵脚，押韵or may be blank verse or a combination of the two.(2) Three kinds: divine poetry; philosophical poetry哲理诗; and so called “poetry”2. A Sketch简述of English PoetryThe Old English poetryThe Medieval 中世纪English poetry The Renaissance poetryThe Metaphysical玄学poetry The Augustan (Neo-classical) poetry新古典主义The Romantic poetryThe Modern poetry3.The Forms of English Poetry(1) The physical form:deals with rules and forms of poetical韵文的competition, which includes rhythm and sound, the two chief elements of the English poetry.(2)The Intellectual form:according to the subject matter English poetry can be divided into narrative verse and lyric verse.4. The Physical Form of English PoetrySyllable音节,foot, line, stanza 诗Rhythm, foot, meter韵律, rhyme韵脚5. Rhythm,foot,meter,rhymeRhythm:the arrangement of the stressed and unstressed syllables into a pattern.节奏，韵律，节拍Foot:a rhythm unit,a specific combination of stressed and unstressed syllables.Meter:rhythm reduced to law; a regular pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables.Rhyme:the repetition of sounds in two or more words or phrases that usually close to each other in a poem.6. Kinds of footIambic:one unstressed, one stressed抑扬格Trochaic:one stressed, one unstressed扬抑格Anapestic:two unstressed, one stressed抑抑扬格Dactylic:one stressed, two unstressed扬抑抑格Spondaic:two stressed syllables扬扬格Iambic is the most popular in English poetry7. Line:named after the number of feet it containsMonometer:one foot in a lineDimeter二音步诗:two feet in a lineTrimeter三音步诗:three feet in a lineTetrameter:four feet in a linePentameter:five feet in a lineHexameter, heptameter,octameter（六，七，八音步诗）The iambic pentameter五步格诗i s found in all the plays of Shakespeare’s,all heroic couplets,all sonnets.8. Stanza诗节Stanza:the paragraph of poems;a stanza pattern is determined by the number of lines.Four-line is the commonest.It includes:couplet对句, tercet, quatrain, cinquain, sestet, septet, octet（三~八行押韵诗9. Rhyme韵脚(1) According to the locations there are three kinds:end-rhyme,head-rhyme,internal-rhyme.尾韵，头韵，中间韵(2) According to the number of syllables音节there are three kinds:single-rhyme,double-rhyme,triple-rhyme.(3) Imperfect rhyme:eye-rhyme,slant rhyme,vocalic –rhyme(4) Rhyme-schemes:use letters of the alphabet to denote patterns of rhyme,(ababbcc)10. The use of soundAssonance:the repetition of two or more vowel sounds within a line.Consonance: the repetition of two or more consonant sounds within a line.Alliteration:repetition of two or more initial consonant sounds in words within a line.It is popular used in the earliest English literature.11. The use of repetitionRepetition of a single wordRepetition of a phraseRepetition of the whole structure12. The intellectual form of poetryAccording to the subject matter English poetry can be divided into narrative verse and lyric verse.13. Narrative verse叙事诗Epic:great length, a story of heroic action,in dignified 史诗Mock epic:deals with un-heroic matter仿史诗Ballad:a simple, fairly short narrative poem民谣，民歌Fable:a tale conveying some moral truth or a bit of wisdom寓言，童话Didactic poetry:teaching poetry,putting moral,political ,religious point of view教学的诗Satire:similar to didactic,but by the method of attacking words,follies or opposing points of view by ridicule and wit.讽刺Epistle:a letter in verse to friends or famous person书信体诗文14. Lyric verse抒情诗Occasional verse:written to comment a particular event(epithalamium新婚喜歌,elegy挽歌)Ode:a fairly long poem,dignified in style,addressed to some solemn public occasion颂诗，颂歌Epigram:very short,crisp poem,witty and often satirical暗含讽刺,usually with a stinging climax讽刺诗，警句Pastoral:presents a setting of country life田园诗Verse drama:large cast,complex plot and multiple settings舞台剧Eclogue:originally a characteristic form of pastoral,of poetic dialogue牧歌，田园诗Verse dialogue: be used to cover a rather wider field of miniature小型的dramaDramatic lyric:a kind of tiny play using a single voice15. Some traditional verse formsBlank verse:a sequence of unrhymed iambic pentameter,the principle form for English poetry.Couplet:a pair of lines,in any meter, rhyming.(heroic couplets;octosyllabics)（相连并押韵的两行诗，对句）Triplet:a group of three lines,in any meter,rhymingQuatrain:any verse of four rhyming linesSonnet:a poem of fourteen iambic pentameter lines,with the particular rhyme-scheme十四行诗Octava rima:eight iambic pentameter rhyming abababccSpenserian stanza:eight iambic pentameters followed by one iambic hexameter and rhyming ababbcbccFree verse:neither regular pattern of rhymes,or a recognizable traditional meter自由诗16. Imagery(1) The terms of imagery and image is to make poetry concrete not abstract,it covers the use of descriptive language to represent objects,actions,feelings,thoughts,ideas,states of mind and any sensory experience.(2) Two main patterns of imagery:a series of images;a single dominant image.17. Rhetorical修辞devices in poetrySimile明喻, Metaphor暗喻, Metonymy换喻,Synecdoche提喻, Apostrophe撇号，所有格符号，省略符号, Personification拟人, Hyperbole夸张, Litotes曲言法, Paradox自相矛盾, Symbolism象征手法,Pun双关, Allusion暗指，典故，影射18.Argument(1) A form of discourse in which reason is used to influence or change people's ideas or actions.(2) Writers practice argument most often when writing nonfiction, particularly essays or speeches.Example: In his famous speech delivered to the House of Burgesses on March 23,1775, Patrick Henry advances the argument that only by armed resistance can the colonies defend themselves against England and gain their liberty. Heconcludes: "I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death! "Main Terms in British and American Literature19.Blank Verse(1) Blank verse is one of the principal English verse patterns in which most long English poems are written.(2) It must not be confused with free verse which follows no regular pattern. Blank verse is written in unrhymed iambic pentameter; in other words, it follows two requirements of pattern: a regular line length of five stresses and a rhythm pattern of alternate unstressed and stressed syllables.Example: Look at Frost's "Mending Wall", which is written in blank verse form, and compare it with Whitman's "I Hear America Singing", which is written in free verse.(3)The unrhymed iambic lines of blank verse prove particularly appropriate in treating serious themes, and have been used by many great American and British poets, including William Shakespeare, John Milton, William Cullen Bryant and Robert Frost.20.Caricature夸张讽刺的描绘(1) Writing that exaggerates certain individual qualities of a person and produces a burlesque, ridiculous effect.(2) Caricature, unlike the highest satire讽刺文学, is likely to treat merely personal qualities; although, like satire, it also lends itself to the ridicule 嘲笑，奚落of political, religious and social foibles.小缺点(3)A work of fiction, history, or biography that traffics in excessive distortion扭曲，畸变or exaggeration may be regarded as a caricature.21. Characters and Characterization(1) Characters are persons -- or animals, things, or natural forces presented as persons -- appearing in a short story, novel, play, or narrative poem.(2) Characters are sometimes described as dynamic 动态的or static静态的.(3) Dynamic characters experience some change in personality or attitude. This change is an essential one and usually involves more than a mere change in surroundings or condition.(4) In Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, Hester Prynne, for example, undergoes a major change from being rebellious at the beginning of the novel to being submissive and repentant at the end.(5) Static characters remain the same throughout a narrative. They do not develop or change beyond the way in which they are first presented.(6) Keeney, in the previous play, is an example of a static character. His character is the same at the end of the play as it is at the play's beginning: he is a stem, determined man who puts his pride and reputation before the needs of his wife and the other crew members.(7) Characters in a novel are generally more fully developed than those in a short story, for example. Not only does the novelist have room to develop perhaps more than one dynamic character, but he or she may reveal a main character in many different stages of change. Pip, in Charles Dickens' novel Great Expectations, is a character who, in the course of growing up, undergoes important and basic changes in personality and outlook.(8) Characters are sometimes classified as flat or round.(9) Flat characters have only one or two "sides," representing one or two traits. They are often stereotypes that can be summed up in a few words, for example, an "anxious miser" or a "strong, silent type."(10)Round characters are complex and have many "sides" or traits. Their behavior is unpredictable because they are individuals, and their personalities are fully developed and require lengthy analysis.(11)Flat characters, when developed by a skillful writer, may be as impressive as round characters.(12)Characterization refers to the personality a character displays; also, it is the means by which an author reveals that personality.(13) Generally, a writer develops a character in one or more of the following ways: (1) by showing the character acting and speaking; (2) by revealing a physical description of the character; (3) by revealing the character's thoughts; (4) by revealing what other characters think about the character; (5) by commenting directly on the character. The first four methods are indirect methods of characterization. The writer shows or dramatizes the character and allows you to drawyour own conclusions. The writer tells you directly what a character is like.(15)Direct characterization is always supported by indirect techniques, as characters must act or speak if the writer is developing a story. Also, if characters are to be believable, the reader must hear or see, rather than simply be told, what the characters think or feel or do.22. Conflict(1) Conflict is a struggle between two opposing forces or characters in a short story, novel, play, or narrative poem.(2) Conflict can be external or internal, and it can take one of these forms: (1) a person against another person; (2) a person against society; (3) a person against nature; (4) two elements or ideas struggling for mastery within a person 23.Diction措词Diction is a writer's choice of words, particularly for clarity, effectiveness, and precision.A writer's diction can be formal or informal, abstract or concrete.In choosing the right word, writers must think of their subject and their audience.Words that are appropriate in informal dialogue would not always be appropriate in a formal essay.24.Exposition阐述Exposition is the kind of writing that is intended primarily to present information.Exposition is one of the major forms of discourse. Although it is used in fiction as well as nonfiction, the most familiar form it takes is in essays.Exposition is also that part of a play in which important background information is revealed to the audience.In Romeo and Juliet for example, William Shakespeare begins by giving us essential information about the Montagues and the Couplets. He presents the conflict between these two houses before introducing the love story.25.Fable寓言，童话A fable is a short story, often with animals as its characters, which illustrates a moral.The fable is an ancient form, dating back to ancient Greek and Roman times in which appeared two great world-famous fable writers: Aesop and Phaedrus.Another fabulist with a world-wide fame is the 17th century French writer La Fontaine.Among important American fable writers are Ambrose Bierce and George Ade.26.Free VerseFree verse is a kind of poetry that lacks regular meter or pattern and may or may not rhyme.Depending on natural speech rhythms, its lines may be of different lengths and may switch abruptly from one rhythm to another.When used by a skillful poet, free verse displays special rhythms and melodies unlike any traditional poetic forms.Walt Whitman was the first American poet to use free verse extensively, because it is an appropriate form for his liberating view of life and for his poetry that would allow every aspect of life to speak without restraint.He tried to approximate the natural cadences of speech in his poetry, carefully varying the length of his lines according to his intended emphasis.Most traditional poets dislike this form, but it is in fact a very ancient form (the Psalms of the Bible are written in free verse).As Whitman shows, it can be very effective. If this form ignores some elements of poetic structure, it gives greater importance to others, notably repetition and parallel constructions.27.IronyIrony always involves a contrast, a disparity between the expected and the actual.When the irony implies a discrepancy between what is said and what is meant, it is verbal irony, the most familiar kind. Stories often contain other kinds of irony besides verbal irony: whenever we sense a sharp distinction between the ideas or opinions of the narrator of a story and those of the author, we are generally reading a work written from an ironic point of view——especially when the narrator is telling us something that we are clearly expected to doubt or to interpret very differently.Storyteller are sometimes fond of irony of fate (or a cosmic irony) developments that reveal a terrible, distance between what people deserve and what they get, between what is and what ought to be.O. Henry's "The Cop and the Anthem" best exemplifies this kind of irony. The story's surprise ending suggests that some malicious fate is deliberately frustrating human efforts, and the reader's sympathy is aroused.28.NarrationLike description, narration is a part of conversation and writing.Narration is the major technique used in expository writing, such as autobiography.Successful narration must grow out of good observation, to-the-point selection from observation, and clear arrangement of details in logical sequence, which is usually chronological.Narration gives an exact picture of things as they occur."The Dynamo and The Virgin" is a typical narrative. In this writing, Adams tells his story from the third-person point of view. He presents the reader with an objective process of his thinking development stimulated by the two incidents. The readers follow him to the revelation of his thesis, that is, the dynamic theory of history.29.Nonfiction非小说类文学作品Nonfiction refers to any prose narrative that tells about things as they actually happened or that presents factual information about something.Autobiography and biography are among the major forms of nonfiction.The purpose of this kind of writing is to give a presumably accurate accounting of a person's life.Essays are also common forms of nonfiction. They are generally personal observations on some subject.Other kinds of nonfiction include the stories, editorials, and letters to the editor found in newspapers, as well as diaries, journals, and travel literature.Writers of nonfiction use the major forms of discourse: description (an impression of the subject); narration (the telling of the story); exposition (explanatory information); and persuasion (an argument to influence people's thinking).30.PersuasionPersuasion is the type of speaking or writing that is intended to make its audience. adopt a certain opinion or perform an action or do both.Persuasion is one of the major forms of discourse.Modern examples of persuasion include political speeches, television commercials, and newspaper editorials.31.PlotPlot is the first and most obvious quality of a story.Plot is what happens in a story. Unlike life, which is random and unpredictable, the short story will usually be shaped by a chain of events, one leading inevitably to another in a line of rising action to a moment of crisis the climax.In "A Good Man Is Hard to Find”, the grandmother's secret taking of the cat on the journey; her chance thought to visit the old plantation; and the conversation with Red Sammy are all carefully arranged events by the author that combine to advance the plot, and lead to the final tragedy.The outcome of climax we call the denouement, a French word meaning the untangling of a knot.For the reader, the plot is the underlying pattern in a work of fiction; the structural element trait gives it unity and order.For the writer, the plot is the guiding principle of selection and arrangement. The writer will usually add coherence to the plot by signaling to the reader in advance the outcome of the action. We call these hints foreshadowing.When the reader finishes "A Good Man Is Hard to Find", he may realize that actually the outcome is foreshadowed several times in the early episodes.Sometimes the author may interrupt the action in a flashback in order to describe crucial events that occurred earlier.The flashback is one form of exposition, the process of giving the reader necessary information concerning characters and events existing before the action proper of a story begin32. Point of ViewThe vantage point from which an author presents a storyThree basic points of view may be distinguished.Firstly, the omniscient -- the author serves as a seemingly all-knowing maker.Secondly, the third person -- the author chooses a character and the story is related in terms of that character in such a way that the field of vision is confined to him or her alone.Thirdly, first person narrative -- a character in the story may tell the story as he or she experienced it; if the character does not comprehend the implications of what is told, the character is called a "naive narrator".33. RealismRealism is, in the broadest literary sense, fidelity to actuality in its representation; a term loosely synonymous with VERISIMILITUDE.Generally, realists are believers in democracy, and the materials they elect to describe are the common, the average, the everyday.Realists espouse what is essentially a mimetic theory of art, concentrating on the thing imitated and asking for something close to a one-to-one correspondence between the representation and the subject.34. SettingBy the setting of a story we mean its time and place——its geography, era, season, and society.Most writers invoke particular places and particular times, and their stories establish these settings precisely.Precise setting helps to establish the truth of the story, to persuade the reader of the validity of the tale.In "Rip Van Winkle”, by a detailed description of a remote, isolated "little village of great antiquity", Iriving creates a quiet, tranquil, ante-bellum social aura, which may betray his personal dislike of change, revolution and war: on the other hand, this setting prepares readers for the following exotic experience of Rip.Setting can give us information, vital to plot and theme.Often, setting and character will reveal each other.At the start of "A Rose for Emily", Faulkner depicts Emily Grierson's house, once handsome but now "an eyesore among eyesores" surrounded by a gas station. Still standing refusing to yield its old-time horse-and buggy splender to the age of the automobile, the house in "its stubborn and coquettish decay" embodies the character of its owner.In some stories, a writer will seem to draw a setting mainly to evoke atmosphere.The atmosphere is the aura or mood, or the general pervasive feeling aroused by the work which shapes the reader’s attitudes and expectations.Gothic fiction and Edgar Allan Poe's horror stories abound with settings of this kind.35. Simile and MetaphorSimiles and metaphors both are comparisons made between two unlike things.A simile makes the comparison through the use of connecting words such as like, as, than, or resembles.The comparison must be made between two essentially dissimilar things. "Peter is like a dog" is a simile, while "Peter is like his father" is not.Like a simile, a metaphor also points out a resemblance between two unlike things with the intent of giving added meaning to one of them.Unlike a simile, a metaphor does not use a connecting word to state a comparison but identifies the two things as one: "Life is a dream" is an example of metaphor.Sometimes a metaphor is suggested or implied. It does not directly state that one thing is another, different thing. This is called an implied metaphor.See examples in "Success Is Counted Sweetest" ("To comprehend a nectar/requires sorest need.") and in Whitman's "O Captain! My Captain!“Similes and metaphors are two important forms of figures of speech. They are used in virtually all forms of literature. They help make things more vivid, true-to-life and easy to understand.Many poets in this book, such as Dickinson, Frost, and Hughes, like to use metaphors to help express their deep thoughts or complicated ideas.36. The SonnetAs one of the most popular of traditional poetic forms, the sonnet is a lyric poem of fourteen lines written in iambic pentameter, i.e. a meter with five accents in each line.Sonnets may vary in structure and rhyme scheme, but they usually express a single theme or idea.Generally speaking, there are two types of sonnets: the Petrachan or Italian sonnet and the Shakespearean or English sonnet.Originated by Italian poets during the thirteenth century, this poetic form reached perfection a century later in the work of Francesco de Petrarch (Italian poet, 1304 - 1374), thus coming to be known as the Petrarchan or Italian sonnet.When English poets of the sixteenth century discovered Petrarch, they were challenged by the demands the Italian sonnet made upon a poet's artistry. In experimenting with this verse form, they often changed its structure and its original rhyme scheme.The most notable variation of the sonnet was made by William Shakespeare, hence the appearance of the Shakespearean or English sonnet.The Italian sonnet consists of two parts and imposes a rigid rhyme scheme: the first eight-line part is called the octave, with a rhyme scheme of abbaabba; the second six-line part is called the sestet, with a rhyme scheme of cdecde. Generally, the octave presents the poet's subject or raises a question, while the sestet indicates the significance of the subject, or answers the question or resolves the problem posed in the octave.Unlike the Italian sonnet, the English sonnet is made up of three quatrains and a concluding couplet, with the rhyme scheme of abab cdcd efef gg. In the Italian sonnet, the last six lines usually present a comment on or a summary of the argument put forward in the first eight lines, but in the English sonnet, the conclusion is usually given briefly in the final two lines.Many modern poets have experimented with the sonnet form, combining features of the Italian and the English forms or even inventing new patterns.Of the major American poets of the nineteenth century, Longfellow was the one most influenced by European verse patterns.Therefore, when he attempted the sonnet, he had both the Italian and the English tradition to draw upon.It is typical of his interest in Old World literature that he chose the older Italian form but sometimes made some changes, as in "Mezzo Cammin”37. StanzaThe stanza is a structural division of a poem, consisting of a series of verse lines which usually comprise a recurring pattern of meter and rhyme.In traditional English poetry, there are various stanzaic forms containing two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight or nine lines.The two-line stanza form is called the couplet, the best-known being the heroic couplet which is written in iambic pentameter with all end rhyme:So long as men can Breathe or eyes can see,So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.-- William Shakespeare (1564--1616)The three-line stanza is called the triplet.There are two kinds of triplets: one is called tercet, rhyming aaa, bbb, ccc, and so on; the other is adopted from the Italian, called terza rima, with the first and third lines in rhyme and the second supplying the rhyme for the first and third lines of the following stanza and so on to the end,thus having a rhyme scheme of aba, bcb, cdc, etc.Speak gently, Spring, and make no sudden sound;For in my windy valley yesterday I foundNewborn foxes squirming on the ground——Lew Sarett (1888--1954)I wake to sleep, and take waking slow.I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.I learn by going where I have to go.-- Theodore Roethke (1908--1963)The stanza composed of four lines is called the quatrain, which is the most popular of all stanzaic forms. Its rhyme scheme is generally abab, or abcb, but with variations of aabb, or abba.Many poets included in this book like to use this form. "The Yellow Violet" and "To a Waterfowl" selected here both consist of eight quatrains with a rhyme scheme of abab, cdcd, efef, and so forth.The five-line stanza, called tile quintain, is considered by some poets as one of the most musical forms of stanza we possess, because it is capable of almost endless variety, and the proportions of rhymes, three and two, seem especially conducive to harmony. Edgar Allan Poe's "To Helen" and Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken" are good examples.The six-line stanza, called the sestet, may be made up of three couplets, a quatrain and a couplet, or two triplets. See Poe's "Annabel Lee".The seven-line stanza is called septet, of which the best-known form is the Chaucerian stanza, named after the English poet Geoffrey Chaucer (1340-1400). Its rhyme scheme is ababbcc.The eight-line stanza, or octave, consists either of two quatrains or of a more complex combination of two triplets and a final couplet, with the latter rhyming abababcc. The octave can be either a separate stanza in a poem or the first part of the sonnet (See Longfellow's "Mezzo Cammin" ).The nine-line stanza is called the nonet. Like the septet, the nonet has one notable form known as the Spenserian stanza after the English poet Edmund Spenser (1552-1599), who used it in The Faerie Queene. The Spenserian stanza is made up of eight lines of iambic pentameter and a concluding Alexandrine (one iambic hexameter line), rhyming ababbcbcc. 38. Symbols and SymbolismSymbols are a part of our everyday lives. The eagle is a symbol of America; the skull and crossbones on a bottle is a symbol of poison; and the dove is a symbol of peace.The literary symbol shares something similar. Generally speaking, a symbol is a sign which suggests more than its literal meaning.Literary symbols are of two broad types: the conventional ones and the occasionally coined ones. Certain symbols occur again and again in literature, thus becoming conventional and possessing almost settled symbolic meanings.For instance, roses symbolize love; spring symbolizes life, and winter death; a journey on the road often symbolizes the journey through life. These conventional symbols are easy to recognize and identify. However, in order to convey particular meanings, writers often create their own symbols in their writing. This type of symbols acquires its suggestiveness not only from qualities inherent in itself but also from the way in which it is used in a given work or context.For example, Whitman and Sandburg both use grass in their poems as a symbol to represent nature.In "Mending Wall", Robert Frost seems to be talking about a simple and familiar process--mending a wall with a neighbor in spring. Yet, by the end of the poem, the wall, the neighbor, and the act of mending a wall become symbolic; they come to represent things larger than themselves.Symbolism is especially appropriate for poetry because it enables poets to compress a very complex idea or set of ideas into one image or even one word.Therefore, symbolism is one of the most powerful devices that poets employ in creation.39. Tone and StyleWhatever leads us to infer the author's attitude is called tone.The tone of a speech or a piece of writing can be formal or intimate, outspoken or reticent, abstruse or simple, solemn or playful, angry or loving, serious or ironic.One of the clearest indications of the tone of a story is the style in which it is written.In general, style refers to how speakers or writers say what they say.The style of a particular work or writer maybe analyzed in terms of the characteristic modes of its diction, or choice of words; its sentence structure and syntax; the density and types of its figurative language; the patterns of its rhythm, component sounds, and other formal features, and its rhetorical aims and devices.Mark Twain, for instance, had an uncanny ability to capture the swing and bite of ordinary speech, to reproduce its。
(完整word版)英美文学术语(英文版)_literary_terms
英国文学Alliteration:押头韵repetition of the initial sounds（不一定是首字母）Allegory:寓言a story with two meanings, a literal meaning and a symbolic meaning.Allusion:典故a reference in a literary work to person, place etc. often to well-known characters or events. Archetype:原型Irony:反讽intended meaning is the opposite of what is statedBlack humor:黑色幽默Metaphor: 暗喻Ballad: 民谣about the folk logeEpic:史诗in poetry, refers to a long work dealing with the actions of gods and heroes.Romance: 罗曼史/骑士文学is a popular literary form in the medieval England./ChivalryEuphuism: 夸饰文体This kind of style consists of two distinct elements. The first is abundant use of balanced sentences, alliterations and other artificial prosodic means. The second element is the use of odd similes and comparisons.Spenserian stanza: It refers to a stanza of nine lines, with the first eight lines in iambic pentameter and the last line in iambic hexameter. 斯宾塞诗节新诗体，每一节有9排，前8排是抑扬格五步格诗，第9排是抑扬格六步格诗。
常用英美文学术语
常用英美文学术语下面是店铺整理的一些常用英美文学术语，欢迎大家阅读!01. Humanism(人文主义)Humanism is the essence of the Renaissance.2>it emphasizes the dignity of human beings and the importance of the present life. Humanists voiced their beliefs that man was the center of the universe and man did not only have the right to enjoy the beauty of the present life, but had the ability to perfect himself and to perform wonders.02. Renaissance(文艺复兴)The word“Renaissance”means“rebirth”, it meant the reintroduction into westerm Europe of the full cultural heritage of Greece and Rome.2>the essence of the Renaissance is Humanism. Attitudes and feelings which had been characteristic of the 14th and 15th centuries persisted well down into the era of Humanism and reformation.3>the real mainstream of the english Renaissance is the Elizabethan drama with william shakespeare being the leading dramatist.03. Metaphysical poetry(玄学派诗歌)Metaphysical poetry is commonly used to name the work of the 17th century writers who wrote under the influence of John Donne.2>with a rebellious spirit, the Metaphysical poets tried to break away from the conventional fashion of the Elizabethan love poetry.3>the diction is simple as compared with that of the Elizabethan or the Neoclassical periods, and echoes the wordsand cadences of common speech.4>the imagery is drawn from actual life.04. Classcism(古典主义)Classcism refers to a movement or tendency in art, literature, or music that reflects the principles manifested in the art of ancient Greece and Rome. Classicism emphasizes the traditional and the universal, and places value on reason, clarity, balance, and order. Classicism, with its concern for reason and universal themes, is traditionally opposed to Romanticism, which is concerned with emotions and personal themes.05. Enlightenment(启蒙运动)Enlightenment movement was a progressive philosophical and artistic movement which flourished in france and swept through western Europe in the 18th century.2>the movement was a furtherance of the Renaissance from 14th century to the mid-17th century.3>its purpose was to enlighten the whole world with the light of modern philosophical and artistic ideas.4>it celebrated reason or rationality, equality and science. It advocated universal education.5>famous among the great enlighteners in england were those great writers like Alexander pope. Jonathan swift.etc.06.Neoclassicism(新古典主义)In the field of literature, the enlightenment movement brought about a revival of interest in the old classical works.2>this tendency is known as neoclassicism. The Neoclassicists held that forms of literature were to be modeled after the classical works of the ancient Greek and Roman writers such as Homer and Virgil and those of the contemporary French ones.3>they believed that the artistic ideals should be order, logic, restrained emotion and accuracy, and that literature should be judged in terms of its service to humanity.07. The Graveyard School(墓地派诗歌)The Graveyard School refers to a school of poets of the 18th century whose poems are mostly devoted to a sentimental lamentation or meditation on life. Past and present, with death and graveyard as themes.2>Thomas Gray is considered to be the leading figure of this school and his Elegy written in a country churchyard is its most representative work.08. Romanticism(浪漫主义)1>In the mid-18th century, a new literary movement called romanticism came to Europe and then to England.2>It was characterized by a strong protest against the bondage of neoclassicism, which emphasized reason, order and elegant wit. Instead, romanticism gave primary concern to passion, emotion, and natural beauty.3>In the history of literature. Romanticism is generally regarded as the thought that designates a literary and philosophical theory which tends to see the individual as the very center of all life and experience. 4>The English romantic period is an age of poetry which prevailed in England from 1798 to 1837. The major romantic poets include Wordsworth, Byron and Shelley.09. Byronic Hero(拜伦式英雄)Byronic hero refers to a proud, mysterious rebel figure of noble origin.2>with immense superiority in his passions and powers, this Byronic Hero would carry on his shoulders the burden of rightingall the wrongs in a corrupt society. And would rise single-handedly against any kind of tyrannical rules either in government, in religion, or in moral principles with unconquerable wills and inexhaustible energies.3>Byron’s chief contribution to English literature is his creation of the“Byronic Hero”10. Aestheticism(美学主义)The basic theory of the Aesthetic movement---“art for art’s sake” was set forth by a French poet, Theophile Gautier, the first Englishman who wrote about the theory of aestheticism was Walter Pater.2>aestheticism places art above life, and holds that life should imitate art, not art imitate life.3>According to the aesthetes, all artistic creation is absolutely subjective as opposed to objective. Art should be free from any influence of egoism. Only when art is for art’s sake, can it be immortal. They believed that art should be unconcerned with controversial issues, such as politics and morality, and that it should be restricted to contributing beauty in a highly polished style.4>This is one of the reactions against the materialism and commercialism of the Victorian industrial era, as well as a reaction against the Victorian convention of art for morality’s sake, or art for money’s sake.美学运动的基本原则”为艺术而艺术”最初由法国诗人西奥费尔.高缔尔提出,英国运用该美学理论的第一人是沃尔特.佩特.美学主义崇尚艺术高于生活,认为生活应模仿艺术,而不是艺术模仿生活.在美学主义看来,所有的艺术创作都是绝对主观而非客观的产物.艺术不应受任何功利的影响,只有当艺术为艺术而创作时,艺术才能成为不朽之作.他们还认为艺术不应只关注一些热点话题如政治和道德问题,艺术应着力于以华丽的风格张扬美.这是对维多利亚工业发展时期物质崇拜的一种回应,也是向艺术为道德或为金钱11. Critical Realism(批判现实主义)Critical Realism is a term applied to the realistic fiction in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.2>It means the tendency of writers and intellectuals in the period between 1875 and 1920 to apply the methods of realistic fiction to the criticism of society and the examination of social issues.3>Realist writers were all concerned about the fate of the common people and described what was faithful to reality.4>Charles Dickens is the most important critical realist.而服务的维多利亚传统的挑战.12.The Victorian period(维多利亚时期)In this period, the novel became the most widely read and the most vital and challenging expression of progressive thought. While sticking to the principle of faithful representation of the 18th century realist novel, novelists in this period carried their duty forward to criticism of the society and the defense of the mass.2>although writing from different points of view and with different techniques, they shared one thing in common, that is, they were all concerned about the fate of the common people. They were angry with the inhuman social institutions, the decaying social morality as represented by the money-worship and Utilitarianism, and the widespread misery, poverty and injustice.3>their truthful picture of people’s life and bitter and strong criticism of the society had done much in awakening the public consciousness to the social problems and in the actualimprovement of the society.4>Charles Dickens is the leading figure of the Victorian period.13. Modernism(现代主义)Modernism is comprehensive but vague term for a movement , which begin in the late 19th century and which has had a wide influence internationally during much of the 20th century.2>modernism takes the irrational philosophy and the theory of psycho-analysis as its theoretical case.3>the term pertains to all the creative arts. Especially poetry, fiction, drama, painting, music and architecture.4>in England from early in the 20th century and during the 1920s and 1930s, in America from shortly before the first world war and on during the inter-war period, modernist tendencies were at their most active and fruitful.5>as far as literature is concerned, Modernism reveals a breaking away from established rules, traditions and conventions. fresh ways of looking at man’s position and function in the universe and many experiments in form and style. It is particularly concerned with language and how to use it and with writing itself.14. Stream of consciousness(意识流)(or interior monologue)In literary criticism, Stream of consciousness denotes a literary technique which seeks to describe an individual’s point of view by giving the written equivalent of the character’s thought processes. Stream of consciousness writing is strongly associated with the modernist movement. Its introduction in the literary context, transferred from psychology, is attributed to May Sinclair. Stream of consciousness writing is usually regarded as a special form of interior monologue and is characterized byassociative leaps in syntax and punctuation that can make the prose difficult to follow, tracing as they do a c haracter’s fragmentary thoughts and sensory feelings. Famous writers to employ this technique in the English language include James Joyce and William Faulkner.学术界认为意识流是一种通过直接描述人物思维过程来寻求个人视角的文学写作技巧。
英美诗歌文学术语（全英）
英美诗歌⽂学术语（全英）Selected English and American PoemsLiterary Terms for Discussing PoetryAlliteration: The repetition of initial sounds or prominent consonant sounds. Examples: “A ll the a wful a uguries;” “p ensive p oets;” “a f ter li f e’s f itful f ever;” “I s lip, I s lide, I g loom, I g lance” (from Tennyson’s “The Brook”)Apostrophe: An addressing to an absent or imagined person or to a thing as if it were present and could listen. Example:“Milton! Thou shouldst be living at this hour / England hath need of thee: she is a fen / Of stagnant waters:” (from William Wordsworth, “London, 1802”)Assonance: The repetition, in words of close proximity, of same or similar vowel sounds, especially in stressed syllables, preceded and followed by differing consonant sounds. Examples: “deep green sea;” “light / bride;” “tide / mine” (note that tide and hide are rhymes).Ballad: A short narrative poem, especially one that is sung or recited, composed of quatrains, with 8, 6, 8, 6 syllables, with the second and fourth lines rhyming. A ballad often contains a refrain (i.e.a repeated phrase, line, or group of lines). Examples: “Jackaroe;” “The Long Black Veil”Blank verse: Unrhymed iambic pentameter. Examples: Shakespeare's playsCarpe diem poetry: Poems, whose theme is “to seize the day,” that is concerned with the shortness of life and the need to act in or enjoy the present. Examples: Herrick’s “To the Virgins to Make Much of Time”; Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress"Consonance: The counterpart of assonance; the repetition of identical consonant sounds in words whose main vowels differ. Also called half rhyme or slant rhyme. Examples: shadow / meadow; pressed / passed; trolley / bully; fail / peel.Couplet: A stanza of two lines, usually, but not necessarily, with end-rhymes (i.e. the rhyming words occur at the ends of the lines). Couplets end the pattern of a Shakespearean sonnet. Diction: The choice of vocabulary and of grammatical constructions. In poetry, it can be formal or high—proper, elevated, elaborate, and often polysyllabic language; neutral or middle—correct language characterized by directness and simplicity; or informal or low—relaxed, conversational and familiar language. Example: there is a difference in diction between “One never knows” and “You never can tell.”Double rhyme or trochaic rhyme: Rhyming words of two syllables in which the first syllable is accented. Example: flower / showerDramatic monologue: A poetic form, derived from the theater, in which the poet chooses a moment or a crisis, in which his characters are made to talk about their lives and their minds and hearts to one or more other characters whose presence is strongly felt. In some dramatic monologues, especially those by Robert Browning, the speaker may reveal his personality in unexpected and unflattering ways. Examples: Robert Browning’s “My Last Duchess;” T. S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock;” Tennyson’s “Ulysses”Elegy: A lyric poem expressing sadness, usually a lament for the dead. Example: Thomas Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”Enjambment: The continuation of the grammatical construction and logical sense of a line on to the next line or lines for the purpose of special effect. Also called run-on lines. Example: “The Count your master’s known munificence / Is ample warrant that no just pretense / Of mine fordowry will be disallowed…. ” (from Browning, “My Last Duchess”)Epic: A long narrative poem, dignified in theme and elevated in style, that usually records how a hero, through experiences of great adventure, accomplishes important deeds. Examples: Homer’s “Odyssey;” Milton’s “Paradise Lost”Eye rhyme: Words that look as if they should rhyme because they are spelled identically but pronounced differently. Examples: heath / death; watch / catch, bear / fear, dough / coughEnd rhyme: Identical sounds at the ends of lines of poetry. Also called “terminal rhyme.” Example: “Tyger! Tyger! burning bright / In the forests of the night” (from William Blake, “The Tyger”). Feminine rhyme (double rhyme): Stressed rhyming syllables are followed by identical unstressed syllables. Examples: fatter / batter; tenderly / slenderly; revival / arrival Foot: A basic metrical unit, consisting of two or three syllables, with a specified arrangement of the stressed syllable orsyllables. The repetition of feet can produce a pattern of stresses throughout the poem. The numbers of feet are given here: monometer (one foot); dimeter (two feet); trimeter (three feet); tetrameter (four feet); pentameter (five feet); hexameter (six feet); heptameter or septenary (seven feet); Octameter (eight feet).Free verse: Poetry in lines of irregular length, usually unrhymed and often largely based on repetition and parallel grammatical structure. Examples: Walt Whitman’s “O Captain! My Captain!”; Gwendolyn Brooks’ “The Bean Eaters”Heroic couplet: Two successive rhyming lines of iambic pentameter, often “closed,” i.e. containing a complete thought. It is called heroic because in England, especially in the 18th century, it was much used for heroic (epic) poems. Examples: “Be not the first by whom the new are tried, / Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.” (f rorm Alexander Pope, “An Essay on Criticism”) Iambic pentameter: The most natural and common kind of metrical pattern in English. Example: “The curfew tolls the knell of parting day, / The lowing herd wind slowly o’er the lea, / The plowman homeward plods his weary way, / And leaves the world to darkness and to me” (from Thomas Gray, “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”).Image: An Image is language that appeals to the senses, such as sight (visual), sounds (auditory), tastes (gustatory), smells (olfactory), and sensations of touch (tactile). Imagery refers to images throughout a work or throughout the works of a writer or group of writers. Images frequently do more than offer only sensory impressions. They also convey emotions and moods. Examples: “the gray sea and the long black land” (visual); “and quench its speed i’ the slushy sand” (auditory); “sea-scented beach” (olfactory); Ezra Pound’s “In a Station of the Metro” (visual and tactile) Lyric poem: A short poem, often songlike, with the emphasis not on narrative but on the speaker’s emotion or reverie. Example: Christopher Marlowe’s “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” Masculine rhyme: Rhyme of one-syllable words such as lies / cries or, if more than one syllable, words in which the final syllables are stressed and, after their differing initial consonant sounds, are identical in sound. Examples: stark / mark; support / retort; behold / foretoldMetaphor: A kind of figurative language equating two literally incompatible things with each other, without a connective such as like or a verb such as appears or resembles. Examples: “Oh, my love is a red, red rose” (the speaker’s love is equated with a rose); “a piercing cry” (a cry is compared to a spear or other sharp instrument)Metaphysical conceit: An elaborate and extended metaphor or simile that links two apparently unrelated fields or subjects in an unusual and surprising conjunction of ideas. The term is commonly applied to the metaphorical language of a number of early 17th century poets,particularly John Donne. Examples: Donne’s “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning;” Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress”Meter: A pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables. The most common kinds of metrical feet in English poetry are the five listed below:Iamb (iambic): An unstressed stressed foot. The most common rhythm in English verse.Examples: alone; away; “My heart is like a singing bird”Trochee (trochaic): A stressed unstressed foot. Examples: happy; garden, “Tyger! Tyger!Burning bright;”He was / louder / than the / preacherAnapest (anapestic): An unstressed unstressed stressed foot. Also called “galloping meter.”Examples: “As I came / to the edge / of the wood;” “There are man / -y whosay / that a dog / has his day”Dactyl (dactylic): A stressed unstressed unstressed foot. Examples: underwear; constantly;Take her up / tenderly; Sing it all / merrilySpondee (spondaic): A stressed stressed foot. Examples: True-blue; smart lad; sweet rose;dead set; “ (That the) night come”Ode: A long, stately poem in stanzas of varied length, meter, and form; Usually a serious poem on an exalted subject. Example: Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind”Onomatopoeia: A blending of consonant and vowel sounds designed to imitate or suggest the sound of the activity being described. Examples: hiss; buzz; murmur; whirrOxymoron: A self-contradictory combination of words or smaller verbal units. Also can be seen as a compact paradox. Examples: bittersweet; a pleasing pain; hurry slowly. An exaggerated employment of oxymoron can be seen in Romeo’sspeech early in Romeo and Juliet:Why, then, O brawling love! O loving hate!O anything, of nothing first create!O heavy lightness! serious vanity!Misshapen chaos of well-seeming forms!Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health!Still-waking sleep, that is not what it is!Paradox: A rhetorical figure embodying a seeming contradiction that is nonetheless true with a logic structure. Examples:“More haste, less speed;” “less is more;” “The child is father of the man”Pentameter: A line of verse containing five feet.Personification: Attributing human characteristics to nonhuman things or abstractions. Prosody: The principles of versification, particularly as they refer to rhyme, meter, rhythm, and stanza.Quatrain: A four-line stanza or poetic unit. In an English or Shakespearean sonnet, a group of four lines united by rhyme.Rhyme: The repetition of identical or similar concluding syllables in different words, most often at the ends of lines. Unlike rhythm, rhyme is not basic to poetry; but it is pleasant, suggests order, and may be related to meaning implying a relationship. Examples: lie / high; June / moon; stay / play; tender / slender; throne / alone; love / doveRhyme scheme: The pattern of rhyme, usually indicated by assigning a letter of the alphabet toeach rhyme at the end of a line of poetry. Example: The rhyme scheme of Shakespearean sonnet often is abab cdcd efef gg.Scan (scansion): The process of marking the kind and number of feet in poetic lines to establish the prevailing metrical pattern. Example: The scansion of the line “The summer thunder, like a wooden bell” tells readers that it is iambic pentameter.Shakespearean sonnet: A fourteen-line poem written in iambic pentameter, composed of three quatrains and a couplet rhyming abab cdcd efef gg. Also called the English sonnet. Shakespeare was its most distinguished practitioner.Slant rhyme: A near or approximate but not true rhyme in which the concluding consonant sounds are identical but not the vowels. Also called oblique rhyme, off-rhyme and pararhyme. Examples: sun / noon, should / food, slim / ham. Soliloquy: A speech in a play, in which a character alone on the stage speaks his or her thoughts aloud. Examples: Shakespeare’s HamletSonnet: A closed form of poem almost invariably of fourteen lines and following one of several set rhyme schemes. The two basic sonnet types are the Italian or Petrarchan and the English or Shakespearean. The sonnet developed in Italy probably in the 13th century and the form was introduced into England by Thomas Wyatt.Stanza: A group of poetic lines forming a unit corresponding to paragraphs in prose; the meters and rhymes are usually repeating or systematic.Terza rima: An interlocking rhyme scheme with the pattern aba bcb cdc, etc. Example: Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind”Verse: (1) a line of poetry; (2) a stanza of a poemVersification: The art and practice of writing verse. It includes all the mechanical elements making up poetic composition: accent, rhyme, meter, rhyme, stanza form, diction, and such aids as assonance, onomatopoeia, and alliteration. Guidelines for Reading Poetry ResponsivelyThe following guidelines can help you respond to important elements that reveal a poem’s effects and meanings. The questions listed are general, so not all of them will necessarily be relevant to a particular poem. Many, however, should prove useful for thinking, discussing, understanding, and writing about poetry.1. Read the poem a few times slowly and aloud.2. Make sure you understand the grammar of each sentence so that you can follow what eachsentence literally says. If there are deviations form normal syntax, consider the reasons for them.3. Try relating the poem to your own experience in your life, work or study.4. Pay attention to the title. What does it mean or emphasize? Does it provide any context forthe poem?5. Rephrase the poem in your own words. What does your paraphrase reveal about thepoem’s subject and central concerns? What is lost or gained in your paraphrase?6. Study the poem’s voice. Who is the speaker? Is it possible to determine his or her age, sex, level of awareness, and values? Is he or she addressing anyone in particular? How would you characterize the poem’s tone? Is it consistent? What is the setting or situation?7. Analyze the poem’s diction. Look up unfamiliar words in a dictionary. Examine the denotations and connotations of the words the poet chose. Is dialect used? Is word order unusual or unexpected? How does the arrangement of words reveal the meaning or the theme of the poem?8. Consider the poem’s use of allegory, allusion, myth, and symbols. In what way are they related to the poem’s theme? Does the poem also use imagery or figures of speech such as metaphor, simile, irony, personification, hyperbole, understatement, metonymy, etc.? How do they enrich the poem’s vividness or meaning?9. Listen to the poem’s sound and rhythm. What is the predominant rhythm or meter? Are they regular or irregular? Is the rhythm consistent with the tone of the poem? Does the poem use alliteration? Assonance? Rhyme? What effect do they produce in the poem?10. Consider the poem’s form. Is the poem constructed as a sonnet? An ode? An elegy? A lyric? A free verse? Is the form appropriate for shaping the poem’s thought and emotion? 11. Identify the poem’s theme. What central theme or themes does the poem explore? How are the themes expressed?12. Consider the biographical and historical information about the author and the poem which might provide a useful context for interpretation of the poem.13. Don’t expect to produce a definitive reading. Many poems do not resolve all the ideas, issues, or tensions in them. Your reading will explore rather than define the poem.Suggestions for Scanning a Poem1. After reading the poem through, read it aloud. Try listening for natural emphases or accented syllables in the rhythm of the line.2. Mark the stressed syllables first, and then mark the unstressed syllables. Several methods can be used to mark lines. One widely used system employs ˊ for a stressed syllable and ˇ for an unstressed syllable.3. If you are not sure which syllables should be stressed, look for two- and three-syllable words in a line and pronounce them as you would normally pronounce them. For Examples, you'd say beLOW, not Below, MURmuring, not murMURing or murmurING.4. Try breaking the words into syllables so that you can see them individually instead of as part of a word. For example: You’d say “The CUR few TOLLS the KNELL of PART ing DAY,” not “The curfew tolls the knell of parting day.” This will make it easier to find the stressed syllables.5. From your markings, identify the dominant kind of foot (iambic, trochaic, dactylic, or anapestic) and divide the lines into feet.6. Count up the number of feet in each line (Remember that there may be variations; what is important is the overall pattern). Put the kind of foot together with the number of feet, and you've identified the meter. Examples: “The CUR | few TOLLS | the KNELL | of PART| ing DAY” is iambic pentameter whereas “As I CAME | to the EDGE | of the WOODS” is anapestic trimeter.7. Keep in mind that scansion does not always yield a definitive measurement of a line. What really matters is not a precise description of the line but an awareness of how a poem’s rhythms contribute to its effects.。
英美文学术语,中英对照简洁版
1.Allegory (寓言)A tale in verse or prose in which characters, actions, or settings represent abstract ideas or moral qualities.寓言，讽喻：一种文学、戏剧或绘画的艺术手法，其中人物和事件代表抽象的观点、原则或支配力。
2.Alliteration (头韵)Alliteration is the repetition of the same initial consonant sound within a line or a group of words.头韵：在一组词的开头或重读音节中对相同辅音或不同元音的重复。
3.Allusion (典故)A reference to a person, a place, an event, or a literary work that a writer expects the reader to recognize and respond to.典故：作者对某些读者熟悉并能够作出反映的特定人物，地点，事件，文学作品的引用。
4.Analogy (类比)A comparison made between two things to show the similarities between them.类比：为了在两个事物之间找出差别而进行的比较。
5. Antagonist (反面主角)The principal character in opposition to the protagonist or hero or heroine of a narrative or drama.反面主角：叙事文学或戏剧中与男女主人公或英雄相对立的主要人物。
6. Antithesis (对仗)The balancing of two contrasting ideas, words, or sentences.对仗：两组相对的思想，言辞，词句的平衡。
英语诗歌术语以及定义
英语诗歌术语以及定义acrosticismthe art or skill of writing a poem in which the lines or stanzasbegin with letters of the alphabet in regular order or one inwhich the first, middle, or final letters of the line spell a word or a phrase. —acrostic, n., adj. Alexandrinean iambic hexameter, or iambic verse with six feet.anapesta foot of three syllables, the first two short or unstressed, thethird long or stressed. —anapestic, adj.antibacchius1. (in quantitative meter) two long syllables followed by a short.2. (in accented meter) two stressed syllables followed by anunstressed. Cf. bacchius. —antibacchic, adj.antistrophethe second of two metrically related sections in a poem. Cf.strophe. See also 127. DRAMA. —antistrophic, antistrophal , adj.arsisthe accented part of a foot of verse.bacchius1. (in quantitative meter) a short syllable followed by two long.2. (in accented meter) an unstressed syllable followed by twostressed. Cf. antibacchius . —bacchic , adj.bardism1. the art or skill of one who composes and recites epic orheroic poetry, often to his own musical accompaniment.2. membership in an ancient Celtic order of poets.cantoone of the main (larger) divisions in a long poem.catalexisincompleteness of a foot, wherever it appears in a verse.—catalectic, adj.dactyla foot of three syllables, the flrst long or accented, the followingtwo short or unaccented. —dactylist, n.—dactylic, adj. diastole(in Greek and Latin verse) the lengthening of a short syllable. Cf.systole.—diastolic, adj.dipodya double foot; a pair of similar feet comprising a metrical unit.—dipodic, adj.disticha couplet or pair of verses or lines, usually read as a unit. ecthlipsis(in Latin prosody) the elision of the last syllable of a word ending in m when the following word begins with a vowel. heptametera verse having seven metrical feet. —heptametrical, adj. heptapodya verse having seven metrical feet; a heptameter.—heptapodic, adj.hexametera verse having six metrical feet. —hexametrical, adj. hexapodya verse having six metrical feet; a hexameter. —hexapodous,adj.iamba foot of two syllables, the first short or unstressed, the secondlong or stressed. —iambic, adj.ictusthe stress or accent that indicates the rhythm of a verse or piece of music. See also 284. MUSIC.lettrisma technique of poetic composition originated by Isidore Isou,characterized by strange or meaningless arrangements ofletters.logaoedica poem or verse composed of dactyls and trochees or anapestsand iambs, resulting in a proselike rhythm. —logaoedic, adj. lyricismthe practice of writing verse in song form rather than narrativeform to embody the poet’s thoughts and emotions. Alsolyrism.—lyricist, n.—lyrical, adj.lyrismlyricism. —lyrist, n.madrigala lyric poem suitable for setting to music, usually with love as atheme. —madrigalist, n.metricism1. any of various theories and techniques of metricalcomposition.2. the study of metrics. —metricist, n.metrics1. the science of meter. —metricist, n.2. the art of composing metrical verse. —metrician, metrist, n. metromaniaan abnormal compulsion for writing verse.monopodya verse consisting of one foot. —monopodic, adj.octonarya stanza of eight lines; an octave. —octonary, adj. orthometry1. the laws of versification.2. the art or practice of applying these laws.pentametera verse of five metrical feet.pentapodya line of verse containing five feet.poesy1.Archaic. poetry.2.Obsolete, a poem.poetasterypoor or mediocre poetry.poeticismthe qualities of bad poetry: trite subject matter, banal or archaic and poetical language, easy rhymes, jingling rhythms, sentimentality, etc; the standards of a poetaster.poetics1.Lit. Crit. the nature and laws of poetry.2. the study of prosody.3. a treatise on poetry.4. (cap. ) a treatise or collection of lecture notes on aestheticscomposed by Aristotle.proceleusmatica metrical foot of four short syllables. —proceleusmatic, adj. prosody1. the science or study of poetic meters and versification.2. a particular or distinctive system of metrics and versification,as that of Dylan Thomas. —prosodist, n.—prosodie,prosodical, adj.pyrrhica metrical foot composed of two short or unaccented syllables.—pyrrhic, adj.rhapsodismthe professional recitation of epic poems. —rhapsodist, n. rhapsodomancya form of divination involving verses.rhopalism1. the art or skill of writing verse in which each successive wordin a line is longer by one syllable than the preceding word or inwhich each line of verse is longer by a syllable or a metrical foot than the preceding line.2. an instanceof rhopalicform. —rhopalist, n.—rhopalic, adj. rhymestera poetaster or poet of little worth; a mere versifier.scansionthe analysis of verse into its metrical or rhythmic components. spondeea foot of two syllables, both long or stressed. —spondiac, adj. stanzaa section of a poem containing a number of verses.sticha line of a poem; verse.stichomancya form of divination involving lines of poetry or passages frombooks.strophethe first of two metrically related sections in a poem. Cf.antistrophe. See also 127. DRAMA.synonymous parallelisma term describing a couplet in which the second line repeats theidea or content of the first line, but in different terms, as by using different images, symbols, etc. systolethe shortening of a syllable that is naturally long. Cf. diastole .—systolic, adj.tetrameter1. a verse of four feet.2.Classical Prosody. a verse consisting of four dipodies introchaic, iambic, or anapestic meter. —tetrameter, adj. tetrapodya verse of other measure having four metrical feet.triadismthe composition of poetic triads. —triadist, n.tribracha foot composed of three short syllables. —tribrachic, adj. trimetera verse having three metrical units.triplet1. a stanza of three verses.2. any set of three verses. See also 284. MUSIC; 295.NUMBERS.tripodya verse or measure of three metrical feet.tristicha poem, strophe, or stanza of three lines. —tristichic, adj. trocheea foot of two syllables, the first long or stressed, the secondshort or unstressed. —trochaic, adj.truncationthe omission of one or more unaccented syllables at the beginning or end of a verse. —truncated, adj。
- 1、下载文档前请自行甄别文档内容的完整性，平台不提供额外的编辑、内容补充、找答案等附加服务。
- 2、"仅部分预览"的文档,不可在线预览部分如存在完整性等问题,可反馈申请退款(可完整预览的文档不适用该条件!)。
- 3、如文档侵犯您的权益，请联系客服反馈,我们会尽快为您处理(人工客服工作时间：9:00-18:30)。
Selected English and American PoemsLiterary Terms for Discussing PoetryAlliteration: The repetition of initial sounds or prominent consonant sounds. Examples: “A ll the a wful a uguries;” “p ensive p oets;” “a f ter li f e’s f itful f ever;” “I s lip, I s lide, I g loom, I g lance” (from Tennyson’s “The Brook”)Apostrophe: An addressing to an absent or imagined person or to a thing as if it were present and could listen. Example: “Milton! Thou shouldst be living at this hour / England hath need of thee: she is a fen / Of stagnant waters:” (from William Wordsworth, “London, 1802”)Assonance: The repetition, in words of close proximity, of same or similar vowel sounds, especially in stressed syllables, preceded and followed by differing consonant sounds. Examples: “deep green sea;” “light / bride;” “tide / mine” (note that tide and hide are rhymes).Ballad: A short narrative poem, especially one that is sung or recited, composed of quatrains, with 8, 6, 8, 6 syllables, with the second and fourth lines rhyming. A ballad often contains a refrain (i.e.a repeated phrase, line, or group of lines). Examples: “Jackaroe;” “The Long Black Veil”Blank verse: Unrhymed iambic pentameter. Examples: Shakespeare's playsCarpe diem poetry: Poems, whose theme is “to seize the day,” that is concerned with the shortness of life and the need to act in or enjoy the present. Examples: Herrick’s “To the Virgins to Make Much of Time”; Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress"Consonance: The counterpart of assonance; the repetition of identical consonant sounds in words whose main vowels differ. Also called half rhyme or slant rhyme. Examples: shadow / meadow; pressed / passed; trolley / bully; fail / peel.Couplet: A stanza of two lines, usually, but not necessarily, with end-rhymes (i.e. the rhyming words occur at the ends of the lines). Couplets end the pattern of a Shakespearean sonnet. Diction: The choice of vocabulary and of grammatical constructions. In poetry, it can be formal or high—proper, elevated, elaborate, and often polysyllabic language; neutral or middle—correct language characterized by directness and simplicity; or informal or low—relaxed, conversational and familiar language. Example: there is a difference in diction between “One never knows” and “You never can tell.”Double rhyme or trochaic rhyme: Rhyming words of two syllables in which the first syllable is accented. Example: flower / showerDramatic monologue: A poetic form, derived from the theater, in which the poet chooses a moment or a crisis, in which his characters are made to talk about their lives and their minds and hearts to one or more other characters whose presence is strongly felt. In some dramatic monologues, especially those by Robert Browning, the speaker may reveal his personality in unexpected and unflattering ways. Examples: Robert Browning’s “My Last Duchess;” T. S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock;” Tennyson’s “Ulysses”Elegy: A lyric poem expressing sadness, usually a lament for the dead. Example: Thomas Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”Enjambment: The continuation of the grammatical construction and logical sense of a line on to the next line or lines for the purpose of special effect. Also called run-on lines. Example: “The Count your master’s known munificence / Is ample warrant that no just pretense / Of mine fordowry will be disallowed…. ” (from Browning, “My Last Duchess”)Epic: A long narrative poem, dignified in theme and elevated in style, that usually records how a hero, through experiences of great adventure, accomplishes important deeds. Examples: Homer’s “Odyssey;” Milton’s “Paradise Lost”Eye rhyme: Words that look as if they should rhyme because they are spelled identically but pronounced differently. Examples: heath / death; watch / catch, bear / fear, dough / coughEnd rhyme: Identical sounds at the ends of lines of poetry. Also called “terminal rhyme.” Example: “Tyger! Tyger! burning bright / In the forests of the night” (from William Blake, “The Tyger”). Feminine rhyme (double rhyme): Stressed rhyming syllables are followed by identical unstressed syllables. Examples: fatter / batter; tenderly / slenderly; revival / arrivalFoot: A basic metrical unit, consisting of two or three syllables, with a specified arrangement of the stressed syllable or syllables. The repetition of feet can produce a pattern of stresses throughout the poem. The numbers of feet are given here: monometer (one foot); dimeter (two feet); trimeter (three feet); tetrameter (four feet); pentameter (five feet); hexameter (six feet); heptameter or septenary (seven feet); Octameter (eight feet).Free verse: Poetry in lines of irregular length, usually unrhymed and often largely based on repetition and parallel grammatical structure. Examples: Walt Whitman’s “O Captain! My Captain!”; Gwendolyn Brooks’ “The Bean Eaters”Heroic couplet: Two successive rhyming lines of iambic pentameter, often “closed,” i.e. containing a complete thought. It is called heroic because in England, especially in the 18th century, it was much used for heroic (epic) poems. Examples: “Be not the first by whom the new are tried, / Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.” (f rorm Alexander Pope, “An Essay on Criticism”) Iambic pentameter: The most natural and common kind of metrical pattern in English. Example: “The curfew tolls the knell of parting day, / The lowing herd wind slowly o’er the lea, / The plowman homeward plods his weary way, / And leaves the world to darkness and to me” (from Thomas Gray, “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”).Image: An Image is language that appeals to the senses, such as sight (visual), sounds (auditory), tastes (gustatory), smells (olfactory), and sensations of touch (tactile). Imagery refers to images throughout a work or throughout the works of a writer or group of writers. Images frequently do more than offer only sensory impressions. They also convey emotions and moods. Examples: “the gray sea and the long black land” (visual); “and quench its speed i’ the slushy sand” (auditory); “sea-scented beach” (olfactory); Ezra Pound’s “In a Station of the Metro” (visual and tactile) Lyric poem: A short poem, often songlike, with the emphasis not on narrative but on the speaker’s emotion or reverie. Example: Christopher Marlowe’s “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” Masculine rhyme: Rhyme of one-syllable words such as lies / cries or, if more than one syllable, words in which the final syllables are stressed and, after their differing initial consonant sounds, are identical in sound. Examples: stark / mark; support / retort; behold / foretoldMetaphor: A kind of figurative language equating two literally incompatible things with each other, without a connective such as like or a verb such as appears or resembles. Examples: “Oh, my love is a red, red rose” (the speaker’s love is equated with a rose); “a piercing cry” (a cry is compared to a spear or other sharp instrument)Metaphysical conceit: An elaborate and extended metaphor or simile that links two apparently unrelated fields or subjects in an unusual and surprising conjunction of ideas. The term is commonly applied to the metaphorical language of a number of early 17th century poets,particularly John Donne. Examples: Donne’s “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning;” Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress”Meter: A pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables. The most common kinds of metrical feet in English poetry are the five listed below:Iamb (iambic): An unstressed stressed foot. The most common rhythm in English verse.Examples: alone; away; “My heart is like a singing bird”Trochee (trochaic): A stressed unstressed foot. Examples: happy; garden, “Tyger! Tyger!Burning bright;”He was / louder / than the / preacherAnapest (anapestic): An unstressed unstressed stressed foot. Also called “galloping meter.”Examples: “As I came / to the edge / of the wood;” “There are man / -y whosay / that a dog / has his day”Dactyl (dactylic): A stressed unstressed unstressed foot. Examples: underwear; constantly;Take her up / tenderly; Sing it all / merrilySpondee (spondaic): A stressed stressed foot. Examples: True-blue; smart lad; sweet rose;dead set; “ (That the) night come”Ode: A long, stately poem in stanzas of varied length, meter, and form; Usually a serious poem on an exalted subject. Example: Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind”Onomatopoeia: A blending of consonant and vowel sounds designed to imitate or suggest the sound of the activity being described. Examples: hiss; buzz; murmur; whirrOxymoron: A self-contradictory combination of words or smaller verbal units. Also can be seen as a compact paradox. Examples: bittersweet; a pleasing pain; hurry slowly. An exaggerated employment of oxymoron can be seen in Romeo’s speech early in Romeo and Juliet:Why, then, O brawling love! O loving hate!O anything, of nothing first create!O heavy lightness! serious vanity!Misshapen chaos of well-seeming forms!Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health!Still-waking sleep, that is not what it is!Paradox: A rhetorical figure embodying a seeming contradiction that is nonetheless true with a logic structure. Examples: “More haste, less speed;” “less is more;” “The child is father of the man”Pentameter: A line of verse containing five feet.Personification: Attributing human characteristics to nonhuman things or abstractions. Prosody: The principles of versification, particularly as they refer to rhyme, meter, rhythm, and stanza.Quatrain: A four-line stanza or poetic unit. In an English or Shakespearean sonnet, a group of four lines united by rhyme.Rhyme: The repetition of identical or similar concluding syllables in different words, most often at the ends of lines. Unlike rhythm, rhyme is not basic to poetry; but it is pleasant, suggests order, and may be related to meaning implying a relationship. Examples: lie / high; June / moon; stay / play; tender / slender; throne / alone; love / doveRhyme scheme: The pattern of rhyme, usually indicated by assigning a letter of the alphabet toeach rhyme at the end of a line of poetry. Example: The rhyme scheme of Shakespearean sonnet often is abab cdcd efef gg.Scan (scansion): The process of marking the kind and number of feet in poetic lines to establish the prevailing metrical pattern. Example: The scansion of the line “The summer thunder, like a wooden bell” tells readers that it is iambic pentameter.Shakespearean sonnet: A fourteen-line poem written in iambic pentameter, composed of three quatrains and a couplet rhyming abab cdcd efef gg. Also called the English sonnet. Shakespeare was its most distinguished practitioner.Slant rhyme: A near or approximate but not true rhyme in which the concluding consonant sounds are identical but not the vowels. Also called oblique rhyme, off-rhyme and pararhyme. Examples: sun / noon, should / food, slim / ham.Soliloquy: A speech in a play, in which a character alone on the stage speaks his or her thoughts aloud. Examples: Shakespeare’s HamletSonnet: A closed form of poem almost invariably of fourteen lines and following one of several set rhyme schemes. The two basic sonnet types are the Italian or Petrarchan and the English or Shakespearean. The sonnet developed in Italy probably in the 13th century and the form was introduced into England by Thomas Wyatt.Stanza: A group of poetic lines forming a unit corresponding to paragraphs in prose; the meters and rhymes are usually repeating or systematic.Terza rima: An interlocking rhyme scheme with the pattern aba bcb cdc, etc. Example: Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind”Verse: (1) a line of poetry; (2) a stanza of a poemVersification: The art and practice of writing verse. It includes all the mechanical elements making up poetic composition: accent, rhyme, meter, rhyme, stanza form, diction, and such aids as assonance, onomatopoeia, and alliteration.Guidelines for Reading Poetry ResponsivelyThe following guidelines can help you respond to important elements that reveal a poem’s effects and meanings. The questions listed are general, so not all of them will necessarily be relevant to a particular poem. Many, however, should prove useful for thinking, discussing, understanding, and writing about poetry.1. Read the poem a few times slowly and aloud.2. Make sure you understand the grammar of each sentence so that you can follow what eachsentence literally says. If there are deviations form normal syntax, consider the reasons for them.3. Try relating the poem to your own experience in your life, work or study.4. Pay attention to the title. What does it mean or emphasize? Does it provide any context forthe poem?5. Rephrase the poem in your own words. What does your paraphrase reveal about thepoem’s subject and central concerns? What is lost or gained in your paraphrase?6. Study the poem’s voice. Who is the speaker? Is it possible to determine his or her age, sex, level of awareness, and values? Is he or she addressing anyone in particular? How would you characterize the poem’s tone? Is it consistent? What is the setting or situation?7. Analyze the poem’s diction. Look up unfamiliar words in a dictionary. Examine the denotations and connotations of the words the poet chose. Is dialect used? Is word order unusual or unexpected? How does the arrangement of words reveal the meaning or the theme of the poem?8. Consider the poem’s use of allegory, allusion, myth, and symbols. In what way are they related to the poem’s theme? Does the poem also use imagery or figures of speech such as metaphor, simile, irony, personification, hyperbole, understatement, metonymy, etc.? How do they enrich the poem’s vividness or meaning?9. Listen to the poem’s sound and rhythm. What is the predominant rhythm or meter? Are they regular or irregular? Is the rhythm consistent with the tone of the poem? Does the poem use alliteration? Assonance? Rhyme? What effect do they produce in the poem?10. Consider the poem’s form. Is the poem constructed as a sonnet? An ode? An elegy? A lyric? A free verse? Is the form appropriate for shaping the poem’s thought and emotion? 11. Identify the poem’s theme. What central theme or themes does the poem explore? How are the themes expressed?12. Consider the biographical and historical information about the author and the poem which might provide a useful context for interpretation of the poem.13. Don’t expect to produce a definitive reading. Many poems do not resolve all the ideas, issues, or tensions in them. Your reading will explore rather than define the poem.Suggestions for Scanning a Poem1. After reading the poem through, read it aloud. Try listening for natural emphases or accented syllables in the rhythm of the line.2. Mark the stressed syllables first, and then mark the unstressed syllables. Several methods can be used to mark lines. One widely used system employs ˊ for a stressed syllable and ˇ for an unstressed syllable.3. If you are not sure which syllables should be stressed, look for two- and three-syllable words in a line and pronounce them as you would normally pronounce them. For Examples, you'd say beLOW, not Below, MURmuring, not murMURing or murmurING.4. Try breaking the words into syllables so that you can see them individually instead of as part of a word. For example: You’d say “The CUR few TOLLS the KNELL of PART ing DAY,” not “The curfew tolls the knell of parting day.” This will make it easier to find the stressed syllables.5. From your markings, identify the dominant kind of foot (iambic, trochaic, dactylic, or anapestic) and divide the lines into feet.6. Count up the number of feet in each line (Remember that there may be variations; what is important is the overall pattern). Put the kind of foot together with the number of feet, and you've identified the meter. Examples: “The CUR | few TOLLS | the KNELL | of PART| ing DAY” is iambic pentameter whereas “As I CAME | to the EDGE | of the WOODS” is anapestic trimeter.7. Keep in mind that scansion does not always yield a definitive measurement of a line. What really matters is not a precise description of the line but an awareness of how a poem’s rhythms contribute to its effects.。