英国文学史名词解释

1. Ballad(民谣)

A ballad originally is a song intended as an accompaniment to a dance or a popular song. In the relatively recent sense, now most widely used, a ballad is a single, spirited poem in short stanzas, in which some popular story is graphically narrated. The ingredients of ballads usually include a refrain, stock descriptive phrases, and simple, terse dialogue.

2. Alliteration(头韵)

It refers to a repeated initial consonant to successive words and it is the most striking feature in its poetic form. In alliterative verse, certain accented words in a line begin with the same consonant sound. There are generally 4 accents in a line, three of which show alliteration, and it is the initial sound of the third accented syllable that normally determiners the alliteration. In old English verse, alliteration is not an unusual or expressive phenomenon but a regular recurring structural feature of the verse.

3. Sonnet (十四行诗)

It is a poem of 14 lines (of 11 syllables in Italian and 10 in English), typically in rhymed iambic pentameter. Sonnets characteristically express a single theme or idea.

The sonnet was introduced to England by Sir T. Wyatt and developed Henry Howard (Earl of Surrey) and was thereafter widely used notably in the sonnet sequences of Shakespeare, Sidney, and Spenser. 4. Tragedy(悲剧)

The word is applied broadly to dramatic works in which events move to a fatal or disastrous conclusion. It is concerned with the harshness and apparent injustice of life. Often the hero falls from power and his eventual death leads to the downfall of others. The tragic action arouses feelings of awe in the audience.

5. Lyric(抒情诗)

As a genre, it was the tradition of popular song flourishing in all the medieval literatures of Western Europe. In England lyric poems flourished in the Middle English period, and in the 16th century, heyday of humanism. This tradition was enriched by the direct imitation of ancient models. During the next 200 years the links between poetry and music was gradually broken, and the term “lyric” came to be applied to short poems expressive of a poet’s thoughts or feelings.

6. Epic(史诗)

It is a poem that celebrates in the form of a continuous narrative the achievements of one or more heroic personages of history or tradition. Among the great epics of the world may be mentioned the Iliad, Odyssey, Aeneid, and Paradise Lost.

7. Renaissance(文艺复兴)

The word “renaissance” means rebirth or revival. It is commonly applied to the movement or period of great flowering of art, architecture, politics, and the study of literature, usually seen as the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the Modern worn world. It came about under the influence of Greek and Roman models. It began in Italy in the late 14th century, reached the highest development in the early 16th century, and spread to the rest of Europe in the 15th century and afterwards. Its emphasis was humanist: that is , on regarding the human figure and reason without a necessary relating of it to the superhuman.