英美文学复习题

英美选读第三题

英美选读第三题

1．In the medieval tradition tragedy invariably represents the hero’s falling into misery or adversity from prosperity or happiness and thereby inculcates a moral or didactic lesson. There is no moral of this sort in Marlowe’s plays. He p erceived that tragic action must issue from, and be reflected in, the individual. Though death comes to all Marlowe’s tragic heroes, the kernel of his play lies rather in the struggle of a brave human soul against forces that in the end prove too great for it. This conception of serious drama – Renaissance virtue battling on to success and then falling unconquered before fate –is one of Marlowe’s most outstanding contributions to the development of a truly august type of English tragedy.

3 .In several famous and eloquent soliloquies, Shakespeare reveals the deep conflict within

the thoughtful and idealistic Hamlet as he is torn between the demands of his emotions and the hesitant scepticism of his mind. The 'To be or not to be' soliloquy is the best known and often felt to be central to Hamlet's personality. It provides an excellent example of Hamlet not doing anything. Trapped in a nightmare world of hypocrisy, treachery and general corruption, and apparently bearing the intolerable burden of the duty to revenge his father’s death, Hamlet is obliged to inhabit a shadow world, to live suspended between fact and fiction, language and action. He considers that it would be far better for us all to commit suicide, but that we don't because we are scared of what might happen to us in the afterlife. Furthermore, we very often put things off because of our understanding that we might be being sinful. We look too closely at our plans only to find reasons for not carrying them out. The speech conveys a sense of utter world-weariness as well as the author’s incisive comments on the social reality of his time. 5. What is the theme of Sheridan’s The School for Scandal?

Morality is the constant theme in Sheridan’s plays. He is much concerned with the current moral issues and lashes harshly at the social vices of the day. In The School for Scandal, for example, he attacks the moral degeneracy of the aristocratic-bourgeois society in the 18th-century England. The idle rich spend their time scheming deception and intrigues and mongering scandals. By contrasting the life and deeds of the Surface brothers, Sheridan lays bare the depraved morality of Joseph Surface behind the mask of honorable life and high-sounding moral principles. He turns out a liar, a moral corruptor, and a hypocrite.

7.what are the artistic features of Romantic literature?

(1)t is a partial reaction against neo-classicism.

(2)It is a golden period of poetry; there are two schools: the Lake School of Poetry and the

Satanic School of Poetry

(3)In verse form, it preferred to lyrics, odes, sonnets, ballads, blank verses, amd Spenserian

stanzas.

(4)In poetic diction, it stresses on the fresh, simple, commonly used and colloquial language.

(5)In thematic matter, it tends to write on nature; the simple, common, rural life; the facts and

ideas of revolution; and medieval romances and myths.

(6)In poetic effect, it shows a preference for the wild, the irregular or the grotesque in nature

and art, the unrestricted imagination and strangeness in beauty

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