第三部分 乔叟时期

plete the following statements with a proper word or a phrase according to the textbook.

1.Geoffrey Chaucer,the “_______”and one of the greatest narrative poets of England,was born in London or about the year 1340eatly c.

2.Chaucer died on the 25th of October,1400,and was buried in_____.

3.The people’s uprising of 1388 raised the question as to the abolition of ______.

4.Boccaccio, Chaucer composes a long narrative poem______,based upon Boccaccio’s poem ______.

5.Chaucer greatly contribute to the founding of the English literary language, the basis of which was formed by the ______dialect, so profusely used by the poet.

6.Chaucer’s masterpiece is ______,one of the most famous works in all literature.

7.The Prologue is a splendid masterpiece of ______ portrayal, the first of its kind in the history of English literature.

8.In his greatest work, created a strikingly brilliant and picturesque panorama of his _______ and his _______.

9.His work is permeated with buoyant free-thinking, so characteristic of _______ whose immediate forerunner Chaucer thus becomes.

10.________are anonymous narrative songs that have been preserved by oral transmission.

11.Bishop＿＿(1729-1811) was among the first to take a literary interests in ballads.

12.There are various kind of ballads: historical, ＿＿,fantastical, ＿＿, and humorous.

13.In the numerous ＿＿the age-long struggle between the scots and the English is reflected.

14.Robin Hood is a partly ＿＿and partly＿＿character.

15.The first mention of Robin Hood in literature is in Langland’s＿＿.

Define the literary terms listed below.

1.Romance

2.Ballad

For the quotation listed below please give a brief analysis.

When the sweet showers of April fall and shoot

Down through the drought of March to pierce the root,

Bathing every vien in liquid power

From which there springs the engendering of the flower,

When also Zephyrus with his sweet breath

Exhales an air in every grove and heath

Upon the tender shoots, and the young sun

His half-course in the sign of the Ram has run,

And the small fowls are making melody

That sleep away the night with open eye

(So nature picks them and their heart engages)

The people long to go on pilgrimages

And palmers long to seek the stranger strands.

IV.Give brief answers to the following questions.

1.What does the General Prologue tell us?

2.What does The Canterbury Tales reflet?

3.Can you say something about social criticism in The Canterbury Tales?

4.Summarize Chaucer’s literary career.

ment on Chaucer’s position in literary history.

6.What are the stylistic features of the Ballads?

参考答案

I

1.father of English poetry

2.Westminster Abbey

3.Feudalism

4.Italian Troilus and Cressie Filostrato

5.London

6.The Canterbury Tales

7.Realistic

8.Time country

9.Renaissance

10.Ballads

11.Thomas Percy

12.Legendary humorous

13.border ballads

14.Historical legendary

II

1.Romance

It is a literary genre popular in the Middle Ages (5th century to 15th century),dealing,in verse or prose,with legendary,supernatural,or amorous subjects and characters.The name refers to Romance languages and originally denoted any lengthy composition in one of those ter the term was applied to tales specifically concerned with knights,chivalry,and courtly love.The romance and the epic are similar forms,but epics tend to be longer and less concerned with knights,chivalry,and courtly love.The romance and the epic are similar forms,but epics tend to be longer and less concerned with courtly love. Romances were written by court musicians, clerics, scribes, and aristocrats for the entertainment and moral edification of the nobility. Popular subjects for romances included the Macedonian King Alexander the Great, King Arthur of Britain and the knights of the Round Table, and the Frankish Emperor Charlemagne. Later prose and verse narratives, particularly those in the 19th-century romantic tradition, are also referred to as romances; set in distant or mythological places and times, like most romances they stress adventure and supermatural elements.

2. Ballad

It is a lyric poem generally of three eight-line stanzas with a concluding stanza of four lines called an envoy. With some variations, the lines of a ballad are iambic or anapestic tetrameter rhyming ababbcbC; the envoy, which forms a personal