文学术语

⏹Heroic Epic :a long poem telling the story of the deeds of gods and great men

and women, or the early history of a nation. The Song of Beowulf

⏹Style of alliteration: the appearance of the same sound or sounds at the

beginning of 2 or more words that are next or close to each other.

EX

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The Epic: long narrative poem, majestic both in theme and style. Epics deal with legendary or historical events of national or universal significance.

Most epics deal with the exploits （功绩）of a single individual, thereby giving unity to the composition.

EX

⏹The Romance: literary genre (体裁) popular in the Middle Ages (5th century

to 15th century), dealing, in verse or prose, with legendary, supernatural, or amorous (情爱的) subjects and characters.

EX：Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

⏹The Ballad:short narrative folk song that fixes on the most dramatic part of a

story, moving to its conclusion by means of dialogue and a series of incidents.

Such a poem could be narrative or lyric, sentimental or satiric, religious or secular; it was vaguely associated with dance.

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⏹Frame narrative (or Frame story) : refers to a story in which another story is

enclosed or embedded as a tale-within-the-tale, or which contains several such tales.Prominent examples of frame narrative are Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales , and novels such as Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

⏹Heroic couplet: a rhymed pair of iambic pentameter lines.

‘Named from its use by Dryden and others in the heroic drama of the late 17th century.

⏹The heroic couplet had been established much earlier by Chaucer as major

English verse-form for narrative and other kinds of non-dramatic poetry; it dominated English poetry for the 18th century, notably in the closed couplets of Pope, before declining in importance in the early 19th century.

EX

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Alliteration, repetition of the initial letter (generally a consonant辅音) or first sound of several words, marking the stressed syllables in a line of poetry or prose.

⏹A simple example is the phrase “through thick and thin.”The device is used

to emphasize meaning and thus can be effectively employed in oratory.

Alliteration is a characteristic of Anglo-Saxon poetry, notably the epic

Beowulf; it is still used, with modifications, by modern poets.

Shakespeare’s Sonnets

⏹Sequence of 154 sonnets

⏹Thought to be written between 1595 and 1599, the sonnets are of the

Shakespearean form, which consists of three quatrains （四行诗）and a couplet, with the rhyme scheme ababcdcdefefgg.

⏹These sonnets are considered one of the supreme achievements in

this form in all of English literature.

⏹Ex. His Sonnet 18, Sonnet 130

Black verse :

⏹In literature, unrhymed poetry, typically in iambic pentameter 抑扬格的

五音步行诗. Black verse is the verse form used in some of the greatest

English poetry, including that of William Shakespeare and John Milton.

Here is an example from Shakspeare’s Macbeth.

⏹EX: If you can look into the seeds of time,

And say which grain will grow and which will not ,

Speak then to me, who neither beg nor fear

Your favours nor you hate

Metaphysical Poetry: The poetry of John Donne and other seventeeth-century poets who wrote in a similar style. Metaphysical poetry is characterized by verbal wit and excess, ingenious structure, irregular meter（格律）, colloquial language, elaborate imagery, and a drawing together of dissimilar ideas.

Ex: The Flea

Conceit,an elaborate, often extravagant（放纵的，无度的）metaphor or simile making an analogy between totally dissimilar things. The term originally meant “concept”or “idea.”The use of conceits is especially characteristic of 17th-century English metaphysical poetry.

An example occurs in the poem “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning,”by the English poet John Donne, in which two lovers' souls are compared to the legs of drawing compasses（圆规）.

. Lake Poets?

Lake Poets, term loosely applied to three English poets, Robert Southey, Samuel