英国文学简史问答题期末考试复习提纲

1. How much do you know about the English literature in the Romantic Age?

①The Romantic Age in England was like the Elizabethan Age, distinctively an age of poetry. It was regarded as the second great age in English literary history; for poetry is the highest form of literary expression, and seems to have been most in harmony with the noblest powers of the English genius. The glory of the age is in the poetry of Scott, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelly, Keats, Moore, and Southey；

②Women novelists appeared in this age. It was during this period that women assumed for the first time, an important place in English literature. Mrs. Anne Radcliff was one of the most successful writers of the school of exaggerated romance. Jane Austen offered us her charming descriptions of everyday life in her enduring work her masterpiece----Pride and Prejudice;

③The greatest historical novelist Walter Scott also appeared in this period. His historical novels combine a romantic atmosphere with a realistic description of historical background and common people life. Scott marked the transition from romanticism to the period of realism which followed it;

④Romantic prose was represented by Lamb, Hazlitt, De Quincey and Hume. Lamb was the best essayist, whose familiar essays are very famous.

3.What are the major features of Dickens’ novels?

①Dickens’ novels offer a most complete and realistic picture of the English bourgeois society of his age. His novels tell much of the unhappy experiences of his own childhood. They reflect the protest of the people against capitalist exploitation, and criticize the vices of capitalist society.

② The success of Dickens novels also lies in his character-portrayal. Not only are the major characters in his novels very carefully delineated and given distinctive individual characteristics but also his minor figures create in the readers’ mind strong impressions of their personalities. Some of Dickens’characters are really such “typical characters under typical circumstances”that they become proverbial or are representative of a whole group of similar persons.

③Dickens is a great humorist and satirist. His novels are full of humor and satire

④Dickens is not especially known for the construction of plot in his novels. There is in his novels often more than one minor thread of story beside the major one, and these threads are generally very loosely woven together. He seems to love a complicated and involved plot.

⑤In almost every one of Dickens’ novels there is a happy ending, which points to the author’s optimism which is an admirable thing for a critical realist because that means his still has his hopes after seeing the gloomy world all around him and one hand, and as a petty-bourgeois intellectual, could not overstep the limits of his class on the other hand.

⑥Another feature in Dickens’novels is his adroit use of language. On the whole Dickens has a richness of expressions and generally succeeds in using the right words and phrases at the right moments for the right characters to attain the right effects. 12. What are the characteristics of Dickens’ novels?(同第三题)

2.What are the chief characteristics of the 18th –century literature in England?

①The main literary stream of the 18th century was realism. What the writers described in their works were social realities. The main characters were usually common men. Most of the writers concentrated their attention on daily life;

②The 18th century was an age of prose. A group of excellent prose writers, such as Addison, Steele, Swift, Fielding were produced;

③Novel writing made a big advance on this century. The main characters in the novels were no longer kings and nobles but the common people;

④In this age satire was much used in writing. Since there was fierce strife of the political parties in society, nearly every writer of the century was employed and rewarded by Whigs or Tories for satirizing their enemies. English literature of this age produced some excellent satirists, such as Pope, Swift and Fielding.

14. What are the chief characteristics of the 18th –century literature in England?

同第二题

4. What are the major features of Shakespeare’s dramatic works?

①Shakespeare is a realist. He is one of the founders of realism in English literature. His plays are mirrors of his age. He described the decaying of the feudal society and the rising of the bourgeois spirit. His comedies reflect lives of the young men and women who just freed themselves from the fetters of feudalism and who were striving for individual emancipation. His comedies lay emphasis on emancipation of women. In his tragedies Shakespeare depicted the life and death struggle between the humanists——the newly emerging forces and the corrupted king and his feudal followers ——the dark power of the town, and also the contradictions between the rich and poor.

②The stories of Shakespeare’s plays often took place in other countries or in the past instead of in England or in his own age. Yet the thought and the feelings of his characters and their attitudes toward life belong to the age of Shakespeare. In fact, his characters are representatives of the people of his time.

③Shakespeare’s main characters are depicted in typical situation. They are typical characters. Their fundamental traits are reveled in their conflicts with their surroundings, in their relations with their fellow men. Each of his characters is a representative of a group of men.

④Shakespeare’s dramatic form fits the content of his plays very well. His plays are not controlled by the roles of the classical unities of time, plays and action.

⑤ Shakespeare was a great master of English language. The language of each of his characters fits his position in society and revels the peculiarities of his character.

⑥Blank verse is the principle form of his dramas.

⑦One very striking phenomenon in connection with Shakespeare character-portrayal is his emphasis on the psychological make-up of his major characters.

6. What are the major f eatures of Dickens’ novels? ( 同第三题)

5. How much do you know about Milton’s Paradise Lost?

①Paradise Lost is the greatest English epic, consisting of 12 books and done in blank words. The stories were taken from the Old Testament: The Creation; the rebellion in Heaven of Satan and his fellow-angles; their defeat and expulsion from Heaven; the creation of the earth and of Adam and Eve; the fallen angles in hell plotting against God; Satan’s temptation of Eve; and the departure of Adam and Eve from Eden.

②The main idea of the poem is the heroic revolt against God’s authority.

③Adam and Eve embody Milton’s belief in powers of man their caving for knowledge adds a particular significance to their character. It is this longing for knowledge that opens before mankind a wide road to an intelligent and active life. The picture of God surrounded by his angles resembles the court of an absolute monarchy, while Satan and his followers bear resemblance to a republican parliament. This alone is sufficient to prove that Milton’s revolutionary feelings made him forget religious orthodoxy.

④Satan is the real hero of the poem, and represents the spirit of rebellion against an unjust authority.

13. How much do you know about Milton’s Paradise Lost?(同第五题)

7. How much do you know about Wordsworth?

①Wordsworth was the representative of the first generation of Romantic poets, who expressed the deepest aspirations of English Romanticism. He saw nature and men with new eyes. His whole work is an attempt to communicate that new vision.

②His poetry is distinguished by the simplicity and purity of his language. It was his theory that the language spoken by the peasants when purified from its defects was the best of all.

③His theory and practice in poetical creation started from a dissatisfaction with social reality under capitalism, and hinted at the thought of “back to nature” and “back to the patriarchal system of the old time”.

④Nearly all of his good poetry was written during the first decade of his literary career (1798-1807).

⑤His later writings were full of mysticism and many of them unreadable.

⑥L YRICAL BALLADS——the joint work of Wordsworth and his friends Coleridge, marking the beginning of the Romantic Movement in England; the majority of the poems written by Wordsworth and Coleridge’s contribution being his masterpiece “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”; the poems characterized by a sympathy with the poor, simple peasants, a passionate love of nature and the simplicity and purity of the language.

⑦Wordsworth was at his best in descriptions of mountains and rivers, flowers and birds, children and peasants, and reminiscences of his childhood and youth. He , as a great poet of nature, was the first to find words for the most elementary sensations of man face to face with natural phenomenon.

⑧Some of Wordsworth’s PRINCIPLE POEMS are Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey(1798), The Prelude(1805-1806), The Excursion(1814), and miscellaneous sonnets(written at different periods of his life).

8. What are the major features of Milton’s poetry?

①Milton is a great revolutionary poet of the 17th century. He is also an outstanding political pamphleteer of the Revolution Period. He dedicated himself to the revolutionary cause.

②Milton is a great stylist. His poetry has a grand style. His poetry is noted for sublimity of thought and majesty of expression.

③ Milton is a great mater of blank verse. He is the glorious pioneer to introduce blank verse into non-dramatic poetry. He has use it as the main tool in his masterpiece Paradise Lost. His blank verse is rich in every poetic quality and never monotonous.

11.What are the characteristics of Milton’s poetry?(同第八题)

9. What are the major features of Chaucer’s writing?

①Chaucer’s major contribution to the English poetry is that the introduced from France the rhymed couplet of iambic pentameter to English poetry.

②He is the first great poet who wrote in the current English language——he wrote dialect of London.

③His poetry is full of swiftness and vividness. Chaucer’s style in The Canterbury Tales is remarkably flexible.

④His prose, like his vocabulary, is easy and informal.

⑤Chaucer is a great satirist, but he is almost never bitter when he pokes fun at the foibles and weaknesses of people.

15. What are the chief characteristics of Chaucer’s literary writing?(同9)

10. How much do you know about Shelley?

①Shelley loved the people and hate their oppressors and exploiters. He called on the people to overthrow the rule of tyranny and injustice and prophesied a happy and free life for mankind. He stood for this social and political ideal all his life. He and Byron are justifiably regarded as the two great poets of revolutionary romanticism in England.

②Queen Mab is Shelley’s first long poem of importance. It expresses all his major political ideas. Queen Mab is revolutionary poem condemning tyranny and exploitation and the unjust war waged by the rich to plunder wealth

③The Revolt of Island is another important long poem.

④Prometheus Unbound, a lyrical drama, is Shelley’s masterpiece. The story was taken from Greek mythology. The figure of Prometheus has been symbolic of those nobble-hearted revolutionaries, who devote themselves to the just cause of the people.

⑤Shelley’s short poems on nature and love form an important part of his literature output. To him nature exists as an unseen life of the universe and his love of nature is almost boundless.

⑥Shelly’s lyrics on love are also beautifully written. His best love lyrics include such well-known poems as Love’s Philosophy, One Word is Too Often Profound.