英国文学复习笔记整理

英国文学复习笔记整理1 Although Geoffrey Chaucer was essentially a medieval writer, he bore marks of humanism and anticipated a new era of literature to come.2 Romance, which uses narrative verse or prose to tell stories of Knightly adventures or other heroic deeds, is a popular literary form in the medieval period.The Renaissance PeriodEdmund Spencer / Christopher Marlowe / William ShakespeareFrancis Bacon / John Donne / John Milton1. Renaissance: between 14th and mid-17th century.2. Renaissance means rebirth or revival is actually a movement stimulated by a series of historical events, such as:The rediscovery of ancient Roman and Greek culture,The new discoveries in geography and astrology,The religious reformation and the economic expansion.3. The Renaissance, therefore in essence is a historical period in which the European humanist thinkers and Scholars made attempt to get rid of those old feudalist ideas in Medieval Europe, to introduce new ideas that expressed the purity of the rising bourgeoisie, and to recover the purity of the early church from the corruption of the Roman Catholic Church.The religious reformation in the early 16th-century England was a reflection of the class struggles waged by the rising bourgeoisie against the feudal class and its ideology4. Humanism is the essence of the RenaissanceThe essence of humanism is to emphasize human qualities(1) Capable of individual development in the direction of perfection.(2) They inhabited was theirs not to despise by to question, explore and enjoy.(3) Tomas More, Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare are the best representative of the English humanist.5 Metaphysical poetry:Metaphysical is characterized by passionate thought succession of concentrated image, exercise of elaborate ingenuity and “wit”, John Donne was the famous of the Metaphysical poet. The Metaphysical Poets were men of learning and to show their learning was their endeavor.Edmund SpenserMasterpiece: The Faerie Queene (allegory)Christopher Marlowe （University wits）1 Important plays: Tambulaine, Dr.Faustus, The Jew of Malta2 Marlowe voiced the supreme desire of the man of the Renaissance of infinite powers and authority(1) Perfected the blank verse.(2)Creation of the Renaissance hero to English drama, it embodies Marlowe’s ideal of human dignity and capacity.3Dr.Faustus: aspiring for knowledge, the play’s dominant moral is human rather than religious,it celebrates the human passion for knowledge, power and happiness, it also reveals man’s frustration in r ealizing the high aspiration in a hostile moral order and the confinement to time is the cruelest fact of man’s condition.4 The statement that a man gained the whole world but lost his own soul makes a good summary of the main plot of The Tragic History of Doctor FaustusWilliam Shakespeare1.Works: 154 sonnets, 38 plays, 2 long poemsComedy: Merchant of Venice.2 4 great tragedies: Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, MacbethEach portrays some noble hero, who face the injustice of human fate is closely connected with the fate of the whole nation; each hero has his weakness of nature.Hamlet, the melancholic scholar-prince, faces the dilemma between action and mind:Othello’s inner weakness is made use of by the outside evil force;old King Lear who is unwilling to totally give up his power makes himself suffer from treachery(背叛) and infidelity(失真)Macbeth’s lust for power stirs up his ambition and leads him to incessant crime.3 statements best illustrates the theme of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18 :The)2 Novum Organum: most impressive display of Beacon’s intellect. The argument is for the use of inductiveness of reason in scientific study.3 Beacon suggests the inductive reasoning,i.e. proceeding from the particular to the general, in place of the Aristotelian method, the deductive reasoning, i.e. proceeding from the general to the particular.4 Beacon’s essays are famous for their brevity, compactness and powerfulness.John DonneMetaphysical poetryThe most striking feature of Donn e’s poetry is precisely its tang of reality, in the sense that it seems to reflect life in a real rather than a poetical world.Donne frequently applies conceits.John MiltonThree major poetical works:Paradise lost, Paradise Regained, Samson AgonistsThe freedom of the will is the key tone of Milton’s creed.Paradise LostThe epic is the masterpiece of John MiltonThe story is drawn from the Old Testament of the Bible, which tells how Satan, after being defeated in his rebel against God, tempts Adam and Eve to eat the apples for the Forbidden Tree, and causes the Fall of Man. The Neoclassic PeriodJohn Bunyan / Alexander Pope / Daniel Defoe / Jonathan SwiftHenry Fielding / Samuel Johnson / Richard Brinsley SheridanTomas Gray1 Between the return of the Stuarts to the English throne in 1660 and the full assertion of Romanticism which came with the publication of lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge in 17982 Enlightenment or the Age of reasonThe Enlightenment movement was a progressive intellectual movement, which flourished in France and swept the whole Western Europe at the timeIts propose was to enlighten the whole world with the light of modern philosophical and artistic ideas. The enlightenment celebrated reason or rationality, equality and science. They called for a reference to order, reason and rule, yield place to “eternal truth” “eternal justice” and “natural equality”They believed that human beings were limited, dualistic and imperfect literature at the time, heavily didactic and moralizing.They believed in self-restraint, self-reliance and hard work. To work, to economize and to accumulate wealth constitutes the whole meaning of their life. This aspect of social life is best-formed in the realistic novels of the 18th century.3 In the field of literature, they believed that the artistic should be order, logic, restrained emotion and accuracy. Seek proportion, unity, harmony and grace in literary expression, in an effort to delight, instruct and correct human beings.4 Neoclassicism. In English literature and, the stylistic trend between the Restoration and the advent of romanticism at the beginning of the 19th century is referred to as Neoclassicism.5 Heroic: It is a pair of rhymed lines of iambic pentameter. The form was introduced into English by Chaucer and widely used subsequently.John Bunyan1. Masterpiece: The pilgrim’s progress2.The “vanity fair” symbolizes human wor ld; for all that comth is vanityeverything and anything in this world is vanity, having no value and no meaning.3.In The Pilgrim’s Progress, John Banyan describes The Vanity Fair in asatirical tone.The phrase "to urge people to abide by Christian doctrines and to seek salvation through constant struggles with their own weaknesses and all kinds of social evils" may well sum up the implied meaning ofThe Pilgrim’s ProgressAlexander Pope1 Pope, a very sensitive man, would strike back hard, and in the constant verbal battles he developed a style of biting satire.2 He was one of the first to introduce rationalism to England, but was not entirely blind to the rapid moral, political and cultural deterioration.3 For him the supreme values were order-cosmic order, political order, social order, aesthetic order, and this emphasis an order expression in all of his works. Pope made his name as a great poet with the publication of an Essay on Criticism in 1711.4 Pope strongly advocated Neoclassicism, emphasizing that literary works should be judged by classical rule of order, reason, logic, restrained emotion, good taste and decorum.Daniel DefoeMasterpiece: Robinson CrusoeHis language is smooth, easy, colloquial (口语的)and most vernacular. Defoe glorifies human labor and the puritan fortitude. It refers the enterprising sprit of the middle class.Jonathan Swift1. Chief works:A Tale of a Tub, The battle of the books, The Drapier’s letters, Gulliver’s Travel and a modest proposal.2. Swift is almost unsurpassed in the writing of simple, direct, precise prose. He defined a good style as “proper words in proper places” clear, simple, concrete, diction, uncomplicated sentence structure and economy and concise use of language mark all his writing-essay, poems and novels.3. As a whole, the book is one have the most effective and devastating criticism and satires of all aspects in the then English and European lifesocially, politically, religiously, philosophically, scientifically and morally.Henry Fielding1. Masterpiece: A History of Tom Jones, a Foundling2. Fielding has been regarded by some as “Father of the English Novel” for his contribution to the establishment of the form of the modern novel.3. Fielding’s lang uage is easy, unlabored and familiar but extremely vivid and vigorous.4. Of all the 18th century novelist, he was the first to set out both in theory and practice. To write specially a “comic epic in poem” the first to give the modern novels its structure and story; he use epistolary form and “the third-person narration”.5. In planning his stories, he tries to retain the grand, epical of the classical works but at the same time keeps faithful to his realistic presentation of common life as it is.Samuel Johnson1. Lexicographer: the author of the first English dictionary by an English man---A Dictionary of the English Language (1755)2. To the Right Honorable the Earl of----Chesterfield3. He was particularly fond of moralizing, and didacticism. His language in characteristically general, often Latinate and frequently polysyllabic. Richard Brinsley Sheridan1 Masterpiece: The school for scandal.2 Sheridan has the only important English dramatist of the 18th century; important link between Shakespeare and Bernard Shaw.3 In his play, morality is the constant theme.He is much concerned with the current moral issue and harshly at the social life of the day.Tomas Gray1. His masterpiece, “Elegy in a Country Churchyard” was published in 1751; the poem once and for all established his fame as the leader of the sentimental poetry of the day especially”the Graveyard School”2. In his poem, Gray reflects on death, the sorrow of life and the mysteries of hum a touch of his Personal Melancholy.3. His poems, as a whole are mostly devoted to a sentimental lamentation or mediation on life, past and present. His poems are characterized by an exquisite sense of form. His style is sophisticated and allusive. His poems are often marked with the trait of a highly artificial diction and a distorted word order.Romantic PeriodWilliam Blake / William Wordsworth / Samuel Taylor Coleridge George Gordon/ ByronPercy/ Bysshe Shelley /John Keats / Jane Austen1. Major Romantic Points(1) A rebellion against neo-classicism(2) Express on imagination(3) Priorities been given to passion, emotion and feeling(4) Being close to nature for its purity while the society is corrupting5) Tremendous interest in something remote in term of space and time(6) Favor of modernism(7) Supremacy of freedom2 Romantic Period began in 1798 with the publication of Wordsworth and Coleridge’s lyrical Ballads and have ended in 1852 with Sir Walter Scott’s death and the passage of the first Reform Bill in the Parliament. 3. It was in effect a revolt of the English imagination against the neoclassical reason, which prevailed from the days of Pope to those of Johnson1. Jean-Roseau: exploration new idea about Nature, society, Education.4The Romantic Movement expressed a more or less negative attitude the existing social and political conditions that came with industrial lization and the growing importance of the bourgeoisie.5 Thus, we can say that Romanticism actually constitutes a change of direction attention to the outer world of social civilization to the inner world of the human spirit6 Nature to Wordsworth is a source of mental cleanliness and spiritual understanding.7 Poetry has been traditionally regarded as an art governed by rules; but for Romantics, Poetry should be free from all rules.8 Gothic novels: its principal elements are violence, horror and supernatural, which strongly appeal to the reader’s emotion.9 How is Romanticism different from Neoclassicism? Provide brief evidence from the literary works you know best.a. Neoclassicists upheld that artistic ideals should be order, logic, restrained emotion and accuracy, and that literature should be judged in terms of its service to humanity, and thus, literary expressions should be of proportion, unity, harmony and grace. Pope’s An Ess ay on Criticism advocates grace, wit ( usually though satire/ humor ), and simplicity in language (and the poem itself is a demonstration of those ideals, too); Fielding’s Tom Jones helped established the form of novel; Gray’s Elegry Written in a country C hurchyard” displays elegance in style, unified structure, serious tone and moral instructions.b. Romanticism tended to see the individual as the very center of all experience, including art, and thus, literary work should be “spontaneous overflow of stron g of feeling”and no matter how fragmentary those experience were ( Wordsworth’s “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud,” or “The Solitary Reaper,) 0r Coleridge’s “ Keble Khan”), the value of the work link lied in the accuracy of presenting those unique feelings and particular altitude.c. In a word, Neoclassicism emphasized rationality and form but Romanticism attached great importance to the individual’s mind ( emotion, imagination, temporary experience.)William Blake1 (1)The songs of Innocence is a lovely volume poems, presenting a happy and innocent world, though not without its evil and sufferings. (2) The songs of Experience paints a different world, a world of misery, poverty, disease, war and repress with melancholy tone(3) The two books hold the similar subject-matter, but the tone, emphasis and conclusion differs.2 Blake’s Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790) marks his entry into maturity.Blake explains the relationship of the contraries.“without contraries, there is no progression.The marriage to Blake means the reconciliation of the contraries, not the subordination of the one to the other.3 Blake writes his poem in plain and direct language, his poem often carries the lyric beauty with immense compressing of meaning. He distrusts the abstractness and tends to embody his views with visual images; symbolism in wide range is also a distinctive feature of his poetry.William WordsworthThe poetic view of William Wordsworth can be best understood from his remark about poetry, that is, "all good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings."William Wordsworth, a romantic poet, advocated all the followingA.the use of everyday language spoken by the common peopleB. the expression of the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelingC. the use of humble and rustic life as subject matter1 William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey, the three man known as the “Lake Poets”2 Wordsworth is regarded as a “worshiper of nature”3 Wordsworth thinks that common life is the only subject of literary interest.4 Wordsworth see the word freshly, sympathetically and naturally.5 The most important contribution Wordsworth has made is that he has not only started the modern poetry of the growing inner self,but also changed the course of English poetry by using ordinary speech of the language and by advocating a reform to nature.Samuel Taylor Coleridge1 Coleridge’s portion (work) was to deal with super nature thing for he was more interested in something remote strange on foreign.2 Two divers group: the demonic and the conversational(1) The demonic group: beyond the control of reason. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner “Christabel” “Kubl a Khan”(2) The conversational group: “Frost at Midnight”3 Coleridge is one of the first critics to give close critical affection to language, maintaining that the true end of poetry is to give pleasure “through the medium of beauty”4 He was recognized as a lyrical poet and literary critic of the first rank. His poetic themes range from the super nature to the domestic.His treatises, lectures, and compelling conversational powers made him one of the most influential English literary critics and philosophers of the 19th century.George Gordon Byron1 Masterpiece: Don Juan, Childe Ha rold’s Pilgrima ge“I awake on e morning and found myself famous.”2 Byron invests in Juan the moral positives like courage, generosity and franknessThe unifying principal in Don Juan is the basic ironic theme of appearance and reality.3 Byron has enriched European poetry with an abundance of ideas, images, artistic forms and innovation.4 Byronic heroThe creation of the Byronic hero is Byron’s chief contribution to English Poetry, such a hero is a proud, mysterious rebel figure of noble origin. Passionate and powerful, he is to right all the wrongs in a corrupt society and he would fight single-handedly against all the misdoings, political, religious moral. Thus this figure is a rebellious individual social systems and customs. Because Byron’s poetry is one of t he experiences on the whole, such a hero is more or less a surrogate of himself; He appears first in Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage and then further develops in later works such as the “Oriented Tale” “Manfred” and “Don Juan”.Percy Bysshe Shelley1 In 1813 he published his first long serious work. Queen Mab: A Philosophical Poem.2 Masterpiece “The Cenci” “Prometheus unbounded”Lyrics: “The Cloud” “To a Skylark” “Adonais”3 He held a life-long aversion to cruelty, injustice, authority, institutional religion and the formal shames of respectable society, condemning war, tyranny and exploitation.4 Shelley expressed his love for freedom and his hatred toward tyranny in several of his lyrics such as: Ode to Liberty,” “Ode to Naples,” “Sonnet: England in 1819” and so on.5 Best of all the well-known lyric pieces is his “Ode to the west win d” it is rhapsodic and declamatory.6 Shelley’s style abounds in personification and metaphor and other figure of speech, which describe vividly what we see and feel, or express what passionately moves us.John Keats1. Work: Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St.Agnes2. The Odes are generally regarded as Keats’s most important and mature works.Ode on Melancholy, Ode on a Grecian Urn, Ode to a Nightingale, Ode to Psyche3. Keats’s poetry is always sensuous, colorful and rich in imagery, which expresses the acuteness of his senses,sights, sound, scent, taste and felling are all taken in to give an entire understanding of an experience of others either human or animal.4."Beauty is truth, truth beauty."is taken from John Keats’ Ode on a Grecian Urn5 Ode on a Grecian Urn" shows the contrast between the (permanence. ) of art and the (transience ) of human passion.Jane Austen1 Works: Pride and Prejudice. Sense and Sensibility. Northanger Abbey2 And in style, she is a neoclassicism advocator,upholding those traditional ideals of order, reason, proportion and gracefulness in novel writing.The Victorian PeriodCharles Dickens / Charlotte Bronte / Emily Bronte/Alfred Tennyson / Robert Browning1. The Victorian Period roughly coincides with the reign of Queen Victorian from 1836 to 1901, the most glorious in the English history. (Inthis period, the novel became the most widely read and the most vital and challenging expression of progressive thought, criticism of the society and the defense of the mass. ----they are all concerned about the fate of common people.)2 Towards the mid-19th century, England had reached it’s highly point of development as a world power.3 Darwin’s The origin of species and The De scent of Man shook theoretical basic of traditional faith. Utilitarianism was widely accepted and practiced.4 Famous novelists like Charles Dickens, William Makepeace Thackery, Charlotte Bronte, Emily Bronte, Mrs. Gaskell and Anthony Trollope.5 typical feature of the English Victorian literature is that writers becamegreatest critical realist writers of the Victorian Age2 In language, he is often compared with Shakespeare for his adeptness with the vernacular and large vocabulary with which he brings out manya wonderful verbal picture of man and scene.3 His humor and wit seem inexhaustible; character portrayal is the most distinguished feature of his work.4 His best-depicted characters are those innocent, virtuous, persecuted helpless child characters.5 Dickens work are also characterized by a mingling of humor and pathos. He seems to believe that life is itself a mixture of joy and grief.The Victorian Age was largely and age of (epic prose),eminently represented by Dickens and Thackeray.The Bronte sistersCharlotte Bronte1 Masterpiece: Jane Eyre2 The success of the novel is also due to its introduction to the English novel the first governess heroine, Jane Eyre, description of her intense feeling and her thought and inner conflicts brings her to the heart of the audience.Emily Bronte1 Masterpiece: Wuthering Heights2 As a love story, this is one of the most misery: the passion between Heathcliff and Cathrine proves the most intense, the most beautiful and at the same time, the most horrible passion are to be found in human being.Alfred Tennyson1. His poetry voices the doubt and the faith, the grief and the joy of English people in an age of fast social change.2. In 1850, Tennyson was appointed the poet laureate.3. Tennyson is a real artist. He has the natural power of linking visual picture with musical expression, and these two with the feelings.Robert Browning1 Dramatic MonologueA kind of narrative poem in which one character speaks to one or more listeners whose reply is not given in the poem. The occasion is usually a crucial one in the speaker’s life, and the dramatic monologue reads the speaker’s personality as well as the incident that is the subject of the poem; a n experience of a dramatic monologue is “My Last Duchess” by Robert Browning.2“My Last Duchess”: this dramatic monologue is the duke’s speech addressed to the agent who comes to negotiate the marriage. In this talk about “Last Duchess” the du ke reveals himself as a self-conceited, cruel and tyrannical man. The poem is written is heroic couplet,but with no regular metrical system. In reading, it sounds like bland verse.George Eliot (pseudonym of Mary Ann Evans)1 her popular novels, Adam Bede, The Mill on the floss ,Silas Marner, all drawn from her lifelong knowledge of English country life and notable for their realistic details , pungent characterization and high moral tone.11。