English literature I-简介和古英语时期英国文学

What Is Literature
❖ Literature is a permanent expression in words of some thoughts or feelings or ideas about life & the world.
Literary genres
❖ Narrative, lyric, dramatic ❖ Poetry, prose, drama, fiction
❖ Therefore studying English literature, is one of the best ways for us to get a good command of English knowledge.
The Usefulness of Learning Literature
English literature I-简介和古英语时期英国文学
1. About Literature 2. An Outline of English Literature 3. The Making of the Nation
What Is Literature
❖ The word literature is from a Latin word litterae which means letters. Literally means: "things made from letters". In the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, Literature is defined as:
Literary genres
❖ Prose: nonfictional prose, heroic prose, prose poem, polyphonic有韵律变化的prose, alliterative prose, prose fiction and village prose in Russian literature.
❖ 以语言文字为工具形象化地反应客观现实的 艺术。Contemporary Chinese Dictionary
❖ Are the following literary works? an account of yesterday’s football match an advertisement of soap powder dialogues of Plato travel booklets
❖ Genres are often divided into sub-genres. Ancient Greece divided Literature into classic three forms: poetry, drama, and prose.
❖ Poetry may then be subdivided into the genres of lyric, epic, and dramatic. The lyric includes all the shorter forms of poetry, e.g., song, ode, ballad, elegy, sonnet. Dramatic poetry might include comedy, tragedy, melodrama, and mixtures like tragicomedy.
1) written which of artistic value; 2) all the books, articles, etc. on a particular
subject; 3) printed material, esp. giving information.
What Is Literature
❖ (2) Improving one’s language ability.
❖ Generally speaking, all that is best in a language finds expression in its literature. Dictionaries tell us about the spellings, pronunciations & definitions of words. The commonest way to learn the meaning of a word is to look it up in a dictionary. But dictionaries cannot show all the subtle shades of meaning of a word. The best way to study the meaning of a word is that of learning it between the lines in the works of major writers. For an intimate understanding of the language , we need to read literary works and to think about what we read.
❖ English literature is a mirror to the social life at different stages of English history. It is a general expression of the ideas, feelings & aesthetic judgments of writers from different social classes. It is also a direct or indirect & vivid expression of the relationship among people of different social classes, between people & society, people & nature, and the spirit & psychological state of people themselves.
❖ Fiction: realistic fiction (science fiction, detective stories), non-realistic fiction, semifiction.
The Usefulness of Learning Literature
❖ (1) Increasing one’s knowledge