英国文学史考试内容

3. Beowulf is the oldest poem in the English language, and also the oldest surviving epic in the English language.4. Chaucer composed a long narrative poem named Troilus and Gressie based on Boccaccio’s poem Filostrato.6. The Canterbury Tales contains the general prologue and 24 hours, two of which left unfinished.7. Chaucer employed the heroic couplet in writing his greatest work The Canterbury Tales.8. __Romance___ is the most prevailing literary form in the Middle Age.1. What are the Chaucer’s contributions to English literature?①Chaucer, for the first time in English literature, presents to the readers a comprehensive realistic picture of the English society of his time and describes a series of vivid characters from all walks of life in The Canterbury Tales.②Chaucer introduces from France the rhymed stanzas of various types to English poetry to replace the old English alliterative verse. He is the first to use the rhymed couplets of iambic pentameter, which is to be called the heroic couplet.③Chaucer affirms men’s and women’s right to pursue earthly happiness and opposed asceticism ( avoiding physical pleasures and comforts). He praises man’s energy, intellect, quick wit and love of life and he exposes and satirizes the social vices, including the corruption of the Church.④Chaucer is the first great poet who wrote in the current English. His production of so much excellent poetry is an important factor in establishing English as the literary language of the country. Chaucer uses London dialect in his writings and the contributes to making it the foundation for modern English speech.2. What are the essential features of romance in the medieval English literature?The romance was the prevailing form of literature in the Middle Ages. It was a long composition, sometimes in verse, sometimes in prose, describing the life and adventures of a noble hero, Its essential features are:①. it lacks general resemblance to truth or reality.②It exaggerates the vices of human nature and idealizes the virtues.③. It contains perilous adventures more or less remote from ordinary life.④. It lays emphasis on supreme devotion to a fair lady.⑤. The central character of the romance is the knight, a man of noble birth skilled in the use of weapons. He is commonly described as riding forth to seek adventures, taking part in tournaments, or fighting for his lord in battle. He is devoted to the church and the king.4.What is the significance of The Canterbury Tales?①In his masterpiece The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer gives us a faithful picture of the society of his time, ② Taking the standard of the rising bourgeoisie, he affirms men and opposes the dogma of asceticism preached by the Church. ③ As a forer unner of humanism, he praise man’s energy, intellect, quick wit and love of life. His tales expose and satirize the evils of his time. They attack the degeneration of the noble, the heartlessness of the judge, and the corruption of the Church. The first to present a comprehensive and realistic picture of the English society of his time and created a whole gallery of vivid characters from all walks of life.4. Bacon’s style has three prominent qual ities: __directness_, __terseness_ and __forcefulness.5. Hamlet, Othello, King and __Macbeth___ are generally regarded as Shakespeare’s four great tragedies.6.___Humanism_ is the essence of the Renaissance.※1. Sonnet: A lyric poem consisting of a single stanza of fourteen iambic pentameter lines linked by an intricate rhyme scheme. There are two major patterns of rhyme in sonnets written in the English language: (1) The Italian or Petrarchan sonnet falls into two main parts: an octave rhyming abbaabba followed by a sestet rhyming cdecde or some variant, such as cdccdc. (2) The Earl of Surrey and other English experimenters in the 16th century also developed a stanza form called the English sonnet, or else the Shakespearean sonnet. This sonnet falls into three quatrains and a concluding couplet: abab cdcd efef gg. There was one notable variant, the Spenserian sonnet, in which Edmund Spenser linked each quatrain to the next by a continuing rhyme: abab bcbc cdcd ee.2. English Renaissance:The Renaissance refers to the transitional period from the medieval to the modern world. It first started in Italy in the14th century. The Renaissance means rebirth or revival. It was stimulated by a series of historical events, such as the rediscovery of ancient Roman and Greek classics, the new discoveries in geography and astrology, the religious reformation, and the economic expansion. Humanism is the essence of Renaissance. The English Renaissance did not begin until the reign of Henry VIII. It was regarded as England’s Golden Age, especially in literature. The real mainstream of the English Renaissance is the Elizabethan drama. This period produced such literary giants as Shakespeare, Spenser, Marlowe, Bacon, etc.5. Give a brief analysis of Shylock, a character in Shakespeare’s play, The Merchant of V enice.Shylock is a Jewish usurer, and he is a tragic-comic character in the play.①He is comic because he finally becomes the one punished by his own evil deed. He is a typical merchant to be made fun of. He is avaricious. He accumulates as much wealth as he can and he even equates his lost daughter with his lost money. He is also cruel. In order to revenge, he would rather claim a pound of flesh from his enemy Antonio than get back his loan.②On the other hand, Shylock is also a tragic figure. He is the victim of the society. He is a Jew. As a minor nationality, he is not treated equally by the society. The law is harsh to him. He has to make as much money as he can in order to protect himself. He is abused by Antonio, and therefore, he wants to get revenge.3. In 1637 Milton wrote the finest pastoral elegy in English, ____Lycidas_, to memorize the tragic death of a Cambridge friend.4. __John Bunyan_ wrote his masterpiece _Pilgrim’s Progress__ during his second imprisonment and it is the most successful __religious allegory__ in the English language.5. John Donne is the founder of the school of _metaphysical poetry_. His works are characterized by mysticism in content and fantastically in form.Passage 1One short sleep past, we wake eternallyAnd death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt dieA. Identify the poet and the poem _John Donne Death, Be Not Proud______B. What does the phrase “one short sleep” mean? ______death__________________C. What idea do these two lines express?It reveals Donne’s belief in life after death. Here death is compared to rest or sleep. Death is butmomentarily while happiness after death is eternal.Passage 2..“ To wage by force or guile eternal war,Irreconcilable to our grand For.”By what means were Satan and his followers to wage this war against God? ____D_____A. by planting a tree of knowledge in the Garden of Eden.B. by turning into poisonous snakes to threaten man’s life.C. by removing God from his throneD. by corrupting man and woman created by GodPassage 3.But thy eternal summer shall not fade,Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st:So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,So long lives this and this gives life to theeA. Identify the poem and the poet. ______________________________B. What does the word “this” refers to? ___the poetry_________________________C. What idea does this stanza express?A nice summer’s day is usually transient, but the beauty in poetry can last for ever. Shakespeare has a faith in the permanence of poetry2. The _Enlightenment__ was a progressive intellectual movement throughout Western Europe in the 18th century.4. Of all the 18th century novelists, __Henry Fielding_ was the first to set out in theory and practice, to write specially a “___comic epic in prose__,” and the first to give the modern novel its structure and style.6. In writing plays the neo-classical writers used ___heroic couplet_____ instead of blank verse. They observed the three unities of time, place and action.9. The Talter and __The Spectator_ were Richard Steele and Joseph Addison’s chief contribution to English literature.10. Pamela is the first __epistolary_ novel in English literature.15. The more notable of the Gothic novels are __The Castle of Otranto__(1765) by Horace Walpole and __The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliff. The mysterious element plays an enormous role in the Gothic novel; it is so replete with bloodcurdling scenes and unatural feelings that it is justly called ___a novel of horrors__16. ___Samuel Johnson___ is the author of the first English dictionary by an Englishman-----Dictionary of the English language, which had become the foundation of all subsequent English dictionaries.Passage one“ The boast of heraldry, the pomp of po wer,And all that beauty, all that wealth e’er gave,Awaits alike the inevitable hour.The paths of glory lead but to the grave.”Questions:19. Identify the author and the title of the poem which this passage is taken.__Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard_ _____Thomas Gray_____________20. What does the phrase “inevitable hour” mean? _______death____________21. Write out the main idea of the passage in plain English.The passage is about man’s inevitable death. No matter what family you are from, wha t power you have got, what beauty and wealth you have possessed, you should feel conceited or self-important. For sooner or later you will have to leave these material things behind; you cannot bring them all into the other world when you die. Since death awaits everyone and your glorious life leads you only to the grave, what is the use of fighting for all those material interests?Passage 2“Most mighty Emperor of Lilliput, delight and terror of he universe, whose dominions extend five thousand blustrugs (about twelve miles in circumference) to the extremities of the globe; Monarch of all monarchs; taller than the sons of men; whose feet press down to the center, and whose head strikes against the sun; at whose nod the princes of the earth shake their knees; pleasant as spring, comfortable as summer, fruitful as autumn, dreadful as winter.”Questions:22. Identify the work and the author Jonathan Swift; Gulliver’s Travels___23. What is the tone of the author? _____Satirical______________________24. What does the author parody here?By presenting the Lilliputian’s exaggerated compliments to their king, Swift parodies absurdly an arrogant style of the Englishmen(or the Europeans) in their speeches to their God or their monarchs.25. Satire: Satire is generally considered as a literary form in which humor, exaggeration or ridicule is used to bring to the forefront an individual or societal vice, folly, abuse or shortcoming. Its purpose, ideally, although humorous and entertaining, is to shine a light on the subject and invoke change.28. Comment on the features of the neoclassical literature.①In the field of literature, the Enlightenment Movement brought about a revival of interest in the old classical works. This tendency is known as neoclassicism.②According to the neoclassicists, all forms of literature were modeled after the classical works of the ancient Greek and Roman writers and those of the contemporary French ones. ③Neoclassicists had some fixed laws and rules for almost every genre of literature. Prose should be precise, direct, smooth and flexible. Poetry should be lyrical, epical, didactic, satire or dramatic, and each class should be guided by its own principles. Drama should be written in the Heroic Couplets (iambic pentameter rhymed in two lines); the three unities of time, space and action should be strictly observed; regularity in construction should be and adhered to, and type characters rather than individuals should be represented. Besides the elegant poetic structure and diction, the neoclassical poetry was also noted for its seriousness and earnestness in tone and constant didacticism.④Mock epic, romance, satire and epigram were popular forms adopted by poets of the time.1.As an age of romantic enthusiasm, the Romantic Age began in 1798 when __ Wordsworth _ and _ Coleridge published _ Lyrical Ballads and ended in 1832 when __ Walter Scott__ died.2. Romanticism was in effect a revolt of the English __imagination_____ against the neoclassical __reason____3. Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage contains __four__ cantos, which is written in the _Spenserian stanza. It teems with all kinds of recognizable features of Romantic poetry.5. Ode to a Nightingale expresses the contrast between the happy world of _ natural loveliness and human world of __ agony.6. Ode on a Grecian Urn shows the contrast between the __ permanence of art and the _ transience___ of human passion.9. Walt Scott is considered as “the father of _the _historical novel____” which opens up to fiction the rich and lively realm of history.11. The main idea running through the dramatic poem Prometheus Unbound is that of __freedom_______.12. The Romantic period is an age of poetry. The major Romantic poets such as Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley and Keats started a rebellion against the Neoclassical literature, which as later regarded as ___poetic revolution_____Passage OneWild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;Destroyer and Preserver;hear, O hear!13. Identify the poem and the poet. Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Ode to the West Wind14. What is the “Wild Spirit”? It refers to the West Wind or “breath of Autumn’s being”15. What does the “Wild Spirit”destroy and preserve? It destroys things that are dead; it preserves new life represent new life or new birth.16. The stanza used in this ode was developed by the poet from the interlaced three-line units of the Italian __terza rima____, Shelley’s stanza consists of a set of four such tercets, closed by a couple rhyming with the middle line of the preceding tercet: __ ___.Passage TwoFor oft, when on my couch I lieIn vacant or in pensive mood,They flash upon that inward eyeWhich is the bliss of solitude;And then my heart with pleasure fills,And dances with the daffodils17. Identify the poem and the poet.18. What is the recurrent central image in this poem?Daffodile19. Explain in a few words “that inward eye/Which is the bliss of solitude?The poet thinks that it is a bliss to recollect the beauty of nature in his mind while he is solitude.。