名词解释_英国文学史与选读

名词解释Allegory: It is a fictional narrative or artistic expression that conveys a symbolic meaning parallel to but distinct from, and more important than, the literal meaning. The symbolic meaning is usually expressed through personifications and other symbols. Related forms are the fable and the parable, which are didactic, comparatively short and simple allegories. The art of allegory reached its height during the Middle Ages, (especially in the works of the Italian poet Dante and the English poet Geoffrey Chaucer) and during the Renaissance. In The Faerie Queene the English poet Edmund Spenser conceals, beneath a surface of chivalric romance, a commentary on religious and ethical doctrines and on social conditions in 16th-century England. One of the greatest of all allegories is Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan, a prose narrative symbolically concerning the search for spiritual salvation. Although modern authors generally favor less abstract, more personal symbolism, allegories are still written. Animal Farm is a popular example, which was written by the English writer George Orwell.Alliteration: A repeated initial consonant to successive words. In Old English verse, any vowel alliterates with any other, and any alliteration is not an unusual or expressive phenomenon but a regularly recurring structural feature of the verse, occurring on the first and third, and often on the first, second, and third, primary-stressed syllables of the the four-stressed line. Thus, from The Seafarer: hreran mid hondum hrincaelde sae(“to stir with his hand the rime-cold sea”)In later English verse tradition, alliteration becomes expressive in a variety of ways. Spener uses it decoratively, or to link adjective and noun, verb and object, as in the line: “much daunted with t hat dint, her sense was dased.” In the 18th and 19th centuries it becomes even less systematic and more “musical”.Ballad: It is a lyric poem generally of three eight-line stanzas with a concluding stanza of four lines called an envoy. With some variations, the lines of a ballad are iambic or anapestic tetrameter rhyming ababbcbC; the envoy, which forms a personal dedication to some person of importance or to a personification, rhymes bcbC. The last line (C) of the stanza is repeated as a refrain throughout. Another pattern often employed consists of a ten of five lines rhyming ccdcD. The ballad became popular in England in the late 14th century and was adopted by Geoffrey Chaucer, who wrote several notable examples, including the Complaint…to His Empty Pur se.Blank Verse: Blank verse is unrhymed poetry, typically in iambic pentameter, and the dominant verse form of English dramatic and narrative poetry since the mid-16th century. Blank verse was adapted by Italian Renaissance writers from classical sources; it became the standard form of dramatists. Christopher Marlowe used blank verse for dramatic verse; William Shakespeare transformed blank verse into a supple instrument, uniquely capable of conveying speech rhythms and emotional overtones. According John Milton, only unrhymed verse could give English the dignity of a classical language.Classicism: As a critical term, a body of doctrine thought to be derived from or to reflect the qualities of ancient Greek and Roman culture, particularly in literature, philosophy, art, or criticism. Classicism stands for certain definite ideas and attitudes, mainly drawn from the criticalutterances of the Greeks and Romans or developed through an imitation of ancient art and literature. These include restraint, restricted scope, dominance of reason, sense of form, unity of design and aim, clarity, simplicity, balance, attention to structure and logical organization, chasteness in style, severity of outline, moderation, self-control, intellectualism, decorum, respect for tradition, imitation, conservatism, and “good sense”.Couplet (Heroic): It is a term in poetry applied to two successive lines of verse that form a single unit because they rhyme; the term also is often used for lines that express a complete thought or form a separate stanza. Couplets in English are usually written in ten-syllable (decasyllabic) lines, a form first used by the 14th-century poet Geoffrey Chaucer. This evolved into the so-called heroic couplet popular in the 17th and 18th centuries. The heroic couplet, two rhyming iambic pentameter lines, is also called a closed couplet because the meaning and the grammatical structure are complete within two lines. John Dryden and Alexander Pope employed this form with great effect. Sometimes the sense of the first line of a couplet runs over to the succeeding line; this is termed enjambment. An even freer form of expression is provided by the open couplet, of which the second line is run-on, requiring the first line of the succeeding couplet to complete its meaning. Nineteenth-century romantic poets most notably employed this variant. Couplets form the concluding lines of sonnets by William Shakespeare; they were also used for emphasis at the ends of long speeches in Elizabethan and Jacobean drama.Criticism, Literary: The term refers to analysis, interpretation, and evaluation of works of literature in light of existing standards of taste, or with the purpose of creating new standards. There are two approaches to literary criticism. Theoretical criticism is the study of the principles governing fiction, poetry, and drama with the aim of defining the distinct nature of literature. Practical criticism is the threefold act of reading and experiencing a literary work, judging its worth, and interpreting its meaning.Elegy: It is, originally in Greek and Roman literature, a poem composed of couplets. Classical elegies addressed various subjects, including love, lamentation, and politics, and were characterised by their metrical form. Since the 16th century elegies have been characterised not by their form but by their content, which is invariably melancholy and centers on death. The best known elegy in English is Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, by the English poet Thomas Gray, which treats not just a single death but the human condition as well. A distinct category of elegy, the pastoral elegy, has its roots in Greek and Sicilian poetry of the 3rd and 2nd centuries B.C. Using formal conventions, which developed gradually over centuries, pastoral elegists mourn a subject by representing the mourner and the subject as shepherds in a pastoral setting. The most famous example of the pastoral elegy is Lycidas, by the English poet John Milton.Epic: It is, originally, an oral narrative poem, majestic both in theme and style. Epics deal with legendary or historical events of national or universal significance, involving action of broad sweep and grandeur.Most epics deal with the exploits of a single individual.Renaissance: It is commonly applied to the movement or period which marks the transition from the medieval to the modern world in the Western Europe. In the ususal sense of the word,Renaissance suggests especially the 14th, 15th, 16th, and early 17th centuries, the dates differing for different countries. It is best to regard the Renaissance as the result of a new emphasis upon and a new combination of tendencies and attitudes already existing, stimulated by a series of historical events. The new humanistic learning which resulted from the rediscovery of classical literature is taken as the beginning of the Renaissance on its conscious, intellectual side, since it was to the treasures of classical culture and to the authority of classical writers that the people of the Renaissance turned for inspiration.Romanticism: Romanticism, as a literary movement, developed in Europe in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Romanticism is above all an exaltation of individual values and aspirations above those of society. It was to cultivate the individual ego, reflect all that is spontaneous and unaffected in nature and in man, and be free to follow its own fancy and its own way. Through its concern with the hidden forces in man, Romanticism excerted a profound infuence on modern thought, and opened the way, for example, to psychoanalysis. The leading Romantic literary figures found Byron, keats, Shelley, Jane Austen, Coleridge and Wordsworth in Britain.Satire: A type of writing that holds up persons, ideas, or things to varying degrees of amusement, ridicule, or contempt in order, presumably, to improve, correct, or bring about desirable change.Science Fiction: A form of fantasy literature which speculatively extrapolates known facts of science or its possibilities into the future. Ray Bradbury’s “August 2002: Night Meeting” (1950) is an example of good science fiction.Setting: The time and place in which the action of a story, poem, or play occurs; physical setting alone is often referred to as the locale.Stream of Consciousness: The narrative method of capturing and representing the inner workings of a character’s mind. The term was first used by William James in his Principles of Psychology (1890).Structuralism: A critical approach, utilizing methodology of anthropology linguistics, that attempts to analyze literature in terms of its underlying structural patterns. In critic Jonathan Culler’s words, “Structuralists take linguistics as a model and attempt to develop grammars .. that would account for the form and meaning of literatury works.”Style: The au thor’s characteristic manner of expression; style includes the author’s diction, syntax, sentence patterns, punctuation, and spelling, as well as the use made of such devices as sound, rhythm, imagery, and figurative language.Subplot: The subplot (also called the minor plot or underplot) is a secondary action or complication within a fictional or dramatic work that often serves to reinforce or contrast to the main plot.Suspense: The psychological tension or anxiety resulting from the reader’s or audienc e’suncertainty or just how a situation or conflict is likely to end.Symbol: Literally, something that stands for something else. In literature, any word, object, action, or character that embodies and evokes a range of additional meaning and significanc e. In Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1899), for example, the journey up the Congo River into the jungle is obviously a symbol of a parallel journey into the recesses of the human heart and back into the bleakest corners of civilization.Three Unities: Three rules or absolutes of 16th-and 17th-century Italian and French drama, broadly adapted from Aristotle’s Poetics: the Unity of T ime, which limits a play to a single day; the Unity of Place, which limits a play’s setting to a single location; and the Unity of Action, which limits a play to a single story line.Assonance: The repetition in two or more nearby words of similar vowel sounds, for example:”…the ch a lk w a ll f a lls”Augustan Period: The period in English literature between about 1700 and 1750, when English writers deliberately set out to imitate ideals of restraint and balance in the reign of Roman Emperor Caesar Augustus (27 B.C. – 14 A.D.). Major writers include Addison, Pope, Steele, and Swift.Black Humour: Humour which is the product of a morbid, alienated, or pessimistic view of the world. Black humour is often associated with the antinovel (anti-story) and the theatre of the absurd. Black humour is exemplified in the folk expression, “Been down so long it looks like up to me.”Cavalier Poets: A group of poets – including Carew, Herrick, Lovelace, and Suckling – associated with the court of Charles I of England (reigned between 1625--1649), whose supporters were known as Cavaliers. The Cavalier poets were known for their light and amorous verse.Character: It is an individual within a literary work. Characters may be complex and well developed (round characters) or undifferentiated and one-dimensional (flat characters); they may change in the course of the plot (dynamic characters) or remain essentially the same (static characters).Closet Drama: It is a drama written to be read rather than staged and acted. Samson Agonistes by Milton, Cain by Byron and Prometheus Unbound by Shelley are such examples.Sonnet:A fourteen-line lyric poem, usually written in rhymed iambic pentameter. A sonnet generally expresses a single theme or idea. Sonnets vary in structure and rhyme scheme, but are generally of two types: the Petrarchan or Italian sonnet and the Elizabethan or Shakespearean sonnet.Conceit: A kind of metaphor that makes a comparison between two startlingly different things. Aconceit may be a brief metaphor, but it usually provides the framework for an entire poem.Byronic hero: As a leading Romanticist, Byron’s chief contribution is his creation of the “Byronic hero”, a proud, mysterious rebel figure of noble origin.With immense superiority in his passions and powers, this Byronic hero would carry on his shoulders the burden of righting all the wrongs in a corrupt society, and would rise single-handedly against any kind tyrannical rules either in government, in religion, or in moral principles with unconquerable wills and inexhaustible energies. The conflict is usually one of rebellious individuals against outworn social systems and conventions, such a hero appears first in “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage”, and then further developed in later works in different guises. The figure is, to some extent, modeled on the life and personality of Byron himself, and makes Byron famous both at home and abroad.heroic couplet: the heroic couplet refers to iambic pentameter rhymed in two lines. During the Restoration and the 18th century Alexander Pope perfected the closed couplet, which means only a couplet can express a complete idea, and developed it to the heroic couplet.ballad stanza:a type of four-line stanza. The first and third lines have four stressed words or syllables; the second and fourth lines have three stresses. Ballad meter is usually iambic. The number of unstressed syllables in each line may vary. The second and fourth lines rhyme.terza rima: An Italian verse formc onsisting of a series of three-line stanzas in which the middle line of each stanza rhymes with the first and third lines of the following stanza, as follows: aba bcb cdc, ect.。