英国文学简史复习重点

1.Byronic hero: 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 kinds of 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. E.g. George Byron “Don Juan”

2.Conceit: In literature, a conceit is an extended metaphor with a complex logic that

governs a poetic passage or entire poem.In English literature the term is generally associated with the 17th century metaphysical poets, an extension of contemporary usage. In the metaphysical conceit, metaphors have a much more purely conceptual, and thus tenuous, relationship between the things being compared. E.g. John Donne “The Flea”

3.English renaissance: The English Renaissance was a cultural and artistic

movement in England dating from the late 15th to the early 17th century.The beginning of the English Renaissance is often taken, as a convenience, to be 1485.

Renaissance style and ideas, however, were slow to penetrate England, and the Elizabethan era in the second half of the 16th century is usually regarded as the height of the English Renaissance. E.g. Thomas More “Utopia”William Shakespeare “Hamlet”

4.Romanticism in English poetry: at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries

romanticism appeared in England as a new trend in literature. It rose and grew under the impetus of the Industrial Revolution and French Revolution. In 1798 Coleridge and William Wordsworth jointly published the “Lyrical Ballads”, which marked the beginning of romanticism in England. (Romanticism was an artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that originated in Europe toward the end of the 18th century and in most areas was at its peak in the approximate period from 1800 to 1850.) E.g. William Blake “The Lamb”Robert Burns “A Red, Red Rose”

5.Dramatic monologue: in literature, it refers to the occurrence of a single speaker

saying something to a silent audience. Robert Browning‟s“My Last Duchess” is a typical example in which the duke, speaking to a non-responding audience reveals the reasons for his disapproval of the behavior of his former duchess and some tyrannical and merciless aspects of his own personality.

6.Streams of consciousness: it is a psychological term indicating “the flux of

conscious and subconscious thoughts and impressions moving in the mind at any given time independently of the person‟s will.”In the 20th century, under the influence of Freud‟s theory of psychological analysis, a number of writers adopted the “stream of consciousness”method of novel writing. E.g. Virginia Woolf Mrs. Dalloway

7.Epiphany(顿悟): Deep thoughts that might be gained through incidents and

circumstances which seem outwardly insignificant. It‟s Joyce‟s theory. E.g. James Joyce Dubliners

8.Critical realism in English: English critical realism of the 19th century flourished

in the forties and in the early fifties. The critical realists described with much vividness and great artistic skill the chief traits of the English society and criticized the capitalist system from a democratic viewpoint. E.g. Charles Dickens Great Expectations David Copperfield

William Blake “The Tyger”

“Songs of Experience”

Theme: God‟s creativity

Tone: rational

Rhythm: blacksmithing

Image: mysterious august

Six quatrains in rhymed couplets; the meter is regular and rhythmic; from the perspective of a more experienced person

George Bernard Shaw: He was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Shaw was against “art for art‟s sake.” He wrote, “For art‟s sake I will not face the toil of writing a sentence.”Shaw was a friend of progressive mankind. He supported the forces of revolution and democracy in their struggle against imperialism and reaction.

Mrs. Warren‟s Profession is one of the Plays Unpleasant. Unpleasant it is to the bourgeois public because Shaw attacked in it the vices of capitalist society. He shows that under the guise of bourgeois respectability horrible crimes and corruption are concealed. In this play Shaw accuses the bourgeois of making profit by fostering prostitution. Mrs. Warren‟s own life experience as a whole cannot represent that of the ordinary, suffering poor women in capitalist society.