英国文学复习资料

Learn the following by heart, paying special attention to the underlined parts.

◆As the forerunner of the English Romantic Movement, and as a leading romantic poet, Wordsworth advocated using everyday language spoken by common people, choosing the humble and rustic life as the subject matter, and expressing the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.

◆In 1843 immediately after the death of Southey, Wordsworth was made poet laureate.

◆Wordsworth defines poetry as “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings”.

◆In 1798 Wordsworth published Lyrical Ballads in collaboration with Coleridge, and the preface to this collection of poems is an important piece of literary criticism in English literature.

◆If we say that Wordsworth is chiefly concerned with nature in his poetry, then Coleridge is predominantly concerned with the supernatural.

◆Coleridge’s famous poem“The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” that was composed in his dream demonstrates Coleridge’s talent for concocting bizarre, unsettling stories full of fantastic imagery and magic.

◆Don Juan, a satirical epic, is Byron’s masterpiece, telling about the romantic adventures of a legendary Spanish youth.

◆In the poem “The Isles of Greece”, Byron makes extensive allusions to the splendid ancient Greek civilization to arouse Greeks’ morale.

◆In Shelley’s political lyric “Ode to the West Wind”, the west wind is symbolized both as a destroyer and a preserver.

◆Shelley himself has been regarded as a prophet, as revealed by his poetic lines —“The trumpet of a prophecy! O, Wind”.

◆In Stanza V of “Ode to a Nightingale”, Keats appeals to the sense of smell, as he “[cannot see] what soft incense hangs upon the boughs”.

◆“The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.” This line, taken from “Ode to a Nightingale”, is a vivid case of alliteration (a rhetorical device), suggesting the sound made by the flies that make people feel drowsy.

◆The poet Mathew Arnold, in Culture and Anarchy, attacked the barbarians, a term referring to the aristocrats, and philistines, a term used to refer to the middle class.

◆Charles Dickens has been widely acclaimed as the greatest representative of critical realism in England.

◆Dombey, the owner of a shipping company, has been preoccupied with a desire for a son to carry on his family business.

◆The subtitle of V anity Fair is “A Novel without a Hero”, showing that Thackeray intends to satirize the Victorian society as a whole.

◆Tennyson’s collection of poems In Memoriam A. H. H was written in memory of his friend Arthur Hallam.

◆In contrast with Tennyson, Robert Browning was bold and unconventional in matter and style. He is noteworthy for introducing dramatic monologue into poetry.

◆Hardy’s philosophy was that everything in the universe is determined by the Immanent Will, which is present in all parts of the universe and is impartially hostile towards human beings’ desire for joy and happiness.

◆Characteristics of Modernism includes: complexity and obscurity, use of symbols, allusion, and irony.