英国文学知识点答案

18.This is one of the most famous of all the sonnets, justifiably so. But it would be a mistake to ta ke it entirely in isolation, for it links in with so many of the other sonnets through the themes of the descriptive power of verse; the ability of the poet to depict the fair youth adequately, or not; and the immortality conveyed through being hymned in these 'eternal lines'. It is noticeable that here the poet is full of confidence that his verse will live as long as there are people drawing breath upon the earth, whereas later he apologises for his poor wit and his humble lines which are inadequate to encompass all the youth's excellence. Now, perhaps in the early days of his love, there is no such self-doubt and the eternal summer of the youth is preserved forever in the poet's lines. The poemalso works at a rather curious level of achieving its objective through dispraise. The summer's day is found to be lacking in so many respects,but curiously enough one i s left with the abiding impression that 'the lovely boy' is in fact like a summer's day at its best, fair , warm, sunny, temperate, one of the darling buds of May, and that all his beauty has been wond erfully highlighted by the comparison。

29.This is one of shakespeare's more ambiguous sonnets :one does not know who the speaker is referring to or if the word "love"in this sonnet refers to a romantic love or a platonic love.

The whole poem expresses the changes of the author's inner feelings,which are from disappoint to hopeful,from negative to positive ,from desperate to attectionate ,from self-abased toconfiden t. discloses the desire of appetite ,lust and power and proposes that appetite is the basic desire , lust has its own duality ,the desire for power is a danger and finally the paper gives a way to deal with the desires.

It is a poem which helps us sense the greatness of love,which is the center of his life,the sunshine on a cloudy day.

The Canterbury Tales：The magnificent eighteen-line sentence that opens the General Prologue is a superb expression of a double view of the Canterbury pilgrimage. The first eleven lines are a chant of welcome to the spring with its harmonious marriage between heaven and earth which mellows vegetations, pricks fouls and stirs the heart of man with a renewing power of nature. Thus the pilgrimage is treated as an event in the calendar of nature, an aspect of the general s pringtime surge of human energy which wakens man’s love of nature. But spring is also the season of Easter and is allegorically regarded as the time of the Redemption through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ with its connotations of religious rebirth, which w akens man’s love of God . Therefore, the pilgrimage is also treated as an event in the calendars of divinity, an aspect of religious piety, which draws pilgrims to holy places.

Astrophel and Stella：Astrophel and Stella, a sequence of 108 sonnets, was Sidney’s major achievement as a poet. It took inspiration from the Italian Renaissance poet Petrarch. Its publication made sonnet sequence a popular literary form in England.

Sidney’s Defense of Poetry is a prose essay that descries the nature of poetry and defends it against Puritan objections to imaginative literature.