扬大英国文学简史 复习重点 2012年

英国文学简史复习重点12年

PART ONE: EARLY AND MEDIEVAL ENGLISH LITERATURE

Chapter 1: The Making of England

At the same time Britain was invaded by swarms of pirates. They were three tribes from Northern Europe: the Angles, Saxons and Jutes.

Chapter 2: Beowulf 《贝奥武甫》

It is Beowulf, the national epic of English people （民族史诗）

Features of Beowulf

1.Most striking feature: the use of alliteration --- in alliterative verse, certain accented（重读

的）words in a line, begin with the same consonant sound.

(There are generally 4 accents in a line, three of which show alliteration, as can be seen from the above quotation.)

2.Other features: the use of metaphor and of understatements （隐喻和委婉）

Chapter 3: Feudal England

Best known English Romance（英国骑士文学代表作）: Adventures of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table《亚瑟王和他的圆桌骑士》

The Class Nature of the Romance

1.The theme of loyalty to king and lord was repeatedly emphasized in romance, as loyalty

was the corner-stone of the feudal morality, without which the whole structure of feudalism would collapse.

2.They were composed for the noble, of the noble, and in most cases by the poets patronized

（保护，赞助）by the noble.

Chapter 5: The English Ballads

The most important department of English folk literature is the ballad.

Best representative of English Ballads: The Geste of Robin Hood.《绿林好汉罗宾汉》

Chapter 6: Chaucer

Geoffrey Chaucer（拼写）is the founder of English poetry.

Major work: The Canterbury Tales 《坎特伯雷故事集》

Chaucer’s contribution to English poetry lies in the fact that

1.He introduced from France the rhymed stanza（节）of various types, esp. the “heroic

couplet”（英雄诗双行体）to English poetry, instead of the old Anglo-Saxon alliterative verse（头韵体）

2.He did much in making the dialect of London the standard for the modern English speech

PART TWO THE ENGLISH RENAISSANCE

Chapter 1: Old English in Translation

The Renaissance sprang first in Italy in the 14th century and gradually spread all over Europe. Two features are striking of this movement:

1. A thirsting curiosity for the classical literature

2.The keen interest in the activities of humanity

Humanism is the key-note of Renaissance Humanism reflected the new outlook of the rising bourgeois class, which saw the world opening before it. According the humanists, both man and world are hindered only by external checks（阻碍）from infinite improvement. Man could mould the world according to his desires, and attain happiness by removing all external checks by the exercise of reason.

Thomas More（摩尔）: Utopia《乌托邦》

Edmund Spenser（斯宾塞）: The Faerie Queene（拼写）《仙后》

The Faerie Queene is written in a special verse from that consists of eight iambic pentameter lines followed by a ninth line of six iambic feet (an alexandrine), with the rhyme scheme ababbcbcc. This form has since been called the Spenserian Stanza.（斯宾塞诗体）

Chapter 4: Drama

Four types of English plays during Renaissance: The Miracle Play（奇迹剧）, The Morality Play （道德剧）, The Interlude（幕间剧）, The Classical Drama（古典剧）

Chapter 5: Marlowe

The most gifted of the “university wits” was Christopher Marlowe.

Marlowe's best includes Tamburlaine 《帖木耳》, The Jew of Malta《马耳他的犹太人》, Doctor Faustus《浮士德博士》

Theme: in Tamburlaine it is ambition, in The Jew of Malta, greed for wealth, in Doctor Faustus, desire for knowledge

Chapter 6: Shakespeare

Born on April 23, 1564, died on April 23, in 1616

Four great tragedies: Hamlet《哈姆雷特》, Othello《奥赛罗》, King Lear《李尔王》, Macbeth 《麦克白》

Shakespeare’s The Mature Histories:

1.The principal idea of plays of history is the necessity for national unity under one king.

2.Shakespeare believed in a wise and humane king who would live to serve his country.

The hero of Henry IV is Henry V.

The Melancholy（忧郁）of Hamlet

1.It is said not without reason that the keynote of Hamlet’s character is melancholy, and

there can be no Hamlet without melancholy. But his melancholy is not the negative, hair-splitting and fruitless kind. It is rather the result of his penetrating habit of mind.

(personality)

2.He seems to understand that his mere revenge upon his uncle would in no way solve the

problem that trouble and upset him. Revenge is easy, but it is not merely personal revenge that Hamlet seeks. What is more important is to expose the root of the evil and to establish a reign of justice. His responsibility is thus enlarged into a radical transformation of society. (sense of responsibility for transforming the society)

3.Thus, Hamlet’s mental world has gone through the shock of a personal wrong to an

awakening of his great responsibility in reforming the world as a whole. But to realize his ideal in his own time was beyond him. This and this only, is the cause of Hamlet’s profound melancholy and his delay in revenge. So Hamlet’s profound melancholy shows, in a way,