英国文学名词解释2

[1]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.

Typically, an epic includes several features: the introduction of supernatural forces that shape the action;

conflict in the form of battles or other physical forces combat; and stylistic conventions such as an invocation to the Muse, and set speeches couched in elevated language. They summarize and express the nature or ideals of an entire nation at a significant or crucial period of its history. Eg: Iliad，Odyssey，Paradise Lost，The Divine Comedy。

[2]Heroic couplet: They are poetry composed in iambic pentameter. In this form of poetry, lines consisting

of five iambic feet rime together in pairs. The rime scheme :aa bb cc …..

[3]Blank verse: A poem written in unrhymed iambic pentameter.

[4]Enlightenment : The Enlightenment was a progressive intellectual movement throughout Western Europe

in the 18th century. It was an expression of struggle of the bourgeoisie against feudalism. The enlighteners fought against class inequality, stagnation, prejudices and other survivals of feudalism. They thought the chief means for bettering the society was "enlightenment" or "education" for the people. The English

enlighteners were bourgeois democratic thinkers. They set no revolutionary aim before them and what they strove for was to bring it to an end by clearing away the feudal ideas with the bourgeois ideology. [5]Classicism: A movement or tendency in art, music, and literature to retain the characteristics found in

work originating in classical Greece and Rome. It differs from Romanticism in that while Romanticism dwells on the emotional impact of a work, classicism concerns itself with form and discipline.

[6]Sentimentalism: Sentimentalism appeared in the middle of the 18th century, as a reaction against

commercialism and the cold rationalism. Sentimentalists emphasize “the human heart” and show

sympathy to the poor. This trend marks the transition form neoclassicism to romanticism in English poetry.

Thomas Gray is one of the models. Another sentimentalist poet is Oliver Goldsmith (The Disserted

Village). The most outstanding figure of English sentimentalism is Laurence Sterne.

[7]Pre-romanticism: The Romantic Movement was marked by a strong protest against the bondage of Classicism,

by a renewed interest in medieval literature. In England, this movement showed itself in the trend of Pre-romanticism in poetry. It was represented by Blake and Robert Burns. They struggled against the neoclassical tradition of poetry.

[8]Aestheticism: Aestheticism is a term given to a movement, a cult, a mode of sensibility in the 19th

century. Fundamentally, it expressed the point of view that art is self-sufficient and need serve no other purpose than its own ends. The major implication of the new aesthetic standpoint was that art had no

reference to life, and therefore had nothing to do with morality. Many poets of the period strove for

beautiful musical effects in their verses rather than for sense. They aspired to sensuousness and revived archaistic modes and archaic language. They also revived an extensive use of classical mythology as a framework for expressing ideas. It opposes the democratic and socialist ideals and upholds bourgeois

individualism. Their slogan is "art for art's sake". They can see the social evils, but they don't think it

possible to remove those evils and make life fair and just. They think that the world is suffering from an incurable disease. Their writings are like groans of desperate patients. Oscar Wilde is the representative among the writers of aestheticism.

[9]Stream-of-consciousness: Stream of consciousness, which presents the thoughts of a character in the

random, seemingly unorganized fashion in which the thinking process occurs, has the following

characteristics. First, it reveals the action or plot through the mental processes of the characters rather than through the commentary of an omniscient author. Second, character development is achieved through

revelation of extremely personal and often typical thought processes rather than through the creation of