英国文学史名词解释2

名词解释

Old English: the language of Anglo and Saxon people during 5and 11th century

Epic: A long narrative poem celebrating the great deeds of one or more legendary heroes. In a grand ceremonious style .The hero, usually protected by or even descended from gods, performs superhuman exploits in battle or in marvelous voyages, often saving or founding a nation.

Romance: the most popular literary form in the Middle Ages in Europe; A tale (in verse or prose) that deals with knightly adventures or other heroic deeds or supernatural or amorous subjects, and usually emphasizes the chivalric love.

Ballad: A folk song or orally transmitted poem telling in a direct and dramatic manner some popular story usually derived form a tragic incident in local history or legend. Ballad are normally composed in quatrains with alternating four-stress and three- stress lines ,the second and fourth lines rhyming.

Couplet(双行体)a pair of rhyming verse lines of the same length. Chauser established the use of couplet in his Canterbury Tales, using rhymed iambic pentameters later known as heroic couplet

The Renaissance refers to the period between the 14th and 17th centuries. The rebirth of literature, art, and learning that progressively transformed European culture from the mid-14th century in Italy to the mid-17th century in England, strongly influenced by the rediscovery of classical Greek and Latin literature. The Renaissance is commonly held to mark the close of the middle Ages, and the beginning of the modern western world. The term normally refer to the combined intellectual and artistic transformation of the 15th 16th centuries, including the emergency of humanism, protestant individualism, Copernican astronomy, and the discovery of America

Humanism: it stands for devotion to human values represent in classical literature. it is the keynote or the dominate ideology during the Renaissance

Sonnet：A lyric of fourteen lines usually in iambic pentameter. 1. Shakespearean sonnet: Also called English sonnet or Elizabethan Sonnet. It is structured of 3 quatrains and a final couplet with the rhyme scheme: abab cdcd efef gg2. Petrarchan Sonnet: Also called Italian sonnet. It contains an octave with the rhyme pattern abba abba and a sestet of various rhyme Patterns such as cdecde or cdcdcd.

3. Spenserian sonnet: comprising 3 quatrains and a couplet in iambic pentameter with the rhyme scheme abab bcbc cdcd ee Ode is a dignified and elaborately structured lyric poem of some length, praising and glorifying an individual, commemorating an event or describing nature intellectually rather than emotionally.

Elegy Formal lyric poem lamenting the death of a friend or a public figure, or reflecting seriously on a solemn subject. Pastoral: a highly conventional mode of writing that celebrates the innocent life of shepherds or shepherdesses in poems, plays, and prose romance.

Tragedies were concerned with the harshness and apparent injustice of life. They involved the trials and eventful death of a