古英语和中世纪英语 英国文学考点

古英语和中世纪英语 英国文学考点 第一章 古英语时期和中世纪时期的英国文学考点 1. The Old English poetry can be divided into two groups: the religious group and the secular one. The Bible consists of the Old Testament and the New Testament. Beowulf 《贝尔武夫》, a typical example of Old English poetry, is regarded as the greatest national epic of the Anglo-Saxons. The epic describes the exploits of a Scandinavian hero, Beowulf, in fighting against the monster Grendel, his revengeful mother, and a fire-breathing dragon in his declining years. While fighting against the dragon, Beowulf was mortally wounded. However, he killed the dragon at the cost of his life. Beowulf is shown not only as a glorious hero but also as a protector of the people. 2. Romance is a popular literary form in the medieval England. It sings knightly adventures or other heroic deeds. Chivalry (such as bravery, honor, generosity, and kindness to the weak and poor) is the spirit of romance. 3. John Gower is the author of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the best romance of the period. William Langland is a more realistic writer who dealt with the religious and social issues of his day in Piers Plowman《农夫皮尔斯》. 4. Geoffry Chaucer is the greatest writer of Middle Ages. His masterpiece The Canterbury Tales《坎特伯蕾 故事 滥竽充数故事班主任管理故事5分钟二年级语文看图讲故事传统美德小故事50字120个国学经典故事ppt 集》presents, for the first time in English literature, a comprehensive realistic picture of the medieval English society and creates a whole gallery of vivid characters from all walks of life. In ―The Canterbury Tales‖, Chaucer developed his art of poetry still further towards drama and the art of the novel. In Troilus and Criseyd, he gave the world what is virtually the first modern novel. Chaucer wrote in Middle English and did much in making London dialect the foundation for modern English language. Though essentially still a medieval writer, Chaucer bore marks of humanism and anticipated a new era to come. As a forerunner of humanism, he praises man’s energy, intellect, quick wit and love of life. His tales exposed and satirized the evils of his time. These tales attacked the degeneration of the noble, the heartlessness of the judge, the corruption of the church, etc. In his works, he developed his characterization to a higher level by presenting characters with both typical qualities and individual dispositions. ―The Wife of Bath‖ is a famous tale in which the heroine is depicted as the new bourgeois. Taking the stand of the rising bourgeoisie, he affirms men and opposes the dogma of asceticism preached by the church. Chaucer introduced from France rhymed stanzas of various types into English poetry to replace the Old English alliterative verse. It was he who used for the first time in English the rhymed couplet of iambic pentameter that was later called the ―heroic couplet‖. The Chaucer’s reputation has been securely established as one of the best English poets for his wisdom, humor, and humanity. John Dryden called Chaucer the father of English poetry. 第二章 文艺复兴时期的英国文学考点 1. Renaissance refers to the transitional period from the medieval to the modern world. It first started in Italy in the 14th century, lasting into the 17th century. The Renaissance means rebirth or revival. It was marked by a humanistic revival of ancient Roman and Greek classics expressed in a flowering of the arts and literature and by the beginnings of modern science. Humanism is the essence of the Renaissance. The English Renaissance did not begin until the reign of Henry VIII. It was usually regarded as England’s Golden Age, especially in literature. Among the literary giants were Shakespeare, Spenser, Johnson, Sidney, Marlowe, Bacon and Donne, and John Milton was the last great poet of the English Renaissance. The real mainstream of the English Renaissance is the Elizabethan drama. 2. Humanism is the essence of the Renaissance. It emphasizes the dignity of human beings and the importance of the present life. Humanists voiced their beliefs that man was the center of the universe and man did not only have the right to enjoy the beauty of the present life, but had the ability to perfect himself and to perform wonders. 3. Petrarch was regarded as the fountainhead of literature by the English writers. Wyatt introduced the Petrarchan sonnet into England. Surrey brought in blank verse(无韵体诗)，i.e. the unrhymed iambic(抑扬格的)pentameter(五音步的)line. 4. Renaissance drama: the Elizabethan drama is the real mainstream of the English Renaissance. English dramas were influenced by the Greek and Roman classics. Thomas Kyd wrote the earliest popular tragedy of blood and revenge, The Spanish Tragedy. The most famous dramatists in the Renaissance England are Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare, and Ben Johnson. Elizabethan drama reached its peak in Shakespeare’s works. Shakespeare’s compassionate understanding of the human fate has perpetuated his greatness and made him the representative figure of English literature for the whole world. Francis Bacon was the first important English essayist. He was the founder of modern science in England. His writing paved the way for the use of scientific method. 5. University Wit refers to any of a notable group of pioneer English dramatists writing during the last 15 years of the 16th century. They transformed the native dramatic inheritance of interlude and chronicle play into a potentially great drama by writing plays of quality and diversity. In doing so they prepared the ground for genius of William Shakespeare. Their forerunner was John Lily, Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Nashe, Robert Green, and Thomas Kyd, etc. All these writers except Thomas Kyd took degrees from universities like Oxford and Cambridge. 6. Edmund Spenser: The Shepherd’s Calendar is his early work. Spenser’s masterpiece is the Faerie Queene 《仙后》, a great poem of its age. There are five main qualities in Spenser’s poetry: a perfect melody; a rare sense of beauty; a splendid imagination; a lofty moral purity and seriousness, and a dedicated idealism. It is Spenser’s idealism, his love of beauty, and his exquisite melody that earn him the title of ―the poets’ poet.‖ (诗人的诗人)The Faerie Queene is written in the stanza invented by Spenser himself, the Spenserian stanza, i.e., a stanza(诗的一节)of nine lines, with the first eight lines in iambic pentameter and the last line in iambic hexameter(六音步), rhyming ababbcbcc. 7.Christopher Marlowe: (1) As the most gifted of the ―University Wits‖, Marlowe composed six plays within his short lifetime. Among them the most important are: Tamburlaine, Dr. Faustus, The Jew of Malta and Edward II. Tamburlaine is a play about an ambitious and pitiless Tartar conqueror in the fourteenth century who rose from a shepherd to an overpowering king. By depicting a great hero with high ambition and sheer brutal force in conquering one enemy after another, Morlowe voiced the supreme desire of the man of the Renaissance for infinite power and authority. Dr. Faustus is a play based on the German legend of a magician aspiring for knowledge and finally meeting his tragic end as a result of selling his soul to the Devil. It celebrates the human passion for knowledge, power and happiness; it also reveals man’s frustration in realizing the high aspirations in a hostile moral order. And the confinement to time is the cruelest fact of man’s condition. The play is a good example to illustrate the idea that a man gains the whole world but loses his own soul. (2) Marlowe’s greatest literary achievement lies in that he perfected the blank verse and made it the principal medium of English drama. He brought vitality and grandeur into the blank verse with his ―mighty lines‖ which carry strong emotions. Marlowe’s second achievement is his creation of the Renaissance hero for English drama. Such hero is always individualistic and full of ambition, facing bravely the challenge from both gods and men. Such a hero embodies Marlowe’s humanistic ideal of human dignity and capacity. With the endless aspiration for power, knowledge, and glory, the hero embodies the true Renaissance spirit. 8. William Shakespeare (1564—1616): (1) Shakespeare was born on April 23, 1564, into a merchant’s family in Stratford-on-Avon. In 1582, he got married and had three children. It was probably because he had to support his growing family that he left for London. Shakespeare wrote 38 plays, 154 sonnets and 2 long poems. He is the greatest dramatist of the English Renaissance. Shakespeare is above all writers in the past and in the present time. Robert Greene, one of the ―University Wits‖, resentfully declared him to be ―an upstart crow.‖ He died on April 23, 1616. Shakespeare is surpassingly great because his works never fail to bear a kind of closeness to human life and never fail to be the mirror reflecting human nature. Shakespeare is so great that maybe only Ben Johnson’s praising poem will somewhat cover his greatness: ―…Soul of the Age! The applause! delight! The wonder of our stage! Triumph, my Britain, thou hast one to show To whom all scenes of Europe homage owe. He was not of an age, but for all time!‖ (2) Shakespeare’s four dramatic periods: a. His first dramatic period was one of apprenticeship. He wrote five history plays: Henry VI, Parts I, II, and III, Richard III, and Titus Andronicus; and four comedies: The Comedy of Errors, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Taming of the Shrew, and Love’s Labour’s Lost. b. His second dramatic period was highly individualized. He wrote five history plays: Richard II, King John, Henry IV, Parts I and II, and Henry V; six comedies: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Merchant of Venice, Much Ado About Nothing, As You Like It, Twelfth Night, and The Merry Wives of Windsor; and two tragedies: Romeo and Juliet and Julius Caesar. Romeo and Juliet eulogizes the faithfulness of love and the spirit of pursuing happiness. The play, though a tragedy, is permeated with optimistic spirit. Shakespeare’s history plays of these two periods are mainly written under the principle that national unity under a mighty and just sovereign is a necessity. c. His third period includes his greatest tragedies and his so-called dark comedies. The tragedies of this period are: Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra, Troilus and Cressida, and Coriolanus. The two comedies are: All’s Well That Ends Well and Measure for Measure. Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth are Shakespeare’s four greatest tragedies. They have some characteristics in common. Each tragedy portrays a noble hero, who faces the injustice of human life and is caught in a difficult situation and whose fate is closely connected with the fate of the whole nation. Each hero has his weakness of nature: Hamlet, the melancholic scholar-prince, faces the dilemma between action and mind; Othello’s inner weakness is made use of by the outside evil force; the old King Lear who is unwilling to totally give up his power makes himself suffer from treachery and infidelity. In King Lear, Shakespeare has not only made a profound analysis of the social crisis in which the evils can be seen everywhere, but also criticized the bourgeois egoism; and Macbeth’s lust for power stirs ups his ambition and leads him to incessant crimes. In these tragedies Shakespeare portrays the weakness of each hero and shows the conflict between the individual and the evil force in the society. d. Shakespeare’s last period includes romantic tragicomedies: Pericles，Cymbeline, The Winter’s Tale, The Tempest, Henry VIII and The Two Noble Kinsmen. The Tempest is the best of his final romances. It typically shows Shakespeare’s pessimistic views towards human life and society in his late years. e. Shakespeare’s non-dramatic poetry consists of two long narrative poems: Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece， and 154 sonnets. Shakespeare’s sonnets are the only direct expression of the poet’s own feelings. His sonnets numbered 1-126 are addressed to a young man, Shakespeare’s beloved friend. The sonnets numbered 127-152 involve a mistress of Shakespeare, a mysterious ―Dark Lady‖. His sonnets’ most common themes concern the destructive effects of time, the quickness of physical decay, and the loss of beauty, vigor, and love. Sonnet 18 is one of Shakespeare’s most beautiful sonnets. In the poem he has a profound meditation on the destructive power of time and the eternal beauty brought forth by poetry to the one he loves. A nice summer’s day is usually transient, but the beauty in poetry can last for ever. Thus Shakespeare has a faith in the permanence of poetry. The rhyme of the poem is abab cdcd efef gg. (3) Shakespeare’s literary ideas: As a humanist writer, Shakespeare has accepted the Renaissance views on literature. e holds that literature should be a combination of beauty, kindness and truth, and H should reflect nature and reality. He claims through the mouth of Hamlet that the ―end‖ of dramatic creation is to give faithful reflection of the social realities of the time. He also says that literary works which have truly reflected nature and reality can reach immortality. (4) The Merchant of Venice: The play has a double plot: an impoverished young man, Bassanio asks his friend, Antonio, for a loan so that he might marry Portia, a rich and beautiful heiress of Belmont. They fall in love with each other at first sight. Bassanio passes the test of the caskets and he chooses the right one containing Portia’s portrait. However, their rejoicing is interrupted by a letter from Antonio; Antonio’s money is all invested in mercantile expeditions. He has to borrow money from Shylock, the Jewish usurer. Shylock has made a strange bond requiring Antonio to surrender a pound of his flesh if he fails to repay him within a certain period of time. Antonio’s letter reads that his ships are lost at sea, and he is penniless, and will have to pay the pound of flesh. The most famous part of the comedy is Act IV, Scene I. It is the major climax of the play. It takes place in a court of law at which Portia appears disguised as a young lawyer instructed to judge the case. She first appeals to Shylock to have mercy. But when he insists on the letter of the law, she lets him have it. He may take his pound of flesh, but there is no mention of blood in the bond; if he sheds a single drop of a Christian’s blood, his lands and goods will be confiscated by the State according to the law of Venice. Thus Antonio is saved, and Shylock has to undergo certain severe penalties, including compulsory conversion to Christianity. The traditional theme of the play is to praise the friendship between Antonio and Bassanio, to idealize Portia as a heroine of great beauty, wit and loyalty, and to expose the Insatiable greed and brutality of the Jew. But people today tend to regard the play as a satire of the Christian’s hypocrisy and their false standards, their cunning ways of pursuing worldliness and their unreasoning prejudice against Jews. (5) Hamlet Hamlet is considered the greatest of Shakespeare’s tragedies. It has the qualities of a ―blood-and-thunder‖ thriller and a philosophical exploration of life and death. Shakespeare takes the bare outlines of Revenge Tragedy used in Thomas Kyd in his The Spanish Tragedy. The timeless appeal of Hamlet lies in its combination of intrigue, emotional conflict and searching philosophic melancholy. In the play Hamlet is urged by the ghost of his father (who is murdered by Claudius) to seek revenge. Hamlet hesitates in his revenge not because he is incapable of action, but because the cast of his mind is so speculative, so questioning, and so contemplative that action, when it finally comes, seems almost like defeat, diminishing rather than adding to the stature of the hero. He lives suspended between fact and fiction, language and action. a necessary release of his anguish. ―To be For Hamlet, soliloquy is a natural medium， or not to be‖ soliloquy is the best known and often felt to be central to Hamlet’s personality. It provides an excellent example of Hamlet not doing anything. In his case we can conclude that too much thinking makes action impossible. The play is also Shakespeare’s most detailed expose of a corrupted court----―an unweeded garden‖ in which there is nothing but ―a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours‖(汇集着各种罪恶肮脏的气体). (6) Macbeth Macbeth is one of Shakespeare’s four greatest tragedies. He is introduced in the play as a warrior hero, whose fame on the battlefield wins him great honor from the king. His physical courage is joined by a consuming ambition and a tendency to self-doubt----the prediction that he will be king brings him joy, but it also creates inner turmoil. These three attributes----bravery, ambition, and self-doubt----struggle for mastery of Macbeth throughout the play. Shakespeare uses Macbeth to show the terrible effects that ambition and guilt can have on a man who lacks strength of character. (7) King Lear Lear’s basic flaw at the beginning of the play is that he values appearances above reality. He wants to be treated as a king and to enjoy the title, but he doesn’t want to fulfill a king’s obligations of governing for the good of his subjects. Similarly, his test of his daughters demonstrates that he values a flattering public display of love over real love. But his values do change over the course of the play. As he realizes his weakness and insignificance in comparison to the awesome forces of the natural world, he becomes a humble and caring individual. Eventually, Lear displays regret, remorse, empathy, and compassion for the poor, a population that Lear has not noticed before. He comes to cherish Cordelia above everything else and to place his own love for Cordelia above every other consideration, to the point that he would rather live in prison with her than rule as a king again. King Lear’s madness: The madness in King Lear enables him to realize the essence of a corrupt society, in which each is ready to destroy the other. He not only sympathizes with the poor but realizes for the first time with much remorse for his former tyranny and indifference toward the suffering multitude. The madness is also the course of Lear’s spiritual pilgrimage from arrogance into humiliation, misery, and finally a rebirth into a childlike simplicity and humility. Moreover, King Lear also presents Shakespeare’s affirmation of national unity and royal responsibility. Shakespeare seems to point out that the king, however great he might be, should be responsible to the people. If, in one way or another, he betrays the people’s trust, history will condemn him. It is just at this point, when he seems to have earned an innocent happiness, that his tragic suffering culminates, since Cordelia meets her death in the very hour of victory. 9. Francis Bacon Francis Bacon, a representative of the Renaissance in England, is a well-known philosopher, scientist and essayist. He lays the foundation for modern science with his insistence on scientific way of thinking and fresh observation rather than authority as a basis for obtaining knowledge. His Essays is the first example of that genre in English literature. Bacon borrowed the term ―essay‖ from Montaigne, the first great modern essayist, the predecessor of Bacon. The Advancement of Learning is a great tract on education. Here Bacon highly praises knowledge, refuting the objections to learning and outlining the problems with which his plan is to deal. Also he answers the charge that learning is against religion. Novum Organum (The New Instrument) is a successful treatise written in Latin on methodology. The argument is for the use of inductive method of reasoning (归纳推理的方法) in scientific study. Of Studies is the most popular of Bacon’s essays. It analyzes what studies chiefly serve for, the different ways adopted by different people to pursue studies, and how studies exert influence over human character. Forceful and persuasive, compact and precise, the essay reveals to us Bacon’s mature attitude towards learning. Famous quotations from Bacon: Studies serve for delight, for ornament and for ability. Reading makes a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man. 10. Metaphysical Poetry(玄学派诗歌) The term ―metaphysical poetry‖ is commonly used to name the work of the 17th-century writers who wrote under the influence of John Donne. With a rebellious spirit, the metaphysical poets tried to break away from the conventional fashion of the Elizabethan love poetry. The diction is simple as compared with that of the Elizabethan or the Neoclassical periods, and echoes the words and cadences of common speech. The imagery is drawn from actual life. The form is frequently that of an argument with the poet’s beloved, with God, or with himself. Modern poets like T. S. Eliot, John Ransom, and Allen Tate are examples who have been mostly affected by the metaphysical influence. 11. metaphysical conceit: The metaphysical conceit, associated with the Metaphysical poets of the 17th century, is a more intricate and intellectual device. It sets up an analogy, usually between one entity’s spiritual qualities and an object in the physical world, that sometimes controls the whole structure of the poem. For example, in John Donne’s A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning, two lovers’ souls are compared to a draftsman’s compass. 11. John Donne John Donne is the leading figure of the ―metaphysical school‖. The most striking feature of Donne’s poetry is precisely its tang of reality, in the sense that it seems to reflect life in a real rather than a poetical world. John Donne is a religious poet. His great prose works are his sermons. It is the obsession with death that characterizes Donne’s mature religious works. The Songs and Sonnets is probably his best-known lyrics. Love is the basic theme. Donne holds that the nature of love is the union of soul and body. In his poetry, Donne frequently applies conceits(奇想/夸张的比喻), i.e. extended metaphors involving dramatic contrasts. His poem, The Sun Rising, is taken from his Songs and Sonnets. The speaker in the poem is showing his annoyance at the sun entering the lover’s secret room without their approval. Also he means that lover’s schedule needn’t follow the sun’s movement. His poem, Death, Be Not Proud, is taken from his Holy Sonnets. The poem means that shortly after we die we will wake up (as from sleep) and live eternally. It reveals the poet’s belief in life after death: death is but momentary while happiness after death is eternal. 12. John Milton John Milton is a versatile writer. He wrote sonnets, elegies, long narrative poems, short lyrics, and prose works. His literary ambition of his youth was to write an epic which England would ―not willingly let die.‖ As a real revolutionary, a master poet and a great prose writer, Milton holds an important place in the history of English literature. His literary achievements can be divided into three groups: the early poetic works, the middle prose pamphlets and the last great poems. In his early works, Milton appears as the inheritor of all that was best in Elizabethan literature. Lycidas, an elegy dedicated to a drowned friend, is a typical example. His powerful pamphlets in his middle period make him the greatest prose writer of his age. Areopagitica 《论 出版自由》is probably his most memorable prose work. It is a great plea for freedom of the press. But, Milton’s highest achievements were made in the final period of his writing career. In the last period, he wrote three major poetic works: Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes. Among the three, the first is the greatest, indeed the only generally acknowledged epic in English literature since Beowulf; and the last one is the most perfect example of the verse drama after the Greek style in English. Paradise Regained, a long narrative poem, tells how man, in the person of Christ, withstands the tempter and is established once more in the divine favor. In Samson Agonistes, a verse drama modeled on the Greek tragedy, Milton presents to us a picture of how Samson, the Israel’s mighty champion, brings destruction down upon the enemy at the cost of his own life. The whole poem strongly suggests Milton’s passionate longing like Samson’s that he too could bring destruction down upon the enemy at the cost of his own life. In this sense, Samson is Milton. Paradise Lost Paradise Lost, the only generally acknowledged epic in English since Beowulf, is Milton’s highest achievement (his masterpiece). The story is taken from the Bible. The theme of the epic is the ―Fall of Man,‖ i. e. man’s disobedience and the loss of Paradise, with its prime cause ---- Satan. It intends to expose the ways of Satan and to ―justify the ways of God to men.‖ In Heaven, Satan led a rebellion against God. Defeated, he and his angels were cast into Hell. However, Satan refused to accept his failure, vowing that ―all was not lost‖ and that he would seek revenge for his downfall. In order to achieve his ambition, Satan, in the shape of a snake, managed to tempt Adam and Eve, the first human beings created by God, to eat fruit from the tree of knowledge against God’s instruction. For their disobedience, Adam and Eve were driven out of Paradise. Satan is the real hero of the poem. Satan, in the image of a rebel, remains obeyed and admired by those who follow him down to hell. The features of his character include his boldness, unbending ambition and ―unconquerable will‖. The poem is full of biblical and classical allusions. The majesty of expression suits well the sublimity of the poet’s thought. John Milton’s style reminds one of Roman poet Virgil. 第三章 新古典主义时期的英国文学 1. The Enlightenment Movement(启蒙主义运动) The eighteenth-century England is known as the Age of Enlightenment or the Age of Reason. The Enlightenment Movement was a progressive intellectual movement which flourished in France and swept through Western Europe at the time. The movement was a furtherance of the 15th and 16th centuries. Its purpose was to enlighten the whole world with the light of modern philosophical and artistic ideas. The enlighteners celebrated reason or rationality, equality and science. They called for a reference to order, reason and rules and advocated universal education. Famous among the great enlighteners in England were those great writers like John Dryden(约翰)德莱顿), Alexander Pope(亚历山大)蒲柏), Joseph Addison(约瑟夫 )艾迪森)and Sir Richard Steele(理查)斯蒂尔), the two pioneers of familiar essays(随笔散文), Jonathan Swift(乔纳森)斯威夫特)， Richard Bringsley Sheridan(谢拉丹), Daniel Defoe(丹尼尔)笛福), Henry Fielding(亨利)菲尔 丁)and Samuel Johnson(塞缪尔)约翰逊). 2. Neoclassicism(新古典主义) In the field of literature, the Enlightenment Movement brought about a revival of interest in the old classical works. This tendency is known as neoclassicism. According to the neoclassicists(新古典主义者), all forms of literature were to be modeled after the classical works of the ancient Greek and Roman writers (Homer, Virgil(维吉尔), and so on.) and those of the contemporary French ones. They believed that the artistic ideals should be order, logic, restrained emotion and accuracy, and that literature should be judged in terms of its service to humanity. This belief led them to seek proportion(协调性), unity(统一性), harmony(和谐性)and grace (典雅性)in literary expressions, in an effort to delight, instruct and correct human beings, primarily as social animals. Thus, a polite, urbane，witty, and intellectual art developed. The middle part of the 18th century was predominated by a newly rising literary form---the modern English novel, which gives a realistic presentation of life of the common English people. This is the most significant phenomenon in the history of the development of English literature. 3. The Graveyard School (墓地派诗歌) It refers to a school of poets of the 18th century whose poems are mostly devoted to a sentimental lamentation or meditation on life, past and present, with death and graveyard as themes. Thomas Gray(托马斯)格雷)is considered to be the leading figure of this school and his ―Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard‖《写在乡村教堂 墓地的挽歌》is its most representative work. In this poem, Gray reflects on death, the sorrows of life, and the mysteries of human life with a touch of his personal melancholy. The poet compares the common folk with the great ones, wondering what the commons could have achieved if they had had the chance. Here he reveals his sympathy for the poor and the unknown, but mocks the great ones who despise the poor and bring havoc on them. 4. The Heroic Couplet(英雄体偶句) It means a pair of lines of a type once common in English poetry, in other words, it means iambic pentameter rhymed in two lines. 5. Gothic Novel(哥特式小说) It is a school of novel that appeared in the 18th century. Such a novel is often of mystery and horror which takes place in some haunted or dilapidated Middle Ages castles. 6. John Bunyan Bunyan is a religious novelist whose style was modeled after that of the English Bible. His concrete and living language and vivid details made it possible for the reader of the least education to share the pleasure of reading his novel and to relive the experience of his character. His masterpiece, The Pilgrim’s Progress《天涯历程》, is the most successful religious allegory, tells of the experience of a devout Christian the Pilgrim with a neighbor named Faithful in a world full of vice and wickedness. Through the Christian the Pilgrim’s allegorical journey from the doomed city to the Celestial City, Bunyan means to urge people to comply with Christian doctrines and seek salvation through constant struggles with their own weaknesses and all kinds of social evils. The novel is not only about something spiritual but also bears much relevance to the time. Its predominant metaphor ---life as a journey--- is simple and familiar. The Vanity Fair is a famous scene where all such merchandise sold, as houses, lands, trades, places, honors, titles, countries, kingdom, lusts, pleasures, wives, husbands, children, blood, bodies, souls, gold, pearls…, etc. except one thing---truth. A wise saying goes, ―All that cometh is vanity.‖ 7. Alexander Pope As a representative of the Enlightenment, Pope was one of the first to introduce rationalism to England. He was the greatest poet of the Neoclassical period. He strongly advocated neoclassicism, emphasizing that literary works should be judged by classical rules of order, reason, logic, restrained emotion, good taste and decorum. He worked painstakingly on his poems, developed a satiric, concise, smooth, graceful and well-balanced style and finally brought to its last perfection the heroic couplet Dryden had successfully used in his plays. His masterpiece, An Essay on Criticism《论 批评》, is a didactic poem written in heroic couplets. It consists of 744 lines and is divided into three parts. It sums up the art of poetry as upheld and practiced by the ancients like Aristotle, and the 18th-century European classicists. Pope first laments the dearth of true taste in poetic criticism of his day and calls on people to turn to the old Greek and Roman writers for guidance. The poem, as a comprehensive study of the theories of literary criticism, exerted great influence upon Pope’s contemporary writers in advocating the classical rules and spreading the neoclassicist tradition in England. The excerpt is taken from Part 2. Here Pope advises the critics not to stress too much the artificial use of Conceit(奇思妙想、别出心裁的比喻或措辞) or the external beauty of language but to pay special attention to True Wit which is best set in a plain style. The Rape of the Lock《夺发记》is Pope’s finest mock epic. It ridicules the foolish, meaningless life of the lords and ladies in the aristocratic bourgeois century England. The Dunciad《群愚史诗》is Pope’s best satiric society of the 18th – work. In the book, dullness as reflected in the corruptness of government, social morals, education and even religion, is expertly exposed and satirized. Famous quotations: Little knowledge is a dangerous thing. To err is human, to forgive divine. 8. Daniel Defoe Robinson Crusoe《鲁宾逊漂流记》is Defoe’s masterpiece. In the novel, Defoe traces the growth of Robinson from a na飗e and artless youth into a shrewd and hardened man, tempered by numerous trials in his eventful life. The realistic account of the successful struggle of Robinson single-handedly against the hostile nature forms the best part of the novel. Robinson is here a real her a typical eighteenth-century English middle-class ( a hero of the rising bourgeoisie) man, with a great capacity for work, inexhaustible energy, courage, patience and persistence in overcoming obstacles, in struggling against the hostile natural environment. He is the very prototype of the empire builder, the pioneer colonist. In describing Robinson’s life on the island, Defoe glorifies human labor and the Puritan fortitude, which save Robinson from despair and are a source of pride and happiness. He toils for the sake of subsistence, and the fruits of his labor are his own. (Robinson has a servant named Friday and the first English word Robinson teaches him is ―master‖.) Defoe’s other four novels including Captain Singleton, Moll Flanders, Colonel Jack and Roxana are the first literary works devoted to the study of problems of the lower-class people. They clearly manifest Defoe’s deep concern for the poor and the unfortunate in his society. 9. Jonathan Swift Swift is a master satirist. A Modest Proposal is generally taken as a perfect model of his satire that is usually masked by an outward gravity and an apparent earnestness which renders his satire all the more powerful. Swift is one of the greatest masters of English prose. He is almost unsurpassed in the writing of simple, direct, precise prose. He defined a good style as ―proper words in proper places.‖ His other chief works include: A Tale of a Tub《一个桶子的故事》, The Battle of the Books《书籍的战斗》, The Drapier’s Letters《德莱皮尔的信》 and Gulliver’s Travels《格列佛游记》, his masterpiece. Gulliver’s Travels, Swift’s best fictional work, contains four parts, each about one particular voyage during which Gulliver has extraordinary adventures on some remote island after he has met with shipwreck or piracy or some other misfortune. The four places Gulliver visits are: Lilliput(小人国利立浦特), Brobdingnag(大人国布罗卜丁奈格), the Flying Land(飞岛) and the Houyhnhnm land(慧马国), where he meets the Yahoos, hairy, wild, low and despicable brutes, who resemble human beings not only in appearance but also in almost every other way. As a whole, the novel is one of the most effective and devastating criticisms and satires of all aspects in the then English and European life---socially, politically, religiously, philosophically, scientifically, and morally. Its social significance is great and its exploration into human nature profound. Gulliver’s Travels is also an artistic masterpiece. Here we find its author at his best as a master of prose. In structure, the four parts make an organic whole, with each contrived upon an independent structure, and yet complementing the others and contributing to the central concern of study of human nature and life. The first two parts are generally considered the best paired-up. Here, man is observed from both ends of a telescope. The exaggerated smallness in Part 1 works just as effectively as the exaggerated largeness in Part 2. The similarities between human beings and the Lilliputians and the contrast between the Brobdingnagians and human beings both bear reference to the possibilities of human state. Part 3 furthers the criticism of the western civilization and deals with different malpractices and false illusion about science, philosophy, history and even immortality. The last part, where comparison is made through both similarities and differences, leads readers to a fundamental question: What on earth is a human being? The excerpt is taken from Chapter III, Part 1. Here Gulliver gives an account of some aspects of Lilliputian life and obviously alludes to the similar ridiculous practices or tricks of the English government. 10. Henry Fielding Henry Fielding is one of the greatest writers of the Neoclassical period. His major works include The History of Jonathan Wild the Great 《大伟人江奈生)魏尔德传》, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling《汤姆)琼斯----一个弃儿的故事》, and The History of Amelia,《阿米丽亚》 etc. Of these, Tom Jones, generally considered as Fielding’s masterpiece, brings its author the name of the ―Prose Homer.‖ The panoramic view it provides of the 18th-century English country and city life with scores of different places and about 40 characters is superb. By this, Fielding has indeed achieved , both in theory and practice, his goal of writing a ―comic epic in prose.‖ In as way, Tom Jones stands for a wayfaring Everyman, who is expelled from the paradise and has to go through hard experience to gain a knowledge of himself to approach perfection. In his writings, Fielding is very sympathetic toward the poor and unfortunate, and protests strongly against social injustice and political corruption. He holds that the purpose of the novel is not just to amuse, but to instruct. The object of his novels was to present a faithful picture of life, ―the just copies of human manners,‖ with sound teaching woven into their texture, so as to teach men to know themselves, their proper spheres and appropriate manners. Fielding’s language is easy, natural and familiar, but extremely vivid and vigorous. His sentences are always distinguished by logic and rhythm, and his structure carefully planned towards an inevitable ending. His works are also famous for lively, dramatic dialogues and other theatrical devices such as suspense, coincidence and unexpectedness. Fielding has been regarded by some as ―Father of the English Novel‖ for his contribution to the establishment of the form of the modern novel. 12. Samuel Johnson Samuel Johnson was the last great neoclassicist enlightener in the late eighteenth century. He was very much concerned with the theme of vanity of human wishes: almost all of his major writings bear this theme. He tried to warn men against this folly and hoped to cure them of it through his writings. In literary creation and criticism, he was rather conservative, openly showing his dislike for some newly rising form of literature and his appreciation for those writings which carried a lot of moralizing and philosophizing. He held that a writer must adhere to universal truth and experience, i. e. Nature.; he must please, but he must also instruct; he must not offend against religion or promote immorality; and he must let himself be guided by old principles. Like Pope, he was particularly fond of moralizing and didacticism. He is the author of the first English dictionary by an Englishman---A Dictionary of the English Language. His famous letter, To the Right Honorable The Earl of Chesterfield 《致切斯特菲尔德勋爵的信》, is written to the fame-fishing Chesterfield who offered Johnson nothing while he compiled A Dictionary of the English Language. The letter is written in a refined and very polite language, with a bitter undertone of defiance and anger. The seemingly peaceful retrospection, reasoning and questioning express, to the best satiric effect, the author’s strong indignation at the lord’s fame-fishing and his firm resolution not to be reconciled to the hypocritical lord. It expresses explicitly the author’s assertion of his independence, signifying the opening of a new era in the development of literature. 13. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Sheridan was the only important English dramatist of the eighteenth century. In his plays, morality is the constant theme. He is much concerned with current moral issues and lashes harshly at the social vices of the day. His plays, especially The Rivals《情 敌》and The School for Scandal《造谣学校》, are generally considered as important links between the masterpieces of Shakespeare and those of Bernard Shaw, and as true classics in English comedy. In The Rivals, a comedy of manners, he is satirizing the traditional practice of the parents to arrange marriages for their children without considering the latter’s opinion. The School for Scandal is mainly a story about two brothers, the hypocritical Joseph Surface and the good-natured, imprudent, spendthrift Charles Surface. In the play Lay Sneerwell’s house is described as a den of wicked people. It is a sharp satire on the moral degeneracy of the aristocratic-bourgeois society in the eighteenth-century England, on the vicious scandal-mongering among the idle rich, on the reckless life of extravagance and love intrigues in the high society and, above all, on the immorality and hypocrisy behind the mask of honorable living and high-sounding moral principles. And in terms of the artistic art, it shows the playwright at his best. No wonder, the play has been regarded as the best comedy since Shakespeare. The excerpt is taken from Act 4, Scene III, the famous scene where Joseph’s entanglement with Lady Teazle is found out. 14. Thomas Gray Thomas Gray is regarded as the leader of ―the Graveyard School‖ mainly for his masterpiece poem ―Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard‖. The poem is the outcome of about eight years’ careful composition and polish. It is more or less connected with the melancholy event of the death of Richard West, Gray’s intimate friend. In this poem, Gray reflects on death, the sorrows of life, and the mysteries of human life with a touch of his personal melancholy. The poet compares the common folk with the great ones, wondering what the commons could have achieved if they had had the chance. Here he reveals his sympathy for the poor and the unknown, but mocks the great ones who despise the poor and bring havoc on them. In a way, the poem conveys what is implied in the proverb ―In the grave the rich and poor lie equal.‖ The poem abounds in images and arouses sentiment in the bosom of every reader. Though the use of artificial poetic diction and distorted word order make understanding of the poem somewhat difficult, the artistic polish –--the sure control of language, imagery, rhythm, and his subtle moderation of style and tone –--gives the poem a unique charm of its own. The poem has been ranked among the best of the eighteenth century English poetry. 15. Between 1761 and 1762 Oliver Goldsmith completed his pastoral novel The Vicar of Wakefield. The whole story is told in the voice of Dr. Primrose, who is the embodiment of the oppressed people. The novel is of sentimentalism. 第四章 浪漫主义时期的英国文学 1. English Romanticism The English Romantic period is an age of poetry. Blake，Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley and Keats are the major Romantic poets. They started a rebellion against the neoclassical literature, which was later regarded as the poetic revolution. Wordsworth and Coleridge were the major representatives of this movement. They explored new theories and innovated new techniques in poetry writing. They saw poetry as a healing energy; they believed that poetry could purify both individual souls and the society. The Lyrical Ballads《抒情歌谣集》, written by Wordsworth and Coleridge in 1798, acts as a manifesto for the English Romanticism. Wordsworth’s long poem The Prelude was in fact a record of the growth of his mind and his development as a poet. Wordsworth defines the poet as a ―man speaking to men,‖ and poetry as ―the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings, which originates in emotion recollected in tranquility.‖(诗歌是强烈情感的自发流露，发乎情，止乎静。) The Romantics not only extol the faculty of imagination, but also stress the concept of spontaneity and inspiration, regarding them as something crucial for true poetry. The natural world comes to the forefront of the poetic imagination. Nature is not only the major source of poetic imagery, but also provides the dominant subject matter. Wordsworth is the closest to nature. To escape from a world that had become excessively rational, as well as excessively materialistic and ugly, the Romantics would turn to other times and places, where the qualities they valued could be convincingly depicted. Romantics also tend to be nationalistic, defending the great poets and dramatists of their own national heritage against the advocates of classical rules who tended to glorify Rome and rational Italian and French neoclassical art as superior to the native traditions. To the Romantics, poetry should be free from all rules. They would turn to the humble people and their everyday life for subjects. Romantic writers are always seeking for the Absolute, the Ideal through the transcendence of the actual. They have also made bold experiments in poetic language, versification and design, and constructed a variety of forms on original principles of structure and style. Thematically speaking, romantics celebrate individual freedom, spontaneity, and love of nature. 2. Gothic novel Gothic novel, a type of romantic fiction that predominated the late eighteen century, was one phase of the Romantic movement. Its principal elements are violence, horror, and the supernatural, which strongly appeal to the reader’s emotion. The setting of a Gothic novel is usually set in a gloomy old castle or monastery. With its descriptions of the dark, irrational side of human nature, the Gothic form has exerted a great influence over the writers of the Romantic period. Works like The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe and Frankenstein by Mary Shelley are typical Gothic romance. 3. William Blake William Blake is one of major English Romantic poets in the 19th century. He is famous for his two volumes of poems: Songs of Innocence《天真之歌》and Songs of Experience《经验之歌》. Childhood is central to Blake’s concern in these two volumes of poems. The former is a lovely volume of poems, presenting a happy and innocent world, though not without its evils and sufferings. In this volume, Blake, with his eager quest for new poetic forms and techniques, broke completely with the traditions of the 18th century. He experimented in meter(音步) and rhyme and introduced bold metrical innovations which could not be found in the poetry of his contemporaries. The Chimney Sweeper is from this volume. The poem indicates the conditions which makes religion a consolation, a prospect of ―illusory happiness‖. Songs of Experience paints a different world, a world of misery, poverty, disease, war and repression with a melancholy tone. The benighted England becomes the world of the dark wood and of the weeping prophet. The Chimney Sweeper from this volume reveals the true nature of religion which helps bring misery to the poor children. The two ―Chimney Sweeper‖ poems are good examples to reveal the relation between an economic circumstance, i. e. the exploitation of child labor, and an ideological circumstance, i. e. the role played by religion in making people compliant to exploitation. Symbolism is a distinctive feature of Blake’s poetry. Tyger is also a famous poem by Blake. Lamb in the poem is a symbol of peace and purity whereas tyger a symbol of dread and violence. 4. William Wordsworth As a great Romantic poet, Wordsworth had a long poetic career. His Lyrical Ballads, written with Coleridge, is generally regarded as the symbol of the beginning of the Romantic period in England. The Prelude is ranked by many critics as his greatest work. According to the subjects, Wordsworth’s short poems can be classified into two groups: poems about nature and poems about human life. Wordsworth is regarded as a ―worshipper of nature‖ or ―a nature poet‖. He can penetrate to the heart of things and give the reader the very life of nature. ―I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud‖ is perhaps the most anthologized poem in English literature, and one that takes us to the core of Wordsworth’s poetic beliefs. To Wordsworth, nature embodies human beings in their diverse circumstances. It is nature that gives him ―strength and knowledge full of peace.‖ The poet thinks that it is a bliss to recollect the beauty of nature in his mind while he is in solitude. Common life is the poet’s only subject of literary interest. The joys and sorrows of the common people are his themes. His sympathy always goes to the suffering poor. For example, ―The Solitary Reaper‖ and ―To a Highland Girl‖ use rural figures to suggest the timeless mystery of sorrowful humanity and its radiant beauty. The former shows that the girl’s singing deeply moved the traveler and kept lingering in his heart. She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways is one of his famous ―Lucy poems‖, in which the lover tells that she (his lover) lived unknown and died unknown. Composed upon Westminster Bridge describes a vivid picture of a beautiful morning in London. Wordsworth is a poet in memory of the past. To him, life is a cyclical journey. Its beginning finally turns out to be its end. His philosophy of life is presented in his masterpiece The Prelude. Wordsworth’s deliberate simplicity and refusal to decorate the truth of experience produced a kind of pure and profound poetry which no other poet has ever equaled. Poetry, he believes, originates from ―emotion recollected in tranquility.‖ Rejecting the contemporary emphasis on form and intellectual approach that drained poetic writing of strong emotion, he maintains that the scenes and events of everyday life and the speech of ordinary people are the raw material of which poetry can and should be made. Wordsworth is the leading figure of the English Romantic poetry, the major poetic voice of the period. His is a voice of searchingly comprehensive humanity and one that inspires his audience to see the world freshly, sympathetically and naturally. The most important contribution he has made is that he has not only started the modern poetry but also changed the course of English poetry. Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southey once lived near an area in the lake district in the northwestern of England. They are called ―Lake Poets‖. Wordsworth succeeded Southey as Poet Laureate in 1843. 5. Samuel Taylor Coleridge Coleridge is one of the major Romantic poets in the 19th-century England. His actual achievement as poet can be divided into two remarkably diverse groups: the demonic(魔幻诗)and the conversational(对话诗). The demonic group included his three masterpieces: The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Christabel and Kubla Khan, or A Vision in a Dream.. Mysticism and demonism with strong imagination are the distinctive features of this group. The poems are set in a strange territory of the poet’s memory and dream. The first poem tells an adventurous story of a sailor, who killed an albatross, suffered from his sin and repented what he did and was finally saved. The second poem tells an old tale of a serpent disguised as a beautiful lady to victimize an innocent maiden. The third poem was composed in a dream after the poet took the opium. The poet was reading about Kubla Klan , a Chinese emperor, when he fell asleep. When he awoke, he wrote down the images of the river, of the magnificent palace and a girl playing a dulcimer (一种古乐器)and singing. Generally, the conversational group speaks more directly of an allied(相似的)theme: the desire to go home, not to the past, but to ―an improved infancy‖. Each of these poems verges upon a kind of vicarious and purgatorial(受苦的)atonement, in which Coleridge must fail or suffer so that someone he loves may succeed or experience joy. Coleridge is one of the first critics to give close critical attention to language, maintaining that the true end of poetry is to give pleasure ―through the medium of beauty‖. In analyzing Shakespeare, Coleridge emphasizes the philosophical aspect, reading more into the subject than the text and going deeper into the inner reality than only caring for the outer form. 6. George Gordon Byron(1) Byronic heroAs a leading Romanticist, Byron’s chief contribution is his creation of the ―Byronic hero‖, a proud, mysterious rebel figure of noble origin. With immense superiority in his passions and powers(不可一世的激情和能力), this Byronic hero would carry on his shoulders the burden of righting all the wrongs in a corrupt society(肩负起匡正腐败社会中所有邪恶的重任)，and would rise single-handedly against any kind of tyrannical rules either in government, in religion, or in moral principles with unconquerable wills and inexhaustible energies. The conflict is usually one of rebellious individuals against outworn(颓废的)social systems and conventions. Such a hero appears first in Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage《恰尔德)哈尔罗德游记》, and then further developed in later works such as the Oriental Tales《东方故事》, Manfred 《曼弗雷德》, and Don Juan《唐璜》 in different guises. The figure is, to some extent, modeled on the life and personality of Byron himself, and makes Byron famous both at home and abroad. (2) Don JuanDon Juan is Byron’s masterpiece, a great comic epic of the early 19th century. It is a poem based on a traditional Spanish legend of a great lover and seducer of women. In the conventional sense, Juan is immoral, but Byron takes this poem as the most moral(把这首诗作为道德的楷模). Byron places in Juan the moral positives like courage, generosity and frankness, which, according to Byron, are virtues neglected by modern society. With an impartiality, Byron reveals the barbarity and blood-lust of war, the incompetence of the generals who conduct it, and the rapaciousness(贪婪)of the rulers who urge it. In the last cantos(诗章)of the work, Byron’s indignation at the self-serving(自私的)cant(伪善的言词)of the English aristocracy is supported by a subtle social awareness and a narrative skill which verges on the verse novel(诗歌小说). Byron puts into Don Juan his rich knowledge of the world and the wisdom gained from experience. It presents brilliant pictures of life in its various stages of love, joy, suffering, hatred and fear. The unifying principle in Don Juan is the basic ironic theme of appearance( 表 关于同志近三年现实表现材料材料类招标技术评分表图表与交易pdf视力表打印pdf用图表说话 pdf 象)and reality(现实), i. e. what things seem to be and what they actually are. Byron’s satire on the English society in the later part of the poem can be compared with Pope’s. The diverse materials and the clash of emotions gathered in the poem are harmonized by Byron’s insight into the difference between life’s appearance and its actuality. (3) The Isles of Greece《哀希腊》 The Isles of Greece is taken from Don Juan, Canto III, which is sung by a Greek singer at the wedding of Don Juan and Haidee. In the early 19th century, Greece was under the rule of Turk. By contrasting the freedom of ancient Greece and the present enslavement, the poet appealed to people to struggle for liberty.