英美文学名词解释(一)

第一篇：英美文学名词解释(一)

1.Allegory: A tale in verse or prose in which characters, actions, or settings represent abstract ideas or moral qualities.An allegory is a story with two meanings, a literal meaning and a symbolic meaning.2.Alliteration: The repetition of the initial consonant sounds in poetry.3.Allusion: A reference to a person, a place, an event, or a literary work that a writer expects the reader to recognize and respond to.An allusion may be drawn from history, geography, literature, or religion.4.American Naturalism: American naturalism was a new and harsher realism.American naturalism had been shaped by the war;by the social upheavals that undermined the comforting faith of an earlier age.America’s literary naturalists dismissed the validity of comforting moral truths.They attempted to achieve extreme objectivity and frankness, presenting characters of low social and economic classes who were determined by their environment and heredity.In presenting the extremes of life, the naturalists sometimes displayed an affinity to the sensationalism of early romanticism, but unlike their romantic predecessors, the naturalists emphasized that the world was amoral, that men and women had no free will, that lives were controlled by heredity and environment, that the destiny of humanity was misery in life and oblivion in death.Although naturalist literature described the world with sometimes brutal realism, it sometimes also aimed at bettering the world through social reform.5.American Puritanism: Puritanism is the practices and beliefs of the Puritans.The Puritans were originally members of a division of the Protestant Church.The first settlers who became the founding fathers of the American nation were quite a few of them.They

were a group of serious, religious people, advocating highly religious and moral principles.As the word itself hints, Puritans wanted to purity their religious beliefs and practices.They accepted the doctrine of predestination, original sin and total depravity, and limited atonement through a special infusion of grace form God.As a culture heritage, Puritanism did have a profound influence on the early American mind.American Puritanism also had a enduring influence on American literature.6.American Realism: In American literature, the Civil War brought the Romantic Period to an end.The Age of Realism came into existence.It came as a reaction against the lie of romanticism and sentimentalism.Realism turned from an emphasis on the strange toward a faithful rendering of the ordinary, a slice of life as it is really lived.It expresses the concern for commonplace and the low, and it offers an objective rather than an idealistic view of human nature and human experience.7.American Romanticism: The Romantic Period covers the first half of the 19th century.A rising America with its ideals of democracy and equality, its industrialization, its westward expansion, and a variety of foreign influences were among the important factors which made literary expansion and expression not only possible but also inevitable in the period immediately following the nation’s political independence.Yet, romantics frequently shared certain general characteristics: moral enthusiasm, faith in value of individualism and intuitive perception, and a presumption that the natural world was a source of goodness and man’s societies a source of corruption.Romantic values were prominent in American politics, art, and philosophy until the Civil War.The romantic exaltation of the individual suited the nation’s revolutionary heritage and its

frontier egalitarianism.8.American Transcendentalism: Transcendentalists terroras from the romantic literature of Europe.They spoke for cultural rejuvenation and against the materialism of Americagogopirit, or the Oversoul, as the most important thing in the Universe.They stressed the importance of the individual.To them, the individual was the most important element of society.They offered a fresh perception of nature as symbolic of the Spirit or God.Nature was, to them, alive, filled with God’s overwhelming presence.Transcendentalism is based on the belief that the most fundamental truths about life and death can be reached only by going beyond the world of the senses.Emerson’s Nature has been called the “Manifesto of American Transcendentalism” and his The American Scholar has been rightly regarded as America’s “Declaration of Intellectual Independence”.9.Analogy:(a figure of speech)A comparison made between tow things to show the similarities between them.Analogies are often used for illustration or for argument.10.Anapest抑抑扬: It’s made up of two unstressed and one stressed syllables, with the two unstressed ones in front.11.Antagonist: A person or force opposing the protagonist in a narrative;a rival of the hero or heroine.12.Antithesis:(a figure of speech)The balancing of two contrasting ideas, words phrases, or sentences.An antithesis is often expressed in a balanced sentence, that is, a sentence in which identical or similar grammatical structure is used to express contrasting ideas.13.Aphorism: A concise, pointed statement expressing a wise or clever observation about

life.14.Apostrophe顿呼法: A figure of speech in which an absent or a dead person, an abstract quality, or something nonhuman is addressed directly.15.Argument: A form of discourse in which reason is used to influence or change people’s idea or actions.Writers practice argument most often when writing nonfiction, particularly essays or speeches.16.Aside: In drama, lines spoken by a character in an undertone or directly to the audience.An aside is meant to be heard by the other characters onstage.17.Assonance: The repetition of similar vowel sounds, especially in poetry.Assonance is often employed to please the ear or emphasize certain sounds.18.Atmosphere: The prevailing mood or feeling of a literary work.Atmosphere is often developed, at least in part, through descriptions of setting.Such descriptions help to create an emotional climate for the werrors to establish the reader’s expectations and attitudes.19.Autobiography: A person’s account of his or her own life.An autobiography is generally written in narrative form and includes some introspection.20.Ballad: A story told in verse and usually meant to be sung.In many countries, the folk ballad was one of the earliest forms of literature.Folk ballads have no known authors.They were transmitted orally from generation to generation and were not set down in writing until centuries after they were first sung.The subject matter of folk ballads stems from the everyday life of the common people.Devices commonly used in ballads are the refrain, incremental repetition, and code language.A later form of ballad is the literary

ballad, which imitates the style of the folk ballad.

第二篇：英美文学名词解释

名词解释（英国）

Epic（叙事诗）: Epic is a narrative poem on the grand scale and in majestic style concerning the exploits and adventures of a superhuman hero(or heroes)engaged in a quest or some serious endeavor.Among noted epics are

Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, old English Beowulf and Milton’s Paradise Lost.is a long composition, in verse or in prose, describing the life and adventures of a noble hero.It generally concerns knights and involves a large amount of fighting as well as a number of miscellaneous adventures and a series of love stories.anonymous narrative song, usually in 4-line stanzas, with the second and the fourth lines rhymed.The word “Renaissance” means “rebirth”(of learning).The Renaissance period was marked by a reawakening of interest in learning, in the individual and in the world of nature.The revival of learning led scholars back to the culture of Greece and Rome.The rebirth of interest in the

individual gave rise to a new appreciation of beauty, to a desire for self-expression in varied activities and to the creation of great works of art.The renewal of curiosity about the natural world ultimately drew men to discover new lands and new scientific truth.Humanism was a literary and philosophic system of thought which attempted to place the affairs of mankind at the centre of its concerns.According to humanists, man should mould the world according to his own desires, and attains happiness by removing all external checks by the exercise of the human intellect.Sonnet（十四行诗）：A sonnet is a fourteen-line poem in iambic pentameter with a carefully patterned rhyme scheme.Puritanism was the religious doctrine of revolutionary

bourgeoisie during the English Revolution.It preached thrift, sobriety, hard work and unceasing labor, with no extravagant enjoyment of the fruits of labor.Worldly

pleasures were condemned as harmful.Puritans opposed

churches,squandering property.Enlightenment（启蒙运动）：The movement, on the whole, an expression of the struggle of the bourgeoisie against feudalism, class inequality, stagnation and prejudices.The enlighteners believed in the power of reason and the watchword was Common Sense.Neo-classicism（新古典主义）：Modeling itself on the literature of ancient Greece and Rome, neoclassicism exalts the virtues of proportion, unity, harmony, grace, taste, manners, and restraint.It values realism and reason over imagination and emotion.Wit and satire flourished in this period, as did the ode and verse written in heroic couplets.Romanticism is a movement prevailing the Western world in the 19th century in literature, art, music and philosophy, beginning as a reaction and protest against the bondage of rules and customs of

neo-classicism to unfetter human spirit.It returned to nature and plain humanity for material.It is a movement of expression of individual originality.Imagination is highlighted and a dream of golden age is required against stern reality.义）：Critical realists

described with much vividness and artistic skill the chief traits of the English society and criticized the capitalist system from a democratic viewpoint.In their best works, the greed and hypocrisy of the upper classes are contrasted with the honesty and good-heartedness of the obscure “simple people” of the lower classes.Humor and satire abound.Without finding a way of solution, they do not point toward revolution but rather evolution or

reformism with happy endings.basic theory of the Aesthetic movement---“art for art’s sake”.Aestheticism places art above life, and holds that life should imitate art, not art imitate life.According to the aesthetes, all artistic creation is absolutely subjective as opposed to

objective.Only when art is for art’s sake, can it be immortal.Stream of Consciousness（意识流小说）：First, it reveals the action or plot through the mental processes of the

characters.Second, character development is achieved

through revelation of extremely personal and often typical thought processes.Third, the action of the plot seldom corresponds to real

chronological time, but moves back and forth through present time to memories of past

events and dreams of the future.Fourth, it replaces narration, description, and commentary with interior monologue and free association.动）：feminism is a belief in the social, political and economic equality of the sexes, and a movement organized around the conviction that biological sex should not be the

pre-determinant factor shaping a person's social identity or socio-political or economic rights.结）：In Greek myth, Oedipus is the king who is said to kill his father and marry his mother.According to Freud, children may have sexual drives subconsciously toward the opposite parent.Here, Oedipus complex refers to that boy’s obsession to his mother.In English literature, Lawrence is the first to introduce male characters’ impotence to females because of mother’s excessive love.（美国）

清教）

The settlements grew out of religious controversy, out of an urge for religious freedom and determination, out of fleeing from religious and political oppression and persecution, out of human thirst for greater

economic opportunity, for land, and for adventure.American Puritans stressed predestination, original sin, total depravity and limited atonement from God’s grace.They built a way of stressed hard work, diligence and thrift, piety and sobriety, rigid sense of morality, self-reliance.Transcendentalism（超验主义）

Transcendentalism is a philosophical and literary

movement centered in Concord and Boston, which was

prominent in the intellectual and cultural life of New

England from 1836 until just before the Civil War.It stresses mode of knowledge grounded in feeling and intuition;self-trust, self-reliance and self-sufficiency;a turn away from modern society;a faith in a divine “Principle”, or “Spirit”, or “Soul”.In gothic novel, there is usually a gloomy castle furnished with dungeon.The typical story focused on the sufferings imposed on an innocent

heroine by a cruel and lustful villain, and made bountiful use of ghosts, mysterious disappearances, and other sensational and supernatural occurrence.The principal aim of such novels was to evoke chilling terror and a variety of horror.

第三篇：英美文学名词解释

英美文学名词解释

1.Allegory: A tale in verse or prose in which characters, actions, or settings represent abstract ideas or moral qualities.An allegory is a story with two meanings, a literal meaning and a symbolic meaning.2.Alliteration: The repetition of the initial consonant sounds in poetry.3.Allusion: A reference to a person, a place, an event, or a literary work that a writer expects the reader to recognize and respond to.An allusion may be drawn from history, geography, literature, or religion.4.American Naturalism: American naturalism was a new and harsher realism.American naturalism had been shaped by the war;by the social upheavals that undermined the comforting faith of an earlier age.America’s literary naturalists dismissed the validity of comforting moral truths.They attempted to achieve extreme objectivity and frankness, presenting characters of low social and economic classes who were determined by their environment and heredity.In presenting the extremes of life, the naturalists sometimes displayed an affinity to the sensationalism of early romanticism, but unlike their romantic predecessors, the naturalists emphasized that the world was amoral, that men and women had no free will, that lives were controlled by heredity and environment, that the destiny of humanity was misery in life and oblivion in death.Although naturalist literature described the world with sometimes brutal realism, it sometimes also aimed at bettering the world through social reform.5.American Puritanism: Puritanism is the practices and beliefs of the Puritans.The Puritans were originally members of a division of the Protestant Church.The first settlers who became the founding fathers of the American nation were quite a few of them.They were a group of serious, religious people, advocating highly religious and moral principles.As the word itself hints, Puritans wanted to purity their religious beliefs and practices.They accepted the doctrine of predestination, original sin and total depravity, and limited atonement through a special infusion of grace form God.As a culture heritage, Puritanism did have a profound influence on the early American mind.American Puritanism also had a enduring influence on American literature.6.American Realism: In American literature, the Civil War brought the Romantic Period to an end.The Age of Realism came into existence.It came as a reaction against the lie of romanticism and sentimentalism.Realism turned from an emphasis on the strange toward a faithful rendering of the ordinary, a slice of life as it is really lived.It expresses the concern for commonplace and the low, and it offers an objective rather than an idealistic view of human nature and human experience.7.American Romanticism: The Romantic Period covers the first half of the 19th century.A rising America with its ideals of democracy and equality, its industrialization, its westward expansion, and a variety of foreign influences were among the important factors which made literary expansion and expression not only possible but also inevitable in the period immediately following the nation’s political independence.Yet, romantics frequently shared certain general characteristics: moral enthusiasm, faith in value of individualism and intuitive perception, and a presumption that the natural world was a source of goodness and man’s societies a source of corruption.Romantic values were prominent in American politics, art, and philosophy until the Civil War.The romantic exaltation of the individual suited the nation’s revolutionary heritage and its frontier egalitarianism.8.American Transcendentalism: Transcendentalists terroras from the romantic literature of Europe.They spoke for cultural rejuvenation and against the materialism of Americagogopirit, or the Oversoul, as the most important thing in the Universe.They stressed the importance of the individual.To them, the individual was the most important element of society.They offered a fresh perception of nature as symbolic of the Spirit or God.Nature was, to them, alive, filled with God’s overwhelming presence.Transcendentalism is based on the belief that the most fundamental truths about life and death can be reached only by going beyond the world of the senses.Emerson’s Nature has been called the “Manifesto of American Transcendentalism” and his The American Scholar has been rightly regarded as America’s “Declaration of Intellectual Independence”.9.Analogy:(a figure of speech)A comparison made between tow things to show the similarities between them.Analogies are often used for illustration or for argument.10.Anapest抑抑扬: It’s made up of two unstressed and one stressed syllables, with the two unstressed ones in front.11.Antagonist: A person or force opposing the protagonist in a narrative;a rival of the hero or heroine.12.Antithesis:(a figure of speech)The balancing of two contrasting ideas, words phrases, or sentences.An antithesis is often expressed in a balanced sentence, that is, a sentence in which identical or similar grammatical structure is used to express contrasting ideas.13.Aphorism: A concise, pointed statement expressing a wise or clever observation about life.14.Apostrophe顿呼法: A figure of speech in which an absent or a dead person, an abstract quality, or something nonhuman is addressed directly.15.Argument: A form of discourse in which reason is used to influence or change people’s idea or actions.Writers practice argument most often when writing nonfiction, particularly essays or speeches.16.Aside: In drama, lines spoken by a character in an undertone or directly to the audience.An aside is meant to be heard by the other characters onstage.17.Assonance: The repetition of similar vowel sounds, especially in poetry.Assonance is often employed to please the ear or emphasize certain sounds.18.Atmosphere: The prevailing mood or feeling of a literary work.Atmosphere is often developed, at least in part, through descriptions of setting.Such descriptions help to create an emotional climate for the werrors to establish the reader’s expectations and attitudes.19.Autobiography: A person’s account of his or her own life.An autobiography is generally written in narrative form and includes some introspection.20.Ballad: A story told in verse and usually meant to be sung.In many countries, the folk ballad was one of the earliest forms of literature.Folk ballads have no known authors.They were transmitted orally from generation to generation and were not set down in writing until centuries after they were first sung.The subject matter of folk ballads stems from the everyday life of the common people.Devices commonly used in ballads are the refrain, incremental repetition, and code language.A later form of ballad is the literary ballad, which imitates the style of the folk ballad.21.Ballad stanza: A type of four-line stanza.The first and third lines have four stressed words or syllables;the second and fourth lines have three stresses.Ballad meter is usually iambic.The number of unstressed syllables in each line may vary.The second and fourth lines rhyme.22.Biography: A detailed account of a person’s life written by another person.23.Blank verse: Verse written in unrhymed iambic pentameter.24.Caesura诗间休止: A break or pause in a line of poetry.25.Canto: A section or division of a long poem.26.Caricature: The use of exaggeration or distortion to make a figure appear comic or ridiculous.A physical characteristic, an eccentricity, a personality trait, or an act may be exaggerated.27.Character: In appreciating a short story, characters are an indispensable element.Characters are the persons presented in a dramatic or narrative work.Forst divides characters into two types: flat character, which is presented without much individualizing detail;and round character, which is complex in temperament and motivation and is represented with subtle particularity.28.Characterizatiogogoo, the means by which a writer reveals that personality.29.Classicism: A movement or tendency in art, literature, or music that reflects the principles manifested in the art of ancient Greece and Rome.Classicism emphasizes the traditional and the universal, and places value on reason, clarity, balance, and order.Classicism, with its concern for reason and universal themes, is traditionally opposed to Romanticism, which is concerned with emotions and personal themes.30.Climax: The point of greatest intensity, interest, or suspense in a gogotory’s turning point.The action leading to the climax and the simultaneous increase of tension in the plot are known as the rising action.All action after the climax is referred to as the falling action, or resolution.The term crisis is sometimes used interchangeably with climax.31.Comedy: in general, a literary work that ends happily with a healthy, amicable armistice between the protagonist and society.32.Conceit: A kind of metaphor that makes a comparison between two startlingly different things.A conceit may be a brief metaphor, but it usually provides the framework for an entire poem.An especially unusual and intellectual kind of conceit is the metaphysical conceit.33.Conflict: A struggle between two opposing forces or characters in a short story, novel, play, or narrative poem.Usually the events of the story are all related to the conflict, and the conflict is resolved in some way by the story’s end.34.Connotation: All the emotions and associations that a word or phrase may arouse.Connotation is distinct from denotation, which is the literal or “ dictionary” meaning of a word or phrase.35.Consonance: The repetition of similar consonant sounds in the middle or at the end of words.36.Couplet: Two consecutive lines of poetry that rhyme.A heroic couplet is an iambic pentameter couplet.37.Critical Realism: The critical realism of the 19th century flourished in the fouties and in the beginning of fifties.The realists first and foremost set themselves the task of criticizing capitalist society from a democratic viewpoint and delineated the crying contradictions of bourgeois reality.But they did not find a way to eradicate social evils.38.Dactyl扬抑抑: It’s made up of one stressed and two unstressed syllables, with the

stressed in front.39.Denotation: The literal or “dictionary” meaning of a word.40.Denouement结局: The outcome of a plot.The denouement is that part of a play, short story, novel, or narrative poem in which conflicts are resolved or unraveled, and mysteries and secrets connected with the plot are explained.41.Description: It is a great part of conversation and of almost all writing.It is a part of autobiography, storytelling.With description, the writer tries terror, feel, and hear by showing rather than by merely telling.It’s through the use of specific details and concrete language that abstract ideas and half-formed thoughts are make vividly real.We have objective and subjective description.42.Diction: A writer’s choice of words, particularly for clarity, effectiveness, and precision.43.Dissonance: A harsh or disagreeable combination of sounds;discord.44.Dramatic monologue: A kind of narrative poem in which one character speaks to one or more listeners whose replies are not given in the poem.The occasion is usually a crucial one in the speaker’s personality as well as the incident that is the subject of the poem.45.Elegy: A poem of mourning, usually over the death of an individual.An elegy is a type of lyric poem, usually formal in language and structure, and solemn or even melancholy in tone.46.Emblematic image: A verbal picture or figure with a long tradition of moral or religious meaning attached to it.47.Enlightenment: With the advent of the 18th century, in England, as in other European countries, there sprang into life a public movement known as the Enlightenment.The Enlightenment on the whole, was an expression of struggle of the then progressive class of bourgeois against feudalism.The egogo inequality, stagnation, prejudices and other survivals of feudalism.The attempted to place all branches of science at the service of mankind by connecting them with the actual deeds and requirements of the people.48.Epic: A long narrative poem telling about the deeds of a great hero and reflecting the values of the society from which it originated.Many epics were drawn from an oral tradition and were transmitted by song and recitation before they were written down.49.Epigram: A short, witty, pointed statement often in the form of a poem.50.Epigraph: A quotation or motto at the beginning of a chapter, book, short story, or poem that makes some point about the work.51.Epilogue收场白: A short addition or conclusion at the end of a literary work.52.Epiphany主显节: A moment of illumination, usually occurring at or near the end of a work.53.Epitaph: An inscription on a gravestone or a short poem written in memory of someone who has died.54.Epithet称号: A descriptive name or phrase used to characterize someone or something.55.Era of Modernism: The years from 1910 to 1930 are often called the Era of Modernism, for there seems to have been in both Europe and America a strong awareness of some sort of “break” with the past.The new artists shared a desire to capture the complexity of modern life, to focus on the variety and confusion of the 20th century by reshaping and sometimes discarding the ideas and habits of the 19th century.The Era of Modernism was indeed the era of the New.56.Essay: A piece of prose writing, usually short, that deals with a subject in a limited way and expresses a particular point or view.An essay may be serious or humorous, tightly organized

or rambling, restrained or emotional.The two general classifications of essay are the informal essay and the formal essay.An informal essay is usually brief and is written as if the writer is talking informally to the reader about some topic, using a conversational style and a personal or humorous tone.By contrast, a formal essay is tightly organized, dignified in style, and serious in tone.57.Exemplum说教故事: A tale, usually inserted into the text of a sermon that illustrates a moral principle.58.Exposition:(1)That part of a narrative or drama in which important background information is revealed.(2)It is the kind of writing that is intended primarily to present information.Exposition is one of the major forms of discourse.The most familiar form it takes is in essays.Exposition is also that part of a play in which important background information is revealed to the audience.59.Fable: A fable is a short story, often with animals as its characters, which illustrate a moral.60.Farce: A type of comedy based on a ridiculous situation, often with stereotyped characters.The humor in a farce is largely slapstick—that is, it often involves crude physical action.The characters in a farce are often the butts of practical jokes.bb s.kaoyan.com

第四篇：英美文学

Analysis of Robinson Crusoe

2009级师范三班刘静 Robinson Crusoe is written by Defoe(1660 ~ 1731), known as the father of English novel and the periodical literature.He is the father of the English novel and periodical literature, who was born in a family which was against the Anglican Protestant.His father is a businessman, doing business.His article influenced the later development of journal articles and newspaper.Because the speech, he was repeatedly arrested.At the age of 59 Defoe began writing fiction as a novelist, show remarkable ability.Robinson Crusoe Robinson is Defoe's first novel, is also one of the most famous novels.It is based on a British seaman on a deserted island alone for 4 years in exile records and creation.Robinson is the heroine of Defoe works in accordance with their ideals and created the character, he killed out of doing business, living on a desert island for 28 years, overcome all sorts of unimaginable difficulties.He start empty-handed, develop the island, not only to their own survival, and create a new world.He was a pioneer in the image, a real asset class hero.In this figure embodies the western ocean civilization tradition, with the outward development of curiosity, desire to conquer and spirit of adventure, praised the strength quality and working spirit.The novel opens English realistic novel road.In this novel, there are so many about the Wonderful part, but two points impress: one is the author of the narrative language easy to understand.In front of the book, the author use a lot of space to introduce Robinson in the sea to sea before, whether does not listen to parents' guide, but follow the guidance of the soul, the careful psychological description, the author description most incisive.Two is a fascinating story, the protagonist of nearly thirty years of life vividly in front of us, let our eyes as if emerging from a young life.Robinson Crusoe is to let a person look after all that the most primitive, most of my books, not only because it is the wonderful, and it gives us the modern enlightenment.The most qualities I learn from Robinson Crusoe is not his hard-working and brave, but his amazing mental capacity.One can imagine, a single large living alone on a desert island life ten years, no one to accompany him, even the most basic, and a person simply talk for a while to do.The deserted island there is no house, no rice, can only rely on his own hard to create a piece of heaven and earth.The first nonwhite character to be given a realistic, individualized, and humane portrayal in the English novel, Friday has a huge literary and cultural importance.Recent rewritings of the Crusoe story, like J.M.Coetzee’s Foe and Michel Tournier’s Friday, emphasize the sad consequences of Crusoe’s

failure to understand Friday and suggest how the tale might be told very differently from the native’s perspective.Besides his importance to our culture, Friday is a key figure within the context of the novel.Friday’s sincere questions to Crusoe about the devil, which Crusoe answers only

indirectly and hesitantly, leave us wondering whether Crusoe’s knowledge of Christianity is superficial and sketchy in contrast to Friday’s full

understanding of his own god Benamuckee.In short, Friday’s exuberance and emotional directness often point out the wooden conventionality of Crusoe’s personality.Despite Friday’s subjugation, however, Crusoe appreciates Friday much more than he would a mere servant.Crusoe does not seem to value intimacy with humans much, but he does say that he loves Friday, which is a

remarkable disclosure.Crusoe may bring Friday Christianity and clothing, but Friday brings Crusoe emotional warmth and a vitality of spirit that Crusoe’s own European heart lacks.This novel shows that we need to believe ourselves, where there is a will, there is way.Use our hands, then see a new world.What is more, we are not only live ourselves in the world, we need to care about others.Be brave, and

never lose hope.

第五篇：英美文学

术语解释：

Couplets: a rhymed pair of Iambic pentameter lines.Blank verse: unrhymed Iambic pentameter lines.Sonnet: 14 Iambic pentameter lines which follows certain rhyme schemes.2.The conquest: In the year the Normans headed by which is mainly about 4.The Canterbury Tales, in Chaucer’s plan, was to exceed that of Boccaccio’s Decameron, but he failed and only 24 tales were written.5.William Shakespeare, one of the first founders of realism.6.In the first period of his work Shakespeare wrote:

1590The Second and Third part of King Henry VI

1591The First part of King Henry VI

1592The Life and Death of King Richard III;The Comedy of Errors

1593Titus Andronicus;The Taming of the Shrew

1594The Two Gentlemen of Verona;Love’s Labour’s Lost;Romeo and Juliet

1595The Life and Death of Richard II;A Midsummer Night’s Dream

***8Much Ado About Nothing;The Merry Wives of Windsor;The Life of King Henry V

1599The Life and Death of Julius Caesar;As You Like It

1600Twelfth Night, or, What You Will

In the second period:

1601 1602 Troilus and Cressida;All’s Well That Ends Well

160416051606Antony and Cleopatra

1607The Tragedy of Coriolanus;Timon of Athens

1608Pericles, Prince of Tyre

In the third period:

1609Cymbeline, King of Britain

1610The Winter’s Tale

1612The Tempest;The Life of King Henry VIII

7.Hamlet.To be, or not to be: that is the question: is soliloquy which used in a play on the stage and without a listener.To die, to sleep, no more.8.Francis Bacon is scientist, philosopher, essayist.John Donne, a metaphysical poets(玄学派诗人)

John Milton, his Paradise Lost, which tells how Satan rebelled against God and how Adam and Eve were driven1

out of Eden.John Bunyan, The plain man’s pathway to heaven.成功刻画人物。

Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe, the first English novel, 是一部现实主义小说，作品的主题是通过对主人公鲁滨孙的成功刻画，歌颂资本主义上升时期那种不畏艰难和困苦，充满野心和冒险精神，富有百折不挠，顽强毅力和斗志，依靠自己的双手改变一切、创造一切的自我奋斗和创业精神。Is a realistic novel, the theme is according to the successfully describe of the hero Robinson, sing the praises of the not afraid of hardships and difficulties, and full of ambition and spirit of adventure , indomitable will power and fighting power, what’s more, the spirit of self-made depending on oneself in the liftperiod of capitalism.John Swift, his Gulliver’s Travels, 抨击当时英国的议会政治和反动的宗教势力，通过描写格列佛四次遇险，写出了作者看透了当代的腐败，以讽刺的方法，抨击了当时腐败的社会。Attack the Britain

parliamentarism and reactionary religious forces, according to describe Gulliver’s four-time distress to show the writer has understood the contemporary social corruption, and attack the corrupted society by satire at that time.Henry Fielding is the father of English novel.John Smith is the first American writer.Thomas Jefferson is the writer of The Declaration of Independence.The literature of romanticism period is from American War of Independence to before the Civil War.combining historical romance loaded with symbolism and deep psychological themes, bordering on

surrealism.His depictions of the past are a version of historical fiction used only as a vehicle to express

Transcendentalism是美国浪漫主义最高潮时期的体验，认为世间万物都是平等的。

Henry David Thoreau is the beginner of transcendentalism.Herman Melville, American novelist, proser and poet.Moby Dick, in which shows the struggle between

mankind and nature and draw people’s attention on how to get along with nature properly.He wants to subvert transcendentalism.9.诗歌鉴赏

Sonnet 18

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?我能否将你比作夏天？

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:你比夏天更美丽温婉。

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,狂风将五月的蓓蕾凋残，And summer's lease hath all too short a date;夏日的勾留何其短暂。

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,休恋那丽日当空，And often is his gold complexion dimm'd,转眼会云雾迷蒙。

And every fair from fair sometime declines,休叹那百花飘零，By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd:催折于无常的天命。

But thy eternal summer shall not fade唯有你永恒的夏日常新

Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,你的美貌亦毫发无损。

Nor shall Death brag thou wand'rest in his shade,死神也无缘将你幽禁，When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st.你在我永恒的诗中长存。

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,只要世间尚有人吟诵我的诗篇，So long lives this,and this gives life to thee.这诗就将不朽，永葆你的芳颜。

全诗的基本格律是五音步抑扬格（iambic pentameter），包括三个四行组（quatrain）和一个对偶句(couplet)，采用典型的莎氏十四行的韵式，即abab cdcd efef gg。

二、比喻和描述有时平淡或离奇，破坏意美

Sonnet 29

When, in disgrace with fortune and man's eyes当我受尽命运和人们的白眼，I all alone beweep my outcast state暗暗地哀悼自己的身世飘零，And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries徒用呼吁去干扰聋瞶的昊天,And look upon my self and curse my fate顾盼着身影，诅咒自己的生辰，Wishing me like to one more rich in hope愿我和另一个一样富于希望，Featured like him,like him with friends possess'd面貌相似，又和他一样广交游，Desiring this man's art and that man's scope希求这人的渊博，那人的内行，With what I most enjoy contented least最赏心的乐事觉得最不对头；

Yet in these thought myself almost despising可是，当我正要这样看轻自己，Haply I think on thee,and then my state忽然想起了你，于是我的精神，Like to the lark at break of day arising便象云雀破晓从阴霾的大地

From sullen earth sings hymns at heaven's gate振翮上升，高唱着圣歌在天门：

For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings一想起你的爱使我那么富有，That then I scorn to change my state with kings和帝王换位我也不屑于屈就。

赏析：对社会、对自己的命运的不满和无奈。格律是五音步抑扬格（iambic pentameter）.韵式，即abab

cdcd efef gg。

To a Waterfowl《 致 水 鸟 》

-----by William Cullen Bryant威廉·卡伦·布赖恩特

Whither, 'midst falling dew,披着滴落的露珠，While glow the heavens with the last steps of day,天空灿烂，白日的行程就要结束；

Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue穿过玫瑰色的遥远空际，Thy solitary way?你往何方把孤单的前程追逐？

总结：As the dew falls and the sun sets in the rosy depths of the heavens, I wonder where you(waterfowl)are

going?

Vainly the fowler's eye看你远远飞翔而无计可施，Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong,捕鸟人的眼光徒劳眷顾；

As, darkly painted on the crimson sky,满天红霞把你映衬，Thy figure floats along.暗黑的身影飘飘飞舞。

总结：the hunter can bring no harm to you ,you are free and safe.Without success, a hunter(fowler)might try to

bring you down as you float in silhouette against the crimson evening sky.Seek'st thou the plashy brink你是在寻找开阔的大河之滨，Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide,还是波浪拍岸的水草之湖？

Or where the rocking billows rise and sink或者潮水冲刷的海滩，On the chafed ocean side?那里的巨浪奔腾起伏？

• 总结：are you seeking for a place that is suitable for rest? Are you looking for the marshy edge of a lake,the bank of a river, or the shore of the ocean?

There is a Power whose care有上苍把你关照，Teaches thy way along that pathless coast,--在无路的海岸为你指路，The desert and illimitable air,--在荒漠和无边的空际，Lone wandering, but not lost.你孤单的飘荡不致迷途。

• 总结：There is a Power that leads you on your way across deserts and through unlimited expanses of air.You may be wandering and alone, but you are not lost.All day thy wings have fann'd你成天翕动翅膀，At that far height, the cold thin atmosphere:任空气稀薄暴风寒冷，飞在高处，Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land,疲乏中你不肯降落舒适的大地，Though the dark night is near.即使黑夜即将紧闭它的帷幕。

总结：you have been flying the whole day, but do not stop and have a rest though dark is coming.You have been flapping your wings all day high in the sky, yet you continue on even though night is near and land beckons beneath you.And soon that toil shall end,你很快就会结束这样的劳苦，Soon shalt thou find a summer home, and rest,你即将找到你夏天的住处；

And scream among thy fellows;reeds shall bend休息中呼唤自己的伙伴，Soon o'er thy sheltered nest.芦苇也会躬身把你的窝巢遮护。

• 总结：you have a strong desire to be with your family;or, to achieve your goal.Soon your journey will

end.Soon you will descend to your summer home.There, you will scream among others of your kind and find secure shelter among the tall grasses.Thou'rt gone, the abyss of heaven你的身躯全被吞没，Hath swallowed up thy form;yet, on my heart天堂深渊里，你踪影全无；

Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given,然而你的启迪深深留在我的心底，And shall not soon depart.我将久久地久久地把它记住。

• 总结:I can no longer see you, but I will never forget the lesson you taught me.He, who, from zone to zone,谁，从一个地方到另一个地方，Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight,指引你穿越无限的天空作必然的飞翔，In the long way that I must tread alone,也会在我必须独自跋涉的长途上，Will lead my steps aright.正确地引导我的脚步。

赏析：There are eight 4-line stanzas, in each stanza, their rhyme is abab.