英国文学名词解释大全(整理版)
1，alliteration 2，kenning 3，caesura 4,romance 5,chivalery 6,quatrain 7,meter:rhyme 8,heroic couplet 9iambic pentameter 10,bob and wheel 11,realism 12,idealism 13,renaissiance 14,blank verse 15,sonnet 16,comedy 17,tragedy 18,humanism 19,cavalier poets 20,metaphysical poets 21,metaphysical conceit
1. Epic(史诗)（appeared in the Anglo-Saxon Period ）
Epic is an extended narrative poem in elevated or dignified language, like Homer’s Iliad & Odyssey. It usually celebrates the feats of one or more legendary or traditional heroes. The action is simple, but full of magnificence.
Today, some long narrative works, like novels that reveal an age & its people are also called epic.
E.g. Beowulf （the pagan（异教徒），secular(非宗教的) poetry）Iliad 《伊利亚特》，Odyssey《奥德赛》Paradise Lost 《失乐园》.
1.Romance （传奇）(Anglo-Norman feudal England)
?Romance is any imaginative literature that is set in an idealized world and that deals with heroic adventures and battles between good characters and villains or monsters.
?Originally, the term referred to a medieval (中世纪) tale dealing with the love and adventures of kings, queens, knights, and ladies, and including supernatural happenings.
Form:long composition, in verse, in prose
Content:description of life and adventures of a noble hero
Character:a knight, a man of noble birth, skilled in the use of weapons; often described as riding forth to seek adventures, taking part in tournaments(骑士比武), or fighting for his lord in battles; devoted to the church and the king ?Romance lacks general resemblance to truth or reality.
?It exaggerates the vices of human nature and idealizes the virtues.
?It contains perilous (dangerous) adventures more or less remote from ordinary life.
?It lays emphasis on supreme devotion to a fair lady.
3. Alliteration（押头韵）: a repeated initial(开头的) consonant(协调,一致) to successive(连续的) words.
4. Heroic couplet （英雄双韵体）（introduced by Geoffrey Chaucer）
Definition:the rhymed couplet of iambic pentameter; a verse form in epic poetry, with lines of ten syllables and five stresses, in rhyming pairs.
英雄诗体/英雄双韵体：用于史诗或叙事诗，每行十个音节，五个音部，每两行押韵。
5. couplet（两行诗，对句）: Two consecutive lines of poetry that rhyme. A heroic couplet is an iambic pentameter couplet. During the Restoration period and the 18th C. it was a popular verse form.
6. iambic pentameter(抑扬格五音步): A poetic line consisting of five V erse feet (pentameter- is from a Greek word meaning “five”), with each foot an iamb-- that is, an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable.
7. Rhyme（韵，押韵）: the repetition (反复) of sounds in two or more words or phrases that appear close to each other in a poem.E .g. River/shiver, song/long
8. meter (格律) （属于Prosody ['pr?s?d?]（韵文学;诗体学；(某语言的)韵律(学)））: A generally regular
pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables（音节）in poetry.
9. Rhythm（节奏，韵律）（属于Prosody ['pr?s?d?]（韵文学;诗体学；(某语言的)韵律(学)））：refers
to the regular recurrence（反复，重现）of the accent（重读）or stress in poem or song.
E.g. the rhythm of day and night, the seasonal rhythm of the year, the beat of our hearts, and the rise and fall of sea tides, etc.
10．Humanism
1) Humanism is the essence of the Renaissance. According to humanists, human beings were glorious creatures capable of individual development in the direction of perfection and the world can be questioned, explored and enjoyed.
2) By emphasizing the dignity of human beings and the importance of the present life, in contrast to the medieval emphasis on God and contempt for the things of this world, they voiced their beliefs that man did not only have the right to pursue happiness of this life, but had the ability to perfect himself and to perform wanders.
11. Tragedy（Drama form）
?A serious play or novel representing the disastrous downfall of a central character, the protagonist. According to Aristotle, the purpose is to achieve a catharsis through incidents arousing pity and terror. The tragic effect usually depends on our awareness of admirable qualities in he protagonist, which are wasted terribly in the fated disaster.
? E.g. （莎士比亚）Great Tragedies（四大悲剧）（explores the faults/weaknesses of humans）: Hamlet, Othello, King Lear& Macbeth
12. Blank V erse （无韵诗）
?Unrhymed lines of iambic pentameter. It is a very flexible English verse form which can attain rhetorical grandeur（雄伟，壮观）while echoing the natural rhythms of speech. It was first used by Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, and soon became a popular form for narrative and dramatic poetry. Marlowe, Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, Tennyson, Stevens and Robert Frost are fond of this form.
13. Sonnet
A sonnet is a lyric poem comprising 14 rhyming lines of equal length: iambic pentameter in English, hendecasyllables [hen,dek?'sil?bl]（十一音节）in Italian, and alexandrines.[??liɡ?zɑ:ndrain]（亚历山大诗行）in French.
. The English/Shakespearean sonnet
It was introduced into English poetry in the early 16th century by Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542). It consists of 3 quatrains and a final couplet, rhyming abab cdcd efef gg.
An important variant is the Spenserian sonnet, which links the 3 quatrains by rhyme, rhyming abab bcbc cdcd ee.
（quatrain: 四行诗(每节四行,韵律一般为abab或abba)）
14. Allegory（寓言）
?A story with a double meaning: a primary or surface meaning, and a secondary or under-the-surface meaning
?A story that can be read, understood and interpreted at two levels
Two levels of allegory
?One level examines the moral, philosophical and religious values and is represented by the Red Cross Knight, who stands for all Christians.
?The second level is the particular, which focuses on the political, social, and religious conflicts in the then English society.
15. Metaphysical(形而上学，超自然，纯哲学) Poets
METAPHYSICAL POETS refer to a school of poets at the beginning of the 17th century England who wrote under the influence of John Donne. The works of the Metaphysical poets are characterized, generally speaking, by mysticism in content and fantasticality in form.
The most eminent poets are John Donne, George Herbert & Andrew Marwell.
16. Metaphysical Poetry
Metaphysical poetry is concerned with the whole experience of man, especially about love, romantic and sensual; about man's relationship with God, and about pleasure, learning and art.
Metaphysical poems are lyric poems of brief but intense meditations, characterized by the striking use of wit, irony and wo rdplay. Beneath the formal structure (of rhyme, meter and stanza) is the underlying structure of the poem’s argument. In “To His Coy Mistress,” the explicit argument (Marvell's request that the coy lady yield to his passion) is a stalking horse for the more serious argument about the transistorizes of pleasure.
Rise & Fall of Metaphysical Poetry
?Metaphysical poetry was rarely read in the 17th, 18th and early 19th century.
?In the late 19th century and early 20th century, there was a renewed interest in metaphysical poetry.
?The modernist poets T.S. Eliot, John Ransom and Allen Tate claimed their influence by John Donne. So John Donne became a cult figure in the early 20th century English-speaking countries.
Metaphysical conceit
This type of conceit draws upon a wide range of knowledge, and its comparisons are elaborately（苦心经营地，精巧地）rationalized.
For instance, Donne’s “The Flea” compares a flea bite to the act of love; and in “A V alediction: Forbidding Mourning” separated lovers are likened to the l egs of a compass, the leg drawing the circle eventually returning home to "the fixed foot."
17. neoclassicism（新古典主义）
–It found its artistic models in the classical literature of the ancient Greek and Roman writers like Homer, Virgil, Horace, and Ovid.
–A partial reaction against the fires of passion blazed in the late Renaissance, especially in the Metaphysical poetry.
--- Prose should be precise, direct, smooth and flexible.
--- Poetry should be lyrical（抒情的）, epical（叙事的）, didactic（教导的）, satiric or dramatic, and each class should be guided by its own principles.
--- Neo-classical writers are: John Dryden, Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, Joseph Addison, Richard Steele, Henry Fielding, Samuel Johnson, Oliver Goldsmith, Edward Gibbon, etc.
18. Enlightenment Movement(启蒙运动)
Under the influence of scientific discoveries (Newton) and flourishing of philosophies, French enlightenment started.
Enlightenment thinkers such as V oltaire伏尔泰, Montesquieu孟德斯鸠, Locke洛克, Hobbes霍布斯, and Rousseau卢梭believed that the world was an object of study and that people could understand and control the world by means of reason and empirical（以观察或实验为依据的）research.
?an intellectual movement beginning in France and then spread throughout Europe
? a continuation of Renaissance in belief in the possibility of human perfection through education
?the guiding princ iple or slogan（标语，标号）is Ration（定量？）/Reason, natural right and equality (American Independence War in 1776; French Revolution in 1789)
?Ration became standard for measurement of everything.
?In religion, it was against superstition（迷信）, intolerance（心胸狭窄）, and dogmatism（教条主义，独断，武断）; in politics, it was against tyranny（暴政，苛政）; and in society, it was against prejudice, ignorance, inequality, and any obstacles to the realization of an individua l’s full intellectual and physical well-being. At the same time, they advocated（提倡）universal education. In their opinion, human beings were limited, dualistic （二元的）, imperfect, and yet capable of rationality（合理性，合理的行为见解）and perfection through education.
The great enlighteners:
?Alexander Pope,
?Joseph Addison,
?Jonathan Swift, and
?Samuel Johnson
19. Sentimentality literature伤感文学
--- It was a partial reaction against that cold, logic rationalism which dominated people’s life since the last decades of the 17th century.
--- A ready sympathy and an inward pain for the misery of others became part of accepted social morality and ethics.
--- started by Samuel Richardson’s Pamela
And Clarissa
--- represented in novel form by Laurence Sterne’s A
Sentimental Journey through France and
Italy (1768)
--- represented in poetry by “The Graveyard School”:
Thomas Gray, Edward Y oung
--- emphasizing the emotion/heart instead of ration
---gradually merged into Romanticism
20. The Realistic Novel
The English middle-class people were ready to cast away the aristocratic romance and to create a new and realistic literature of their own to express their ideas and serve their interests.
The whole life in its ordinary aspects of the middle class became the major source of interest in literature.
Major novelists: Daniel Defoe, Samuel Richardson, Henry Fielding, Laurence Sterne, Oliver Goldsmith, Tobias George Smollett…
Point of view
The method of narration that determines the position, or angle of vision from which the story is told.
Commonly used points of view
文学名词解释 整理版教学文稿
1、潜在写作：指17年和文革期间，许多被剥夺了正常写作权利的作家们的创作，包括他们当时不能发表的作品和本无发表预期的日记、书信等。如丰子恺的《缘缘堂续笔》，食指的诗，沈从文的家书等。“潜在写作”的相对概念是公开发表的文学作品，两者一起构成了时代文学的整体。潜在写作（又称为地下写作）：为了说明当代文学创作的复杂性，即有许多被剥夺了正常写作权力的作家在哑声的时代里，依然保持着对文学的挚爱和创作的热情，他们写作了许多在当时客观环境下不能公开发表的文学作品。一种是作家们自觉的创作，如丰子恺写的《缘缘堂续笔》和食指的诗；另一种是作家们在非常时期不自觉的写作，如日记、书信、读书笔记等。 三突出原则：指的是“文革时期”特定的文学创作原则。根据江青的指示，开始由于会泳在《让文艺舞台永远成为宣传毛泽东思想的阵地》一文中提出的，“在所有人物中突出正面人物来，在正面人物中突出主要英雄人物来，在主要英雄人物中突出中心人物来”的三突出创作原则。后来有姚文元改定为“在所有人物中突出正面人物，在正面人物中突出英雄人物，在英雄人物中突出主要英雄人物”。这种创作原则是企图严格维护的社会政治等级在文学结构上的体现。 2、反思文学：是继“伤痕文学”之后出现的文学现象，因表现出对于社会历史痛定思痛的反思特点而得名。其把揭露与批判的文学承担前溯至五十年代甚至更前，具有较深邃的历史纵深感和较大的思想容量。但理想主义的理性色彩，使反思文学失去了“伤痕文学”刻骨铭心的忏悔与绝望，在某种程度上回避了揭露文化大革命的灾难性实质。代表作家作品有：茹志鹃《剪辑错了的故事》，王蒙的《布礼》、《蝴蝶》，方之的《内奸》等。 3．朦胧派：一九八○年开始，诗坛出现了一个新的诗派，被称为“朦胧派”。以舒婷、顾城、北岛等为先驱者的一群青年诗人，从一九七九年起，先后大量发表了一种新风格的诗。这种诗，有三四十年没有出现在中国的文学报刊上了。最初，他们的诗还仿佛是在继承现代派或后现代派的传统，但很快地他们开拓了新的疆域，走得更远，自成一个王国。朦胧派诗人无疑
英国文学名词解释
Allegory is a tale in verse or prose in which characters, actions, or settings represent abstract ideas or moral qualities. Thus, an allegory is a story with two meaning, a literal meaning and a symbolic meaning. Bildungsroman: a novel that traces the initiation, development, and education of a young person. Examples are Dickens’s David Copperfield and James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Byronic hero is a character-type found in Byron’s narrative Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. He is a boldly defiant but bitterly self-tormenting outcast, proudly contemptuous of social norms but suffering for some unnamed sin. Emily Bronte’s Heath cliff is a later example. Conceit: a kind of metaphor that makes a comparison between two startlingly different things. A conceit usually provides the framework for an entire poem. An especially unusual and intellectual kind of conceit is the metaphysical conceit, used by certain 17th-century poets, such as John Donne.. Comedy of manners is a kind of comedy representing the complex and sophisticated code of behavior current in fashionable circles of society, where appearances count for more than true moral character. Its humor relies chiefly on elegant verbal wit and repartee. In England, the comedy of manners flourished as the dominant form of Restoration comedy in the works of Etheredge, Wycherley and Congreve. It was revived in a more subdued form in the 1770s by Goldsmith and Sheridan, and later by Oscar Wilde. An epic is a long narrative poem in elevated or dignified language, typically one derived from ancient oral tradition, narrating and celebrating the deeds and adventures of heroic or legendary figures or the past history of a nation. Epiphany(顿悟）: a sudden revelation of truth about life inspired by a seemingly trivial incident Heroic couplet is the rhymed couplet of iambic pentameter. Intrusive narrator: an omniscient narrator who, in addition to reporting the events of a novel’s story, offers further comments on characters and events, and who sometimes reflects more generally upon the significance of the story. Iambic pentameter: a poetic line consisting of five verse feet, with each foot an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. Iambic pentameter is the most common verse line in English poetry. Metaphysical poetry: the poetry of John Donne and other 17th-century poets who wrote in a similar style. It is characterized by verbal wit and excess, ingenious structure, irregular meter, colloquial language, elaborate imagery, and a drawing together of dissimilar ideas . Metaphysical Poetry 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 try to break away from the conventional fashion of the Elizabethan love poetry. They are characterized by mysticism in content and fantasticality in form. John Donne is the lead ing figure of the “metaphysical school.” Naturalism: a post--Darwinian movement of the late 19th century that tried to apply the laws of scientific determinism to fiction. The naturalists went beyond the realists’ insistence on the objective presentation of the details of everyday life to insist that the materials of literature
美国文学名词解释
1. Transcendentalism The origin of it is a philosophical and literary movement centered in Concord and Boston, which marks the summit of American Transcendentalism. 19th-century movement of writers and philosophers in New England who were loosely bound together by adherence to an idealistic system of thought based on a belief in the essential unity of all creation, the innate goodness of man, and the supremacy of insight over logic and experience for the revelation of the deepest truths. The major features of American Transcendentalism are:It emphasis on spirit, or the Oversoul, as the most important thing in the universe. It stressed the importance of the individual. To them the individual was the most important element of society. It offered a fresh perception of nature as symbolic of the Spirit or God. 2.Romanticism The Romanticism period stretches from the end of the 18th century through the outbreak of the Civil War. It is a term associate with imagination boundlessness, and in critical usage is contrasted with classicism which is commonly associated with reason and restriction. The features of Romanticism are: American Romanticism was in a way derivative: American romantic writing was some of them modeled on English and European works. American romanticism was in essence the expression of "a real new experience "and contained"an alien quality".Representatives:William Cullen Bryant; Henry Longfellow and James Cooper, Washington Irving. 3.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.The representatives are Howells, James, and Mark Twain. 4. Naturalism American naturalism was a new and harsher realism, it had come from Europe. Naturalism was an outgrowth of realism that responded to theories in science, psychology, human behavior and social thought current in the late nineteenth century. The background of naturalism are: In the last decade of the nineteenth century, with the development of industry and modern science, intelligent minds began to see that man was no longer a free ethical being in a cold, indifferent and essentially Godless universe. In this chance world he was both helpless and hopeless.Major Features of it are:Humans are controlled by laws of heredity and environment.The universe is cold, godless, indifferent and hostile to human desires.Representatives of it such as Stephen Crane, Frank Norris and Theodore Dreiser. 5.New Criticism The New Criticism as a school of poetry and criticism established itself in the 1940s as an academic orthodoxy in the United States. The school has its beginning in the 1920s. It focus on the analysis of the text rather paying attention to external elements such as its social background, its author's intention and political attitude, and its impact on society. Then it explores the artistic structure of the work rather than its author's frame of mind or its reader's responses. It also see a literary work as an organic entity, the unity of content and form, and places emphasis on the close reading of the text. These New Critics included T.S. Eliot,I.A.Richards,John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate and some other critics. The New Criticism has tended to divorce criticism from social and moral concerns, which was to become one salient feature of the movement. 6.Imagism: Between 1912 and 1922 there came a great poetry boom in which about 1000 poets published over 1000 volumes of poetry. Indeed ,to express the modern spirit, the sense of fragmentization and dislocation, was in large measure the aim of quite a few modern literary movements, of which Imagism was one.The first Imagist theorist, the English writer T.E.Hulme. Hulme suggests that modern art deals with expression and communication of momentary phases in the poet's mind. The most effective means to express these momentary impressions is through the use of dominant image.It is a literary movement launched American poets early in the 20th century that advocated the use of free verse, common speech patterns, and clear concrete images as a reaction to Victorian sentimentalism. The representatives are Ezra pound, William Carlos Williams and some other poets.
美国文学史复习提纲 名词解释
I. Explain the following literary terms(名词解释). 1. Romanticism The most profound and comprehensive idea of romanticism is the vision of a greater personal freedom for the individual. Appeals to imagination; Stress on emotion rather than reason; optimism, gen iality. Subjectivity: in form and meaning. 2 American transcendentalism American transcendentalism was an important movement in philosophy and literature that flourished during the early to middle years of the nineteenth century (about 1836-1860). For the transcendentalists, the soul of each individual is identical with the soul of the world and contains what the world contains. 3 Realism: ―nothing more and nothing less than the truthful treatment of material.‖ the Civil war a. verisimilitude of details derived from observation b. representative in plot, setting and character c. an objective rather than an idealized view of human experience or（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.） 4. Modernism like modernism in general is a trend of thought that affirms the power of human beings to create, improve, and reshape their environment, with the aid of scientific knowledge, technology and practical experimentation, and is thus in its essence both progressive and optimistic. The general term covers many political, cultural and artistic movements rooted in the changes in Western society at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century. American modernism is an artistic and cultural movement in the United States starting at the turn of the 20th century with its core period between World War I and World War II and continuing into the 21st century. 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、Transcendentalism: In New England, an intellectual movement known as transcendentalism developed as an American version of Romanticism. The movement began among an influential set of authors based in Concord, Massachusetts and was led by Ralph Waldo Emerson. Like Romanticism, transcendentalism rejected both 18th century rationalism and established religion, which for the transcendentalists meant the Puritan tradition in particular. The transcendentalists celebrated the power of the human imagination to commune with the universe and transcend the limitations of the material world. They found their chief source of inspiration in nature. Emerson’s essay Nature was the major document of the transcendental school and stated the ideas that were to remain central to it. 7、Free verse: free verse is the rhymed or unrhymed poetry composed without attention to conventio nal rules of meter. Free verse was first written and labeled by a group of French poets of the late 19th century. Their purpose was to deliver poetry from the restrictions of formal metrical patterns and to recreate the free rhythms of natural speech. Walt Whitman was the precursor who wrote lines of varying length and cadence, usually not rhymed. The emotional content or meaning of the work was expressed through its rhythm. Free verse has been characteristic of the work of many modern American poets, including Ezra Pound and Carl Sandburg. 8、Naturalism: A more deliberate kind of realism in novels, stories and plays, usually involving a view of human beings as passive victims of natural forces and social environment. Naturalism was a new and harsher realism. It
现代文学名词解释
- 名词解释 1930 年“中国左翼作家联盟”的简称，中国共产党领导的革命文学组织，【左联】 3 于 月2 日在上海成立，会议选举鲁迅、沈端先、冯乃超、钱杏邨、郑伯奇、洪灵菲七人为常务 “左联”的委员。创办《前哨》、《世界文化》、《文学导报》、《北斗》、《文学月报》等刊物。 培养革成立，对于团结进步作家反击国民党反动派的文化“围剿”和推进革命文学运动，命介绍和宣传马克思主义文艺理青年作家队伍，繁荣无产阶级革命文学，论，做出了积极的贡献。1936 年在共产国际的干预下宣布自动解散。日成立于汉口。由郭沫3 月27 的简称，1938 年“中华全国文艺界抗敌协】【文协 若，会”茅盾、丁玲、胡风、夏衍等任理事，周恩来为名誉理事之一，老舍任总务部主任，负责“文“文协”的机
关刊物是抗战期间坚持时间最久的《抗战文协”的日常工作。艺》。“文协”在成立后提出了“文章下乡，文章入伍”的口号。提倡抗战文艺的通俗化，要求文艺紧密地与“文协”的成立标志着文艺界抗日民族统一战线的最终形抗日斗争相结合。成。月，由特务头子陈立夫、陈果夫兄弟策年6 【民族主义文学】指由1930 划，并纠集一帮政客、帮闲、特务和反动文人，发起的反革命文学运动。其主要成员有潘公展、朱应鹏、范争黄震遐等国民党上海市党部委波、王平陵、傅彦长、 国民党御用文人、上海市政府委员、员，、《前锋月刊》等。在《民族主义文学运动宣言》中鼓国民党军官等。出版刊物《前锋周报》 。攻击左翼文艺运动导致了吹“文艺的中心意识”，声称“文艺的最高主义，就是民族主义” “新文艺的危机”。妄图以封建意识和法西斯思想的混合物来冒充民族意识，以此来抹煞阶级斗争，否定阶级意识，进而否定“左联”提倡的无产阶级革命文学，并创作“杀人放火”的“屠夫文学”与左翼文学对抗。 【现代诗派】“现代派”因施蛰存在1932 年5 月出版《现代》杂志而得名。施蛰存在《现代·发刊词》中写道：“《现
英国文学名词解释及课后答案
名词解释 Renaissance:The Renaissance indicates a revival of classical (Greek and Roman) arts and sciences in Europe beginning in the 14th century and extending to the 17th century, marking the transition from the medieval to the modern world. Sonnet: A fourteen-line lyric poem, usually written in rhymed iambic pentameter and most often in one of the two rhyme schemes: the Italian(or Petrarchan) or Shakes pearean ( or English ). A sonnet is a 14-line poem with a specific rhyme scheme and meter .It has two main forms :the shakespearean sonnet and the Italian sonnet. Shakespeare Sonnet: a lyric with three quatrains and one couplet, rhyming ababcdcdefefgg, consisting of 14 lines, usually in iambic pentameter restricted to a definition rhyme scheme. A Shakespearean sonnet consists of fourteen lines written in iambic pentameter, in which a pattern of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable is repeated five times. The rhyme scheme in a Shakespearean sonnet is a-b-a-b, c-d-c-d, e-f-e-f, g-g; the last two lines are a rhyming couplet. Enlightenment: the movement was a furtherance of the Renaissance of the 15th and 16th centries, a progressive intellectual movement, reason (rationality), equality & science (the 18th century) The Age of Enlightenment (also called the Age of Reason) refers to the 18th_ century England.The Enlightenment was a progressive intellectual movement.It celebrated reason (rationality), equality, science and human beings’ ability to perfect themselves and their society and it aimed to enlighten the whole world with the light of modern ,philosophical and artistic ideas. Romanticism: it flourished in literature, philosophy, music, and art in Western culture during most if the nineteenth century, beginning as a revolt against classicism. In it, emotion over reason, spontaneous emotion, a change from the outer world of social civilization to the inner world of the human spirit, poetry should be free from all rules, imagination, nature, commonplace. Dramatic monologue: A kind of narrative poem in which one character speaks to one or more listeners whose replies are not given in poem. The occasion is a crucial one in the speaker’s life, and the dramatic monologue reveals the speaker’s personality as
美国文学名词解释
Allegory is a narrative that serves as an extended metaphor. Allegories are written in the form of fables, parables, poems, stories, and almost any other style or genre. The main purpose of an allegory is to tell a story that has characters, a setting, as well as other types of symbols, that have both literal and figurative meanings. One well-known example of an allegory is Dante’s The Divine Comedy.In Inferno, Dante is on a pilgrimage to try to understand his own life, but his character also represents every man who is in search of his purpose in the world. Alliteration is a pattern of sound that includes the repetition of consonant sounds. The repetition can be located at the beginning of successive words or inside the words. Poets often use alliteration to audibly represent the action that is taking place. Aside is an actor’s speech, directed to the audience, that is not supposed to be heard by other actors on stage. An aside is usually used to let the audience know what a character is about to do or what he or she is thinking. Asides are important because they increase an audience's involvement in a play by giving them vital information pertaining what is happening, both inside of a character's mind and in the plot of the play. Gothic is a literary style popular during the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th. This style usually portrayed fantastic tales dealing with horror, despair, the grotesque and other “dark” subjects. Gothic literature was named for the apparent influence of the dark gothic architecture of the period on the genre. Also, many of these Gothic tales took places in such “gothic” surroundings. Other times, this story of darkness may occur in a more everyday setting, such as the quaint house where the man goes mad fro m the "beating" of his guilt in Edgar Allan Poe's “The Tell-Tale Heart.”In essence, these stories were romances, largely due to their love of the imaginary over the logical, and were told from many different points of view. CATHARSIS is an emotional discharge that brings about a moral or spiritual renewal or welcome relief from tension and anxiety. According to Aristotle, catharsis is the marking feature and ultimate end of any tragic artistic work. IMAGERY: A common term of variable meaning, imagery includes the "mental pictures" that readers experience with a passage of literature. It signifies all the sensory perceptions referred to in a poem, whether by literal description, allusion, simile, or metaphor. Surrealism is an artistic movement doing away with the restrictions of realism and verisimilitude that might be imposed on an artist. In this movement, the artist sought to do away with conscious control and instead respond to the irrational urges of the subconscious mind. From this results the hallucinatory, bizarre, often nightmarish quality of surrealistic paintings and writings. Sample surrealist writers include Frank O'Hara, John Ashberry, and Franz Kafka.