常耀信《英国文学简史》名词解释大全

常耀信《英国文学简史》名词解释大全

1Romance: is a long composition in verse or in prose, describing the life and adventures of a noble hero. It generally concerns the knights and involves a large amount of fighting as well as a number of miscellaneous adventures and a series of love stories. The most important romance of the period is about King Arthur and his knights of round table.

2. Ballad: The most important form of popular literature is the popular ballad, the ageless narrative folk song, which flourished with special vigor during the 15th century and most ballads were written down in 18th century. The ballads are mostly written in quatrains with the first and third lines in iambic tetrameter, and the second and the forth lines in iambic trimester, and the rhyme scheme of abcb or abab. Most important ballad is Robin Hood ballads.

3. The miracle play: the miracle play or the mystery play has as its subject either a story from Bible or else the life and martyrdom of a saint. The word miracle denotes only drama on the lives of saints. In contrast, the miracle play is applied to dramas based on the Old and New Testaments. Interlude: in Latin means “between the play”. It is terms applied to a variety of short entertainments which were often put on between courses of feasts and between the acts of a longer plays.

The morality plays were dramatized allegories of the life of a man, of his temptation and his quest for salvation, of his confrontation with death.

4. Humanism was a literary and philosophical system of thought which attempted to place the affairs of mankind at the centre of its concerns. Originating in Italy during Renaissance, it soon spread throughout the most of Western Europe. According to humanist, man should mould the world according to his desires and remove the checks by the exercise of human intellect.

5. The oxford reformer: During the reign of Henry VIII, there was a group of scholars called oxford reformer. They were students and later the teachers in Oxford University. They traveled in Italy and introduced to England the classical literatures and strove to reform education on humanistic line, by emphasizing the study of Greek and Latin and secular science. They helped to spread the light of new science and world outlook.

6. The Spenserian stanza: it is a type of stanza invented by Edmund Spenser in his Faerie Queen which is written on a nine-lined stanza invented by Spenser and has since born his name Spenserian stanza. The first eight lines are iambic pentameter and the ninth line has two more syllables, rhyming ababbcbcc. This poetical form had been utilized by Thomas, Byron, Shelley and Keats.

7. University wits: among the first playwrights who wrote for the popular playhouses was a group of young men called “university wits”. They had studied at universities of Oxford or of Cambridge and then set up as professional writers, selling their learning and wits to the London public of playgoers and to the reading public as well. These playwrights were hardworder as they revised the old plays and wrote new ones. They made rapid progresses in dramatic techniques because they had close contract with the actors and audience. Their representatives are Marlowe, Lyly, etc.

8. The metaphysical poets appeared in England in the beginning of 17th century. It was a school of poets who were characterized by mysticism in content and fantasticality in form. Their poetry is often labored and intellectual and obscure and concerned too much with philosophy. Its hallmark is the conceit, a sort of far-fetched and ingenious metaphor. Their representatives are John Donne, The cavalier poets were often courtiers who stood on the side of the king and called themselves

the sons of Ben Johnson. They wrote the light poems, polished and elegant, amorous and gay, but often superficial. Most of their verses were short songs, pretty madrigals, and love fancies characterized by lightness of heart and of morals. But beneath their lightness lies the some foreboding of impending doom.

9. Humor: a humor is a theory used by Ben Johnson in his playwriting which according to the physiology and psychology of the time is one of the liquid constituents of the body, each of which has its peculiar emotional propensity. Thus, each character of his play personified a definite humor, so his characters are like caricatures.

10. Neoclassicism: in England the neoclassicism was initiated by Dryden, culminated in Pope and continued by Johnson. Flourishing in 17th and 18th century England, neoclassicism was a reaction to the intricacy and obscurity and boldness and extravagance of European literature of the late Renaissance as seen for instance in the works of the metaphysicals, in favor of simplicity, regularity, clarity, restraint and good sense. These writers were called neoclassicist because they modeled themselves on the works of ancient Greek and Latin writers in order to achieve perfect form in literature. The general tendency of neoclassical literature is to look at social and political life critically, to emphasize the intellect rather than imagination, the form rather than content of sentence. These writers tend to repress the enthusiasm, and to use precise and elegant method of expression. The term “classicism”in the 18th century refers only to the critical and intellectual spirit of many writers, to the fined polish of their heroic couplet or to the elegance of their prose. The neoclassicists invented literary rule of their own: in drama, they adhered to the unity of time, place and action. In diction, they highly regarded the witty expression. In poetry, they demanded to follow the ancient division: lyric, epic, didactic, satirical or dramatic and each class should be guided by its principle. In versification, they used closed heroic couplet.

11. The literary club: Samuel Johnson is a poet, essayist, lexicographer, literary critic. In 1764, he founded the famous literary club which included many famous figures of the time. At the gathering of the club, Samuel Johnson’s conversational gifts were fully exercised and well enjoyed and he gave his laws upon literature through his talks.

12. Sentimentalism; in the middle of 18th century, the sentimentalist came into being as a result of the bitter discontentment with social reality. They were dissatisfied with the reason in the neoclassicism and appealed to the sentiment. They turned to the countryside for literary material. The poetry of sentimentalist is marked by sympathy with the poor peasants. The appearance and development of sentimentalism marks the transience from neoclassicism to romanticism in English poetry.

13. Pre-romanticism: in the second half of 18th century, a new literary movement came in Europe called romantic revival, and this literary tendency has been called pre-romanticism. The representatives are Robert Burns and William Blake. It was marked by the strong protest against the bondage of classicism, by recognition of the claims of imagination and emotion, and by a renewed interest in the medieval literature.

14. the special qualities of romanticism: the spontaneous overflow of powerful emotion, the creation of the a world of imagination, return to nature for material, sympathy with the humble and the glorification of commonplace, the emphasis on the expression of individual genius, the return to John Milton and Elizabethans for literary model, the interest in the old stories and medieval romances, a sense of melancholy and loneliness, a rebellious spirit.

15. The lake poets: The first generations of romantics include Wordsworth, Coleridge, and

Southey, who were called the lake poets. They had lived for a time in a mountainous lake district in the northwest of England. They are regarded as one group because of their community of literary and social outlook. They had traversed the same path in politics and in poetry, beginning as radicals and closing as conservatives.

16. Byronic hero: Byron introduced into English literature a new style of character, which has been always referred to as Byronic heroes of satanic spirit. People had imagined that they had seen something of Byron himself in these pirates, rebels, and desperate adventures. They were passionate, haughty, cynical, even dissolute, but undoubtedly against all oppression.

17. The younger generation of romantics: George Golden Byron, together with Shelley and Keats, belongs to the second generation of Romantic poets. He and Shelley were called by Robert Southey as Satanic because of their revolutionary spirit and their rebellion against society.

18. The familiar essay. The three greatest essayists if the age, Charles Lamb, William Hazlitt, and Thomas De Quincey made the informal essay a pliable vehicle for expressing the writers’own personality, thus bringing into English literature the personal or familiar essay—commentary on a non-technical subject written in a relaxed intimate manner.

19. Gothic novel was a new type of fiction prominent in the 18th century. It was a style of fiction characterized by the use of desolate or remote settings, fantastic, mysterious, or violent incidents and grotesque and ghost characters. Walpole’s castle of Otranto is the representative gothic novel.

20. Novel of purpose was new type of fiction popular at the turn of the 19th century. This style of fiction was characterized by didactic intention to propagate the new social and political theories current in the period of the French revolution combined with elements of Gothic terrors.

21. In Memoriam is a collection of poems written by Tennyson in memory of his friend Arthur Henry Hallam. The friendship between them was the most important experience in Tennyson’s life. Hallam’s sudden death was a hard blow to him. Inspired by a deep grief he wrote In Memoriam, which the Victorians considered to be his masterpiece. Not only in this poetical work but also in his other works the tone is elegiac and content is related to God and to nature.

22. Dramatic monologue is poetical contribution to English poetry. It is superficially resembles a soliloquy in drama. In this sort of poems, the voice speaking in the poem is not the poet himself but a character invented by poet so that it reflects objectivity. In this way he attempted to explore a wide variety of attitude toward to life and art, and revealed character and society as in the novels of his days.

23. Pre-Raphaelite poets. Pre-Raphaelitism means before Raphaelite, an Italian painter and poet, which begins with the formation of Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood before 1850. It is, in fact, a much more important movement in painting than in literature. The Pre-Raphaelite poets oppressed the conventionalism in painting and writing and emphasized a true-to-nature depiction through the use of pictorial details and symbolism. The essence of this movement was opposition against the use of technical skills without inspiration. They used their poetry as a dream world of refuge from social struggle so that they pave way for the Aesthetic movement.

24. Aesthetic movement. The basic theory of aestheticism is art for arts’ sake. It places art above life and holds that life should imitate art, not vice versa. According to aestheticism, artistic creation should be absolutely subjective as opposed to objective. Art should be free from any influence of egoism. Only when art is for arts’ sake, can it be immortal. It is a reaction against materialism and commercialism of the Victorian industrial era, as well as a reaction against the Victorian convention of art for money’s sake or art for politics’ sake. Its representatives are Walter

Pater and Oscar Wilde.

25. Streams of consciousness technique. In 20th century, this term originated from Henry James’elder brother Williams James psychological works. In English literature, its representatives are James Joyce and Virginia Woolf. The characteristics of streams of consciousness technique are depiction of characters’mental and emotional reaction to external events rather than events themselves and abandonment of the conventional usages of realistic plots and structure and description, and characterization development is achieved through the revelation of extremely personal ad often typical thought process, revelation of action or plot through mental process of the characters, the action of plot seldom corresponding to real and chronological time, but moving back and forth from the present time to the memories of the past and dreams of the future, the replacement of narration description and commentary with dramatic monologue and free association.

26. The movement was a school of poets who appeared in the fifties. They written poems that seem to be an accurate reflection of the post war world with its grief and disappointments. Many of them has turned from urban image of the early part of the 20th century to return to more pastoral metaphors. The representative of this poetic school is Philip Larkin.

31. Irish literary theatre was founded in 1899 with Yeats’ early play The Coutess Cathleen as its first production. The founders—Yeats, Lady Gregory, George Moore and Edward Martyn—aimed at Irish literary revival. In 1902, the Irish literary theatre was able to maintain permanent all-Irish company and changed its name to The Irish National Theatre, which was changed again in 1904 to the Abbey Theatre. They centred on the sufferings of ordinary people, each presenting a range of diverse characters and using rich popular idioms. His later works was influenced by expressionist’s techniques suggested by German dramatists.

32. The angry young men. In the 1960’s appeared a group of rebellious writers known as the angry young men, led by Kinsley Amis. They deliberately rebelled against the artistic innovations to which writers like James Joyce and Virginia Woolf had devoted their lives. The angry young men were hostile against anything highbrow, which they labeled as phony and created a kind of anti-hero coming from the lower or lower-middle class who was disgusted with English culture and society. The movement died out in the 60’s when these young men were no longer angry and their later works are quite different from those they wrote in the 50’s.

32. Theatre of Absurd, derived from Existentialism and influenced by symbolism expressionism and surrealism, is one of the most important and influential literary schools after World War II. It originated in France in the mid 50’s and soon spread over most of Europe and America. Waiting for Godot is a masterpiece of Theatre of Absurd. The absurd play which is totally unconventional drama without plot or conflict is both despairing and humorous, expressing the absurdity and meaninglessness of human existence in a style that can be described as absurd. Its representative is Samuel Becket.

33. Modernism is a movement of experiments in new technique in writing. It was international in scope and drew heavily on the French simplistic poets as well as on the psychological teachings of Sigmund Freud. Modernism is itself a movement both wide and deep and extending into all the forms literature and art. Modernists stressed the description of the characters’ psychological action. It involved a radical and deliberate break not only with traditional aesthetic principles reaching back to Aristotle that had been the bedrock of western culture. The most important period for modernism was between 1920 and 1925, including symbolism, imagism, futurism and symbolism.