文学名词

中古时期的英国文学Ballad(民谣)：1, ballad is a story in poetic form to be sung or recited. 2, ballads were passed down from generation to generation. 3, Robin Hood is a famous ballad singing the goods of Robin Hood. Coleridge’s the Rime of the Ancient Mariner is a 19th century English ballad.Epic(史诗)：1, epic, in poetry, refers to a long work dealing with the actions of gods and heroes. 2, Beowulf is the greatest national epic of Anglo-Saxons. John Milton wrote three great epics: Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained and Samson Agonists.Romance(罗曼史/骑士文学)：1, romance is a popular literary form in the medieval England. 2, it signs knightly adventures or other heroic deeds. 3, chivalry (such as bravery, honor, generosity, loyalty and kindness to the weak and poor) is the spirit of romance.Alliteration(押头韵)：1, alliteration means a repetition of the initial sounds of several words in a line or group. 2, alliteration is a traditional poetic device in English literature. 3, Robert Frost’s poem Acquainted with the Night is a case in point: I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet.文艺复兴时期：Renaissance(文艺复兴): 1, “renaissance” means “rebirth”. It meant the reintroduction into Western Europe of full cultural heritage of Greece and Rome. 2, the essence of the renaissance is humanism. Attitudes and feelings which had been characteristic of the 14th and 15th centuries persisted well down into the era of humanism and reformation. 3, the real mainstream of the English renaissance is the Elizabethan drama with William Shakespeare being the leading dramatist.Humanism(人文主义): 1, humanism is the essence of the renaissance. 2, it emphasizes the dignity of human beings and the importance of the present life. Humanists voiced their beliefs that men was the center of the universe and man didn’t only have the right to enjoy the beauty of the present life, but have the ability to perfect himself and to perform wonders.Spenserian stanza(斯宾塞诗节)：1，Spenserian stanza is the creation of Edmund Spenser. 2, it refers to a stanza of nine lines, with the first 8 lines in iambic pentameter and the last line in iambic hexameter(六音步)，rhyming ababbcbcc. 3, Spenser’s Faerie Queene was written in Spenserian stanza.Conceit(奇特的比喻)：1, conceit is a far-fetched simile or metaphor, a literary conceit occurs when the speaker compares two highly dissimilar things. 2, conceit is extensively employed in john Donne’s poetry.Metaphysical poetry(玄学派诗歌): 1, metaphysical poetry is commonly used to name the work of the 17th century writers who wrote under the influence of John Donne. 2, with a rebellious spirit, the metaphysical poets tried to break away from the conventional fashion of the Elizabethan love poetry. 3, the diction is simple as compared with that of the Elizabethan or neoclassical periods and echoes the words and cadences(节奏) of common speech. 4, the imagery is drawn from actual life. Sonnet(十四行诗): 1, sonnet is the one of the most conventional and influential forms of poetry in Europe. 2, a sonnet is a lyric consisting of 14 lines, usually in iambic pentameter, restricted to a definite rhyme scheme. 3, Shakespeare’s sonnets are well-known.Blank verse(无韵体诗)：blank verse is verse written in unrhymed iambic pentameter. 2, it is the verse form used in some of the greatest English poetry, including that of William Shakespeare and John Milton.Meter(格律)：1，the word “meter” is derived from the Greek word “metron”, meaning “measure”. 2, in England when applied to poetry, it refers to the regular pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables. 3, the analysis of the meter is called scansion(格律分析).Allegory(寓言)：Allegory is a story told to explain or teach sth, especially a long and complicated story with an underlying meaning different from the surface meaning of the story itself. 2, allegorical novels use extended metaphors to convey moral meanings or attack certain social evils. Characters in these novels often stand for different values such as virtue and vice. 3, Bunyan’s pilgrim’s progress. Golding’s lord of the flies and Melville’s Moby Dick are three examples of this kind.Stanza(诗节)：1, Stanza is a group of poetry, usually four or more, arranged according to a fixed plan. 2, the stanza is the unit of structure in a poem and poets do not vary the unit within a poem.University wits(大学才子): 1, university wits refer to a group of scholars during the Elizabethan age who graduated from either oxford or Cambridge. They came to London with the ambition to become professional writers. Some of them later became famous poets and playwrights. They were called “university wits”. 2, Thomas Greene, Thomas Kyd, john lily and Christopher Marlowe were among them. 3, they paved the way, to some degree, for the coming of Shakespeare.Foreshadowing(预兆)：1，foreshadowing, in drama, means a method used to build suspense by providing hints of what is to come. 2, in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Romeo’s expression of fear in act 1, scene 4 foreshadows the catastrophe to come: I fear too early, for my mind misgives，some consequence yet hanging in the stars…Soliloquy(独白): 1, soliloquy, in drama, means a moment when a character is alone and speakers his or her thoughts aloud. 2, in the line “to be not to be, that is the question”, which begins the famous soliloquy from act 3, scene 1 of Shakespeare’s hamlet. In this soliloquy, hamlet questions whether or not life is worth living and speakers of the reasons why he does not end his life.Narrative poem(叙述诗)：1, a narrative poem refers to a poem that tells a story. 2, it may consist of a series of incidents, as in homer’s the Iliad and the Odysseus, and john Milton’s Paradise Lost.启蒙主义时期：The enlightenment movement: 1, enlightenment movement was a progressive intellectual movement which flourished in France and swept through Western Europe in the 18th century. 2, the movement was a furtherance of the renaissance from 14thh century to the mid-17th-century. 3, its purpose was to enlighten the whole world with the light of modern philosophical and artistic ideas. 4, it celebrated reason or rationality, equality and science. It advocated universal education. Literature became a very popular means of education. 5, famous among the great enlighteners in England were those great writers like john Dryden, Alexander pope, Joseph Addison andsir Richard Steele, the two pioneers of familiar essays, Jonathan swift, Richard Bringsley Sheridan, Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding and Samuel Johnson, etc. Neoclassicism(新古典主义时期)：1，in the field of literature, the enlightenment movement brought about a revival of interest in the old classical works. 2, this tendency is known as neoclassicism. The neoclassicists held that forms of literature were to be modeled after the classical works of the ancient Greek and roman writers such as Homer and Virgil and those of contemporary French ones. 3, they believed that artistic ideas should be order, logic, restrained emotion and accuracy and that literature should be judged by its service to humanity.The graveyard school(墓地派诗歌)：1, the graveyard school refers to a school of poets of the 18th century whose poems are mostly devoted to sentimental lamentation or mediation on life, past and present, with death and graveyard as themes. 2, Thomas Gray is considered to the leading figure of this school and his elegy written in a country churchyard is its most representative work.The heroic couplet(英雄对偶句)：The heroic couplet means iambic pentameter in two lines.Elegy(挽歌): 1, elegy has typically been used to refer to reflective poem that lament the loss of sth or sb. 2, In Memoriam by Alfred Tennyson is a famous elegy.Satire(讽刺)：1, satire means a type of writing that holds up to ridicule or contempt the weakness or wrongdoings of individuals, groups, institutions, or humanity in general. 2, the aim of satirists is to set a moral standard for the society and they attempt to persuade the readers to see their point of view through the force of laughter. 3, swift’s Gulliver’s travels is a great satire of the then English society from different aspects.Sentimentalism(感伤主义文学): 1, sentimentalism is pejorative term to describe false or superficial emotion, assumed feeling, self-regarding postures of grief and pain. 2, in literature it donates overmuch use of pathetic effects and attempts to arouse feeling by “pathetic” indulgence. 3, the vicar of Wakefield by Oliver goldsmith is a case in point.Didactic(说教的): 1, didactic literature is said to be didactic if it deliberately teaches some moral lesson. The use of literature for such teaching is one of its traditional justifications. 2, most modern literary works during the enlightenment period tend to be didactic.Farce(闹剧/滑稽剧)：Farce refers to a play full of ridiculous happenings, absurd actions and unreal situations meant to be very funny.Aside(旁白)：Aside refer to words spoken by an actor which other actors are supposed not to hear. 2, an actor’s asides are usually spoken to the audience. 3, hamlets very first line is an aside.Denouement(戏剧的结局)：Denouement is a part of a drama which follows the climax and leads to the resolution.浪漫主义时期：Romanticism(浪漫主义)：1，in the mid-18th century, a new literary movement called romanticism came to Europe and then to England. 2, it was characterized by a strong protest against the bondage of neoclassicism, which emphasized reason, order and elegant wit. Instead, romanticism gave primary concern to passion, emotion and natural beauty. 3, in the history of literature, romanticism is generally regarded as the thought that designates a literary and philosophical theory which tends to see the individual as the very center of all life and experience. 4, the English romantic period is an age of poetry. Major romantic poems include Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley and Keats. Romanticism prevailed in England from 1798 to 1837.Lyric(抒情诗)：1, lyric is a short poem where expresses an emotion or illustrates some life principle. 2, lyric often concerns love. “My love is a red, red rose”is Robert burn’s well-known lyric.Byronic hero(拜伦式英雄)：1, Byronic hero refers to a proud, mysterious rebel figure of noble origin. 2, with immense superiority in his passions and powers, this Byronic hero would carry on his shoulders the burden of righting all the wrongs in a corrupt society, 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. 3, Byron’s chief contribution to English literature is his creation of “Byronic hero”.Terza rima(三行诗)：1,terza rima is an Italian verse that consists of a series of three-line stanzas in which the middle line of each stanza rhymes with the first and the third lines of the following stanza with the rhyming scheme aba, bcb, cdc, ded, ect. 2, Sh elley’s ode to the west wind is a case in point.Ottava rima(八行诗): 1, ottava rima is a form of eight line iambic stanza rhyming abababcc. 2, Byron’s Don Juan and William Butler’s Sailing to Byzantium are outstanding example.Canto(诗章)：1, canto is a section of division of a long poem. 2, the most famous cantos in literature are those that make up Dante’s Divine Comedy, a 14th-century epic. In English poetry, Alexander pope’s The Rape of the Lock and Byron’s Don Juan are divided into cantos.Gothic novel(哥特式小说)：1, Gothic novel is a kind of romance very popular late in the 18th century and at the beginning of 19th century. 2, Gothic novel emphasizes things which are grotesque, violent, mysterious, supernatural, desolate and horrifying. 3, Gothic, originally in the sense of “medieval, not classical”, was applied by Horace Walpole to his novel The Castle of Otranto, a Gothic story, published in 1765. 4, with its description of the dark, irrational side of human nature, Gothic novel 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 typically Gothic romance.High comedy(正统喜剧)：High comedy is a comedy that deals with polite society and depends more on witty dialogue and well-drawn characters than on comic situations.Ode(颂歌)：1, Ode is a dignified and laboratory structured lyric poem of some length, praising and glorifying an individual commemorating an event or describe nature intellectually rather than emotionally. 2, John Keats wrote great odes, Ode on a Grecian Urn is a case in point.Lake poets(湖畔派诗人): Lake poets refer to such romantic poets such as William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey who lived in the LakeDistrict. They came to known as the Lake School or Lakers.批判现实主义时期：Critical realism(批判现实主义): 1, Critical realism is a term applied to the realistic fiction in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. 2, it means the tendency of writers and intellectuals in the period between 1875 and 1920 to apply the methods of realistic fiction to the criticism of society and the examination of social issues. 3, realist writers were concerned about the fate of common people and described what was faithful to reality. 4, Charles dickens is the most important critical realist.Dramatic monologue(戏剧独白): 1, Dramatic monologue refers to the occurrence of a single speaker saying sth to a silent audience. 2, Robert Browning’s My Last Duchess is a typical example in which the duke speaks to a non-responding audience, revealing not only the reasons for his disapproval for the behavior of his former duchess, but some tyrannical and merciless aspects of his own personality as well.Psychological novel(心理小说)：1, psychological novel refers to a novel that dwells on a complex psychological development and presents much of the narration through the inner workings of the character’s mind. 2, Thackeray’s characterization of Sharp is very much psychological.Point of view(叙述角度): 1, point of view can be divided by the narrator’s relationship with the character, represented by the grammatical person: the 1st-person narrative, the 3rd–person narrative, and omniscient narrator.2, in the 1st person narrative, the narrator appears in the novel as I or me. In the 3rd-person, the narrator appears as he, she or they. If the speaker knows everything including the actions, motives and thoughts of all the characters, the speaker is referred to as omniscient narrator.Plot(情节): 1, plot refers to the structure of a story. 2, the plot of a literary work includes the rising action, the climax, the falling action and the reclusion. It has a protagonist who is opposed by an antagonist, creating conflict.Allusion(暗指，典故): 1, allusion means a reference to a person, a place, an event or a literary work that the writer expects the reader to recognize and respond to. 2, an allusion may be drawn from history, geography, literature or religion. 3, Thackeray’s Vanity Fair serves as a literary example. The name of the novel is borrowed from the famous scene in John Bunyan’s the Pilgrim’s Progress.Protagonist and antagonist(正面人物与反面人物): 1, protagonist refers to the hero or the central character who is often hindered by some opposing force either human or animal in accomplishing his or her objective. 2, for example, Captain Ahab is the protagonist in Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick whereas the white whale is the antagonist.现代主义时期：Modernism(现代主义): 1, modernism is a international movement in literature and arts, especially in literary criticism, which began in late 19th century and flourished until 1950s. 2, modernism takes the irrational philosophy and the theory of psycho-analysis as its theoretical case. 3, the modernism writers concentrate mere on the private and subjunctive than on the public and objective, mainly concerned with the inner of an individual. 4, James Joyce, T S Eliot, Virginia Woolf and William Faulkner are prominent modernist writers.Dadaism(达尔文主义): Dadaism refers to western European artistic and literary movement (1916-1923) that sought the discovery of authentic reality through the abolition of traditional, cultural and aesthetic forms by a technique of comic derision in which irrationality, chance and intuition were the guiding principles.Stream of consciousness(意识流): 1, stream of consciousness has sth to do with a method of storytelling in which the author tells the story through the freely flowing thoughts and associations of one of the characters. It is used to depict the mental and emotional reactions of characters to external events, rather than the events themselves. 2, among English writers, James Joyce and Virginia Woolf are two major advocates of this technique.The theater of absurd(荒诞派喜剧): 1, the Theater of Absurd is a kind of drama that explains an existential ideology and presents a view of the absurdity of the human condition by the abandoning of usual or rational devices and the use of neorealist form. 2, the most original playwright of the Theater of Absurd is Samuel Beckett, who wrote about human beings living a meaningless life in an alien, decaying world. His play, Waiting for Godot, is regarded as the most famous and influential play of the Theater of Absurd.Existentialism(存在主义)：1, extentialiam is a philosophy that emphasizes the uniqueness and isolation of the individual experience in a hostile or indifferent universe, regards human existence as unexplainable and stresses freedom of choice and responsibility for the consequences of one’s acts. 2, its famous motto is “existence precedes essence”(存在先于本质).Parody(戏仿)：1, parody means mimicry of a work or a style expression. 2, sometimes the mimicry is undertaken to make fun of what is parodied; sometimes it is done in a sincere effort to gain the understanding that comes from painstaking imitation.Black humor(黑色幽默): 1, black humor is also known as Black Comedy. It is a kind of writing that places grotesque elements side by with humorous ones in an attempt to shock the reader, forcing him or her to laugh at the horrifying reality of a disordered world. It is humor out of despair and laughter out of tears. 2, black humor conveys anguish and fury at conditions in which institutionalized absurdity gets the upper hand. It intends to satirize hypocrisy, materialism, racial prejudice and the dehumanization of the individual by a modern society. Black humor prevails in modern American literature. 3, Joseph Heller’s novel Catch-22 is considered a superb example of the use of black humor. Kurt V onnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five is also a case in point.Oedipus complex(俄狄浦斯情节/恋母情节): 1, it is a term occupied by Sigmund Freud to designate a son’s subconscious feeling of love toward his mother and jealousy and hatred toward his father. 2, D H Lawrence’s Son and Lovers is a case.Surrealism(超现实主义): Surrealism is a 20th century literary and artistic movement that attempts to express the workings of the subconscious by fantastic imagery and incongruous juxtaposition of subject matter.。