English Literature
Review
Types of questions
●Ⅰ. Choose from the given choices the correct one. (2’X15=30’)
●Ⅱ. Define the following terms. (10’X3=30’)
●Ⅲ. III. Answer one of the following questions. (20’X1=20’)
●Ⅳ. Write no less than 100 words on one of the following topics in English. (20’
X1=20’)
What we’ve learned?
Beowulf
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
●The Anglo-Saxon Period
●The Anglo-Norman Period
●The 14th century
●The Renaissance
●The 17th century
●The 18th century
●The 19th century
●The 20th century
Geoffrey Chaucer
William Shakespeare
4 Johns: John Milton & John Bunyan
Neo-classicism; Realistic Novel; Sentimentalism，Pre-romanticism
Romanticism; Critical Realism
Stream of Consciousness
Anglo-Saxon 449-1066
●Three pagan Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, from Denmark and northern Germany came
around 450---600 AD
●England’s natinal epic:
●The song of Beowulf
●Alliteration is a device with certain accented words in a line beginning with the same
consonant sound.
●p3
Anglo-Norman Period
●1066, The Norman Conquest
● the battle of Hastings
● William, Duke of Normandy win
● P17-18
●Metrical Romance:
●the culmination of the Arthurian romances
●Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Geoffrey Chaucer
●The Middle Class Author
●“Father of English poetry”: Chaucer introduced from France the rhymed
stanzas---heroic couplet.
●heroic couplet: is a rhymed couplet of iambic pentameter.
●Forerunner of English Renaissance and humanism
●The founder of English realism/ The first realistic writer
●first to be buried in the Poet’s Corner of Westminster Abbey
●The Canterbury Tales p43-45
English Renaissance
(1520s---1620s) P67
●Poet: Thomas Wyatt, Edmund Spenser
●Thomas Wyatt was the first to introduce the sonnet into English literature.
●Edmund Spenser: (epic) The Fairy Queen
●Essayist: Francis Bacon
●Playwright: Christopher Marlowe
●William Shakespeare
●Christopher Marlowe is the greatest o the pioneers of English drama. He
makes blank verse the principal vehicle of expression in drama.f
●P67-68
The Renaissance and humanism
●was an intellectual movement. It sprang from first in Italy in the 14th century and
gradually spread all over Europe. Two features are striking. The one is a thirsting curiosity for the classical literature of the Greek and Latin. Another feature is the keen interest in the activities of humanity.
●Humanism is the key-note of the Renaissance.
● Blank verse is a verse with unrhymed (rhymeless) iambic pentameter.
● Sonnet is a fourteen-line poem in iambic pentameter with a carefully
patterned rhyme scheme.
William Shakespeare
●Great comedies: ?
●Great tragedies: ?
●p71-72
