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英美文学名词解释

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Allegory: 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 meanings, a literal meaning and a symbolic meaning. The most

famous allegory in English literature is John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress.

Heroic couplet: a pair of successive lines in iambic pentameter (regularly 5 feet, or 10 syllables)

Ballad stanza: is a type a four-line stanza (quatrain) rhyming abcb. 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.

Alliteration is the repetition of a speech sound in a sequence of nearby words. The term is usually applied only

to consonants, and only when the recurrent sound begins a word or a stressed syllable within a word.

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.

Kenning: a kenning is a metaphor usually composed of two words, which becomes the formula for a special

object.

Ballad is also known as the folk ballad or tradition ballad. It is a song, transmitted orally, which tells a story.

Ballads are thus the narrative species of folk songs, which originate, and are communicated orally, among

illiterate or only partly literate people.

Spenserian stanza: It is a longer form devised by Edmund spenser for the Faerie Queene---nine lines, in which

the first eight lines are iambic pentameter and the last iambic hexameter, rhyming ababbcbcc

Soliloquy is the act of talking to oneself, whether silently or aloud. In drama it denotes the convention by which

a character, alone on the stage, utters his or her thoughts aloud.

blank verse: Verse without rhymes. It is typically in iambic pentameter, the dominant verse form of English

dramatic and narrative poetry since the mid-16th century. The first practitioner of English dramatic blank verse

is Christopher Marlowe.

Romances: is the prevailing form of literature in the Middle Ages. It is a long composition, sometimes in verse,

sometimes in prose, describing the life and adventures of knights.

Myth: a myth is an anonymous traditional story with its roots in culture and folk belief that relies on the

supernatural to explain the mystery of the world.

Legend: a legend is also a traditional story handed down from generation to generation. But unlike a myth, a

legend is believed to be based on historical truth. Usually a legend celebrates the heroic qualities of a national

leader, eg. Arthurian legend.

Meter is the recurrence, in regular units, of a prominent feature in the sequence of speech-sounds of a

language.

Imagism: It’s a poetic movement of England and the U.S. flourished from 1909 to 1917. the movement insists

on the creation of images in poetry by “the direct treatment of the thing” and the economy of wording. The

leaders of this movement were Ezra Pound and Amy Lowell.

Sonnet: a lyric poem consisting of a single stanza of fourteen iambic pentameter lines linked by an intricate

rhyme scheme. There are two major patterns of rhyme in sonnets written the English language:(1)the Italian of

Petrarchan sonnets (named after the fourteenth century Italian poet Petrarch) falls into two main parts: an

octave( eight lines) rhyming abbaabba followed by a sestet (six lines) rhyming cdecde or some variant, such as

cdccdc.(2) the Earl of Surrey and other English experimenters in the 16th century also developed a stanza form

called the English sonnet, or the Shakespearean sonnet. This sonnet falls into three quatrains and a concluding

couplet: ababcdcdefefgg. There was one notable variant, the Spenserian sonnet, in which Spenser linked each

quatrain to the next by a continuing rhyme:abab bcbc cdcd ee

Imagism in Poetry: Imagism is the name given to a movement in poetry, originating in 1912 and represented

by Ezra Pound, Amy Lowell, and others, aiming at clarity of expression through the use of precise visual

images. (when speaking of images in poetry we generally mean a word or sequence of words that refers to any

sensory experience. Often this experience is a sight, but it may be a sound or a touch. It may be an odor or a

state or perhaps bodily sensation such as pain, or the perception of something cold.

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英美文学名词解释(1)

英美文学名词解释(1)

1puritanism清教主义

The dogmas 教条preached by Puritans. They believed that all men were

predestined命中注定 and the individual ‘s free will played no part in his quest for

salvation. This was a rejection of the dogmas preached by the Roman Catholic

Church and its rites仪式. The Puritans also advocated a strict moral code which

prohibited many earthly pleasures such as dancing and other merry-makings.清教徒提倡严格的道德准则禁止如跳舞和其他许多世俗的快乐的气质。 They stressed the

virtues of self-discipline,自律 thrift节俭 and hard work as evidence that one was

among the “elect” to be chosen to go to Heaven after death

2Romanticism

The term refers to the literary and artistic movements of the late 18th and early 19th

century. Romanticism rejected the earlier philosophy of the Enlightenment, which

stressed that logic and reason were the best response humans had in the face of

英美文学专有名词术语解释

英美文学专有名词术语解释

Literary Terms（文学术语解释） * Legend（传说）: A song or narrative handed down from the past, legend differs from myths on the basis of the elements of historical truth they contain. * 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 the Anglo-Saxons. John Milton wrote three great epics: Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes. * Romance（罗曼史/骑士文学）: 1)Romance is a popular literary form in the medieval England. 2)It sings 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. * 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. * The Heroic Couplet（英雄对偶句）:1)It means a pair of lines of a type once common in English poetry, in other words, it means iambic pentameter rhymed in two lines. 2)The rhyme is masculine. 3)Use of the heroic couplet was first pioneered by Geoffrey Chaucer. * Humanism（人文主义）:1)Humanism is the essence of the Renaissance. It emphasizes the dignity of human beings and the importance of the present life. 2)Humanists voiced their beliefs that man was the center of the universe and man did not only have the right to enjoy the beauty of the present life, but had the ability to prefect himself and to perform wonders. * Renaissance（文艺复兴）:1)It refers to the transitional period from the medieval to the modern world. It first started in Italy in the 14th century. 2)The Renaissance means rebirth or revival. 3)It was stimulated by a series of historical events, such as the rediscovery of ancient Roman and Greek classics, the new discoveries in geography and astrology, the religious reformation and the economic expansion. 4)Humanism is the essence of Renaissance. 5)The English Renaissance didn’t begin until the reign of Henry Ⅷ. It was regarded as England’s Golden Age, especially in literature. 6)The real mainstream of the English Renaissance is the

【良心出品】《英美文学史》名词解释

【良心出品】《英美文学史》名词解释

英美文学史名词解释

1. English Critical Realism

English critical realism of the 19th century flourished in the forties

and in the early fifties. The realists first and foremost criticized the

capitalist society from a democratic viewpoint and delineated (portrayed)

the crying (extremely shocking) contradictions of bourgeois reality. The

greatness of the English realists lies not only in their satirical portrayal of

bourgeoisie and in the exposure of the greed and hypocrisy of the ruling

classes, but also in their sympathy for the laboring people. Humor and

satire are used to expose and criticize the seamy (dark) side of reality. The

major contribution of the critical realists lies in their perfection of the

novel. Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray are the most

important representative of English critical realism.

英美文学重点名词解释

英美文学重点名词解释

local colorism is an unique variation of American literary realism.

Generally, the works by local colorism are concerned with the life of a

small region or province. This kind of fiction depicts the characters from

a specific setting or of an era, which are marked by its customs, dialects,

landscape, or other peculiarities that have escaped standardizing

cultural influence. Tasks of local colorism is to wirte or present local

characters of their regions in truthful depicton distinguished from

others, usually a very small part of the world. local colorism

concerned themselves with presenting and interpreting the local character

of their regions. they tended to idealize and glorify, but they never

forget to keep an eye on the truthful color of local life. Their truthful

depiction of the common people in their commonplace lives added strength