4. Aestheticism// the Aesthetic Movement // the fin de siècle aestheticism: it was a
European phenomenon during the latter 19th century that had its chief
headquarters in France. In opposition to the dominance of scientific
thinking and widespread indifference of the middle-class society to art, the
advocates of the movement developed the view that a work of art is the
supreme value because it is self-sufficient and has no use or moral aim
outside its own being. The end of a work of art is simply to exist in its
formal perfection. A rallying cry of Aestheticism is “art for art’s sake”
The views later were introduced to Victorian England and Algernon
Charles Swinburne, Oscar Wilde became its major representatives. (唯美
主义运动, 19世纪末的唯美主义运动)
6. Metaphysical poetry: it refers to the poetry written by a group of 17th century poets
represented by John Donne, Andrew Marvell and George Herbert etc.
They employ paradox, pun and startling parallels in simile and metaphor to
write poetry with the basic features of “wit”or “conceit”. A subtle and
often deliberately outrageous logic is involved to render the form of a
heated argument or a meditative process throughout the poem.
Metaphysical poetry is sharply opposed to the Elizabethan poetry tradition
and has been drastically elevated to a high hierarchy of English poetry
after World War I. （玄学派诗歌）
7. Gothic novel: it is a type of prose fiction with the medieval setting in its barbaric and
supernatural aspects. The term is now generally applied to literature
dealing with the strange, mysterious and supernatural designed to invoke
suspense and terror in the reader. Gothic novel invariably exploits ghosts
and monsters and settings such as castles, dungeons, and graveyards,
which impart a suitably sinister and terrifying atmosphere. （哥特式小说）8. English Romanticism: it is a literary poetic movement starting from the publication
of Lyrical Ballads in 1798 through the first three decades of the
nineteenth century. It favors innovation over traditionalism in the
materials, forms and style of literature, emphasizing poet’s own
spontaneous feelings as the inherent organic laws of poetry. Also, the
external nature---the landscape, together with its flora and fauna,
becomes a persistent subject of romantic poetry. The major poets in
this movement include Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley and
Keats. （英国浪漫主义诗歌运动）
9. Modernism: the term is widely used to identify the distinctive features in the
subjects, forms, concepts and styles of literature and other arts in the
early decades of 20th century, especially after World War I. Under the
influence of irrational philosophy, modernists break up the narrative
continuity and cast away almost all the traditional elements in literature
like story, plot and character. They shift the narrative focus from the
realists’concern with the external material world to the inner-mind
activities of the characters by the use of stream of consciousness and
other innovative modes of narration. The monuments of modernist
innovation include James Joyce’s Ulysses, T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land,
and Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway. （现代主义）
14. Negative Capability：It is the ability to perceive and to think more than any
presupposition of human nature allows.It describes the capacity of
human beings to reject the totalizing constraints of a closed context,
