英国文学第一学期名词解释

英国文学第一学期名词解释

Allegory: a story or description in which the characters and events symbolize some

deeper underlying meaning, and serve to spread moral teaching.

Alliteration: A poetic device where the first consonant sounds or any vowel sounds in

words or syllables are repeated.

Allusion: A reference to a familiar literary or historical person or event, used to make an

idea more easily understood.

Ballad: A short poem that tells a simple story and has a repeated refrain. Ballads were

originally intended to be sung. Early ballads, known as folk ballads, were passed down

through generations, so their authors are often unknown. Later ballads composed by

known authors are called literary ballads.

Blank Verse: unrhymed lines of iambic pentameter.

Carpe Diem: A Latin term meaning "seize the day." This is a traditional themeof Poetry,

especially lyrics. A carpe diem poem advises the reader or the person it addresses to live

for today and enjoy the pleasures of the moment.

Two celebrated carpe diem poems are Andrew Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress" and Robert

Herrick's poem beginning "Gather ye rosebuds while ye may...."

Conceit: an unusually far-fetched or elaborate metaphor or simile presenting a

surprisingly apt parallel between two apparently dissimilar things or feelings.

Connotation: The impression that a word gives beyond its defined meaning.

Couplet: Two lines of Poetry with the same rhyme and Meter, often expressing a

complete and self-contained thought.

Denotation: The definition of a word, apart from the impressions or feelings it creates in

the reader.

Dramatic Monologue

Epic: A long narrative poem about the adventures of a hero of great historic or legendary

importance. The setting is vast and the action is often given cosmic significance through

the intervention of supernatural forces such as gods, angels, or demons. Epics are typically

written in a classical style of grand simplicity with elaborate Metaphors and allusions that

enhance the symbolic importance of a hero's adventures.

Frame story: a story in which another story is enclosed or embedded as a “tale within a

tale”, or which contains several such tales.

Foot: The smallest unit of rhythm in a line of Poetry. In English-language poetry, a foot is

typically one accented syllable combined with one or two unaccented syllables. There are many different types of feet. When the accent is on the second syllable of a two

syllable word (con-tort), the foot is an "iamb"; the reverse accentual pattern (tor-ture) is a

"trochee." Other feet that commonly occur in poetry in English are "anapest", two

unaccented syllables followed by an accented syllable as in in-ter-cept, and "dactyl", an

accented syllable followed by two unaccented syllables as in su-i-cide.

Grub Street Writers: Hack writers in the Eighteenth Century England. Many of them

lived on Grub Street. They took writing as a profession.

Heroic Couplet: A rhyming couplet written in iambic pentameter (a Verse with five

iambic feet).

Humanism: A philosophy that places faith in the dignity of humankind and rejects the

medieval perception of the individual as a weak, fallen creature. "Humanists" typically

believe in the perfectibility of human nature and view reason and education as the means

to that end.

Iambic pentametre: If a line of a poem has five feet, and in each foot there are two

syllables, the first being unstressed, the second, stressed, the line is an iambic pentameter

line.

Irony: In literary criticism, the effect of language in which the intended meaning is the

opposite of what is stated.

Metaphysical Poetry: The body of poetry produced by a group of seventeenth-century

English writers called the "Metaphysical Poets." The group includes John Donne and

Andrew Marvell. The Metaphysical Poets made use of everyday speech, intellectual

analysis, and unique imagery. They aimed to portray the ordinary conflicts and

contradictions of life. Their poems often took the form of an argument, and many of them

emphasize physical and religious love as well as the fleeting nature of life.

Elaborate conceits are typical in metaphysical poetry.

Metaphysical Poets: a group of 17th century English poets whose work is notable for its

ingenious use of intellectual concepts in surprising conceits, strange paradoxes, and

far-fetched imagery.

Meter: In literary criticism, the repetition of sound patterns that creates a rhythm

in Poetry. The patterns are based on the number of syllables and the presence and

absence of accents. The unit of rhythm in a line is called a Foot. Types of meter are

classified according to the number of feet in a line. These are the standard English lines: