2024年3月10日发(作者：)

1，alliteration 2，kenning 3，caesura 4,romance 5,chivalery 6,quatrain

7,meter:rhyme 8,heroic couplet 9iambic pentameter 10,bob and wheel 11,realism

12,idealism 13,renaissiance 14,blank verse 15,sonnet 16,comedy 17,tragedy

18,humanism 19,cavalier poets 20,metaphysical poets 21,metaphysical conceit

1. Epic

(史诗)（appeared in the Anglo-Saxon Period ）

Epic is an extended narrative poem in elevated or dignified language, like Homer’s

Iliad

&

Odyssey

. It usually celebrates the feats of one or more legendary or traditional heroes. The action

is simple, but full of magnificence.

Today, some long narrative works, like novels that reveal an age & its people are also called

epic.

E.g.

Beowulf

（ the pagan（异教徒），secular(非宗教的) poetry）

Iliad 《伊利亚特》，

Odyssey《奥德赛》 Paradise Lost 《失乐园》.

1. Romance （传奇）(Anglo-Norman feudal England)

• Romance is any imaginative literature that is set in an idealized world and that deals with

heroic adventures and battles between good characters and villains or monsters.

• Originally, the term referred to a medieval (中世纪) tale dealing with the love and adventures

of kings, queens, knights, and ladies, and including supernatural happenings.

Form: long composition, in verse, in prose

Content: description of life and adventures of a noble hero

Character: a knight, a man of noble birth, skilled in the use of weapons; often described as

riding forth to seek adventures, taking part in tournaments(骑士比武), or fighting for his lord in

battles; devoted to the church and the king

• Romance lacks general resemblance to truth or reality.

• It exaggerates the vices of human nature and idealizes the virtues.

• It contains perilous (dangerous) adventures more or less remote from ordinary life.

• It lays emphasis on supreme devotion to a fair lady.

3. Alliteration（押头韵）: a repeated initial(开头的) consonant(协调,一致) to successive(连

续的) words.

4. Heroic couplet （英雄双韵体）（introduced by Geoffrey Chaucer）

Definition: the rhymed couplet of iambic pentameter; a verse form in epic poetry, with lines

of ten syllables and five stresses, in rhyming pairs.

英雄诗体/英雄双韵体：用于史诗或叙事诗，每行十个音节，五个音部，每两行押韵。

5. couplet（两行诗，对句）: Two consecutive lines of poetry that rhyme. A heroic couplet is an

iambic pentameter couplet. During the Restoration period and the 18th C. it was a popular verse

form.

6. iambic pentameter(抑扬格五音步): A poetic line consisting of five Verse feet (pentameter -

is from a Greek word meaning “five”), with each foot an iamb-- that is, an unstressed syllable

followed by a stressed syllable.

7. Rhyme（韵，押韵）: the repetition (反复) of sounds in two or more words or phrases that

appear close to each other in a poem. E .g. River/shiver, song/long

8. meter (格律) （属于Prosody ['prɔsədɪ]（韵文学;诗体学；(某语言的)韵律(学)））: A generally

regular pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables（音节） in poetry.

9. Rhythm（节奏，韵律）（属于Prosody ['prɔsədɪ（]韵文学;诗体学；(某语言的)韵律(学)））： refers

to the regular recurrence（反复，重现） of the accent（重读） or stress in poem or song.

E.g. the rhythm of day and night, the seasonal rhythm of the year, the beat of our hearts, and

the rise and fall of sea tides, etc.

10．Humanism

1) Humanism is the essence of the Renaissance. According to humanists, human beings were

glorious creatures capable of individual development in the direction of perfection and the world

can be questioned, explored and enjoyed.

2) By emphasizing the dignity of human beings and the importance of the present life, in

contrast to the medieval emphasis on God and contempt for the things of this world, they voiced

their beliefs that man did not only have the right to pursue happiness of this life, but had the

ability to perfect himself and to perform wanders.

11. Tragedy（Drama form）

• A serious play or novel representing the disastrous downfall of a central character, the

protagonist. According to Aristotle, the purpose is to achieve a catharsis through incidents

arousing pity and terror. The tragic effect usually depends on our awareness of admirable

qualities in he protagonist, which are wasted terribly in the fated disaster.

• E.

g.

（莎士比亚）

Great Tragedies（四大悲剧）（explores the faults/weaknesses of humans）:

Hamlet, Othello, King Lear& Macbeth

12. Blank Verse （无韵诗）

• Unrhymed lines of iambic pentameter. It is a very flexible English verse form which can

attain rhetorical grandeur（雄伟，壮观） while echoing the natural rhythms of speech. It was first

used by Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, and soon became a popular form for narrative and

dramatic poetry. Marlowe, Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, Tennyson, Stevens and Robert Frost

are fond of this form.

13. Sonnet

A sonnet is a lyric poem comprising 14 rhyming lines of equal length: iambic pentameter in

English, hendecasyllables [hen,dekə'siləbl]（十一音节） in Italian, and alexandrines.[ˌæliɡˈzɑ:ndrain]

（亚历山大诗行） in French.

. The English/Shakespearean sonnet

It was introduced into English poetry in the early 16th century by Sir Thomas Wyatt

(1503-1542). It consists of 3 quatrains and a final couplet, rhyming

abab cdcd efef gg

.

An important variant is the Spenserian sonnet, which links the 3 quatrains by rhyme, rhyming

abab bcbc cdcd ee

.

（quatrain: 四行诗 (每节四行,韵律一般为abab或abba)）

14. Allegory（寓言）

• A story with a double meaning: a primary or surface meaning, and a secondary or

under-the-surface meaning

• A story that can be read, understood and interpreted at two levels

Two levels of allegory

• One level examines the moral, philosophical and religious values and is represented

by the Red Cross Knight, who stands for all Christians.

• The second level is the particular, which focuses on the political, social, and religious

conflicts in the then English society.

15. Metaphysical(形而上学，超自然，纯哲学) Poets

METAPHYSICAL POETS refer to a school of poets at the beginning of the 17th century

England who wrote under the influence of John Donne. The works of the Metaphysical poets are

characterized, generally speaking, by mysticism in content and fantasticality in form.

The most eminent poets are John Donne, George Herbert & Andrew Marwell.

16. Metaphysical Poetry

Metaphysical poetry is concerned with the whole experience of man, especially about

love, romantic and sensual; about man's relationship with God, and about pleasure, learning and

art.

Metaphysical poems are lyric poems of brief but intense meditations, characterized by

the striking use of wit, irony and wordplay. Beneath the formal structure (of rhyme, meter and

stanza) is the underlying structure of the poem’s argument. In “To His Coy Mistress,” the

explicit argument (Marvell's request that the coy lady yield to his passion) is a stalking horse for

the more serious argument about the transistorizes of pleasure.

Rise & Fall of Metaphysical Poetry

• Metaphysical poetry was rarely read in the 17th, 18th and early 19th century.

• In the late 19th century and early 20th century, there was a renewed interest in metaphysical

poetry.

• The modernist poets T.S. Eliot, John Ransom and Allen Tate claimed their influence by John

Donne. So John Donne became a cult figure in the early 20th century English-speaking countries.

Metaphysical conceit

This type of conceit draws upon a wide range of knowledge, and its comparisons are

elaborately（苦心经营地，精巧地） rationalized.

For instance, Donne’s “The Flea” compares a flea bite to the act of love; and in “A

Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” separated lovers are likened to the legs of a compass, the leg

drawing the circle eventually returning home to "the fixed foot."

17. neoclassicism（新古典主义）

– It found its artistic models in the classical literature of the ancient Greek and Roman

writers like Homer, Virgil, Horace, and Ovid.

– A partial reaction against the fires of passion blazed in the late Renaissance, especially

in the Metaphysical poetry.

--- Prose should be precise, direct, smooth and flexible.

--- Poetry should be lyrical（抒情的）, epical（叙事的）, didactic（教导的）, satiric or dramatic,

and each class should be guided by its own principles.

--- Neo-classical writers are: John Dryden, Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, Joseph Addison,

Richard Steele, Henry Fielding, Samuel Johnson, Oliver Goldsmith, Edward Gibbon, etc.

18. Enlightenment Movement(启蒙运动)

Under the influence of scientific discoveries (Newton) and flourishing of philosophies, French

enlightenment started.

Enlightenment thinkers such as Voltaire伏尔泰, Montesquieu孟德斯鸠, Locke洛克, Hobbes

霍布斯, and Rousseau卢梭 believed that the world was an object of study and that people could

understand and control the world by means of reason and empirical（以观察或实验为依据的）

research.

• an intellectual movement beginning in France and then spread throughout Europe

• a continuation of Renaissance in belief in the possibility of human perfection through

education

• the guiding principle or slogan（标语，标号） is Ration（定量？）/Reason, natural right and

equality (American Independence War in 1776; French Revolution in 1789)

• Ration became standard for measurement of everything.

• In religion, it was against superstition（迷信）, intolerance（心胸狭窄）, and dogmatism（教

条主义，独断，武断）; in politics, it was against tyranny（暴政，苛政）; and in society, it was against

prejudice, ignorance, inequality, and any obstacles to the realization of an individual’s full

intellectual and physical well-being. At the same time, they advocated（提倡） universal education.

In their opinion, human beings were limited, dualistic（二元的）, imperfect, and yet capable of

rationality（合理性，合理的行为见解） and perfection through education.

The great enlighteners:

• Alexander Pope,

• Joseph Addison,

• Jonathan Swift, and

• Samuel Johnson

19. Sentimentality literature伤感文学

--- It was a partial reaction against that cold, logic rationalism which dominated people’s life

since the last decades of the 17th century.

--- A ready sympathy and an inward pain for the misery of others became part of accepted

social morality and ethics.

--- started by Samuel Richardson’s

Pamela

And

Clarissa

--- represented in novel form by Laurence Sterne’s

A

Sentimental Journey through France and

Italy

(1768)

--- represented in poetry by “The Graveyard School”:

Thomas Gray, Edward Young

--- emphasizing the emotion/heart instead of ration

---gradually merged into Romanticism

20. The Realistic Novel

The English middle-class people were ready to cast away the aristocratic romance and to

create a new and realistic literature of their own to express their ideas and serve their interests.

The whole life in its ordinary aspects of the middle class became the major source of interest

in literature.

Major novelists: Daniel Defoe, Samuel Richardson, Henry Fielding, Laurence Sterne, Oliver

Goldsmith, Tobias George Smollett…

Point of view

The method of narration that determines the position, or angle of vision from which the story

is told.

Commonly used points of view