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(完整word版)2012-13(II)英国文学史名词解释(吴伟仁)

英国文学史名词解释

The sonnet is one of the poetic forms that can be found in lyric poetry from Europe. The term

"sonnet" derives from the Occitan word sonet and the Italian word sonetto, both meaning "little song".

By the thirteenth century, it had come to signify a poem of fourteen lines that follows a strict rhyme

scheme and specific structure. The conventions associated with the sonnet have evolved over its

history. The writers of sonnets are sometimes referred to as "sonneteers," although the term can be

used derisively. One of the best-known sonnet writers is Shakespeare, who wrote 154 of them. A

Shakespearean sonnet consists of 14 lines, each line contains ten syllables, and each line is written in

iambic pentameter in which a pattern of a non-emphasized syllable followed by an emphasized

syllable is repeated five times. The rhyme scheme in a Shakespearean sonnet is ABAB CDCD EFEF GG,

in which the last two lines are a rhyming couplet.

2. Iambic pentameter

Iambic pentameter is a commonly used metrical line in traditional verse and verse drama. The

term describes the particular rhythm that the words establish in that line. That rhythm is measured in

small groups of syllables; these small groups of syllables are called "feet". The word "iambic" describes

the type of foot that is used (in English, an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable). The

word "pentameter" indicates that a line has five of these "feet."

3. Heroic couplet

Heroic couplet is a traditional form for English poetry, commonly used for epic and narrative

poetry; it refers to poems constructed from a sequence of rhyming pairs of iambic pentameter lines.

(完整word版)2012-13(II)英国文学史名词解释(吴伟仁)

The rhyme is always masculine. Use of the heroic couplet was first pioneered by Geoffrey Chaucer in

the Legend of Good Women and the Canterbury Tales. Chaucer is also widely credited with first

extensive use of iambic pentameter.

4. Stream of consciousness

The continuous flow of sense-perceptions, thoughts, feelings, and memories in the human mind:

or a literary method of representing such a blending of mental processes in fictional characters,

usually in an unpunctuated or disjoint form of interior monologue.

5. The Renaissance

The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century,

beginning in Italy in the late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also

used more loosely to refer to the historic era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not

uniform, this is a very general use of the term.

6. Humanism

Humanism is a literary and philosophical view emphasizing humankind as its center concerns.

Humanism originated in the Renaissance, the term has been used many ways, but always suggests

humanity as the central concern, with the natural world (science) and the spiritual world (religion)

valued for their relation to people.

7. The Enlightenment

The Enlightenment was an intellectual movement originating in France，which attracted

widespread support among the ruling and intellectual classes of Europe and North America in the

(完整word版)2012-13(II)英国文学史名词解释(吴伟仁)

second half of the 18th century. It characterizes the efforts by certain European writers to use critical

reason to free minds from prejudice, unexamined authority and oppression by Church or State.

Therefore the Enlightenment is sometimes called the Age of Reason.

8. Romanticism

Roughly the first third of the 19th century makes up English literature’s romantic period. Writers

of romantic literature are more concerned with imagination and feeling than with the power of reason.

A volume of poems called Lyrical Ballads written by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge

is regarded as the romantic poetry’s “Declaration of Independence.” Keats, Byron and Shelley, the

three great poets, brought the Romantic Movement to its height. The spirit of romanticism also

occurred in the novel.

9. Critical Realism

Critical realism is a philosophical view of knowledge. On the one hand it holds that it is possible to

acquire knowledge about the external world as it really is, independently of the human mind or

subjectivity. That is why it is called realism. On the other hand it rejects the view of naïve realism that

the external world is as it is perceived. Recognizing that perception is a function of, and thus

fundamentally marked by, the human mind, it holds that one can only acquire knowledge of the

external world by critical reflection on perception and its world. That is why it is called critical.

ticism( 美学主义) The basic theory of the Aesthetic movement----“art for art’s sake”

----was set forth by a French poet, Theophile Gautier. The first Englishman who wrote about the

theory of aestheticism was Walter Pater, the most important critical writer of the late 19

th

century. The

chief representative of the movement in England was Oscar Wilde,with his

Picture of Dorian Gray

.

Aestheticism places art above life, and holds that life should imitate art, not art imitate life. According

(完整word版)2012-13(II)英国文学史名词解释(吴伟仁)

to the aesthetes, all artistic creation is absolutely subjective as opposed to objective. Art should be

free from any influence of egoism. Only when art is for art’s sake,can it be immortal They believed

that art should be unconcerned with controversial issues, such as politics and morality, and that it

should be restricted to contributing beauty in a highly polished style. This was one of the reactions

against the materialism and commercialism of the Victorian industrial era, as well as a reaction against

the Victorian convention of art for morality’s sake, or art for money’s sake.

11. Modernism

Modernism refers to a form of literature mainly written before WWII. It is characterized by a high

degree of experimentation. It can be seen as a reaction against the 19

th

century forms of Realism.

Modernist writers express the difficulty they see in understanding and communicating how the world

works. Often, Modernist writing seems disorganized, hard to understand. It often portrays the action

from the viewpoint of a single confused individual, rather than from the viewpoint of an all-knowing

impersonal narrator out side the action. One of the most famous English modernist writers is Virginia

Woolf.

12..Metaphysical poetry a derogatory term invented by John Dryden(1631-1700 ) and later

adopted by Samuel Johnson(1709-1784) describing a school of highly intellectual poetry marked by

bold and ingenious conceits,incongruous imagery,complexity of thought,frequent use of paradox,and

often by deliberate harshness or rigidity of main themes of metaphysical poets are

love,death,and ing to them,all things in the universe, no matter how dissimilar they are

to each other,are closely unified in chief representative of this school was John Donne.

poets（湖畔诗人） William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Robert Southey

became known as the Lake Poets, because they lived in the Lake District in the northwestern part of

England. According to the critics, such as, Francis Jeffrey, Thomas De Quincey, the Lake Poets shared

(完整word版)2012-13(II)英国文学史名词解释(吴伟仁)

only friendship and brief periods of collaboration, not similar philosophies or poetic styles.

Wordsworth used his imaginative powers to idealize nature, Coleridge explored the philosophical

aspects of poetry, Southey's Romantic efforts centered on travel and adventure.

(史诗) An epic is a long oral narrative poem that operates on a grand scale and deals

with legendary or historical events of national or universal significance .Most epics deal with the

exploits of a single individual and also interlace the main narrative with myths, legends, folk tales and

past events; there is a composite effect, the entire culture of a country cohering in the overall

experience of the poem . Epic poems are not merely entertaining stories of legendary or historical

heroes; they summarize and express the nature or ideals of an entire nation at a significant or crucial

period of its history.

(颂歌) Long, often elaborate formal lyric poem of varying line lengths dealing with a

subject matter and treating it reverently. It aims at glorifying an individual, commemorating an event,

or describing nature intellectually rather than emotionally. Conventionally, many odes are written or

dedicated to a specific subject. For instance,

Ode to the West Wind

is about the winds that bring

change of season in England.

Ode to the Nightingale

is about the nightingale that lures the poet

temporarily away from his great misery. The earliest English odes include the

Epithalamion

and the

Prothalamion

,or marriage hymns by poet Edmund Spenser.