英国文学所有的名词解释

Renaissance: The period in European history that began at late 14th century in Italy through 15th
century and 16th century，Following Middle Ages;It is the dividing line between the Middle Ages
and the Modern Ages. European culture reached eminence; came to England in 16th century
Wars of Roses (royal power, noble houses of York and Lancaster)Establishment of Tudor dynasty
(1485-1603)
Renaissance humanism:It is an approach in study, philosophy, or practice that focuses on human
values and concerns. It is a philosophy that places faith in the dignity of humankind and rejects the
medieval perception of the individual as a weak, fallen creature.
Features
New learning：Greek knowledge, printing; cultivated Renaissance aristocracy, “The Courtier”
New religion: Martin Luther challenging Roman Catholic church, direct transaction with God
New world: Columbus; economic exploitation
New cosmos: Copernicus, the center being the sun, not the earth; Descartes (Give me extension
and motion, and I will construct the universe); Enlightenment
Women of the Renaissance (Margaret L. King)
Elizabethan AgeThis is a period of the flowering time of English literature.
University Wits: A group of people wrote for the stage of the time and survive by writing skills
Church and theatres: morality plays; attacks on theatres by church (breeding grounds for
infection)
Elements of Drama:
Protagonists: Antagonists, Exposition,Suspense,Rising Action,Climax,Falling action:
Aside独白: inaudible to other characters
TragedyRepresentations of serious actions which eventuate in a disastrous conclusion for the
protagonist (the chief character)
ComedyIt is any humorous discourse generally intended to amuse and to interest.
SonnetIt is one of several forms of lyric poetry originating in Europe. A fourteen-line poem
usually composed in iambic pentameter, employing one of several rhyme schemes. In
Shakespeare's sonnets, the rhyme pattern is abab cdcd efef gg, with the final couplet used to
summarize the previous 12 lines or present a surprise ending.
An iamb is a metrical foot consisting of one stressed syllable and one unstressed syllable — as in
dah-DUM, dah-DUM dah-DUM dah-DUM dah-DUM.
five of these in each line, which makes it a pentameter.
Lyric poetryIt is a form of poetry with rhyming schemes that express personal and emotional
feelings.
SoliloquyA monologue in a drama used to give the audience information and to develop the
speaker's character. It is typically a projection of the speaker's innermost thoughts. Usually
delivered while the speaker is alone on stage, a soliloquy is intended to present an illusion of
unspoken reflection.
Rhyme: This term generally refers to a poem in which words sound identical or very similar and
appear in parallel positions in two or more lines.
Alliteration: A poetic device where the first consonant sounds or any vowel sounds in words or
syllables are repeated.
Meter: The repetition of sound patterns 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.
Foot: The smallest unit of rhythm in a line of Poetry.
Imagery
Imaginary: uses of language in a literary work that evoke sense- impressions by reference to
concrete objects, scenes, actions, or to senses
Metaphor: one idea is referred to by a word or expression normally denoting another thing, idea
so as to suggest some common quality shared by the ary identity rather than directly
stated as a comparison. He is a pig. He is like a pig. (simile)
Ode
? Elaborately formal lyric poem
? Address to a person or entity
? Serious and elevated in tone
? Greek choral odes: praise of athletes
? Horace’s privately reflective odes in Latin
? Horatian odes: same form of stanza is repeated regularly
? Keats: “Ode on a Grecian Urn”, “Ode to a Nightingale
Heroic Couplet: A rhyming couplet written in iambic pentameter (a Verse with five iambic feet).
Stanza:A stanza consists of a grouping of lines, set off by a space that usually has a set pattern of
meter and rhyme.
The Middle Ages: a period of enormous historical, social, and linguistic change
The Protestant Reformation: It is a movement which emphasis on the authority of scripture and
salvation by faith alone (Henry VIII’s insistence on divorcing his wife, Catherine of Aragon,
against the wishes of the Pope)
Restoration It refers to the restoration of Charles II to his realms across the British Empire.
1660-1785
Epic It is a long narrative poem about the adventures of a hero of great historic or legendary
importance. 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.
Paradox悖论It is a statement that appears illogical or contradictory at first, but may actually
point to an underlying truth.
HyperboleIt is the use of exaggeration as a rhetorical device or figure of speech.
Valediction告别辞It is a statement made as a farewell.
Novel It is a long fictional prose work.
Picaresque novel It is a series of loosely strung episodes about an adventurer or a lovable rogue.
Novel of sentiment It is a moral tale of romance and tears.
Novel of manners: witty society tales.
Tone It is the author’s implicit attitudes toward people.
Irony It is the effect of language in which the intended meaning is the opposite of what is stated.
It reveals reality different from what it appears to be.
Symbol ：Anything that stands for something else beyond it—an idea conventionally associated
with it. Evocative image; concrete object with further significance; differing from
metaphor in that its application is left open as an unstated suggestion.
Allusion: A reference to a familiar literary or historical person or event, used to make an idea
more easily understood.

Classicism Admiration of the qualities of formal balance, proportion, decorum, and restraint
attributed to the major works of ancient Greek and Roman literature. Condemned romantic
self-expression as eccentric self- indulgence. Doctrines of Matthew Arnold and more especially of
T. S. Eliot are classicist
Neoclassicism
Codified form of classicism that dominated French literature in the 17th and 18th centuries,
with a significant influence on English writing, especially from 1660 to 1780
In contrast with Romanticism-- “Age of Reason”It is emerged from rediscovery of Aristotle’s
Poetics (4th century BC) by Italian scholars in the 16th century.
Etching: a method of making prints from a metal plate, usually copper, into which the design has
been incised by g: a unity of the corporeal and the spiritual
the contraries: creatively opposite and necessary complementary to form a united whole
Tetrameter Line: eight syllables.
Trochaic Foot抑扬格诗句: a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable.
Catalexis: absence of a syllable in the final foot in a line. In Blake’s poem, an unstressed syllable
is absent in the last foot of each line. Thus, every line has seven syllables, not the conventional
eight.
Alliteration头韵: A poetic device where the first consonant sounds or any vowel sounds in words
or syllables are repeated.
Blank Verse: unrhymed lines of iambic pentameter.
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
Rhymed couplet A rhyming couplet written in iambic pentameter (a Verse with five iambic feet).
Enlightenment:
Age of Reason, late 17th century to late 18th century especially in France and Switzerland.
Bacon, Descartes, Newton, Locke, human reason to clear away superstition.
Faith in human progress brought about by propagation of rational principles
Edward Burke, Thomas Paine
“Negative Capability”
the ability to bask in the beautiful without questioning either it or his methods of description.
In other words to take beauty simply as it is.
Theme
(1) the abstract concept explored in a literary work;
(2) frequently recurring ideas, such as enjoy-life while-you-can;
(3) repetition of a meaningful element in a work, such as references to sight, vision, and
blindness in Oedipus Rex. Sometimes the theme is also called the motif.
A theme in Keats's
Metaphysical Poetry It is a complex, highly intellectual verse filled with intricate and far-fetched
metaphors. The body of poetry produced by a group of seventeenth- century English writers called
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 17
th
century English poets whose work is notable for its ingenious
use of intellectual concepts in surprising conceits, strange paradoxes, and far- fetched imagery.
Oedipus Complex: A son's amorous obsession with his mother. The phrase is derived from the
story of the ancient Theban hero Oedipus, who unknowingly killed his father and married his
mother.
Tragic Flaw悲剧性缺陷: In a tragedy, the quality within the hero or heroine which leads to his
or her downfall. Examples of the tragic flaw include Othello's jealousy and Hamlet's
indecisiveness, although most great tragedies defy such simple interpretation.
Unities: (Also known as Three Unities.) Strict rules of dramatic structure, formulated by Italian
and French critics of the Renaissance and based loosely on the principles of drama discussed by
Aristotle in his Poetics. Foremost among these rules were the three unities of action, time, and
place that compelled a dramatist to: (1) construct a single plot with a beginning, middle, and end
that details the causal relationships of action and character; (2) restrict the action to the events of a
single day; and (3) limit the scene to a single place or city. The unities were observed faithfully by
continental European writers until the Romantic Age, but they were never regularly observed in
English drama. Modern dramatists are typically more concerned with a unity of impression or
emotional effect than with any of the classical unities.
Romanticism
It, as a literary movement, took place in Britain and then throughout the whole Europe roughly
between 1770 and 1848, emphasized the individual, the subjective, the irrational, the imaginative,
the personal, the spontaneous, the emotional, the visionary, and the transcendental.
Omniscience:
? The narrator is capable of knowing, seeing, and telling whatever he wishes in the
story. Characterized by freedom in shifting from the exterior world to the inner
selves of a number of characters and by a freedom in movement both in time and
place.
? What is irony?
? A subtly humorous perception of inconsistency, in which an apparently straightforward
statement or event is undermined by its context so as to give it a very different
significance
essay: short composition that discusses its subject in nontechnical fashion; persuades us to accept
a thesis on any subject.