英美文学课总结
湘潭大学教务管理系统-河南理工大学录取分数线
English Romanticism
English Romanticism
begins in 1798 with the publication of Wordsworth
and
Coleridge’s The Lyrical Ballads and ends
in 1832 with Walter Scott’s death. William
Blake and Robert Burns also belong to this
literary genre, though they live prior to the
Romantic period. English Romanticism is a
revolt of the English imagination against
the
neoclassical reason. The French Revolution of
1789-1794 and the English
Industrial
Revolution exert great influence on English
Romanticism. The romanticists
express a
negative attitude towards the existing social or
political conditions. They
place the
individual at the center of art, as can be seen
from Lord Byron’s Byronic
Hero. The key words
of English Romanticism are nature and imagination.
English
Romantic tend to be nationalistic,
defending the greatest English writers. They argue
that poetry should be free from all rules.
Lake poets
Wordsworth, Coleridge and
Southey were known as Lake Poets because they
lived
and knew one another in the last few
years of the 18th century in the district of the
great lakes in Northwestern England. The
former two published The Lyrical Ballads
together in 1798, while all three of them had
radical inclinations in their youth but
later
turned conservative and received pensions and poet
laureateships from the
aristocracy.
Karl
Marx likes Byron and Shelley very much. MU
Dan（穆旦查良铮），a renowned
Chinese poet and
translator , did splendid work to popularize Byron
and Shelley in
China.
Other greatest
Romantic poets are: John Keats, P.B. Shelley and
G. G. Byron.
Years ago, Wordsworth and
Coleridge were labeled “negative romantic poets”
while
Byron and Shelley were hailed as
“positive (revolutionary) Romantic poets”.
Wordsworth and Coleridge’s literary
achievements were underestimated for a long
time.
Feminist works
Mary
Wollstonecraft wrote A Vindication of the Rights
of Woman in 1792.
Gothic novel is a type of
romantic fiction that predominates in the late
18th century
and continues to show its
influence in early 19th century. Its principal
elements are
violence, horror, and the
supernatural. Frankenstein (1818) by Mary Shelley
and The
Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) by Ann
Radcliffe are masterpieces of English gothic
novel.
English fiction gropes its way
amidst the overwhelming Romantic poetry. It
revives
its popularity in the hands of Jane
Austen & Walter Scott.
Walter Scott is noted
for his historical novel based on Scottish history
and legends. He
exerted great influence on
European literature of his time.
Jane Austen
is the first and foremost English women novelist.
Following the
neoclassical tradition, she is
unsurpassed in the description of uneventful
everyday
life.
Essayists in English
Romanticism
Essayists
William Hazlitt
Charles Lamb
Coleridge
Representative works
Familiar essays
Essays of Elia; Tales from Shakespeare
Biographia Literaria
William Wordsworth
Wordsworth is the most representative poet of
English Romanticism. He was labeled
as
“negative Romantic poet” by Karl Marx In 1795 he
，his sister Dorothy
Wordsworth and Coleridge
became “three people with one soul” in literary
history.
In 1798, Wordsworth and Coleridge
published their Lyrical Ballads.
His major
works
Wordsworth’s fame lies chiefly in his
short poems. His short poems fall into 2
categories: poems about nature and poems about
human life.
His best known poems of nature
include: The Daffodils (I Wandered Lonely as a
Cloud), Tintern Abbey, To the Cuckoo, My Heart
Leaps up, To a Butterfly, An Evening
Walk, &
The Sparrow’s Nest.
His best known poems about
human life include: Lucy Poems, The Solitary
Reaper
and The Old Cumberland Beggar, Michael,
& To a Highland Girl.
Wordsworth wrote many
sonnets. His famous sonnets are: Earth Has Not
Anything to
Show More Fair (Written Upon
Westminster Bridge), On the Extinction of the
Venetian Republic, & Thought of a Briton on
the Subjugation of Switzerland.
His best
known long poem is The Prelude.
Brief
Comments
Wordsworth is the representative
poet of English romanticism
Wordsworth’s
poetry is distinguished by the simplicity and
purity of his
language.
Wordsworth’s
theory on versification has exerted profound
influence on later
poets. (mimesis模仿--
imaginative recreation)
Samuel Taylor
Coleridge
Major works
Demonic poems
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
Kubla Khan
Christabel
Conversational poems
Frost at Morning
Dejection: An Ode (沮丧）
Essays
Biographia Literaria
Lectures on Shakespeare
George
Gordon Byron (1788-1824)
Major works
Long
Poems or Collections
Hours of Idleness
English Bards and Scotch Reviewers
Childe
Harold’s Pilgrimage
Don Juan
Best known
single poems in China
When We Two Parted
She Walks in Beauty
The Isles of Greece
(from Don Juan)
Sonnet on Chillon
Brief
comments
Byron’s poetry is based upon his own
experience. His heroes are more or less
pictures of himself. His hero is known as
“Byronic Hero”, a proud, mysterious
rebel
figure of noble origin. For such a hero, the
conflict is usually one of
rebellious
individual against outworn social systems and
conventions.
The figure is, to some extent,
modeled on the life and personality of Byron.
Byron’s poetry exerts great influence on the
Romantic Movement. He stands
with Shakespeare
and Scott among the British writers who exert
great
influence over the mainland of Europe.
P. B. SHELLEY (1792-1822)
Percy
Bysshe Shelley Shelley is one of the greatest
English lyrical poets. His
poems abound with
personification, metaphor and other figures of
speech.
Major works
Ode to the West
Wind
西风颂
To a Skylark
云雀颂
The Cloud
云
Prometheus Unbound
解放了的普罗米修斯》
Queen Mab
麦布女王
The Masque of Anarchy
专治魔王的化装游行》
The Necessity of Atheism
《无神论的重要性》
A Defence of Poetry
《诗辩》
Keats
Major Works
Long poems
Endymion
Isabella
The Eve of St.
Agnes
Lamia
Hyperion
Odes and
sonnets
Ode to Autumn
Ode to a
Nightingale
Ode on Melancholy
Ode on
a Grecian Urn
Bright Star
When I
Have Fear
The Grasshopper and The Cricket.
Quiz One
1.
Who were the earliest inhabitants of Britain?
A. Romans B. Saxons
C. Celts
D. Normans
2. What is another term for Old
English?
A. Teutonic B. Celtic
C. Anglo-Saxon D. Middle English
3.
Beowulf fought against all of the following
figures EXCEPT _____.
A. Hrothgar B.
Firedrake
C. Grendel D. Grendel’s mother
4. Which is NOT one of the features of
the Song of Beowulf?
A. The use of
alliteration
B. The use of metaphor
C. The use of understatement
D. A Christian
poem
5. Beowulf was written down in the
______.
A. 8th century B. 9th century
C. 10th century D. 11th century
6. Which is NOT one of the languages spoken during
the Saxon-Norman
Period?
A. English
B. Greek
C. French D. Latin
7. What is the prevailing form of literature in
the Middle Ages?
A. Legend B. Romance
C. Epic D. Ballad
8. Sir Gawain
started his adventure from _____.
A.
Spring B. Summer
C. Autumn D.
Winter
9. What are the features that
characterize a romance EXCEPT that .
A. It has great resemblance to truth or reality.
B. It exaggerates the vices of human
nature and idealizes the virtues.
C. The
central figure of the romance is the knight who is
devoted to the church
and the king.
D.
It involves a large amount of fighting as well as
a number of perilous
adventures.
The 18th Century The AGE OF
ENLIGHTENMENT
General Introduction
Three
political parties
:
1. The
liberal Whigs: 辉格党
2. The
Conservative Tories: 托利党
3.
Jacobites: 二世党人
• Social Life:
1.
public coffeehouses and private clubs
2.
sociability
3. its influence on literature
The 18th century is, on the whole, an age of
prose rather than of poetry.
The
Enlightenment Movement
The first
representatives of the English Enlightenment were
Joseph Addison (约瑟夫•
阿狄森), and Richard Steele
(理查德 •斯蒂尔爵士), the publishers of The
Spectator
《观察者》《旁观者》and the poet Alexander Pope
(亚历山大•蒲柏), who was
famous for his caustic wit
and metrical skill, particularly his use of the
heroic couplet
(英雄双韵体). Followed by writers
Defoe, Fielding, Smollet, Richardson. The most
outstanding figure was Jonathan Swift.
Sheridan was the only important playwright
known for his comedy School for Scandal《造谣学校》.
• Alexander Pope is the representative poet of
neoclassical school. Samuel
Johnson, the
writer of the first English dictionary, also
follows the neoclassical
Sentimentalism made
its appearance in the middle of the tradition.
• 18th century as the result of a bitter
discontent among the enlightened people
with
social reality.
Sentimentalism also finds its
voice in English fiction
(Oliver Goldsmith;
Laurence Sterne; Thomas Gray).
Romanticism
• Romanticism was a movement
in the arts and literature which originated in the
late 18th century, emphasizing inspiration,
subjectivity, and the primacy of the
individual. It was a reaction against the
order and restraint of classicism and
neoclassicism, and a rejection of the
rationalism which characterized the
Enlightenment. William Blake and Robert Burns
are the forerunners of the
19th century
romanticism.
The Rise of the Novel
literature is novel. England produces three
greatest novelists: Daniel Defoe, father of
modern novel and the author of Robinson
Crusoe; Jonathan Swift, the greatest
English
satirist and the author of Gulliver’s Travels; and
Henry Fielding, the
author of The
History of Tom Jones, a Foundling.
•
Daniel Defoe ( 1660-1731)
• Defoe’s major
works include: Robinson Crusoe; Captain
Singleton《辛格
顿船长》, Moll Flanders 《摩尔•弗兰德斯》and
A Journal of the Plague
Year《大疫年日记》. Besides
his novels, he has produced a famous poem Hymn to
Pillory《枷邢颂》 and some notable pamphlets such
as The Shortest Way with the
Dissenters
《铲除新教徒的捷径》.
Jonathan Swift (1667--1745)
Swift is one of the realist writers.
His
major stories include: The Battle of the
Books(1704)《书的战争》, A Tale of a
Tub
(1704)《一只桶的故事》, and Gulliver
’
s Travels
(1726)
《格列佛游记》. His most famous essay is A
Modest Proposal (1729)《一个小小的
建议》. He is also a
productive poet.
Fielding & Tome Jones
A brief Introduction:
The History
of Tom Jones, a Foundling, often known simply as
Tom Jones,
is a comic novel by the English
playwright and novelist Henry Fielding. First
published on 28 February 1749, Tom Jones is
among the earliest English prose works
describable as a novel. The novel is divided
into 18 smaller books.