英国文学名词解释
堪培拉大学-浮士德读后感
英国文学名词解释
1. Epic: A long narrative poem
telling about the deeds of a great hero
and
reflection the values of the society which it
originated.
2. Romance: 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. (It is the most
popular form of literature in the Anglo-Norman
period.)
3. The Renaissance: The great
intellectual and cultural movement of the
revival of interest in classical Greek and
Roman learning and culture
that occurred in
Europe in the 14
th
, 15
th
,
16
th
and early 17
th
centuries,
--a period which saw the transition from the
Middle Age to modern
times.
4.
Humanism: Humanism is the essence of the
Renaissance. It’s a
fundamental intellectual
current in the Renaissance, and it originated
in the study of classical culture and
emphasized the dignity and worth
of the
individual in contrast to the medieval emphasis on
God and
contempt for the things of this world.
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5. Soliloquy: A
dramatic convention by means of which, a
character,
either alone on the stage or
unheard by other characters, utters his or
her
own thoughts aloud.
6. Conceit: A conceit
is a figure of speech which makes an unusual and
sometimes elaborately sustained comparison
between two dissimilar
things.
7.
Metaphysical poets: A group of English lyric poets
of the 17
th
century
characterized by
their metaphysical conceit
(a figure of
speech that
employs unusual and paradoxical
images), a reliance on intellectual
wit,
learned imagery, and subtle argument. The most
important
metaphysical poets are John Donne,
George Herbert and Andrew
Marvell.
8. Allegory: A narrative in prose or verse
that conveys a symbolic
meaning that lies
outside the narrative itself. The underlying
meaning
has moral, social, religious or
political significance and characters are
often personifications of abstract ideas.
(Related forms are fable and
the parable,
which are didactic, comparatively short and simple
allegories.
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9. Enlightenment: An
intellectual movement that developed in Europe
in the 17
th
century and reached its
height in the 18
th
. The Enlighteners
fought against class inequality, stagnation,
prejudices and other
survivals of feudalism.
The Enlightenment celebrated reason, equality,
science and human being’s ability to perfect
themselves and their
society.
10.
Sentimentalism: The name of Sentimentalism came
from Laurence
Sterne’s novel Sentimental
Journey through France and Italy.
Sentimentalism appeared in the latter part of
the 18
th
century, as a
revolt against
the cold rationalism and strict neo-classicism.
Dissatisfied with the social realities of the
time, sentimentalists
focused on the revealing
of emotions, expression of feelings,
individuality and personal spiritual life and
they craved for something
more natural and
spontaneous in thought and language.
11.
Picaresque Novel: A basically realistic and often
satiric work of
fiction chronicling the career
of an engaging attractive, low-class
rogue-
hero, who takes to the road for a series of loose,
episodic
adventures, sometimes with a
companion.
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12.
Verbal Irony: A statement in which the meaning
that a speaker
implies differs sharply from
the meaning that is ostensibly expressed.
( or
a contrast between what is literally said and what
is actually
meant. )
13. Character-
sketch: A brief narrative that reveals a fictional
character’s
traits or personality.
14. Epistolary Novel: A type of novel in which
the narrative is carried on
by means of series
of letters.
15. Romanticism: An artistic
intellectual movement of the late 18
th
and
early 19
th
centuries in Western Europe
that rejected the rules of order,
balance, and
rationality that typified Classicism and
Neoclassicism,
and reacted against the
Enlightenment and 18
th
—century
rationalism.
Romanticism emphasized the
individual, the irrational, the
imaginative,
the spontaneous and the emotional.
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