英国文学复习

1 . Pre-Chaucerian Age

1. Pre-Chaucerian Age

• Anglo-Saxon period (450-1066)

--(Anglo-Saxon)Teutonic conquest: formation of English as a nation, language, and people --Poetry: Beowulf • Anglo-Norman period --Norman Conquest

--Romance: Sir Gawin and the Green Knight

2. The Age of Chaucer (1340-1400)

Geoffrey Chaucer

--- “father of English poetry”

--- the first to write about common people in a realistic way instead of in an allegorical way

--- The Canterbury Tales in rhyming couplet—heroic couplet

15th-16th century

After Chaucer, English literature began to decline. Except the “The Death of Arthur” by Thomas Marlory, there was no written literature in its real sense. However, ballads became an important feature in this age. --- Sir Patrick Spens --- Robinhood All are in ballad.

Ⅱ. The English Renaissance

– Historical backgroun

--- Renaissance in Europe

---Humanism: the most outstanding intellectual movement-- The

ideal/core of Renaissance is humanism

•The ideal/core of Renaissance is humanism.

•Renaissance humanists found in the classics a justification to exalt human nature and came to see that human beings were glorious creatures capable of individual development in the direction of perfection, and inhabited in a world it was theirs not to despise but to interrogate, explore and enjoy. •Thus, the beliefs that man did not only have the right to enjoy the beauty of this life, but had the ability to perfect himself and to perform wonders. They also expressed their rebellious spirit against the tyranny of feudal

rule and ecclesiastical domination.

•2. Literary Achievement (Age of drama) • --- William Shakespeare

• --- Francis Bacon ---the first English essayist • ---Thomas Moore (“Utopia”) • --- Drama /blank verse

• ---Sonnet and sonnet sequence

Shakespeare

•His 4 great comedies are The Merchant of Venice; Much Ado About Nothing; As You Like It; Twelfth Night.

•His 4 great tragedies are Hamlet; Othello; King Lear; Macbeth.

•Sonnet 18

• the permanence or immortality of poetry. Poetry will bring eternity to the

one the poet loves and eulogizes. •Thy eternal summer shall never fade? •Figurative devices

Metaphor: summer’s day---the beloved person.

Personification: summer’s day -----hold a lease. Symbol: bud, the eye of heaven---beautiful things

Ⅲ. 17th century(Puritan Age)

• ---Bourgeois revolution: for church but against despotic rulers • ---Metaphysical poets

• ---John Milton: The Paradise Lost •---Daniel Defoe: Robinson Crusoe

Metaphysical poets

Donne was the founder of the metaphysical school and a poet of genius,

known by his contemporaries as “the great writer of conceited verse”.

•conceits

---logical reasoning (to express the emotion),

---psychological analysis of the emotions and religion, ---their fondness of the novel and the shocking,

--- the use of bold and ingenious conceits and incongruous imagery,

 All resulted frequently in obscurity, rough verse, and strained imagery.

Daniel Defoe

•Robinson Crusoe --- analysis of Crusoe

John Milton:

“Paradise”—in blank verse

Fighting the God--- fighting the despotism

Ⅳ. 18th century(Age of Novel)

• ---Enlightenment (emphasis on reason)

• ---Poets: John Dryden ; Alexandra Pope • ---Essayists: Joseph Addison, Richard Steele, ---Novelists: Daniel Defoe,Henry Fielding • ---Sentimentalism: Thomas Gray (the

representative) • ---Pre-Romanticism: William Blake,

Robert Burns

•William Blake

--- Songs of Innocence ; Songs of Experience

The symbolic meaning of Tyger

•R. Burns

-- in scottish dialect -- A Red, Red Rose: Symbolic language

Ⅴ.Romanticism (1798-1832)

•The French Revolution; the Industrial Revolution

•From emphasis on reason to instinct and emotion •Wordsworth; Coleridge; Southey;

Shelley; Byron; Keats

•Post-Romanticism: the Browings; Tennysons

Principles for Romanticism

•“all good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feeling.” --- Subjectivism ---Spontaneity ---Nature

---Simplicity/plainness

---Life of the common people ---Imagination

---Rebellious spirit

W. Wordsworth(1770-1850)

•In 1798, in collaboration with Coleridge, he published us first major volume

of poetry, “The Lyrical Ballads”, an epoch-making book in English poetry.

•I Wondered Lonely as a Cloud：

the happy recollections tend to enable the poet to understand the harmony between things in nature, and harmony between the poet himself and the nature, thus realizing the happiness of oneness of the soul and creatures

•Shelley(1792-1822 ） •Ode to the West Wind：

•“If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?” illustrated Shelley’s

optimistic belief in the future of mankind.

•The image of west wind—destroyer and preserver

•Keats

--- Keats’ odes have generally been considered as his most important work Ode to Nightingale

•Robert Browning(1812-1889)

My Last Duchess: Dramatic monologue Characterization Ⅵ.19th. Century (The Victorian Age 1832-1901)

• Chartist Movement

•---Age of Novels:critical realism • ---Dickens; Thackery • ---Women novelists:

Bronte sisters; Jane Austin

• ---Thomas Hardy

Jane Austin

•Pride and prejudice

•Money and marriage

•Character analysis

Thomas Hardy

•Tess

Stonehenge:

Ⅶ. 20th Century

•Modernist literature

•--- T.S. Eliot: the desolation in the western country after the war, and

their spirit

•---James Joyce (Ulysses): a search into the soul of modern westerners by

adopting the Stream of Consciousness

•T.S. Eliot: the desolation in the western country after the war, and their

spirit

•A Love Song: •Style---fragmentation

James Joyce

Araby

Setting epiphany

D.H.Lawrence

A Rocking-horse winner

Mother’s tragedy

Doris Lessing

Heat image

How do you see the sunbathing woman and the working men?

• • • • •

Choices

Excerpts reading Matching

Explanation of Literary terms Essay writing

•Discussion

Relationship between man and woman in A Woman on a Roof