英国文学简史小题

1. The English people are of a mixed blood. The early inhabitants in the island now we call England were Britons, a tribe of Celts. From the Britons the island got its name of Britain, the land of Britons.

2. At the same time Britain was invaded by swarms of pirates, from Northern Europe, the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes.

3. The Anglo-Saxon period witnessed a transition from tribal society to feudalism. The Anglo-Saxons were heathen people. The Anglo-Saxons were Christianized in the seventh century.

4. Beowulf over 3000 lines, the national epic of the English people. Features of Beowulf: use of alliteration, use of metaphors and of understatements, use of ironical humour.

5. The Romance cycles: matters of Britain( King Arthur), matters of France, matters of Rome.

6. Piers the Plowman over 7000 lines. Features: a dream vision; an allegory; a realistic picture of medieval England.

7. The most important department of English folk literature is the ballad. A ballad is a story told in song, usually in 4-line stanzas, with the second and fourth

lines rhymed.

8. Chaucer: founder of English poetry( father of English poetry). He died in 1400 and was buried in Westminster Abbey, thus founding the “ Poet’s Corner”.

9. The Prologue provides a framework for the tales. Chaucer has been called “the founder of English realism.”

10. The first complete English Bible was translated by John

Wycliffe.(1324-1384) Authorized Version, which was King James Bible.

11. an intellectual movement known as the renaissance, or, the rebirth of letters.

12. Humanism is the key-note of the Renaissance. Humanism reflected the new outlook of the rising bourgeois class.

13. More was one of the forerunners of modern socialist thought.

14. England became “a nest of singing birds”. Sidney’s collection of love sonnets, Astrophel and Stella( the first sonnet sequence). Sidney: Apology for Poetry

15. Spenser: the Poet’s Poet The Shepherd’s Calendar, a pastoral poem in twelve books, one for each month of the year.

16. Spenser’s greatest work, The Faerie Queene is a long poem planned in 12 books, of which he finished only 6. The work was dedicated to Queen Elizabeth. It is an allegory.

17. The highest glory of the English Renaissance was unquestionably its drama.

18. Miracle plays, morality plays, interludes and classical plays- such were the forms of drama prevailing until the reign of Elizabeth.

19. The most gifted of the “university wits” was Christopher Marlowe.

20. Marlowe’s masterpiece is The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus. It is based upon a German legend.

21. Marlowe was the greatest of the pioneers of English drama. It is Marlowe who first made blank verse (rhymeless iambic pentameter) the principal instrument of English drama.

22. Shakespeare’s life from three sources: church and legal records, folk traditions, and the comments of his contemporaries.

23. Shakespeare also wrote two narrative poems, Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece.

24. Shakespeare’s earliest great success in tragedy is Romeo and Juliet.

25. The second period of Shakespeare’s work is his mature period, mainly a period of “great comedies” (A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Merchant of Venice, As you like it, Twelfth Night)

26. The fourth period of Shakespeare’s work is the period of romantic drama.

27. Heroines like Rosalind are no longer the women under the yoke of feudalism. They are witty, bold, loving, optimistic and faithful. They carry their destinies with them and in speaking and thinking as well as in feeling are men’s equals or even superiors.

28. P72 P76

29. Othello is a new man of the Renaissance. Othello is a tragedy of humanism. Othello is also a tragedy of the coloured people in a society of racial prejudice.

30. Hamlet is a humanist, a man who is free from medieval prejudices and superstitions. He has an unbounded love for the world instead of the heaven. Starting from his humanist love of man, he turns to those around him with the same eagerness. He loves good and hates evil. His intellectual genius is outstanding. He is also a close observer of men and manners. Owing to their tragi-comic nature, they are sometimes called his “romances

31. Shakespeare is one of the founders of realism in world literature. Shakespeare’s dramatic creation often used the method of adaptation. Shakespeare was skilled in many poetic forms: the song, the dramatic blank verse. Shakespeare was a great master of the English language. He commanded a vocabulary larger than any other English writer. Shakespeare has been universally acknowledged to be the summit of the English Renaissance, and one of the greatest writers the world over.

32. P95 An advocate of classic drama, Jonson insisted on a careful study of the old Greek and Roman masters. He took a firm stand for the “three unities.” Jonson was a forerunner of classicism in English literature, which was to reach its hightide in the 18th century.

33. Milton was famous for his personal beauty and the strictness of his life and was nicknamed “the lady of the Christ’s”.

34. Samson Agonistes ended Milton’s writing life.

35. Paradise Lost is Milton’s masterpiece. It is a long epic in 12 books, written in blank verse. The stories were taken from the Old Testament.

36. P108

37. Samson Agonistes is a poetical drama modelled on the Greek tragedies. It deals with the story of Samson from the “Book of Judges” in the Old

Testament.

38. There is much in common between Samson and Milton. Like Samson, Milton has also been embittered by an unwise marriage, persecuted by his enemies, has suffered from blindness and yet is unconquerable.

39. Milton wrote the greatest epic in English literature. Milton is a master of the blank verse. He first used blank verse in non-dramatic works.

40. The Pilgrim’s Progress is a religious allegory. It tells of the spiritual pilgrimage of Christian, who flies from the City of Destruction, and finally comes to the Delectable Mountains and the Celestial City.

41. One of the most remarkable passages is that in which Vanity Fair and the persecution of Christian and his friend Faithful are described.

42. Donne is a poet of peculiar conceits.

43. George Herbert “the saint of the Metaphysical school,”

44. Another school of poetry prevailing in the period was that of Cavalier Poets. (often knights and squires)

45. The Restoration period was a period of reaction and degeneration.

46. The most distinguished literary of the figure of the Restoration Period

was John Dryden (1631-1700), poet, playwright and critic.

47. Dryden was the forerunner of the English classical school of literature in the next century.

48. Enlightenment was an intellectual movement in Europe in the 18th century. It was an expression of struggle of the bourgeoisie against feudalism. The enlighteners fought against class inequality, stagnation, prejudices and other survivals of feudalism. They thought the chief means for bettering the society was Enlightenment or education for the people.

49. The representatives of the Enlightenment in English literature were Joseph Addison and Richard Steele, Alexander Pope.

50. The literature of the Enlightenment in England mainly appealed to the middle class readers.

51. Richard Steele (1672-1729) was born in Dublin.

52. P135

53. Pope translated the entire Iliad(1715-1720) and half of the Odyssey(1725-1726).

54. The Dunciad is a satirical poem. Essay on Man is a philosophical poem in heroic couplets.

55. Jonathan Swift was born in Dublin, Ireland.

56. P141 P142 P145

57. Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe was one of the forerunners of the English realistic novel.

58. Moll Flanders is written in the form of autobiography.

59. Today Defoe is chiefly remembered as the author of Robinson Crusoe, his masterpiece. The character of Robinson Crusoe is representative of the English bourgeoisie at the earlier stages of its development. P153

60. Pamela was a new thing in three ways: Firstly it pictured the life and love of ordinary people. Secondly its merely entertainment but also moral instruction. Thirdly, the first English psycho-analytical novel.

61. Clarissa is the best of Richardson’s novel.

62. Fielding’s first novel was written in connection with Pamela Richardson. Fielding as the Founder of the English realistic novel.

63. Laurence Sterne was born in Ireland.

. Sheridan, the most important English playwright of the 18th century, was born in Dublin.

65. The School for Scandal has been called a great comedy of manners.

66. P181 P183 P192

67. In the latter half of the 18th century: Thomas Percy; James Macpherson; Thomas Chatterton

68. Blake’s first collection of poems, Poetical Sketches.

69. Songs of Innocence contains poems which were written for children.

70. In Songs of Experience, a much mature work showed the suffering of the miserable.

71. The contrast between Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience is of great significance. It marks a progress in the poet’s outlook on life.

72. Burns is remembered mainly for his songs written in the Scottish dialect on a variety of subjects.

73. Numerous are Burn’s songs of love and friendship. One of his world-famous songs is A Red, Red Rose.

74. At the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries romanticism appeared in England as a new trend in literature. The only great novelist in this period was Walter Scott.

75. In 17 they jointly published the Lyrical Ballads. Coleridge contribution was his masterpiece The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

76. The publication of the Lyrical Ballads marked the break with the conventional poetical tradition of the 18th century, with classicism, and the beginning of the Romantic revival in England.

77. The Preface to the Lyrical Ballads served as the manifesto of the English Romantic Movement in poetry.

78. P224

79. Queen Mab, Shelly’s first long poem of importance, it is written in the form of a fairy-tale dream.

80. Shelly’s masterpiece is Prometheus Unbound, a lyrical drama in 4 acts.

81. The unfinished long epic Hyperion has been regarded as Keats’s greatest achievement in poetry.

82. De Quincey is best-known for his essay, On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth, a classic of Shakespeare criticism.

83. De Quincey is remembered chiefly for his masterpiece, The Confessions of an English Opium-Eater.

84. Scott has been universally regarded as the founder and great master of the historical novel. The death of Scott ended the romanticism.

85. Features of Scott’s historical novels: combine historical fact with romantic imagination; historical events are closely interwoven with the fates of individuals.

86. English critical realism of the 19th century flourished in the forties and in the early fifties. The greatest English realist of the time was Charles Dickens. Another critical realist, Thackeray.

87. Chartist Literature: Ernest Jones; Thomas Cooper; Linton

88. English critical realism of the 19th century flourished in the forties and in the early fifties. The greatest English realist of the time was Charles Dickens. Another critical realist, Thackeray.

. Dickens : first period: This naïve optimism; second period: Dickens’s naïve optimism about capitalist society was thus profoundly shaken. Third period: loss of hope.

90. David Copper field was Dickens’s own favourite. It is written in the first person and is the most autobiographical of all his books.

91. A Tale of Two Cities Dickens takes the French Revolution as the subject of

his novel, and the “two cities” are Paris and London in the time of that revolution.

92. Thackreay, like Dickens, was a representative of critical realism in 19th century England. He was born in India.

93. Vanity Fair( A Novel Without a Hero): “A Novel Without a Hero,” emphasizes the fact that the writer’s intention was not to portray individuals, but the bourgeois and aristocratic society as a whole.

94. Jane Austen at the turn of the century(18th-19th). P312

95. Gaskell was one of the first English writers to describe in a novel the class struggle between the workers and the capitalists in “the Hungry Forties”.

96. The Mill on the Floss is largely autobiographical in its early chapters.