英国文学史

英国文学源远流长，经历了长期、复杂的发展演变过程。在这个过程中，文学本体以外的各种现实的、历史的、政治的、文化的力量对文学发生着影响，文学内部遵循自身规律，历经盎格鲁-萨克逊、文艺复兴、新古典主义、浪漫主义、现实主义、现代主义等不同历史阶段。战后英国文学大致呈现从写实到实验和多元的走势。

英国文学史

• The Middle Ages (5th-15th)
  • The Middle Ages: •It began with the collapse of the Western Roman Empire and merged into the Renaissance and the Age of Discovery
  • Chapter 1 The Anglo-Saxon Period
    • Pagan poetry
      • Beowulf 《贝奥武夫》the oldest poem in the English language, and also the oldest surviving national epic in the English language
        • Epic(史诗）: A long narrative poem telling about the deeds of a great hero and reflecting the values of the society from which it originated.
    • Religious poetry
      • the works of Caedmon who wrote a poetic Paraphrase of the Bible, and Cynewulf , the author of poems on religious subjects.
  • Chapter 2 The Anglo-Norman Period
    • The literature which they brought to England is remarkable for its bright, romantic tales of love and adventure
    • The matter of France , tales about Charlemagne；matter of Greece and Rome , an endless series of fabulous tales about Alexander, and about the fall of Troy; matter of Britainhaving for their heroes Arthur and his knights of the Round Table.
  • Chapter 3 Geoffrey Chaucer
    • Chaucer’s three literary periods
      • 1.The French period: •The Romance of the Rose《玫瑰传奇》 •The Book of the Duchess《悼公爵夫人》the best work of the time
      • 2. The Italian period: • Troilus and Criseyde《特罗伊拉斯和克莱西德》a poem of a love story •Chaucer’s longest complete poem about 8000 lines. •The poem is from a poem of Baccaccio. •The love story of Troilus.
      • 3. The English period, his best period: •The Canterbury Tales《坎特伯雷故事集》his masterpiece and a representative works of the Middle Ages.
        • Introduction to the book: Chaucer created a strikingly;brilliant and picturesque;panorama of his time and his country, and it’s a comprehensive picture of the social reality of the poet’s day.
        • Heroic couplet 英雄双行体: •a verse form in epic poetry, with lines of ten syllables and five stresses, in rhyming pairs. 用于史诗或叙事诗，每行十个音节，五个音部，每两行押韵。
      • Chaucer’s language 1. full of humor,vivid, exact and smooth, a master of word-pictures. 2. He is the first to use heroic couplet which he introduced from France.
• The Renaissance (late 15th-early 17th)
  • Renaissance •means "rebirth",is actually a movement stimulated by a series of historical events. European humanist thinkers made attempts to get rid of those old feudalist ideas, to introduce new ideas
  • Chapter 5 William Shakespeare
    • The greatest of all English authors, one of the first founders of realism
    • Tragedies : 1. Hamlet 2. Othello 3. King Lear 4. Macbeth
      • Hamlet is regarded as Shakespeare’s most popular and greatest play ,the summit of Shakespeare’s art. •Set in the Kingdom of Denmark, the play dramatises the revenge Prince Hamlet is instructed to enact on his uncle Claudius.
        • Soliloquy in Hamlet: To be, or not to be (blank verse)
    • Comedy: The Merchant of Venice
    • Sonnets (a poetic form from Italy, strictly a rhyme scheme )
      • Sonnet 18 Theme: power of verse Metre: 5-foot Iambus (Iambic Pentametre)（五步抑扬格） ABAB式
  • Chapter 6 Francis Bacon
    • Three classes: the philosophical the literary the professional works
    • Of Studies 《论读书》
• The Period of Revolution and Restoration （Puritan age) ( 17th )
  • Introduction one of the most tempestuous period in English history. The contradiction between the feudal system and the bourgeoisie had reached its peak and resulted in a revolutionary outburst.
  • Chapter 7 Jone Donne
    • Metaphorical poetry (玄学）
    • Song
      • Conceit 奇喻；玄喻 • a figure of speech which makes an unusual and sometimes elaborately sustaine comparison between two dissimilar things.(compares love to a spider)
    • A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning
      • 1. ABAB式 2. rhyme scheme 3. iambic tetrameter meter
      • Main conceit: two souls of couple —— two feets of a compass
    • Sonnet: Death Be Not Proud
      • 1. dialogue 2. 通过悖论(paradox)语言达到强烈的戏剧化效果和反讽意味
  • Chapter 8 John Milton
    • language: elevated refined
    • Three Most Important Works of Milton： •Paradise Lost《失乐园》 is considered one of the greatest poems in world literature, which tells how Satan rebelled against God and how Adam and Eve were driven out of Eden.The poet's announced aim was to “justify the ways of God to men “
  • Chapter 9 John Bunyan
    • Allegory (寓言）is a fictional literary narrative that conveys a symbolic meaning parallel to but distinct from, and more important than the literal meaning.
    • The Pilgrim’s Progress 《天路历程》for which Bunyan is chiefly known, was written as a book of religious instructions for simple folk, in the form of allegory and dream.