英美诗歌选读复习内容.docx

名词解释
1、Epic:
A long and narrative poem written in an elevated style that recounts the adventures of a hero, who often embodies the traits of a nation or people. The earliest epic tales survived for centuries as oral traditions before they were finally written down.
Epics typically share a wide variety of characteristics:
1) the protagonist is a hero of great stature and significance;
2) the setting is vast in scope, often involving more than one nation;
3) the action requires noble, fantastic, and even superhuman actions; 
4) the theme reflects timeless values, such as courage and honor, and encompasses universal ideas, such as good and evil or life and death;
Beowulf is the oldest surviving epic poem in English.

2、Sonnet
A sonnet is a poetic form which originated in Italy. In the 13th century, sonnet refers to a 14-line lyric poem with a complicated rhyme scheme and a defined structure, usually written in iambic pentameter. Sonnet can be divided into 3 types according to different structures:
1) Petrarchan sonnet. It was derived from the great Italian poet Petrarch;
2) Shakespearean sonnet. The shakespearean sonnet form contains 3 quatrains and a heroic couplet. The rhyme scheme is abab cdcd efef gg. The most famous sonneteer is William Shakespeare;
3) Spenserian sonnet. It was introduced in Britain by Sir Thomas Wyatt. It contains 3 quatrains and a couplet. What is unique to the Spenserian sonnet is the interlocking rhyme scheme:abab bcbc cdcd ee.

3、Pastoral
A pastoral is a poem that presents shepherds in idealized rural settings. Renaissance poets like Marlowe and Raleigh used the pastoral form to express their feelings and thoughts about love and other subjects. Shepherd in pastoral tend to use courtly speech. The poems usually have metrical patterns and rhyme schemes that help give them a musical or songlike quality. The imagery derives from commonplace country settings.

4、Metaphysical poetry
Metaphysical poetry is term adopted by Samuel Johnson to describe a school of highly intellectual poetry marked by bold and ingenious conceits, incongruous imagery, complexity of thought, frequent use of paradox, and often by deliberate harshness or rigidity of expression. The main themes of the metaphysical poets are love, death, and religion. The metaphysical poetry can be difficult to understand. They share several traits:
1) simple, conventional vocabulary, but complex sentence patterns;
2) Metaphysical conceits, a type pf extended metaphor comparing very dissimilar things;
3) Paradoxes, or statements that seem to contradict themselves;
4) Disruptions of poetic meter;
5) Witty and imaginative plays on words.
The chief representative of this school was John Donne.

5、 Elegy
Elegy is derived from the Greek work “elegos”, which means mournful poem or song . The forms of elegies we see today were introduced in the 16th century. Elegy is a form of literature which can be defined as a poem or song in the form of elegiac couplets, written in honor of someone deceased. It typically laments or mourns the death of the individual.
Elegy is one of the richest literary forms because it has the capacity to hold emotions that deeply influence people. The strongest of the tools elegy uses is its reliance on memories of those who are no more. Most of the poets who wrote elegies were evidently awed by the frailty of human beings and how the world completely forgets about the deceased at some point.
A famous example is“Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” by Thomas Gray.

6、 Satire
Satire is a technique employed by writers to expose and criticize foolishness and corruption of an individual or a society by using humor, irony, exaggeration or ridicule. It intends to improve humanity by criticizing its follies and foibles. A writer in a satire uses fictional characters, which stand for real people, to expose and condemn their corruption.
Usually satire has two style:
1) the gentle, playful, and sympathetic approach of Horatian satire
The famous writer who wrote satiric poetry in Horatian mode is Alexander Pope, poking fun at the dandies and ladies of high society and addressing moral political, and philosophical issues in clever, elegant couplets.
2) The darker, biting style of Juvenalian satire
The representative writer of this kind of satire is Jonathan Swift, who attacked educators, politicians, churchmen, and any others he saw as corrupt.

诗歌分析
The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
By Christopher Marlowe (paraphrase)
Come live with me and be my love. We will try all the pleasure offered by valleys, roves, woods and mountains.
I want us to sit upon the rocks with shallow rivers falling under our feet, seeing those shepherds far away feeding their sheep, and hearing birds sing beautifully around us.
And I will use roses to make beds decorated with a thousand sweet-smelling posies for you to lie. I will weave a flower cap, and make you kirtle fringed with myrtle leaves.
We pull out of the finest wool from our lambs to make a pretty gown. And a pair of high-qualited slippers will be made for you, to keep you from being cold. On the slippers I will put buckles, which was made of purest gold.
Also, I will make you a belt of straw and ivy buds with coral clasps and amber studs. If these pleasure may touch your heart, come live with me and be my love.
The young shepherd shall dance and sing in each May morning to delight you, and if you may be touched by these delights, then live with me and be my love.

Analysis
“The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” is a love poem that contains six quatrains of rhyming couplets in iambic tetrameter. The rhyme meter is aabb. Its simple, musical language and fanciful imagery create an idyll of innocent love. The tone of the poem is passionate, eager and fanciful.
In this poem, the shepherd persona speaks to his beloved, evoking “all the pleasures” of a peaceful springtime nature. He promises her the delights of nature and his courtly attention. The first quatrain is the invitation to “Come live with me and be my love.” Next, the speaker describes the pleasant natural setting in which he plans that they will live. Their life will be one of leisure; they will “sit upon the rocks,” watch the shepherds, and listen to the birds. The writer used a lot of natural images such as valleys, groves, hills, etc, to express a typical atmosphere of pastoral poem, describing life in a idealized way.
Marlowe’s “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” is a celebration of youth, innocence, love, and poetry. The poem participates in an ongoing tradition of lyrical love poetry. It casts the lovers as shepherds and shepherdesses who are at home in a beneficent natural setting.

The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd
By Sir Walter Raleigh
The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd, by Walter Raleigh, is a poem that responds to and parodies the poem ″The Passionate Shepherd to His Love″ by Christopher Marlowe. In her reply to the shepherd’s invitation, the nymph presents her rejection of the shepherd's courtship for a life of pastoral idyll.
Raleigh uses the exact same meter (iambic tetrameter) and form (six quatrains, or four-line stanzas) in "The Nymph's Reply". Sometimes he uses spondee to disrupt the meter and express his view, like “Time drives the flocks from field to fold”
 In the Marlowe poem, the shepherd proposes to his beloved by portraying their ideal future together: a life filled with earthly pleasures in a world of eternal spring. Raleigh’s reply, however, debunks the shepherd’s fanciful vision. While Marlowe’s speaker promises nature’s beauty and a litany of gifts, Raleigh’s nymph responds that such promises could only remain valid “if all the world and love were young.” Thus, she introduces the concepts of time and change. In her world, the seasons cause the shepherd’s “shallow rivers” to “rage,” rocks to “grow cold” and roses to “fade.” The shepherd’s gifts might be desirable, but they too are transient: they “soon break, soon wither” and are “soon forgotten.” In the end, the nymph acknowledges that she would accept the shepherd’s offer “could youth last” and “had joys no date.” Like the shepherd, she longs for such things to be true, but like Raleigh, she is a skeptic, retaining faith only in reason’s power to discount the “folly” of “fancy’s spring.”

Sonnet 75
By Edmund Spenser
This sonnet written is a typical Spenserian sonnet. It has 3 quatrains and a rhyming couplet. Its meter is iambic pentameter and it has a unique rhyme scheme, interlocking rhyme scheme: abab bcbc cdcd ee.
In the first stanza, the poet wrote his lover’s name on the sand but the waves came and washed it away. And the poet tried again and again the tide came and the letter vanished. In the second stanza, the poet’s lover did not have the confidence in his efforts of trying to immortalize his love towards her. She argued it is a waste of time as love is a mortal thing. But in the third stanza, the poet claimed that he can make their love last forever despite mortality. He believe by using his verse their love can pass on eternally. Finally in the couplet, the poet says death will destroy mortal things on earth but their love will never die through the presence of the sonnet.
The Sonnet 75 is a poem about a man promising his lover an eternal love. The tone is sweet, soft and determined. The theme of the sonnet is eternal love through verses. The poet believes love can be eternalized through his sonnet, thus expressing his belief in the power of art.

Sonnet 29
By William Shakespeare

This sonnet is a typical Shakespearean sonnet, with 3 quatrains and a rhyming couplet. Its is composed in iambic pentameter and rhyme scheme is abab cdcd efef gg.
In the first stanza, the poet describe him as outcast and ignored by God. He is in dreadful mood and feeling very depressed. The second stanza tells that the poet became jealous of the rich and wish to become more like others. But in third stanza, he suddenly thinked of a person he loves, his mood changed greatly. He felt extremely happy and excited. Then in the couplet he just told us that he was so happy with his lover’s love that he would never wanted to change his state with king.
The theme of the sonnet is love, wealth and religion. Through the whole sonnet, the poet express that as long as he in in love, he wouldn’t care how screw up his life is. The tone changes from upset to ecstasy. The poet first describe how terrible his life was so as to contrast with the last part when he express how happy he was to be in love, thus showing his belief in the power of love. It is like a hymn for love.

Sonnet 116
By William Shakespeare

Typical Shakespearean sonnet.
In the first stanza the poet expressed his strong belief in love, saying that love will never change despite obstacles such as disloyalty. If it does, then that is not true love. In the second stanza, he said the value of love stands high in the sky and will keep shining. In the third stanza, he stressed that even man’s beauty will fade away as time pass by, love will still survive. Time couldn’t influence love. Then in the couplet, he said if he can be proven wrong, then there is no true love in man. He stands firmly of his judgment.
The theme is true love and time

A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning
By John Donne
“So let us melt, and make no noise,
No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move,”
“If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two;
Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if th’ other do.”

"A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" is a metaphysical poem by John Donne. Written in 1611 or 1612 for his wife Anne before he left on a trip to Continental Europe. Based on the theme of two lovers about to part for an extended time, the poem is notable for its use of conceits and ingenious analogies to describe the couple's relationship. The poem has an ABAB rhyme scheme and an iambic tetrameter meter.
Donne's speaker begins with the very weird metaphor of an old man dying. Then he shifts gears and compares shallow love to earthquakes that make a big scene and cause a big fuss, but don't have tremendous lasting effects. On the contrary, his love is like the unnoticed, subtle movements of the stars and planets that control the fates of every person. Then he says that he and his wife are like a compass when drawing a circle. One foot of the compass (Donne) goes way out and travels around, while the other (his wife) stays planted at home and leans after it.
The theme: death, love, loyalty, natural phenomenon

Holy Sonnet 10
By John Donne
Petrarchan sonnet
Theme: Death, Life, Mortality, Religion

The Lamb
By William Blake
This poem has a simple rhyme scheme : AA BB CC DD AA AA EF GG FE AA. The layout is set up by two stanzas with the refrain: "Little Lamb who made thee/Dost thou know who made thee". In the first stanza, the speaker asks the lamb who his creator is; the answer lies at the end of the poem. Here we find a physical description of the lamb, seen as a pure and gentle creature. In the second stanza, the lamb is compared with the infant Jesus, as well as between the lamb and the speaker's soul. In the last two lines the speaker identifies the creator: God.

The Tyger
By William Blake
"The Tyger" is the sister poem to "The Lamb" (from "Songs of Innocence"), a reflection of similar ideas from a different perspective (Blake's concept of "contraries"), with "The Lamb" bringing attention to innocence. "The Tyger" presents a duality between aesthetic beauty and primal ferocity.
 The first stanza opens the central question. The second stanza questions "the Tyger" about where he was created; the third about how the creator formed him; the fourth about what tools were used. In the fifth stanza, Blake wonders how the creator reacted to "the Tyger," and who created the creature. Finally, the sixth restates the central question while raising the stakes; rather than merely question what/who "could" create the Tyger, the speaker wonders: who dares.

She Walks in Beauty
By Lord Byron
It is written in iambic tetrameter, three stanzas of six lines each, which is a poetic form mostly used for hymns, and thus associated both with simplicity, and with chasteness. In fact the poem itself, although a type of love poem, does not really refer to passionate or sexual love. The speaker’s awe at the woman’s beauty comes across as just that: the awe that one would feel for a lovely painting, or a picture of nature.