考研英国文学复习要点(参照教材刘炳善《英国文学简史》).doc

Part One: Early and Medieval English Literature
1. Beowulf: national epic of the English people; Denmark story; alliteration, metaphors and understatements （此处可能会有填空，选择等小题）
2. Romance （名词解释）
3. “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight”: a famous roman about King Arthur’s story
4. Ballad（名词解释）
5. Character of Robin Hood
6. Geoffrey Chaucer: founder of English poetry; The Canterbury Tales (main contents; 124 stories planned, only 24 finished; written in Middle English; significance; form: heroic couplet)
7. Heroic couplet (名词解释)
Part Two: The English Renaissance
8. The Authorized Version of English Bible and its significance（填空选择）
9. Renaissance（名词解释）
10.Thomas More——Utopia
11. Sonnet（名词解释）
12. Blank verse（名词解释）
13. Edmund Spenser
“The Faerie Queene”; Amoretti (collection of his sonnets)
Spenserian Stanza（名词解释）
14. Francis Bacon “essays” esp. “Of Studies”（推荐阅读，学习写正式语体的英文文章的好参照，本文用词正式优雅，多排比句和长句，语言造诣非常高，里面很多话都可以引用做格言警句，非常值得一读）
15. Christopher Marlowe (“Doctor Faustus” and his achievements)
16. William Shakespeare可以说是英国文学史中最重要的作家，一定要看熟了。四大喜剧，四大悲剧比较重要，此外就是罗密欧与朱立叶了，这些剧的主题，背景，情节，人物形象都要熟悉，当然他最重要的喜剧作品是Hamlet这是肯定的。他的sonnet也很重要，最重要属sonnet18。（其戏剧中著名对白和几首有名的十四行诗可能会出选读）
Lecture 1
Part 1 Early and Medieval English Literature
“Early” here means English literature in primitive and slavery society.
“Medieval period” is a quite special period in English history. In Chinese “Medieval” or “The Middle Age” means “中世纪”. You may hear something about this period. It was called “The Middle Age” because it was considered as the time between ancient world and the modern world. Here “Medieval” means English literature in feudal England before the Renaissance.
I. Early English Literature (Anglo-Saxon Literature)
1, Historical Background
1 The earliest inhabitants of the British Isles were Britons, a tribe of Celts. Today most Celts lived in Scotland and Wales.
2 From 55 B.C. to 410 A. D. Romans conquered the Great Britain. The Roman army was led by Julius Caesar, who was a very famous figure in ancient Rome. He was a famous general and conquered lot of places in Europe and then he became dictator of Rome. He had famous words “I came, I saw, I conquered”. You can see how strong this man’s will is.  
Consequence of Roman conquest: a network of highways; scores of towns, including London; Roman lifestyle
3 English Conquest
•Shortly after Romans’ retreat, the Britain was invaded by Anglos, Saxons and Jutes. And by the 7th century Old English emerged.
•Anglo-Saxon period witnessed a transition from tribal society to feudalism.
•Anglo-Saxons were Christianized in the 7th century. Before Christianization, Anglo-Saxons believed in old northern European mythologies. If you are interested in old Britain mythologies you may read the famous novel “The Lord of the Rings”, which was a collection of old northern European mythologies. The Christianization of Anglo-Saxons influenced the record of old English literature.
2, Beowulf —— National epic of English people
1 Definition of epic: an extended narrative poem in elevated or dignified language, celebrating the feats of a legendary or traditional hero
2 Story of Beowulf
•Ask students to read the story of Beowulf on textbook by themselves and then ask them “What are the three adventures mentioned in the story?”
•The story of Beowulf includes three adventures: killing monster Grendel, killing Grendel’s mother and killing a fire dragon.
3 Some important points
•“Beowulf” is a folk legend brought to England by Anglo-Saxons from their continental homes. However it also reflected the features of the tribal society in Britain.
•Originally Beowulf, the great epic, was in oral form and it must be a collective creation.
•Beowulf in the epic is a legendary figure. In formal history you can not find a man named Beowulf.
④ Artistic features of “Beowulf”
•Using alliteration
Definition of alliteration a rhetorical device, meaning some words in a sentence begin with the same consonant sound（头韵）
Some examples on P5
•Using metaphor and understatement
Definition of understatement: expressing something in a controlled way
Understatement is a typical way for Englishmen to express their ideas. You may find some examples on P6
⑤ Epic tradition in Europe
long narrative verse, part-historical and part-legendary origin
This tradition can be traced back to Homer’s “Iliad” and “Odyssey”. Similar works in Europe are “Edda” and “Saga” from Iceland etc. (referring to 《欧洲文学史》)
3, “Anglo-Saxon Chronicle”
• The book was conceived by King Alfred the Great. He also organized and supervised the writing process of the book.
•This book is a very important historical document and specimen of Anglo-Saxon prose.
II, Medieval English Literature
1, Historical Background
1 Norman conquest in 1066 marks the establishment of feudalism in England.
2 By the end of the 14th century, the Middle English emerged.
3 The ecclesiastics, from the monks and the clergy to the bishops and archbishops, together possessed over one third of the land in the country and owned numerous serfs, and had their tithes and ecclesiastical courts and the backing of the Pope in Rome. They had much political as well as religious power. Understanding the great influence of Christianity in the medieval Europe is very important for you to understand their literature because Christianity is one of the two resources of European culture. (referring to
Lecture 2
2. The Romance（骑士文学）
1 Definition of the Romance: a long composition, sometimes in verse, sometimes in prose, describing the life and adventures of a noble hero. (P10)
* Knight is a special group of people existed in the Middle Age in Europe. Nearly all nobles were knights. However, nobody was born a knight. One nobleman who want to become a knight must experience hard training and then the king will give him knighthood.
* Codes of the Knight（骑士准则）:protect the weak, fight for church, loyal to your lord, loyal to King, respect women of noble birth西方人对于男士良好风度的概念起源于这些骑士准则，是以西方有“骑士风度”说法。）（参阅《欧洲文化入门》）
2 The great majority of the romances fall into three groups: matters of Britain, matters of France and matters of Rome.
* Charlemagne, a very great French emperor, 查理曼大帝 （参阅《欧洲文化入门》）
* Alexander the Great, a very great emperor in ancient Greece, 亚历山大大帝，目前埃及名城亚历山大就是以他的名字命名 （参阅《欧洲文化入门》）
3 The Romance of King Arthur and his Round Table knights, whose origin was in Celtic legend, is comparatively the most important for the history of English literature, especially the works called “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight”.关于亚瑟王的传说来自英国的凯尔特民族的传说，《格温爵士和绿衣骑士》的故事可以在陈嘉《英国文学史》第34到35页找到。
• The theme of loyalty to king and lord is an important common theme of the Romance. So they were composed for the noble class.
* 英国的骑士文学(Romance)并没有产生如同法国的《罗兰之歌》那样多姿多彩的作品，中世纪在整个欧洲骑士文学还是有很多的读者，有一些人甚至对骑士文学的喜爱到达痴迷的程度，比如西班牙作家塞万提斯的名作《唐吉诃德》中刻画的主人公便是一位让人觉的可笑又觉的同情的骑士文学迷。（参阅《欧洲文学史》）
3. “Piers the Plowman”（农夫皮尔斯）
1 The author – William Langland
Read his life story by yourself. (P12)
He was lived in lower social position all his life and he was a person with strong Christian color. These two elements concerning with his life experience influenced his literary creation.
2 Story
Read P12 to P16 and answer the following questions:
•What kinds of people were considered as parasites?
•Religion was compared to what kind of person?
•What kind of social phenomenon was represented by Lady Meed?
•Lady Meed is asked by King to marry whom?
•Why Conscience refused to marry Lady Meed?
•Who is the hero of the poem? What kind of person he is?
3 Features
•Important point which makes the work special: The author considers the peasant named Piers to be the nearest to truth and salvation. (It was in the Middle Ages. Nearly all literary works produced at that time was written about those noblemen.)
•Form: a series of dreams
•Style: alliterative verse
•Social significance: kindling the toiling people’s sense of human dignity and equality before God and playing a part in arousing their revolutionary sentiment
•Limitations: conservatism (See P16 “The Class Nature of Piers”); Strong Christian color
•Artistic feature of the production: allegory（寓言）, personification（拟人）, symbolism（象征主义，用作品中具体的形象来代替某种现象或一个抽象概念）The usage of symbolism became a tradition of English literature. You may find lots of similar works in later English literature, for example, Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress.
4, The English Ballads
1 Definition of the ballad: A ballad is a story told in song, usually in 4-line stanzas, with the second and fourth lines rhymed.（rhymed在这里指第二行和第四行最后一个词以相同或近似的元音和辅音结尾）
2 Features of ballads
•Flourished in the 15th century
•Originally oral literature (Ballads were collected and written down in the 18th century. Earliest publication of collection of ballads was Thomas Percy’s “Reliques of Ancient English Poetry”.)
•Collective creation (no certain writer for each ballad)
•Ballads wrote on all kinds of subjects.
3 Robin Hood Ballads（罗宾汉）

•Of all the ballads, those written about Robin Hood are comparatively important.
•Robin Hood is a partly historical and partly legendary character.（罗宾汉本来是一个很普通的历史人物，但是在人们的传说中逐渐被神化，成为了民谣中描写的传说中的形象，这种方式与中国历史上关羽的形象很近似。）
•Important points of the character of Robin Hood: hatred for the cruel oppressors and love for the poor; orthodox in religion; reverence for the King (just an illusion)
•Social Significance: showing the fighting spirit, courage and revolutionary energy of English peasantry
（Robin Hood是英国文学史中的一个绿林英雄形象，与中国文学中的许多劫富济贫的形象很相近，特别是《水浒》中的很多人物形象。）
17. Ben Jonson个别戏剧的名字要能和人对上号，如Every Man in His Humor, 二外好像在这里出过一道匹配题，但是不用看太具体。
Part Three: The Period of the English Bourgeois Revolution
18. John Milton 三大史诗非常重要，特别是Paradise Lost和Samson Agonistes。对于Paradise Lost需要知道它是blank verse写成的，故事情节来自Old Testament，具体情节在课本124页，另外要知道此书theme和Satan的形象。对于Samson Agonistes要知道它是poetical drama，知道故事大概情节及其来源。另外129页到130页brief summary中5条要看。
19. John Bunyan——The Pilgrim’s Progress
20. Founder of the Metaphysical school——John Donne; features of the school: philosophical poems, complex rhythms and strange images
21. Andrew Marvell 此人不重要，但他有一首名诗To His Coy Mistress
22. John Dryden——“All for Love”(a tragedy); “An Essay of Dramatic Poesy”(Literary criticism); forerunner of the Classicism in Britain
Part Four: The Eighteen Century
23. Enlightenment（名词解释）
24. Classicism（名词解释）
25. Richard Steele——“The Tatler”
26. Joseph Addison——“The Spectator”这个比上面那个要重要，注意这个报纸和我们今天的报纸不一样，它虚构了一系列的人物，以这些人物的口气来写报纸上刊登的散文，这一部分要仔细读。
27. Steel’s and Addison’s styles and their contributions
28. Alexander Pope: “Essay on Criticism”, “Essay on Man”, “The Rape of Lock”, “The Dunciad”; his workmanship (features) and limitations
29. Jonathan Swift: “Gulliver’s Travels”此书非常重要，要知道具体内容，就是Gulliver游历过的四个地方的英文名称，和每个部分具体的讽刺对象; “The Drapier’s Letters” and “A Modest Proposal”, 后一篇比较重要，要注意后一篇作者用的irony也就是反讽手法。
30. The rise and growth of the realistic novel is the most prominent achievement of 18th century English literature.
31. Daniel Defoe: “Robinson Crusoe”, “Moll Flanders”, 当然是Robinson Crusoe比较重要，剧情要清楚，179页这一节最后一段，有Robinson Crusoe的形象和故事中蕴涵的早期黑奴的原形，以及殖民主义的萌芽。另外注意Defoe的style和feature，另外Defoe是forerunner of English realistic novel。
32. Samuel Richardson——“Pamela” (first epistolary novel), “Clarissa Harlowe”, “Sir Charles Grandison”
33. Henry Fielding: “Joseph Andrews”, “Jonathan Wild”, “Tom Jones”第一个和第三个比较重要，需要仔细看。他是一个比较重要的作家，200页founder of the English Realistic novel部分要看，201页第3点features也要看，另外Fielding也被称为father of the English novel.
34. Laurence Sterne——“Tristram Shandy”
35. Richard Sheridan——“The School for Scandal”
36. Samuel Johnson——“Dictionary”, “Letter to Lord Chesterfield” (the writers’ declaration of independence)
37. Oliver Goldsmith——“The Traveller”(poem), “The Deserted Village” (poem) (both two poems were written by heroic couplet), “The Vicar of Wakefield” (novel), “The Good-Natured Man” (comedy), “She stoops to Conquer” (comedy), “The Citizen of the World” (collection of essays)
38. Edward Gibbon——“The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”
40. Sentimentalism（名词解释）
41. Thomas Gray——“Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”（英国诗歌里非常著名的一首，曾经被誉为“有史以来英国诗歌里最好的一首”）(a representative of sentimentalism and graveyard school of poets墓园派诗人)
*Graveyard School / Poets”: A term applied to eighteenth-century poets who wrote meditative poems, usually set in a graveyard, on the theme of human mortality, in moods which range from elegiac pensiveness to profound gloom. The vogue resulted in one of the most widely known English poems, Thomas Gray’s “Elegy written in a country churchyard”. The writing of graveyard poems spread from England to Continental literature in the second part of the century and also influenced some American poets.
42. In the latter half of the 18th century, Pre-Romanticism; representative: William Blake and Robert Burns.
43. Thomas Percy——“Reliques of Ancient English poetry”许多中古的民谣都是在这个时期重新收集和整理起来的，这个集子是那个时代比较有名的一个民谣集。
44. William Blake比较重要，需要对主要作品有所了解，特别是Songs of Innocence 和 Songs of Experience, 这两本集子的contrast一定要注意，另外Blake的写作特点也要注意，比如语言的简单明了，神秘主义氛围等。
45. Robert Burns伟大的苏格兰民族诗人, A Red Red Rose, Scots Wha Hae, Auld Lang Syne等名诗，写作特点: Scottish dialect; a poet of peasant and Scottish people; plain language; influence from Scottish folk songs and ballads; musical quality of his poems.
Part Five: Romanticism in England
46. Romanticism（名词解释）要对浪漫主义兴起的时间，根源，主要特点，主要代表作家都有所了解。
47.William Wordsworth要知道他的 “Lyrical Ballads”前言是英国浪漫主义时期开始的标志，也是宣言。Lake Poets（名词解释）。他诗歌的主要两类题材:nature and common people’s lives。
写过的著名作品:I wandered lonely as a cloud; To the cuckoo; Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey; The solitary reaper; We are seven 等等。
48. Samuel Taylor Coleridge两首名诗:The Rime of the Ancient Mariner; Kubla Khan主要写作supernatural题材。
49. George Gordon Byron，Byronic Heroes (名词解释); 著名作品:Child Harold’s Pilgrimage要知道大致内容，另外此诗用Spenserian Stanza写成；Don Juan要知道大致内容，及其诗体attava rima。
50. Percy Bysshe Shelley著名作品:Queen Mab; The Revolt of Islam; Prometheus Unbound（lyrical drama，要知道大致内容及此剧与古希腊的“被束缚的普罗米修斯”不同之处及其意义。）其它名作: Ode to the West Wind; To a skylark; One word is too often profaned等等。
51. John Keats著名作品:Ode to Autumn; Ode to a Nightingale; Ode on a Grecian Urn”。注意Keats与Byron和Shelley的不同，Keats的诗歌没有两人那么强的革命性，他的诗歌主要是为了缔造一个唯美的世界，为了追求美而写作的。
52. Charles Lamb:The Essays of Elia (humorous, archaisms, quotations from other writers)
53. Walter Scott: founder and great master of the historical novel; his death marks the ending of Romantic Period in English literature; famous novels: Rob Roy, Ivanhoe; features of his novels (P322)
Part Six: English Critical Realism
54. Critical Realism批判现实主义，要知道它兴起的时间，历史背景，主要代表人物及主要特点。
55. Charles Dickens主要作品: The Pickwick Papers (first novel); Oliver Twist; Dombey and Son; David Copperfield; A Tales of Two Cities等等，对这些主要作品除了第一部以外剩下的要对情节，主要人物形象，主题及其意义有所了解，另外要知道狄更斯的小说的特色（P362-P363）。
56. William Makepeace Thackeray主要作品即Vanity Fair要知道这个题目出自John Bunyan的The Pilgrim’s Progress，另外小说的副标题 “A novel without a hero