2023年英美文学史复习笔记.docx

Chapter 1 Old and Medieval English Literature(450—1066-1340)
1.Beowulf: a typical example of Old English poetry is regarded as the national epic of the Anglo-Saxons. It is an example of the mingling of nature myths and heroic legends.
2.Romance:
①It uses narrative verse or prose to sing knightly adventures or other heroic deeds is a popular literary form in the medieval period.
②It has developed the characteristic medieval motifs of the quest, the test, the meeting with the evil giant and the encounter with the beautiful beloved.
③The hero is usually the knight, who sets out on a journey to accomplish some missions. There are often mysteries and fantasies in romance.
④Romantic love is an important part of the plot in romance.
Characterization is standardized, While the structure is loose and episodic, the language is simple and straightforward.
⑤The importance of the romance itself can be seen as a means of showing medieval aristocratic men and women in relation to their idealized view of the world.
2. Heroic couplet:
Heroic couplet is a rhymed couplet of iambic pentameter. It is Chaucer who used it for the first time in English in his work The Legend of Good Woman.
3. The theme of Beowulf:
The poem presents a vivid picture of how the primitive people wage heroic struggles against the hostile forces of the natural world under a wise and mighty leader. The poem is an example of the mingling of the nature myths and heroic legends.
5. Chaucer’s achievement:
①He presented a comprehensive realistic picture of his age and created a whole gallery of vivid characters in his works, especially in The Canterbury Tales.
②He anticipated a new ear, the Renaissance, to come under the influence of the Italian writers.
③He developed his characterization to a higher level by presenting characters with both typical qualities and individual dispositions.
④He greatly contributed to the maturing of English poetry. Today, Chaucer’s reputation has been securely established as one of the best English poets for his wisdom, humor and humanity.
6. “The Father of English poetry”:
Originally, Old English poems are mainly alliterative verses with few variations.
①Chaucer introduced from France the rhymed stanzas of various types to English poetry to replace it.
②In The Romaunt of the Rose (玫瑰传奇), he first introduced to the English the octosyllabic couplet (八音节对偶句).
③In The Legend of Good Women, he used for the first time in English heroic couplet.
④And in his masterpiece, The Canterbury Tales, he employed heroic couplet with true ease and charm for the first time in the history of English literature.
⑤His art made him one of the greatest poets in English; John Dryden called him “the father of English poetry”.

【例题】The work that presented, for the first time in English literature, a comprehensive realistic picture of the medieval English society and created a whole gallery of vivid characters from all walks of life is most likely _____ (0704)
A. William Langland’s Piers Plowman
B. Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales
C. John Gower’s Confession Amantis
D. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
【答案】B
Chapter 2: The Renaissance Period (14th—mid-17th Century)

1. The Renaissance:
The Renaissance marks a transition from the medieval to the modern world. Generally, it refers to the period between the 14th & 17th centuries. It first started in Italy, with the flowering of painting, sculpture & literature. From Italy the movement went to embrace the rest of Europe.
2. Humanism:
Humanism is the essence of the Renaissance. It sprang from the endeavor to restore a medieval reverence for the ancient authors and is frequently taken as the beginning of the Renaissance on its conscious, intellectual side. Through the new learning, humanists not only saw the arts of splendor and enlightenment, but the human values represented in the works. Thomas More, Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare are the best representatives of the English humanists.

Ⅰ. William Shakespeare

1. The bibliography
William Shakespeare is one of the most remarkable playwrights and poets the world has ever known.
3. The major contributions
38 plays (historical plays, tragedies and comedies)
2 narrative poems: Venus, The Rape of Lucrece
154 sonnets
4. His play-creation
five historical plays: Henry IV, part I, II, and III; Richard III; and Titus Andronicus（泰特斯, 提图斯）.
four Comedies, including: The Comedy of Errors; The Two Gentlemen of Verona（维罗纳）; The Taming of the Shrew（泼妇旳驯服）, and Love’s Labor’s Lost
Five historical: Richard II, King John, Henry IV, part I, II, Henry V
Six comedies: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Merchant of Venice, Much Ado About Nothing, As You like(皆大欢喜), Twelfth Night, and the Merry Wives of Windsor（温莎公爵旳快乐情妇）
Two tragedies: Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar
Seven tragedies: Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra（克利奥帕特拉）, Troilus and Cressida（特洛伊罗斯和克雷西达）, Coriolanus（科里奥兰纳斯）
Two comedies: All’s Well That Ends Well, Measure for Measure
romantic tragicomedies: Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter’s Tale, and The Tempest
Two final plays: Henry III, and The Two Noble Kinsmen

7. Shakespeare’s writing characteristics
The progressive significance of the theme--humanism
The successful character portrayal—women’s characters
The masterhand in constructing the plot
The ingenuity of his poetry
The mastery of his language

Ⅱ. John Milton
Lycidas
his 3 major poetical works: Paradise Lost (1667), Paradise Regained (1671), & Samson Agonistes (1671).
①Epics: Paradise Lost失乐园
Paradisen Regained复乐园
②Dramatic poem: efence of the English People为英国人民声辩
④ On His Blindness我旳失明

Chapter 3: The Neoclassical Period (17th—18th Century, 1660~1798)
1. Duration:
Neoclassical period is the one in English literature between the return of Stuarts to the English throne in 1660 and the full assertion of Romanticism which came with the publication of Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge in 1978. It’s in fact a turbulent period.
8. Gothic novels:
Gothic novels are mostly stories of mystery and horror which take place in some haunted or dilapidated Middle Class castles. They appeared from the middle part of the 18th century. Richard Brinsley Sheridan was the leading figure among a host of playwrights. And of the witty and satiric prose, those written by Jonathan Swift are worth studying.

【例题】The British bourgeois or middle class believed in the following notions EXCEPT ______. (0904)
A. self - esteem B. self - reliance
C. self - restraint D. hard work
【答案】A

Ⅰ. Daniel Defoe
1. Daniel Defoe’s major works:
The Shortest Way with the Dissenters.
The True-born Englishman
The Review
Robinson Crusoe (most famous of his work, his masterpiece)
Captain Singleton《辛格尔顿船长》
Moll Flanders《摩根.佛兰德斯》
Colonel Jack《杰克上校》
Roxana《罗克珊娜》
A Journal of the Plague Year. 《大疫年日志》
Ⅱ. Jonathan Swift
2. Masterpieces
A Tale of a Tub (satirist) 《木桶旳故事》
The Battle of the Books 《书籍之战》
The Examiner 《主考》
Gulliver’s Travels (his greatest satiric work) 《格列佛游记》
A Modest Proposal (more powerful) 《一种温和旳提议》
The Drapier’s Letters《专培儿之信》
Ⅲ. Henry Fielding
2. Contributions:
①Father of the English Novel—because of his contribution and establishment of the form of the modern novel
②Of all the eighteenth-century novelists he was the first to set out, both in theory and practice:
First: give the modern novel both its structure and its style
Second: adopted the “third-person narration” in which the author became the all-knowing God

3. Main works:
The earlier essays:
The True Patriot and the Liberty of Our Own Times
The Jacobite’s Journal
The Convent-garden Journal
 Plays: 
The Coffee-House Politician
The Tragedy of Tragedies
Pasquin
The Historical Register for the Year
 Novels: 
The History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews and of his friend Mr. Abraham Adams
The History of Jonathan Wild the Great
The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling –masterpiece on subject of human nature
The history of Amelia- a story of the unfortunate life of an idealized woman, a maudlin picture of the social life
Chapter 4: The Romantic Period1798—1832, the early 30 years in 19th Century )
1. Historical background:
Internationally,
① The French Revolutions:②Rousseau
These paved the way for the development of Romanticism in the literature internationally
Nationally,
①Industrial revolution (Industrialization, Further capitalization and Urbanization)
②The survival of fittest (the sharper contradiction between capitalists and the labors)
These are the national basis of the production of Romanticism
3. The definition, duration and characteristics of the Romanticism:
①The definition:
The Romantic Movement, which associated with vitality, powerful emotion and dreamlike ideas, is simply the expression of life as seen by the imagination rather than by prosaic common sense.
【例题】Which of the following poems is a landmark in English poetry? (0704)
A. Lyrical Ballads by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge
B. “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” by William Wordsworth
C. “Remorse”by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
D. Leaves of Grass Walt Whitman
【答案】A
6. Main representatives:
①Main representatives—poets:
Pre-Romanticism: (Blake and Burns)
The first generation: (Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southey)
The younger generation: (Byron, Shelley and Keats)
②Main representatives—novelists
Jane Austen --- love and marriage
Walter Scott --- main works (book) human nature
③Gothic novelists
Ann Radcliffe and Mary Shelley
Gothic novel:
It is a type of romantic fiction that predominated in the late 18th century & was one phase of the Romantic Movement
Works like The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) by Ann Radcliffe & Frankenstein (1818) by Mary Shelley are typical Gothic romance

Ⅰ.William Blake
1．Introduction:
English poet, artist, & philosopher, made distinguished contributions to both Literature & art. He ranks with great poets in the English language & may be considered the earliest of the major English Romantic poets.
4. Main works:
Early works: Poetical Sketches《诗学札记》
Songs of Innocence《天真之歌》
Songs of Experience《经验之歌》
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell《天堂与地狱旳婚姻》
The similarities and differences between two volumes:
Generally:
Hold the similar subject-matter
The childhood is the central to his concern
The tone, emphasis and conclusion differ

Specifically:
Infant Joy against Infant Sorrow
Lamb against Tyger
Chimney SweeperⅠagainst Chimney SweeperⅡ
The Book of Urizen
The Book of Los
The Four Zoas
Milton

【例题】William Blake’s central concern in the Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experiences_______, which gives the two books a strong social and historical reference. (0804)
A. youth hood B. childhood
C. happiness D. Sorrow
Ⅱ. William Wordsworth
1. Introduction:
William Wordsworth, known as “the Lake Poets” together with Coleridge and Southey, is the leading figure of the English Romantic poetry, the focal poetic voice of the period
2. Types of his poem according to his poetic outlook:
According to the subjects, Wordsworth’s short poems can be classified into two groups: poems about nature and poems about human life.
①Poems about nature:
I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud
An Evening Walk
My Heart Leaps up
The Sailor’s Mother
The Affliction of Margaret
The Old Cumberland Beggar
The Idiot Boy
The Solitary Reaper
To a Highland Girl
Ⅲ. Percy Bysshe Shelley
1. Introduction:
Shelley is one of the leading Romantic poets, an intense & original lyrical poet in the English language.
3. His major works:
Early works:
Queen Mab:
Alastor or The Spirit of Solitude
Hymn to Intellectual Beauty
Mont Blanc
Julian and Maddalo
The Revolt of Islam
The Cenci
Hellas
The Cloud

To a Skylark:
: Adonais
Ode to the west Wind (Best of all the well-known lyric pieces )
Ode to Liberty
Ode to Naples
Sonnet: England in 1819
Men of England
Major prose essay: Defense of Poetry
Ⅳ.Jane Austen
1. Introduction:
It was Jane Austen who brought the English novels, as an art of form, to its maturity and she had been regarded as one of the greatest of all novelists.
Austen is universally regarded as the founder of the novel which deal with unimportant middle-class people.

2. Major works:
In her lifelong career, Jane Austen wrote altogether six complete novels, which can be divided into two distinct periods.
Sense and Sensibility 理智与情感Her first novel
Pride and Prejudice傲慢与偏见The most popular of her novels dealing with the five Bennet sisters & their search for suitable husbands
Northanger Abbey 诺桑觉寺satirizes those popular Gothic romances of the late 18th century
Mansfield Park曼斯菲尔德庄园presents the antithesis of worldliness & unworldliness
Emma 爱玛gives the thought over self-deceptive vanity
Persuasion 劝导contrasts the true love with the prudential calculations

【例题】“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” The quoted part is taken from ______. （0804）
A. Jane Eyre
B. Wuthering Heights
C. Pride and Prejudice
D. Sense and Sensibility
【答案】C
Chapter 5: The Victorian Period
Ⅰ. Charles Dickens
2. His Major Works:
Period of youthful optimist
Sketches by Boz (1836); The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (1836-1837); Oliver Twist (1837-1838);Nicholas Nickleby (1838-1839); The Old Curiosity Shop (1840-1841); Barnaby Rudge(1841)
American Notes (1842); Martin Chuzzlewit (1843-1845); A Christmas Carol (1843); Dombey & Son (1846-1848); David Copperfield (1849-1850)
Bleak House (1852-1853); Hard Times 1854); Little Dorrit (1855-1857); A Tale of Two Cities (1859); Great Expectations (1860-1861); Our Mutual Friend (1864-1865); Edwin Drood (unfinished)(1870)

【例题】Among the works by Charles Dickens _______ presents his criticism of the Utilitarian principle that rules over the English education system and destroys young hearts and minds. （0804）
A. Bleak House
B. Pickwick Paper
C. Great Expectations
D. Hard Times
【答案】D
Ⅱ. Charlotte Bronte
1. Charlotte's Literary Creation and her Writing Characteristics:
Charlotte Bronte's works are all about the struggle of an individual towards self-realization, about some lonely & neglected young women with a fierce longing for love, & understanding & a full, happy life. Besides, she is a writer of realism combined with romanticism. Her works are famous for the depiction of the life of the middle-class workingwomen, particularly governesses

Jane Eyre:
Ⅲ. Thomas Hardy
2. His Major Works:
Poetry: The Dynasts
Hardy himself divided his novels into three groups:
A Pair of Blue Eyes (1873); The Trumpet Major (1880)
Desperate Remedies-；The Hand of Ethelberta
Under the Greenwood Tree
The Return of the Native
The Mayor of Cas