英国文学名词术语解释

Ballad(民谣) In more exact literary terminology, a ballad is a narrative poem consisting of quatrains of iambic tetrameter alternating with iambic trimeter. Common traits of the ballad are that(a) the beginning is often abrupt ,(b) the story is told through dialogue and action (c) the language is simple or “folksy,” (d) the theme is often tragic---though comic ballads do exist, (e) the ballad contains a refrain repeated several times. The ballad became popular in England in the late 14th century and was adopted by many writers. One of the most important anthologies of ballads is F. J. Child’ s The English and Scottish Popular Ballads.

Epic(史诗) An epic is a long oral narrative poem that operates on a grand scale and deals with legendary or historical events of national or universal significance .Most epics deal with the exploits of a single individual and also interlace the main narrative with myths, legends, folk tales and past events; there is a composite effect, the entire culture of a country cohering in the overall experience of the poem . Epic poems are not merely entertaining stories of legendary or historical heroes; they summarize and express the nature or ideals of an entire nation at a significant or crucial period of its history.

Humanism(人文主义) Broadly, this term suggests any attitude which tends to exalt the human element or stress the importance of human interests, as opposed to the supernatural , divine elements ---or as opposed to the grosser, animal elements.In a more specific sense, humanism suggests a devotion to those studies supposed to promote human culture most effectively----in particular, those dealing with the life,thought, language, and literature of ancient Greece and Rome. It proclaimed that man is the most important noble creature in the world; the goal of life is to enjoy oneself in this present world instead of afterlife. According to the humanists ; both man and world are hindered by external checks from infinite improvement. Man could mould the world according to his desires, and attain

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happiness by removing all external checks by the exercise of reason. In literary history the most important use of the term is to designate the revival of classical culture which accompanied the Renaissance.

Renaissance(文艺复兴) The word “renaissance” means rebirth or revival. It is commonly applied to the movement or period in western civilization , which marks the transition from the medieval to the modern world . It sprang up first in Italy in the 14th century and gradually spread all over Europe, the date differing for different countries. The Renaissance indicates a revival of classical (Greek and Roman) arts and sciences after the dark ages of medieval obscurantism. The study and propagation of classical learning and art was carried on by the progressive thinkers of the humanists. They held their chief interest not in ecclesiastical knowledge, but in man, his environment and doings and his brave fight for the emancipation of man from the tyranny of the church and religious dogmas. Because in the ancient Greek and Roman mythology were found the ideas of universal love, respect to human beings and approval of man’s power, ability and knowledge. And at the same time worldly enjoyment on the earth was affirmed. In short, man became the center of the world instead of God as upheld in the Middle Ages. The Renaissance Movement is a great revolution carried out in the fourteenth to the mid-seventeenth century Europe. It broke the chain and bondage of feudal and theological ties and brought human wisdom and capacity into full play. Renaissance

Ode(颂歌) Long, often elaborate formal lyric poem of varying line lengths dealing with a subject matter and treating it reverently. It aims at glorifying an individual, commemorating an event, or describing nature intellectually rather than emotionally. Conventionally, many odes are written or dedicated to a specifie subject. For instance,Ode to the West Wind is

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about the winds that bring change of season in England. Ode to the Nightingale is about the nightingale that lures the poet temporarily away from his great misery. The earliest English odes include the Epithalamion and the Prothalamion,or marriage hymns by poet Edmund Spenser.

Romanticism(浪漫主义) The term refers to the literary and artistic movements of the late 18th and early 19th century. Romanticism rejected the earlier philosophy of the Enlightenment, which stressed that logic and reason were the best response humans had in the face of cruelty, stupidity, superstition, and barbarism. Instead ,the Romantics asserted that reliance upon emotion and natural passions provided a valid and powerful means of knowing and a reliable guide to ethics and living.The Romantic movement typically asserts the unique nature of the individual, the privileged status of imagination and fancy, the value of spontaneity over “artifice” and “convention”, the human need for emotional outlets, the rejection of civilized corruption, and a desire to return to natural primitivism and escape the spiritual destruction of urban life Their writings are often set in rural, or Gothic settings and they show an obsessive concern with “innocent” characters----children, young lovers, and animals. The major Romantic poets included William Blake, William Wordsworth, John Keats , Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Lord Gordon Byron.

Stream of Consciousness(意识流) (psychol organized by William James) individual conscious experience regarded as continuously moving forward in time in an uneven flow. In creative writing the interior monologue makes use of this to reveal character and comment on life.

Critical Realism (批判现实主义) Critical realism is one of the literary genres that

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flourished mainly in the 19th century. It reveals the corrupting influence of the rule of cash upon human nature. Here lies the essentially democratic and humanistic character of critical realism. The English critical realists of the 19th century not only gave a satirical portrayal of the bourgeoisie and all the ruling classes, but also showed profound sympathy for the common people. In their best works, they used humor and satire to contrast the greed and hypocrisy of the upper classes with the honesty and good-heartedness of the obscure “simple people” of the lower classes. Humorous scenes set off the actions of the positive characters, and the humor is often tinged with a lyricism which serves to stress the fine qualities of such characters. At the same time,bitter satire and grotesque is used to expose the seamy side of the bourgeois society. The critical realists, however, did not find a way to eradicate the social evils they knew so well. They did not realize the necessity of changing the bourgeois society through conscious human effort. Their works do not point toward revolution but rather evolution or reformism. They often start with a powerful exposure of the ugliness of the bourgeois world in their works, but their novels usually have happy endings or an impotent compromise at the end. Here are the strength and weakness of critical realism.

Gothic(哥特式) As a word Gothic on the one hand means “of or in a style of building common in Western Europe between the 12th century and 16th centuries,with pointed arches,tall pillars, and tall thin pointed windows often with colored glass in them”and on the other hand it means “of or like a style of writing popular in the late 18th century which produced stories set in lonely frightening places ”. It is now generally applied to literature dealing with the strange, mysterious, and supernatural designed to invoke suspense and terror in the readers. Gothic literature invariably exploits ghosts and monsters and settings such as castles, dungeons, and graveyards, which imparts a suitably sinister and terrifying atmosphere. The term “Gothic ” derived from the frequent setting of the tales in the ruined,

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moss-covered castles of the Middle Ages, but it has been extended to any novel which exploits the possibilities in a kind of frightening and mysterious situation in which the central story centers upon a beautiful maiden persecuted by an obsessed and haggard villain. The Gothic novels have opened up to later fictions the dark, irrational side of human nature—the savage egoism, the perverse impulses, and the nightmarish terror that lie beneath the controlled and ordered surface of the conscious mind. Gothic novels have exerted significant influence on the literature of later generations and on every European literature. The Gothic novels have exerted great effect on the American literature,Hawthorn and Allen Poe in particular. Furthermore, they also influenced the surrealism literature movement in the 20th century.

Byronic belonging to or derived from Lord Byron(1788-1824)or his works. The Byronic hero is a character-type found in his celebrated narrative poem Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage(1812-18),his verse drama Manfred(1817),and other works:he is a boldly defiant

but bitterly self –tormenting outcast,proudly contemptuous of social norms but suffering for some unnamed sin. Emily Bronte’s Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights(1847)is a later example.

Sonnet a lyric poem comprising 14 rhyming lines of equal length:iambic pentameters in English,alexandrines in French,hendecasyllables in ltalian. The rhyme schemes of the sonnet follow two basic patterns.

①The Italian sonnet (also called the Petrarchan sonnet after the most influential of the Italian sonneteers) comprises an 8-line ‘octave’of two quatrains,rhymed abbaabba, followed by a 6-line ‘sestet’ usually rhymed cdecde or cdcdcd. The transition from octave to sestet usually coincides with a ‘turn’ ( ltalian,volta )in the argument or mood of the poem. In a

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variant form used by the English poet John Milton,however, the ‘turn’ is delayed to a later position around the tenth line.Some later poets----notably William Wordsworth----have employed this feature of the ‘Miltonic sonnet’while relaxing the rhyme scheme of the octave to abbaacca . The Italian pattern has remained the most widely used in English and other languages.

②The English sonnet (also called the Shakespearean sonnet after its foremost practitioner) comprises three quatrains and a final couplet,rhyming ababcdcdefefgg.An important variant of this is the Spenserian sonnet (introduced by the Elizabethan poet Edmund Spenser),which links the three quatrains by rhyme,in the sequence

ababbabccdcdee.In either form,the ‘turn’comes with the final couplet,which may sometimes

achieve the neatness of an epigram.

Enlightenment movement The eighteenth-century England is also, and better, known as the Age of Enlightenment or the Age of Reason.The Enlightenment was a progressive intellectual movement going on throughout Europe at the time, with France in the vanguard. The Enlightenment celebrated reason (rationality), equality, science and human beings’ ability to perfect themselves and their society . The movement was based on the basic theories provided by the philosophers of the age, which ranged from John Locke’s materialism, Lord Shaftsbury’s deism, and George Berkeley’s immaterialism to David Hume’s skepticism. Whatever philosophical beliefs they might have, they held the common faith in human rationality and the possibility of human perfection through education. They believed that when reason served as the yardstick for the measurement of all human activities and social relations, superstition, injustice, privilege and oppression were to yield place to “eternal truth”, “etenal justice ”, and “natural equality” or inalienable rights of men.

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Everything was put under scrutiny, to be measured by reason . No authorities, political or religious or otherwise , were accepted unchallenged while almost all the old societies and governments and all the traditional concepts, including Christianity, were examined and criticized. The belief provided theory for the French Revolution in 17 and the American War of Independence in 1776.

Metaphysical poetry a derogatory term invented by John Dryden(1631-1700 ) and later adopted by Samuel Johnson(1709-1784) describing 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 metaphysical poets are love,death,and religion.According to them,all things in the universe, no matter how dissimilar they are to each other,are closely unified in God.The chief representative of this school was John Donne.

Lake poets William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Robert Southey became known as the Lake Poets, because they lived in the Lake District in the northwestern part of England. According to the critics, such as, Francis Jeffrey, Thomas De Quincey, the Lake Poets shared only friendship and brief periods of collaboration, not similar philosophies or poetic styles.Wordsworth used his imaginative powers to idealize nature, Coleridge explored the philosophical aspects of poetry,Southey's Romantic efforts centered on travel and adventure.

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