《英国文学史》复习思考题答案.pdf

《《英国文学史》复习思考题答案.pdf》由会员分享，可在线阅读，更多相关《《英国文学史》复习思考题答案.pdf（5页珍藏版）》请在淘文阁 - 分享文档赚钱的网站上搜索。

1、（00910091）英国文学史复习思考题答案英国文学史复习思考题答案I.I.Write out the authors names of the following works.(Write out the authors names of the following works.(20)20)1 William ShakespeareRomeo and Juliet2 Henry FieldingTom Jones3 Charlotte BronteJane Eyre4 Daniel DefoeRobinson Crusoe5 Robert BurnsA Red Red,Rose6 Osca

2、r WildeThe Importance of Being Earnest7 George Bernard Shaw Mrs.Warrens Profession 8 Virginia Woolf To the Lighthouse9 Lord ByronDon Juan10 John KeatsOde to the Nightingale12 Jonathan SwiftGullivers Travels14 Emily BronteWuthering Heights16 Thomas HardyTess of the DUrberviles18 George EliotSilas Mar

3、ner20 Percy ShelleyOde to the West Wind 11 William ShakespeareMacbeth13 William ThackeryVanity Fair15 Charles Dickens A Tale of Two Cities 17 James JoyceUlysses19 Lord ByronDon JuanII.Define the following literary terms.(20)II.Define the following literary terms.(20)1 1、Iambic pentameterIambic penta

4、meter is a meter in poetry,consisting of an unrhymed line with five iambs orfeet(hence pentameter),felt by many to be the most powerful of all metrical forms in Englishpoetry.Shakespeare excelled in the use of iambic pentameter(as in his famous Sonnet XVIII,beginning Shall I compare thee to a summer

5、s day?”2 2、HeroicHeroic coupletcouplet:a rhyming couplet in iambic pentameter.It is also called riding rhyme,rhymed 5-beat lines,or rhymed decasyllables.It is one of the most popular metrical forms inEnglish poetry.Though its origin is uncertain,heroic couplet is generally assumed to beintroduced by

6、 Chaucer.Characteristics exhibited by heroic couplet include epigrammaticexpression,balanced sentences,parallel construction,concise diction,use of antithesis,and medialpause.Two types of heroic couplets can be distinguished:closed heroic couplet and open heroiccouplet.The former is a complete sente

7、nce with a full stop at the end of the second rhyme.Thelatter is one in which a sentence extends from one couplet to another.3 3、Courtly loveCourtly love:an idealized love in some medieval literature and chivalric society.It has itsorigin in the works of Plato,in Ovids Ars Amatoria,and in Andreas Ca

8、pellanuss De ArteHoneste Amandi.It owes its development to the medieval devotion to the Virgin Mary.Courtlylove celebrates the beauty,virtues and ennobling power of women.It adds to the rise of womensposition and offers a philosophical and religious interpretation of love and its function.Apart from

9、noble passions and persistent pursuit,courtly love aims at the moral perfection of the lover.Loveis essentially treated as a motivating power,directing the lover toward moral progress and spiritualdevelopment.Other elements of courtly love are humility and courtesy on the part of the lover,adultery

10、between the man and his beloved mistress,and a great respect for the lady.Courtly lovewas popular first in France among the troubadours of the 12th and 13th centuries.In England,thosewho wrote in this tradition were Chaucer,Sidney,Spenser and Shakespeare.Examples areChaucers Troilusand Criseyde and

11、the sonnets written by Shakespeare and Spenser.4 4、LiteratureLiterature ofof thethe AbsurdAbsurd:a term associated with modern literature,criticism,andphilosophy.It is applied to describe the meaninglessness of human existence in a world that isalien and incomprehensible.Deprived of their old belief

12、s and cut off from their past,humanbeings are in a state of complete isolation and confusion.Literature of the absurd hasExistentialism as its philosophical background and is most fruitful in drama and novel.The ideathat man and his existence are absurd is best illustrated in the works of Camus,Beck

13、ett,Ionesco,Adamov,Albee,Heller,Pynchon,and V onnegut.5 5、BalladBallad:a narrative poem in short stanzas about heroic or tragic deeds;or a song that tells aromantic or sentimental story.There are mainly two kinds of ballads:the folk ballad and theliterary ballad.The folk or popular ballad is without

14、 authorship and is of oral tradition.It might becomposed by an individual or a community.It is intended to be sung or recited before the public.Ballads of oral tradition are not written down until many years later.And its language is simpleand even unliterary.Folk ballad belongs to the Middle Ages.T

15、he literary or art ballad is withknown authorship and has a definite moral purpose.Ballads of this type are usually imitations ofmedieval popular ballads.They are written down at the start.Many Romantic poets of the 19thcentury wrote literary ballads.Both folk and literary ballads share the followin

16、g similarities:(a)simple and familiar language;(b)having adventure,love or war as the subject matter;(c)tellingstory through dialogue;(d)little description;(e)strong supernatural elements;(f)frequent use ofrepetition and parallelism;(g)having rhyme,assonance and the like;(h)impersonal narrator;(I)ly

17、rical,romantic,sentimental or tragic qualities;and(j)the ballad writer getting his inspirationfrom folklore,local or national history.In England,many ballads are about the border conflictsbetween English and Scottish people,or about the legends of Robin Hood and his merry men.Collections of ballads

18、were once made by Bishop Percy who had Reliques of Ancient EnglishPoetry,Walter Scott who wrote Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border,and Child who compiled TheEnglish and the Scottish Popular Ballads.Coleridges Rime of the Ancient Mariner and WildesThe Ballad of Reading Goal fall in the category of lit

19、erary ballad.And there were more writerswho wrote in the ballad style.They were Scott,Noyes,Macauley and Robert Service.Ballad as apoetic form is still alive today.6 6、BlankBlank verseverse:poetry that does not rhyme but has iambic pentameter lines.Though notoriginated in England or America,it has b

20、een the most important and most widely used Englishverse form.Blank verse is popular because it is closest to the rhythm of daily English speech.Thus most English poems which are dramatic,reflective or narrative are in the form of blank verse.This verse was probably first used in England by Surrey w

21、ho translated Aeneid,by Sackville andNorton who composed Gorboduc.It was developed and perfected by Marlowe,Shakespeare andMilton.In the 18th century,most poets favored heroic couplets.But Young and Thomson were ableto write in the tradition of blank verse.The 19th century saw a renewed interest in

22、this poetic form.Masters of blank verse included Wordsworth,Coleridge and Bryant.The fact that blank verse isstill practiced by writers like T.S.Eliot,Yeats,Frost and Stevens shows how influential andfavorable it really is.7 7、ComedyComedy:In its literary sense,three meanings may be distinguished:(a

23、)drama that amuses,written in the tradition of Greek and Roman comedy;(b)any work of literature in the Middle Agesand early Renaissance that has a happy ending;(c)by natural extension,works in every literaryform that provoke laughter and smiles.Generally speaking,comedy is thought to be a less impor

24、tant form than tragedy.Thus,dramatictheories concerning comedy are small in number.Aristotle in hisPoetics briefly defines comedyas“an imitation of men worse than the average.”It seeks to entertain and deals with“somedefectthat is not painful or destructive.”Plato in his“Philebus”explains that“When

25、we laugh atthe folly of our friends,”we experience“pleasure.”Our laughter is provoked by the harmlessignorance and absurdity of the comic character.Philip Sidney in Apologie for Poetrie says“Comedy is an imitation of the common errors of our life.”Walpole of the 18thcentury wrote:“This world is a co

26、medy to those that think,a tragedy to those that feel.”And Byron had a famousstatement:“All tragedies are finished by a death,/All comedies are ended by a marriage.”Otherscholars and critics who responded to comedy in one way or another include Henry Fielding,Sigmund Freud and George Meredith.8 8、An

27、tiheroAntihero:a main character in a story,novel,play or film who behaves in a completelydifferent way from what people expect a hero to do.A non-hero is without the qualities andfeatures of a traditional or old-fashioned hero.He is doomed to fail.Antiheroes of early days wereDon Quixote,Macbeth,Rip

28、 Van Winkle,and Tristram Shandy.Examples of antiheroes in modernliterature include Leopold Bloom,Jim Dixon,Jimmy Porter,Herzog,and Yassarian.III.Give brief answers to the following questions.(20)III.Give brief answers to the following questions.(20)1.WhatWhat is is thethe nationalnational epicepic o

29、fof thethe EnglishEnglish people?people?AndAnd whatwhat waswas thethe mostmost famousfamousmedieval romance?medieval romance?(Beowulf;King Arthur and his knights of the Round Table)2.Who were the Lake Poets?Who were the Lake Poets?(Wordsworth,Coleridge and Southey)3.3.What is Metaphysical poetry?Wha

30、t is Metaphysical poetry?The poetry written by John Donne,George Herbert,Andrew Marvell,Henry Vaughan,and manyother 17thcentury English poets.Their poetic works were characterized by original images,elaborate conceits,strange paradoxes,far-fetched imagery,wit,ingenuity,dialectical argument,complex t

31、hemes,elliptical thoughts,flexibility of rhythm and meter,terse expression,andcolloquial speech.These poets were similar in their attitude against the established conventions ofElizabethan love poetry.Broadly speaking,the term refers to any poetry that displays thesequalities,any poetry that discuss

32、es metaphysics or the philosophy of knowledge and existence.Preoccupied with thoughts of death,sexual love and religious devotion,metaphysical poetry isphilosophical,intellectual,psychological,analytical and bold.The term was used by John Dryden in his criticism of Donnes overuse of philosophy.InDis

33、course of the Original and Progress of Satire Dryden thus spoke of Donne:“He affects themetaphysics not only in his satires,but in his amorous verses,where nature only should reign,andperplexes the minds of the fair sex with nice speculations of philosophy.”Later Dr Johnson chosethe term to designat

34、e a peculiar poetic manner that he did not really approve.In Lives of the Poets,he regarded the metaphysical imagery as a sort of discordia concors through which“the mostheterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together.”What offended Johnson w as its pretensionand lack of spontaneity.Discordia con

35、cors is,Johnson remarked,“a combination of dissimilarimages or discovery of occult resemblances in things apparently unlike.”Ben Jonson said Donne“deserved hanging”for not recognizing accent.The intentional roughness,obscurity,strain andsome other extremes of metaphysical poets had given them a bad

36、reputation.John Donne was no doubt the leader of the school.But the most metaphysical were Cowley andCrashaw.Other important metaphysical poets included Traherne,Carew,Lovelace,Cleveland,Edward Taylor,Baudelaire,Rilke,T.S.Eliot,J.C.Ransom,Allen Tate,John Hollander,and so on.4.What are major women wr

37、iters in English literature?4.What are major women writers in English literature?(Jane Austen,the Bronte sisters,George Eliot,Mrs.Gaskell,Mrs.Browning,Virginia Woolf,andso on)5.5.What was Wordsworths definition for poetry?What was Wordsworths definition for poetry?Poetry is the spontaneous overflow

38、of powerful feelings;it takes its origin in emotion recollectedin tranquility.6.What is Art for Art6.What is Art for Art s Sake?s Sake?The theory that the fine arts are independent of social-historical reality and have nothing to dowith moral or religious purposes.A work of art is free to seek beaut

39、y and its values are aesthetic.Aestheticism:Aestheticism:a literary movement in the 19thcentury with“art for arts sake”as its majordoctrine.One of its important advocates was Oscar Wilde,who insisted upon the self-reliance,self-government,self-completeness and self-autonomy of literature.The origin

40、of aestheticism canbe traced back to the writers and philosophers of Germanic Romantic periodGoethe,Kant,Schiller,and Schelling.They held it to be true that art should be autonomous and independent ofmorality,politics,social reality,and other non-aesthetic standards.Kant emphasized the value ofpure

41、art and its disinterested existence.The idea that art must be separated from other things wasadvocated earlier in England by Coleridge,Carlyle,and Pater.In America there were Emerson andAllan Poe.Poe defined poetry as the“rhythmical creation of beauty”and condemned the“heresyof the didactic.”The Pre

42、-Raphaelites such as Tennyson,Morris,Swinburne and Rossetti wereclosely related to aestheticism.They worked hard for the musical effects of pure poetry.They hada tendency to withdraw,or live in the“ivory tower.”Gautier has been regarded as the first toexperiment with aestheticism in a self-conscious manner.Other aesthetes were Baudelaire,Mallarm,Dowson,etc.Aestheticism was a reaction against the 19thcentury English andAmerican capitalism,industrialism,materialism,commercialism and realism.