英国文学史 个人整理.docx
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The Medieval English Literature
2.1 A Brief Survey
In the second half of the 14 th century, English literature starts to flourish In comparison with Old English literature, Middle
English literature deals with a wider range of subjects, is uttered by more voices and is presented in a greater diversity of styles,
tones and genres, including popular folk.The Middle English literature strongly reflects the principles of the medieval Christian
doctrines, mainly on the issue of personal salvation and the humanity of Christ and the imagery of human passion.The lack of
originality in Middle English literature is partly due to the Christian teaching.
2.2 Medieval Romance
Romance uses narrative verse or prose to sing knightly adventures or other heroic deeds.Characterization is standardized, while
the structure is loose and episodic, the language is simple and straightforwar
D.English romance mainly deals three major
subjects:
the “Matter of France,”the “Matter of Rome,”and the “Matter of Britain”
The “Matter of France”meant a collection of tales about Chalemagne, the mighty ruler of France and neighboring countries
around the year
A.
D.800, and his peers headed by Roland, and their wars against the Saracens.
The “Matter of Rome”covered everything that had come down from the ancient Romans, and from the Greeks also.This
included Roman history and poetry, also included Greek mythology.
The “Matter of Britain”meant the legendary history of Britain, where King Arthur came in.
Excerpts from The General Prologue of the Canterbury Tales
Author:
Geoffrey Chaucer.
Framework of The Canterbury Tales:
Chaucer used pilgrimage as a framework for stories in Canterbury Tales.The work consists of three parts:
The General
Prologue; 24 tales, two of which unfinished; and separate prologues to each tale.
General Prologue:
composed of a series of sketches differing widely in length and method, blending the individual and the
typical in varying degrees.The Purposes, 5 “To”, P65.The pilgrims are a microcosm of 14 th century English society.The tone
of the whole work is grateful acceptance of life.
In The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer employed the heroic couplet with true ease and charm for the first time in the history of
English literature.
Renaissance P91
Renaissance , regarded as the result of a new emphasis upon the newly discovered Greek and Poman classics and the
combination or compromise of a newly interpreted Christian tradition and an ardently admired tradition of pagan classical
culture, is a historical period in which the European humanist thinkers and scholars made attempts to get rid of old feudalist
ideas in medieval Europe and introduce new ideas that expressed the interests of the rising bourgeoisie, and to lift the restriction
in all areas placed by the Roman Catholic Church authorities.
In the medieval society, people as individuals were largely subordinated to the feudalist rule without any freedom and
independence; and in medieval theology, people’s relationships to the world about them were largely reduced to a problem of
adapting or avoiding the circumstanced of earthly life in and effort to prepare their souls for a future life in the next worl
D.By
emphasizing thee dignity of human beings and the importance of the present life, humanists of the Renaissance voiced their
beliefs that man did not only have the right to enjoy the beauty of this life, but had the ability to perfect himself and to prepare
himself and to perform wonders.
The Sixteenth-Century poetry
Following the main tradition of antiquity and the Middle Ages, the Renaissance poetry was addressed to Reason as a universal
moral guide; it was composed on the assumption that the function of poetry was to teach by delighting-to “interpret nature”and
to influence men’s actions.Generally, Renaissance poets would place epic at the pinnacle of their genre system, and pastoral
poems at the base.
Main categories:
pastoral poetry; poems in the satirical mode, poems in the lyric mode, including the sonnet and the songs of
Elizabeth’s reign; poems in tragic mode; poems in mythological-erotic mode; poems in heroic mode.A most important lyric
genre in the 16 th century was the sonnet, its conventions were established by Petrarch.Sonnet has come to identified by its
formal structure, a14-line poem in iambic pentameter, in three principal rhyming patterns, the so-called English sonnet is
divided structurally into three quatrains and a couplet.
Edmund Spenser:
“the poets’poet”
Recognized by his contemporaries as the foremost poet of his time, Spenser was not only a master of meter and language but a
profound moral poet as well.
The Shepheardes Calendar consists of 12 pastoral poems or eclogues, one for each moth of the year.The themes are generally
rural life, nature, love in the fields.
Amoretti is a series of 88 sonnets, describing the course of the poet’s wooing of Elizabeth Boyle, his wife.Spenser adopted his
own special form of linked quatrains, rhyming ababbcbccdcdee.
Epithalamion, the hymn Spenser wrote to celebrate his marriage with Elizabeth Boyle, different from marriage hymns in its
wider melodious range and broader humanity.
The Faerie Queen set in the mythical world of King Arthur and his knights.12 planned, only 6 complete
D.Spenser uses biblical
allegory to tell his story; its purpose was to educate, to turn a young man into a gentleman.Two levels of allegory present, one
examines the moral, philosophical and religious values and is represented by the Red Cross Knight, who stands for all
Christians, the second is the particular, which focuses on the political, social, and religious conflicts in the then English society.
Brief analysis of “sonnet 75”by Edmund Spenser P111
Rhyme scheme:
abab bcbc cdcd ee
Part One (Lines 1-8)
He is talking about how things in this world are impermanent.He wrote her name in the sand, but it washed
away.She criticizes him for trying to make a mortal thing (them/their love) immortal (last forever).
Part two (Lines 9-12)
Line 9 begins the turn of the poem (turn is a poetry term).He has set up this idea of impermanence, but he is
going to begin to change thought here.He claims that he can make her/.their love live forever・e says he can do
this by using his verse/this sonnet.He talks about how all people will die, and even when they do, the whole
world will still know of their love.
Part three (13-14) rhyming couplet
These two lines sum up the whole poem.The whole world is going to die, but our love will last forever (because
of this poem.)
Christopher Marlowe
Hero and Leander, unfinished, is Marlowe’s fragment of a miniature epic, it is different in verse form and
somewhat different in tone from Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis.
Tamburlaine the Greet, a drama in blank verse, is about the rise and fall of Timur, the Tartar King of the
14 th -century central Asi
A.The play is a tragedy about a man who thinks he can control his own fate but falls
nonetheless into its hand, Marlow voiced man’s desire for infinite power and authority in it.
The Jew of Malta, is a study of the lust for wealth, which centers around Barabas, Strongly suggestive of
Shylock in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice.
Edward the Second, is a tragic study of a king’s weakness and misery.
莎士比亚课本上的那段章节太长了,不过感觉可能会在小题中出现,建议还是把那个章节全部看一遍。
Brief analysis of Sonnet 18
The speaker opens the poem with a question addressed to the beloved:
“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
”The next
eleven lines are devoted to such a comparison.In line 2, the speaker stipulates what mainly differentiates the young man from
the summer’s day:
he is “more lovely and more temperate.”Summer’s days tend toward extremes:
they are shaken by “rough
winds”; in them, the sun (“the eye of heaven”) often shines “too hot,”or too dim.And summer is fleeting:
its date is too short,
and it leads to the withering of autumn, as “every fair from fair sometime declines.”The final quatrain of the sonnet tells how
the beloved differs from the summer in that respect:
his beauty will last forever (“Thy eternal summer shall not fade...”) and
never die.In the couplet, the speaker explains how the beloved’s beauty will accomplish this feat, and not perish because it is
preserved in the poem, which will last forever; it will live “as long as men can breathe or eyes can see.”
Answer to the Study Questions(仅供参考):
1.The image suggests illumination, brilliance, light, life, and all things associated with the sun as the source of all these things.
Shakespeare feels the same way about the young man; he is in his prime, in his glory, full of life and beautiful; 2.above; 3.to
remember through the printed word; 4.the verse; 5.This final part of Shakespeare’s promise to the youth explains that as long
as man inhabits the earth, the verse will always exist, and because of the existence of the verse, the youth will live on forever in
the words.His image and beauty will always be captured in time and because it is captured, he will remain immorta l; 6.?
Brief analysis of Sonnet 73
This is a traditional sonnet comprised of fourteen rhymed lines of ten syllables.Each line has five feet consisting of an
unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one, indicating the poem was written in iambic pentameter.The seven rhyming
pairs are set out in the scheme introduced by Surrey; ABAB CDCD EFEF GG.In this poem, the speaker invokes a
series of metaphors to characterize the nature of what he perceives to be his old age.In the first quatrain, he tells the beloved
that his age is like a “time of year,”late autumn, when the leaves have almost completely fallen from the trees, and the weather
has grown cold, and the birds have left their branches.In the second quatrain, he then says that his age is like late twilight, “As
after sunset fadeth in the west,”and the remaining light is slowly extinguished in the darkness, which the speaker like