英国文学简史术语解释总结(英文)

1.Beowulf: national epic of the English people; Denmark story; alliteration,

metaphors and understatements.

2. Romance （名词解释）a story of adventure--fictitious, frequently marvelous or supernatural--in verse or prose.

3，Ballad民谣（名词解释）

Popular Ballads 大众民谣：a story hold in 4-line stanzas with second and fourth line rhymed(笔记)

Ballads are anonymous narrative songs that have been preserved by oral transmission(书上). 4，4，Heroic couplet (名词解释)

heroic couplet 英雄双韵体：a verse unit consisting of two rhymed(押韵) lines in iambic pentameter(五步抑扬格)

5 . Renaissance（名词解释）

Renaissance: the activity, spirit, or time of the great revival of art, literature, and learning in Europe beginning in the 14th century and extending to the 17th century, marking the transition from the medieval to the modern world.

555humanism 人文主义：admire human beauty and human achievement

556The Enlightenment was an expression of struggle of the then progressive class of bourgeoisie against feudalism

6，. Sonnet（名词解释）

The sonnet is a poem in 14 lines with one or the other rhyme schme,a form much in vogue in Renaissance Europe, expecially in Italy ,France and England.

7，Blank verse（名词解释）: written in unrhymed iambic pentameter.

8，Spenserian Stanza（名词解释）

Stanza form developed by Edmund Spenser and almost certainly influenced by rhyme royal and ottava rima. Spenser's stanza has nine lines and is rhymed a-b-a-b-b-c-b-c-c. The first eight lines of the stanza are in iambic pentameter and the last line in iambic hexameter. He used this form in his epic poem The Faerie Queene. John Keats, a great admirer of Spenser, used this stanza in his poem The Eve of St. Agnes.

,9 Enlightenment (1650-1800)（名词解释）A revival of interest in the old classical works, order, logic, restrained emotion(抑制情感) and accuracy

Individualism--emphasized the importance of the individual and his inborn rights Rationalism-- the conviction that with the power of reason, humans could arrive at truth and improve the world.

Relativism-- was the concept that different cultures, beliefs, ideas, and value systems had equal merit.

Gothic novel(哥特式小说)：mystery, horror, castles(from middle part to the end of century)

10，Classicism（名词解释）

In the arts, historical tradition or aesthetic attitudes based on the art of Greece and Rome in antiquity. In the context of the tradition, Classicism refers either to the art produced in antiquity or to later art inspired by that of antiquity; Neoclassicism always refers to the art produced later but inspired by antiquity.

11 Sentimentalism（名词解释）Sentimentalism 感伤主义 no belief 没有信仰

The representatives of sentimentalism continued to struggle against feudalism but they vaguely sensed at the same time the contradictions of bourgeois progress that brought with it enslavement and ruin to the people.

12 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.

13 Romanticism

14 Lake Poets（名词解释）

The Lake Poets all lived in the Lake District of England at the turn of the nineteenth century.

15 Aestheticism唯美主义（名词解释）

The Aesthetic Movement is a loosely defined movement in literature, fine art, the decorative arts, and interior design in later nineteenth-century Britain. It represents the same tendencies that symbolism or decadence stood for in France and may be considered the British branch of the same movement. It belongs to the anti-Victorian reaction and had post-Romantic roots, and as such anticipates modernism. It took place in the late Victorian period from around 1868 to 1901, and is generally considered to have ended with the trial of Oscar Wilde.

16 Stream-of-consciousness（名词解释）

The “stream of consciousness”is a psychological term indicating “the flux of conscious and subconscious thoughts and impressions moving in the mind at any given time independently of the person’s will”.