英国文学复习资料

Pre-Renaissance period

Beowulf : the first English national epic

I. The position of the Beowulf:

the first English national epic

II.The story: (to simply narrate it )

Beowulf←→ Grendel and his mother

Beowulf←→ Fire dragon

III. Its artistic features

1. I t’s a 3183-line verse written in true epic style and in Old English;

2. the most evident feature: the use of alliteration; (refer to the history of literature By Liu Bingshan,)

3. to use compound-words to serve as metaphors;

4. the use of understatements: the impression and a color of humor.

△5. the mixing of pagan elements with Christian colouring.

Geoffrey Chaucer

I. life :

1. He was born in a wine merchant family in 1340;

2. His early life as a page and his marriage acquainted him with knowledge about upper class;

3.he was buried in Westminster Abbey, thus founding the “Poets Corner”.

II. His Work: The Canterbury Tales

The Canterbury Tales

The General Prologue

...

The Prioress

There was also a Nun, a Prioress,

Whose name was gentle and full of guilelessness. “By St. Loy!” was the worst oath she would say. She sang mass well, in a becoming way,

Intoning through her nose the words divine,

And she was known as Madam Eglantine.

She spoke good French, as taught at Stratford-Bow For the Parisian French she did not know.

She was schooled to eat so primly and so well That from her lips no morsel ever fell.

She wet her fingers lightly in the dish

Of sauce, for courtesy was her first wish.

With every bite she did her skillful best

To see that no drop fell upon her breast.

She always wiped her upper lip so clean

That in her cup was never to be seen

A hint of grease when she had drunk her share, She reached out for her meat with comely air. She was a great delight, and always tried

To imitate court ways, and had her pride,

Both amiable and gracious in her dealings.

As for her charity and tender feelings,

She melted at whatever was piteous.

She would weep if she but came upon a mouse Caught in a trap, if it were dead of bleeding. Some little dogs that took pleasure feeding

On roasted meat or milk or good wheat bread

She had, but how she wept to find one dead

Or yelping from a blow that made it smart,

And all was sympathy and loving heart.

Neat was her wimple in its every plait,

Her nose well formed, her eyes as gray as slate.

Her mouth was very small and soft and red.

She had so wide a brow I think her head

Was nearly a span broad, for certainly

She was not undergrown, as all could see.

She wore her cloak with dignity and charm,

And had her rosary about her arm,

The small beads coral and the larger green,

And from them hung a brooch of golden sheen,

On it a large A and a crown above;

Beneath, “all things are subject unto love.”

I.Questions for discussion:

1.What is the tone of the setting? How did the author achieve such setting of the

tales?

2.Summarize the character of the Prioress in this Prologue.

3.To analyze Chaucer’s ways of characterization in this Prologue and the language

style of the selected part.

II. To illustrate the terms.

Heroic couplet: A two-line section of a poem, which rhymes and has five feet each in iambic meter(also termed as iambic pentameter ), and which has a meaning complete within itself.

Example: The vein s are bathed in li quor of such power

As brings about the engen dering of the flower,

(抑抑扬)

ATT: For the convenience of the interpretation for the foot, some words are detached.

Foot: A group of syllables forming a unit of verse, usually one foot contains at least one stressed word, or contains one stressed word and one or more than one unstressed words.

III. Social significance of The Canterbury Tales (also function as a simple analysis) 1.The Canterbury is not only a collection of stories strung by loose thread.

(1) To affirm men and women’s right to pursue their happiness;

(2) To oppose the dogma of asceticism;

(3) To praise man’s energy, intellect and love of life.

2.This work exposed the evil of time

(1) the degeneration of the noble;

(2) the heartless of judge;

(3) the corruption of church

IV. Chaucer’s achievements in and contribution to English literature

1.He is one of the earliest literary talents who embody humanism.

2.Father of English poetry

(1)the first great poet who wrote in English language;

(2)introduced rhymed five accents in iambic meter to English poetry (heroic

couplet)

3.Founder of English realism

The prologue supplies a miniature of then English society (ways of narrating the stories and different social status of these pilgrims).

4.His excellent works contribute a lot to establish English as the literary language of

the country. (set an example for the poets of later generation )

5.He made London dialect as the standard for the modern English speech.

Renaissance Period

William Shakespeare

I. Life

1. born of trader family in Stratford-on-Avon in 1564, and his family got into financial troubles;

2. Fail to finish formal schooling for the reason of financial difficulties, he left for London.

II. Shakespeare the dramatist

His plays are poetical dramas, most of which are written in blank verse which was created one of the famous university wits, Christopher Marlow.

His career as a dramatist may be divided into three (or four) periods: (to be lectured later)

Hamlet

●The Monologue：

To be: to exist, to live, to passively accept, to suffer;

Not to be: to die, to take action to fight against fate.

That is the question: this shows Hamlet confronted with both body and moral dilemma: whether to suffer passively or to take action to fight.

◆three reasons for his dilemma:

1.He receives Stoic philosophy: Forbearance is the noblest(顺从是最高的美德). Ciceronian philosophy: Duty is most important.

These two views of philosophy are quite contradictory for Hamlet. (to interpret in depth )

2.Religious reason: fear of after-life. (as obviously shown in this monologue: to die, to sleep)

3. Odepus complex (commonly called mother complex): this view was put forward by some critic, which conducted a psychological analysis based on the Freudian philosophy. (to simply narrate the origin of this complex.)

Points worthy of notice and interpretation in the monologue

the slings and arrows (a metaphor, ): attack

To die, to sleep (analogy)

no more: to exist no more

heartache: spiritual pain

natural shocks: physical pain and suffering

consummation: final settlement

devoutly to be wished : to be passionately wished

perchance: perhaps

ay: yes

rub: difficulty

shuffled off: get rid of

mortal coil: trouble of mortal life, coil: body

pause: hinder

respect: consideration, thinking

whips and scorns of time: the beat and sneer in the word we live in.

wrong: ill treatment

Contumely: despising

Pangs: sharp pain

spurns that patient merit of th’unworthy takes: kicks that a person of merit takes from the unworthy.

Fardels: (archaic word) burdens

A weary life: a burdensome life

But that : unless

Conscience: reflection, consciousness

Is sicklied over :is covered with

Pale cast: sickly cover, sickly color

Thought: anxious thought or melancholy thought

Enterprise: the great cause

Pith and moment: importance

With this regard: on this account, for this reason

Their current turn awry: change the direction

Action: here refers to “take arms against the fate”

Questions for discussion:

Give thorough consideration to the whole play and the monologue we have covered, and answer these questions:

1.What is the use of the spirit of Hamlet’s father in the development of dramatic

plot ?

2.What is the use of his father’s spirit in the development of Hamlet’s

character?

3.To analyze Hamlet’s character?

4.To analyze the change of Hamlet’s attitude for Ophellia, what are the reasons

for the change?

◆Any other question concerning this play you want to put forward and explain. Welcome to speak your mind!

III. Shakespeare the poet

1. His sonnet (a general introduction about all 154 sonnets):

Sonnet XVIII

Pre-reading task:

1. To contrast the tone of the 1st and 2nd stanza with the one of the 3rd, try to find the difference.

2. What are denotation of such images as “summer’s day”, “buds of May”and “rough wind”?

Notes:

?thee: you

?Summer’s day: warmth and beauty (best season for Shakespeare)

?Thou art: you are

?Temperate: mild

?Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May: beauty is short-lived.

?And every fair from fair sometimes decline (a inverted line): And every fair

sometimes decline from fair.

?By chance, or nature’s changing course untrimm’d (a inverted line): untrimm’d By chance, or nature’s changing course. Trim: dress Questions and task for sonnet 18

1. Consider the relationship among four stanzas to identify the special poetic pattern of Shakespearian sonnet.

2. what is the theme of this sonnet?

Edmund Spenser

I.Spenser the man

1. born of a poor merchant’s family;

2. Educated at Merchant Tailor’s school

In this school, a teacher with humanism conveyed the idea of education as follows: “It’s not a mind, nor a body, that we have to educate, but a man, we can not divide him”.

3. Studying in Cambridge University, he was under the influence of Platonism (one aspect: the inner beauty is more important than the beauty of appearance.) This may be found in his poetry; and he also got much influence from Phillip Sidney, this influence is of importance for his creation of sonnet.

II. Spenser the poet (mainly his poem)

1. Amoretti (爱情小唱)：a sequence of 88 poems, in which sonnet 54 and sonnet 75 are most famous.

Pre-reading Questions for sonnet 54:

1.What is the tone of this poem?

2.Who is the speaker?

3. Could you describe the changes of the speaker’s inner world, esp. his

emotional changes?

Sonnet 54

Of this worlds theatre in which we stay,

My love like the spectator ydly sits

Beholding me that all the pageants play,

Disguysing diversly my troubled wits.

Sometimes I joy when glad occasion fits

And mask in myrth lyke to a comedy:

Sonne after when my joy to sorrow flits,

I wane and make my woes a tragedy.

Yet she, beholding me with constant eye,

Delights not in my mirth nor rues my smart:

But when I laugh she mocks, and when I cry

She laughs and hardens evermore her heart.

What then can move her? If nor merth nor mone,

She is no woman, but a sencelesse stone.

Question for discussion: What is the theme of this sonnet?

Sonnet 75

One day I wrote her name upon the strand,

But came the waves and washed it away:

Agayne I wrote it with a second hand,

But came the tyde, and made my payne his pray.

“Vayne man,” sayd she, “that doest in vaine assay,

A mortall thing so to immortalize,

For I my selve shall lyke to this decay,

And eek my name bee wyped out lykewize.”

“Not so,” quod I, “ let baser things devize,

To dy in dust, but you shall live by fame:

My verse your vertues rare shall eternize,

And in the heavens wryte your glorious name,

Where whenas death shall all the world subdew,

Our love shall live, and later life renew.”

Questions for sonnet 75

1. What are the connotations of such images in this sonnet as “wave”, “name” and “heaven”?

Could you find some instances of comparison the poet used in this poem?

2. In this sonnet, Spenser conveyed the idea of “our love shall live, and later life

renew.”But, how can “our love live, and later life renew”?

3. What is the theme of this sonnet?

Connotation of some images in this sonnet:

Term:

Alliteration: Alliteration is a kind of rhyme with the initial sounds identical, identical sounds closely connects two or more words both in sounds and in meaning.

2. The Shepherds’ Calendar（牧童的月历）

(1) A pastoral poem(田园诗，牧歌体诗) consisting 12 eclogues，one for each month, these eclogues are written in different meters;

（2）The shepherd represents the poet and his friend;

Most part of this poem are written in dialogue form, esp. the dialogue between the shepherd and his friend;

（3）The dominant theme is love, and the theme of religion is also discussed.

3. The Faire Queen

(1) Spenser’s masterpiece;

an epic written in a special verse form (Spenserian Stanza);

(2) Planned in 12 books, but only 6 books and two cantos(诗章) of the 7th were finished;

(3) hero and heroin: king Arthur and Gloriana;

(4) the story: (adventures of 12 knights). It’s a vivid narrative of knightly adventures,

it also involved moral, religion and political allegories, and all sorts of supernatural beings;

(5) Each knight stands for a virtue: Holiness, Temperance, Chastity, Friendship, Justice and Courtesy, these virtues were acquired in the course of adventures.

(6) thought of this poem: nationalism, humanism and puritanism.

Spenserian Stanza(斯宾塞体): A special verse form consists of eight iambic pentameter lines followed by a ninth line of six iambic feet (an alexandrine). Remark: 斯宾塞体即五音步一行的八行加上六音步一行而形成的九行体。

4. Two wedding odes

(1) Epithalamium, a wedding song written to celebrate the poet’s lo ve and marriage to his wife Elizabeth Boyle.

(2) Prothalamium, a wedding ode, mainly depicted the grand ceremony over the river of Thames, and unfolded the beauty and charm of grassland, flower in London suburb.

A famous line: “Sweet Thames, run softly, t ill I end my song.”

5. The poet’s fame

His achievement in poetic beauty earned him the fame of “the poets’ poet” and cast influence upon such great poets of later generations as Byron, Shelly, Keats and Tennyson.

Francis Bacon

I. Bacon the man

1. son of the Lord Keeper during the reign of Elizabeth;

2. At the precocious age of 12,he entered into Cambridge University, then he engaged in law at 16;

3. During the reign of James I, he was continuously promoted and became Lord Chancellor.

4.In 1621,he was charged with bribery, and then was deprived of his office and imprisoned in London Tower. Later, he was released. Then, he devoted all his time to literary and philosophical work.

II. Bacon the essayist

1. under the influence of French writer Montaigne, Bacon composed 58 essays, which were collected into one collection.

2. These essays are pieces of author’s reflections and comments on rather abstract subjects (such as “love”or “beauty” or “riches, etc. )

★3. These essays are: landmark in the development of English prose and the first collection of essays of English language.

★4. he was considered the first English essayist for his concise, brief, simple and forceful essays.

Of studies

? 1. the general function of studies: for delight, for ornament, and for ability.

? 2. a few ways to deal with what we studied ;

? 3. the relationship among studies, nature and experience;

? 4. different men’s attitudes toward studies;

? 5.method of studies;

? 6.different reading method for different books;

?7.the different function of reading,conference and writing;

?8. the function of different sujects;

?9.fit exercises for the treatment of physical diseases (analogy): special

receipt for the defect and impediment in the wit, that is, every study passes into character. （凡有所学皆成性格。）

III. the founder of materialism in philosophy and modern science

1.The Advancement of Learning(学术的进展)：in this book, he classifies all knowledge into two kinds: (1)knowledge acquired by divine revelation;(2) knowledge acquired by the exercise of human faculties;

2. Novum Organum (New Instrument) : a treatise to introduce the inductive method, that is, inductive reasoning. This method of inductive reasoning through analysis and experiment showed the correct direction of modern science in Bacon’s day.

Metaphysical Poets

John Donne

I. Donne the man

1. He was brought up as a Catholic(天主教徒)；

2. Being a Catholic, he could not obtain the degree from Cambridge University

and Oxford University in which he majored in law;

3.suffering from many set backs, he gave up his faith and became an Anglican, which he took it as a shame.

4.Being an Anglican and eloquent preacher, he was continuously promoted and became the Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral.

II. Donne the poet

1.His poems can be divided into early love poetry and later divine poems;

2.the following points can be helpful for the understanding of his poems:

(1) his poems are characterized by mysticism in content and strangeness in form;

(2)his poems often contains: complicated reasoning, obscure conceits(奇思妙想，奇喻), far-fetched comparison and strange imageries.

(3) “The most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together”(by Samuel Johnson)

Song

Go, and catch a falling star,

Get with child a mandrake root,

Tell me, where all past years are,

or who cleft the Devil’s foot,

Teach me to hear Mermaids singing,

Or to keep off envy’s stinging,

And find

What wind

Serves to advance an honest mind.

If thou beest borne to strange sight,

Things invisible to see,

Ride ten thousand days and nights,

Till age snow white hairs on thee,

Thou, when thou return’st, wilt tell me

All strange wonders that befell thee,

And swear

No where

Lives a woman true, and fair.

If thou findst one, let me know,

Such a Pilgrimage were sweet;

Yet do not, I would not go,

Though at next door we might meet,

Though she were true, when you met her,

And last, till you write your letter,

Yet she

Will be

False, ere I come, to two, or three. Questions for this “song”

1. what is the tone of this poem? And what is the speaker’s attitude towards women?

2.what is the language style of this poem?

3.. what is the theme of this poem?

4. In what way does this poem differentiate from the poem we discussed before?

Literature of the Revolution and Restoration period

John Milton (1608-1674)

I. Life

1. born in a Puritan family in which old Milton tutored his son in Italian, French, music and other subjects.

2. Studied in Cambridge, Milton acquired a mastery of Latin.

3.He become Latin Secretary of the Government for his staunch support of the revolution.

II. Career

1. born in a period of tremendous social upheavals, Milton, the most learned poet in English literature, defended the Commonwealth with his pamphlets.

2. After restoration, he still calls for the fight and revolution with his masterpiece “Paradise Lost”, an epic of 12 books, written in blank verse.

Masterpiece: Paradise Lost

?Story (retell)

?Notes (line105---124):

? 1. what though: what if, what’s the matter

? 2.all is not lost: not all is lost

? 3.study: plan

? 4.wrath: great anger

? 5.grace: glory,favour

? 6.so late: recently

?7.empire: authority

?8.ignominy: humiliation

?9.beneath: worse than

?10. fail：perish

?11. in arms：in force

?12. Give in ,surrender

The image of Satan（to analyze）

Term:

Blank verse: it’s the unrhymed lines of iambic pentameter. Blank verse is a very flexible English verse form which can attain rhetorical grandeur while echoing the natural rhythms of speech and allowing smooth enjambment. First used by Henry Howard, Earl of Surry, it soon become both standard meter for dramatic poetry and a widely used form for narrative and meditative poems, and then become an important medium for poetic drama.

Early poems, pamphlets, and sonnets

Samson Agonists (To simply narrate)

Milton’s achievements (to briefly summarize and interprete)