英美文学选读笔记完整笔记-全面归纳

1、Chapter I The Renaissance Period2. Metaphysical形而上学 poetry: The term metaphysical poetry the influence of John Donne. With a rebellious spirit, the metaphysical poets tried to break away from the conventional fashion of the Elizabethan love poetry. I. Edmund Spenser The Faerie Queene, a great poem o

2、f its ag. A complex moral, religious, & political allegory, it is also an epic that exalts Queen Elizabeth & the English nation. his principal intention is to present through a historical poem the example of a perfect gentleman: to fashion a gentleman or noble person in virtuous & gentle discipline.

3、 Its principal hero is the Arthur of medieval legend. The six books of the poem illustrate the nature of particular virtues, such as, temperance & justice.1) Main qualities of Spensers poetrya perfect melody a rare sense of beautya splendid imaginationa lofty moral purity & seriousnessa dedicated id

4、ealism2) In his writing, Spenser drew on the conventions & thought of Classical, medieval, & Renaissance literature. However, he added to his fusion of these diverse elements much that was original, & his works inspired many later English poets. He created a new stanza, called the Spenserian stanza,

5、 which is well suited to narrative verse. His skills in writing melodious English verse & his combination of emotion, erudition, & spiritual vision have won him the admiration of generations of English poets. It is his idealism, his love of beauty, &his exquisite melody that make him known as the po

6、ets poet.4. 应用The Faerie Queene: 1) It is a long, allegorical poem. In the poem, Spenser dramatized political, religious, & moral themes by personifying them, or making them characters.2)Plot: The story, which is set against a background of Arthur & medieval legend, deals with the adventures of six

7、knights of the court of the fairy queen named Gloriana, who represents Queen Elizabeth of English. The faerie Queen was left unfinished at Spensers death. It was originally planned as a 12-book poem. II. Christopher Marlowe dramatist & poet， was the first great English Dramatist. He brought to the E

8、nglish stage a new concept of tragedy, one in which the drama centers around the struggles of a man overwhelmed by his passions & ambitions.His Major WorksHis most famous tragedies are Doctor Faustus, The Jew of Malta, Tamburlaine & Edward . In his plays, Marlowe used blank verse, which he molded in

9、to a superb instrument for expressing intense emotions. His non-dramatic poetry includes Hero & Leander, the Passionate shepherd to His love, & a verse translation of Ovids Amores.Marlowes Doctor Faustus (about 1589), generally considered his best play, was based on a real Dr. Faustus, who was later

10、 associated with a medieval legend of a man selling his soul to the devil. The plays dominant moral is human rather than religious. It celebrates the human passion for knowledge, power & happiness; it also reveals mans frustration in realizing the high aspirations in a hostile moral order. The last

11、scene, in which Faustus confronts his doom, brilliantly renders the fear & agony of a condemned man. The Jew of Malta (about 1589) illustrates Marlowes outstanding portrayal of character. Its hero, Barabas the Jew, served as the model for Shylock in Shakespeares The Merchant of Venice., Edward 。 It

12、is his most dramatically mature play & exhibits his mastery of characterization, stage craft & rhetoric.Tamburlaine is a play about an ambitious & pitiless Tartar conqueror in the fourteenth century who rose from a shepherd to an overpowering King. By depicting a great hero with high ambition & shee

13、r brutal force in conquering one enemy after another, Marlowe voiced the supreme desire of the man of the Renaissance for infinite power & authority. 3. Achievements: the blank verse & made it the principal medium of English drama.second achievement is his creation of the Renaissance hero for Englis

14、h drama.His influence: A man of wide learning, Marlowe was one of the extra ordinary poets & playwrights of his time. Marlowes mighty line, as Ben Jonson called his blank verse, was one of the most important contributions to the art of English literature.4. 应用Dr. FaustusThe selection of Actfrom Dr.

15、Faustus is mainly about Faustus is showing his great ambition, that is, if he had many souls, he would give them all to the Devil so that he could control the world. In portraying Faustus, a more introspective & philosophical figure than Tamburlaine, Marlowe praises his soaring aspiration for knowle

16、dge while warning against the sin of pride since Faustuss downfall was caused by his despair in God & trust in Devil. William ShakespeareWilliam Shakespeare was the greatest writer of plays who ever lived. His friend & fellow playwright Ben Jonson said that Shakespeare was not of an age but for all

17、time. The 18th-century English essayist Samuel Johnson described his work as the mirror of life. The 19th-century English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge spoke of myriad-minded Shakespeare. The 20th-century English dramatist George Bernard Shaw stressed his enormous power over language.3. 领会His Influen

18、ce1) Contributions to language Many words and commonly used phrases have been added to everyday English vocabulary through their appearance in Shakespeares works.2) Effects on literature Shakespeares plays & poetry have had a pervasive influence on world literature. Most of the great literary figure

19、s of the world have been inspired & stimulated by his achievement.On the whole, however, Shakespeares contribution has been to the language & spirit of later writing rather than to its form. References & parallels to Shakespeares phraseology have occurred in literature since the 16th century.Perhaps

20、 the greatest inspiration to subsequent authors has been Shakespeares capacity to depict life in all its complexity & to illuminate mans character & destiny.1) DramaA. The Merchant of Venice Theme: to praise the friendship between Antonio & Bassanio, to idealize Portia as a heroine of great beauty,

21、wit & loyalty, & to expose the insatiable greed & brutality of the Jew.Plot: The play has a double plot (P39)B. Hamlet Hamlet is generally regarded as Shakespeares most popular play on the stage, for it has the qualities of a blood-and-thunder thriller & a philosophical exploration of life & death.

22、And the timeless appeal of this mighty drama lies in its combination of intrigue, emotional conflict & searching philosophic melancholy.C. The Tempest The Tempest, an elaborate & fantastic story, is known as the best of his final romances. The characters are rather allegorical & the subject full of

23、suggestion.2) PoemsA. SonnetsThe first 126 sonnets are apparently addressed to a handsome young nobleman, presumably the authors patron. The poems express the writers selfless but not entirely uncritical devotion to the young man.A philosophical theme that appears in many of the sonnets is that of t

24、ime as the destroyer of all mortal things. Also expressed in the poems is the authors disillusionment with the false ness of earthly life.B. Other poemsVenus & Adonis, in which Shakespeare made his first bid for literary patronage & fame, is a conventional Elizabethan narrative poem. Its mythologica

25、l story, taken from Ovids Metamorphoses, tells of the passionate love goddess who woos the reluctant youth Adonis.二大喜剧Alls well that ends well and measure for measure四大悲剧Pericles,Cymbeline,the winters tale,the tempest.5. 领会His Major Theme1) Shakespeare is against religious persecution & racial discr

26、imination, against social inequality & the corrupting influence of gold & money.2) He was a humanist of the time & accepted the Renaissance views on literature.6. 领会His Literary Achievements1) Characterizationthey are individuals representing certain types. Each character has his or her own personal

27、ities; meanwhile, they may share features with others. The soliloquies in his plays fully reveal the inner conflict of his characters. Shakespeare also portrays his characters in pairs. Contrasts are frequently used to bring vividness to his characters. 3) Language using nouns as adjectives or verbs

28、, adjectives as adverbs, & pronouns as nouns.blank verse, or unrhymed iambic pentameter. His bland verse is especially beautiful & mighty. He has an amazing wealth of vocabulary & idiom. His coinage of new words & distortion of the meaning of the old ones also create striking effects on the reader.7

29、. 应用Selected Readings 1) Sonnet 18Theme: a profound meditation on the destructive power of time & the eternal beauty brought forth by poetry to the one he loves. Imagery: a summers day-youth the eye of heaven-the sun2) The Merchant of Venice Theme: To praise the friendship between Antonio & Bassanio

30、, to idealize Portia as a heroine of great beauty, wit & loyalty, & to expose the insatiable greed and brutality of the Jew.3) Hamlet This is one part of Hamlets most famous monologue. Hamlet, facing the dilemma of action & mind, is hesitating whether he should revenge for his father, which may brin

31、g him death, or he should suffer & hide his hatred for his uncle in his deep heart, which may secure his life. IV. Francis Bacon philosopher, essayist, statesman, One of the outstanding figures of the Renaissance, His chief interest were science philosophy。He was one of the earliest & most eloquent

32、spokesmen for experimental science. He lays the foundation for modern science with his insistence on scientific way of thinking & fresh observation rather than authority as a basis for obtaining knowledge.2. 识记His worksEssays, which deal with honor, friendship, love, & riches. Written in a terse, po

33、lished style, with many learned allusions & metaphors, the essays rank with the finest in English literature. Baconst literary works include The New Atlantis, an account of an ideal society & an imaginary voyage, & The History of the Reign of King Henry , a perceptive psychological study of Henrys m

34、ind & characters.3. 领会 His Major WorksEssays Bacon learned from Montaigne, the first great modern essayist, the economic & flexible way of writing. However, as a practical & prudential man, he intends to write for the ambitious Elizabethan & Jacobean youth of his class & tell them how to be efficien

35、t & make their way in public life.Bacons essays are famous for their brevity, compactness & powerfulness. The essays are well arranged & enriched by Biblical allusions, Metaphors & cadence.4. 领会His achievementsBacon is the first English essayist, As a philosopher, he is the founder of English materi

36、alistic philosophy. He advocates the inductive method of reasoning. In his famous plea for progress, Bacon demands three things: 1) the free investigation of nature, 2) the discovery of facts instead of the blind belief in theories 3) the verification of results by experiment rather than by argument

37、. In our day, these are the ABC of science, but in Bacons time they were revolutionary, Marx called him the real father of English materialism & experimental science of modern times in general.5. 应用 Of StudiesOf Studies is the most popular of Bacons 58 essays. It analyzes what studies chiefly serve

38、for, the different ways adopted by different people to pursue studies, & how studies exert influence over human character. Forceful & persuasive, compact & precise, Of Studies reveals to us Bacons mature attitude towards learning. Bacons language is neat, priest, & weighty. It is some what affected,

39、 like the water in the reservoir, restricted & confined.V. John Donnevividness of imagery & vitality of rhythms, which show a notable contrast to the other Elizabethan lyric poems, which are pure, serene, tuneful, & smooth running. ts tang of reality, in the sense that it seems to reflect life in a

40、real rather than a poetical world. Metaphysical Poetry is commonly used to name the work of the 17th-century writers who wrote under the influence of John Donne.2识记His major worksDonnes great prose works are his sermons, exhibiting the same kind of physical vigor & scholastic complexity as his poetr

41、y.3. 领会 Characteristics of His Poems Donnes poetry is subtle, complex, & often startling. He made expert use of such poetic techniques as the paradox, a statement that seems contradictory but actually contains truth, & the conceit, a pertinent comparison between 2 apparently dissimilar things.His ea

42、rly Lyrics. Love is the basic theme. Donne holds that the nature of love is the union of soul & body. The operations of the soul depend on the body. Idealism & cynicism about love coexist in Donnes love poetry. With the brief, simple language, the argument is continuous throughout the poem. 4. 应用Sel

43、ected Readings1) Death Be Not Proud, one of Donnes Holy Sonnets, is an almost Startling put-down of poor death. Staunchly Christian in its pare expectation of the resurrection, Donnes poem personifies death as an adversary swollen with false pride & unworthy of being called mighty & dreadful. Donne

44、gives various reasons in accusing death of being little more than a slave bossed about by fate, chance, kings & desperate men-a craven thing that keeps bad company, such as poison, was & sickness. Finally, Donne taunts death with a paradox: death, thou shalt die. The sonnet is written in the strict

45、Petrarchan pattern. It reveals the poets belief in life after death: death is eternal.2) The Sun Rising The persona apostrophizes the sun as unruly because the sun enters the lovers secret room without their approval. The speaker criticizes the sun pays too much attention to such things as sex & tha

46、t he should not be behaving so tediously as to stick to his rule & enter without thinking twice into such a place as lovers dwell. John MiltonMilton was one of the greatest poets in the English language & one of the towering figures in all literature. His masterpiece, Paradise Lost, is considered th

47、e unsurpassed English epic poem. It is a powerfully imaginative & dramatic work, based in part on the Biblical story of the temptation & fall of Adam & Eve in the Garden of Eden.Milton was a great master of language, & his poetry, both epic & lyric, is admired for its sublime eloquence & rich musica

48、l quality. 2. achievements mbridge. These are companion pieces that contrast the temperaments of the cheerful, active man & the melancholy, reflective man. Lycidas (1637) is a typical example. All of Miltons early works reflect his interest in Greek & Latin poetry, which greatly influenced his style

49、. His poems contain a wealth of classical references, figures of speech, & English. 3.领会His Major Works2) Paradise Lostwritten in blank verse, represents the fullest expression of Miltons genius. The poem vividly portrays the story of Satans rebellion against God & his tempting of Adam & Eve to eat

50、the fruit of the forbidden Tree of Knowledge. The theme is the Fall of Man, 二ter II The Neoclassical 新古典Period3) The heroic couplet 4) the Realistic Novel, Among the pioneers were Daniel Defoe ,Samuel Richardson, enry Fielding, Laurence Sterne, Tobias Creorge Smollott, & Oliver Goldsmith. 2. 领会Chara

51、cteristics of Neoclassical Literature. Neoclassicists had some fixed laws &rules for almost every genre of literature, prose should be precise, direct, smooth & flexible. Poetry should be lyrical, epical, didactic, satiric or dramatic, & each class should be guided by its own principles. Drama shoul

52、d be written in the Heroic CoupletsI John Bunyan2. 识记His major worksJohn Bunyans The Pilgrims Progress (1678) is the outstanding 17th-century English religious literature. For more than 200 years this book was second in popularity only to the Bible. mans spiritual life.Bunyan chiefly wrote four pros

53、e works - Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, The Life & Death of Mr. Badman, The Holy War & The Pilgrims Progress, part II3. 领会Characteristics of his works Bunyans style was modeled after that of the English Bible. With his concrete &living language & carefully observed & vividly presented det

54、ails, he made it possible for the reader of the least education to share the pleasure of reading his novel & to relive the experience of his characters.4. 应用Selected ReadingThe Vanity Fair, an excerpt from Part I of The Pilgrims Progress.(1) Theme: The Pilgrims Progress is the most successful religi

55、ous allegory in the English language. Its purpose is to urge people to comply with Christian doctrines & seek salvation through constant struggles with their own weakness & all kinds of social evils. It is not only about something spiritual but also beats much relevance to the time. Its predominant

56、metaphor-life as a journey-is simple & familiar.(2) Vanity Fair is the most famous part of The Pilgrims Progress. It tells how Christian & his friend Faithful come to Vanity Fair on their way to heaven, a fair where in should be sold all sorts of vanity & that it should last all the year long: there

57、fore at this fair all such merchandise sold, as houses, lands, trades, places, honors, preferments, titles, countries, kingdoms, lusts, pleasures & delights of all sorts as harlots, wives, husbands, children, masters, servants, lives, blood, bodies, souls, silver, gold, pearls, precious stones & wha

58、t not. As they refuse to buy anything but truth, they are beaten & put in a cage & then taken out & led in chains up & down the fair. They are sentenced to death-to be put to the most cruel death that can be invented. Vanity Fair is a satirical picture of English society, law & religion in Bunyans day.II. Alexander popePope is one of the