英美文学选读自学资料英国文学部分

1、英美文学选读自学资料（英国文学部分） contents introduction the old english period poetry alliterative verse the major manuscripts problems of dating religious verse elegiac and heroic verse prose early translations into english late 10th- and 11th-century prose the early middle english period poetry influence of fren

2、ch poetry didactic poetry verse romance the lyric prose the later middle english and early renaissance periods later middle english poetry the revival of alliterative poetry courtly poetry chaucer and gower poetry after chaucer and gower courtly poetry popular and secular verse political verse later

3、 middle english prose religious prose secular prose middle english drama the transition from medieval to renaissance the renaissance period: 15501660 literature and the age social conditions intellectual and religious revolution the race for cultural development elizabethan poetry and prose developm

4、ent of the english language sidney and spenser elizabethan lyric the sonnet sequence other poetic styles prose styles elizabethan and early stuart drama theatre and society theatres in london and the provinces professional playwrights christopher marlowe shakespeare's works the early histories t

5、he early comedies the tragedies shakespeare's later works playwrights after shakespeare ben johnson marston and middleton early stuart drama early stuart poetry and prose the metaphysical poets donne donne's influence jonson and the cavalier poets continued influence of spenser effect of rel

6、igion and science on early stuart prose prose styles milton's view of the poet's role the restoration literary reactions to the political climate the defeated republicans writings of the nonconformists writings of the royalists major genres and major authors of the period chroniclers diarist

7、s the court wits dryden drama by dryden and others locke the 18th century publication of political literature political journalism major political writers pope thomson, prior, and gay swift shaftesbury and others the novel the major novelists defoe richardson fielding smollett sterne minor novelists

8、 poets and poetry after pope burns goldsmith johnson's poetry and prosethe romantic period the nature of romanticism poetry blake, wordsworth, and coleridge other poets of the early romantic period the later romantics: shelley, keats, and byron minor poets of the later period the novel: austen,

9、scott, and others miscellaneous prose drama the post-romantic and victorian eras early victorian literature: the age of the novel dickens thackeray, gaskell, and others the brontës early victorian verse tennyson robert browning and elizabeth barrett browning arnold and clough early victorian no

10、nfictional prose late victorian literature the novel verse the victorian theatre victorian literary comedy “modern” english literature: the 20th century from 1900 to 1945 the edwardians the modernist revolution anglo-american modernism: pound, lewis, lawrence, and eliot celtic modernism: yeats, joyc

11、e, jones, and macdiarmid the literature of world war i and the interwar period the 1930s the literature of world war ii (193945) literature after 1945 fiction poetry drama additional reading general works the old english and early middle english periods the later middle english and early renaissance

12、 periods the renaissance period, 15501660 elizabethan poetry and prose elizabethan and early stuart drama early stuart poetry and prose the restoration and the 18th century the romantic period the post-romantic and victorian eras “modern” english literature: the 20th century from 1900 to 1945 litera

13、ture after 1945naturalism      naturalism is a term of literary history, primarily a french movement in prose fiction and the drama during the final third of the 19th-cent. although it is also applied to similar movements or groups of writers in other countries in the later decad

14、es of the 19th and early years of the 20th cents. in france emile zola (1840-1902) was the dominant practitioner of naturalism in prose fiction and the chief exponent of its doctrines.      the emergence of naturalism does not mark a radical break with realism, rather the new sty

15、le is a logical extension of it. broadly speaking, naturalism is characterized by a refusal to idealize experience and by the persuasion that human life is strictly subjected to natural laws. the naturalists shared with the earlier realists the conviction that the everyday life of the middle and low

16、er classes of their own day provided subjects worthy of serious literary treatment. emphasis was laid on the influence of the material and economic environment on behaviour, especially in zola, on the determining effects of physical and hereditary factors in forming the individual temperament. senti

17、mentalism i. the nature of sentimentalismv      sentimentalism is one of the important trends in english literature of the middle and later decades of the 18th century.v      along with a new vision of love, sentimentalism presented a new v

18、iew of human nature which prized feeling over thinking, passion over reason, and personal instincts of "pity, tenderness, and benevolence" over social duties. v      literary work of the sentimentalism, marked by a sincere sympathy for the poverty-stricken, ex

19、propriated peasants, wrote the "simple annals of the poor”.v      writers of sentimentalism justly criticized the cruelty of the capitalist relations and the gross social injustices brought about by the bourgeois revolutions.v      but

20、 they attacked the progressive aspect of this great social change in order to eliminate it and sighed for the return of the patriarchal times which they idealized.v       sentimentalism embraces a pessimistic outlook and blames reason and the industrial revolution for t

21、he miseries and injustices in the aristocratic-bourgeois society and  indulges in sentiment, hence the definite signs of decadence in the literary works of the sentimental tradition. ii. social background of sentimentalism v      the bourgeoisie gaining their

22、ascendancy in national politics in england after the two revolutions of 1640 and 1688. v      the handicrafts labour gradually transformed to machine industry in the course of the industrial revolution in the middle and later decades of the 18th century v  

23、60;   the new capitalist relations were established. v      sharp social contradictions began to take shape and to threaten the short-lived social stability in the early decades of the 18th century. v      the continuous, lar

24、ge-scale enclosures of land resulted in rural bankruptcy. v      the poverty and misery of the exploited and unemployed labouring masses in the cities increased. v      the enlightenment which believed in educating the people to be kind and

25、 righteous and upheld reason as the cure-all for all social wrongs and miseries declined. v      all this led to skepticism and disbelief in the myth about the bourgeois society as the best of all possible worlds v      lack of a better or

26、more sound substitute for reason as the instrument to reform the none-too-satisfactory or even highly unsatisfactory society, sentiment or even an over-dose of sentiment was indulged in at least as a sort of relief if not as a salvo for the grieves and heart-aches felt toward the world's wrongs

27、v      hence sentimentalism in literature. iii. literary forms in sentimentalismv      in english poetry of the 18th century, sentimentalism first found its full expression in the forties and the fifties; in the later decades of the century

28、, strains of sentimentalism may still be found in a number of the poems of william cowper. v      in english drama of the century, the true founder of sentimental comedy has often been traced back to richard steele whose comedies "the lying lover" (1703) and &

29、quot;the conscious lovers" contained elements of sentimentalism as a sort of reaction to the immoral comedies of manners of the restoration period. v      in the field of prose fiction that sentimentalism had its most outstanding expression, oliver goldsmith's

30、"the vicar of wakefield" may be considered as representative works of this category. v      oliver goldsmiths poetry and prose fiction was quite an exponent of sentimentalism. v      laurence sterne was the most prominent and the

31、most typical of the sentimental tradition among all english novelists and among all english writers of the 18th century.symbolism in literature by karen bernardojust as characterization and dialogue and plot work on the surface to move the story along, symbolism works under the surface to tie the st

32、ory's external action to the theme. early in the development of the fictional narrative, symbolism was often produced through allegory, giving the literal event and its allegorical counterpart a one-to-one correspondence.in john bunyan's pilgrim's progress, for example, everything and ev

33、eryone stands for something else. the protagonist christian, to no one's surprise, stands for every christian reader; his goal, the celestial city, stands for heaven; the places through which he passes on his way - lucre hill, vanity fair, and the like - stand for the temptations bunyan felt tha

34、t christian readers were likely to encounter on their journey to salvation. even the names of christian's fellow travelers - mr. feeble-mind, great-heart, and the like - represent not individual characters but states of being.allegory is undoubtedly the simplest way of fleshing out a theme, but

35、it is also the least emotionally satisfying because it makes things a little too easy on the reader. we feel that we are being lectured to; it's almost as if the author is stopping every sentence or two to say, "now pay special attention to this, because if you don't remember it, you wo

36、n't get the point." essentially, allegory insults our intelligence.allegory also, however, limits our perceptions. the best works of literature are those in which an element of mystery remains - those which lend themselves to a variety of interpretations. strict allegory seldom does this, w

37、hich is why religious allegory is generally less satisfying than the scriptural story on which it was based.to take allegory to the next higher level, we arrive at something that for want of a better term can be called symbolism. at this level, there is still a form of correspondence, and yet it is

38、not so one-to-one, and certainly not so blatant. whereas allegory operates very consciously, symbolism operates on the level of the unconscious. this does not mean that the author himself is unconscious of the process of creating symbolism - merely that we, as readers, accept its input without reall

39、y understanding how it works.in shakespeare's hamlet, for example, we discover that hamlet is fascinated with actors and acting. upon reflection, an astute reader realizes that this is because hamlet's whole life has become unreal; he is being haunted by the ghost of his father, his father t

40、urns out to have been murdered by his uncle, his mother has married his father's murderer. the motif of the actors is a symbol for the unreality of hamlet's life.similarly, near the beginning of f. scott fitzgerald's novel the great gatsby, there is the famous scene of the valley of ashe

41、s where tom buchanan's mistress myrtle lives. although fitzgerald never says so, it is clear that the valley of ashes represents the real state of tom's soul; although to the outside world his residence is in a mansion on the beautiful bay at east egg, where everything is opulent and expensi

42、ve and tasteful, the inwardly rotten, spiritually desiccated tom really "lives" where his "heart" does, in a grim ashen valley presided over by a billboard decorated with a huge pair of bespectacled eyes. the eyes represent god, who sees tom's actions and knows the interior o

43、f his heart, but ominously seems powerless to intervene.other famous symbols are melville's great white whale in moby dick; dante's journey into the underworld in the inferno; and coleridge's albatross in "the rime of the ancient mariner." all these concrete objects or places c

44、arry within them a wide range of associations that stand for something so ineffable it would spoil the magic to explain it. symbolism, therefore, is an integral component of fiction, because it enriches the narrative by pulling its message down to the level of our unconscious and anchoring it there.

45、romanticism i. introduction romanticism (the romantic movement), a literary movement, and profound shift in sensibility, which took place in britain and throughout europe 1770-1848. intellectually it marked a violent reaction to the enlightenment. politically it was inspired by the revolutions in am

46、erica and france and popular wars of independence in poland, spain, greece, and elsewhere. emotionally it expressed an extreme assertion of the self and the value of individual experience (the 'egotistical sublime'), together with the sense of the infinite and transcendental. socially it cha

47、mpioned progressive causes, though when these were frustrated it often produced a bitter, gloomy, and despairing outlook. as an age of romantic enthusiasm, the romantic age began in 1798 when william wordsworth and samuel taylor published lyrical ballads, in the preface of the 2nd and 3rd editions o

48、f which wordsworth laid down the principles of poetry composition, and ended in 1832 when walter scott (1771-1832) died. at the beginning the literature reflected the political turmoil of the age stirred by french revolution. the glory of the age is notably seen in the poetry of wordsworth, coleridg

49、e, byron, shelley and keats, who were grouped into two generations: passive romantic poets represented by the lakers / lake poets wordsworth, coleridge, burns, and blake though introspective 18th-cent. poets such as thomas gray (1716-71) and william cowper (1731-1800) show pre-romantic tendencies, a

50、s well as gothic novelists such as horace walpole (1717-97) and 'monk' lewis (1775-1818, matthew gregory lewis), who reflected those classes which had been ruined by the bourgeoisie, but later grew conservative and turned to the feudal past and idealized the life of the middle ages to protes

51、t against capitalist development; and active / revolutionary romantic poets represented by those younger poets byron, shelley and keats, firm supporters of french revolution, who expressed the aspiration of the labouring classes and set themselves against the bourgeois society and the ruling class,

52、as they bore a deep hatred for the wicked exploiters and oppressors and had an intensive love for liberty. women novelists appeared in this period and assumed for the first time an important place in english literature.  mrs ann radcliffe (1764-1823) was one of the most successful writers

53、of the school of exaggerated romance. jane austen offered us her charming descriptions of everyday life in her enduring work. the greatest historical novelist sir walter scott also appeared in this period. he praised jane's in the quarterly review in 1815, and later wrote of "that exquisite

54、 touch which renders ordinary commonplace things and characters interesting". charles lamb (1775-1834), william hazlitt (1778-1830), thomas de quincey (1785-1859) and david hume (1711-76) represented romantic prose of the period. ii. features of romantic writing 1) the romanticists' own asp

55、iration and ideals are in sharp contrast to the common sordid daily life under capitalism. their writings are filled with strong-willed heroes or even titanic images, formidable events and tragic situations, powerful conflicting passions and exotic pictures. sometimes they resorted to symbolic metho

56、ds, with the active romanticists, symbolic pictures represent a vague ideal of some future society; while with the passive romanticists, these pictures often take on a mystic colour. 2). the romanticists paid great attention to the spiritual and emotional life of man. personified nature plays an imp

57、ortant role in the pages of their works. terror, passion, and the sublime (an idea associated with religious awe, vastness, natural magnificence, and strong emotion which fascinated 18th-cent. literary critics and aestheticians) are essential concepts in early romanticism; as is the sense of primiti

58、ve mystery rediscovered in the celtic bardic verse of *macpherson's 'ossian', the folk ballads collected by *percy, and the medieval poetry forged by *chatterton (whom *southey edited).  foreign sources were also vital: *goethe's the sorrows of young werther 1774); the ghos

59、tly ballads of burger (*lenore, 1773); the verse dramas of *schiller (the robbers, 1781); and the philosophical criticism of a. w. *schlegel. 3) the tone of romanticism was shaped by the naked emotionalism of *rousseau's julie, ou la nouvelle heloise (1761), and the exotic legends and mythology

60、found in oriental and homeric literatures and 17th-cent. travel writers. the stylistic keynote of romanticism is intensity, and its watchword is 'imagination'. remembered childhood, unrequited love, and the exiled hero were constant themes. 4) romanticism expressed an unending revolt against

61、 classical form, conservative morality, authoritarian government, personal insincerity, and human moderation.  the romantics saw and felt things brilliantly afresh.  they virtually invented certain landscapes the lakes, the alps, the bays of italy.  they were strenuous

62、walkers, hill-climbers, sea-bathers, or river-lovers.  they had a new intuition for the primal power of the wild landscape, the spiritual correspondence between man and nature, and the aesthetic principle of 'organic' form (seen at their noblest in wordsworth's *prelude or j. m. w. *tur