2024年3月11日发(作者：)

Literary Terms（文学术语解释）

* Legend（传说）: A song or narrative handed down from the past, legend differs from

myths on the basis of the elements of historical truth they contain.

* Epic（史诗）: 1)Epic, in poetry, refers to a long work dealing with the actions of gods and

heroes. 2)

Beowulf

is the greatest national epic of the Anglo-Saxons. John Milton wrote three

great epics:

Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes.

* Romance（罗曼史/骑士文学）: 1)Romance is a popular literary form in the medieval

England. 2)It sings knightly adventures or other heroic deeds. 3)Chivalry(such as bravery,

honor, generosity, loyalty and kindness to the weak and poor) is the spirit of romance.

* Ballad（民谣）: 1)Ballad is a story in poetic form to be sung or recited. 2)Ballads were

passed down from generation to generation. 3)

Robin Hood

is a famous ballad singing the

goods of Robin Hood. Coleridge’s

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

is a 19th century English

ballad.

* The Heroic Couplet（英雄对偶句）:1)It means a pair of lines of a type once common in

English poetry, in other words, it means iambic pentameter rhymed in two lines. 2)The rhyme

is masculine. 3)Use of the heroic couplet was first pioneered by Geoffrey Chaucer.

* Humanism（人文主义）:1)Humanism is the essence of the Renaissance. It emphasizes

the dignity of human beings and the importance of the present life. 2)Humanists voiced their

beliefs that man was the center of the universe and man did not only have the right to enjoy

the beauty of the present life, but had the ability to prefect himself and to perform wonders.

* Renaissance（文艺复兴）:1)It refers to the transitional period from the medieval to the

modern world. It first started in Italy in the 14th century. 2)The Renaissance means rebirth or

revival. 3)It was stimulated by a series of historical events, such as the rediscovery of ancient

Roman and Greek classics, the new discoveries in geography and astrology, the religious

reformation and the economic expansion. 4)Humanism is the essence of Renaissance. 5)The

English Renaissance didn’t begin until the reign of Henry Ⅷ. It was regarded as England’s

Golden Age, especially in literature. 6)The real mainstream of the English Renaissance is the

Elizabethan drama. 7)This period produced such literary giants as Shakespeare, Spenser,

Marlowe, Bacon, Donne and Milton, etc.

* University Wits（大学才子）: 1)It refers to a group of scholars during the Elizabethan

age who graduate from either Oxford or Cambridge. They came to London with the ambition

to become professional writers. Some of them later become famous poets and playwrights.

2)Thomas Greene, John Lily and Christopher Marlowe were among them. 3)They paved the

way, to some degree, for the coming of Shakespeare.

* Blank verse（无韵体）:1)It is verse written in unrhymed iambic pentameter. 2)It is the

verse form used in some of the greatest English poetry, including that of William

Shakespeare and John Milton.

* Spenserian Stanza（斯宾塞诗节）:1)It is the creation of Edmund Spenser. 2)It refers to

a stanza of nine lines, with the first eight lines in iambic pentameter and the last line in iambic

hexameter（六音步）,rhyming ababbcbcc. 3)Spenser’s

The

Faerie Queene

was written in this

kind of stanza.

* Sonnet(十四行诗)1)It is the one of the most conventional and influential forms of

poetry in English.2)A sonnet is a lyric consisting of 14 lines, usually in iambic pentameter,

restricted to a definite rhyme scheme.3)Shakespeare’s sonnets are well-known.

* Soliloquy(独白)1)Soliloquy, in drama, means a moment when a character is alone and

speaks his or her thoughts aloud. 2)In the line “To be, or not to be, that is the question”,

which begins the famous soliloquy from Act3, Scene1 of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. In this

soliloquy Hamlet questions whether or not life is worth living and speaks of the reasons why

he does not end his life.

* Metaphysical Poets（玄学派诗人）：They refer to a group of religious poets in the first

half of the 17th century whose works were characterized by their wit, imaginative picturing,

compressions, often cryptic expression, play of paradoxes and juxtapositions of metaphor.

* Enlightenment Movement(启蒙运动)1)It was a progressive intellectual movement

which flourished in France and swept through Western Europe in the 18th century.2)The

movement was a furtherance of the Renaissance from 14th century to the mid-17th

century.3)Its purpose was to enlighten the whole world with the light of modern

philosophical and artistic ideas.4)It celebrated reason or nationality, equality and science. It

advocated universal education. Literature at the time became a very popular means of public

education.5)Famous among the great enlighteners in England were those great writers like

John Dryden, Pope, Johnson, Swift, Defoe, Fielding, Sheridan, etc.

Neoclassicism(新古典主义)1)In the field of literature, the 18th century Enlightenment

Movement brought about a revival of interest in the old classical works. This tendency is

known as neoclassicism.2)The neoclassicists hold that forms of literature were to be modeled

after the classical works of the ancient Greek and Roman writers such as Homer and Virgil

and those of the contemporary French ones.3)They believed that the artistic ideas should be

order, logic, restrained emotion and accuracy, and that literature should be judged in terms

of its service to humanity

* Sentimentalism(感伤主义文学)1)It is a pejorative term to describe false or superficial

emotion, assumed feeling, self-regarding postures of grief and pain.2)In literature it denotes

overmuch use of pathetic effects and attempts to arouse feeling by pathetic

indulgence.3)

The

Vicar

of Wakefield

by Oliver Goldsmith is a case in point.

* The Graveyard School(墓地派诗歌)1)It refers to a school of poets of the 18th century

whose poems are mostly devoted to a sentimental lamentation or meditation on life, past

and present, with death and graveyard as theams.2)Thomas Gray is considered to be the

leading figure of this school and his

Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

is its most

representative work.

* Epistolary novel(书信体小说)1)It consists of the letters the characters write to each

other. The usual form is the letter, but diary entries, newspaper clippings and other

documents are sometimes used.2)The epistolary novel’s reliance on subjective points of

view makes it the forerunner of the modern psychological novel.3)Samuel Richardson’s

Pamela

is typical of this kind.

* Gothic Romance(哥特传奇)1)A type of novel that flourished in the late 18th and early

19th century in England.2)Gothic romances are mysteries, often involving the supernatural

and heavily tinged with horror, and they are usually against dark backgrounds of medieval

ruins and haunted castles.

* Picaresque novel(流浪汉小说)1)It is a popular sub-genre of prose fiction which is

usually satirical and depicts in realistic and often humorous detail the adventures of a roguish

hero of low social class who lives by his or her wits in a corrupt society. 2)As indicated by its

name, this style of novel originated in Spain, flourished in Europe in the 17th and 18th

centuries, and continues to influence modern literature.

* English Romanticism(英国浪漫主义文学)1)The English Romantic period is an age of

poetry. Poets started a rebellion against the neoclassical literature, which was later regarded

as the poetic revolution. They saw poetry as a healing energy; they believed that poetry

could purify both individual souls and the society.2)

The

Lyrical Ballads

by Wordsworth and

Coleridge in 1798 acts as a manifesto for the English Romanticism.3)The Romantics not only

eulogize the faculty of imagination, but also stress the concept of spontaneity and inspiration,

regarding them as something crucial for true poetry.4)The natural world comes to the

forefront of the poetic imagination. Nature is not only the major source of poetic imagery,

but also provides the dominant subject matter.

* Ode(颂歌)1)Ode is a dignified and elaborately lyric poem of some length, praising and

glorifying an individual, commemorating an event, or describing nature intellectually rather

than emotionally.2)John Keats wrote great odes. His

Ode on a Grecian Urn

is a case in point.

* Lake Poets(湖畔派诗人)They refer to such romantic poets as William Wordsworth,

Samuel Coleridge and Robert Southey who lived in the Lake District. They came to be known

as the Lake School or “Lakers”.

* Byronic hero（拜伦式英雄）: It refers to a proud, mysterious rebel figure of noble origin.

With immense superiority in his passions and powers, this Byronic hero would carry on his

shoulders the burden of righting all the wrongs in a corrupt society, and would rise

single-handedly against any kind of tyrannical rules either in government, in religion, or in

moral principles with unconquerable wills and inexhaustible energies.

Terza rima(三行体)1)It is an Italian verse that consists of a series of three-lines stanzas in

which the middle line of each stanza rhymes with the first and third lines of the following

stanza with the rhyming scheme aba, bcb, cdc,ded, etc..2)Shelley’s “Ode to the West

Wind” is a case in point

* Critical Realism(批判现实主义)1)The Critical Realism of the 19th century flourished in

the forties and in the beginning of fifties.2)The realists first and foremost set themselves

the task of criticizing capitalist society from a democratic viewpoint and delineated the

crying contradictions of bourgeois reality. But they did not find a way to eradicate social

evils.3)Charls Dickens is the most important critical realist.

* Psychological novel(心理小说)1)A vague term to describe that kind of fiction which is

for the most part concerned with the spiritual, emotional and mental lives of the characters

and with the analysis of characters rather than with the plot and the action.2)Thackeray’s

characterization of Rebecca Sharp is very much psychological.

* Narration(叙述)1)Like description, narration is a part of conversation and writing.

Narration is the major technique used in expository writing, such as

autobiography.2)Successful narration must grow out of good observation, to-the-point

selection and clear arrangement of details in logical sequence, which is usually

chronological.3)Narration gives an exact picture of things as they occur.

* Narrator(叙述者)1)It refers to one who narrates, or tells, a story.2)A story may be told

by a first-person narrator, someone who is either a major or minor character in the story. Or a

story may be told by a third-person narrator, someone who is not in the story at all.3)The

word narrator can also refer to a character in a drama who guides the audience through the

play, often commenting on the action and sometimes participating in it.

* Plot(情节)1)Plot is the first and most obvious quality of a story. Plot is what happens in

a story.2)It consists of the phrases of action in a story that are linked together by a chain of

casual relationships.

Point of view(叙述角度)1)The event of a story may be told as they appear to one or more

participants or observers. In first-person narration the point of view is automatically that of

the narrator.2)More variation is possible in third-person narration, where the author may

choose to limit his or her report to what could have been observed or known by one of the

characters at any given point in the action—or may choose to report the observations and

thoughts of several characters. The author might choose to intrude his or her own point of

view.

* Naturalism(自然主义)1)A post Darwinian movement of the late 19th century that tried

to apply the laws of scientific determinism to fiction. 2)The naturalist went beyond the

realist’s insistence on the objective presentation of the details of everyday life to insist that

the materials of literature should be arranged to reflect a deterministic universe in which a

person is a biological creature controlled by environment and heredity.3)Major writers

include Crane, Dreiser in America; Zola in France ; and Hardy and Gissing in England.

* The Aesthetic Movement(唯美主义运动)1)It is a loosely defined movement in

literature, fine art, the decorative arts and interior design in later nineteenth-century Britain.

2)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 (which occurred in

1895).3)The aesthetes believed that art did not have any didactic purpose; it need only be

beautiful.

Dramatic Monologue(戏剧独白)1)In literature, it refers to the occurrence of a single

speaker saying something to a silent audience.2)Robert Browning is

My Last Duchess

is a

typical example in which the duke, speaking to a non-responding audience, reveals not only

the reasons for his disapproval of the behavior of his former duchess, but some tyrannical

and merciless aspects of his own personality as well.