英国文学期末考试会出现的名词解释（自己整理 - 超实用的！）

1. epic 史诗

a long narrative poem, grand in style, about heroes and heroic deeds, embodying heroic ideals of a nation or race in the making. Beowulf is the English national epic that was passed from mouth to mouth and written down by many unknown hands. Other examples of epic poems are Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene, John Milton's Paradise Lost, William Wordsworth's The Prelude, Elizabeth Barret Browning's Aurora Leigh, and T. S. Eliot's \ 2. caesura 停顿

a break or pause in a line of poetry, dictated by the natural rhythm of the language and sometimes enforced by punctuation. In Old English verse, such as Beowulf, the caesura was used rather monotonously to indicate the half line. 3. alliteration 头韵

the repetition of the same sound or sounds at the beginning of two or more words that are close to each other. It is a feature of Beowulf and other Old English poems.

4. alliterative verse 头韵诗

poetry written in alliteration. Nearly all Old English verse, including Beowulf, is heavily alliterative, and the pattern is fairly standard – with either two or three stressed syllables in each line alliterating. 5. kenning 隐喻语

a metaphor usually composed of two words and used for description and association. Beowulf is full of kennings, such as “helmet bearer” for “warrior” and “swan road” for “sea”. 6. romance

originally refers to the vernacular (native) language, as opposed to Latin, and later it meansa popular literary form in the medieval period which uses narrative verse or prose to sing knightly adventures or other heroic deeds.Sir Gawain and the Green Knight was a great verse romance.

7. allegory

It is a story or description in which the characters and events symbolize some deeper underlying meaning, and serve to spread moral teaching.It has a primary meaning and a secondary meaning . In an allegory, abstract qualities or ideas, such as patience, purity, or truth, are personified as characters in the story. 8. rhythm

briefly speaking, rhythm is a regular repeated pattern of movement or sound. In poetry, two main factors contribute to the formation of rhythm are the recurrence of stresses and pauses. That is the regular repeated appearance of stressed syllables and unstressed syllables and pauses. 9. foot 音步

is the unit of rhythm in verse composed of accented and unaccented syllables. Different patterns of arrangements of stressed and unstressed syllables are given different names. The commonest foot in English verse is iamb; the commonest line is five-foot line, called pentameter. William Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 18” contains fourteen iambic pentameter lines.

10. meter 格律

is the rhythm established by the use of the specific foot, in another word, the specific arrangement of stressed and unstressed syllables. The number of feet in a line forms another means of describing the meter: monometer (one foot), dimeter (two), trimeter (three), tetrameter (four), pentameter (five) hexameter (six).heptameter(7).octameter(8). 11. rhyme 韵律

the sameness or similarity of the sounds at the end of the poetry lines. 12. rhyme scheme 押韵格式

the pattern of end-thymes in a stanza or poem, generally described by using letters of the alphabet to denote the recurrence of rhyming lines. For example, heroic couplets are “aabbcc” and so on. 13. iambic pentameter 五步抑扬格

the basic line in English verse, with five feet in a line, usually an unaccented syllable followed by an accented syllable. It was probably introduced by Geoffrey Chaucer and certainly established by him in The Canterbury Tales

14. heroic couplet 英雄双韵体

They are poetry composed in iambic pentameter. In this form of poetry, lines consisting of five iambic feet rime together in pairs with the rhyme scheme :aabbcc. Geoffrey Chaucer’s

masterpiece The Canterbury Tale was written in heroic couplet and it was best represented by Alexander Pope. 15. ballad meter 民谣体

traditionally a four-line stanza containing alternating four-stress and three-stress lines, usually with a refrain and the rhyme scheme of abcb. Robert Burns’ “A Red, Red Rose” is a great love ballad. 16. ballad民谣

It is a story in poetic form, often about tragic love and usually sung. Ballads were passed down from generation to generation by singers. The medieval ballads are ballads of Robin Hood.

17. Renaissance

marks the transition from the medieval to the modern world. It first started in Italy in the 14th century and gradually spread all over Europe. The word “Renaissance” means rebirth or revival. In essence, it is a historical period in which the European humanist thinkers and scholars made attempts to get rid of those old feudalist ideas in medieval Europe and introduce new ideas that expressed the interests of the rising bourgeoisie, and to lift the restriction in all areas placed by the Roman Catholic Church authorities. Two features of renaissance: It is a thirsting curiosity for the classical literature. People learned to admire the Greek and Latin works as models of literary form. It is the keen interest in the activities of humanity.

18. Drama

is a genre of literature, in which the words are mainly dialogue. People talking is the basic dramatic action. The essential quality of drama is interaction since it used words to create action through the dialogue of characters talking to one another rather than to the reader.

19. Spenserian stanza:

is a group of eight lines of iambic pentameter followed by a six-stress iambic line, with a rhyme scheme ababbcbcc. further utilized by Milton, Gray, Keats, Shelley, Byron and Tennyson. 20. University Wits :

in 16th century a number of university students began to write plays after the model of Roman dramatist and they were the predecessors to Shakespeare:Robert Greene, Thomas Kyd and Christopher Marlowe. 21. Elizabethan literature

literature written in the Elizabethan Age (1558-1603). 22. sonnet 十四行诗

A lyric poem of fourteen lines whose ryhme scheme is fixed. The rhyme scheme in the Italian form as typified in the sonnets of Petrarch is abbaabba cdecde. The Petrarchian sonnet has two divisions: the first is of eight lines (the octave), and the second is of six lines (the sestet). The rhyme scheme of the English, or Shakespearean sonnet is abab cdcd efef gg. The change of rhyme in the English sonnet is coincidental with a change of theme in the poem. The meter is iambic pentameter.

23. blank verse 无韵诗

unrhymed iambic pentameter, the most widely used of English verse forms and usually used in English dramatic and epic poetry. It was first made the principal instrument of

English drama by Christopher Marlowe and it was the chief verse form used by Shakespeare.John Milton’s Paradise Lost was also written in this form. 24. The Metaphysical poets

A term that is now applied to a group of 17th-century poets who, whether or not directly influenced by John Donne, employ similar poetic procedures and imagery, both in secular poetry and in religious poetry. 25. The Metaphysical poetry 26. essay 散文

a composition, usually in prose, which may be of only a few hundred words or of book length and which discusses, formally or informally, a topic or a variety of topics. It is one of the most flexible and adaptable of all literary forms. Francis Bacon is a great essayist; his “Of Studies” is a model of good essay. 27. Lyric:

A poem, brief and discontinuous, emphasizes sound and pictorial imagery rather than narrative or dramatic movement.

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