简明英国文学史

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简明英国文学史

A Brief History of English Literature

Part I Old and Middle English Periods (450-1066)

Chapter 1

Old English Period and Beowulf

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Britons, a branch of Celts, came to the Isles in BC400 to BC300, at the early stage of the Iron Age

Julius Caesar of the Roman Empire defeated the Celts and ruled there from BC55 to AD 407

The Roman Empire declined, the Teutonic or Germanic tribes of Angles, Saxons and Jutes moved to live in the British Isles in about AD450

They drove the Celts to Wales, Scotland and Ireland, the English language has gradually changed, Old Anglo-Saxon. 8 to 11 Century, Danes from Scandinavia came to the Isles Norman Conquest 1066, it influenced the evolution of the English language, life style and culture.

Religion Christianity

Historical situation

Part II English Renaissance and Shakespeare

(1485-1616)

Chapter 3

The English Renaissance Literature

Historical situation

from feudal society to capitalism;

?

industry and commerce; ―sheep devouring men‖

Tudor Reign: Religious Reformation,

King Henry VIII (1509-1547), Protestantism

Queen Elizabeh (1558-1603)

moderate policies to keep balance between the rising middle class and the feudal lords, the Protestants and the Catholics.

a powerful country, set up English colonies overseas.

Humanism and the Renaissance in England

Renaissance: revival of arts and sciences of ancient Greece and Rome after the long years of neglect in the medieval time In England

a strong interest in ancient Greek and Rome art and science;

Humanism: concerned about the welfare of human beings and believed that human happiness in this life was more important that what people were supposed to.

religious reformation of the church ;

praised man and man’s pursuit of happiness.

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Chief Literary Achievement of the Period 1. translating classical Italian and French works;

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2. poetry

― a nest of singing birds;‖

sonnet became the most popular poetic form; Thomas Wyatt

3. Drama and Theatre Performance

Marlowe; Ben Jonson and Shakespeare London , the centre of drama performance

II. Ten Renaissance Writers

Thomas More:Utopia ? Edmund Spenser:The Faerie Queene ? Philip Sidney ? University Wits:

John Lyly: Euphues -- Euphuism

?

Thomas Nashe, Robert Greene

Francis Bacon essays

? Christopher Marlowe

blank verse: the major vehicle of expression in drama ? Ben Jonson drama; prose work

?

Chapter 4

William Shakespeare

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Stratford-on-Avon, 1564

? Literary career and productions 37 plays

154 sonnets

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The life

Shakespeare’s major works

History plays

get material from the English history and from the history of ancient Rome

Julius Caesar Henry IV, Part I and Part II Richard II Henry V Henry VI, Part I , Part II , Part III

Comedies

A Mid-Summer Night’s Dream; ?

As You Like It; The Twelfth Night; The Merchant of Venice

Tragedies Hamlet; ?

King Lear Macbeth Othello

Tragic-comedies The Winter’s Tale ?

The Tempest Sonnets

Sonnet 73 ? Sonnet 18 ? Sonnet 130

?

My Mistress’ Eyes

My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun Coral is far more red than her lips’ red,

If snow be white, why then her breasts arte dun, If hairs be wires, black wires grow upon her head. I have seen roses damasked, red and white, But no such roses see I in her cheeks,

And in some perfumes is there more delight, Than in the breath that from my mistress’ reeks.

I love to hear her speak: yet well I know That music hath a far more pleasing sound, I grant I never saw a goddess go,

My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground. And yet by heaven, I think my love as rare, As any she belied with false compare.

Part III

The Seventeenth Century (1616-1688)

Chapter 5

The Bourgeois Revolution and Milton

1. History of the 17th century: a.King Charles I--Long Parliament

b.the civil war (1642-1649):

army of the Parliament led by Oliver Cromwell;

Bourgeois Revolution of England (Puritan Revolution); Puritans;

King Charles II—James II—

―glorious Revolution‖(光荣革命) constitutional monarchy(君主立宪制)

2. Chief Literary Achievements

?

fountain heads of the Western Civilisation: The bible, Greek and Roman mythology and

The Bible ( The Old Testament and the New Testament)

philosophy;

Hebrew—Greek—Latin

English version: ―The King James Bible‖ (47 scholars, 7 years)

?

Poetry

a.―Metaphysical Poets‖(玄学派)—John Donne, Andrew Marvell, Herbert

b.Cavalier Poets (骑士诗人)

c. Epics(史诗) by John Milton

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Prose

political pamphlets and essays;

non-political matters

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Drama(Restoration period)

comedies combined with the French taste with witty language;

light, often coarse themes;

emphasis on the wit of the characters they are criticised as decadent.

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Dryden and Bunyan Dryden: man of letters

Bunyan: The Pilgrim’s Progress II. John Milton

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Paradise Lost (失乐园) ? Paradise Regained (复乐园) George

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Chapter 6

Samson Agonistes (力士生孙) The Metaphysical Poets and the Restoration Drama

? Metaphysical Poets (John Donne, Andrew Marvell, George Herbert)

―Death Be not Proud‖

― The Flea‖

― A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning‖ (理解诗歌:240)

John Donne

Death be not proud, though some have called thee Mighty and dreadful, for, thou art not so,

For, those, whom thou think'st, thou dost overthrow, Die not, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill me; From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,

Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow, And soonest our best men with thee do go, Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.

Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men, And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell, And poppy, or charms can make us sleep as well,

And better than thy stroak; why swell'st thou then? One short sleep past, we wake eternally,

And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

Chapter 7

Dryden and Bunyan

John Bunyan

The Pilgrim’s Progress ?

Part IV

The Eighteenth Century

(1688-1780)

Chapter 8

The Age of Classicism

Historical Situation

science and technology:

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Steam engine—Industrial Revolution; political economics;

Enlightenment Movement;

religion: Deism, more individual,

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The Age of Classicism (or Neoclassicism)

Literary Achievements (In the first half of the 18th century):

- Alexander Pope ( heroic couplet) - Swift ( master of satire)

they admire and follow the styles of ancient poets in Roman Empire of

Augustus in a metaphorical manner.; they worshipped reasons, so also called the Age of Reason

II. Chief Representatives

Alexander Pope An Essay on Criticism ?

The Rape of the Lock

Jonathan Swift ―A Modest Proposal‖

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Gulliver’s Travels Lilliput;

Brobdingnag;

Laputa(flying island)

Houyhnhnms (horsese), yahoo.

Joseph Addison ? Richard Steele

The Spectator ?

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The Dictionary Samuel Johnson (a journalist, a biographer, a literary critic)

Chapter 9

The Rise of the Novel

Background About the Rise of the Novel science and technology developed;

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printing;

reading makes the flourish of a book market; women’s reading even writing

II. Major Novelists

1. Daniel Defoe

Robinson Crusoe ?

( a sailor, 28 years in an isolated island) Moll Flanders Roxana

2. Samuel Richardson

Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded (letter novel)

?

Clarissa, or The History of a Young Lady

3. Henry Fielding Joseph Andrews ?

The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling ?

Tristram Shandy 4. Laurence Sterne

A Sentimental Journey Chaoter 10

?

The Pre-Romantic Literature

Background

growth of cities, the bourgeois class, the book market From reason to passion;

literature in the second half century shifted from paying attention to human fates and social problems to searching the meaning of life and death, from exploring human nature, philosophy of human congnition to experiencing and praising nature.

Pre-Romantic Poetry

Graveyard Poets

Thomas Parnell, Edward Young, Robert Blair

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Thomas Gray (Elegy Written in a Country Church-Yard) wrote melancholy poems, often with the poet meditating on human mortality problems at night or in a graveyard.

Robert Burns, the Sctottish Bard ? William Blake

Songs of Innocence ?

Songs of Experience

The Gothic Novelists

The Castle of Otranto –Horace Walpole

?

The Monk –Matthew Gregory Lewis

The Mysteries of Udolpho —Ann Radcliffe

Part V

The Romantic Period (1780-1830)

Chapter 11

Wordsworth and Coleridge

Historical background

Industrial Revolution, working class,

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the Luddites’ movement – frame-breakers, breaking looms and machines, ignorant of the

real cause for their sufferings;

relationship with Ireland, Scotland and her colonies in North American became critical.

American Revolution and the French Revolution; democracy, equality and freedom, social reform

Literary Achievements 1) Poetry

Wordsworh, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, Keats

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Lake Poets: Wordswoth, Coleridge, Southey

2) Novel

Walter Scott, Jane Austen

Romanticism or Romantic Movement is a literary movement in Britain and the European Continent between 1770 and 1848.

its keynote is ―intensity(strong emotion)‖, its watchword is ―imagination‖

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The English Romantic Movement was marked by the publication of Lyrical Ballads in 1798.

? Features of English Romanticism: simplicity (content and language);

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love of nature( respect nature’s force, feelings with nature); subjectivity (individual emotion recollected in tranquility); spontaneity (―the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings‖)

subject: supernatural, mysterious, stange and splendid, remote time and place; tone:melancholy

II. The Romantic Sage

William Wordsworh

? ?

Lyrical Ballads, a joint work of Wordsworth and Coleridge

Poems in search for self-definition in relation with nature

Tintern Abby‖

―I Wandered Lonely As a Cloud‖; ―My Heart Leaps up When I Behold‖; ―Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Poems of Solitary ―The Solitary Reaper‖

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I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud by Wordsworth

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