Literary terms1

1. Epic: long narrative poem, majestic both in theme and style. Epics deal with legendary or historical events of national or universal significance, involving action of broad sweep and grandeur. Most epics deal with the exploits of a single individual, thereby giving unity to the composition. Commonplace details of everyday life may appear, but they serve as background for the story and are described in the same lofty style as the rest of the poem.

2. Blank Verse: in literature, unrhymed poetry, typically in iambic pentameter, and, as such, the dominant verse form of English dramatic and narrative poetry since the mid-16th century. Blank verse was adapted by Italian Renaissance writers from classical sources; and English playwright William Shakespeare transformed blank verse into a supple instrument, uniquely capable of conveying speech rhythms and emotional overtones. According to the English poet John Milton, only unrhymed verse could give English the dignity of a classical language. As he explained in the preface to his epic Paradise Lost, one of the greatest of all poems in blank verse:

3. Sonnet: lyric poem of 14 lines with a formal rhyme scheme, expressing different aspects of a single thought, mood, or feeling, sometimes resolved or summed up in the last lines of the poem. Originally short poems accompanied by mandolin or lute music, sonnets are generally composed in the standard meter of the language in which they were written—for example, iambic pentameter in English, and the Alexandrine in French (see Versification).

The two main forms of the sonnet are the Petrarchan, or Italian, and the English, or Shakespearean. The former probably developed from the stanza form of the canzone or from Italian folk song. The earliest known Italian sonneteer was Guittone d'Arezzo.

4. Soliloquy (from Latin: \"talking by oneself\") is a device often used in drama when a character speaks to himself or herself, relating thoughts and feelings, thereby also sharing them with the audience. Other characters, however, are not aware of what is being said.[1][2] A soliloquy is distinct from a monologue or an aside: a monologue is a speech where one 共6 页 第 1页

character addresses other characters; an aside is a (usually short) comment by one character towards the audience.

Soliloquies 独白 [sə'liləkwi] in Shakespeare The plays of William Shakespeare feature many soliloquies, the most famous being the \"To be or not to be\" speech in Hamlet. In Richard III and Othello, the respective villains use soliloquies to entrap the audience as they do the characters on stage. Macbeth's \"Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow\" speech and Juliet's \"O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?\" are other famous examples of Shakespearean soliloquies. (Juliet's speech is overheard by Romeo, but because she believes herself to be alone, her speech is still considered a soliloquy.) There are also a few in Macbeth \"is this a dagger I see before me?\" is one of the many.

5. Monologue is presented by a single character, most often to express their mental thoughts aloud, though sometimes also to directly address another character or the audience. Monologues are common across the range of dramatic media (plays, films, etc.) as well as in non-dramatic media such as poetry. Monologues share much in common with several other literary devices including soliloquies, apostrophes, and aside. There are, however, distinctions between each of these devices.

6. Couplet: Couplet, in poetry, term applied to two successive lines of verse that form a single unit because they rhyme; the term also is often used for lines that express a complete thought or form a separate stanza. Couplets in English are usually written in ten-syllable (decasyllabic) lines, a form first used by the 14th-century poet Geoffrey Chaucer. This evolved into the so-called heroic couplet popular in the 17th and 18th centuries. The heroic couplet, two rhyming iambic pentameter lines, is also called a closed couplet because the meaning and the grammatical structure are complete within two lines. John Dryden and Alexander Pope employed this form with great effect,

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7. Romanticism: (literature), a movement in the literature of virtually every country of Europe, the United States, and Latin America that lasted from about 1750 to about 1870, characterized by reliance on the imagination and subjectivity of approach, freedom of thought and expression, and an idealization of nature. The term romantic first appeared in 18th-century English and originally meant “romancelike”—that is, resembling the fanciful character of medieval romances.

The preface to the second edition of Lyrical Ballads (1800), by English poets William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge was also of prime importance as a manifesto of literary romanticism. Here, the two poets affirmed the importance of feeling and imagination to poetic creation and disclaimed conventional literary forms and subjects. Thus, as romantic literature everywhere developed, imagination was praised over reason, emotions over logic, and intuition over science—making way for a vast body of literature of great sensibility and passion. This literature emphasized a new flexibility of form adapted to varying content, encouraged the development of complex and fast-moving plots, and allowed mixed genres (tragicomedy and the mingling of the grotesque and the sublime) and freer style.

8. Realism (art and literature), in art and literature, an attempt to describe human behavior and surroundings or to represent figures and objects exactly as they act or appear in life. Attempts at realism have been made periodically throughout history in all the arts; the term is, however, generally restricted to a movement that began in the mid-19th century, in reaction to the highly subjective approach of romanticism. In general, the work of these writers illustrates the main tenet of realism that writers must not select facts in accord with preconceived aesthetic or ethical ideals but must set down their observations impartially and objectively. Concerned with the faithful representation of life that frequently lacks form, the realists tended to downplay plot in favor of character and to concentrate on middle-class life and preoccupations, avoiding larger, more dramatic issues.

9. Naturalism (literature), in literature, the theory that literary composition should be based on an objective, empirical presentation of human beings. It differs from realism in adding an amoral attitude to the objective presentation of life. Naturalistic writers regard human

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behavior as controlled by instinct, emotion, or social and economic conditions, and reject free will, adopting instead, in large measure, the biological determinism of Charles Darwin and the economic determinism of Karl Marx.

Naturalism was first prominently exhibited in the writings of 19th-century French authors, especially Edmond Louis Antoine de Goncourt, his brother Jules Alfred Huot de Goncourt, and Émile Zola.

10. Stream of consciousness is often confused with interior monologue, but the latter technique works the sensations of the mind into a more formal pattern: a flow of thoughts inwardly expressed, similar to a soliloquy. The technique of stream of consciousness, however, attempts to portray the remote, preconscious state that exists before the mind organizes sensations. Consequently, the re-creation of a stream of consciousness frequently lacks the unity, explicit cohesion, and selectivity of direct thought.

Stream of consciousness, as a term, was first used by William James, the American philosopher and psychologist, in his book The Principles of Psychology (10). Widely used in narrative fiction, the technique was perhaps brought to its highest point of development in Ulysses (1922) and Finnegans Wake (1939) by the Irish novelist and poet James Joyce

11. Elegy originally, in classical Greek and Roman literature, a poem composed of distiches, or couplets. Classical elegies addressed various subjects, including love, lamentation, and politics, and were characterized by their metric form. Ancient poets who used the elegiac form include the Alexandrian Callimachus and the Roman Catullus. In modern poetry (since the 16th century) elegies have been characterized not by their form but by their content, which is invariably melancholy and centers on death. The best-known elegy in English is Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (1751), by the English poet Thomas Gray, which treats not just a single death but the human condition as well.

12. Lyric, short poem that conveys intense feeling or profound thought. In ancient Greece, lyrics were sung or recited to the accompaniment of the lyre. Elegies and odes were popular forms of the lyric in classical times. The lyric poets of ancient Greece included Sappho, Alcaeus, and Pindar; the major Roman lyric poets included Horace, Ovid, and Catullus.

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Lyrical poetry was also written in ancient India and China; and the Japanese verse called haiku is a lyric.

13. Enlightenment, Age of, a term used to describe the trends in thought and letters in Europe and the American colonies during the 18th century prior to the French Revolution. The phrase was frequently employed by writers of the period itself, convinced that they were emerging from centuries of darkness and ignorance into a new age enlightened by reason, science, and a respect for humanity.

The precursors of the Enlightenment can be traced to the 17th century and earlier. They include the philosophical rationalists René Descartes and Baruch Spinoza, the political philosophers Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, and various skeptical thinkers in France such as Pierre Bayle. Equally important, however, were the self-confidence engendered by new discoveries in science and the spirit of cultural relativism encouraged by the exploration of the non-European world.

14. Modernist literature

modernist literature, has its origins in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, mainly in Europe and North America. Modernism is characterized by a self-conscious break with traditional styles of poetry and verse. Modernists experimented with literary form and expression, adhering to Ezra Pound's maxim to \"Make it new.\" The modernist literary movement was driven by a conscious desire to overturn traditional modes of representation and express the new sensibilities of their time.[2] The horrors of the First World War saw the prevailing assumptions about society reassessed.[3] Thinkers such as Sigmund Freud questioned the rationality of mankind. Formal/Stylistic characteristics

Juxtaposition, irony, comparisons, and satire are important elements found in modernist writing. Modernist authors use impressionism and other devices to emphasize the subjectivity of reality, and they see omniscient narration and fixed narrative points of view as providing a false sense of objectivity. They also employ discontinuous narratives and fragmented plot

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structures. Modernist works are also often reflexive and draw attention to their own role as creator. Juxtaposition is used for example in a way to represent something that would be oftentimes unseen, for example, a cat and a mouse as best friends. Irony and satire are important tools used by the modernist writer to comment on society. Thematic characteristics

For the first-time reader, modernist writing can seem frustrating to understand because of the use of a fragmented style and a lack of conciseness. Furthermore the plot, characters and themes of the text are not always presented in a linear way. The goal of modernist literature is also not particularly focused on catering to one particular audience in a formal way. In addition modernist literature often forcefully opposes, or gives an alternative opinion, on a social concept. Common concerns of modernism are: the breaking down of social norms, rejection of standard social ideas, and traditional thoughts and expectations, rejection of religion and anger against the effects of the world wars. As well, modernists tend to reject history, social systems, and emphasize alienation in modern urban and industrial societies.

期末考试范围，考查以下作家含教材中作品1. Shakespeare 4. Defoe 8. Shelley 9.Wordsworth 10. Keats 11. Jane Austen 12. Charlotte Bronte 13. Dickens 18. D. H. Lawrence 以下作家(不含教材里的作品)

2. Bacon 3. Milton6. Blake 5. Swift 7. Byron 14 .Hardy 15. George Bernard Shaw 16. T.S. Eliot 17. Joyce 19. William Golding 20. Doris Lessing

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