2015-2016(1)英国文学复习提纲.doc

2015-2016（1）英美文学（一）课程提纲

Unit 2 Early and Medieval Literature
1. Key Facts:
--three conquests
--the medieval period: 476 A. D—the 15th century
--Anglo-Saxon Period (449-1066):
--oral traditions;
--“Beowulf”: the national epic
--Caedmon: the first known English religious poet
--Anglo-Norman Period (1066-15th century):
--Popularity of romances;
--Chaucer: the father of English poetry;
--Ballads developed;
--“Beowulf”: longest; an epic; features (Pagan and Christian coloring; kenning; metaphor)
--Romance: It is a narrative verse of prose singing knightly adventures or other heroic deeds. Romances are popular in the medieval period; “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight”
--Geoffrey Chaucer: the father of English literature/poetry; The Canterbury Tales: a double fiction; the Wife of Bath’s prologue; The Wife of Bath’s Tale; heroic couplet)
--Ballad: A story told in song, usually in four line stanzas, with the 2nd and the 4th lines rhymed; Robin Hood Ballads.
2. Selected Readings:
--Geoffrey Chaucer’s “The Canterbury Tales”:
THE PROLOGUE
When in April the sweet showers fall
And pierce the drought of March to the root, and all
The veins are bathed in liquor of such power
As brings about the engendering of the flower,
When also Zephyrus with his sweet breath
Exhales an air in every grove and heath
Upon the tender shoots, and the young sun
His half-course in the sign of the Ram has run,
And the small fowl are making melody
That sleep away the night with open eye
(So nature pricks them and their heart engages)
Then people long to go on pilgrimages
And palmers long to seek the stranger strands
Of far-off saints, hallowed in sundry lands,
And specially, from every shire's end
Of England, down to Canterbury they wend
To seek the holy blissful martyr,* quick
To give his help to them when they were sick.
It happened in that season that one day
In Southwark, at The Tabard, as I lay
Ready to go on pilgrimage and start
For Canterbury, most devout at heart,'
At night there came into that hostelry
Some nine and twenty in a company
Of sundry folk happening then to fall'
In fellowship, and they were pilgrims all
That towards Canterbury meant to ride.
The rooms and stables of the inn were wide;
:They made us easy, all was of the best.
And, briefly, when the sun had gone to rest,
I'd spoken to them all upon the trip
And was soon one with them in fellowship,
Pledged to rise early and to take the way
To Canterbury, as you heard me say.
But none the less, while I have time and space,
Before my story takes a further pace,
It seems a reasonable thing to say
What their condition was, the full array
Of each of them, as it appeared to me,
According to profession and degree,
And what apparel they were riding in;
And at a Knight I therefore will begin.

Unit 3-6 The Renaissance
1. Key Facts:
--Renaissance
--a thirsting curiosity for classical literature;
--a keen interest in life and human activities.
--Humanism
--individualism; the joy of the present life; reason; the affirmation of self-worth
--Humanism emphasizes the dignity of human beings and the importance of the present life. 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 perfect himself and to perform wonders.
--Sonnet:
--Definition: It is a poem of 14 lines that follows a strict rhyme scheme and specific structure; it expresses a single idea or theme. (Thomas Wyatt first introduced it to England)
--Shakespearean sonnet:
--Definition: A Shakespearean sonnet consists of three four-line stanzas (called quatrains) and a final couplet composed in iambic pentameter with the rhyme scheme abab cdcd efef gg.
--iambic pentameter:
--Blank verse: having a regular meter, but no rhyme. (Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey)
--Spenserian stanza:
--Definition: Each stanza contains nine lines in total: eight lines in iambic pentameter followed by a single 'Alexandrine' line in iambic hexameter. The rhyme scheme of these lines is "ababbcbcc."
--The first English essayist: Francis Bacon (“Of Studies”)
--Elizabethan theatre—the golden age of English drama;
--Shakespearean comedies: As You Like It; The Merchant of Venice; A Midsummer Night‘s Dream; Much Ado About Nothing; Twelfth Night
--Shakespearean tragedies: Macbeth; King Lear; Hamlet; Othello
2. Selected Readings:
Sonnet 18—by Shakespeare
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimmed;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,
Nor shall death brag thou wand'rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to Time thou grow'st.
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
From Hamlet—by Shakespeare
To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action. - Soft you now!
The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember'd.
From Macbeth—by Shakespeare
“Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow; a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Unit 7 The Period of Revolution and Restoration (the 17th century)
1. Key Facts:
--17th: the beginning of modern England;
--Cavalier poets:
--Reflected the royalist values;
--Themes: beauty, love, loyalty, morality;
--Style: Direct, short, frankly erotic
--Motto: “Carpe Diem” “Seize the Day”
--Robert Herrick, Ben Johnson, Richard Lovelace, etc;
--Appreciation: “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time” (Herrick; “to seize the day”)
--Metaphysical school:
--the founder of the Metaphysical school: John Donne
--conceit: an extended metaphor involving dramatic contrasts or far-fetched comparisons;
--John Donne’s love poems: “The Flea”; “Valediction: Forbidden Mourning” (Appreciation)
--Andrew Marvell: “To His Coy Mistress”
--Puritan writers:
--John Bunyanh: “The Pilgrim’s Progress” (a religious allegory)
--John Milton: “Paradise Lost” (based on The Old Testament)
2. Selected Readings:
From “The Paradise Lost”—by John Milton
What though the field be lost?
All is not lost: the unconquerable will,
And study of revenge, immortal hate,
And courage never to submit or yield:
And what is else not to be overcome?
To bow and sue for grace
With suppliant knee, and deify his power…
We may with more successful hope resolve
To wage by force or guile eternal war,
Irreconcilable to our grand Foe,
Who now triumphs, an din th’ excess of joy
Sole reigning holds the tyranny of Heaven.

Unit 8&9 The 18th Century Literature—The Age of Enlightenment
1. Key Facts:
--18th century: the golden age of English novels
--Enlightenment
--an intellectual movement in Europe in the 18th century;
--Reason as the guiding principle for thinking and action;
--the belief in eternal truth, eternal justice, natural equality ;
--a continuation of Renaissance;
(Belief in the possibility of human perfection through education).
--Neo-classicism:
--A revival of classical standards of order, harmony, balance, simplicity and restrained
emotion in literature in the 18th century.
--Alexander Pope
--“Essay on Criticism” by Alexander Pope
--a manifesto of neoclassicism;
--Appreciation: “A Little Learning is a Dangerous Thing…” (learning as mountain climbing; inadequate learning may impair a balanced appreciation of a poem).
--Realistic novels:
--Jonathan Swift; Gulliver’s Travels; A Modest Proposal; A Tale of a Tub; The Battle of the Books;
--Daniel Defoe: Robinson Crusoe;(Appreciation)
--Henry Fielding: Tom Jones; Joseph Andrews; Jonathan Wilde the Great;
--Sentimentalism
--the middle and later decades of the 18th c.;
--definition: passion over reason, personal instincts over social duties; the return of the patriarchal times; lamenting over the destructive effects of industrialization
--Oliver Goldsmith, Thomas Gray, etc.
--The Graveyard School
--subjects, style;
--Thomas Gray’s “Elegy written in a country churchyard”: structure; theme; (Appreciation)
--Pre-romanticism:
--the latter half of the 18th century;
--Robert Burns: “Auld Lyne Syne”; “A Red, Red Rose”
--William Blake: “Songs of Innocence” “Songs of Experience”; “The Lamb”, “The Tyger”;
--Richard Bringsley Sheridan: The School for Scandal; The Rivals;
--Oliver Goldsmith: The Vicar of Wakefield; She Stoops to Conquer
2. Selected Readings:
From “Essay on Criticism”—by Alexander Pope
A little learning is a dangerous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.
Fired at first sight with what the Muse imparts,
In fearless youth we tempt the heights of arts,
While from the bounded level of our mind
Short views we take, nor see the lengths behind:
Bur more advanc'd, behold with strange surprise
New distant scenes of endliess science rise!
So pleas'd at first the tow'ring Alps we try,
Mount o'er the vales, and seem to tread the sky;
Th'eternal snows appear already past,
And the first clouds and mountains seem the last:
But those attain'd, we tremble to survey
The growing labours of the lengthen'd way;
Th'increasing prospect tires our wand'ring eyes,
Hills peep o'er hills, and Alps on Alps arise!
From Robinson Crusoe —by Daniel Defoe
I consulted several things in my situation, which I found would he proper for me: 1st, health and fresh water, I just now mentioned; 2ndly, shelter from the heat of the sun; 3rdly, security from ravenous creatures, whether man or beast; 4thly, a view to the sea, that if God sent any ship in sight, I might not lose any advantage for my deliverance, of which I was not willing to banish all my expectation yet.
Before, as I walked about, either on my hunting or for viewing the coutnry, the anguish of my soul at my condition would break out just uopon me suddenly, and my very heart would die within me, to think of the woods, the mountains, the deserts I was in….
But now I began to exercise myself with new thoughts. I daily read the Word of God, and applied all the comforts of it to my present state.
One morning, being very sad, I opened the Bible upon these words, “I will never, never leave thee, nor forsake thee.” Immediately it occurred that these words were for me. Why else should they be directed in such a manner, just at the moment when I was mourning over my condition, as one forsaken of God and man?
“My island was now peopled, and I thought myself very rich in subjects; and it was a merry reflection, which I frequently made, how like a king I looked. First of all, the whole country was my own mere property, Baso that I had an undoubted right of dominion. Secondly, my people were perfectly subjected. I was absolute lord and lawgiver, they all owed their lives to me, and were ready to lay down their lives, if there had been occasion of it, for me.”.
Unit 10-12 The Romantic Period (1789-1832)
1. Key Facts:
--The Romantic period: an age of poetry
--Romanticism:
--Manifesto of British Romanticism: Lyrical Ballads: co-published by Wordsworth and Coleridge
--Features: individual as the center of all life and experience; from the outer world to the inner world; Passion; imagination ; Nature; pastoral; past ; Individual freedom; simple and spontaneous expression; symbolic presentations; fantastic elements;
--English Romantic Poets
--Lake Poets: Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey
--The Satanic Poets: Byron; Shelley; Keats
--Lyrical Ballads: the manifesto of the English Romantic Movement;
--William Wordsworth
--“a worshipper of nature”;
--nature and country poems: “I Wanderered Lonely as a Cloud”; “The World is Too Much with us”; “Tintern Abbey”; “To a Butterfly” “The Solitary Reaper”; “Lucy Poems”;
--Wordsworth’s definition of poetry: “Poetry is a spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings; it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.”
--Wordsworth’s view of nature: critique of materialism; a source of mental cleanliness; the guardian of the heart; the beneficial influence of nature;
--Appreciation: “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud”; “Tintern Abbey”;
--Samuel Taylor Coleridge:“The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”
--George Gordon Byron:
--Byronic Hero: an idealised but flawed anti-hero created by Byron; love of freedom, hatred of tyranny, passionate, rebellious, chivalrous, arrogant, cynical, individualistic, isolated, single-handedly, melancholy
--major poems by Byron: “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage” (Byronic Hero); “Don Juan”; “She Walks in Beauty”; “The Isles of Greece” (Appreciation)
--Percy Bysshe Shelley:
--Plato’s influence; pantheism
--“Prometheus Unbound”; “Ode to the West Wind” “Prometheus Unbound”; “Ode to a Skylark”; “Queen Mab”; “A Defense of Poetry”;
-- Appreciation : “Ode to the West Wind”: themes of death and rebirth; destruction and regeneration;
--John Keats
-- “Ode on a Grecian Urn”; “Ode to a Nightingale”; “Ode to Autumn”; “Endymion”; “Isabella”
--A