英美文学期末复习.doc

第一课
1.这段时间的历史背景：
（1）The early inhabitants on the island we now called England were Britons (a tribe of Celts).
（2）三次主要的侵略：
a. The Roman Conquest .(In 55 B. C., Britain was invaded by the Roman general Julius Caesar. In 410, the Romans abandoned the island, which marks the end of “Roman Conquest” (55 B. C.—410 A. D.)
b. the English (Anglo-Saxons) Conquest around 449. (England was invaded by three Germanic (Teutonic) tribes: the Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes, who came from the Northeast of Europe. The Anglo-Saxon invaders established some small kingdoms in Britain which by the 7th century were bined into a United Kingdom called England (the land of Angles). Its people were called the English. The three dialects spoken by them naturally grew into a single language called Anglo-Saxon, or Old English. 古英语到Norman Conquest结束，it is the ancestor of the Modern English)
c. the Norman Conquest in 1066
(3) The Anglo-Saxon period witnessed a transition from a tribal society to feudalism.
2.术语：
（1）epic：It’s a long narrative poem celebrating the great deeds of one or more legendary heroes, majestic in theme and style. （史诗的例子：Homer’s Epics: Iliad and Odyssey）
（2）Alliteration (头韵)
The repetition of similar sounds, usually consonant or consonant clusters, in a group of words. Sometimes the term is limited to the repetition of initial consonant sounds. (When alliteration occurs at the beginning of words, it is called initial alliteration; when it occurs within words, it is called internal or hidden alliteration. It usually occurs on stressed syllables.)

3. 这一时期的文学：
（1）The literature of this period falls naturally into two divisions---pagan and Christian.
Two major genres: poetry and prose
（2）the pagan represented by Beowulf and the Christian poetry represented by the works of Caedmon and Cynewulf（Caedmon is the first known religious poet of England. He is known as the father of English song.He wrote a poetic Paraphrase of the Bible）
（3）Anglo-Saxon literature, or the Old English literature is almost exclusively a verse literature in oral form. It could be passed down by word of mouth from generation to generation.
4. 关于Beowulf 的一些信息：
（1）The Song of Beowulf is the oldest poem in the English language, and also the oldest surviving epic in the English language. The poem consists of 3182 lines. It is considered as the highest achievement of Old English literature and the earliest European vernacular (using the native language of a region, especially as distinct from the literary language) epic. It has achieved national epic status in Britain.
(2). It tells the story of the Scandinavian hero Beowulf, , who gains fame as a young man by vanquishing the monster Grendel and Grendel's mother; later, as an aging king, he kills a dragon but dies soon after, honored and lamented.
(3). The whole epic is to be divide into two parts with an interpolation (添写;插补) between the two. The whole song is pagan in spirit and matter, while the interpolation is obviously an addition made by the Christian who copied the song.(因此带有一点基督教的特点)
（4）. The Song of Beowulf的一些重要的特点：
a. The use of alliteration is one of its most striking features.
b. The use of pound-words (kennings隐喻表达法) to serve as metaphors.
c. The use of understatements.
(5). The Song of Beowulf 的主题或意义：
Thematically, the poem presents a vivid picture of how the primitive people wage struggles against the hostile forces of the natural world under a wise and mighty leader.
第二课
1.历史背景：
（1）Norman Conquest的定义 ：The French-speaking Normans under Duke William came in 1066. After defeating the English at Hastings, William was crowned as King of England. It was called the Norman Conquest.（Duke William也被称作William the Conqueror征服者威廉）
（2）The Norman Conquest marks the establishment of feudalism in England.
（3）Norman Conquest的影响：
The three chief effects of the conquest were：
(a) the bringing of Roman civilization to England;
(b) the growth of nationality, i.e. a strong centralized government, instead of the loose union of Saxon tribes;
(c) the new language and literature, which were proclaimed in Chaucer.
注：语言方面的变化----Great changes took place in languages: after the conquest, three languages co-existed in England. The Normans spoke French, the lower class spoke English, and the scholars and clergymen used Latin.（There almost no written literature in English for a time. Romances, the prominent kind of literature in the Anglo-Norman Period, were at first all in French.）
（4）在这一段历史时期内的重要事件：Important historical events
a. the Hundred Years’ War (1337-1453)
b. the Black Death (1348-49/50)
c. the Rising of 1381
2.术语:
(1).Romance: it is the literature for the upper class, which is a long position in the narrative verse or prose form, describing the life and adventures of a noble hero. It generally concerns knights and involves a large amount of fighting as well as a number of miscellaneous (各种各样的)adventures.
Features of a Romance
a. in the narrative verse or prose form;
b. central character: knight
c. subjects: knightly adventures; chivalry loyalty; faith; courtesy; …courtly love;
d. Romances had a lot to do with the noble, but nothing with the mon folks;
(2). Legend (民间传说): A song or narrative handed down from the past. Legends differ from myths on the basis of the elements of historical truth they contain.
3. The prevailing form of literature in the feudal England was the Romance. Romance (罗曼司;骑士传奇) was a type of literature that was very popular in the Middle Ages. From France it was introduced into England in the second half of the 13th and 14th centuries.(是从法国引入的)
4.Romance的主要分类：In subject matters (题材), romance naturally falls into three categories:
(a) the Matter of France: tales about Charlemagne the Great and Roland, a French national hero in the 8th century. The most well-known piece is Chanson de Roland;
(b) Matter of Greece and Rome: an endless series of fabulous tales about Alexander the Great, and about the fall of Troy;
(c) Matter of Britain: tales having for their heroes Arthur and his knights of the Round Table.
5. 有关亚瑟王的一些信息：
King Arthur is one of the great mythic figures of English literature, a legendary king and champion of the Britons against the Anglo-Saxon invaders.
6.在关于亚瑟王的Romance中，its culmination(巅峰) is in “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight”
对“Sir Gawain and the Green Knight”的一些评价：
1). The story of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is the culmination of the Arthurian romances.
2). Its theme is a series of tests on faith, courage, purity and human weakness for self-preservation.
3). By placing self-protection before honor, Gawain has sinned and fallen and bee an image of Adam. Human excellence (美德) is marked by original sin, and the girdle itself remains a perpetual reminder of his weakness.
第三课 乔叟
一．乔叟的一些荣誉以及生平：
1. Father of the English poetry 2. “the father of English literature” 3.forerunner of humanism,
4.one of the greatest English poets (Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton)
5.the first English poet to use heroic couplet dexterously in his writing
6.he maintained contacts ranged from the highest to the lowest.
7.he died on Oct. 25, 1340. He was buried in Westminster Abbey, and his tomb became the nucleus of what is now known as Poets' Corner.
二．乔叟的文学创作阶段：translation----adaptation----writing（先翻译别人的，再改写别人的，最后再写自己的）
(1) Early Works
The first period includes his early work (to 1370), which is based largely on French models,
The Romaunt of the Rose 《玫瑰传奇》
a translation, popular in Middle ages
The Book of the Duchess 《悼公爵夫人》
the best work of the time
(2)Italian Period
Chaucer's second period (up to c.1387) is called his Italian period because during this time his works were modeled primarily on Dante and Boccaccio (薄伽丘).
Troilus and Criseyde 《特罗伊洛斯和克瑞西德》
a poem of a love story
(3)The Canterbury Tales
To Chaucer's final period, in which he achieved his fullest artistic power, belongs his masterpiece, The Canterbury Tales (written mostly after 1387).
关于The Canterbury Tales 的一些信息：
The Canterbury Tales -------His masterpiece and a representative works of the Middle Ages.
 Written sometime in the 1380s, The Canterbury Tales -- the first selection of short stories in English -- - is about a group of pilgrims who agree to tell stories while they travel together to Canterbury, the seat of the English Church (still Catholic) and the site of the shrine dedicated to Thomas a Beckett, who was martyred for his faith.
Originally, he proposed 124 stories; he actually wrote 24.
The Canterbury Tales is the imitation of Boccaccio’s Decameron（模仿伯伽丘的十日谈。Use English instead of French or Latin.）

三．术语
1.rhyme royal(皇家韵诗;君王诗体)
a form of verse introduced into English by Chaucer, consisting of seven-line stanzas of iambic pentameter (抑扬格五音步 ) in which there are three rhymes, the first line rhyming with the third, the second with the fourth and fifth, and the sixth with the seventh (rhyming ababbcc).
2.iambic pentameter (抑扬格五音步 )
The most mon meter in English verse.
It consists of a line ten syllables long that is accented (重读) on every second beat. It is a poetry
pattern in which each line has 10 syllables, beginning with an unstressed syllable and a stressed syllable, followed by another pair of unstressed and stressed syllables, and so on–until there are five pairs of syllables (or ten syllables in all) .  
3.Heroic Couplet refers to lines of iambic pentameter which rhyme in pairs: aa, bb, cc, and so on.