english literature英国文学史

I. Early Literature (识记)

Beowulf     folk tale

English national epic

            In Old English

            Used alliteration

Geoffrey Chaucer    Mideval poet

                   Father of English poetry

          Masterpiece: The Canterbury Tales

                    in heroic couplet

                    Middle English

                    short story collection

                    stories in different genres

                    realistic portrait of the people of Chaucer’s day

II. English Renaissance(Elizabethan Age/ Shakespearean Age)

Time & historical background:

Keynote: humanism （理解、运用）

Literary achievements: drama— prominent achievement

                        Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson

William Shakespeare: types of plays (Historical play, comedy, tragedy, romance, and common features respectively)

                    great comedies & great tragedies

                   poetry    Edmund Spenser (poet’s poet): The Faerie Queene

                            William Shakespeare: sonnets (154)

                                              sonnet 18 (theme, recitation)（理解）

                   prose     Francis Bacon (1st English essayist): Essays

                                  Of Studies, Of Beauty, Of Truth, Of Marriage, etc.

III. 17th Century Literature (English Bourgeois Revolution)

John Milton: second great poet in English poetry

Masterpiece: Paradise Lost 

           from “genesis”, Old Testament

           Satan, Adam & Eve (the fall of man)

           Greatest epic in English poetry

           Blank verse

           Selective reading & significance（理解）

John Donne    Metaphysical poetry: conceit

John Bunyan: Pilgrim’s Progress 《天路历程》(great allegory in English literature)

                Christian, sin, celestial city & salvation

IV. 18th Century Literature(Enlighenment Movement)

Central idea: reason, moralization

newspapers, magazine, periodicals flourished (prose, satirical, didactic)

Neoclassical poetry: Alexander Pope

                        Essay on Criticism

Literary criticism

neoclassicism

Heroic couplet

                           Didactic

realistic novels: Daniel Defoe

                   Robinson Crusoe: selective reading, significance（理解）

              Henry Fielding

              Samuel Richardson

                  influences on the following writing

Richard Brinsley Sheridan(dramatist): A link between Shakespeare and Bernard Shaw

Sentimentalism: Thomas Gray (poet)

V. English Romanticism

Time & historical background:

Romantic movement

Main philosophical ideas: Rousseau’s return to nature

Major characteristics of romantic poems & contribution（理解）

Poetry      Robert Burns: “A Red, Red Rose”

           William Blake: Songs of Innocence, Songs of Experience, differences

William Wordsworth: “I wandered lonely as a cloud” （理解）

                              Lyrical Ballads, its importance

                              Poetic view

            Shelley: “Ode to the West Wind”

            Byron: Don Juan

            John Keats: great odes

“ode to a Nightingale”/ “To Autumn” 

Artistic view

Novel        Jane Austen: six complete novels, subject matter

             Walter Scott (typically romantic): father of the romantic novel

historical novel

             Gothic fiction/ horror(romantic novel): dominant features

                              Mary Shelley: Frankenstein