英国文学作品赏析复习大纲

Review

1. Literary Glossary

Question: What is the definition of each literary term below?

Heroic couplet Byronic hero stream-of-consciousness

Metaphysical poetry/poet Romance comedy tragedy soliloquy Sentimentalism/Sentimental novel Gothic novel foil Romanticism/Romantic era sonnet blank verse stanza Iambic pentameter Aestheticism

2. Selected reading.

(1). The first twelve lines in the General Prologue in Canterbury Tale.

(2). Shakespeare: sonnet 18(The main theme of this poem.)

Act3 scene3, Hamlet’s monologue (main idea, major themes, meter and rhyme)

(3). Milton, Paradise Lost Book 1, excerpt, lines describing Satan’s unyielding spirit (line50--75) (Satan’s character)

(4). Jonathan Swift: A Modest Proposal (For whom was this essay written?) Gulliver’s travels (the name of each place Gulliver visits)

(5). William Blake: Tyger (central image, main theme)

(6). Robert Burns: My heart’s in the highlands (theme, does the speaker love the highlands? How does he show his love in the poem?)

(7). William Wordsworth: I wondered lonely as a cloud (the central image, rhyme scheme, main idea of each stanza)

(8). Shelley: Ode to the west wind. First stanza. (why is the west wind both destroyer and preserver?)

(9). Jane Austen: chapter 1, first and second paragraph: “It is truly universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of life” (Is there any irony? What does this sentence imply?)

(10). Jane Eyre: Chapter 5 and chapter 4 (Jane Eyre’s personality and Mr Rochester’s character)

(11). Hardy: Tess of the D’Urbervilles (subtitle of the novel, Tess’ character)

3. Key characters.

Hamlet, Shylock, Satan, Robinson Crusoe, Jane Eyre…

4. Literary stages

What are the main themes and dominating literary genres(文学体裁) in each of the following historical periods?

Medieval age, the Renaissance, the Restoration and Revolution,

The age of Enlightenment, Romantic era, the Victorian age (the age of realist critical realism, modernism.