英美文学各章学习重点.docx

英美文学各章学习重点英美文学各章学习重点——应用部分Civil war: 1861——1865World War Ⅰ: 1914——1918World War Ⅱ: 1931——1945英国文学— The old and medieval periods1．Beowuf这部作品Romance是这个时期最流行的文学形式；Chaucer第一个引进“英雄偶句”诗体Beowulf（贝奥武甫(八世纪初的一篇古英语史诗; 该史诗中的主角)）, a typical example of old English poetry, is regarded today as the national epic (民族史诗) of the Anglo-Saxons. Literary position: The poem was originally in an oral form, it is written down in the 10th century. Thematically the poem presents a vivid picture of how the primitive people wage heroic struggles against the hostile forces of the natural world under a wise and mighty leader.Romance (骑士抒情诗)，a popular literary form in the medieval period) uses narrative verse or prose to sing knightly adventures or other heroic deeds, whose motifs（主题, 主旨）of the quest is for truth, beauty and kindness.Chaucer(乔叟): whose masterpiece is The Canterbury Tales《坎特伯雷故事集》. The famous character of his works is the Wife of Bath. Chaucer employed the heroic coupletverse form (英雄双韵诗形式) with true ease and charm for the first time in the history of English literature. He is the father of English poetry.英国文学—The renaissance periods1.《仙后》一部寓言(allegory), 人物象征意义与主题.The Faerie is an allegory.The Red-crosse Knight stands for St.George, the patron saint of England, and he also represent Holiness.A lovely Ladie, virgin Una, symbolizes the thruth or the true faith of religion.A milke white lambe reprents the God.Dragon and infernall feend refer the SatanThe theme is not “Arms and the man,” but something more romantic—“fiece warres and faithful loves”.2. 斯宾塞的诗歌特点The five main quailites of spenser’s poetry are:1) a perfect melody;2) a rare sense of beauty;3) a splendid imagination;4) a lofty purity and seriousness;5) a dedicated idealism.3.《浮士德》的主题Dr. Faustus is a play based on the German legend of a magician aspiring for knowledge and finall y meeting his tragic end as a result of selling his soul to the Devil. The play’s dominant moral is human than religious. It celebrates the human passion for knowledge, power and happ iness; it also reveals man’s frustration in realizing the high aspiration in a hostile moral order. And the confinement to ti me is the cruelest fact of man’s condition.4.《威尼丝商人》的故事及主题The play has a double plot:1) Bassanio——Portia2) Antonio——ShylockThe traditional theme of the play is to praise the friendship betweem Antonio and Bassanio, to idealize Portia as a heroine of greate beaulity, wit and loyalty, and to expose the insatiable greed and brutality of the Jew. Tody, many people tend to regard the play as a satire of the christians’ hypocrisy and their false standards of frindship and love, their cunning way of pursuing worldliness(俗心, 俗气) and their unreasoning prejudice against Jews.5．Milton的三部作品Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, Samson Agonistes.英国文学—The neoclassical periods1．Bunyan的《天路历程》是一部寓言(allegory)，其主题及《名利场》的寓意The Pilgrim’s Progress is the most successful religious allegory in the English la nguage. Its purpose is to urge people to abide by Christian doctrines and seek salvation through constant struggle with their own weakness and all kinds of social evils. Its predominant metaphor — life as a journey —is simple and familiar. The objects that Christian meets are homely and commonplace, and the scence presented a typical English ones, but throughout the allegory a spiritual signifiance is added to the commonplace details.The Vanity Fair symbolizes human world, for “All that cometh is vanity.” Everything and anything in this world is “vanity”, having no value and no meaning. The Vanity Fair, a “marcket selling nothingness” of all sorts, is a dirty place originally built up by devils, but, this town “lay” in the way to the Celestial City, meaning pilgrims had to resist the tempatations there way through. So, the depiction of the “Fair” in selling things worldly and in attracting people bad, represents John Bunyan’s rejection of the worldly seekings and pious longing for the pure and charming “Celestial City” his Christian ideal.2．鲁宾逊的意义Robinson is here a real hero: a typical eighteenth-century Enlish middle-class man, with a great capacity for work, inexhaustible energy, courage, patience and persistence in overcoming obstacles, in stuggling against the hostile natural environment. He is the very prototype of the empire builder, the pioneer colonist.3．Gulliver’s Travel的四个部分The book contains four parts.The first part —— LilliputThe second part —— BrobdingnagThe third part —— flying IslandThe fourth part —— Houyhnhnm land, YahooAs a whole, the book is one of the most effcetive and devastating criticisms and satires of all aspects in then English and European life —socially, politically, religiously, philosophically, scientifically, and morally.4．Fielding的贡献Fielding has been regarded by some as “Father of the English Novel”.He was first to set out, both in theory and practice, to write specifically a “comic ep。