英国文学第一学期名词解释

英国文学第一学期名词解释
Allegory: a story or description in which the characters and events symbolize some
deeper underlying meaning, and serve to spread moral teaching.
Alliteration: A poetic device where the first consonant sounds or any vowel sounds in
words or syllables are repeated.
Allusion: A reference to a familiar literary or historical person or event, used to make an
idea more easily understood.
Ballad: A short poem that tells a simple story and has a repeated refrain. Ballads were
originally intended to be sung. Early ballads, known as folk ballads, were passed down
through generations, so their authors are often unknown. Later ballads composed by
known authors are called literary ballads.
Blank Verse: unrhymed lines of iambic pentameter.
Carpe Diem
: A Latin term meaning themeof Poetry,
especially lyrics. A
carpe diem
poem advises the reader or the person it addresses to live
for today and enjoy the pleasures of the moment.
Two celebrated
carpe diem
poems are Andrew Marvell's
Herrick's poem beginning
Conceit: an unusually far-fetched or elaborate metaphor or simile presenting a
surprisingly apt parallel between two apparently dissimilar things or feelings.
Connotation: The impression that a word gives beyond its defined meaning.
Couplet: Two lines of Poetry with the same rhyme and Meter, often expressing a
complete and self-contained thought.
Denotation: The definition of a word, apart from the impressions or feelings it creates in
the reader.
Dramatic Monologue
Epic: A long narrative poem about the adventures of a hero of great historic or legendary
importance. The setting is vast and the action is often given cosmic significance through
the intervention of supernatural forces such as gods, angels, or demons. Epics are typically
written in a classical style of grand simplicity with elaborate Metaphors and allusions that
enhance the symbolic importance of a hero's adventures.
Frame story: a story in which another story is enclosed or embedded as a “tale within a
tale”, or which contains several such tales.

Foot: The smallest unit of rhythm in a line of Poetry. In English-language poetry, a foot is
typically one accented syllable combined with one or two unaccented syllables.

There are many different types of feet. When the accent is on the second syllable of a two
syllable word (con-
tort
), the foot is an
tor
-ture) is a

unaccented syllables followed by an accented syllable as in in-ter-
cept
, and
accented syllable followed by two unaccented syllables as in
su
-i-cide.
Grub Street Writers: Hack writers in the Eighteenth Century England. Many of them
lived on Grub Street. They took writing as a profession.
Heroic Couplet: A rhyming couplet written in iambic pentameter (a Verse with five
iambic feet).
Humanism: A philosophy that places faith in the dignity of humankind and rejects the
medieval perception of the individual as a weak, fallen creature.
believe in the perfectibility of human nature and view reason and education as the means
to that end.
Iambic pentametre: If a line of a poem has five feet, and in each foot there are two
syllables, the first being unstressed, the second, stressed, the line is an iambic pentameter
line.

Irony: In literary criticism, the effect of language in which the intended meaning is the
opposite of what is stated.
Metaphysical Poetry: The body of poetry produced by a group of seventeenth-century
English writers called the
Andrew Marvell. The Metaphysical Poets made use of everyday speech, intellectual
analysis, and unique imagery. They aimed to portray the ordinary conflicts and
contradictions of life. Their poems often took the form of an argument, and many of them
emphasize physical and religious love as well as the fleeting nature of life.
Elaborate conceits are typical in metaphysical poetry.
Metaphysical Poets: a group of 17
th
century English poets whose work is notable for its
ingenious use of intellectual concepts in surprising conceits, strange paradoxes, and
far-fetched imagery.

Meter: In literary criticism, the repetition of sound patterns that creates a rhythm
in Poetry. The patterns are based on the number of syllables and the presence and
absence of accents. The unit of rhythm in a line is called a Foot. Types of meter are
classified according to the number of feet in a line. These are the standard English lines:
Monometer, one foot; Dimeter, two feet; Trimeter, three feet; Tetrameter, four feet;
Pentameter, five feet; Hexameter, six feet (also called the Alexandrine); Heptameter,
seven feet (also called the
The most common English meter is the iambic pentameter, in which each line contains ten

syllables, or five iambic feet, which individually are composed of an unstressed syllable
followed by an accented syllable.
Oedipus Complex: A son's amorous obsession with his mother. The phrase is derived
from the story of the ancient Theban hero Oedipus, who unknowingly killed his father and
married his mother.
Oxymoron: A phrase combining two contradictory terms. Oxymorons may be intentional
or unintentional.
Paradox: A statement that appears illogical or contradictory at first, but may actually
point to an underlying truth.
Poetic License: Distortions of fact and literary convention made by a writer — not always
a poet — for the sake of the effect gained. Poetic license is closely related to the concept of

Renaissance: The period in European history that marked the end of the Middle Ages. It
began in Italy in the late fourteenth century. In broad terms, it is usually seen as spanning
the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries, although it did not reach Great Britain,
for example, until the 1480s or so. The Renaissance saw an awakening in almost every
sphere of human activity, especially science, philosophy, and the arts. The period is best
defined by the emergence of a general philosophy that emphasized the importance of the
intellect, the individual, and world affairs. It contrasts strongly with the medieval
worldview, characterized by the dominant concerns of faith, the social collective, and
spiritual salvation.
Rhyme: When used as a noun in literary criticism, this term generally refers to a poem in
which words sound identical or very similar and appear in parallel positions in two or more
lines. Rhymes are classified into different types according to where they fall in a line or
stanza or according to the degree of similarity they exhibit in their spellings and sounds.
Some major types of rhyme are
In a masculine rhyme, the rhyming sound falls in a single accented syllable, as with
and
as with
the two unaccented syllables that follow:
Romance: is a tale in verse, embodying the life and adventures of knights. Romance was
characteristic of the early feudal age, as it reflected the spirit of chivalry, i. e., the quality
and ideal of knightly conduct. The content of romance was usually about love, chivalry,
and religion. It generally concerns knights and involves a large amount of fighting as well
as a number of miscellaneous adventures;
Scansion: The analysis or poem to determine its Meter and often
its rhyme scheme. The most common system of scansion uses accents (slanted lines
drawn above syllables) to show stressed syllables, breves (curved lines drawn above
syllables) to show unstressed syllables, and vertical lines to separate each Foot.

In the first line of John Keats's
Endymion,


the word

word

a pair of vertical lines separate the foot ending with

Soliloquy: A monologue in a drama used to give the audience information and to develop
the speaker's character. It is typically a projection of the speaker's innermost thoughts.
Usually delivered while the speaker is alone on stage, a soliloquy is intended to present an
illusion of unspoken reflection.
Sonnet: A fourteen- line poem, usually composed in iambic pentameter, employing one of
several rhyme schemes. There are three major types of sonnets, upon which all other
variations of the form are based: the

consists of an octave rhymed
abbaabba
and a
either
cdecde,

cdccdc,
or
cdedce.
The octave poses a question or problem, relates
a narrative, or puts forth a proposition; the sestet presents a solution to the problem,
comments upon the narrative, or applies the proposition put forth in the octave. The
Shakespearean sonnet is divided into three quatrains and a couplet rhymed
abab cdcd efef
gg.
The couplet provides an epigrammatic comment on the narrative or problem put forth
in the quatrains. The Spenserian sonnet uses three quatrains and a couplet like the
Shakespearean, but links their three rhyme schemes in this way:
abab bcbc cdcd ee.
The
Spenserian sonnet develops its theme in two parts like the Petrarchan, its final six lines
resolving a problem, analyzing a narrative, or applying a proposition put forth in its first
eight lines.
Spenserian stanza: a group of eight lines of iambic pentameter followed by a six- stress
iambic line, with a rhyme scheme
ababbcbcc.

Theme: The main point of a work of literature. The term is used interchangeably with
thesis.
Tragic Flaw: In a tragedy, the quality within the hero or heroine which leads to his or her
downfall.
Examples of the tragic flaw include Othello's jealousy and Hamlet's indecisiveness,
although most great tragedies defy such simple interpretation.
Unities: (Also known as Three Unities.) Strict rules of dramatic structure, formulated by
Italian and French critics of the Renaissance and based loosely on the principles of drama
discussed by Aristotle in his
Poetics.
Foremost among these rules were the three unities of
action, time, and place that compelled a dramatist to: (1) construct a single plot with a
beginning, middle, and end that details the causal relationships of action and character; (2)
restrict the action to the events of a single day; and (3) limit the scene to a single place or

city. The unities were observed faithfully by continental European writers until the
Romantic Age, but they were never regularly observed in English drama. Modern
dramatists are typically more concerned with a unity of impression or emotional effect than
with any of the classical unities.