文学专业术语

8.

Alliteration

（头韵）

:

the

repetition

of

the

initial

consonant

sounds.

In

Old

English

alliterative

meter, alliteration is the principal organizing device of the verse line, such as in Beowulf.

9.

Consonance

is

the

repetition

of

a

sequence

of

two

or

more

consonants

but

with

a

change

in

the

intervening vowel, such as “live and love”.

10.

Assonance

is

the

repetition

of

identical

or

similar

vowel,

especially

in

stressed

syllables,

in

a

sequence of nearby words, such as “child of silence”.

11. Allusion

（典故）

is a reference without explicit identification, to a literary or historical person,

place,

or

event,

or

to

another

literary

work

or

passage.

Most

literary

allusions

are

intended

to

be

recognized

by

the

generally

educated

readers

of

the

author’s

time,

but

some

are

aimed

at

a

special

group.

12. Ambiguity

（复义性）

: Since William Empson

（燕卜荪）

published Seven Types of Ambiguity

《复义七型》

）

, the term has been widely used in criticism to identify a deliberate poetic device: the

use of a single word or expression to signify two or more distinct references, or to express two or more

diverse attitudes or feeling.

13.

Antihero

（反英雄）

：

the

chief

character

in

a

modern

novel

or

play

whose

character

is

totally

different from the traditional heroes. Instead of manifesting largeness, dignity, power, or heroism, the

antihero is petty, passive, ineffectual or dishonest. For example, the heroine of Defoe’s Moll Flanders

is a thief and a prostitute.

14. Antithesi s

（

对照）

：

(a figure of speech) An antithesis is often expressed in a balanced sentence, that

is, a sentence in which identical or similar syntactic structure is used to express contrasting ideas. For

example, “Marriage has many pains, but celibacy

（独身生活）

has no pleasures.” by Samuel Johnson

obviously employs antithesis.

15. Archaism

（拟古）

：

the literary

use

of

words

and

expressions

that

have

become

obsolete

in

the

common

speech

of

an

era.

For

example,

the

translators

of

the

King

James

Version

of

Bible

gave

weight and dignity to their prose by employing archaism.

16.

Atmosphere

（氛围）

:

the

prevailing

mood

or

feeling

of

a

literary

work.

Atmosphere

is

often

developed,

at

least

in

part,

through

descriptions

of

setting.

Such

descriptions

help

to

create

an

emotional climate to establish the reader’s expectations and attitudes.

17.

Ballad

（民谣）

：

it

is

a

song,

transmitted

orally,

which

tells

a

story.

It

originated

and

was

communicated orally among illiterate or only partly literate people. It exists in many

variant forms.

The

most

common

stanza

form,

called

ballad

stanza

is

a

quatrain

in

alternate

four-

and

three-stress

lines;

usually

only

the

second

and

fourth

lines

rhyme.

Although

many

traditional

ballads

probably

originated in the late Middle Age, they were not collected and printed until the eighteenth century.

18. Climax

：

as a rhetorical device it means an ascending sequence of importance. As a literary term, it

can

also

refer

to

the

point

of

greatest

intensity,

interest,

or

suspense

in

a

story’s

turning

point.

The

action

leading

to

the

climax

and

the

simultaneous

increase

of

tension

in

the

plot

are

known

as

the

rising action. All action after the climax is referred to as the falling action, or resolution. The term

crisis is sometimes used interchangeably with climax.

19. Anticlimax

（突降）

：

it denotes a writer’s deliberate drop from the ser

ious and elevated to the trivial

and lowly, in order to achieve a comic or satiric effect. It is a rhetorical device in English.

20. Beat Generation

（垮掉一代）

：

it refers to a loose- knit group of poets and novelists, writing in the

second

half

of

the

1950s

and

early

1960s,

who

shared

a

set

of

social

attitudes

–

antiestablishment,

antipolitical,

anti- intellectual,

opposed

to

the

prevailing

cultural,

literary,

and

moral

values,

and

in

favor

of

unfettered

self-realization

and

self-expression.

Representatives

of

the

group

include

Allen

Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs. And most famous literary creations produced by this

group should be Allen Ginsberg’s long poem Howl and Jack Kerouac’s On the Road.

21. Biography

（传记）

：

a detailed account of a person’s life w

ritten by another person, such as Samuel

Johnson’s Lives of the English Poets and James Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson.

22. Autobiography

（自传）

：

a person’s account of his or her own life, such as Benjamin Franklin’s

autobiography.

23.

Blank

verse

（无韵诗）< /p>

：

it

consists

of

lines

of

iambic

pentameter

which

are

unrhymed.

Of

all

English

metrical

forms

it

is

closest

to

the

natural

rhythms

of

English

speech,

and at

the

same

time

flexible

and

adaptive

to

diverse

levels

of

discourse;

as

a

result

it

has

been

more

frequently

and

variously used than any other type of versification. Soon after blank verse was introduced by the Earl

of Surrey in his translation of Virgil’s works, it became the standard meter for Elizabethan and later

poetic

dramas

and

some

poets

also

employed

this

form

to

write

their

long

poems

such

as

John

Milton’s Paradise Lost.

24. A parody

（模仿）

imitates the serious manner and characteristic features of a particular literary

work,

or

the

distinctive

style

of

a

particular

author,

or

the

typical

stylistic

and

other

features

of

a

serious

literary

genre,

and

deflates

the

original

by

applying

the

imitation

to

a

lowly

or

comically

inappropriate subject.

25. Celtic Revival also known as the Irish

Literary Renaissance

（爱尔兰文艺复兴）

identifies the

remarkably creative period in Irish literature from about 1880 to the death of William Butler Yeats in

1939. The aim of Yeats and other early leaders of the movement was to create a distinctively national

literature by going back to Irish history, legend, and folklore, as well as to native literary models. The

major writers of this movement include William Butler Yeats, Lady Gregory, John Millington Synge

and Sean O’Casey and so on.

26. Characters

（人物）

are the persons represented in a dramatic or narrative work, who are interpreted

by

the

reader

as

being

endowed

with

particular

moral,

intellectual,

and

emotional

qualities

by

inferences

from

the

dialogues,

actions

and

motivations.

E.

M.

Forster

divides

characters

into

two

types:

flat

character,

which

is

presented

without

much

individualizing

detail;

and

round

character,

which is complex in temperament and motivation and is represented with subtle particularity.

27. Chivalric Romance (or medieval romance)

（骑士传奇或中世纪传奇）

is a type of narrative that

developed in twelfth- century

France, spread to the literatures of other countries. Its standard plot is

that

of

a

quest

undertaken

by

a

single

knight

in

order

to

gain

a

lady’s

favor;

frequently

its

central

interest is courtly love, together with tournaments fought and dragons and monsters slain. It stresses

the chivalric ideals of courage, loyalty, honor, mercifulness to an opponent, and elaborate manners.

28. Comedy:

（喜剧）

in general, a literary work that ends happily with a healthy, amicable armistice

between the protagonist and society.

29. Farce

（闹剧）

is a type of comedy designed to provoke the audience to simple and hearty laughter.

To do so it commonly employs highly exaggerated types of characters and puts them into improbable

and ludicrous situations.

30. Confessional poetry

（自白派诗歌）

designates a type of narrative and lyric verse, given impetus

by

Robert

Lowell’s

Life

Studies,

which

deals

with

the

facts

and

intimate

mental

and

physical

experiences of the poet’s own life. Confessional poetry was written in rebellion against the demand for

impersonality by T. S. Elliot and the New Criticism. The representative writers of confessional school

include Robert Lowell, Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath and so on.

31. Critical Re alism:

（

批判现实主义）

The critical realism of the 19th century flourished in the fouties

and

in

the

beginning of

fifties.

The

realists

first

and

foremost

set

themselves

the

task

of

criticizing

capitalist society from a democratic viewpoint and delineated the crying contradictions of bourgeois

reality.

But

they

did

not

find

a

way

to

eradicate

social

evils.

Representative

writers

of

this

trend

include Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray and so on.

32. Drama:

（戏剧）

The form of composition designed for performance in the theater, in which actors

take

the

roles

of

the

characters,

perform

the

indicated

action,

and

utter

the

written

dialogue.

(The

common alternative name for a dramatic composition is a play.)

33. Dramatic Monologue:

（戏剧独白）

a monologue is a lengthy speech by a single person. Dramatic

monologue does not designate a component in a play, but a type of lyric poem that was perfected by

Robert Browning. By using dramatic monologue, a single person, who is patently not the poet, utters

the

speech

that

makes

up

the

whole

of

the

poem,

in

a

specific

situation

at

a

critical

moment.

For

example,

Robert Browning’s famous poem “My Last Duchess” was written in dramatic monologue.

34. Elegy

（哀歌或挽歌）

：

a poem of mourning, usually over the death of an individual. An elegy is a

type of lyric poem, usually formal in language and structure, and solemn or even melancholy in tone.

35. Enlightenment

（启蒙运动）

The name applied to an intellectual movement which developed in

Western Europe during the seventeenth century and reached its height in the eighteenth. The common

element was a

trust in human reason as adequate

to solve the crucial problems and to establish the

essential norms in life, together with the belief that the application of reason was rapidly dissipating

the remaining feudal traditions. It influenced lots of famous English writers especially those neoclassic

writers, such as Alexander Pope.

36. Epic

（史诗）

：

it is a long verse narrative on a serious subject, told in a formal and elevated style,

and centered on a heroic or quasi-divine figure on whose actions depends the fate of a tribe, a nation,

or the human race.

37.

Epiphany:

（顿悟）

In

the

early

draft

of

A

Portrait

of

the

Artist

as

a

Young

Man,

James

Joyce

employed

this

term

to

signify

a

sudden

sense

of

radiance

and

revelation

that

one

may

feel

while

perceiving a commonplace object. “Epiphany” now has become th

e standard term for the description,

frequent in modern poetry and prose fiction, of the sudden flare into revelation of an ordinary object or

scene.

38. Epithet: as a term in criticism, epithet denotes an adjective or adjectival phrase used to define a

distinctive

quality

of

a

person

or

thing.

This

method

was

widely

employed

in

ancient

epics.

For

example, in Homer’s epic, the epithet like “the wine

-

dark sea” can be found everywhere.

39. Essay:

（散文）

any short composition in prose that undertakes to discuss a matter, express a point of

view, persuade us to accept a thesis on any subject, or simply entertain. The essay can be divided as