英国文学 名词解释 【英语专业英国文学复习资料之一】

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1. epic 史诗

a long narrative poem, grand in style, about heroes and heroic deeds, embodying heroic ideals of a nation or race in the making. Beowulf is the English national epic that was passed from mouth to mouth and written down by many unknown hands.

2. caesura 停顿

a break or pause in a line of poetry, dictated by the natural rhythm of the language and sometimes enforced by punctuation. In Old English verse, such as Beowulf, the caesura was used rather monotonously to indicate the half line. 3. alliteration 头韵

the repetition of the same sound or sounds at the beginning of two or more words that are close to each other. It is a feature of Beowulf and other Old English poems.

4. alliterative verse 头韵诗

poetry written in alliteration. Nearly all Old English verse, including Beowulf, is heavily alliterative, and the pattern is fairly standard – with either two or three stressed syllables in each line alliterating. 5. kenning 隐喻语

a metaphor usually composed of two words and used for description and association. Beowulf is full of kennings, such as “helmet bearer” for “warrior” and “swan road” for “sea”. 6. protagonist 主角

the principal character of a drama or fiction. Hamlet is the protagonist of William Shakespeare’s drama Hamlet. 7. antagonist 反角

In drama or fiction the antagonist opposes the hero or protagonist. In Hamlet Claudius is antagonist to Hamlet. 8. romance 传奇

a type of literature that was popular in the Middle Ages, usually containing adventures and reflecting the spirit of chivalry. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight was a great verse romance, but its author remains unknown. 9. bob and wheel诗节末尾的短行与叠唱

a rhyming section of five lines that concludes a stanza in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. The “bob” is a very short line, sometimes of only two syllables, followed by the “wheel”, longer lines with three stresses and internal thyme. 10. poet’s corner 诗人角

a part of Westminster Abbey, London, which contains the tombs or monuments of some famous English poets, such as Geoffrey Chaucer and John Milton. 11. heroic couplet 英雄双韵体

two successive lines of rhymed poetry in iambic pentameter. Geoffrey Chaucer’s masterpiece The Canterbury Tale was written in heroic couplet. 12. ballad meter 民谣体

traditionally a four-line stanza containing alternating four-stress and three-stress lines, usually with a refrain and the rhyme scheme of abcb. Robert Burns’ “A Red,

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Red Rose” is a great love ballad. 13. refrain 叠句，副歌

a phrase, line or lines repeated at intervals during a poem and especially at the end of a stanza. It is very often found in English ballads, such as Robert Burns’ “A Red, Red Rose”.

14. English Renaissance 英国文艺复兴

the literary flowering of England in the late 16th century and early 17th century, with humanism as its keynote. William Shakespeare’s Hamlet is considered the summit of this renaissance.

15. Elizabethan literature 伊丽莎白时代的文学

literature written in the Elizabethan Age (1558-1603). William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet was a masterpiece of this period. 16. sonnet 十四行诗

a fixed form consisting of fourteen lines of 5-foot iambic verse. It first flourished in Italy in the 14th century. William Shakespeare was a great English sonnet writer famous for his 154 sonnets. 17. iambic pentameter 五步抑扬格

the basic line in English verse, with five feet in a line, usually an unaccented syllable followed by an accented syllable. It was probably introduced by Geoffrey Chaucer and certainly established by him in The Canterbury Tales. 18. meter 格律

the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in verse. In English verse a line may have a fixed number of syllables and yet have a varying number of stresses; the commonest meter is iambic. William Shakespeare’s sonnets are written in iambic. 19. foot 音步

a group of syllables forming a metrical unit. We measure feet in terms of syllable variation: long and short syllables, stressed and unstressed. The commonest foot in English verse is iamb; the commonest line is five-foot line, called pentameter. William Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 18” contains fourteen iambic pentameter lines. 20. rhyme scheme 押韵格式

the pattern of end-thymes in a stanza or poem, generally described by using letters of the alphabet to denote the recurrence of rhyming lines. For example, heroic couplets are “aabbcc” and so on. 21. quatrain 四行诗节

a stanza of four lines, rhymed or unrhymed. It is the commonest of all stanzaic forms in English poetry. Robert Burns’ “A Red, Red Rose” has four quatrains. 22. image 意象

a concrete representation of an object or sensory experience. Typically, such a representation helps evoke the feelings associated with the object or experience itself. Many images are conveyed by figurative language. An image may be visual, olfactory, tactile, auditory, gustatory, abstract and kinaesthetic. The rose in Robert Burns’ poem “A Red, Red Rose” is a beautiful image. 23. poetic license 诗的破格

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