自学考试英美文学选读Selected Readings In English AndAmerican LiteraturesPart one: English literatureAn Introduction to Old and Medieval EnglishLiterature1. The Old English poetry that has survived can be dividedinto two group: the religious group and the secular one. The poetry of the religious group is mainly on biblical themes………In addition to these religious compositions, Old English poets produced the national epic poem, Beowulf, a typical example of Old English poetry, is regarded today as the national epic of the Anglo-Saxons.2. Romance which uses narrative verse or prose to singknightly adventures or other heroic deeds is a popular literary form in the medieval period. R omantic love is an important part of the plot in romance.3. I t is Chaucer alone who, for the first time in Englishliterature, presented to us a comprehensive realistic picture of the English society of his time and created a whole gallery of vivid characters from all walks of life in his masterpiece The Canterbury Tales.Geoffrey Chaucer is the greatest writer of this period.I n short, Chaucer develops his characterization to a higherartistic level by presenting characters with both typical qualities and individual dispositions. Chaucer introduced from France the rhymed stanzas of various types to English poetry to replace the Old English alliterative verse.Chaucer dominated the works of his15th-centtruy English followers and the so-called Scottish Chaucerians. For the Renaissance, he was the English Homer.Chapter 1 The Renaissance Period1. The Renaissance arks a transition from the medieval tothe modern world. Generally, it refers to the periodbetween the 14th and mid-17th centuries.T he Renaissance is a historical period in which the European humanist thinkers and scholars made attempts to get rid of those old feudalist ideas in medieval Europe, to introduce new ideas that expressed the interests of the rising bourgeoisie, and to recover the purity of the early church form the corruption of the Roman Catholic Church. B ut it was not until the reign of Henry VIII that the Renaissance really began to show its effect in England.The English Renaissance had no sharp break with the past.Attitudes and feelings which had been characteristic of the 14th and 15th centuries persisted well down into the era of Humanism and Reformation.2. Humanism is the essence of the Renaissance. T hus, byemphasizing the dignity of human beings and the importance of the present life, they voiced their beliefs that man did not only have the right to enjoy the beauty of this life, but had the ability to perfect himself and to perform wonders.3. S trong national feeling in the time of the Tudors gave agreat incentive to the cultural development in England. W ith classical culture and the Italian humanistic ideas coming into England, the English Renaissance began flourishing.T he first period of the English Renaissance was one of imitation and assimilation. T he Elizabethan drama, in its totality, is the real mainstream of the English Renaissance.4. F rom Wyatt and Surrey onwards the goals of humanisticpoetry are: skillful handling of conventions, force of language, and, above all, the development of a rhetorical plan in which meter, rhyme, scheme, imagery and argument should all be combined to frame the emotional theme and throw it into high relief. P oetry was to be a concentrated exercise of the mind, of craftsmanship, and of learning.I. Edmund Spenser (埃德蒙·斯宾塞)1. Spenser’s masterpiece is The Faerie Queene, a great poemof its age. A ccording to Spenser’s own explanation, his principal intention is to present through a “historical poem”the example of a perfect gentleman: “to fashion a gentleman or noble person in virtuous and gentle discipline.”2. The five main qualities of Spenser’s poetry are 1) aperfect melody; 2) a rare sense of beauty; 3) a splendid imagination; 4) a lofty moral purity and seriousness; and 5)a dedicated idealism.II. Christopher Marlowe（克里斯托夫·马洛）1. M asterpieces: Tamburlaine, Parts I ⅈ Dr. Faustus;The Jew of Malta; Edward II2. Tamburlaine is a play about an ambitious and pitilessTartar conqueror in the fourteenth century who rose from a shepherd to an overpowering king. I n fact, Tamburlaine is a product of Marlowe’s characteristically Renaissance imagination, fascinated by the earthly magnificence available to men of imaginative power who have the energy of their convictions.3. D r. Faustus is a play based on the German legend of amagician aspiring for knowledge and finally meeting his tragic end as a result of selling his soul to the Devil. I t celebrates the human passion for knowledge, power and happiness; it also reveals man’s frustration in realizing the high aspirations in a hostile moral order. A nd the confinement to time is the cruelest fact of man’s condition.Marlowe praises his soaring aspiration for knowledge while warning against the sin of pride since Faustus’s downfall was caused by his despair I god and trust in Devil.4. M arlowe’s greatest achievement lies in that he perfectedthe blank verse and made it the principal medium of English drama. Marlowe employed hyperbole as his major figure of speech, which, instead of referring to the exaggeration of the language, indicates the poetic energy and intensityconveyed through the verseMarlowe’s second achievement is his creation of the Renaissance hero for English drama. D ifferent from the tragic hero I medieval plays, who seeks the way to heaven through salvation and God’s will, he is against convention al morality and contrives to obtain heaven on earth through his own efforts.III. William Shakespeare （威廉·莎士比亚）1. T he first period of Shakespeare’s dramatic career was oneof apprenticeship.(Henry VI; Richard III; The Comedy of Errors.In the second period, Shakespeare’s style and approach became highly individualized. B y constructing a complex pattern between different characters and between appearance and reality, Shakespeare made subtle comments on a variety of human foibles. (The M idsummer Night’s Dream; The Merchant of Venice; Romeo and Juliet.S hakespeare’s third period includes his greatest tragedies and his so-called dark comedies. (Hamlet; Othello;King Lear)T he last period of Shakespeare’s work includes his principal romantic tragicomedies.2. S hakespeare’s history plays are mainly written under theprinciple that national unity under a mighty and just sovereign is a necessity.3. I n his romantic comedies, Shakespeare takes an optimisticattitude toward love and youth, and the romantic elements are brought into full play. T he most important play among the comedies is The Merchant of Venice. T he sophistication derives in part from the play between high, outgoing romance and dark forces of negativity and hate. T he traditional theme of this play is to praise the friendship between Antonio and Bassanio, to idealize Portia as a heroine of great beauty, wit and loyalty, and to expose the insatiable greed and brutality of the Jew.C ompared with the idealism of other plays, The Merchantof Venice takes a step forward in its realistic presentation of human nature and human conflict. T hough there is a ridiculous touch on the part of the characters restrained by their limitations, Shakespeare’s youthful Renaissance spirit of jollity can be fully seen in contrast to the medieval emphasis on future life in the next world.4. T he successful romantic tragedy is Romeo and Juliet,which eulogizes the faithfulness of love and the spirit of pursuing happiness. T he play, though a tragedy, is permeated with optimistic spirit.5. S hakespeare’s greatest tragedies are: Hamlet, Othello,King Lear, and Macbeth. T hey have some characteristics in common. Each portrays some noble hero, who faces the injustice of human life and is caught in a difficult situation and whose fate is closely connected with the fate of the whole action. E ach hero has his weakness of nature.W ith the concentration on the tragic hero, we see the sharp conflicts between the individual and the evil force in the society, which shows that Shakespeare is a great realist in the true sense.6. T he hero Hamlet in Shakespeare’s play Hamlet is noted forhis hesitation to take his revenge, his melancholy nature of action only to deny possibilities to do anything. H e came to know that his father was murdered by his uncle who became king. He hated him so deeply that he wanted to kill him.B ut he loved his widowed mother who later married hisuncle, and he was afraid to hurt his mother. A nd also, when everything was ready for him to kill his uncle, he forgave him for his uncle was praying to God for his crime. T hus he lost the good chance. H amlet represented humanism of his time.7. S hakespeare takes the bare outlines of Revenge Tragedy,but what he adds is infinitely more interesting than what he adopts. A nd the timeless appeal of this mighty drama lies in its combination of intrigue, emotional conflict andsearching philosophic melancholy. T his play is also Shakespeare’s most detailed expose of a corrupted court—“an unweeded garden”in which there is nothing but“a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours.”B y revealing the power-seeking ,the jostling for place the hidden motives, the courteous superficialities that veil lust and guilt, Shakespeare condemns the hypocrisy and treachery and general corruption at the royal court.8. Shakespeare, as a humanist of the time, is againstreligious persecution and racial discrimination, against social inequality and the corrupting influence of gold and money. I n his plays, he does not hesitate to describe the cruelty and anti-natural character of the civil wars, but he did not go all the way against the feudal rule.9. S hakespeare’s views on literature:Shakespeare has accepted the Renaissance views on literature. H e holds that literature should be a combination of beauty, kindness and truth, and should reflect nature and reality. Shakespeare also states that literary works which have truly reflected nature and reality can reach immortality.10. T he characteristics of Shakespeare’s characters:S hakespeare’s major characters are neither merely individual ones nor type ones; they are individuals representing certain types. E ach character has his or her own personalities; meanwhile, they may share features with others.11. T he characteristics of Shakespeare’s plot:S hakespeare’s plays are well-known for their adroit plot construction. S hakespeare seldom invents his own plots;instead, he borrows them from some old plays or storybooks, or from ancient Greek and Roman sources.12. T he characteristics of Shakespeare’s language:I t is necessary to study the subtlest of his instruments—the language. Shakespeare can write skillfully in different poetic form, like the sonnet, the blank verse, and therhymed couplet. H e has an amazing wealth of vocabulary and idiom. H is coinage of new words and distortion of the meaning of the old ones also create striking effects on the reader.IV. Francis Bacon （弗兰西斯·培根）1. Francis Bacon, a representative of the Renaissance inEngland, is a well-known philosopher, scientist and essayist.2. T he most important works of his first group include TheAdvancement of Learning; Novum Organum. H is philosophical works also belong to the first group. H is literary works are in the second group, among which the most famous is Essays. Maxis of Law and The Learned Reading upon the Statute of Uses are the two famous works from the third group.3. N ovum Organum is a successful treatise written in Latin onmethodology. I t is the most impressive display of bacon’s intellect. T he argument is for the use of inductive method of reasoning in scientific study. B ut Bacon first expounds the four great false conceiving that beset men’s mind and prevent them from seeking the truth. B acon suggests the inductive reasoning, i.e. proceeding from the particular to the general, the deductive reasoning, putting forward this theory. B acon shows the new empirical attitudes toward truth about nature and bravely challenges the medieval scholasticists.4. T he Advancement of Learning is a great tract oneducation. B acon highly praises knowledge, refuting the objections to learning and outlining the problems with which his plan is to deal. A ccording to Bacon, man’s understanding consists of three parts: history to man’s memory, poetry to man’s imagination and creation, and philosophy to man’s reason.5. B acon cares more about axioms under the guidance of whichman think and acts than human nature or morality.B acon’s essays are famous for their brevity, compactnessand powerfulness. T he essays are well-arranged and enriched by Biblical allusions, metaphors and cadence.6. O f Studies is the most popular of Bacon’s 58 essays. I tanalyzes what studies chiefly serve for, the different ways adopted by different people to pursue studies, and how studies exert influence over human character. F orceful and persuasive, compact and precise. O f Studies reveals to us Bacon’s mature attitude towards learning.V. J ohn Donne （约翰·邓恩）1. T he term “metaphysical poetry”is commonly used to namethe work of the 17th-century writers who wrote under the influence of John Donne. W ith a rebellious spirit the metaphysical poets tried to break away from the conventional fashion of the Elizabethan love poetry. T he diction is simple as compared with that of the Elizabethan or the Neoclassic periods, and echoes the words and cadences of common speech.T he imagery is drawn from the actual life. T he form is frequently that of an argument with the poet’s beloved, with God, or with himself.2. T he Elegies and Satires; The Songs and Sonnets.VI. J ohn Milton （约翰·弥尔顿）1. Paradise Lost ; Paradise Regained; Samson Agonistes.2. P aradise Lost is about Eve, seduced by Satan’s rhetoricand her own confused ambition—as well as the mere prompting of hunger—falls into sin through innocent credulity. A dam falls by consciously choosing human love rather than obeying God.T his is the error wherein his greatness lies. I n the fall of man Adam discovered his full humanity. B ut man’s fall is the sequel to another and more stupendous tragedy.3. W orking through the tradition of a Christian humanism,Milton wrote Paradise Lost, intending to expose the ways of Satan and to “justify the ways of God to men.”A t the center of the conflict between human love and spiritual duty liesMilton’s fundamental concern with freedom and choice; the freedom to submit to God’s prohibition on eating the apple and the choice of disobedience made for love.4. T he freedom of the will is the keystone of Milton’screed. H is poem attempts to convince us that the unquestionable truth of Biblical revelation means that an all-knowing God was just in allowing Adam and Eve to be tempted and, of their free will, to choose sin and its inevitable punishment. A nd, thereby, it opens the way for the voluntary sacrifice of Christ which showed the mercy of God in bringing good out of evil.5. I n his life, Milton shows himself a real revolutionary, amaster poet and a great prose writer. H e fought for freedom in all aspects as a Christian humanist, while his achievements in literature make him tower over all the other English writers of his time and exert a great influence over later ones.莎士比亚1. 莎士比亚戏剧生涯的第一阶段是作为一名学徒。