William Shakespeare
• Great comedies: ? • Great tragedies: ? •
p71-72
• Sonnet 18
p118
The Merchant of Venice
• • • • • Great comedies: A Midsummer Night’s Dream The Merchant of Venice As You Like It Twelfth Night
John Donne and the Metaphysical Poets
Metaphysical School: • They are a school of poets at the beginning of the 17th century, with John Donne as the founder. • Their works are generally characterized by mysticism and obscurity in content and fantasticality and conceit in form. • They are known for their excessive use of philosophy and deliberate show-off of their cleverness and learning.
p167
1. Neo-Classicism
★Classicism emphasizes the traditional and the universal, and places value on reason, clarity, balance, and order.
-- control literary creation by fixed law and rules (order, logic, restrained emotions and accuracy)
The Renaissance and humanism • was an intellectual movement. It sprang from first in Italy in the 14th century and gradually spread all over Europe. Two features are striking. The one is a thirsting curiosity for the classical literature of the Greek and Latin. Another feature is the keen interest in the activities of humanity. • Humanism is the key-note of the Renaissance.
• Playwright: P67
Christopher Marlowe • William Shakespeare Christopher Marlowe is the greatest o the pioneers of English drama. He makes blank verse the principal vehicle of expression in drama.f • P67-68
Blank verse is a verse with unrhymed (rhymeless) iambic pentameter. Sonnet is a fourteen-line poem in iambic pentameter with a carefully patterned rhyme scheme.
• The 20th century Stream of Consciousness
Anglo-Saxon 449-1066
• Three pagan Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, from
Denmark and northern Germany came around 450---600 AD
Geoffrey Chaucer
• The Middle Class Author • “Father of English poetry”: Chaucer introduced from France the rhymed stanzas---heroic couplet. heroic couplet: is a rhymed couplet of iambic pentameter. • Forerunner of English Renaissance and humanism • The founder of English realism/ The first realistic writer • first to be buried in the Poet’s Corner of Westminster Abbey
The 17th century
• The Period of Revolution： the Glorious Revolution in 1688
• P130-131
• Metaphysical poet: John Donne; • John Milton • John Bunyan • John Dryden
Literature of the 18th century
• • • • • It is an age of prose rather than poetry.
p166
Literal trends: Neoclassicism: Addison，Steele，Pope The novel: Defoe, Fielding, Smollet,
John Milton’s works
• Paradise Lost 《失乐园》 • Paradise Regain《复乐园》 • Samson Agonistes《力士参孙》
• It’s all based on the story of the Old Testament • of the Bible • a long epic in 12 books, written in blank verse
• The Canterbury Tales
p43-45
English Renaissance
(1520s---1620s)
• Poet: Thomas Wyatt, Edmund Spenser Thomas Wyatt was the first to introduce the sonnet into English literature. Edmund Spenser: (epic) The Fairy Queen • Essayist: Francis Bacon
Geoffrey Chaucer William Shakespeare 4 Johns: John Milton & John Bunyan Neo-classicism; Realistic Novel; Sentimentalism，Pre-romanticism Romanticism; Critical Realism
England’s natinal epic:
The song of Beowulf
Alliteration is a device with certain accented
words in a line beginning with the same consonant sound.
p3
Anglo-Norman Period
Richardson, Swift
• Sentimentalism: Goldsmith, Sterne, Gray • pre-romanticism: Blake, Burns
Pope: authority in matters of
literary art; made heroic couplet popular in poem writing; master of satire and heroic couplet
English Literature
Review
Types of questions
• Ⅰ. Choose from the given choices the correct one. (2’X15=30’) • Ⅱ. Define the following terms. (10’X3=30’) • Ⅲ. III. Answer one of the following questions. (20’X1=20’) • Ⅳ. Write no less than 100 words on one of the following topics in English. (20’ X1=20’)
John Dryden (1631-1700)
A poet, playwright and critic The Poet Laureate/ The Laureate He established the heroic couplet as one of the principal English verse forms The forerunner of the English classicism.
• 1066, The Norman Conquest • the battle of Hastings • William, Duke of Normandy win • P17-18 • Metrical Romance: • the culmination of the Arthurian romances • Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
What we’ve learned?