1. Geoffrey Chaucer is the forerunner of Humanism and introduces from France the rhymed stanzas of various types to English poetry to replace the old English alliterative verse.
2. Geoffrey Chaucer , the “father of English poetry” and one of the greatest narrative poets of England, was born in London in about the year 1340.
3. Despite the enormous plan, The Canterbury Tales in fact contains a general “prologue” and only 24 tales, of which two are left unfinished. 4. The 16th century in England was a period of the breaking up of feudal relations and the establishing of the foundations of capitalism. 5. Wyatt was the first to introduce the sonnet into English literature. 6. Because the wool trade was rapidly growing in bulk, it was a time when, according to Tomas More, “sheep devoured men.”
7. “Shall I Compare Thee to a summer’s Day” is one of William Shakespeare’s best known poetry. 8. Humanism is the key-note of the Renaissance.
9. The 17th century was a period when absolute monarchy impeded the further development of capitalism in England and the bourgeoisie could no longer bear the sway of landed nobility. 10. The most popular genre in the literature of the Restoration was that of comedy whose chief aim was to entertain the licentious aristocrats. 11. The Revolution Period is also called Puritan Age, because the English Revolution was carried out under a religious cloak. 12. Paradise lost tells how Stan rebelled against God and how Adam and Eve were driven out of Eden. 13. The Enlightenment on the whole was an expression of struggle of the progressive class of bourgeoisie against feudalism. 14. It is simply for convenience that we study 18th century writings in three main divisions: the region of so-called classicism, the revival of romantic poetry, and the beginnings of the modern novel. 15. Swift was the most remarkable satirist in the 18th century who criticized the new bourgeois-aristocratic society of his age with mercy. 16. It was Henry Fielding and Smollet who became the real founders of the genre of the bourgeois realistic novel in England and Europe. 17. The mysterious element plays an enormous role in the Gothic novel; it is so replete with bloodcurdling scenes and unnatural feelings that it is
justly called “a novel of horror.” 18. Robinson Crusoe is largely an adventure story, rather than the study of human character which Defoe probably intended it to be. 19. The 18th century literature is an age of prose. 20. Henry Fielding is the greatest novelist of the 18th century. 21. Of all the romantic poets of the 18th century, Blake is the most independent and the most original. 22. The greatest of Scottish poets is Robert Burns. 23. Romanticism as a literary movement came into being in England early in the latter half of the 18th century. 24. With the publication of William Wordsworth’s Lyrical Ballads in collaboration with S.T. Coleridge, Romanticism began to bloom and found a firm place in the history of English literature. 25. The Romanticism Age came to an end in 1832 when the last Romantic writer Walter Scott died. 26. Jane Austin is one of the realist novelists: she drew vivid and realistic pictures of everyday life of the country society in her novels. 27. The Victorian period Literature began with passage of the Reform Bill in 1832 and closed at the end of the Bore war in 1902. 28. In the 19th century English literature, a new trend Critical realism appeared after the romantic poetry, and flourished in the forties and in the early fifties. 29. Critical realism found its expression in the form of novel. 30. Critical realism reveals the corrupting influence of the rule of cash upon human nature. Here lies in the essentially democratic and humanitarian character of critical realism. 31. Charles Dickens was the greatest representative of English Critical realism. 32. The author of The Mill on the Floss is George Eliot. 33. The Bronte sisters are Charlotte Bronte, Emily Bronte and Anne Bronte. 34. Most of Tomas Hood’s works were humorous poems, containing topical comments on contemporary events and manners.
35. The major theme of the modernist literature are the distorted, alienated and ill relationships between man and nature, man and society, man and man, and man and himself. 36. The 20th century has witnessed a great achievement in English poetry. 37. James Joyce is the most outstanding stream of consciousness novelist. 38. Oscar Wilde is a spokesman of the school of “Art for Art’s Sake.” 39. Bernard Shaw is an Irish playwright. 40. Bernard Shaw was strongly against the credo of “Art for Art’s Sake.” 41. On a world tour made by 1931, Bernard Shaw visited China and was warmly received by Luxun and others.
1. Heroic couplet (英雄双韵体) :
There are ten syllables in each line, iambic pentameter, one rhyme in every two lines.(每行十个音节，抑扬格，两行一押韵)
2. Ballad （民谣）A ballad is a form of verse, often a narrative set to music. Ballads were particularly characteristic of British and Irish popular poetry and song from the later medieval period until the 19th century and used extensively across Europe and later North America, Australia and North Africa.
3. Renaissance: the word means rebirth or revival. The humanistic revival of classical art, architecture, literature, and learning that originated in Italy in the 14th century and later spread throughout Europe.
The 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 from the corruption of the Roman Catholic Church.
4. Humanism: The key word for it is humanism, which emphasizes the belief in human beings, his environment and doings and his brave fight for the emancipation of man from the tyranny of the church and religious dogmas. It originally indicates a revival of classical arts and learning after the dark ages of medieval obscurantism. Its aim is to get rid of those old feudalist ideas in medieval time and introduce new ideas that express the interests of the rising bourgeoisie. Shakespeare, Spenser, and Marlowe are all famous literary figures in this period.
5. Sentimentalism is a literal movement in the middle of the 18th century in England which concentrates on the distressed of the poor unfortunate people and demonstrates that effusive（感情奔放的） emotion was evidence of kindness and goodness. It reveals grief, pains and tears. • Representatives:
• Thomas Gray, Samuel Richardson, Oliver Goldsmith, Laurence Sterne
• The Vicar of Wakefield (1766).
• A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy (1768)
6. Pre-romanticism: a literal trend in the English literature of the latter half of the 18th century which composes the romance devoted to the medieval times. William Blake and Robert Burns are two representatives of pre-romanticists.
7. The Gothic novel: the novel which exploits the possibilities of mystery and terror in gloomy landscapes, decaying mansions with dark castle, secret passages, instruments of torture, ghostly visitations ghostly music behind which lurks no one knows what as the central story, the persecution of a beautiful maiden by an obsessed and haggard villain. The real originator of English Gothic novel was Horace Walpole, with his famous Castle of Otranto (1764) . 8. Romanticism (the Romantic Movement), a literary movement, and profound shift in sensibility, which took place in Britain and throughout Europe 1770-1848. Intellectually it marked a violent reaction to the Enlightenment. Politically it was inspired by the revolutions in America and France and popular wars of independence in Poland, Spain, Greece, and elsewhere.
Emotionally it expressed an extreme assertion of the self and the value of individual experience, together with the sense of the infinite and transcendental. Socially it championed progressive causes, though when these were frustrated it often produced a bitter, gloomy, and despairing outlook.
9. Lake Poets: Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southey have often been mentioned as the “Lake poets” because they lived in the Lake District in the northwestern parts of England. Their poetry usually praises the beauty of natural and countryside life. The three traversed the same path in politics and in poetry, beginning as radicals and ends as conservatives 10. Aestheticism is a Victorian literary movement that was begun in the late 19th century.Followers of the movement believed that art should not be mixed with social, political, or moral teaching. Walter Pater’s statement “the love of art for its own sake” is a good summary of aestheticism. The movement had its roots in France, but it gained widespread importance in England in the last half of the nineteenth century, where it helped change the Victorian practice of including moral lessons in literature. Oscar Wilde is one of the best-known \"aesthetes\" of the late nineteenth century.
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