英国文学名词解释

英国文学名词解释

Alliteration :In alliterative verse, certain accented words in a

line began

with the same consonant sound. There are generally four

accents in a line, three of which show alliteration.

Spenserian stanza It was invented by Edmund Spenser for his

allegorical Faerie Queene .Verse form that consists of eight

iambic pentameter lines followed by a ninth line of six iambic feet;

the rhyme scheme is ababbcbcc. The first eight lines produce an

effect of formal unity, while the hexameter completes the

thought of the stanza . The Spenserian stanza has origins in the

Old French ballade , the Italian ottava rima and the stanza form

used by Chaucer in his “Monk's Tale”

Blank verse

1. unrhymed iambic pentameter,

2. the dominant verse form of English dramatic and narrative

poetry since the mid-16th century,

3. one of the most common metrical patterns in English

poetry.

4. used in Shakespeare's dramas and Milton's Paradise Lost

The Shakespearean sonnet

the form of sonnet utilized throughout Shakespeare's

sequence, is divided into four parts. The first three parts are each

four lines long, and are known as quatrains , rhymed abab; the

fourth part is called the couplet, and is rhymed gg. Sonnet is a

14-line lyric poem, usually written in rhymed iambic pentameter

with a rhymed pattern: abab cdcd efef gg .The Shakespearean

sonnet is often used to develop a sequence of metaphors or

ideas, one in each quatrain, while the couplet offers either a

summary or a new take on the preceding images or ideas.

The Metaphysical Poets

About the beginning of the 17th century, there appeared in

England a school of poets called "Metaphysicals" by Samuel

Johnson. With a rebellious spirit, the metaphysical poets tried to

break away from the conventional fashion of the Elizabethan love

poetry. The diction is simple as compared with that of the

Elizabethan [I,liz?’bi:θ?n] or the Neoclassic periods and echoes

the words and cadences of common speech. Neoclassicism: a

revival in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries of classical

standards of order, balance, and harmony in literature. Alexander

Pope, John Dryden and Samuel Johnson were major exponents

of the neoclassical school. It found its artistic models in the

classical literature of the ancient Greek and Roman writers like

Homer, Virgil, Horace etc. and in the contemporary French writers

such as V oltaire and Diderot . It put the stress on the classical

artistic ideal of order, logic, proportion, restrained emotion,

accuracy, good taste and decorum .

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.