【正文】 文學(xué)青年 @2班 英國文學(xué)史及選讀 主講教師：曹小雪 1 1. The Renaissance Period Part I. Definition of literary terms （請(qǐng)背誦下來?。。。? 1. Allegory. As a rule, an allegory (also defined as an extended metaphor) is a story in verse or prose with a double meaning: a primary or suface meaning, and a secondary or underthesurface meaning. It is a story that can be read, understood and interpreted at two levels (and in some cases at three or four levels). It is closely related to fable and parable, which are didactic, paratively short and simple allegories. The form may be literary or pictorial or both. An allegory has no definite length. The higher levels of meaning are usually concerned with moral, religious, political, symbolic or mythical ideas. In an allegory, characters or personifications represent something other than themselves virtues, vices, causes or issues. There are two kinds of allegory: those that use personifications, as in Bunyan?s Pilgrim’s Progress and Spenser?s The Faerie Queene。 and those that use a special kind of symbolism, as in Dante?s Divine Comedy. 2. Blank verse. Blank verse is unrhymed poetry, typically in iambic pentameter, and, as such, the dominant verse form of English dramatic and narrative poetry since the mid16th century. Blank verse is not wirtten in stanza form. Instead, the poem is developed in verse paragraphs that vary in length. Blank verse is a flexible form of expression that gives the poet a choice of many variations within the metrical pattern. Because of its flexibility, blank verse is especially appropriate for narrative and dramatic poetry and other longer kinds of poetry. Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, adapted blank verse from Italian poetry to English in the early 1500?s. Christopher Marlowe and Shakespeare used this form with great power and variety in their plays. Many poets of the 1800?s and 1900?s wrote in blank verse. They include William Wordsworth, Wiliam Cullen Bryant, John Keats, Lord Tennyson, Edwin Arlington Robinson, Robert Frost, and Wallace Stevens. 3. Humanism. Broadly, this term suggests any attitude, which tends to exalt the human element or stress the importance of human interests, as opposed to the supernatural, divine elementsor as opposed to the grosser, animal elements. In a more specific sense, humanism suggests a devotion to those studies supposed to promote human culture most effectivelyiin particular, those dealing with the life, thought, language, and literature of ancient Greece and Rome. In literary history the most important use of the term is to designate the revival of classical culture that acpanied the Renaissance. 4. Metaphysical. It refers to the school of poets that appeared in the Revolutionary period in England by using quite unconventional and often surprising conceits。 the metaphsical poets wrote poems full of wit and humor. But sometimes the logic argument and conceits bee pervasive, going to preposterous dimensions. The language is colloquial but very powerful, creating unorthodox images on the reader?s mind. John Donne and Andrew Marvell are the representative metaphisical poets. 5. Renaissance. It is the rebirth of artistic, literary and academic interest and creativity that marks the transition from Medieval Europe to the modern world. Generally dated from the 14th to the mid17th century, the Renaissance emerged in Italy and spread to the rest of Europe. In outlook the Renaissance brought new importance to individual expression, selfconsciousness, and worldy experience。 cultually it was a time of brillant acplishment in scholarship, literature, science, and the arts. More generally, it was an era of emerging nationstates and exploration, and the beginning of a revolution in merce. It is best to 文學(xué)青年 @2班 英國文學(xué)史及選讀 主講教師：曹小雪 2 regard the Renaissance as the result of a new emphasis upon and a new bination of tendencies and attitudes already existing, stimulat