【正文】 ponsibility, good manners and clearsighted judgment over the Romantic tendencies of emotion and individuality. She shows contemptuous feelings towards snobbery, stupidity, worldliness and vulgarity through subtle satire and irony. Austen’s main literary concern is about human beings in their personal relationships. In her works, she characterizes a human being not at moments of crisis, but in the most trivial incidents of everyday life. Her characteristic theme is that maturity is achieved through the loss of illusions. Faults of character are corrected when through tribulation, lessons are learned. Because of her sensitivity to universal patterns of human behavior, Jane Austen has brought the English novel, as an art of form, to its maturity, and she has been regarded as one of the greatest of all novelists. Gee Gordon Byron He is well known in China. Don Juan, the long satirical epic, is generally considered his masterpiece. As a leading Romanticist, Byron’s chief contribution is his creation of the ―Byronic hero‖, a proud, mysterious rebel figure of noble origin. With immense superiority in his passions and powers, this Byronic hero would carry on his shoulders the burden of righting all the wrongs in a corrupt society, and would rise singlehandedly against any kind of tyrannical rules either in government, in religion, or in moral principles with unconquerable wills and inexhaustible energies. The conflict is usually one of rebellious individuals against outworn social systems and conventions. The Byronic hero became an idol of the young. Percy Bysshe Shelley One of the leading Romantic poets, an intense and original lyrical poet in the English language He is known to Chinese readers mainly for his Ode to the West Wind (1820), whose ending ―If winter es, can spring be far behind?‖ has given courage to many revolutionaries faced with reverses, even death. John Keats (17951821) The one artistic aim in Keats’ poetry was to create a beautiful world of imagination as opposed to the sordid reality of his day. His leading principle is ―beauty is truth, truth is beauty.‖ That is, ―What the imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth, whether it existed before or not said by the poet‖. Gee G. Byron, Percy B. Shelley and John Keats were called positive romantic poets Victorian novelists The Victorian period roughly coincides with the reign of Queen Victoria who ruled over England from 1836 to 1901. The period has generally regarded as one of the most glorious in the English history. Victorian literature, as a product of its age, naturally took on its quality of magnitude and diversity. It was manysided and plex, and reflected both romantically and realistically the great changes that were going on in people’s life and thought. Charlotte Bronte, William Thackeray, Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy were representatives of Victorian novelists. Charlotte Bronte (18161855) Jane Eyre is one of the most popular and important novels of the Victorian Age. It is noted for its sharp criticism of the existing society, that is, the religious hypocrisy of charity institutions. The social discrimination Jane experiences first as a dependent at her aunt’s house and later as a governess at Thornfield, and the false social conversation as concerning love and marriage. At the same time, it is an intense moral fable, Jane, like Mr. Rochester, has to undergo a series of physical and moral tests to grow up and achieve her final happiness. Jane Eyre, taking the form of autobiographies written by authoritative and reliable narrators tells a story of a child’s development and maturation. ? Helen Burns’ death recalls the death of Charlotte’s sisters at Cowan Bridge. ? It is a work of critical realism as well as the first and one of the most popular works of the working middle class women. ? Jane’s experience originates from Charlotte’s own experience. It is the first governess novel in the history of English literature. ? Jane is an orphan who grows up lonely without anybody caring for her. ? Jane is a small, plain and poor governess of Victorian era instead of the rich, gentle, frail, beauties of the conventional heroine. ? Jane only has an intense feeling, a ready sympathy and a strong sense of equality and independence. Critical Realism 1. Time: the middle of the 19th century 2. Representatives: Charles Dickens and William Thackeray etc. 3. Background: Industrial Revolution (1760 – 1840) (employment of machines。 A prominence of firstperson lyric poem ―I‖ – the direct person of the poet。 Emphasized the special qualities of each individual’s mind。 emphasized on the dignity of man and the importance of the present life Enlightenment: saw man as social man。 and the poetic tragedy Samson Agonistes. Paradise Lost Paradise Lost is long epic poem divided into 12 books. The theme is the fall of men: man’s disobedience and the loss thereupon of Paradise. In this epic poem Satan is the most successfully portrayed character. He was evil, rebellious, courageous, heroic and tragic. Milton’s style Milton is difficult to read, because of his involved style with frequent inversion (probably owing to the influence of Latin syntax) and very plicated sentence structures. His sentences are often long, sometimes running into a dozen, or even more lines. To express his sublimity of thou