【正文】 ght, he wrote in a style that is unsurpassed in its sonority, eloquence, majesty and grandeur. Daniel Defoe Daniel Defoe is considered one of the greatest fiction writers of 18thcentury England. Defoe was a very good storyteller. His sentences are sometimes short, crisp and plain, and sometimes long and rambling, while leave on the reader an impression of casual narration. His language is smooth, easy, colloquial and mostly vernacular. There is nothing artificial in his language: it is mon English at its best. Robinson Crusoe The story of Robinson Crusoe is wellknown throughout the world. It tells of how Robinson Crusoe, an English mariner, having shipwrecked on an island, managed to struggle for live for 28 years there and rescued a black man, whom he named Friday, from the cannibals (person who eats human flesh). Later, Robinson got hold of a ship and sailed home. The book’s ―realistic‖ touch and ingenuity (originality) aroused great interest from the readers both in England and abroad. Robinson is here a real hero: a typical eighteenthcentury English middleclass man, with a great capacity for work, inexhaustible energy, courage, patience and persistence in overing obstacles, in struggling against the hostile natural environment. He is the very prototype of the empire builder, the pioneer colonist. Jonathan Swift Jonathan Swift is a master satirist. Gulliver’s Travels Gulliver’s Travels is his best work, a social and political prose satire, in the form of a book of travels. It is partly burlesque of travelers’ tales, and partly realistic wonderbook with a very different satirical aim. As a whole, the book is one of the most effective and devastating criticism and satires of all aspects in the then English and European life—socially, politically, religiously, philosophically, scientifically, and morally. Its social significance is great and its exploration into human nature profound. The book is also an artistic masterpiece. Jonathan Swift himself is one of the greatest masters of English prose. His language is simple, clear, and vigorous. There are no ornaments in his writing, but it bees homes to the reader. Romanticism Romanticism was a movement in literature, philosophy, music and art which developed in Europe in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Starting from the ideas of Rousseau in France and from the Storm and Stress Movement in Germany, it held that classicism, dominant since the 16th century, failed to express man’s emotional nature and overlooked his profound inner forces. Romanticism emphasized individual values and aspirations above those of society. As a reaction to the industrial revolution, it looked to the Middle Ages and to direct contact with nature for inspiration. It gave impetus to the national liberation movement in 19thcentury Europe. The features of Romanticism were: 1) The romantics were against the modes of thinking in the 18th century which saw man as a social animal. 2) They emphasize the special qualities of each individual 3) So Romanticism actually constitutes a change of direction from attention to the outer world of social civilization to the inner world of human spirit. 4) In essence it tends to see the individual as the very center of life and all experience. They also place the individual at the center of art and make literature most valuable as an express of his or her unique feelings and particular attitudes, and value its accuracy in portraying the individual’s experiences. Attitudes towards Individualism: Middle ages: emphasize on God。A Brief Revision Geoffrey Chaucer Geoffrey Chaucer is the ―father of English poetry‖ and one of the greatest narrative poets of England. He was buried in Westminster Abbey. Chaucer’s language, now called Middle English, is vivid and exact. Geoffrey Chaucer is the first great poet who wrote in the English language. Chaucer must be ranked among the most learned and acplished of English poets. The Canterbury Tales is his masterpiece and one of the monumental works in English literature. The Book of the Duchess was posed by Chaucer probably as a memorial poem for the Duchess of Lancaster, who died of the plague. The Canterbury Tales The Canterbury Tales should be an immense work of 124 stories but only 24 were written. Inplete as they are, The Canterbury Tales covers practically all the major types of medieval literature. The Canterbury Tales was written in heroic couplet. General tone: happy, easy, lively, humorous. Terms: Rhyme: the repetition of sounds at the ends of words is called rhyme. When words rhyme at the end of lines of poetry it is called end rhyme. Heroic couplet: Iambic pentameter lines rhymed in pairs. It is called heroic because in England, especially in the 18th century, it was much used for heroic (epic) poems. Iambic pentameter is a meter in poetry, consisting of an unrhymed line with five iambs or feet, felt by many to be the most powerful of all metrical forms in English poetry. Renaissance Generally, it refers to the period between the 14th and mid17th centuries. The Renaissance marks a transition from the medieval to the modern world. It first started in Italy, with the flowering of painting, sculpture, architecture, and literature. The Renaissance, therefore, in essence, is a historical period in which the European humanist thinker