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Brief Introduction to the Renaissance PeriodI. 应用

Definitions of the Literary Terms:

1. The Renaissance: The Renaissance marks a transition from the medieval to the modern world. Generally, it refers to the period between the 14th & 17th centuries. It first started in Italy, with the flowering of painting, sculpture & literature. From Italy the movement went to embrace the rest of Europe. The Renaissance, which means "rebirth" or "revival," is actually a movement stimulated by a series of historical events, such as the re-discovery of ancient Roman & Greek culture, the new discoveries in geography & astrology, the religious reformation & the economic expansion. The Renaissance, therefore, in essence is a historical period in which the European humanist thinkers & 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, & to recover the purity of the early church from the corruption of the Roman Catholic Church.

2. Humanism: Humanism is the essence of the Renaissance. It sprang from the endeavor to restore a medieval reverence for the ancient authors and is frequently taken as the beginning of the Renaissance on its conscious, intellectual side, for the Greek and Roman civilization was based on such a conception that man is the measure of all things. Through the new learning, humanists not only saw the arts of splendor and enlightenment, but the human values represented in the works. Renaissance humanists found in the classics a justification to exalt human nature and came to see that human beings were glorious creatures capable of individual development in the direction of perfections, and that the world they inhabited was theirs not to despise but to question, explore, and enjoy. Thus, by emphasizing the dignity of human beings and the importance of the present life, they voiced their beliefs that man did not only have the right to enjoy the beauty of this life, but had the ability to perfect himself and to perform wonders. Thomas More, Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare are the best representatives of the English humanists.

3. Spenserian stanza:

Spenserian stanza was invented by Edmund Spenser. It is a stanza of nine lines, with the first eight lines in iambic pentameter & the last line in iambic hexameter, rhyming ababbcbcc.

4. Metaphysical poetry: The term "metaphysical poetry" is commonly used to name the work of the 17th century writers who wrote under the influence of John Donne. 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 or

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the Neoclassic periods, and echoes the words and cadences of common speech. The imagery in drawn from the actual life. The form is frequently that of an argument with the poet's beloved, with God, or with himself.

5. The Renaissance her A Renaissance hero refers to one created by Christopher Marlowe in his drama. Such a hero is always individualistic and full of ambition, facing bravely the challenge from both gods and men. He embodies Marlowe's humanistic ides of human dignity and capacity. Different from the tragic hero in medieval plays, who seeks the way to heaven through salvation and god's will, he is against conventional morality and contrives to obtain heaven on earth through his own efforts. With the endless aspiration for power, knowledge, and glory, the hero interprets the true Renaissance spirit. Both Tamburlaine and Faustus are typical in possessing such a spirit.

I. Edmund Spenser

1. 一般识记

Brief Introduction to the Author

English poet，born in London, England, about 1552,and died in London, Jan 13, 1599.

2. 识记His Major Works

Spenser's most important work & masterpiece is The Faerie Queene, a great poem of its age. A complex moral, religious, & political allegory, it is also an epic that exalts Queen Elizabeth Ⅰ& the English nation. According to Spenser's own explanation, his principal intention is to present through a "historical poem" the example of a perfect gentleman: "to fashion a gentleman or noble person in virtuous & gentle discipline." Its principal hero is the Arthur of medieval legend. The six books of the poem illustrate the nature of particular virtues, such as, temperance & justice. Other major works of Spenser are The Shepheardes Calender(1579), a poem consisting of 12 eclogues-corresponding to the 12 months of the year; Epithalamion (1595), a poem expressing the deep personal feelings occasioned by the poets second marriage; Amoretti (1595), a series of sonnets.

3. 领会His Influence

1) Main qualities of Spenser's poetry

①a perfect melody

②a rare sense of beauty

③a splendid imagination

④a lofty moral purity & seriousness

⑤a dedicated idealism

2) In his writing, Spenser drew on the conventions & thought of Classical, medieval, & Renaissance literature. However, he added to his fusion of these diverse elements much that was original, & his works inspired many later English poets. He created a new stanza, called the

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Spenserian stanza, which is well suited to narrative verse. His skills in writing melodious English verse & his combination of emotion, erudition, & spiritual vision have won him the admiration of generations of English poets. It is his idealism, his love of beauty, &his exquisite melody that make him known as "the poets' poet."

4. 应用

The Faerie Queene:

1) It is a long, allegorical poem. In the poem, Spenser dramatized political, religious, & moral themes by personifying them, or making them characters.

2)Plot: The story, which is set against a background of Arthur & medieval legend, deals with the adventures of six knights of the court of the fairy queen named Gloriana, who represents Queen Elizabeth Ⅰ of English.

The faerie Queen was left unfinished at Spenser's death. It was originally planned as a 12-book poem. But only 6 books were completed. The poem is particularly admired for the melodic beauty of its language & for its rich content of philosophical & mythological material presented in the form of vivid narratives.

II. Christopher Marlowe

1. 一般识记

Brief Introduction

English dramatist & poet,born in Canterbury, England, Feb, 6,1567, died in Deptford, England, May 30, 1593. Marlowe was the first great English Dramatist. He brought to the English stage a new concept of tragedy, one in which the drama centers around the struggles of a man overwhelmed by his passions & ambitions.

2. 识记

His Major Works

His most famous tragedies are Doctor Faustus, The Jew of Malta, Tamburlaine & Edward Ⅱ. In his plays, Marlowe used blank verse, which he molded into a superb instrument for expressing intense emotions. After his development of blank verse it became the standard medium for English dramatic & epic poetry. His non-dramatic poetry includes Hero & Leander, "the Passionate shepherd to His love," & a verse translation of Ovid's Amores.

Marlowe's Doctor Faustus (about 1589), generally considered his best play, was based on a real Dr. Faustus, who was later associated with a medieval legend of a man selling his soul to the devil. The play's dominant moral is human rather than religious. It celebrates the human passion for knowledge, power & happiness; it also reveals man's frustration in realizing the high aspirations in a hostile moral order. The last scene, in which Faustus confronts his doom, brilliantly renders the

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fear & agony of a condemned man.

The Jew of Malta (about 1589) illustrates Marlowe's outstanding portrayal of character. Its hero, Barabas the Jew, served as the model for Shylock in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice. In about 1592. Marlowe wrote one of the first successful English historical dramas, Edward Ⅱ。It is his most dramatically mature play & exhibits his mastery of characterization, stage craft & rhetoric.

Tamburlaine is a play about an ambitious & pitiless Tartar conqueror in the fourteenth century who rose from a shepherd to an overpowering King. By depicting a great hero with high ambition & sheer brutal force in conquering one enemy after another, Marlowe voiced the supreme desire of the man of the Renaissance for infinite power & authority.

3. 领会His Achievements & Influence

Achievements: Marlowe's greatest achievement lies in that he perfected the blank verse & made it the principal medium of English drama.

His second achievement is his creation of the Renaissance hero for English drama.

The theme of his works is the praise of the Renaissance spirit.

His influence: A man of wide learning, Marlowe was one of the extra ordinary poets & playwrights of his time. "Marlowe's mighty line," as Ben Jonson called his blank verse, was one of the most important contributions to the art of English literature.

4. 应用Dr. Faustus

The selection of ActⅠfrom Dr. Faustus is mainly about Faustus is showing his great ambition, that is, if he had many souls, he would give them all to the Devil so that he could control the world. In portraying Faustus, a more introspective & philosophical figure than Tamburlaine, Marlowe praises his soaring aspiration for knowledge while warning against the sin of pride since Faustus's downfall was caused by his despair in God & trust in Devil.

Ⅲ. William Shakespeare

1. 一般识记Brief Introduction

William Shakespeare was the greatest writer of plays who ever lived. His friend & fellow playwright Ben Jonson said that Shakespeare was "not of an age but for all time." The 18th-century English essayist Samuel Johnson described his work as "the mirror of life." The 19th-century English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge spoke of "myriad-minded Shakespeare." The 20th-century English dramatist George Bernard Shaw stressed his "enormous power over language."

2. 识记His Life & Career

The exact date of Shakespeare's birth is not known, but his baptism was recorded on April 26, 1564, in the parish register of Holy Trinity

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Church at Stratford-on-Avon. Since it was customary to baptize infants within two or three days of birth, April 23 is regarded as a reasonable birth date. It is also the date on which he died in 1616. Generally, his dramatic career is divided into 4 periods.

The First Period (1590-1594)-five historical plays & four comedies: Henry Ⅵ, part Ⅰ (1590)

Henry Ⅵ, part Ⅱ (1590)

Henry Ⅵ, part Ⅲ (1591)

Richard Ⅲ (1592)

Titus Andronicus (1593)

The Comedy of Errors (1592)

The Two Gentlemen of Verona (1594)

The Taming of the Shrew (1593)

Love's Labor's Lost (1594)

The Second Period (1595-1600)-five historical plays, six comedies & two tragedies:

Richard Ⅱ (1595)

King John (1596)

Henry Ⅳ, Part Ⅰ & Part Ⅱ(1597)

Henry V (1598)

A Midsummer Night's Dream (1595)

The Merchant of Venice (1596)

Much Ado About Nothing (1598)

As You Like It (1599)

Twelfth Night (1600)

The Merry Wives of Winsor (1598)

Romeo & Juliet (1595)

Julius Caesar (1599)

The Third Period (1601-1609)-Seven tragedies & two dark comedies: Hamlet

Othello

King Lear

Macbeth

Antony & Cleopatra

Troilus & Cressida

Coriolonus

All's Well That Ends Well

Measure for Measure

The Fourth Period (1609-1612)-Romantic tragic-comedies & two plays:

Pericles

Cymbeline

The Winte's Tale

The Tempest

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Henry Ⅷ

The Two Noble Kinsmen

Shakespeare's authentic non-dramatic poetry consists of two long narrative poems: Venus & Adonis & The Rape of Lucrece & his sequence of 154 sonnets.

3. 领会His Influence

1) Contributions to language

Many words and commonly used phrases have been added to everyday English vocabulary through their appearance in Shakespeare's works.

2) Effects on literature

Shakespeare's plays & poetry have had a pervasive influence on world literature. Most of the great literary figures of the world have been inspired & stimulated by his achievement.

On the whole, however, Shakespeare's contribution has been to the language & spirit of later writing rather than to its form. References & parallels to Shakespeare's phraseology have occurred in literature since the 16th century.

Perhaps the greatest inspiration to subsequent authors has been Shakespeare's capacity to depict life in all its complexity & to illuminate man's character & destiny.

4. 领会His Major Works

1) Drama

A. The Merchant of Venice

Theme: to praise the friendship between Antonio & Bassanio, to idealize Portia as a heroine of great beauty, wit & loyalty, & to expose the insatiable greed & brutality of the Jew.

Plot: The play has a double plot (P39)

B. Hamlet

Hamlet is generally regarded as Shakespeare's most popular play on the stage, for it has the qualities of a "blood-and-thunder" thriller & a philosophical exploration of life & death. And the timeless appeal of this mighty drama lies in its combination of intrigue, emotional conflict & searching philosophic melancholy.

The play opens with Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, appearing in a mood of world-weariness occasioned by his father's recent death & by his mother's hasty remarriage with Claudius, his father's brother. While encountering his father's ghost, Hamlet is informed that Claudius has murdered his father & then taken over both his father's throne & widow. This, Hamlet, is urged by the ghost to seek revenge for his father's "foul & most unnatural murder." Trapped in a nightmare world of spying, testing & plotting, & apparently bearing the intolerable burden of the duty to revenge his father's death, Hamlet is obliged to inhabit a shadow world, to live suspended between fact & fiction, language & action. His

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life is one of constant role-playing, examining the nature of action only to deny its possibility, for he is too sophisticated to degrade his nature to the conventional role of a stage revenger. By characterizing Hamlet, Shakespeare successfully makes a philosophical exploration of life & death.

C. The Tempest

The Tempest, an elaborate & fantastic story, is known as the best of his final romances. The characters are rather allegorical & the subject full of suggestion. The humanly impossible events can be seen occurring everywhere, in the play. The playwright resorts to the supernatural atmosphere & to the dreams to solve the conflict. To Shakespeare, the whole life is no more than a dream. Thus, The Tempest is a typical example of his pessimistic view towards human life & society in his late years.

2) Poems

A. Sonnets

The first 126 sonnets are apparently addressed to a handsome young nobleman, presumably the author's patron. The poems express the writer's selfless but not entirely uncritical devotion to the young man.

Twenty of the sonnets are about a young woman characterized as a " dark lady," whom the poet distrust but cannot resist. The poems addressed directly to her are perhaps the most remarkable in the sequence because their unsentimental tone is unlike that of traditional love sonnets.

A philosophical theme that appears in many of the sonnets is that of time as the destroyer of all mortal things. Also expressed in the poems is the author's disillusionment with the false ness of earthly life.

The form of the poems is the English Variation of the traditional Italian, or Petrarchan, sonnet, Shakespeare's sonnets have three quatrains, or groups of four lines, & a final couplet. Their rhyme scheme is abab, cdcd, efef, gg. A theme is developed & elaborated in the quatrains, & a concluding thought is presented in the couplet.

B. Other poems

Venus & Adonis, in which Shakespeare made his first bid for literary patronage & fame, is a conventional Elizabethan narrative poem. Its mythological story, taken from Ovids Metamorphoses, tells of the passionate love goddess who woos the reluctant youth Adonis.

The Rape of Lucrece, another narrative of passion, is based on the semi historical story of the rape of a chaste Roman matron by Tarquin, son of the king of Rome.

5. 领会His Major Theme

1) Shakespeare is against religious persecution & racial discrimination, against social inequality & the corrupting influence of gold & money.

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2) He was a humanist of the time & accepted the Renaissance views on literature.

6. 领会His Literary Achievements

1) Characterization

His major characters are neither merely individual ones nor type ones; they are individuals representing certain types. Each character has his or her own personalities; meanwhile, they may share features with others. The soliloquies in his plays fully reveal the inner conflict of his characters. Shakespeare also portrays his characters in pairs. Contrasts are frequently used to bring vividness to his characters.

The women in the plays are vivid creations, each differing from the others. Shakespeare was fond of portraying "mocking wenches," such as Kate of the Taming of the Shrew, Rosaline of Love's Labor's Lost, & Beatrice of Much Ado About Nothing, but he was equally adept at creating gentle & innocent women, such as Ophelia in Hamlet, Desdemona in Othello, & Cordelia in King Lear. His female characters also include the treacherous Goneril & Regan, the iron-willed Lady Macbeth, the witty & resourceful Portia, the tender & loyal Juliet, & the alluring Cleopatra.

2) Plot Construction

Shakespeare's plays are well known for their adroit plot construction. He seldom invents his own plots; instead, he borrows them from some old plays or storybooks, or from ancient Greek & Roman sources. There are usually several threads running through the play, thus providing the story with suspense & apprehension.

3) Language

In Shakespeare's time, English grammar & spelling were not yet formalized, so Shakespeare could freely inter charge the various parts of speech, using nouns as adjectives or verbs, adjectives as adverbs, & pronouns as nouns. Such freedom gave his language an extraordinary flexibility, which enabled him to express his thoughts as easily in poetry as in prose.

Most of Shakespeare's dramatic poetry is in blank verse, or unrhymed iambic pentameter. His bland verse is especially beautiful & mighty. He has an amazing wealth of vocabulary & idiom. His coinage of new words & distortion of the meaning of the old ones also create striking effects on the reader.

7. 应用Selected Readings

1) Sonnet 18

Theme: a profound meditation on the destructive power of time & the eternal beauty brought forth by poetry to the one he loves.

Imagery: a summer's day-youth

the eye of heaven-the sun

2) The Merchant of Venice

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Theme: To praise the friendship between Antonio & Bassanio, to idealize Portia as a heroine of great beauty, wit & loyalty, & to expose the insatiable greed and brutality of the Jew.

3) Hamlet

This is one part of Hamlet's most famous monologue. Hamlet, facing the dilemma of action & mind, is hesitating whether he should revenge for his father, which may bring him death, or he should suffer & hide his hatred for his uncle in his deep heart, which may secure his life.

IV. Francis Bacon

1. 一般识记Brief Introduction

English Renaissance philosopher, essayist, statesman, born in London, England, Jan 22,1561 and died in London, April 9 1626.

One of the outstanding figures of the Renaissance, Bacon made important contributions to several fields. His chief interest were science philosophy, but he was also a distinguished man of letters & held several high governmental positions during the reign of king JamesⅠ. He was one of the earliest & most eloquent spokesmen for experimental science. He lays the foundation for modern science with his insistence on scientific way of thinking & fresh observation rather than authority as a basis for obtaining knowledge.

2. 识记His works

As an author, Bacon is most famous for his Essays, which deal with such subjects as honor, friendship, love, & riches. Written in a terse, polished style, with many learned allusions & metaphors, the essays rank with the finest in English literature.

Bacon's other important literary works include The New Atlantis, an account of an ideal society & an imaginary voyage, & The History of the Reign of King Henry Ⅶ, a perceptive psychological study of Henry's mind & characters.

His works can be divided into three groups：

First group: The Advancement of Learning (1605)

Novum Organum (1620) (Latin version)

Second group: Essays

Apophthagmes New & Old (1605)

The History of the Reign of Henry Ⅶ (1622)

The New Atlantis (unfinished)

Third group: Maxims of Law

The Learned Reading upon the

Stature of Uses (1642)

3. 领会His Major Works

Essays

The term "essay" was borrowed from Montaigne's Essais, which appeared from 1580 to 1588. Bacon learned from Montaigne, the first great modern essayist, the economic & flexible way of writing. However,

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as a practical & prudential man, he intends to write for the ambitious Elizabethan & Jacobean youth of his class & tell them how to be efficient & make their way in public life.

Bacon's essays are famous for their brevity, compactness & powerfulness. The essays are well arranged & enriched by Biblical allusions, Metaphors & cadence.

4. 领会His achievements

As a literary man, Bacon is the first English essayist, whose Essays won him a high place in the history of English literature.

As a philosopher, he is the founder of English materialistic philosophy. He advocates the inductive method of reasoning. In his famous plea for progress, Bacon demands three things: 1) the free investigation of nature, 2) the discovery of facts instead of the blind belief in theories 3) the verification of results by experiment rather than by argument. In our day, these are the ABC of science, but in Bacon's time they were revolutionary, Marx called him "the real father of English materialism & experimental science of modern times in general."

5. 应用Of Studies

Of Studies is the most popular of Bacon's 58 essays. It analyzes what studies chiefly serve for, the different ways adopted by different people to pursue studies, & how studies exert influence over human character. Forceful & persuasive, compact & precise, Of Studies reveals to us Bacon's mature attitude towards learning. Bacon's language is neat, priest, & weighty. It is some what affected, like the water in the reservoir, restricted & confined.

V. John Donne

1.一般识记Donne & the Metaphysical Poetry

John Donne: English poet & Clergyman, born in London, England, 1572, and died in London, Mar. 31 1631. Donne is the leading figure of the 17th-century "metaphysical school." His poems give a more inherently theatrical impression by exhibiting a seemingly unfocused diversity of experiences & attitudes, & a free range of feelings & attitudes, & a free range of feelings & moods. The mode is dynamic rather than static, with ingenuity of speech, vividness of imagery & vitality of rhythms, which show a notable contrast to the other Elizabethan lyric poems, which are pure, serene, tuneful, & smooth running. The most striking feature of Donne's poetry is precisely its tang of reality, in the sense that it seems to reflect life in a real rather than a poetical world. "Metaphysical Poetry" is commonly used to name the work of the 17th-century writers who wrote under the influence of John Donne. With a rebellions spirit, the metaphysical poets tried to break away from the conventional fashion of the Elizabethan Love poetry. The diction is simple as compared with echoes the words & cadences of common speech. The imagery is drawn from the actual life. The form is frequently that of an argument with the

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poet's beloved, with God, or with himself. George Herbert, Andrew Marvell, Richard Crashaw, Henry Vaughan, Abraham Cowley, & Thomas Traherne are also considered to be metaphysical poets. They wrote on a variety of religious & secular themes, & to express their ideas, they used startling, highly imaginative comparisons known as conceits. A conceit is a combination of thoughts or images that are not usually associated with one another.

The finest works of the metaphysical poets combine intellectual subtlety with great emotional power. The poems reflect a broad knowledge of science, art, & other branches of learning. At the same time, metaphysical poems express an intense awareness of common human feelings & experiences, such as jealousy, the loss of religious faith, the complexities of love & the fear of death. Although the imagery of metaphysical poetry is frequently strained, the language is often as natural & direct as ordinary speech.

2识记His major works

In his life, Donne wrote a large number of poems & prose works, His poems are especially admired for their unique combination of passionate feeling & intellectual wit. Many of his poems rank with the finest in the English language. Among his most famous works are the poems Death Be Not Proud, "Go & Catch a Falling Star," The Ecstacy, & A Valediction Forbidding Mourning.

Most of The Elegies & Satires & a good many of The Songs & Sonnets were written in the early period. He wrote prose works mainly in the later period. His sermons, which are very famous, reveal his spiritual devotion to God as a passionate preacher.

His works are classified as songs & sonnets, epistles, elegies, & satires. When read in chronological order, the poems reveal his development from "Gay Jack Donne," a reckless & cynical youth, to Dean John Donne, a man devoted to God.

Donne's great prose works are his sermons, which are both rich & imaginative, exhibiting the same kind of physical vigor & scholastic complexity as his poetry. For example, the well-known Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions (1623-1624). Written when he was seriously ill, they contain the famous passage: "No Man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main… Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, & therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."

3. 领会Characteristics of His Poems

Donne's poetry is subtle, complex, & often startling. He made expert use of such poetic techniques as the paradox, a statement that seems contradictory but actually contains truth, & the conceit, a pertinent comparison between 2 apparently dissimilar things.

His early Lyrics most exist in The Songs & Sonnets. Love is the

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basic theme. Donne holds that the nature of love is the union of soul & body. The operations of the soul depend on the body. Idealism & cynicism about love coexist in Donne's love poetry.

As a religious poet, his chief power is shown in the Holy Sonnets & the last hymns.

In his poems, Donne frequently applies conceits, i.e. extended metaphors involving dramatic contrasts. His poetry involves a certain kind of argument, sometimes in rigid syllogistic form. With the brief, simple language, the argument is continuous throughout the poem.

4. 应用Selected Readings

1) Death Be Not Proud, one of Donne's Holy Sonnets, is an almost Startling put-down of poor death. Staunchly Christian in its pare expectation of the resurrection, Donne's poem personifies death as an adversary swollen with false pride & unworthy of being called "mighty & dreadful." Donne gives various reasons in accusing death of being little more than a slave bossed about by fate, chance, kings & desperate men-a craven thing that keeps bad company, such as poison, was & sickness. Finally, Donne taunts death with a paradox: "death, thou shalt die."

The sonnet is written in the strict Petrarchan pattern. It reveals the poet's belief in life after death: death is eternal.

2) The Sun Rising

The persona apostrophizes the sun as " unruly" because the sun enters the lovers' secret room without their approval. The speaker criticizes the sun pays too much attention to such things as sex & that he should not be behaving so tediously as to stick to his rule & enter without thinking twice into such a place as lovers dwell.

Ⅵ. John Milton

1.一般识记Brief Introduction

John Milton, English poet & prose writer, born in London, England, Dec. 9, 1608, and died in London, Nov 8, 1674.

Milton was one of the greatest poets in the English language & one of the towering figures in all literature. His masterpiece, Paradise Lost, is considered the unsurpassed English epic poem. It is a powerfully imaginative & dramatic work, based in part on the Biblical story of the temptation & fall of Adam & Eve in the Garden of Eden. Milton, a deeply religious man, wrote the epic " to justify the ways of God to men." He is also famous for his graceful lyric poems, such as Lycidas, L'Allegro, & for his intensely moving sonnets.

Milton was a great master of language, & his poetry, both epic & lyric, is admired for its sublime eloquence & rich musical quality.

2. 识记His literary achievements

Milton's literary achievements can be divided into three groups: the

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early poetic works, the middle prose pamphlets & the last great poems.

1) Education & Early Poetry

Milton's education would ordinarily have led him to a post in the Church of England. He was a Puritan, however, & his religious vies conflicted with those of the Church. After his 7 years at Cambridge, therefore, he retired in 1632 to his father's estate at Horton. His famous poems L'Allegro & IL Penseroso were probably written in 1631, before his withdrawal from Cambridge. These are companion pieces that contrast the temperaments of the cheerful, active man & the melancholy, reflective man. In his early works, Milton appears as the inheritor of all that was best in Elizabethan literature. Lycidas (1637) is a typical example. All of Milton's early works reflect his interest in Greek & Latin poetry, which greatly influenced his style. His poems contain a wealth of classical references, figures of speech, & other poetic devices, all masterfully blended into his rich verse.

2) Middle Period & Prose Pamphlets

In 1638, Milton began a 15-month tour of the Continent, where he met the Italian scientist Galileo Galilei. Upon his return to England he became deeply involved in the political & religious struggle between Parliament, which was then dominated by the Presbyterians, & the followers of king CharlesⅠ, who supported the Church of England. Milton sided with Parliament & began to write a series of pamphlets attacking the power of the bishops & the rituals of the Church. In 1652 he suffered great personal tragedy with the total loss of his eyesight & the death of his wife & infant son In spite of his blindness, Milton continued his official duties until 1655. During these tragic years of his life he wrote some of his most poignant & beautiful sonnets. They include On His Blindness, which reveals the consolation he found in religious faith, & Methought 1 Saw My Late Espoused Saint, written as a tribute to his second wife. Another of his greatest sonnets, On the Late Massacre in Piedmont, commemorated the slaughter of a sect of religious martyrs in 1655. Areopagitica (1644) is probably his most memorable prose work. It is a great plea for freedom of the press. Its style is smooth & calm.

3) Later Years & Major Poetry

After the Restoration in 1660, Milton was imprisoned. His release was brought about mainly through the efforts of his friends, notably the poet Andrew Marwell, After that time he devoted himself to his 3 major poetical works: Paradise Lost (1667), Paradise Regained (1671), & Samson Agonistes (1671). Among the three, the first is the greatest, indeed the only generally acknowledged epic in English literature since Beowulf; & the last one is the most perfect example of the verse drama after the Greek style in English.

3.领会His Major Works

1) Lycidas

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It is a collection of elegies dedicated to Edward king, a fellow undergraduate of Milton's at Cambridge, who was drowned in the Irish Sea. The poem begins with grief & a feeling of immaturity; then the grief is deepened by the sense of irrecoverable loss in the silencing of a young poet. With this bitter sense of loss, Milton asks why the just & good should suffer. These emotions swell to a passionate call for the consolation of art. The poem moves from a sad apprehension of death, through regret, to passionate questioning, rage, sorrow & acceptance. The feelings begin in a low key but move on to the large questions of divine justice & human accountability. The climax of the poem is the blistering attack on the clergy, i.e. the "Shepherds," who are corrupted by self-interest.

2) Paradise Lost

Paradise Lost, an epic poem in 12 books, written in blank verse, represents the fullest expression of Milton's genius. The poem vividly portrays the story of Satan's rebellion against God & his tempting of Adam & Eve to eat the fruit of the forbidden Tree of Knowledge. The theme is the "Fall of Man," i.e. man's disobedience & the loss of Paradise, with its prime cause-Satan. Although Adam is the central figure in Paradise Lost, it is the villain, Satan, who emerges for many readers as the most interesting character in the poem, In Paradise Lost, Milton used the conventions of ancient Greek & Latin epics & enriched his poem with reference to classical mythology & literature.

Chapter II The Neoclassical Period

1. 识记Definitions of literary terms

1) The Enlightenment Movement

The 18th-century England is known as the Age of Enlightenment or the Age of Reason. The Enlightenment Movement was a progressive intellectual movement which flourished in France & swept through the whole Western Europe at the time. The movement was a furtherance of the Renaissance of the 15th & 16th centuries. Its purpose was to enlighten the whole world with the light of modem philosophical & artistic ideas. The enlighteners celebrated reason or rationality, equality & science. They called for a reference to order, reason & rules & advocated universal education. Famous among the great enlighteners in England were those great writers like John Dryden, Alexander pope & so on.

2) Neoclassicism

In the field of literature, the Enlightenment Movement brought about a revival of interest in the old classical works. This tendency is known as neoclassicism. According to the neoclassicists, all forms of literature were to be modeled after the classical works of the ancient Greek & Roman writers (Homer, Virgil, & so on)& those of the contemporary

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French ones. They believed that the artistic ideals should be order, logic, restrained emotion & accuracy, & that literature should be judged in terms of its service to humanity. This belief led them to seek proportion, unity, harmony & grace in literary expressions, in an effort to delight, instruct & correct human beings, primarily as social animals. Thus, a polite, urbane, witty, & intellectual art developed.

3) The heroic couplet

It means a pair of lines of a type once common in English poetry, which rhyme & are written with five beats each..

4) the Realistic Novel

The mid-century was, however, predominated by a newly rising literary form, the modern English novel, which, contrary to the traditional romance of aristocrats, gives a realistic presentation of life of the common English people. This-the most significant phenomenon in the history of the development of English literature in the eighteenth century - is a natural product of the Industrial Revolution & a symbol of the growing importance & strength of the English of the growing importance & strength of the English middle class, Among the pioneers were Daniel Defoe ,Samuel Richardson, Henry Fielding, Laurence Sterne, Tobias Creorge Smollott, & Oliver Goldsmith.

2. 领会Characteristics of Neoclassical Literature

According to the neoclassicists, all forms of literature were to be modeled after the classical works of the ancient Greek & Roman writers (Homer, Virgil, Horace, Ovid, etc,)& those of the contemporary French ones. Neoclassicists had some fixed laws &rules for almost every genre of literature, prose should be precise, direct, smooth & flexible. Poetry should be lyrical, epical, didactic, satiric or dramatic, & each class should be guided by its own principles. Drama should be written in the Heroic Couplets (iambic pentameter rhymed in two lines); the three unities of time, space & action should be strictly observed; regularity in construction should be adhered to & type characters rather than individuals should be represented.

I．John Bunyan

1. 一般识记His life

English author & preacher, born in Elstow, England, probably Nov.28, 1628,and died in London, England, Aug, 31, 1688.

2. 识记His major works

John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress (1678) is the outstanding 17th-century English religious literature. For more than 200 years this book was second in popularity only to the Bible. Bunyan did not attempt to portray the political confusion & social upheaval of 17th-century England. His concern was rather the study of man's spiritual life.

Bunyan chiefly wrote four prose works - Grace Abounding to the

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Chief of Sinners (1666), The Life & Death of Mr. Badman (1680), The Holy War (1682) & The Pilgrim's Progress, part II (1684).

3. 领会Characteristics of his works

Bunyan's style was modeled after that of the English Bible. With his concrete &living language & carefully observed & vividly presented details, he made it possible for the reader of the least education to share the pleasure of reading his novel & to relive the experience of his characters.

4. 应用Selected Reading

"The Vanity Fair", an excerpt from Part I of The Pilgrim's Progress.

(1) Theme: The Pilgrim's Progress is the most successful religious allegory in the English language. Its purpose is to urge people to comply with Christian doctrines & seek salvation through constant struggles with their own weakness & all kinds of social evils. It is not only about something spiritual but also beats much relevance to the time. Its predominant metaphor-life as a journey-is simple & familiar.

(2) "Vanity Fair" is the most famous part of The Pilgrim's Progress. It tells how Christian & his friend Faithful come to Vanity Fair on their way to heaven," a fair where in should be sold all sorts of vanity & that it should last all the year long: therefore at this fair all such merchandise sold, as houses, lands, trades, places, honors, preferments, titles, countries, kingdoms, lusts, pleasures & delights of all sorts as harlots, wives, husbands, children, masters, servants, lives, blood, bodies, souls, silver, gold, pearls, precious stones & what not." As they refuse to buy anything but truth, they are beaten & put in a cage & then taken out & led in chains up & down the fair. They are sentenced to death-to be put to the most cruel death that can be invented." Vanity Fair" is a satirical picture of English society, law & religion in Bunyan's day.

II. Alexander pope

1. 一般识记His life & career

English poet & satirist, born in London, England, May 21, 1688, died in Twickenham, England May 30, 1744.

Pope is one of the fore-most satirists in world literature as well as a great poet. He wrote witty & polished verses ridiculing the behavior of his day. Pope's mock-heroic poem The Rape of the Lock is one of the finest examples of English comic verse. He made his name as a great poet with the publication of An Essay on Criticism in 1711. His Dunciad is a scathing attack on dullness & pedantry in literature. He also composed verse essays on philosophy, literature, & criticism. In An Essay on Man, he brilliantly expressed the philosophical trends & concepts of his age.

2. 识记Pope's literally outlook

As a representative of the Enlightenment, Pope was one of the first

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to introduce rationalism to England. He was the greatest poet of his time. He strongly advocated neoclassicism, emphasizing that literary works should be judged by classical rules of order, reason, logic, restrained emotion, good taste & decorum. According to Pope, almost every genre of literature should have some fixed laws & rules. Prose should be precise, direct, smooth & flexible, Poetry should be lyrical, epical, didactic, satiric or dramatic, & drama should be written in the Heroic Couplets (iambic pentameter rhymed in two lines); the three unities of time, space & action should be strictly observed; regularity in construction should be adhered to, & type characters rather than individuals should be represented.

3. 识记His major works

1). The Rape of the Lock

A delightful burlesque of epic poetry, it ridicules the manners of the English nobility. The poem is based on an actual incident in which a young nobleman stole a lock of a lady's hair.

2) An Essay on Criticism

His first important work, An Essay on Criticism was a long didactic poem in heroic couplets. In this work, he reflected the neo-classical spirit of the times by advocating good taste, common sense & the adherence to classical rules in writing & criticism. The whole poem is written in a plain style, hardly containing any imagery or eloquence &therefore makes easy reading.

3）The Dunciad

Generally considered Pope's best satiric work, The Dunciad goes deep in meaning & works at many levels. Its satire is directed at Dullness in general, & in the course of it all the literary men of the age. Poets mainly who had made Pope's enemies, are held up to ridicule. But the poem is not confined to personal attack.

Dullness as reflected in the corruptness of government, social morals, education & even religion, is expertly exposed & satirized.

4. 领会His language style

Pope's works are still enjoyed for their sparkling wit, good sense & charm of expression. After Shakespeare, he is the most widely quoted poet in English literature. He worked painstakingly on his poems, developed a satiric, concise, smooth, graceful &well-balanced style.

5. 应用Selected Readings

An Excerpt from Part 2 of An Essay on Criticism.

An Essay on Criticism is a didactic poem written in heroic couplets. It consists of 744 lines &is divided into three parts. It sums up the art of poetry as up held & practiced by the ancients like Aristotle, Horace, Boileau, etc. & the eighteenth century European classicists.

In Part 2, Pope advises the critics not to stress too much the artificial

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use of conceit or the external beauty of language but to pay special attention to True wit which is best set in a plain style.

III. Daniel Defoe

1. 一般识记His life

English novelist & journalist, born in London, England, 1660, and died in London, Apr. 26,1731.

Like Pope, he never went to university, but he received a good education in one of the best Dissenting academies. He started as a small merchant & all his life his business underwent many ups & downs & yet he was never beaten. Defoe also had a zest for politics. He wrote quite a number of pamphlets on the current political issues.

2. 识记His social outlook

As a member of the middle class, Defoe spoke for & to the members of his class & his novels enjoyed great popularity among the less cultivated readers. In most of his works, he gave his praise to the hard-working, sturdy middle class & showed his sympathy for the downtrodden, unfortunate poor.

3. 识记His major works

Defoe is generally considered the first great realistic novelist in English fiction. He based his stories on current events & materials, such as the maps & logs of actual sea voyages, personal memoirs& historical or eyewitness reports.

Perhaps his most popular novel is Robinson Crusoe (1719), an adventure story based partly on the actual experience of a man who had been trapped on a deserted island. A Journal of the Plague Year (1722), sometimes considered his best work, has such a colorful & detailed account of the London plague of 1664 & 1665 that it seems to have been written by an observer on the scene. Defoe's third masterpiece, Moll Flanders (1722), is a lively novel tracing the adventures of a female rogue. Told in the form of "confessions", the narrative includes vivid descriptions of the courts, prisons, & other social institutions of Defoe's era.

4. 领会Characteristics of his works

Defoe was a very good story-teller. He had a gift for organizing minute details in such a vivid way that his stories could be both credible& fascinating. His sentences are sometimes short, crisp & plain, & sometimes long & rambling, which leave on the reader on impression of casual narration. His language is smooth, easy, colloquial & mostly vernacular. There is nothing artificial in his language: it is common English at its best.

5. 应用Selected Reading

An Excerpt from chapter IV of Robinson Crouse.

Robinson Crouse, an adventure story very much in the spirit of the

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time, is universally considered his masterpiece. In the novel, Defoe traces the growth of Robinson from a na?ve & simple youth into a mature & hardened man, tempered by numerous trials in his eventful life. The realistic presentation of the successful struggle of Robinson single-handedly against the hostile nature proves the best part of the novel. Robinson is here a real her a typical eighteenth-century English middle-class man with a great capacity for work, inexhaustible energy, courage, patience & persistence in overcoming obstacles, in struggling against the hostile natural environment. He is the very prototype of the empire builder, the pioneer colonist. In describing Robinson's life on the island, Defoe glorifies human labor &the puritan fortitude, which save Robinson from despair & are a source of pride &happiness .He toils for the sake of subsistence, & get his reward.

VI. Jonathan Swift

1. 一般识记His life

English author, born in Dublin, Ireland, Nov. 30, 1667, and died in Dublin, Oct. 19, 1745.

Swift is generally considered the greatest prose satirist in English literature. Through fables, allegories, & pamphlets he savagely exposed the vices &follies of mankind &championed common sense.

2. 识记Swift's humanist view

Swift was a man of great moral integrity & social charm. A man with bitter life experience, he had a deep hatred for all the rich oppressors & a deep sympathy for all the poor & oppressed. His understanding of human nature is profound. In his opinion, human nature is seriously & permanently flawed. To better human life, enlightenment is needed, but to redress it is very hard. So, in his writings, although he intends not to condemn but to reform & improve human nature &human institutions. There is often an Under-or over tone of helplessness & indignation.

3 领会His style

Swift is a master satirist. His satire is usually masked by an out word gravity &an apparent earnestness which renders his satire all the more powerful.

Swift is one of the greatest masters of English prose. He is almost unsurpassed in the writing of simple, direct, precise prose. He defined a good style as "proper words in proper places." Clear, simple, concrete diction, uncomplicated sentence structure, economy & conciseness of language mark all his writings-essays, poems & novels.

4. 应用Selected reading

An Excerpt from Chapter III, Part I of Gulliver's Travels.

Gulliver's Travels, Jonathan Swift's best fictional work, contains four parts, each about one particular voyage during which Gulliver has extraordinary adventures on some remote island after he has met with

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shipwreck or piracy or some other misfortune. As a whole the book is one of the most effective & devastating criticisms & satires of all aspects in the then English & satires of all aspects in the then English & European life - socially, politically, religiously, philosophically, scientifically, & morally. Its social significance is great & its exploration into human nature profound.

Gulliver's Travels is also an artistic masterpiece. Here we find its author at his best as a master of prose. In structure, the four parts make an organic whole, with each contrived upon an independent structure, & yet complementing the others & contributing to the central concern of study of human nature & life. The first two parts are generally considered smallness in Part I words just as effectively as the exaggerated largeness in Part 2. The similarities between human beings & the Lilliputians & the contrast between the Brobdingnagians & human beings both bear reference to the possibilities of human state. Part 3 furthers the criticism of the western civilization & deals with different malpractices & false illusions about science, philosophy, history & false illusions about science, philosophy, history & even immortality. The lost part, where comparison is made through both similarities &differences, leads the reader to a basic question: What on earth is a human being?

V. Henry Fielding

１. 一般识记：His life & career

English author, born in Sharpham Park, England, April. 22. 1707, and died in Lisbon, Portugal, Oct. & 1754.

During his career as a dramatist, Fielding had attempted a considerable number of forms of plays. Witty comedies of manners or intrigues in the Restoration tradition, farce or ballad operas with political implication, & burlesques & satires that been heavily upon the status quo of England. Of all his plays, the best known are The coffee-House Politician ((1730), The Tragedy of Tragedies (1730), Pasquin (1736) & The Historical Register for the Year 1736(1737).

Fielding started to write novels when he was preparing himself for the Bar. In 1742 appeared his first novel, The History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews & of his friend Mr. Abraham Adams, Written in Imitation of the Manner of Cervantes, which was first intended as a burlesque of the dubious morality & false sentimentality of Richardson's Pamela. The next year came The History of Jonathan Wild the Great, a satiric biography that harks back to Fielding's early plays. The novel was followed by The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling (1749) & The History of Amelia (1751). The former is a masterpiece on the subject of human nature & the latter the story of the unfortunate life of an idealized woman,

a maudlin picture of the social life at the time.

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2. 识记: His major works

1) Joseph Andrews

In this novel, Joseph supposedly the young handsome & chaste brother of Richardson's virtuous heroine Pamela, is tempted by his amorous mistress, supposedly aunt of Pamela's husband, Mr. B. Here, instead of being rewarded for his virtue, Joseph is turned out of doors by his mistress. But the burlesque ends here; the book quickly turns into a great novel of the open road, a "comic epic in prose", whose subject is "the true ridiculous" in human nature, as exposed in all its variety as Joseph & the amiable quixotic parson journey homeward through the heart of England. The dominating qualities of the novel are its excellent character-portrayal, timely entrances & exits, robustness of tone &hilarious, hearty humor.

2) The History of Jonathan Wild the Great

It's a satiric biography that harks back to Fielding's early plays. It takes the life of a notorious real-life thief as a theme for demonstrating the petty division between a great rogue & a great politician such as Sir Robert Walpole, the Prime Minister. The ironical praises for the very qualities of the unscrupulous self-aggrandizement of wild point out the way the Prime Minister had achieved his "greatness." The Great Man, properly considered, is no letter than a great gangster.

3. 领会：His achievement in English novel

Fielding has been regarded by some as "Father of the English Novel," for his contribution to the establishment of the form of the modern novel. Of all the eighteenth-century novelists he was the first to set out, both in theory & practice, to write specifically a "comic epic in prose," the first to give the modern novel its structure & style. Before him, the relating of a story in a novel was either in the epistolary form (a series of letters), as in Richardson's Pamela, or the picaresque form (adventurous wanderings) through the mouth of the principal character, as in Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, but Fielding adopted " the third-person narration," in which the author becomes the "all-knowing God." He "thinks the thought" of all his characters, so he is able-to present not only their external behaviors but also the internal workings of their minds. In planning his stories, he tries to retain the grand epical form of the classical works but at the same time keeps faithful to his realistic presentation of common life as it is.

4. 领会：Characteristics of his language

His language is easy, unlabored & familiar, but extremely vivid & vigorous. His sentences are always distinguished by logic & rhythm, & his structure carefully planned towards an inevitable ending. His works are also noted for lively, dramatic dialogues & other theatrical devices such as suspense, coincidence & unexpectedness.

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