英国文学相关论文

The term English literature refers to literature written in the English language, including literature composed in English by writers not necessarily from England; Joseph Conrad was Polish, Robert Burns was Scottish, James Joyce was Irish, Dylan Thomas was Welsh, Edgar Allan Poe was American, Salman Rushdie is Indian, VS Naipaul was born in Trinidad, Vladimir Nabokov was R In other words, English literature is as diverse as the varieties and dialects of English spoken around the In academia, the term often labels departments and programmes practising English studies in secondary and tertiary educational Despite the variety of authors of English literature, the works of William Shakespeare remain paramount throughout the English-speaking This article primarily deals with literature from Britain written in E For literature from specific English-speaking regions, consult the see also section at the bottom of the Contents [hide]1 Old English2 Renaissance literature3 Early Modern 1 Elizabethan E2 Jacobean 3 Caroline and Cromwellian 4 Restoration 5 Augustan literature4 18th century5 Romanticism6 Victorian literature7 Modernism8 Post-modern literature9 Views of English literature10 See also11 External linksOld EnglishMain article: Anglo-Saxon literatureThe first works in English, written in Old English, appeared in the early Middle Ages (the oldest surviving text is Cædmon's Hymn) The oral tradition was very strong in early British culture and most literary works were written to be Epic poems were thus very popular and many, including Beowulf, have survived to the present day in the rich corpus of Anglo-Saxon literature that closely resemble today's Norwegian or, better yet, I Much Anglo-Saxon verse in the extant manuscripts is probably a "milder" adaptation of the earlier Viking and German war poems from the When such poetry was brought to England it was still being handed down orally from one generation to another, and the constant presence of alliterative verse, or consonant rhyme (today's newspaper headlines and marketing abundantly use this technique such as in Big is Better) helped the Anglo-Saxon peoples remember Such rhyme is a feature of Germanic languages and is opposed to vocalic or end-rhyme of Romance But the first written literature dates to the early Christian monasteries founded by S Augustine of Canterbury and his disciples and it is reasonable to believe that it was somehow adapted to suit to needs of Christian Even without their crudest lines, Viking war poems still smell of blood feuds and their consonant rhymes sound like the smashing of swords under the gloomy northern sky: there is always a sense of imminent danger in the Sooner or later, all things must come to an end, as Beowulf eventually dies at the hands of the monsters he spends the tale The feelings of Beowulf that nothing lasts, that youth and joy will turn to death and sorrow entered Christianity and were to dominate the future landscape of English Renaissance literatureMain article: English RenaissanceFollowing the introduction of a printing press into England by William Caxton in 1476, vernacular literature The Reformation inspired the production of vernacular liturgy which led to the Book of Common Prayer, a lasting influence on literary English The poetry, drama, and prose produced under both Queen Elizabeth I and King James I constitute what is today labelled as Early modern (or Renaissance)Early Modern periodFurther information: Early Modern English and Early Modern BritainElizabethan EraMain article: Elizabethan literatureThe Elizabethan era saw a great flourishing of literature, especially in the field of The Italian Renaissance had rediscovered the ancient Greek and Roman theatre, and this was instrumental in the development of the new drama, which was then beginning to evolve apart from the old mystery and miracle plays of the Middle A The Italians were particularly inspired by Seneca (a major tragic playwright and philosopher, the tutor of Nero) and Plautus (its comic clichés, especially that of the boasting soldier had a powerful influence on the Renaissance and after) However, the Italian tragedies embraced a principle contrary to Seneca's ethics: showing blood and violence on the In Seneca's plays such scenes were only acted by the But the English playwrights were intrigued by Italian model: a conspicuous community of Italian actors had settled in London and Giovanni Florio had brought much of the Italian language and culture to E It is also true that the Elizabethan Era was a very violent age and that the high incidence of political assassinations in Renaissance Italy (embodied by Niccolò Machiavelli's The Prince) did little to calm fears of popish As a result, representing that kind of violence on the stage was probably more cathartic for the Elizabethan Following earlier Elizabethan plays such as Gorboduc by Sackville & Norton and The Spanish Tragedy by Kyd that was to provide much material for Hamlet, William Shakespeare stands out in this period as a poet and playwright as yet Shakespeare was not a man of letters by profession, and probably had only some grammar school He was neither a lawyer, nor an aristocrat as the "university wits" that had monopolised the English stage when he started But he was very gifted and incredibly versatile, and he surpassed "professionals" as Robert Greene who mocked this "shake-scene" of low Though most dramas met with great success, it is in his later years (marked by the early reign of James I) that he wrote what have been considered his greatest plays: Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra, and The Tempest, a tragicomedy that inscribes within the main drama a brilliant pageant to the new This 'play within a play' takes the form of a masque, an interlude with music and dance coloured by the novel special effects of the new indoor Critics have shown that this masterpiece, which can be considered a dramatic work in its own right, was written for James's court, if not for the monarch The magic arts of Prospero, on which depend the outcome of the plot, hint at the fine relationship between art and nature in Significantly for those times (the arrival of the first colonists in America), The Tempest is (though not apparently) set on a Bermudan island, as research on the Bermuda Pamphlets (1609) has shown, linking Shakespeare to the Virginia Company The "News from the New World", as Frank Kermode points out, were already out and Shakespeare's interest in this respect is Shakespeare also popularized the English sonnet which made significant changes to Petrarch's The sonnet was introduced into English by Thomas Wyatt in the early 16th Poems intended to be set to music as songs, such as by Thomas Campion, became popular as printed literature was disseminated more widely in See English Madrigal S Other important figures in Elizabethan theatre include Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Dekker, John Fletcher and Francis B Had Marlowe (1564-1593) not been stabbed at twenty-nine in a tavern brawl, says Anthony Burgess, he might have rivalled, if not equalled Shakespeare himself for his poetic Remarkably, he was born only a few weeks before Shakespeare and must have known him Marlowe's subject matter, though, is different: it focuses more on the moral drama of the renaissance man than any other Marlowe was fascinated and terrified by the new frontiers opened by modern Drawing on German lore, he introduced D Faustus to England, a scientist and magician who is obsessed by the thirst of knowledge and the desire to push man's technological power to its He acquires supernatural gifts that even allow him to go back in time and wed Helen of Troy, but at the end of his twenty-four years' covenant with the devil he has to surrender his soul to His dark heroes may have something of Marlowe himself, whose untimely death remains a He was known for being an atheist, leading a lawless life, keeping many mistresses, consorting with ruffians: living the 'high life' of London's But many suspect that this might have been a cover-up for his activities as a secret agent for Elizabeth I, hinting that the 'accidental stabbing' might have been a premeditated assassination by the enemies of The C Beaumont and Fletcher are less-known, but it is almost sure that they helped Shakespeare write some of his best dramas, and were quite popular at the It is also at this time that the city comedy genre In the later 16th century English poetry was characterised by elaboration of language and extensive allusion to classical The most important poets of this era include Edmund Spenser and Sir Philip S Elizabeth herself, a product of Renaissance humanism, produced occasional poems such as On Monsieur’s DCanons of Renaissance poetryJacobean literatureAfter Shakespeare's death, the poet and dramatist Ben Jonson was the leading literary figure of the Jacobean era (The reign of James I) However, Jonson's aesthetics hark back to the Middle Ages rather than to the Tudor Era: his characters embody the theory of According to this contemporary medical theory, behavioral differences result from a prevalence of one of the body's four "humours" (blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile) over the other three; these humours correspond with the four elements of the universe: air, water, fire, and This leads Jonson to exemplify such differences to the point of creating types, or clichéJonson is a master of style, and a brilliant His Volpone shows how a group of scammers are fooled by a top con-artist, vice being punished by vice, virtue meting out its Others who followed Jonson's style include Beaumont and Fletcher, who wrote the brilliant comedy, The Knight of the Burning Pestle, a mockery of the rising middle class and especially of those nouveaux riches who pretend to dictate literary taste without knowing much literature at In the story, a couple of grocers wrangle with professional actors to have their illiterate son play a leading role in a He becomes a knight-errant wearing, appropriately, a burning pestle on his Seeking to win a princess' heart, the young man is ridiculed much in the way Don Quixote One of Beaumont and Fletcher's chief merits was that of realising how feudalism and chivalry had turned into snobbery and make-believe and that new social classes were on the Another popular style of theatre during Jacobean times was the revenge play, popularized by John Webster and Thomas K George Chapman wrote a couple of subtle revenge tragedies, but must be remembered chiefly on account of his famous translation of Homer, one that had a profound influence on all future English literature, even inspiring John Keats to write one of his best The King James Bible, one of the most massive translation projects in the history of English up to this time, was started in 1604 and completed in It represents the culmination of a tradition of Bible translation into English that began with the work of William T It became the standard Bible of the Church of England, and some consider it one of the greatest literary works of all This project was headed by James I himself, who supervised the work of forty-seven Although many other translations into English have been made, some of which are widely considered more accurate, many aesthetically prefer the King James Bible, whose meter is made to mimic the original Hebrew Besides Shakespeare, whose figure towers over the early 1600s, the major poets of the early 17th century included John Donne and the other Metaphysical Influenced by continental Baroque, and taking as his subject matter both Christian mysticism and eroticism, metaphysical poetry uses unconventional or "unpoetic" figures, such as a compass or a mosquito, to reach surprise For example, in "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning", one of Donne's Songs and Sonnets, the points of a compass represent two lovers, the woman who is home, waiting, being the centre, the farther point being her lover sailing away from But the larger the distance, the more the hands of the compass lean to each other: separation makes love grow The paradox or the oxymoron is a constant in this poetry whose fears and anxieties also speak of a world of spiritual certainties shaken by the modern discoveries of geography and science, one that is no longer the centre of the Apart from the metaphysical poetry of Donne, the 17th century is also celebrated for its Baroque Baroque poetry served the same ends as the art of the period; the Baroque style is lofty, sweeping, epic, and Many of these poets have an overtly Catholic sensibility (namely Richard Crashaw) and wrote poetry for the Catholic counter-Reformation in order to establish a feeling of supremacy and mysticism that would ideally persuade newly emerging Protestant groups back toward CCaroline and Cromwellian literatureThe turbulent years of the mid-17th century, during the reign of Charles I and the subsequent Commonwealth and Protectorate, saw a flourishing of political literature in E Pamphlets written by sympathisers of every faction in the English civil war ran from vicious personal attacks and polemics, through many forms of propaganda, to high-minded schemes to reform the Of the latter type, Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes would prove to be one of the most important works of British political Hobbes's writings are some of the few political works from the era which are still regularly published while John Bramhall, who was Hobbes's chief critic, is largely The period also saw a flourishing of news books, the precursors to the British newspaper, with journalists such as Henry Muddiman, Marchamont Needham, and John Birkenhead representing the views and activities of the contending The frequent arrests of authors and the suppression of their works, with the consequence of foreign or underground printing, led to the proposal of a licensing The Areopagitica, a political pamphlet by John Milton, was written in opposition to licensing and is regarded as one of the most eloquent defenses of press freedom ever Specifically in the reign of Charles I (1625 – 42), English Renaissance theatre experienced its concluding The last works of Ben Jonson appeared on stage and in print, along with the final generation of major voices in the drama of the age: John Ford, Philip Massinger, James Shirley, and Richard B With the closure of the theatres at the start of the English Civil War in 1642, drama was suppressed for a generation, to resume only in the altered society of the English Restoration in Other forms of literature written during this period are usually ascribed political subtexts, or their authors are grouped along political The cavalier poets, active mainly before the civil war, owed much to the earlier school of metaphysical The forced retirement of royalist officials after the execution of Charles I was a good thing in the case of Izaak Walton, as it gave him time to work on his book The Compleat A Published in 1653, the book, ostensibly a guide to fishing, is much more: a meditation on life, leisure, and The two most important poets of Oliver Cromwell's England were Andrew Marvell and John Milton, with both producing works praising the new government; such as Marvell's An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell's Return from I Despite their republican beliefs they escaped punishment upon the Restoration of Charles II, after which Milton wrote some of his greatest poetical works (with any possible political message hidden under allegory) Thomas Browne was another writer of the period; a learned man with an extensive library, he wrote prolifically on science, religion, medicine and the Restoration literatureMain article: Restoration LiteratureRestoration literature includes both Paradise Lost and the Earl of Rochester's Sodom, the high spirited sexual comedy of The Country Wife and the moral wisdom of Pilgrim's P It saw Locke's Treatises on Government, the founding of the Royal Society, the experiments of Robert Boyle and the holy meditations of Boyle, the hysterical attacks on theatres from Jeremy Collier, the pioneering of literary criticism from Dryden, and the first The official break in literary culture caused by censorship and radically moralist standards under Cromwell's Puritan regime created a gap in literary tradition, allowing a seemingly fresh start for all forms of literature after the R During the Interregnum, the royalist forces attached to the court of Charles I went into exile with the twenty-year old Charles II The nobility who travelled with Charles II were therefore lodged for over a decade in the midst of the continent's literary Charles spent his time attending plays in France, and he developed a taste for Spanish Those nobles living in Holland began to learn about mercantile exchange as well as the tolerant, rationalist prose debates that circulated in that officially tolerant The largest and most important poetic form of the era was In general, publication of satire was done There were great dangers in being associated with a On the one hand, defamation law was a wide net, and it was difficult for a satirist to avoid prosecution if he were proven to have written a piece that seemed to criticize a On the other hand, wealthy individuals would respond to satire as often as not by having the suspected poet physically attacked by John Dryden was set upon for being merely suspected of having written the Satire on M A consequence of this anonymity is that a great many poems, some of them of merit, are unpublished and largely

建议写沾中国文学边的，比如中英对比，英文相对于中文的异同。