British Literature_牛客博客

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In 1066, William the Conqueror, with his Norman army, succeeded in invading and defeating England.
In the 14th century, the most important writer (poet) is Chaucer.
The prevailing form of Medieval English literature is romance.
The story of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is the culmination of the Arthurian romances.
William Langland’s Piers the Plowman is written in the form of a dream vision.
After the Norman Conquest, three languages existed in England at that time. The Normans spoke French.
Wycliffe was the greatest of English religious reformers and the first translator of the Bible.
Piers the Plowman describes a series of wonderful dreams the author dreamed, through which, we can see a picture of the life in the feudal England.
The theme of loyalty to king and lord was repeatedly emphasized in romances.
The most famous cycle of English ballads民歌 centers on the stories about a legendary outlaw called Robin Hood.
Geoffrey Chaucer, the “father of English poetry” and one of the greatest narrative poets of England, was born in London in about 1340.
Chaucer died on October 25th, 1400, and was buried in Westminster Abbey.
Chaucer’s earliest work of any length is his The Romaunt of the Rose, a translation of the French Roman de la Rose by Gaillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meung, which was a love allegory enjoying widespread popularity in the 13th and 14th centuries not only in France but throughout Europe.
In his lifetime Chaucer served in a great variety of occupations that had impact on the wide range of his writings. Which one is not his career? engineer.
Chaucer composes a long narrative poem named Troilus and Criseyde based on Boccaccio’s poem “Filostrato”.
Henry VII founded the Tudor Dynasty, a centralized monarchy of a totally new type, which met the needs of the rising bourgeoisie.
The first complete English Bible was translated by John Wycliffe, “the morning star of the Reformation” and his followers.
The progress in industry at home stimulated the commercial expansion abroad. Queen Elizabeth encouraged exploration and travel, which were compatible with the interests of the English merchants.
Except being a victory of England over Spain, the rout of the fleet “Armada” (Invincible) was also the triumph of the rising young bourgeoisie over the declining old feudalism.
Those, both traders and pirates like Francis Drake, established the first English colonies.
Christopher Marlowe was a forerunner of classicism in English literature.
The most gifted of the “university wits” was Marlowe.
Morality plays appeared after interlude.
Folly is used to say and do good things.
Phillip Sidney is one of the forerunners of modern socialist thought.
Thomas Wyatt is not a famous translator in the English Renaissance.
History of the World had supplied Shakespeare with the material for Julius Caesar.
John Wycliffe was one of the first to see the relation between wealth and poverty to understand that the rich were becoming richer by robbing the poor.
Utopia was written in the form of dialogue.
One of the popular morality plays was The Shepherds.
Shakespeare’s plays written between 1590 and 1594 are sometimes called “romances” and all end in reconciliation and reunion.
Miranda is a ***e in Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale.
In 1607 appeared Shakespeare’s Sonnet，Never before Imprinted（《莎士比亚十四行诗》“迄今从未刊印过”）which contains 154 sonnets.
Shakespeare is one of the founders of romanticism.
Among many poetic forms, Shakespeare was especially at home (good at) with the couplet.
In the plays, Shakespeare used about 18000 words.
Francis Bacon has been called the summit of the English Renaissance.
The Latin Bible was universally used by the Catholic Churches.
The English translation of the Bible emerged as a result of the struggle between Protestantism and Catholicism.
The Bible was notably translated into English by the Protestants.
The first complete English Bible was translated by John Wycliffe, “the morning star of the Reformation”.
William Tindal translated the New Testament and portions of the Old Testament, which is known as Tyndale’s Bible.
After Tydale’s Bible, then appeared the Authorized Version, which was made in 1611 under the auspices of James I. And so was sometimes called the King James Bible.
Apart from the religious influence, the Authorized Version has had a great influence on English language and literature.
With the widespread influence of the English Bible, the standard modern English has been fixed and confirmed.
A great number of Bible coinages and phrases have passed into daily English speech as household words.
The simple and dignified language of the Authorized Version has colored the style of the English prose for the last 300 years.
William Caxton was the first English printer.
William Caxton was a prosperous merchant himself, but he was fond of Reading, and his interest was turning to literature.
He translated The Recuyell of Historyes of Troy into English from French which was the First book printed in English.
The Recuyell served as a source for Shakespeare Troilus and Cressida. 《特洛埃勒斯与克雷雪达》
After having established his printing press, William Caxton devoted himself to the career of a printer and publisher.
William Caxton published about 100 books, 24 of which were translated by himself.
By rendering (翻译) French books into English, Caxton exercised the youthful language in the airs (曲调), the graces, the crafts of the elder and contributed to the development of the style of 15th century English prose.
The influence of Caxton’s publications is also great in fixing a national language in England.
As the first English printer, Caxton invented in England the profession of publisher, which in fact has had a lasting significance to the development of English culture as a whole.
The Renaissance started in the 14th century and ended in the 17th century.
The word, “renaissance” means religious , which was stimulated by a series of historical events, such as reformation.
In the Renaissance, the humanist thinkers and scholars tried to get rid of those old feudalist ideas in medieval Europe, to introduce new ideas that expresses interests of the rising bourgeoisie, and to recover the purity of the early church from the corruption of the Roman Catholic Church.
Humanism is the theme of the English Renaissance, which emphasized the capacities of human mind and the achievements of human culture.
Spenserian Stanza is a verse form created by Edmund Spenser for his poem, The Faerie Queene, in which the rhyme scheme is ababbcbcc.
The Wars of the Roses (1455—1485) between the House of Lancaste Pennsylvania and the House of York struggling for the Crown continued for 30 years.
Because of the conflict between the Roman Catholic Church and the King of England, the far-reaching movement of The Reformation took place in England, started by Henry VIII.
After the Enclosure Movement in England, the helpless, dispossessed peasants, being compelled to work at a low wage, became hired laborers for the merchants. These laborers were the fathers of modern English proletarians.
The introduction of printing to England by William Caxton (1476) brought classical works within reach of the common multitude.
The 16th century in England was a period of the breaking up feudal of relations and the establishing of the foundations of capitalism.
Because the wool trade was rapidly growing in bulk, it was a time when, according to Thomas More, “sheep devours men”.
William VIII broke off with the Pope, dissolved all the monasteries and abbeys in the country, confiscated their lands and proclaimed himself head of the Church of England.
Together with the development of bourgeois relationships and formation of the English national state this period is marked by a flourishing of national culture known as Renaissance.
Henry Howard, in his translation of Virgil’s Aeneid, wrote the first English blank verse.
Richard Tottel’s Miscellany of Songs and Sonnets contained 96 poems by Sir Thomas Wyatt and _____ by _____.
Philip Sidney thought that poetry had superiority over philosophy and history.
Utopia, Book One is a picture of contemporary England with forcible exposure of the poverty among the laboring classes.
More points out that the root of poverty is the private ownership of social wealth.
Sonnets contain Italian sonnets and Shakespearean sonnets.
The highest glory of the English Renaissance was unquestionably its drama.
The “miracles” were simple plays based on bible stories.
There are significant touches of real life in the play titled The Shepherds.
A morality play presented the conflict of good and evil with allegorical personages.
Vice was the predecessor of the modern clown.
Through the revival of classical literature, English playwrights came into contact with Greek and Latin drama.
From the contact with Greek and Latin drama, English playwrights learned all the important rules in structure and style, the more exact conception of comedy and tragedy.
English comedies and tragedies on classical models appeared in the middle of the 16th century.
The first English comedy is Gammer Gurton’s Needle.
The first English tragedy is Gorboduc .
Miracle plays, morality plays, interludes and classical plays paved the way for the flourishing of drama.
In the 16th century London became the centre of English drama.
By 1567, professional actors were organized into companies.
Elizabethan theatres were wooden buildings, usually circular in form, with tiers（一排排） of galleries surrounding a roofless pit（楼下剧场）.
In the Elizabethan Theater, there were no actress and women’s parts were always taken by boys.
Shakespeare’s narrative poem, Venus and Adonis, is full of vivid images of the countryside, and aphorisms (格言、警句) on life.
Shakespeare was a great master of the English language.
Shakespeare’s dramatic creation often used the method of adaptation.
Shakespeare’s drama becomes a monument of the English Renaissance.
Shakespeare was a master-hand for play-writing.
Shakespeare’s full-blood people represent all the complexities and implications of real life.
The rhyme scheme of Milton’s L’Allkegro and Il Penseroso is abacdeec.
Areopagitica, as a declaration of people’s freedom of the press, has been a weapon in the later democratic revolutionary struggles.
John Donne poems can be divided into two categories: the youthful love lyrics and the later sacred verses. 年轻的爱歌词和后来的神圣的经文
Witchcraft by a Picture expressed Donne’s own way of describing love.
George Herbert’s The Altar is a well-known shaped poem.
John Donne is the leading figure of Metaphysical poetry.
Which of the following is not a Metaphysical poet? Robert Burton
Urn-Burial is a prose poem on death and immortality.
Izaak Walton’s The Compleat Angler is a delightful description of the English countryside and the simple and kind people.
Who is the greatest figure of the Cavalier poetry? 谁是骑士诗歌史上最伟大的人物 John Suckling
Alexander Pope亚历山大·蒲柏 was the forerunner of the English classical school of literature in the 19th century.
In the field of prose writing of the Puritan Age, John Bunyan occupies the most important place.
The Pilgrim’s执著的心；清***、朝圣者Progress is one of the most popular pieces of Christian writing produced during the Puritan Age.
The Pilgrim’s Progress gives a vivid and satirical picture of Vanity Fair which is the symbol of London at the time of Restoration.
John Bunyan’s masterpiece, The Pilgrim’s Progress, is an allegory, a narrative in which general concepts such as sins, despair, and faith are represented as people or as aspects of the natural world.
John Dryden is the most excellent representative of English classicism in the Restoration period.
In English literature, the Restoration period is traditionally called “Age of Dryden.
In political affairs, John Dryden was quite changeable in attitude.
In his “An Essay of Dramatic Poesy”, John Dryden showed his famous appreciation of Shakespeare.
Dryden wrote about 27 plays. The famous one is All for Love, a tragedy dealing with the same story as Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra.
The main literary achievements of the 17th century lies in the poetry of John Milton, in the prose writing of John Bunyan, and in the plays and literary criticism of John Dryden.
Paradise Lost is one of Milton’s epics.
Satan is the *** Milton’s masterpiece Paradise Lost.
Paradise Lost took its material from mysticism.
The works of the Metaphysical poets are characterized, generally speaking, by the Bible in content and fantasticality in form.
Dryden was the forerunner of the English classical school of literature in the 18th century.
Adam and Eve in Paradise Lost embody Milton’s belief in the powers of man.
The Pilgrim’s Progress is a religious allegory and symbolism is another writing feature.
In the second half of the 17th century we may hear the voices of the private citizens by letters and diaries.
In 1701, Steele published a pamphlet, The Christian Hero, in which he first displayed his moralizing spirit.
Which is the most popular newspaper published by Steele? The Tatler闲谈者
Cato卡托 is Addison’s great tragedy.艾迪生
Which of the following is not the *** The Spectator?旁观者 Isaac Bickerstaff
Addison’s艾迪生 Spectator essays were looked upon as the model of English composition by British authors all through the 18th century.
The most important classicist in the Enlightenment Movement is Pope.
The masterpiece of Alexander Pope is The Rape of the Lock 夺发记 .
Essay on Man is a philosophical poem in heroic couplets.
The Enlightenment was an intellectual movement in the first half of the 18th century.
The literature of the Enlightenment in England mainly appealed to the middle class readers.
Pope is a great classicist but his satire讽刺 is not always just.
The main literary stream of the 18th century was sentimentalism感伤主义. What the writers described in their works were mainly social realities.
The 18th century was the golden age of the English novel. The novel of this period spoke the truth about life with an uncompromising (unbending) courage.
In 1704, Jonathan Swift published two works together, The Battle of the Books, which made him well-known as a satirist.
In a series of pamphlets Jonathan Swift denounced the cruel and unjust treatment of Ireland by the English government. One of the most famous is A Modest Proposal提议者.
“Proper words in proper places, makes the true definition of a style.” This sentence is said by Jonathan Swift, one of the greatest masters of English prose.
Daniel Defoe’s best-known pamphlet was The Trueborn Englishman—A Satire, which contained a caustic exposure of the aristocracy贵族 and the tyranny of the church.
Henry Fielding’s first novel Joseph Andrews约瑟夫·安德鲁was written in connection with Pamela of Samuel Richardson. But after the first 10 chapters, Henry Fielding became so interested and absorbed in his own hovel as to forget his original plan of ridiculing Pamela.
Roderick Random罗德里克the first important work by Tobias Smollett, is based on his own experience as a naval doctor and in part autobiographical.
From the character Mr. Malaprop, in The Rivals by Richard Brinsley Sheridan, is derived the term “malapropism” which means a ridiculous misusage of big words.
Which of the following periodicals期刊 is edited by Samuel Johnson塞缪尔·约翰逊? The Rambler漫步者.
Which of the following works are not written by Oliver Goldsmith? The School for Scandal.
Which of the following works is written by Edward Gibbon?The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
The sentence of “The plowman homeward plods his weary way, /And leaves the world to darkness and to me” is written by Thomas Gray.
Auld Lang Syne友谊天长地久 is not written by William Blake.
“In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy.” This proverb is cited引用 from William Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.
The 18th century witnessed that in England there appeared two political parties, the Whigs and the Tories, which were satirized by Jonathan Swift in his Gulliver’s Travels.
Sentimentalism感伤主义found its representative writers in the field of poetry, such as Edward Young and Thomas Gray, but it manifested itself chiefly in the novels of Lawrence Sterne and Oliver Goldsmith.
Samuel Johnson compiled the A Dictionary of the English Language which became the foundation of all the subsequent English dictionaries.
Which of the following novels is not epistolary (written in letter form) novels? Tomes Jones
Which play is regarded as the best English comedy since Shakespeare? The School for Scandal
The essays in Steele’s The Tatler were written in the form of conversational style.
Steele’s appeal was made to the middle classes.
The purpose of Addison and Steele’s ideas expressed in The Spectator is social reform.
Character sketch is the most striking feature in The Spectator.
Addison and Steele developed the form of letter writing to the verge of the epistolary novel.
Humor, intimacy and elegance shown in The Tatler and The Spectator essays have become the striking features of the English familiar essay.
Essay on Criticism is a didactic poem.
The Dunciad is satirical a poem.
English enlighteners believed in the power of reason.
English enlighteners believed that social problems could be dealt with by human intelligence.
Blake attacks religious persecution in the poem, A Little Boy Lost.
Burns’s poems like The Jolly Beggars are characterized by humor and lightheartedness.
Sheridan’s The School for Scandal has been called a great comedy of manner, giving a brilliant portrayal and a biting satire of English high society.
Sameul Johnson’s A Dictionary of English Language also marked the end of English writers’ reliance on the patronage of noblemen for support.
Samuel Richardson’s first novel, Pamela, is the first epistolary novel in English literature.
Tobias Smollett, a good humorist, used the form of picaresque novel. His humor is better shown in Humphrey Clinker than anywhere else.
In describing Robinson’s life on the island, Defoe glorifies human labor.
Fielding thought that the stage should be the school of morality.
The chapter of “On Hats” in Fielding’s Jonathan Wild is full of satire and symbolism.
Laurence Sterne belonged to the school of those writers who were versed in the “knowledge of Heart.”

True / False

1.    The old English aristocracy 贵族having been exterminated (wiped out) in the course of the War of the Roses, a new nobility高贵, totally dependent on King’s power, come to the fore涌现. T
2.    Absolute monarchy in England reached its summit during the reign of Queen Elizabeth. T
3.    The progress of bourgeois economy made England a powerful state and enabled her in 1588 to inflict a defeat on the Spanish Invincible Armada. T
4.    The Protestant Reformation was in essence a religious movement in a political guise. F. (a political movement in a religious guise)
5.    Before the Reformation, the English Bible was universally used by the Catholic churches.F(the Latin Bible)
6.    Walter Raleigh wrote his History of the World in imprisonment.T
7.    More the man is even more interesting than More the writer. F (Sidney)
8.    Utopia, Book One, describes an ideal communist society.T
9.    Translations occupied an important place in the English Renaissance. T
10.    Philip Sidney’s collection of love sonnets is Astrophel and Stella. T
11.    The Miracle plays were not forbidden to perform in churches after the actors introduced secular and even comical elements into the performance.T
12.    The writer of Gammer Gurton’s Needle is unknown.T
13.    Two lawyers who wrote Gorboduc were Thomas Sackville (托马斯·萨克维尔) and Thomas Norton（托马斯·诺顿）. F ( Book Two)
14.    Shakespeare’s sonnets are divided into three groups: Numbers 1—17, Numbers 18—126, and Numbers 127—154. T
15.    Shakespeare’s sonnets are written for variety of virtues. T
16.    Engels said, “Realism implies, besides truth in detail, the truthful reproduction of typical characters under typical circumstances.” T
17.    Shakespeare wrote about his own people and for his own time. T
18.    Shakespeare’s one play contains one theme. (contains more than one theme)F
19.    To reproduce the real life, Shakespeare often combines the majestic with the funny, the poetic with the prosaic(散文体的) and tragic with the comic.T
20.    Engels called Shakespeare’s plays the “Shakespearean vivacity (活泼、快活) and wealth of (大量的) action”. T
21.    Utopia is More’s masterpiece, written in the form of letters between More and Hythloday, a voyage. F a conversation)
22.    Sir Philip Sidney is well-known as a poet and dramatist. F(poet and critic of poetry)
23.    Carl Marx commented highly on More’s Utopia and mentioned it in his great work, The Capital.F
24.    The highest glory of the English Renaissance was unquestionably its poetry. F (darma)
25.    The miracle plays were simple plays based on Bible stories, such as the creation of the world, Noah and the flood, and the birth of Christ.T
26.    Grammer Gurton’s Needle is the first English comedy, Gorboduc the first English tragedy.T
27.    Both the gentlemen and the common people went to the theatres. But the upper class was the dominant force in Elizabethan theatre. T
28.    After Shakespeare’s death, Herminge and Condell collected and published his plays in 1623. T
29.    From Shakespeare’s history plays, it can be seen that Shakespeare took a great interest in the political questions of his time. T
30.    In Shakespeare’s historical plays, historical accuracy is not strictly regarded.T
31.    King Lear is a tragedy of ambition, which drives a brave soldier and national hero to degenerate into a bloody murder and despot right to his doom. F（ Macbeth)
32.    Coming from an old Danish legend, Othello is considered the summit of Shakespeare’s art.F （hamlet）
33.    Shakespeare is one of the founders of romanticism in world literature. F （realism）
34.    Generally speaking, after Shakespeare, the English drama was undergoing a process of prosperity. F decline)
35.    English Renaissance Period was an age of poetry and drama, and was an age of prose.F not an age of prose)
36.    There are two main characters in As You Like It: Orlando and Rosalind. T
37.    Ben Johnson’s comedies are “comedies of humors” and every character in his comedies personifies a definite “humor”. ordinary people were) F
38.    In Ben Johnson’s later years he became the “literary king” of his time.T
1.    The major parliamentary clashes of the early 17th century were over land ownership. F(ownership: monopolies)

2.    After the victory of the English Revolution, the movement of the Diggers broke out. The leader of this revolt is Wat Tyler. F (Wat Tyler: Gerald Winstanley)
3.    With the establishment of the bourgeois dictatorship, Charles II became the Protector of the English Commonwealth. F (Charles II: Oliver Cromwell)
4.    The spirit of unity and the feeling of patriotism ended with the reign of James I, and England was then convulsed (shook, quivered) with the conflict between the two antagonistic camps, the Royalists and the Puritans. F (Donne: Milton)
5.    In 1644, James I was sentenced to death and Cromwell became the leader of the country. F (James I: Charles I)
6.    English literature of the 17th century witnessed a flourish on the whole. F (flourish: decline)
7.    The Revolution Period produced one of the most important poets in English literature, William Shakespeare. T (William Shakespeare)
8.    The Revolution Period is also called Age of Milton because it produced a great poet whole name is William Milton. F (William: John)
9.    The main literary form in literature of Revolution Period is drama. F (drama: poetry)
10.    Among the English poets during the Revolution Period, John Donne was the greatest one. F (James I: Elizabeth I)
11.    John Milton towers over his age as Byron towers over the Elizabethan Age, and as Chaucer towers over the Medieval Period. F (Byron: Shakespeare)
12.    On his first wife’s death, Milton wrote his only love poem, a sonnet, on His Deceased Wife. F (first: second)
13.    The greatest epic produced by Milton, Paradise Lose, is written in heroic couplets. F (heroic couplets: blank verse)
14.    The poem of Samson Agonistes was “to justify the ways of God to man”, i.e. to advocate submission to the Almighty. F (Satan: God)
15.    It has been noticed by many critics that the picture of Satan surrounded by his angels who never think of expressing any opinions of their own, resembles the court of an absolute monarch. F (Samson Agonistes: Paradise Lost)
16.    Izaak Walton’s The Compleat Angler becomes a “Piscatorial classic”. T
17.    Thomas Browne’s Religia Medici is a collection of opinions on a vast number of subjects more or less connected with religion. T

1. Addison’s The Spectator was published three times a week, having one essay for each issue. F (one time a day)
2. Addison’s chief contribution to literature lies in his essays written for The Tatler and The Spectator. T
3. The essays published in The Tatler deal with the current topics of the time which treated in a serious manner. F (light and pleasant manner)
4. The character sketches in The Spectator are the forerunner of the English novel. T
5. Steele’s translations of Humor’s works are done in heroic couplet. F(Pope’s )
6. Isaac Bickerstaff is the major character of The Spectator. F (The Tatler)
7. The 18th century was an age of poetry. A group of excellent prose writers, such as Jonathan Swift, Samuel Richardson, Henry Fielding, were produced. F (prose)
8. Novel writing made a big advance in the 18th century. The main characters in the novels were no longer common people, but the kings and nobles. F (nobles; common people)
9. The 19th century produced the first English novelists, who fall into two groups: the sentimentalist novelists and the realist novelist. F (18th )
10. In the poems of Edward Young and Thomas Gray, sentimentalism found its fine expression. T
11. A Tale of a Tub is mainly an attack on pedantry in the literary world of the time, in which the reader is told the story of the Bee and the Spider. F ( The Battle of the Books)
12. Tobias Smollett gives a true picture of the evils in the British navy in the novel of Roderick Random, in which Random, like Smollett, is a Scot and a doctor. T
13. The two most important of all Samuel Johnson’s literary works are the preface and comments of individual plays in his edition of Shakespeare, and his Lives of Poets, which pass judgment on a century of English poetry. T
14. Classicism turned to the countryside for its material, so is in striking contrast to sentimentalism, which had confined itself to the clubs and drawing-rooms, and to the social and political life of London. F ( Sentimentalism; classicism)
15. Robert Burns is remembered mainly for his songs written in the English dialect on a variety of subjects. F ( Scottish)

16. In The School for Scandal, Sheridan contrasts two brothers, Joseph Surface and Charles Surface. T

17. My Heart’s in the Highlands is one of the best known poems written by Robert Burns in which he pored his unshakable love for his homeland. T
18. Racial discrimination is expressed in Blake’s “The Little Black”. T
19. Many of Goldsmith’s poems were put to music. F (Burns’s)
20. Pre-romanticism is ushered by Burns and Blake and represented by Percy, Macpherson and Chatterton. F ( Percy, Macpherson and Chatterton; Burns and Blake)