英语文学中重点术语.docVIP

BLANK VERSE: Verse written in unrhymed iambic pentameter. Blank verse is the verse form used in some of the greatest English poetry, including that of William Shakespeare and John Milton. BALLAD STANZA: A type of four-line stanza. The first and third lines have four stressed words or syllables; the second and fourth lines have three stresses. Ballad meter is usually iambic. The number of unstressed syllables in each line may vary. The second and fourth lines rhyme. Here is a ballad stanza from the Scottish folk ballad “Get up and bar the door”: Then by there came two gentlemen, At twelve o’clock at night, And they could neither see house nor hall, Nor coal nor candlelight. CLASSICISM: A movement or tendency in art, literature, or music that reflects the principles manifested in the art of ancient Greek and Rome. Classicism emphasizes the traditional and the universal, and places value on reason, clarity, balance, and order. Classicism, with its concern for reason and universal themes, is traditionally opposed to Romanticism, which is concerned with emotions and personal themes. HEROIC COUPLET: A heroic couplet is an iambic pentameter couplet. During the Restoration period and the eighteenth century it was a popular verse form. Alexander Pope preferred the closed couplet---that is, a couplet in which the two lines form a complete unit of thought. Here is an example from The Rape of the Lock: ˇ ＇ˇ ＇ ˇ ＇ˇ ＇ ˇ ＇ But when to mischief mortals bend their will, ˇ ＇ ˇ ＇ˇ ＇ˇ ＇ ˇ ＇ How soon they find fit instruments of ill! EPIC: A long narrative poem telling about the deeds of a great hero and reflecting the values of the society from which it originated. Many epics were drawn from an oral tradition and were transmitted by song and recitation before they were written down. Two of the most famous epics of Western civilization are Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. The great epic of the Middle Ages is the Divine Comedy by the Italian poet Dante. The two most