八世纪美国文学.ppt

The 18th Century EnglandAn Overview of LiteratureThe Enlightenment Movement The 18th Century England The 18th Century England An Overview of the 18th Literature The Important Terms 1) neo-classicism 2) realism 3) sentimentalism 4) pre-romanticism The Enlightenment Movement  (启蒙运动) 1) What is the Enlightenment Movement? 2) The Features of English Enlightenment (1)English enlighteners believed in the power of reason. That is why the 18th century has often been called “the age of reason” or “the kingdom of reason”. (2) Most of the enlighteners believed that social problems could be solved by human intelligence. The Enlightenment Movement  (启蒙运动) (3) English Enlighteners of the 18th century criticized different aspects of contemporary England, discussed social life according to a more reasonable principle. (4) The literature of the Enlightenment in England mainly appealed to the middle class readers. English Classicists sentimentalism One of the significant and popular trends in English literature in the second half of the 18th century is sentimentalism. Sentimentalism is overindulgence in one’s emotion for the sake of his overwhelming discontent towards the social reality, and pessimistic belief and emphasis upon the virtue of man. Representatives of Sentimentalism Thomas Gray 托马斯·格雷 William Cowper 威廉·柯伯 George Crabbe 乔治·格拉伯 Pre-Romanticism Another conspicuous trend in the English literature of the latter half of the 18th century was the so-called pre-romanticism. It originated among the conservative groups of men of letters as a reaction against Enlightenment and found its most manifest expression in the “Gothic novel,” the term arising from the fact that the greater part of such romances were devoted to the medieval times. The more notable of the Gothic Novels is The Castle of Otranto (1765) by Horace Walpole (1727-1797). But the more important pre-romanticist writers are the two famous poets, William Blake (1757-1821) and R