英国文学史-作品赏析.docVIP

English Literature PAGE  PAGE 10 Sir Gawain and the Green Knight The Canterbury Tales Dr. Faustus Sonnet 18 Hamlet Paradise Lost The Rape of the Lock Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard The School for Scandal Robinson Crusoe A Modest Proposal Tom Jones London I wandered lonely as a cloud The Isles of Greece Ode to the West Wind Prometheus Unbound Walter Scott Pride and Prejudice Vanity Fair Jane Eyre Wuthering Heights The Mill on the Floss Tess of D’Urbervilles Break, Break, Break Mrs. Warren’s Profession Pygmalion  1. Make comments on the romance Sir Gawain and the Green Knight Two motifs: The story seems to show the testing of faith, courage and purity. A true knight should not only dedicate himself to the church but also should possess the virtues of great courage, of fidelity to his promise, and of physical chastity and purity. And another theme of the story is the test of human weakness for self-preservation Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is the most accomplished example of medieval romance and a poem of rich psychological and moral interest. The unknown author of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight was Chaucer’s contemporary, but his alliterative verse form was old fashioned even in his own day, and his dialect, that of Northwest England, is also very difficult for the modern readers. However, superficially the poem is an account of a typical chivalric adventure, an amalgam of a number of the best-known motifs of Arthurian romance -- a challenge by a mysterious superhuman knight, a bargain, which turns out to have unforeseen consequences; a lone quest; an attempted seduction of a Christian knight by a bewitching temptress. And the courtly romances also married to archetypal folk myths and to religion. The brief summary of the action of the poem reveals that it is concerned with the rights and wrongs of conduct. Its theme is a series of tests on faith, courage, purity and human weakness for self-preservation. The story presents a profoundly Christian