英国文学相关背景知识.doc

文学 A tragedy, then, is the imitation of an action that is serious … in a dramatic, not in a narrative form; with incidents arousing pity and fear, with which to accomplish its catharsis of such emotions. Tragedy is an imitation of incidents arousing pity and fear. Such incidents have the very greatest effect on the mind when they occur unexpectedly and at the same time in consequence of one another; they arouse more awe than if they happened accidentally and by chance. Hamlet: A man full of doubts, fears, and spiritual uncertainties Hamlet projected Shakespeare’s vision of political chaos in 17-th century England. Moral corruption. “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.” “Hamlet: Time is out of joint.” “Rosencrantz: Denmark is a prison Hamlet: Then is the world one A goodly one; in which there are many confines, wards, and dungeons; Denmark being one of the worst” A novel is a long prose narrative that describes fictional characters and events in the form of a sequential story, usually. The genre has historical roots in the fields of medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter, an Italian word used to describe short stories, supplied the present generic English term in the 18th century. Further definition of the genre is historically difficult. The construction of the narrative, the plot, the relation to reality, the characterization, and the use of language are usually discussed to show a novels artistic merits. Most of these requirements were introduced to literary prose in the 16th and 17th centuries, in order to give fiction a justification outside the field of factual history. The fictional narrative, the novels distinct literary prose, specific media requirements (the use of paper and print), a characteristic subject matter that creates intimacy, and length can be seen as features that developed with the Western (and modern) market of fiction. The separation of the field of literary fiction from the field of histori