英国文学名词解释2.docVIP

Epic: It is, originally, an oral narrative poem, majestic both in theme and style. Epics deal with legendary or historical events of national or universal significance, involving action of broad sweep and grandeur. Typically, an epic includes several features: the introduction of supernatural forces that shape the action; conflict in the form of battles or other physical forces combat; and stylistic conventions such as an invocation to the Muse, and set speeches couched in elevated language. They summarize and express the nature or ideals of an entire nation at a significant or crucial period of its history. Eg: Iliad，Odyssey，Paradise Lost，The Divine Comedy。 Heroic couplet: They are poetry composed in iambic pentameter. In this form of poetry, lines consisting of five iambic feet rime together in pairs. The rime scheme :aa bb cc ….. Blank verse: A poem written in unrhymed iambic pentameter. Enlightenment : The Enlightenment was a progressive intellectual movement throughout Western Europe in the 18th century. It was an expression of struggle of the bourgeoisie against feudalism. The enlighteners fought against class inequality, stagnation, prejudices and other survivals of feudalism. They thought the chief means for bettering the society was enlightenment or education for the people. The English enlighteners were bourgeois democratic thinkers. They set no revolutionary aim before them and what they strove for was to bring it to an end by clearing away the feudal ideas with the bourgeois ideology. Classicism: A movement or tendency in art, music, and literature to retain the characteristics found in work originating in classical Greece and Rome. It differs from Romanticism in that while Romanticism dwells on the emotional impact of a work, classicism concerns itself with form and discipline. Sentimentalism: Sentimentalism appeared in the middle of the 18th century, as a reaction against commercialism and the cold rationalism. Sentimentalists emphasize “the human