一、 名词解释 15%
1.
Gothic Novel
Gothic, originally in the sense ‘medieval, not classical’, was first applied by Horace Walpole
to his novel The Castle of Otranto published in 1765. Gothic novel is an ancestor of the
modern mystery story, fantasy, and science fiction. It has a medieval setting, tantalizing
plot of revenge and terrifying scenes and ending. The main
character is always a woman
and the atmosphere is depressing.
2.
Sonnet
A sonnet is a lyric invariably of fourteen lines, usually in iambic pentameter, restricted to
a definite rhyme scheme. There are three Prominent Types of Sonnets: Shakespearean
Sonnet, also called Elizabethan sonnet or English sonnet, the Petrarchan Sonnet, also
3.
called Italian sonnet and Spenserian Sonnet, a variation of Shakespearean sonnet.
Historical Novel
In historical novels, the author attempts a faithful picture of daily life in another era. More
often, history is the backdrop/background for an exciting story of love or heroci adveture.
This kind of historical novel was popularized by Sir Walt Scott.
4.
Dramatic point of view
5.
The objective narrator does not tell but show, this kind of point of view is also
called the dramatic point of view be cause the reader is like the audience in a
theatre.
Regionalism
6.
When setting dominates, or when the author wants to capture the language,
appearance, mentality of people of a particular place at a specific moment in
history, the story becomes an example of local color writing or regionalism. E.g.
Stephen Crane’s “The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky”.
Epiphany
7.
Having limited number of pages, short story writers would focus on a single
figure in a single situation, revealing something of a character rather than
recording its development, revealed through incidents, rather than the incidents
themselves. Because the quality of revelation, James Joyce called a short story
an epiphany, a sudden insight of the essential nature of reality.
Imagery
An image is something which evokes a sense experience through language. All the
images formed into a meaning whole in a poem is often called its Imagery. Imagery often
serves three purposes: to create atmosphere, to provide an internal pattern, and to
focus the theme of the poem.
8.
Metaphor
Metaphor is a figure of speech in which the quality of one thing is transferred onto another.
It is also a comparison in nature, but one that is implicit, instead of being the explicit one
one can dind in simile. Simile is a juxtaposition of two things while a metaphor fuses two
things.
9.
Novel of soil
Novels of the Soil concentrate on country life, and usually more on its hardships than on
its pleasure. For example, Pearl Buck’s The Good Earth.
10.
Bildungsroman
First popular in
Germany, the so-called Bildungsroman, or the apprenticeship novel
after its classical example, Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship by Goethe, it is a novel
about a young person’s growing-up. When an apprenticeship novel deals with the
development of an artist or writer, it is called a Kunstlerroman.
11. Round character
Round Characters are those who are fully developed both emotionally and spiritually.
Usually many sides of the round character are presented in a novel and the readers are
12.
allowed access to the inner life of the round character.
Epic
An epic is a long narrative poem of great scale and grandiose style about the heroes who
are usually warriors or even demigods. The word epic is also applied to works that don
treat heroic deeds or national history, but that have some qualities embodied by true
epics, namely coverage of vase space, concentration on characters and unusual
happenings.
二、 问答 15%
1.
What are the differences between Chekhov and Maupassant in their story writing?
(1) Maupassant and Chekhov are two great writers of the later nineteenth century who can
be regarded as representatives of the two kinds of literature respectively: Story of
Resolution and Story of Revelation
(2) Maupassant’s tightly plotted stores move to a decisive end, ordinarily marked by a great
change in fortune, usually to the character’s disadvantage.
(3) Chekhov, revolutionized what writers considered an adequate plot for a short story. His
stories seem loosely knitted and may end with the characters pretty much in the condition
they were in at the start, but their situation is revealed more clearly to readers, who come
to understand how characters feel, even if the characters have not achieved any
self-knowledge.
2.
What are factors that can build up a conflict in a story?
(1) Conflict is the confrontation of actions, ideas, desires, or wills. The conflicts usually
lead to the climax. It should be as meaningful or intense to arouse the reader’s interest
and anxiety.
(2) The factors that can build up a conflict include the tension between the characters,
between the character and the society, between the character and his fate or
environment, or between the character and himself.
(3)Every conflict contains a crisis and a turning point. The conflicts preceding the climax
constitute the rising action and those succeeding the climax the falling action.
3.
What are the features of pastoral elegy?
It is a subtype of elegy originated in Greek and Sicilian poetry in the third and second
centuries B.C. It has the following characteristics:
(1) The setting is pastoral. The poet and the person he mourns are depicted as shepherds.
(2) The poem begins by appealing to the Muses and refers to various mythological figures in
its progression.
(3) Nature takes part in the mourning, more or less.
(4) The poet asks the guardians of the dead where they were when death came.
(5) The poem describes the procession of mourners.
(6) The poem describes the decoration of the bier in a flowery passage.
(7) The poem reflects on divine justice and evils of the day.
(8) In the end, the poem shows hope and joy, expressing the idea that death is the beginning
of life.
4.
What are the relationships between different forms of literature in the way words are
used?
(1) In a story or a play words are used to create imaginary persons and events while in essays
or poems words are used to express ideas and feelings.
(2) In stories and essays words are addressed directly to the reader but in plays or poems
words are overheard by the reader.
(3) A story is basically narration through the report of a storyteller to the reader. The essential
quality of an essay is persuasion, but a poem in its purest form is meditation, with a speaker
talking or thinking to himself rather than to the reader. And a play uses words to create
action through the dialogue of imaginary persons talking to one another rather than to the
reader. Thus the essential quality of drama is interaction.
5.
Where to look for the theme of a novel?
(1) Study how a novel is entitled.
(2)How the novelist show his interest.
(3)How the novelist deals with a common subject.
(4)Important symbols. ‘A’ in The Scarlet Letter.
(5)Important speeches.
三、 选择题 30%
1.
Classification of literature
2.
Novel is the most open to all other genres. In novels, one finds elements of poetry, drama, and
films.
3.
E. M. Foster: novel tells a story. Aspects of Novel
4.
Henry James says in Art of Fiction that the only obligation to which in advance we may hold a
novel is that it be interesting.
5.
A short novel is sometimes also called a novelette, it refers to a narrative midway in length
between a short story and a novel.
6.
Examples of trilogy: John Dos Passos’ U. S. A (The 42nd Parallel, 1919, The Big Money);
Theodore Dreiser’s Trilogy of Desire: The Financier, The Titan, and The Stoic.
7.
Tetralogy. Ford Maddox Ford’s Parade’s End (Some Do Not, No More Parades, A Man Could
Stand Up, and The Last Post)
8.
Standards of the Classification of Novel: by subject matter, by technique, by length
9.
Picaresque novel, definition, Naturally, picaresque novel is an early type of the novel. It
is about a rogue seeking adventures on the highways and living by his wits and duping/fooling the
straight citizenry.
examples: Mark Twain’s The Adventure of Huckleberry Fin, Daniel Defoe’s Moll Flanders.
Henry Fielding’s Jonathan Wild.
10. Gothic Novel, examples: Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto; Bronte’ Jane Eyre,
Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca
11. Bildungsroman, example: Maugham’s Of Human Bondage; Samuel Butler’s The Way of all
Fleshes, Dickens’ Great Expectation
12. Kunstleroman, definition, example: James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Youngman, Doris
Lessing’s The Golden Notebook
13. Psychological Novel: definition, examples: Crime and Punishment. The term was first applied to
a group of novelists in the middle 19th century, a group of which Mrs. Gaskell, George Eliot and
George Meredith were chief writers. Hardy and Conrad were also interested in picturering the interior
motives. Henry James was the father of psychological realism. Freudianism particularly gave impetus
to this type of the novel.
14. Sociological novel, definition, example: John Steinbeck: The Grapes of Wrath; Mrs. Stowe’s
Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Such novels are set out to call attention to certain social problems and sometimes
offer solutions. Utopian and dysutopian visions in fictional form might be included in this category.
15. Proletariat Novel: Proletariat novels focus on the working classes, almost
invariably presenting their miseries and struggles.
e.g. Jack London’s Iron Heel; Mrs. Gaskell’s Mary Barton.
16. Novel’s of soil: Novels of the Soil concentrate on country life, and usually more on
its hardships than on its pleasure. E.g Pearl Buck’s The Good Earth.
17. Epistolary Novel: An epistolary novel consists of the letters the characters write to
each other. examples: Samuel Richardson’s Pamela; Pride and Prejudice, Color Purple
18. The Novel of Ideas: Orwell’s 1984; Sartre’s Age of Reason;
19. Roman a Clef: Literally, roman à clef means a novel with a key. In the
novel
the characters stand for actual people and can be recognized as such by the
initiated. E.g Virginia Woolf’s Orlando. Thomas Love Peacock’s Nightmare Abbey; James
Joyce’s Finnegans Wake.
20. Nonfictional novel: examples: Norman Mailer’s The Armies of the Night; Hemingway’s
Death in the Afternoon, Green Hills of Africa.
21.
The Historical Novel, In historical novels, the author attempts a faithful picture of
daily life in another era. More often, history is the backdrop/background for an
exciting story of love or heroci adveture. This kind of historical novel was
popularized by Sir Walt Scott. Examples: James Fenimore Cooper: The Spy; Stephen Crane’s
The Red Badge of Courage; Melville’s Moby Dick;
22. Kinds of characters: heroes (Protagonist; antagonist); main characters; minor characters; foils.
Round character, flat character
examples: Pablo in For Whom the Bell Toll’s is the main character; Cohn in The Sun Also Rises is a foil
that works by contrast; Wilson in The Great Gatsby is a foil and works by strengthening; Most heroes
are round character; main characters and minor characters are always flat characters. Roger
Chilingworth in The Scarlet Letter is a flat character. Catherine in A Farewell to Arms is also a flat
character.
23. Traditional plot comprise exposition, conflict, climax, denoument
24. Different ways of making a exposition
By relating an unusual or dramatic event: The Mayor of Casterbridge, Henchard selling his wife;
By describing a meaningful scene
By setting up a contrast: Pride and Prejudice; The Scarlet Letter
25.
The most noticeable and important characteristic is compactness. Poetic language is
multidimensional: intellectual dimension, emotional dimension, sensuous dimension, and an
imaginative dimension.
26.
Misconceptions about poetry: poetry is rhyming, poetry is beautiful. Poetic license,
poetic justice
27.
kinds of poetry, ballad, lyric, narrative poem, epic, sonnet (Shakespearean sonnet or
Elizabethan sonnet, petrarchan sonnet, and Spenserian sonnet，
their rhythm and rhyme
scheme), ode, elegy (example: elegy written in a country churchyard, Pastoral Elegy and its
characteristics, ); pastoral (meaning shepherds), blank verse, free verse
* Shakespearean Sonnet
It is also called Elizabethan sonnet or English sonnet. It is perfected by
Shakespeare. It is structured of three quatrains and a terminal couplet in iambic
pentameter with the rhyme pattern abab cdecd
efef gg.
* Petrarchan Sonnet
Also called Italian sonnet, this sonnet form originated in Italy in the 13th century
and was consummated by Francesco Petrarch, a crowned laureate. This form contains a
octave with the rhyme pattern abbaabba and a sestet of various rhyme patters such as
cdecde or cdcdcd.
* Spenserian Sonnet
A Spenserian sonnet form comprises three quatrains and a couplet in iambic
pentameter with the rhyme scheme abab bcbc cdcd ee.
It is considered by
some a variation of Shakespearean sonnet.
The first collection of poem in American literature is The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up
28.
in America (Anne Bradstreet)
29.
The first national epic in English literature is Beowulf
30.
Elements of Poetry
a.
Masculine rhyme, feminine rhyme, approximate rhyme（ alliteration, assonance,
consonance, half rhyme, eye rhyme） rhyme scheme,
b.
Metrical rhythm (iambic pentameter and other types of metrical rhythm), the two
terms used to nark the metrical pattern and rhyme scheme are scansion and caesura. To
mark the stressed and unstressed syllables and rhyme scheme is called to scan; “U”
indicates unstressed, “/” indicates stressed syllables. A pause in a line of verse dictated
by sense or natural speech rhythm rather than by metrics is called caesura.
c.
Tone, examples explained in class
I’m nobody! Who are you?
Are you---Nobody---Too?
Then there’s a pair of us?
Don’t tell! They’d advertise---you know!
How dreary---to be---Somebody!
How public---like a Frog--To tell one’s name---the livelong June--To an admiring Bog!
The general tone of this poem is not a bitterly cynical one, but a
peacefully resigned one. It indicates mutual confidence.
d.
Image, imagery, different senses used to create images, the function of imager: to
create atmosphere, to provide an internal pattern, and to focus the theme of the poem.
“The Raven” p. 357
e.g. The Raven
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
In this short part of poem, Allen Poe uses imagery to enhance the
the gothic atmosphere of this poem.
31.
Poetic devices: definition and the examples discussed in class
a.
Simile
A simile is often marked by like or as. It is used to enhance the meaning of one thing by
means of another. E.g.
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patent etherised upon a table;
b.
Metaphor
e.g. Further in Summer than the Birds.
In this line, Emily Dickinson uses the birds as if they were a ponit in the continuity
of time, a phase of seasonal cycle.
e.g. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some
few to be chewed and digested.
In this line, Francis Bacon talks about books as if they were food.
c.
conceit
d.
personification
Personification
is a figure of speech in which inanimate objects or
are given with human qualities or are represented as
abstractions
possessing human form.
E.g. Siege of Corinth by Lord Byron
The Night-winds sigh, the breakers roar,
And shrieks the wild sea-mew (seagull)
E.g. Robert Burn’s “My heart’s in the Highlands a-chasing the deer”
Here heart is endowed with the ability to chase.
Epithets can also be used to personify inanimate or abstract things.
E.g. A Pause, by Christina G. Rossetti.
Only my soul kept watch from day to day,
My thirsty soul kept watch for one away.
The adjective ‘thirsty’ brings to the ‘soul ’ liveliness and makes it a
personification.
e.
f.
symbol
paradox
It comes from the Greek word ‘paradoros’ meaning conflicting with expectation.
A paradox may be a statement or situation that appears to
be self-contradictory
to the common sense but is in fact valid or true.
e.g. a well-know secret agent
e.g.
Ode on a Grecian Urn
Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
In these two lines, John Keats reveals through paradox the human
psychology that what one imagines is more desirable than what he
g.
Ambiguity
Ambiguity refers to the state or situation in which more than one
interpretation
may be possible.
e.g. Song of Innocence
And I plucked a hollow reed,
And I made a rural pen,
And I stain’d the water clear,
In this part of the poem, William Blake creates an ambiguity by
using ‘stain’d the water clear’. It can meant that poet make the
dirty water clear or dirty the clear water.
h.
32.
has.
onomatopoeia (D. H. Lawrence’s “Snake” )
Drama
three independent origins of drama: Greek tragedy, Greek Comedy, and Medieval Drama)
33. The Cambridge ladies...live in furnished souls.
34. Irony
Verbal Irony: The speaker intends to be understood as meaning something that contrasts
with the literal or usual meaning of what he says. it is easy to detect since the voice can
warn the listener of a double significance.
Irony of Situation: the outcome turns out to be different from expectation. T.S.Eliot, the Love
Song, there is the absence of love. In Emily Dikinson “I’m nobody, who are you?” to be
nobody is truly to be somebody.
Irony of Fate/ Cosmic irony: when ironic twists of fate take place as if some malicious fate is
deliberately frustrating human efforts in O Henry “The Gift of the Magi”, Tess of the
D’Urbevilles
Dramatic Irony refers to knowledge held by the audience but hidden from the relevant characters.
四、文本分析 40%
1. 会模仿课堂所讲例子分析短篇小说的 Exposition, Conflict; Climax, Denoument; 小说的 setting;
character; theme; pint of view
2. 会利用诗歌基本知识分析诗歌：
a. rhyming scheme
b. rhythmic pattern: 规则性的，常见的如 iambic pentameter 或这 iambic tetrameter
c. 如果是 sonnet; 会判断其种类；
d. 分析诗歌的修辞手段
e. 分析诗歌的主题及意象
f. 划分诗歌的重读非重读；参考书上对莎士比亚诗歌的分析，用“U” “/”