学姐包过版!《英国文学史及选读》第二册 期末复习讲义(绝对全)

介绍一下，一共包括四分讲义，按顺序看，学姐没有看书，只看得讲义，复习了一个星期，考了90多分，

第一份：总体了解考点，大体了解就行（往下翻还有别的）

English Literature ( Book II)

Romanticis

1.Romanticism（名词解释）要对浪漫主义兴起的时间，根源，主要特点，主要代表作家都有所了解。

2.William Wordsworth要知道他的“Lyrical Ballads”前言是英国浪漫主义时期开始的标志，也是宣言。Lake Poets（名词解释）。他诗歌的主要两类题材：nature and common people’s lives。

写过的著名作品：I wandered lonely as a cloud; To the cuckoo; Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey; The solitary reaper; We are seven 等等。

3. Samuel Taylor Coleridge两首名诗：The Rime of the Ancient Mariner; Kubla Khan主要写作supernatural题材。

4. George Gordon Byron，Byronic Heroes (名词解释); 著名作品：Child Harold’s Pilgrimage要知道大致内容，另外此诗用Spenserian Stanza写成；Don Juan 要知道大致内容。

5. Percy Bysshe Shelley著名作品：Queen Mab; The Revolt of Islam; Prometheus Unbound（lyrical drama，要知道大致内容及此剧与古希腊的“被束缚的普罗米修斯”不同之处及其意义。）其它名作: Ode to the West Wind; To a skylark等等。

6. John Keats著名作品：Ode to Autumn; Ode to a Nightingale; Ode on a Grecian Urn”。注意Keats与Byron和Shelley的不同，Keats的诗歌没有两人那么强的革命性，他的诗歌主要是为了缔造一个唯美的世界，为了追求美而写作的。

7. Charles Lamb：The Essays of Elia (humorous, archaisms, quotations from other writers)

8. Walter Scott: founder and great master of the historical novel; his death marks the ending of Romantic Period in English literature; famous novels: Rob Roy, Ivanhoe; features of his novels.

English Critical Realism

9. Critical Realism批判现实主义，要知道它兴起的时间，历史背景，主要代表人物及主要特点。

10. Charles Dickens主要作品: The Pickwick Papers (first novel); Oliver Twist; Dombey and Son; David Copperfield; A Tales of Two Cities等等，对这些主要作品除了第一部以外剩下的要对情节，主要人物形象，主题及其意义有所了解，另外要知道狄更斯的小说的特色。

11. William Makepeace Thackeray主要作品即Vanity Fair要知道这个题目出自John Bunyan的The Pilgrim’s Progress，另外小说的副标

题“A novel without a hero”的意思，小说的情节，主题，人物形象都要了解。

12. Jane Austen主要作品：Pride and Prejudice其它5部小说知道名字即可，对于《傲慢与偏见》简单看一下它的情节和主要人物。Austen的写作特点：thin plot, mostly everyday life of simple country society; good at writing young girls; modest satire; witty dialogues。

13. Charlotte Bronte主要作品Jane Eyre，要知道其情节和意义，另外简爱的人物形象也比较重要。

14. Emily Bronte主要作品Wuthering Heights，情节，人物形象及意义。勃朗特姐妹的小说虽然写作在批判现实主义时期，但其作品有明显的浪漫主义特色，比如包含的一些supernatural elements，特别体现在呼啸山庄中。

15. George Eliot主要作品: Adam Bede, The Mill on Floss.

Prose-writers and poets of the mid and later 19th century

16. Alfred Tennyson主要作品: In Memoriam, The Idylls of the Kings；有名的短诗Break, Break, Break; Crossing the bar等，此人政治态度保守，作品追求形式上的完美，富于音乐性和色彩。

17. Robert Browning introduced dramatic monologue to poetry. His famous poems: “Home-thoughts from abroad” etc. Elizabeth Barrett Browning: “Sonn ets from the Portuguese”.

18. Aestheticism唯美主义（名词解释）Oscar Wilde主要作品，写作特点及其意义简要了解。

Twentieth Century English Literature

19. John Galsworthy: 主要作品“The Forsyte Saga”注意这是两个trilogy构成的，可不是一本小说，其中比较重要的是“The Man of Property”就是书上介绍的那一部，要知道此部小说主人公的名字，以及这个主人公的性格，和小说主题。

20. George Bernard Shaw主要作品Mrs Warren’s Profession和Major Babara，对他作品的主要人物，情节，主题和意义要了解，他是比较重要的一个作家。

21. T. S. Eliot比较重要，特别是他的The Waste Land要知道包括哪几个部分，大概是什么情节，有什么象征意义，主题是什么，有什么写作特点。另外他著名的文章Tradition and the Individual Talent被认为是manifesto of modernist poetry.

22. Modernist fiction put emphasis on the description of the characters’ psychological activities under the influence of Austrian doctor Sigmund Freud’s th eories.

23. D. H. Lawrence重点作品Sons and Lovers这个作品明显受到弗洛伊德影响，特别是其中体现的Oedipus complex，对其人物，主题要有了解；The Rainbow 及其续篇Women in Love要有简单了解，特别是对其主题。Lady Chatterley’s Lover简单了解即可。劳伦斯的思想特点以及局限性要了解。

24. Stream-of-consciousness（名词解释）

25. James Joyce其它作品简单了解，但Ulysses非常重要，需要知道题目来源，题目的含义，小说的主人公和情节，以及主题。

26. Virginia Woolf重要的意识流作家，主要作品要指导。书上主要介绍的是Mrs. Dalloway，其实她的其它几部作品特别是To the Lighthouse也比较出名，需要了解一下。

第二份：课本对应版，很多细节题都在里面，不看课本直接背这个讲义我

考了90分，这份是重点

《英国文学史及选读》第二册复习提纲

Part VII. THE ROMANTIC PERIOD

Introduction

●Historical Background

The political & social factors that gave rise to the Romantic Movement were the three revolutions – the American Revolution, the French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution.

●Intellectual background

The shift in literature from emphasis on reason to instinct & emotion was intellectually prepared for by a number of thinkers in the later half of the 18th century. Representative thinkers are Rousseau, Edmund Burke and Thomas Paine.

●Term – Romanticism

（1）Romanticism is a literary trend fighting against the idea of Enlightenment. It prevailed in England during the period of 1798—1832. It begins with the publication of Lyrical Ballads by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge and ends with Sir Walter Scott‘s death.

（2）Romanticism actually constitutes a change of direction from attention to the outer world of social civilization to the inner world of the human spirit. （3）In essence, it designates a literary & philosophical theory, which tends to see the individual as the very center of all life & all experience.

（4）It also places the individual at the center of art, making literature most valuable as an expression of his or her unique feelings & particular attitudes, & valuing its accuracy in portraying the individual‘s experiences.

●Term – Lake Poets or The Lakers

In English literature it refers to such romantic poets as William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey who lived in the Lake District.

●Term—Gothic Novel

It is a type of romance very popular in the 18th century and at the beginning of the 19th century. It emphasizes things which are grotesque, violent, mysterious, supernatural, desolate and horrifying. It was applied by Horace Walpole to his novel The Castle of Otranto. It has exerted a great influence over the writers of the Romantic period with its description of the dark, irrational side of human nature. Gothic novel has exerted a great influence over the writers of the Romantic period. Works like The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe and Frankenstein by Mary Shelley are typical Gothic romance.

●Romantic Authors in England

（1）The glory of the age is in the poetry of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, Keats and Southy.

（2）Of its prose works, those of Scott alone have attained very wide reading

（3）The essays of Charles Lamb

（4）The novels of Jane Austen and historical novels of Walter Scott

William Wordsworth (1770-1850)

―. . . poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility…‖ (―Preface‖) 所有的好诗都是炽烈情感的自然涌流，而这种情感又是经过在宁静中追忆的.——quotation from William Wordsworth.

●Major works from William Wordsworth

Lyrical Ballads抒情歌谣集（I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud我好似一朵孤独的流云；Composed upon Westminster Bridge写于威斯敏斯特桥上）Lucy Poems露西组诗

(She Dwett Among the Untrodden Ways她走在人迹罕至的路边；

To the Cuckoo杜鹃颂;

The Solitary Reape r孤寂的割麦女);

The Excursio n远足

The Prelude序曲

●Analysis of William Wordsworth’s works

（1）She Dwett Among the Untrodden Ways is one of his famous Lucy Poems, in which the lover tells that she lived unknown and died unknown. （2）Composed upon Westminster Bridge describes a vivid picture of a beautiful morning in London.

（3）The Solitary Reaper describes vividly and sympathetically a young peasant girl working in the fields and singing as she works and shows that the girl‘s singing deeply moved the traveler and kept lingering in his heart.

（4）I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud is perhaps the most anthologized poem in English literature, and one that takes us to the core of Wordswort h‘s poetic belief.

●Form

This poem contains four six-lined stanzas of iambic tetrametre(四步抑扬格), with a rhyme scheme of ababcc in each stanza.

●Theme

The theme of this poem is the serene beauty of nature through vivid description of daffodils and the poet‘s respect for nature.

●Content

First Stanza–It shows a harmonious picture. The image of ―cloud‖ gives us the impression of the poet‘s pride and loftiness. But on seeing numerous daffodils, the poet descends from above to below.

Second Stanza– In this stanza, the poet draws an analogy between stars and daffodils to emphasize the great number. ―Star‖ in this stanza echoes with ―cloud‖ in the previous stanza.

Third Stanza–The poet draws an analogy between waves of water and waves of daffodils. The description of the scenery ends in the second line. Following that, the poet shifts his emphasis from scenery to emotion.

Fourth Stanza – The glee of daffodils turns into happiness of the poet. As a result, the beauty of nature becomes the beauty of mind. The last two lines explain why daffodils had brought great wealth to me, because they had brought fresh inspiration, greater creativity and new capacity for imagination. New life has been brought to him by the memory.

●Brief comment on William Wordsworth

（1）He is the leading figure of English Romantic poetry, and he is regarded as a ―worshipper of nature‖.

（2）His Lyrical Ballads, written with Coleridge, marked the beginning of Romanticism in English poetry.

（3）He defined poetry as ―the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.‖

（4）He was one of the ―Lake Poets‖.

George Gordon Byron (1788-1824)

Introduction

●George Gordon Byron was as famous in his lifetime for his personality cult as for his poetry. He created the concept of the ―Byronic hero‖—a proud, mysterious rebel figure of noble origin. Byron‘s influence on European poetry, music, novel, opera, and painting has been immense. He was the most renowned English language poet of his day.

●Term – Byronic Hero

This is a concept created by George Gordon Byron. It refers to a proud, mysterious rebel figure of noble origin. With immense superiority in his passions and powers, this figure would carry on his shoulders the burden of righting all the wrongs in a corrupted society, and would rise single-handedly against any kind of tyrannical rules either in government, in religion, or in moral principles with unconquerable wills and inexhaustible energies.

●Term – Lyric

Lyric is a short poem wherein the poet expresses an emotion or illustrates some life principle. Lyric often concerns love. ―My love is like a red, red rose‖ is Robert Burn‘s well-known lyric.

●Major works

Hours of Idliness1807

English Bords and Scottish Reviewers1809

Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage1812

The Giaour 1813

The Corsair1814

Lara1814

Manfred1817

Cain 1821

Don Juan (1819-1824)

●Famous selected poems in our textbook:

When We Two Parted;

She Walks in Beauty;

The Isles of Greece taken from Don Juan

●Analysis of Byron’s works

（1）Don Juan, Byron‘s masterpiece, is regarded as the great poem of the Romantic Age. It is a poem based on a traditional Spanish legend of a great lover and seducer of women.

（2）When We Two Parted is a lyric poem of usual love between man and woman. The poem is alternately rhymed to show the poet‘s mental pain of love mingled with hate. The metrical movement of this poem is basically a combination of iambic and anapaestic (抑抑扬格) feet, with a rhyme scheme ababcdcd.

（3）She Walks in Beauty is one of B‘s early love lyrics.

●Background knowledge – On June 11, 1814, B attended a party where he for the first time net his young cousin, Lady Wilmot Horton, who was

dressed in a black mourning gown. B was so struck by her beauty that, on returning home, he wrote this poem in a single night.

●Theme – This lyric poem is a compliment to a lady and to celebrate the beauty of the woman.

●Form – The poem contains three stanzas of iambic tetrameter, with a rhyme scheme ababab.

（4）The Isles of Greece is taken from Don Juan, Canto III, which is sung by a Greek singer at the wedding of Don Juan and Haidee. In the early 19th century, Greece was under the rule of Turk. By contrasting the freedom of ancient Greece and the present enslavement, the poet appealed to people to struggle for liberty.

●Comments on Byron

（1）Byron is the most excellent representative of English Romanticism. He was one of the most influential poets of his time.

（2）He created the concept of the ―Byronic hero‖—a proud, mysterious rebel figure of noble origin.

（3）His poems are favorites of the British workers & the laboring people of other countries. He opposed oppression & slavery, & had an ardent love for liberty. He praised the people‘s revolutionary struggles in his works.

（4）He was the most renowned English language poet of his day.

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1827)

Introduction

●Shelley is one of the leading Romantic poets, an intense and original lyrical poet in the English language. Shelley drew no essential distinction between poetry and politics, and his work reflected the radical ideas and revolutionary optimism of the era.

●Term – Ode

It is a dignified and elaborately structured lyric poem of some length, praising and glorifying an individual, commemorating an event, or describing nature intellectually rather than emotionally. Originally they were songs performed to the accompaniment of a music instrument. John Keats wrote great odes. His Ode on a Grecian Urn is a case in point.

●Term -- Terza Rima

It is an Italian verse that consists of a series of three-line stanzas in which the middle line of each stanza rhymes with the first and third lines of the following stanza with the rhyming scheme aba, bcb, cdc, ded, etc.. It appeared first in Dante‘s The Divine Comedy. Besides, Shelley‘s Ode to the West Wind

is a case in point.

●Major Works

The Necessity of Atheism《无神论的必要性》

Adonais《阿多尼斯》

Queen Mab 1813《麦布女王》

The Revolt of Islam 1818《伊斯兰的反叛》

Prometheus Unbound 1820《解放了的普罗米修斯》

A Defence of Poetry《诗辩》

●Famous selected poems in our textbook:

A Song: Men of England

Ode to the West Wind

Ozymandias

To a Skylark

The Cloud

●Analysis of Shelley’s works

（1） A Song: Men of England is one of Shelley‘s greatest political lyrics. It is not only a war cry calling upon all working people to rise up against their political oppressors, but an address to them pointing out the intolerable injustice of economic exploitation. The poet warns the working people that if they should give up their struggle, they would be digging graves for themselves with their own hands.

（2）Ode to the West Wind is one of the most popular and best-known of Shelley's lyrics. Main Idea– Shelley eulogized the powerful west wind & expressed his eagerness to enjoy the boundless freedom from the reality. ―West Wind‖—in the poem symbolizes both destroyer of the old and preserver of the new. It destroys leaves/things/thoughts/ideas that are dead; it preserves new life or seeds that represent new life or new birth.

Form—This ode consists of five stanzas, each a stanza formed of four units of terza rima (三行诗节) completed by a couplet. Famous lines—‖Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;/ Destroyer and Preserver; hear, O hear!‖ and ―I fall upon the thorns of life!‖ and ―If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?‖

（3）Prometheus Unbound is Shelley‘s greatest poetic drama. The drama celebrates man‘s victory over tyranny and oppression.

（4）Queen Mab is a revolutionary poem condemning tyranny and exploitation and the unjust war waged by the rich to plunder wealth.

John Keats (1795-1821)

●Romantic poets compared

Wordsworth: beauty in simplicity

Coleridge: beauty in the extraordinary and supernatural

Byron: beauty in power and satire

Shelley: exquisite beauty

Keats: sensuous beauty(给人以美的享受的).

On John Keats‘ tomb are carved, according to his own request, the words: ―Here lies one whose name was writ in water.‖ (此地长眠者，声名水上书) ●John Keats is one of the major English Romantists in the 19th century. He wrote best odes in English literature. He sought to express beauty in all of

his poems. His leading principle is ―Beauty is truth, truth beauty‖. His poetry is distinguished by sensuousness and the perfection of the form. His ability to appeal to the senses through language is virtually unrivaled.

●Major Works

Long Poems Short Poems

―Endymion‖《恩底弥瓮》―Ode on a Grecian Urn‖《希腊古瓮颂》

―Isabella‖《伊萨贝拉》―Ode on Melancholy‖《忧郁颂》

―The Eve of St. Agnes‖《圣爱格尼斯之夜》―Ode to Autumn‖《秋颂》

―Lamia‖ 《莱米亚》―Ode to a Nightingale‖《夜莺颂》

―Hyperion‖ 《赫披里昂》Sonnet:On First Looking into Chapman‘s Homer

●Analysis of Keats’ works

（1）Ode on an Grecian Urn shows the contrast between the permanence of art and the transience of human passion. Form—Each stanza is 10 lines long, metered in a relatively precise iambic pentameter, and divided into a two part rhyme scheme: the first 7 lines of each stanza follow an ABABCDE rhyme and the last 3 lines of which are variable. The famous line from this ode is ―Beauty is truth, truth beauty‖ and ―Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard/ Are sweeter‖.

（2）On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer is a Petrarchan or Italian sonnet with a rhyme scheme of abba abba cdc dcd. The octet (eight lines) describes Keats's reading experience before reading Chapman's translation and the sestet (six lines) contrasts his experience of reading it.

（3）Ode to a Nightingale expresses the contrast between the happy world of natural loveliness and human world of agony.

Walter Scott (1771—1832)

●Walter Scott, a Scottish novelist and poet, is the father of the historical novel. His historical novel is his chief contribution to English literature. His

historical novels concern the history of Scotland, English history and the history of European countries. His language is difficult with Scottish dialect.

●Major Works of Walter Scott

Poems

1802, Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border,《苏格兰边区歌谣集》

1805, The Lay of the Last Minstrel,《最末一个行吟诗人》

1808, Marmion《玛密恩》

1810, The Lady of the Lake《湖上夫人》

Novels

Of Scottish history

Waverley 《威弗利》1814

Guy Mannering 《盖曼纳合》1815

Old Morality 《清教徒》1816

Rob Roy 1817 《罗布·罗伊》, the best of the group

The Heart of Midlothian 1818《弥德洛西恩的心》

Of the English history

Ivanhoe《艾凡赫》1820, is Scott‘s masterpiece. It is a novel of English subject covering the days after the Norman Conquest.

Kenilworth, 《肯纳尔沃思堡》1821

The Fortunes of Nigel, 《尼格尔的家产》1822

Woodstock 《皇家猎宫》

Peveril of the Peak 《贝弗利尔·皮克》1823

Of the European countries

Quentin Durward 《昆丁·达沃德》1823

Talisman 《惊军英雄记》1825

Count Robert of Paris《巴黎的罗伯特伯爵》1832

St. Ronan’s Wells《圣·罗南之泉》, the only one, dealing with his contemporary life

●Features of Scott’s Novels

（1）Scott has an outstanding gift of vivifying the past.

（2）In his novels, historical events are closely interwoven with the fates of individuals.

（3）In his historical novels, he concerns both the lives and deeds of the higher class and that of the ordinary people.

（4）He is a romantic while a Tory, a conservative in politics.

Jane Austen (1775-1817)

Introduction

●She was a woman novelist of the 18th century, thought she lived mainly in the 19th century for her works show clearly her firm belief in the

predominance of reason over passion, the sense of responsibility, good manners and clear-sighted judgment over the Romantic tendencies of emotion and individuality.

●Six Novels

Emma《爱玛》

Persuasion《劝导》

Mansfield Park《曼斯菲尔德庄园》

Northanger Abbey《诺桑觉寺》

Pride and Prejudice《傲慢与偏见》

Sense and Sensibility《理智与情感》

Analysis of Pride and Prejudice

Pride & Prejudice which was originally drafted as First Impressions, mainly tells of the love story between a rich, proud young man Darcy and the beautiful and intelligent Elizabeth Bennet. In this novel, Darcy stands for Pride and Elizabeth represents Prejudice. In the end false pride is humbled and prejudice dissolved.

Main Characters—Mr. Bennet and Mrs. Bennet with their daughters of Jane, Elizabeth, Mary, Catherine and Lydia, besides there are Charles Bingley and Fitzwilliam Darcy.

Major Themes— Pride and prejudice

Love and marriage

Family

Famous quotations from Chapter 1

①―It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife‖. ——Opening sentence from Pride and Prejudice

Explanations of the opening sentence—P & P begins with one of her most famous uses of irony. The first sentence takes a local attitude, to be exemplified in Mrs. Bennet, about the need of well-to-do men to marry, and transforms it, tongue-in-cheek, into a self-evident fact ―universally acknowledged.‖

②―What is his name?‖

―Bingley.‖

―Is he married or single?‖

―Oh! single, my dear, to be sure! A single man of large fortune; four or five thousand a year. What a fine thing for our girls!‖

―How so? how can it affect them?‖

―My dear Mr. Bennet,‖ replied his wife, ―how can you be so tiresome! You must know that I am thinking of his marrying one of them.‖ ——Conversations between Mr. and Mrs Bennet

Explanations of this conversation—The conversation tells us that Mrs. Bennet is eager to marry one of his daughters to the mentioned young man, but

her husband does not care much.

●Jane Austen’s contribution to English literature

（1）Jane Austen is one of the most important Romantic novelists in English literature. She creates six influential novels such as Sense and Sensibility, Emma, Pride and Prejudice.

（2）Her main literary concern is about human beings in their personal relationships. She makes trivial daily life as important as the concerns about human belief and career and salient social events. This is what make her important in English literature.(3%)

（3）Jane Austen has brought the English novel, as an art of form, to its maturity because of her sensitivity to universal patterns of human behavior and her accurate portrayal of human individuals.

（4）She describes the world from a woman‘s point of view, and depicts a group of authentic and common women.

Charles Lamb (1775-1834)

●Romantic prose writers

（1）The early 19th century is remarkable for the development of a new and valuable type of critical prose writing.

（2）The leaders in this new and important development are William Hazlitt, Leigh Hunt, De Quincy and Charles Lamb.

（3）These prose writers were much influenced by the French Revolution in politics and by the Romantic Movement in literature.

（4）They freely expressed their own personality in their writings.

（5）The best representative of these writers is Charles Lamb.

●Major literary works

First Period

John Woodvil《约翰·伍德维尔》1802

Mr. H 《H君》1806

Second Period

Tales from Shakespeare 《莎士比亚故事集》1807 cooperated with his sister

Specimens of English Dramatic Poets Contemporary with Shakespeare《莎士比亚同时代英国戏剧诗人之范作》1808

Third Perid—series of essays

Essays of Elia 《伊利亚随笔集》1823

Last Essays of Elia《后随笔集》1833

Part VIII. The Victorian Age

●Age Division

The Victorian Age can be roughly divided into 3 periods:

The Early Period (1832-1848): a time of social unrest.

The Middle Period (1848-1870): a period of economic prosperity & religious controversy.

The Last Period (1870-1901): a period of decay of Victorian values.

●Features of Victorian novels

（1）The plot is unfolded against a social background, which is broader than what it had been in previous novels.

（2）The cause-effect sequence is much more striking than in previous novels.

（3）Most of the Victorian novels first published in serial form, that is, by installment, before they were fully published in a single book.

（4）The Victorian novels were tainted by the spirit of Puritanism of the Victorian age.

（5）The Victorian novels were characterized by their moral purpose. Many writers wrote novels with a purpose to edify readers & to bring about reforms.

●Victorian Poets

Although the novel was the predominating genre of literature in the Victorian age, it does not follow that there were no prominent poets after the deaths of major Romantic poets.

In fact, poets like Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892), Robert Browning (1812-1889), Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861), & Matthew Arnold (1822-1888)were important in the sense not only that they wrote highly lyrical poems as the Romaticists did, but also that they in their poetry reflected the spiritual search which was characteristic of the age.

●Terms—Critical Realism

Critical Realism is a term applied to the realistic fiction in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It means the tendency of writers and intellectuals in the period between 1875 and 1920 to apply the method of realistic fiction to the criticism of society and the examination of social issues. Charles Dickens is the

most important critical realist who applies this method.

●Terms—Dramatic Monologue

Dramatic Monologue, in literature, refers to the occurrence of a single speaker saying something to a silent audience. Robert Browning‘s My Last Duchess is a typical example in which the duke, speaking to a non-responding audience, reveals not only the reasons for his disapproval of the behavior of his former duchess, but some tyrannical and merciless aspects of his own personality as well.

Charles Dickens (1812-1870)

―He was a sympathizer to the poor, the suffering, and the oppressed; and by his death, one of England's greatest writers is lost to the world.‖——The Epitaph of Charles Dickens

●Charles Dickens is one of the greatest critical realist writers of the Victorian Age. His works are intended to expose and criticize all the poverty,

injustice, hypocrisy and corruptness of the 19th century England, particularly London. All his works are characterized by a mingling of humor and pathos.

●Major works

The First Period

1836 Sketches by Boz 《博兹随笔》

1837 The Pickwick Papers 《匹克威克外传》

1837-1838 Oliver Twist 《雾都孤儿》criticizes the dehumanizing workhouse system and the dark, criminal underworld life.

1838-1839 Nicholas Nickleby 《尼古拉斯.尼科尔贝》

1840 The Old Curiosity Shop 《老古玩店》

The Second Period

1842 American Notes 《美国札记》

1843 Martin Chuzzlewit 《马丁.瞿述传》

1843 A Christmas Carol 《圣诞欢歌》（圣诞故事集）

1844 The Chimes 《钟声》（圣诞故事集）

1846 Dombey and Son 《董贝父子》

1849 David Copperfield 《大卫.科波菲尔》is about the debtor‘s prison.

The Third Period

1852 Bleak House 《荒凉山庄》attacks the legal system and practices that aim at devouring every penny of the clients.

1853 Hard Times 《艰难时世》lashes the Utilitarian principle that rules over the English education system and destroys young hearts and minds. 1854 Little Dorrit 《小杜丽》

1859 A Tale of Two Cities 《双城记》

1860 Great Expectations 《远大前程》expose the overwhelming social environment which brings moral degeneration and destruction to people. 1864 Our Mutual Friend 《我们共同的朋友》

●The characteristics of Charles Dickens’ works

（1）As a novelist, Charles Dickens was first remembered for his sketches of characters and exaggeration. As a master of characterization, Dickens was skillful in drawing vivid caricatural sketches by exaggerating some peculiarities.

（2）Dickens is well known as a humorist as well as a satirist. He sometimes employs humor to enliven a scene or lighten a character by making it (him or her) eccentric or laughable.

（3）Dickens loved complicated and fascinating plot in his novels. He is also skillful at creating suspense and mystery to make the story fascinating. A plot formula in his novel is the happy ending.

（4）As the greatest representative of English critical realism, Dickens made his novel the instrument of morality and justice. Each of his novels reveals a specific social problem.

William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863)

●William Makepeace Thackeray is one of the most important writers of the English critical realism. Through his masterpiece Vanity Fair, Thackeray

sharply exposes the vices of his society: hypocrisy, money-worship, and moral degradation.

●Major works

The Book of Snobs1846-47《势利人脸谱》《势利者集》

Vanity Fair1847-48《名利场》

The History of Pendennis1849-50《彭登尼斯》

The Newcomes 1853-55《纽克姆一家》

The History of Henny Esmond 《亨利?埃斯蒙德》1852

The Virginians《弗吉尼亚人》1859

●The Analysis of V anity Fair

General Introduction—Vanity Fair is Thackeray's masterpiece. It was published in 1847-48 in monthly installments.

The title— was taken from Bunyan's “Pilgrim's Progress‖.

The sub-title —of the book, ―A Novel Without a Hero‖, suggests the fact that writer ' s inten tion was not to portray individuals, but the bourgeois and aristocratic society as a whole.

Main idea—In this novel Thackeray describes the life of the ruling classes of England in the early decades of the 19th century, and attacks the social relationship of the bourgeois world by satirizing the individuals in the different strata of the upper society. It is a world where money grubbing is the main motive for all members of the ruling classes.

The heroin— is Rebecca Sharp who is a perfect embodiment of the spirit of Vanity Fair as her only aspiration in life is to gain wealth and position by any means fair or foul. Sharp is charming and pretty, but she is ambitious. Driven by her ambition, she has become a merciless social climber. As her name suggests, Becky Sharp is determined to carve out a place for herself in Vanity Fair. She succeeds in establishing herself in Vanity Fair at the cost of lives of two men and the alienation of all her friends and family. But she enjoys the battle.

●The characteristics of Thackeray’s novels

（1）Thackeray is one of the greatest critical realists of the 19th-century Europe .

（2）Thackeray is a satirist. He is noted for realistic depiction, the ironic and sarcastic tone and constant comment and criticism.

（3）Thackeray is a moralist. His aim is to produce a moral impression in all his novels.

（4）He is good at describing the life of the upper class, which he is familiar with.

●The theme of Vanity Fair.

（1）Vanity Fair describes the life of the upper society of England in the early 19th century, and exposes the craftiness, snobbishness and vanity of the ruling classes.

（2）Life is portrayed in this novel as a vanity fair where everything can be sold and bought, and money-grubbing was the main motive for the members of the upper classes.

（3）Becky Sharp is a perfect example of this money-grubbing instinct. She is a subtle embodiment of duplicity, ambition and selfishness.

（4）When we discuss the theme of the novel, disillusionment is the key word. At the end of the novel, nobody is happy.

George Eliot (1819-1880) — Mary Ann Evans

―It was really George Eliot who started it all. It was she started putting action inside.‖

-- D.H. Lawrence‘ evaluation on George Eliot

●Eliot’s Major Works

Novels

Remarkable ones：

Adam Bede, 1859 《亚当.比德》---rural life

The Mill on the Floss, 1860《弗洛斯河上的磨房》--moral problems

Silas Marner, 1861《织工马南》 - psychological studies of characters

Others:

Romola, 1863 《罗慕拉》 --problems of religion &morality

Felix Holt, the Radical, 1866《费力可斯.霍尔特》

Middlemarch, 1871–72《米德尔马契》

Daniel Deronda, 1876《丹尼尔.德龙达》

●The characteristics of Eliot’s literary works

She wrote about rural life influenced by the industrial revolution.

She shows a particular concern for the destiny of women.

She leads in the direction of both the naturalistic and psychological novel.

She shows the interest in the interior life of human beings, moral problems and strains.

Religion is concerned in her novels.

Bronte Sisters

●The story of the three Bronte sisters, Charlotte (1816-1855), Emily (1818-1848), Anne (1820-1849), all literary, all talented and all dying young, is

one of the saddest pages in the history of English literature. They were the daughters of a poor clergyman in the little village of Haworth, Yorkshire, in northern England.

Charlotte Bronte (1816-1855)

●She is one of the three Bronte sisters. Her works are all about the struggle of an individual consciousness towards self-realization, about some lonely and

neglected young women with a fierce longing for love, understanding and a full, happy life. Al her heroines‘ highest joy arises from some sacrifice of self or some human weakness overcome.

●Major works

―The Professor‖ (1846, 1857) 《教师》

―Jane Eyre‖ (1847) 《简·爱》

―Shirley‖ (1849)《雪莉》

―Villette‖(1853) 《维莱特》

●The Analysis of Jane Eyre

（1）Jane Eyre is Charlotte‘s masterpiece, and also one of the most popular and important novels of the Victorian Age.

（2）It is noted for its sharp criticism of the existing society, e.g. the religious hypocrisy of charity institutions such as Lowood School.

（3）It traces the passionate love between Jane Eyre and Rochester.

（4）The success of the novel is also due to its introduction to the English novel the first governess heroine, Jane Eyre.

（5）Jane Eyre is an orphan child with a fiery spirit and a longing to love and be loved, a poor, plain, little governess who dares to love her master, a man superior to her in many ways, and even is brave enough to declare to the man her love for him.

（6）In the novel Charlotte shapes a completely new woman image, a woman with the spirit of independence and self-dignity.

（7）The novel is a song of women‘s struggle for recognition of their basic rights and equality as a human being.

●Quotation explained

―Do you think I can stay to become nothing to you? Do you think I am an automaton?––a machine without feelings? And I can bear to have my morsel of bread snatched from my lips, and my drop of living water dashed from my lips? Do you think I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? –– You think wrong! –– I have as much soul as you –– and full as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty, and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you. I am not talking to you no through the medium of custom,