英语专业英国文学文艺复兴时期名词翻译

The Elizabethan time: refer to the period in English history from

1485 to 1625. This "golden age"represented the apogee of the English

Renaissance and saw the flowering of poetry, music and literature. The

era is most famous for theatre, as William Shakespeare and many others

composed plays that broke free of England's past style of theatre. It was

an age of exploration and expansion abroad, while back at home,

the Protestant Reformation became more acceptable to the people,

most certainly after the Spanish Armada was repulsed. It was also the

end of the period when England was a separate realm before its royal

union with Scotland.

Renaissance（文艺复兴）: The Renaissance Movement is a great

revolution carried out in the fourteenth to the mid-seventeenth century

Europe. It marks the transition from the medieval to the modern world

in Western Europe. It first started in Italy in the 14th century and

gradually spread all over Europe. The word “Renaissance” means rebirth

or revival. In essence, it is a historical period in which the European

humanist thinkers and scholars made attempts to get rid of those old

feudalist ideas in medieval Europe and introduce new ideas that

expressed the interests of the rising bourgeoisie, and to lift the

restriction in all areas placed by the Roman Catholic Church authorities.

Two features of renaissance: It is a thirsting curiosity for the classical

literature. People learned to admire the Greek and Latin works as

models of literary form. It is the keen interest in the activities of

humanity. Humanism is the key-note of the Renaissance.

Humanism: A philosophy that places faith in the dignity of

humankind and rejects the medieval perception of the individual as a

weak, fallen creature. "Humanists" typically believe in the perfectibility

of human nature and view reason and education as the means to that

end.

The English Reformation: was a series of events in 16th

century England by which the Church of England broke away from the

authority of the Pope and the Catholic Church.

Sonnet a lyric poem comprising 14 rhyming lines of equal length:

iambic pentameters in English, alexandrines in French, hendecasyllables

in ltalian. He rhyme schemes of the sonnet follow two basic patterns.

① The Italian sonnet (also called the Petrarchan sonnet after

the most influential of the Italian sonneteers) comprises an 8-line

‘octave’of two quatrains, rhymed abbaabba, followed by a 6-line

‘sestet’ usually rhymed cdecde or cdcdcd. The transition from

octave to sestet usually coincides with a ‘turn’ ( ltalian, volta )in

the argument or mood of the poem. In a variant form used by the

English poet John Milton, however, the ‘turn’ is delayed to a later

position around the tenth line. Some later poets----notably

William Wordsworth----have employed this feature of the

‘Miltonic sonnet’while relaxing the rhyme scheme of the octave to

abbaacca . The Italian pattern has remained the most widely used

in English and other languages.

② The English sonnet (also called the Shakespearean sonnet

after its foremost practitioner) comprises three quatrains and a

final couplet, rhyming ababcdcdefefgg. An important variant of

this is the Spenserian sonnet (introduced by the Elizabethan poet

Edmund Spenser), which links the three quatrains by rhyme, in the

sequence ababbabccdcdee. In either form, the ‘turn’comes with

the final couplet, which may sometimes achieve the neatness of

an epigram.

Spenserian Stanza（斯宾塞诗节） A nine-line stanza rhyming in an

ababbcbcc pattern in which the first eight lines are iambic pentameter

and the last line is an iambic hexameter line. The name Spenserian

comes from the form’s most famous user, Spenser, who used it in The

Fairie Queene. Other examples include Keat’s “Eve of Saint Agnes” and

Shelley’s “Adonais.” The Spenserian stanza is probably the longest and

most intricate stanza generally employed in narrative poetry.

The Spenserian sonnet uses three quatrains and a couplet like the

Shakespearean, but links their three rhyme schemes in this way: abab

bcbc cdcd ee. The Spenserian sonnet develops its theme in two parts like

the Petrarchan, its final six lines resolving a problem, analyzing a

narrative, or applying a proposition put forth in its first eight lines.

iambic pentameter 五步抑扬格

the basic line in English verse, with five feet in a line, usually an

unaccented syllable followed by an accented syllable. It was probably

introduced by Geoffrey Chaucer and certainly established by him in The

Canterbury Tales.

Edmund Spenser埃德蒙▪斯宾塞(莎翁之前最杰出的英国诗人)：The poet’s poet of the period was ES who was buried beside Chaucer in

Westminster Abbey. ES has held his position as a model of poetical art

among the Renaissance English poets, and his influence can be traced in

the works of Milton, Shelley, and Keats. ES is the first master to make

that language the natural music of his poetic effusions(感情的流露). His

sonnets in Amoretti, together with Sidney’s Astrophel and Stella and

Shakespeare’s sonnets ,are the most famous sonnet sequences of the

Elizabeth Age.

【In 1579 he wrote The Shepherd’s Calendar《牧人日记》 which

marked the budding(萌芽) of the Renaissance flower in the northern

island of England. The faerie Queen 《仙后》 is his greatest work which

was dedicated to Queen Elizabeth.】

Francis Bacon: He is the founder of English materialist philosophy

and the founder of modern science in England. His New Instrument is

called the Inductive Method of reasoning. He is also the first English

essayist. To give a few, “Men fear death as children fear to go in the

dark..” “Studies serve for delight.” “Reading makes a full man;

conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.”

Drama: The Miracle Play圣迹剧 The Morality Play道德剧 寓意剧

The Interlude幕间节目

Christopher Marlowe克里斯托弗·马洛: The most gifted of the

“university wits” was Christopher Marlowe. His best work include 3 of

his plays, Tamburlaine《帖木儿大帝》(1587), The Jew of Malta《马耳岛的犹太人》(1592), and Doctor Faustus《浮士德博士》(1588). He was the

greatest of the pioneers of English drama. His work paved the way for

the plays of the greatest English dramatist——Shakespeare——whose

achievements were the monument of the English Renaissance. 【His

plays show the spirit of the rising bourgeoisie, its eager curiosity for

knowledge, its towering pride, its insatiable(不知足的) appetite for

power won by military, might, knowledge, or gold. The theme of his

plays is the praise of individuality freed from the restraints of medieval

dogmas and law, and the conviction of the boundless possibility of

human efforts in conquering the universe. The heroes in his plays are

merely individualists, their individualistic ambition often brings ruin to

the world and sometimes to themselves.】

William Shakespeare: Shakespeare is one of the founders of

realism in world literature. His dramatic creation often used the method

of adaptation. Shakespeare long experience with the stage and his

intimate knowledge of dramatic art thus acquired make him a master

hand for playwriting. Shakespeare was skilled in many poetic forms: the

song, the sonnet, the couplet, and the dramatic blank verse. He was

especially at home with the blank verse. Shakespeare was a great master

of the English language. Shakespeare has been universally acknowledged

to be the summit of the English Renaissance, and one of the greatest

writers over the world.

① The great comedies: A Midsummer Might’s Dream, The

Merchant of Venice, As You Like It, Twelfth Night.

② The great tragedies: Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth.