英语专八考试英美文学知识梳理.doc

English and American Literature English Literature Old Medieval（中世纪） English Literature (449-1485) Beowulf(the first long poem in English)(the most important work of Old English literature) The Romances(King Arthur and His Knights of Round Table , Sir Gawain and the Green Knight) Chaucer (1343-1400) The Canterbury Tales the father of English poetry The Renaissance Period (1485-1660) Humanism: it is the essence of the Renaissance.(was a literary and philosophic system of thought which attempted to place the the affairs of mankind at the center of its concerns) Francis Bacon (1561-1626) The Advancement of Learning (1605) William Shakespeare(1564?-1616) Merchant of Venice, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Much Ado About Nothing （无事生非） Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, King Lear, and Macbeth John Milton (1608-1674) Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, The Neoclassical（新古典主义） Period (1660 - 1798） John Bunyan (1628-1688) The Pilgrim’s Progress （天路历程）(the most successful religious allegory 寓言) Alexander Pope An Essay on Criticism （论批评） Daniel Defoe (1660-1731) Robinson Crusoe (1719)(most famous of his work, his masterpiece) The Neoclassical Period (1660 and 1798） Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) Gulliver’s Travels (his greatest satiric work) A Modest Proposal （一个小小的建议） Henry Fielding (1707-1754) Father of the English Novel Tom Jones Samuel Johnson (1709-1784): A Dictionary of the English Language Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816) The School for Scandal (his masterpiece) the only important English dramatist（剧作家） of the 18th century The Romantic Period (1798-1832)(The first Generation of Romantics ) William Wordsworth(1770-1850) with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with the 1798 joint publication Lyrical Ballads. Wordsworth was Britains Poet Laureate（桂冠诗人） from 1843 until his death in 1850. I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud His Works divided into two groups: Poems about nature and poems about human life Samuel Taylor