Giáo trình Văn Học Anh 2023-2024 | Đại học Ngoại Ngữ - Tin Học Thành Phố Hồ Chí Minh

CONTENTS Page PART 1 : (3-22) 1. Figures of Speech (4-7) 2. Exercises (8-9) 3. The Elements of Fiction
4. A Story For Interpretation : The Luncheon . (10-14) 5. Verification (15-20) (21-22) PART 2 : (23-76)
1. The Old English Period : _ Beowulf: Summary (24-26)
2. The Middle English Period :
_ Geoffrey Chaucer : A Biography _ The Canterbury Tales. (27-28) 3. The Renaissance : _ Shakespeare: A Biography _ Hamlet :
Soliloquy “To be or not to be” (29-42) _ Sonnet : What is a sonnet ?
_ Sonnets 73, 93, 116 for analysis 4. The Restoration 5. The Age of Reason _ Daniel Defoe : A Biography _ Robinson Crusoe : Extract (43-44) 6. The 19 c th entury : (45-49) • The Romantic Period :
_ William Wordsworth : A Biography I wandered lonely as a cloud (50-69) The world is too much with us _ Byron : A Biography In silence and tears
On my thirty –third birthday 1 • The Victorian Period :
_ Charlotte Bronte : A Biography Jane Eyre : Extracts (70-76) 7. The Modern Age :
_ Virginia Woolf : A Biography A Haunted House 2
PART 1: SOME LITERARY DEVICES AND CONCEPTS
Part I provides students with some basic literary devices and concepts practical y
intended to facilitate students’ interpretative work of the literary materials chosen for the course. FIGURES OF SPEECH 3
Figurative language includes words and impressions that are not taken in the literal sense.
It enables readers to get at the mood of the writer or to have profound understanding o
what is meant. With just a few words, the writer can communicate volumes about feelings and impressions.
SOME COMMON TYPES OF FIGURES OF SPEECH :
1. Simile: A comparison that reveals similarities between otherwise dissimilar things.
My love is like a red, red rose.
My love for Clinton is like the foliage in the woods Time wil change it. I’m well
aware, as winter changes the trees. My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks
beneath, a source of little visible delight, but necessary. I am Heathcliff_ He is always,
always in my mind. [Wuthering Heights]
2. Metaphor : a figure of speech containing an implied comparison, in which a word or
phrase ordinarily used for one thing is applied to another.
Metaphor may be grouped according to their parts of speech :
Noun : She was breathing fire. The lash of his words. A flash of hope. Bloom of youth Ad
jective: Stony heart , burning eye, smiling sun, angry sea.
Verb: His eyes flashed angrily.
Fortune has smiled on his family.
He threw himself in the mercy of court.
* Extended metaphor: expressed through a series of images al bearing some a central point of resemblance:
_ All the world is a stage. And al the men and women are merely players. They have
their exits and entrances. And one man in his times plays many parts. (from As you like it by Shakespeare)
_ Life is but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour on the stage.
And then is heard no more, it is a tale told by an idiot ful of sound and fury, signifying
nothing. (from Macbeth by Shakespeare)
* Dead metaphor: Some words and phrases were original y metaphors or similes but
as they are so often used, the metaphorical characteristic is lost. 4 The foot of the hil The face of a clock.
3. Personification: a figure of speech which gives the qualities of a person to
an animal an object or an idea. The writer uses it to show something in an entirely new
light, to communicate a certain feeling or attitude towards it and to control the way a reader perceives it.
The house was alive with soft, quick steps and running voices.
Little faint winds were playing chase (The Garden Party by Katherine Mansfield)
4. Apostrophe: Direct address to a person (often dead or absent), an abstraction or thing often personified.
O! Solitude! Where are the charms that sages have seen in their face?(Wil iam Cowper
Frailty, thy name is woman. (Hamlet)
5. Hyperbole (Overstatement) : an exaggerated statement not meant to be taken
literal y but made for a special effect
She's said so mil ions of occasions I'm dead tired. I'm bored to death.
Her eyes are brighter than the very sun.
6. Litotes: (understatement): the expression of an affirmative by the negative of its contrary.
She's not a bad- looking girl.
I shan't be sorry. (I shal be very glad)
7. Pun: The humorous use of a word or combination of words that are alike or nearly
alike in sound so as to emphasize different meanings
Is Life worth living? Yes, it depends on the liver.
She told the child to try not to be so trying.
8. Paradox: An apparently self- contradictory statement that may in reality express a
possible truth. It is also intended to cause surprise or arrest attention. Stil water run deep.
The child is the father of the man.
I can resist anything except temptation. Haste makes waste.
9. Antithesis: A striking contrast of ideas marked by the choice and arrangement of
words in the same sentence to secure emphasis. Give me liberty , o r give me death. 5
Speech is silver, but silence is gold.
To err is human; to forgive is divine.
10. Oxymoron: A figure of speech in which apparently contradictory terms
appear in conjunction for a startling effect. Romeo utters a series of
oxymoron when he complains about his " loving hate ", his" heavy lightness"
"serious vanity", "cold fire", “sick heart”', “cold passion”.
11. Euphemism: The use of pleasant, mild or indirect phrases in place of more accurate or direct ones. Pass away for die Pass water for urinate Powder room for toilet
12. Climax : The arrangement of ideas in the order of more or less importance.
What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty!
In action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a God!
To gossip is a fault, to libel a crime, to slander a sin.
Simple, erect, severe, austere, sublime.
13. Synecdoche: The use of a part to stand for a whole, the whole for a part,
an individual name for a whole class. He has many mouths to feed. She was a girl of 20 summers.
I describe a sail steering to the southeast (a ship)
One of the finest marbles (sculptures carved out of marble)
14. Metonymy: The use of the name of one object for that of another with
which it is closely associated or of which it is a part. It is also the use of the
sign for the thing signified, the instrument for the agent, the container for
what is contained, the concrete objects for the abstract concepts.
The White House : the American president The bench: the judges The crown: the king.
The pen is mightier than the sword. From the cradle to the grave.
15. Transferred epithet: a qualifying adjective is changed from the noun it
is intended to qualify to another word which is somewhat in connection with that noun. He passed a sleepless night.
The ploughman plods his weary way homeward. He had a busy week.
SOUND DEVICES: Techniques for bringing out the sound of words
1. Onomatopoeia: the use of words that mimic sounds, like "buzz" or "hiss"
Tuk-Tuk-Tuk, clucked cook like an agitated hen Pom! Ta- t -
a ta tee-ta! The piano burst out so passionately....
2. Alliteration: The repetition of the same sound at the beginning of closely linked
words or syl ables. It helps break up the tedium of prose and add zest to poetry
There was a haze on the horizon.
The golden mound of sweet oily ivory mounts in the milk glass bowl It was hot and humid. Hateful heap
3. Consonance : The repetition of the same consonants in a string of words.
All mammals named Sam are clammy.
4. Assonance: The repetition of the vowels break, break, break
on thy cold, gray stones, O sea! 7 EXERCICES
Identify the fol owing figures of speech:
1. He paid the workers $5 per head.
2. How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank. 3. The heart of the matter. 4. A fleet of 40 sails.
5. The convict was thrown into the condemned cel 6. A flood of questions 7. I have read al of Milton.
8. Australia beat Canada at cricket. 9. Cotton suits you.
10. He glanced at the dew-covered grass, and it winked back at him.
11. How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth, stolen on his wing me three and twentieth year.
12. And I wil love you stil , my dear, Til the seas gone dry,
And the rocks melt in the sun.
13. She smiles and the whole world is happy.
14. We are caught in war, wanting peace. We are torn by division, wanting unity.
15. Though this is madness, yet there is method in it.
16. Someday you wil be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.
17. I know that I know nothing.
18. I think we’ve reached a point of great decision, not just for our nation, not only for
al humanity, but for life upon the earth.
19. It is raining cats and dogs.
20. In June, the clouds are cushion in the mid-day sky.
21. The lawyers were waiting for a decision from the bench.
22. My wit is fol y, my day is night, my love is hate, my sleep waking ( Chaucer)
23. Two minds are better than one. 8
24. When you decide to give her a ring, give us a ring.
25. Good friends are hard to find, harder to leave,, and impossible to forget.
26. The best brains of our country. 27. Death, be not proud.
28. I came, I saw, I won (Cesar)
29. Seven days without water makes me weak.
30. Money is a bottomless sea, in which honor, conscience and truth may be drowned. 9 THE ELEMENTS OF FICTION PLOT 1. What is plot?
The arrangement of events that make up a story. It involves a sequence of incidents
that bear a significant causal relationship to each other. Causality in fiction simply
means that one thing happens because of or as a result of something else. 2. The function of plot:
We do not read for plot only. We read for the revelations of character or life presented by means of plot. 3. The structure of plot:
A writer may use a predictable structure (the story moves from the beginning to the
end) or unpredictable one, in which the plot may start at the end. Then the author may
use flashback by looking back on the past to provide background information, or
interrupt the flow of time to project into the future. 4. The development of plot
A typical fictional plot fol ows a common pattern as fol ows:
a. Exposition or situation: serves as the introduction to the world of the text providing
information about the situation as the story opens, the major characters, their relationship.
b. Complication: (The rising action) : when a sudden element is brought in to “
complicate” the struggle of the main character. This is a very important stage to affect the whole course of the plot.
c. Climax: (The turning point or grand climax): the point of greatest tension when the
conflict is presented directly to be solved one way or another. After climax the story comes to an end.
d. Resolution: when something final y happens to solve the conflict
• Close ending: the conflict has a definite solution
• Indeterminate or open ending: There is no definite resolution. The end is left open for
readers to interpret for themselves. 10