英美文学术语解释(14)

A verbal picture or figure with a long tradition of moral or religious meaning attached to it.

39. Epigraph(题词)

A quotation or motto at the beginning of a chapter, book, short story, or poem that makes some point about the work. 40. Epilogue(收场白)

A short addition or conclusion at the end of a literary work. 41. Epitaph(碑文)

An inscription on a gravestone or a short poem written in memory of someone who has died. 42. Epithet(称号)

A descriptive name or phrase used to characterize someone or something. 43. Exemplum(说教故事)

A tale, usually inserted into the text of a sermon that illustrates a moral principle. 44. Exposition(解释说明)

(1) That part of a narrative or drama in which important background information is revealed.

(2) It is the kind of writing that is intended primarily to present information. Exposition is one of the major forms of discourse. The most familiar form it takes is in essays. Exposition is also that part of a play in which important background information is revealed to the audience. 45. Fable(寓言)

A fable is a short story, often with animals as its characters, which illustrate a moral. 46. Figurative language(比喻语言)

Language that is not intended to be interpreted in a literal sense. By appealing to the imagination, figurative language provides new ways of looking at the world. Figurative language consists of such figures of speech as hyperbole, metaphor, metonymy, oxymoron(矛盾修饰法), personification, simile, and synecdoche. 47. Figure of speech(修辞特征)

A word or an expression that is not meant to be interpreted in a literal sense. The most common kinds of figures of speech—simile, metaphor, personification, and metonymy—involve a comparison between unlike things. 48. Foil(衬托)

A character who sets off another character by contrast. 49. Foot(脚注)

It is a rhythmic unit, a specific combination of stressed and unstressed syllables. 50. Hyperbole(夸张)

A figure of speech using exaggeration, or overstatement, for special effect. 51. Iamb(抑扬格)

It is the most commonly used foot in English poetry, in which an unstressed syllable comes first, followed by a stressed syllable. 52. Image(影像)

We usually think with words, many of our thoughts come to us as pictures or imagined sensations in our mind. Such imagined pictures or sensations are called images. 53. Incremental repetitio(递增重复)

The repetition of a previous line, or lines but with a slight variation each time that advances the narrative stanza by stanza. This device is commonly used in ballads. 54. In medias res(中间部分)

A technique of plunging into the middle of a story and only later using a flashback to tell

what has happened previously. In medias res is Latin for “in the middle of things”. 55. Inversion(倒置)

The technique of reversing, or inverting, the normal word order of a sentence. Writers may use inversion to create a certain tone or to emphasize a particular word or idea. A poet may invert a line so that it fits into a particular meter or rhyme scheme. 56. Invocation(祈祷)

At the beginning of an epic (or other poem) a call to a muse, god, or spirit for inspiration. 57. Kenning(代称)

In Old English poetry, an elaborate phrase that describes persons, things, or events in a metaphorical and indirect way. 58. Melodrama(通俗剧)

A drama that has stereotyped characters, exaggerated emotions, and a conflict that pits an all-good hero or heroine against an all-evil villain. The good characters always win and the evil ones are always punished. Also, each character in a melodrama had a theme melody, which was played each time he or she made an appearance on stage. 59. Metaphor(暗喻)

A figure of speech that makes a comparison between two things that are basically dissimilar. Unlike simile, a metaphor does not use a connective word such as like, as, or resembles in making the comparison.

60. Metonymy(转喻)

A figure of speech in which something very closely associated with a thing is used to stand for or suggest the thing itself. 61. Miracle play(奇迹剧)

A popular religious drama of medi England. Miracle plays were based on stories of the saints or on sacred history. 62. Motif(主题)

A recurring feature (such as a name, an image, or a phrase) in a work of literature. A motif generally contributes in some way to the theme of a short story, novel, poem, or play. At times, motif is used to refer to some commonly used plot or character type in literature. 63. Motivation(动机)

The reasons, either stated or implied, for a character’s behavior. To make a story believable, a writer must provide characters with motivation sufficient to explain what they do. Characters may be motivated by outside events, or they may be motivated by inner needs or fears. 64. Multiple Point of View(多视角)

It is one of the literary techniques William Faulkner used, which shows within the same story how the characters reacted differently to the same person or the same situation. The use of this technique gave the story a circular form wherein one event was the center, with various points of view radiating from it. The multiple points of view technique makes the reader recognize the difficulty of arriving at a true judgment. 65. Narrator(叙述者)

One who narrates, or tells, a story. A story may be told by a first-person narrator, someone who is either a major or minor character in the story. Or a story may be told by a third-person narrator, someone who is not in the story at all. The word narrator can also refer to a character in a drama who guides the audience through the play, often commenting on the action and sometimes

participating in it. 66. Nonet

the nine-line stanza. Spenserian stanza: ababbcbcc. 67. Nonfiction(写实文学)

It refers to any prose narrative …… 此处隐藏：6242字，全部文档内容请下载后查看。喜欢就下载吧 ……