自考英美文学选读名词解释十四　

　　196. 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.

　　197. 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.

　　198. 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.

　　199. 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.

　　200. 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.

　　201. 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.

　　202. 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.

　　203. 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.

　　204. Nonet

　　the nine-line stanza. Spenserian stanza： ababbcbcc.

　　205. Nonfiction（写实文学）

　　It refers to any prose narrative that tells about things as the actually happened or that presents factual information about something. The purpose of this kind of writing is to give a presumably accurate accounting of a person‘s life. Writers of nonfiction use the major forms of discourse： description （an impression of the subject）； narration （the telling of the story）； exposition （explanatory information）； persuasion （an argument to influence people’s thinking）。 Forms： autobiography， biography， essay， story， editorial， letters to the editor found in newspaper， diary， journal， travel literature.

　　206. Novel（小说）

　　A book-length fictional prose narrative， having may characters and often a complex plot.

　　207. Octave（八行体诗）

　　the eight-line stanza. 2 quatrains/ 2 triplets + 1 couplet.

　　208. Onomatopoeia（拟声法构词）

　　The use of a word whose sound in some degree imitates or suggests its meaning.

　　209. Oxymoron（矛盾修辞法）

　　a figure of speech that combines opposite or contradictory ideas or terms. An oxymoron suggests a paradox， but it does so very briefly， usually in two or three words.

　　210. Paradox（自相矛盾）

　　A statement that reveals a kind of truth， although it seems at first to be self-contradictory and untrue.