高分求用英文介绍英国文化的文章

1,英国式幽默的介绍
Humor
It is difficult to make generalizations about humor during the Renaissance because the kinds of things that provoked laughter varied by country, language, and social class. In all parts of Europe, however, laughter was considered an important—even essential—part of life. Scholars often quoted the words of the ancient Greek philosopher ARISTOTLE, who described man as a being capable of laughter. Scholars of drama, medicine, and rhetoric* discussed the nature of humor and laughter. In the fields of drama and fiction, the Renaissance produced some of the greatest comic writers ever.
Humor on the Stage. Comedy played a major role in both formal and informal performances throughout the Renaissance. Renaissance festivals often featured comic performances that made a mockery of the established social order. The most important of these festivals was Carnival, a period of revelry before the sober days of Lent (the 40 weekdays leading up to Easter). Carnival festivities in all parts of Europe included comic plays. French celebrations involved "fools' plays," known as sotties, while Polish events included crude comedies in a realistic style. Songs with mocking or obscene lyrics also formed a part of some Carnival events.
Some early plays featured political humor. The French king Louis XII encouraged political comedies because they helped him to learn what was going on in the state. Other comedies based their humor on stock characters and themes, such as a cheating wife deceiving her dim-witted husband. Although most of these early farces* were penned by unnamed authors, a few well-known poets wrote in this style in France and England. In Italy, a kind of farce called COMMEDIA DELL'ARTE developed in the 1500s. Commedia dell'arte also involved standard character types caught in typical situations. This style of drama featured physical action and broad comedy, with plots ranging from the fairly realistic to the wildly fantastic. Humanist* comedies provided a more intellectual alternative to farce. Humanists of the Renaissance imitated the comedies of the ancient Roman playwrights Plautus and Terence. This classical* style of comedy arose in Italy and spread across Europe. The Italian statesman and author Niccolò MACHIAVELLI produced an obscene comedy called The Mandrake Root that is widely viewed as a masterpiece. Another brilliant work in this style is Ralph Roister Doister, by the English playwright Nicolas Udall.
In addition to staged performances, humor had a regular place at royal and noble courts in the person of the fool, or jester. Dressed in a costume that featured a cap with bells on it, the fool was the one person at the court allowed to ridicule everyone and everything. Fools appeared often as characters in literary works, such as the plays of William SHAKESPEARE. However, the fool's function was not always strictly comical. In many works, he served more to instruct than to amuse.
Humor on the Page. Like the drama of the period, literature of the 1400s and 1500s was largely comic. Renaissance humanists frequently gathered humorous material from classical Greek and Roman literature. They particularly enjoyed collecting short Latin works called facetiae, which could be jokes, serious stories, riddles, or moral fables. Humanists usually did not explain why they chose particular stories for their joke collections. Some, including the Italian poet PETRARCH, drew heavily on the ideas of the ancient Roman writer CICERO about what was funny.
Humanists also enjoyed creating their own humor—especially for the purpose of satire*. The Dutch scholar Desiderius ERASMUS was particularly good at using humor in his satire. One of his funniest works, "The Abbot* and the Learned Lady," ends with the laughter of the witty, educated lady who has outsmarted the rude, ignorant churchman. German and French humanists of the 1500s produced some extremely funny works of satire by writing mock letters in deliberately bad Latin.
Other Renaissance writers turned to verse for their comedy. One of the Italian comic writers' favorite forms was the mock epic*, a takeoff on a highly respected literary form. The famous poem Orlando Furioso (Mad Roland), by the Italian poet Ludovico ARIOSTO, contains elements of the mock epic style. Another well-known mock epic is The Chess Game by Jan Kochanowski, Poland's most famous Renaissance poet. Poets in England or France do not appear to have used this style, but they did mock the conventions* of other poetic forms. For example, Petrarch had set certain standards for love poetry that involved praising the beloved in extravagant terms. Later writers made fun of Petrarch's style, as in Shakespeare's well-known sonnet "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun."
Humor appeared in both long and short fiction works during the Renaissance. Miguel de CERVANTES of Spain and François RABELAIS of France incorporated humor in novels that are still widely read today. Most French comic authors wrote shorter stories, often inspired by Italian sources. For example, MARGARET OF NAVARRE based several comic stories in her Heptameron on the famous Decameron (1353) by Italian author Giovanni BOCCACCIO. Some French stories, such as the collection How to Succeed, by Béroalde de Verville (written around 1612), were highly obscene.
In England one popular form of humor was the "jest," a very short story with a punch line (much like a modern joke). Writers collected these comic stories into jestbooks, which were similar to the Italian collections of facetiae. Jestbooks also became popular in Germany in the late 1500s, and some examples appeared in Spain and Italy.
Humor in the Visual Arts. The comic elements found in Renaissance literature also appeared in the art of the period. Art often used humor to deliver moral or religious messages. During the Protestant Reformation*, Protestant leaders put out illustrated pamphlets that portrayed their enemies as animals or showed the devil playing a Catholic monk like a musical instrument. However, not all humorous art had a moral message. In the late 1520s artist Giulio Romano painted a room at a palace in Mantua with lifelike figures of giants who appear to be pulling down the walls and pillars of the room. This witty style of illusion, known as trompe l'oeil (fool the eye), was very popular at the time.
In the early 1500s, artists began painting in a style known as grotesque, based on ancient Roman wall paintings. Grotesques often portray humans and animals in a fantastic manner, with leaves, flowers, and curly lines where arms and legs should be. The famous Italian artist MICHELANGELO BUONARROTI created several works in this style. Many grotesques still exist on the walls of museums and Italian palaces. Humor also found its way into Renaissance sculpture. The Boboli Gardens of Florence, Italy, built in the 1500s, contain such comic statues as a fat dwarf sitting on a turtle.
2,英国街头文化
Hip hop is a cultural movement that developed in New York City in the 1970s primarily among Black Americans and Latino Americans. It was DJ Afrika Bambaataa that outlined the five pillars of hip-hop culture: MCing, DJing, breaking, graffiti writing, and knowledge.Other elements include beatboxing, hip hop fashion, and slang. Since first emerging in the Bronx, the lifestyle of hip hop culture has spread around the world. When hip hop music began to emerge, it was based around disc jockeys who created rhythmic beats by looping breaks (small portions of songs emphasizing a percussive pattern) on two turntables. This was later accompanied by "rapping" (a rhythmic style of chanting) and beatboxing, a vocal technique mainly used to imitate percussive elements of the music and various technical effects of hip hop DJs. An original form of dancing and particular styles of dress arose among followers of this new music. These elements experienced considerable refinement and development over the course of the history of the culture.
Musicologists often identify the following characteristics as typical of the pop music genre:
a focus on the individual song or singles, rather than on extended works or albums
an aim of appealing to a general audience, rather than to a particular sub-culture or ideology
an emphasis on craftsmanship rather than formal "artistic" qualities
an emphasis on recording, production, and technology, over live performance
a tendency to reflect existing trends rather than progressive developments
The main medium of pop music is the song, often between two and a half and three and a half minutes in length, generally marked by a consistent and noticeable rhythmic element, a mainstream style and a simple traditional structure. Common variants include the verse-chorus form and the thirty-two-bar form, with a focus on melodies and catchy hooks, and a chorus that contrasts melodically, rhythmically and harmonically with the verse.The beat and the melodies tend to be simple, with limited harmonic accompaniment.The lyrics of modern pop songs typically focus on simple themes – often love and romantic relationships – although there are notable exceptions.
Pop music is a music genre that developed from the mid-1950s as a softer alternative to rock 'n' roll and later to rock music. It has a focus on commercial recording, often orientated towards a youth market, usually through the medium of relatively short and simple love songs. While these basic elements of the genre have remained fairly constant, pop music has absorbed influences from most other forms of popular music, particularly borrowing from the development of rock music, and utilizing key technological innovations to produce new variations on existing themes.
3,英国古典文化
哥特式
Gothicismus, Gothism, or Gothicism (Swedish: Göticism) is the name given to what is considered to have been a cultural movement in Sweden. The founders of the movement were Nicolaus Ragvaldi, the brothers Johannes Magnus, Olaus Magnus and Olof Rudbeck d.ä.. They all held the belief that the Goths had originally lived in Sweden. This belief continued to hold power in the 17th century, when Sweden was a great power following the Thirty Years' War, but lost most of its sway in the 18th. It was revitalized by national romanticism in the early 19th century, this time with the vikings as heroic figures.
The name is derived from Jordanes's account of the Gothic urheimat in Scandinavia (Scandza), and the Gothicists in Sweden believed that the Goths had originated from Sweden. Some scholars in Denmark also attempted to identify the Goths with the Jutes, however, these ideas did not lead to the same widespread cultural movement in the Danish society as it did in the Swedish. In contrast with the Swedes, the Danes of this era did not forward claims to political legitimacy based on assertions that their country was the original homeland of the Goths and that the conquest of the Roman Empire was proof of their own country's military valor and power through history
The Gothicismus movement took pride in the Gothic tradition that the Ostrogoths and their king Theodoric the Great who assumed power in the Roman Empire had Scandinavian ancestry. This pride was expressed as early as the medieval chronicles, where chroniclers wrote about the Goths as the ancestors of the Scandinavians, and it permeated the writings of the Swedish writer Johannes Magnus (Historia de omnibus gothorum seonumque regibus) and his brother Olaus Magnus (Historia de gentibus septentrionalibus). Both works had a large impact on contemporary scholarship in Sweden.
During the 17th century, Danes and Swedes competed for the collection and publication of Iceland manuscripts, Norse sagas, and the two Eddas. In Sweden, the Icelandic manuscripts became part of an origin myth and were seen as proof that the greatness and heroism of the old Geats had been passed down through the generations to the current population. This pride culminated in the publication of Olaus Rudbeck's Atland eller Manheim (1679–1702), where he claimed that Sweden was identical to Atlantis.
维多利亚风格
Victorian fashion comprises the various fashions and trends in British culture that emerged and grew in prominence throughout the Victorian era and the reign of Victoria, a period which would last from June 1837 to January 1901. Covering nearly two thirds of the 19th century, the 63 year reign would see numerous changes in fashion. These changes would include, but not be limited to, changes in clothing, architecture, literature, and the decorative and visual arts.
Varieties of Victorian architecture：
Styles conceived in the Victorian era
British Arts and Crafts movement
Industrial architecture
Painted Ladies
Queen Anne (Stick-Eastlake)
Second Empire
Jacobethan (the precursor to the Queen Anne style)
Neo-Grec
Renaissance Revival
Romanesque Revival (includes Richardsonian Romanesque)
[edit] Other movements popularized in the period
While not uniquely Victorian, and part of revivals that began before the era, these styles are strongly associated with the Victorian era due to the large number of examples that were erected in that period
Gothic Revival
Italianate
Neoclassicism
爵位分类：
Peers are of five ranks, in descending order of hierarchy:
Duke comes from the Latin dux, leader. Created in 1337.
Marquess comes from the French marquis, which is a derivative of marche or march. This is a reference to the English borders ("marches") with Wales and Scotland, a relationship more evident in the feminine form: Marchioness. Created in 1385.
Earl comes from the Old English or Anglo-Saxon eorl, a military leader. The meaning may have been affected by the Old Norse jarl, meaning free-born warrior or nobleman, during the Danelaw, thus giving rise to the modern sense. Since there was no feminine Old English or Old Norse equivalent for the term, "Countess" is used (an Earl is analogous to the Continental count), from the Latin comes. Created circa 800-1000.
Viscount comes from the Latin vicecomes, vice-count. Created in 1440.
Baron comes from the Old Germanic baro, freeman. Created in 1066.
In Scotland, the fifth rank is called a Lord of Parliament, as Barons are holders of feudal dignities, not peers. Baronets, while holders of hereditary titles, are not peers. Knights, Dames, and holders of other non-hereditary British honors are also not peers.
For peers, the various titles are in the form of (Rank) (Name of Title) or (Rank) of (Name of Title). The name of the title can either be a place name or a surname. The precise usage depends on the rank of the peerage and on certain other general considerations. Dukes always use of. Marquesses and Earls whose titles are based on place names normally use of, while those whose titles are based on surnames normally do not. Viscounts, Barons and Lords of Parliament do not use of. However, there are several exceptions to the rule. For instance, Scottish vicecomital titles theoretically include of, though in practice it is usually dropped. (Thus, the "Viscount of Falkland" is commonly known as the "Viscount Falkland".)
4,英国概述
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (commonly known as the United Kingdom, the UK, or Britain) is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe. It is an island country, spanning an archipelago including Great Britain, the northeastern part of Ireland, and many small islands. Northern Ireland is the only part of the UK with a land border, sharing it with the Republic of Ireland. Apart from this land border, the UK is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, the North Sea, the English Channel and the Irish Sea. The largest island, Great Britain, is linked to France by the Channel Tunnel.
The United Kingdom is a constitutional monarchy and unitary state consisting of four countries: England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.It is governed by a parliamentary system with its seat of government in London, the capital, but with three devolved national administrations in Belfast, Cardiff and Edinburgh, the capitals of Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland respectively. The Channel Island bailiwicks of Jersey and Guernsey, and the Isle of Man are Crown Dependencies and not part of the UK.The UK has fourteen overseas territories, all remnants of the British Empire, which at its height in 1922 encompassed almost a quarter of the world's land surface, the largest empire in history. British influence can continue to be observed in the language, culture and legal systems of many of its former colonies.
The UK is a developed country, with the world's sixth largest economy by nominal GDP and the seventh largest by purchasing power parity. It was the world's first industrialised country and the world's foremost power during the 19th and early 20th centuries, but the economic cost of two world wars and the decline of its empire in the latter half of the 20th century diminished its leading role in global affairs. The UK nevertheless remains a major power with strong economic, cultural, military, scientific and political influence. It is a nuclear power and has the fourth highest defence spending in the world. It is a Member State of the European Union, holds a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council, and is a member of the Commonwealth of Nations, G8, OECD, NATO, and the World Trade Organization.
你说的每一项都写得挺少的
写不下了,也不知道够不,留一下邮箱,我可以继续补充