英美文学名词解释(1)

1puritanism清教主义

The dogmas 教条preached by Puritans. They believed that all men were predestined命中注定and the individual ‘s free will played no part in his quest for salvation. This was a rejection of the dogmas preached by the Roman Catholic Church and its rites仪式. The Puritans also advocated a strict moral code which prohibited many earthly pleasures such as dancing and other merry-makings.清教徒提倡严格的道德准则禁止如跳舞和其他许多世俗的快乐的气质。They stressed the virtues of self-discipline,自律thrift节俭and hard work as evidence that one was among the “elect” to be chosen to go to Heaven after death

2Romanticism

The term refers to the literary and artistic movements of the late 18th and early 19th century. Romanticism rejected the earlier philosophy of the Enlightenment, which stressed that logic and reason were the best response humans had in the face of cruelty, 残忍的stupidity, superstition,迷信的and barbarism. Instead, the Romantics asserted that reliance 依赖upon emotion and natural passions provided a valid and powerful means of knowing and a reliable guide to ethics 伦理and living. The Romantic movement typically asserts 声称，代言the unique nature of the individual, the privileged status 特权地位of imagination and fancy想象和幻想, the value of spontaneity over “artifice” and “convention”价值的理解“技巧”和“公约”，the human need for emotional outlets, the spiritual destruction 精神上的摧残of urban life.城市生活。Their writings are often set in rural, or Gothic settings and they show an obsessive 强迫性的concern with “innocent” characters—children, young

lovers, and animals. The major Romantic poets included William Blake, William Wordsworth, John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Lord Gordon Byron.

3Epic 史诗

An epic is a long oral narrative poem that operates on a grand scale大尺度and deals with legendary传奇or historical events of national or universal significance.意义Most epics deal with the exploits利用of a single individual and also interlace the main narrative with myths, legends, folk tales and past events; there is a composite effect, the entire culture of a country cohering in the overall experience of the poem. Epic poems are not merely entertaining stories of legendary or historical heroes; they summarize and express the nature or ideals of an entire nation at a significant or crucial period of its history.

4Transcendentalism

Transcendentalism is a philosophical and literary movement, flourishing in New England from the 1830s to the Civil War.

It is the summit of American Romanticism.It is strongly against Rationalism and Materialism (物质享乐主义）.What is popularly called Transcendentalism among us is idealism, idealism as appears in 1842. Transcendentalism was a romantic idealism, or philosophical romanticism. It is also regarded as a considerable-scale ideological and cultural revolution after American people struggled to get free from the English colonial rule

5Realism

Realism is the trend, beginning with mid nineteenth-century French literature and