2010-2011年英美文学史复习提纲(名词解释答案)

1.Humanism:
A Renaissance intellectual and artistic movement triggered by a “rediscovery” of classical Greek and Roman language, culture and literature. Humanists emphasized human culture, reason, learning, art, and education as a means of improving humanity. They exalted the dignity of man, and emphasized present life as a worthwhile focus for art, poetry, and literature.
2.Naturalism:
Naturalism is a literary trend prevailing in Europe, especially in France and Germany, in the second half of the 19th century. The school of thought is a product of Darwin’s evolutionary theory. It asserts that human beings exist entirely in the order of nature. Humanity is thus a higher order animal whose character and behavior are entirely determined by two kinds of forces, hereditary and environment.
3.Imagism:
Imagism is an early twentieth-century artistic movement in the United States and Britain. Imagists believe poets should use common, everyday vocabulary, experiment with new rhythm, and use clear, precise, concentrated imagery. The Imagists advocate direct treatment of the thing and a rhythm like that of a musical phrases.
4.Romanticism:
It is an artistic and intellectual movement originating in Europe in the late 18th century and characterized by a heightened interest in nature, emphasis on the individual’s expression of emotion and imagination, departure from the attitudes and forms of classicism, and rebellion against established social rules and conventions of classicism.
5.Transcendentalism:
Transcendentalism is the summit of the Romantic Movement in the history of American literature. It was started in New England in the 1830s. Transcendentalists place emphasis on the importance of the Oversoul, the individual and Nature. It is believed that nature is ennobling and the individual is divine and therefore, self-reliant.
6.The Lost Generation:
A term first used by Gertrude Stein to describe the group of twentieth-century authors who grew disillusioned after World War I and lived in Europe as expatriates. Ernest Hemingway is one of the more famous members of the Lost Generation.
7.Modernism:
Modernism refers to the deliberate departure from tradition and the use of innovative forms of expression that distinguish many styles in the arts and literature of the 20th century. As a reaction against realism, it takes the irrational philosophy and the theory of psycho-analysis as it theoretical base and cast away all the traditional elements in literature such as story, plot, character, chronological narration, etc.
8.Local Colorism:
When setting dominates, or when the author wants to capture the language, appearance, mentality of people of a particular place at a specific moment in history, the story becomes an example of local color writing or regionalism.。