英国文学名词解释

一、Modernism:

1、Modernism is an international movement in literature and arts, especially in literary criticism, which began in the late 19th century and flourished until 1950s.

2、James Joyce, T.S.Eliot, Virginia Woolf and William Faulkner are prominent modernist writers.

3、Modernism represents a new mode of perception, a major feature of which is disjunctive irony. Its attempt to cope with chaos and fragmentation led to inward transcendence, to the construction of a more perfect world, a literary cosmos, a

self-imposed and self-imposed and self-contained sense of wholeness and harmony in art.d.

二、Postmodernism: 40-50二战后开始60-70高峰法国中尉女人

1、A term referring to certain radically experimental works of literature and art produced after World War II. Post-modernism is distinguished from modernism, which generally refers to the revolution in art and literature that occurred during the period 1910-1930, particularly following the disillusioning experience of World War

I.

2、Much of post-modernist writing reveals and highlights the alienation of individuals and the meaninglessness of human existence. Postmodernists break away from traditions through experimentation with new literary devices, forms, and styles.

三、Aestheticism: art for art seak

1、It began to prevail in Europe at the middle of the 19th century.

2、The two most important representatives of aestheticists in English literature are Walt Pater and Oscar Wilde. They believed that Art did not have any didactic purpose; it need only be beautiful.

3、It is a European design style that emphasized aesthetic values more than socio-political themes for literature, fine art, the decorative arts, and interior design.

四、Epiphany：Araby

1、a sudden revelation of truth about life inspired by a seemingly trivial incident.

2、a spiritual an intellectual illumination of the nature of a thing

3、a sudden revelation of spiritual or moral meaning, usually as to the essential being of a person or thing

五、Dramatic monologue：MY last dutchess

1、~ is a kind of narrative poem in which one character speaks to one or more listeners whose replies are not given in the poem. The occasion is usually a crucial one in the speaker's personality as well as the incident that is the subject of the poem.

2、Robert Browing's My Last Duchess is a typical example.

六、Metafiction：法国中尉女人

1、It is the literary term describing fictional writing that self-consciously and systematically draws attention to its status as an artifact in posing questions about the relationship between fiction and reality, usually using irony and self-reflection.

2、Metafiction is primarily associated with Modernist and Postmodernist literature, but is found at least as early as Homer´s Odyssey and Chaucer's 14th-century Canterbury Tales.