美国文学-名词解释
美国文学术语解释(全面且简练)
美国文学术语解释(全面且简练)美国文学是指具有美国独特文化地域色彩的文学作品。
包括小说、戏剧、诗歌、散文以及加拿大和多明尼加等国家的文学作品。
其短篇小说及戏剧都有着浓厚的美国文化特色，其龙头主流的文学派别是在17世纪后期形成的新约克郡派，主要有约翰•德拉谢尔（John Dryden）、Jonathan Swift 等人，他们为美国文学写下了精彩绝伦的篇章。
新约克郡派把文章写成了装满宗教特质、歌颂胜利、崇高赞美的模式，也就是赞美诗，发掘探索细节、夸张搭配修辞，准确表达真实情境，是后期美国文学的重要基础；而在早期的美国文学发展史上，更多的是宗教文学。
随着美国政治的发展，社会文化的不断进步，宗教文学慢慢地被实用的文学文本所取代。
美国的文学活动开始贴近人文主义的文学脉络，表现出散文风格，致力于针对现状的批判性反思以及自我叙述性自觉。
然而，到了18世纪末，受英国文学传统影响，美国文学正式步入正轨，并开始向两群导向，即诗歌与小说。
第一类作品赞美自然风景、积极的立场或事实内容，通过句法、修辞手法和宋体表达，以“说服力”为特征；而小说，基本上描写人物及其情感，作者给予考量和评析，以构建一个小说世界。
有关美国文学习派别方面，它指的是具有某种特殊特性的作品、作者或趋势，这些特性可以汇聚成学派，如经典主义派、象征主义派、古典注重艺术形式翻新派、现代主义派、问题类型派、客观散文派等等。
美国文学家们也是新的运动的团体来提倡这些派别，如1820年墨西哥战争、当时的托马斯汉密尔顿著名的圣教徒笃信运动引起的“波厄特派”，其中的小说作家和写报人表达了一种激进的、反殖民主义的文学潮流。
波厄特派的影响很大，它声称小说应该坚持自然、客观原则，实证严谨，保持超验主义，而不是神话传说，也不是把文学作品改写成像诗歌一样的形式。
自19世纪初美国文学思想开始发展至今，美国文学进入了一个更加多样化、开放空间愈加广阔的阶段，无论是宗教、哲学还是政治新思想都将重新回归到文学之中，美国文学也变得更加丰富多彩了。
美国文学名词解释
1. Transcendentalism—it is a philosophic and literary movement that flourish in New England, as a reaction against rationalism and Calvinism. It stressed intuitive understanding of god without the help of the church, and advocated independence of the mind. 超验主义，它是一个蓬勃发展的新英格兰的哲学和文学运动，反对理性主义和加尔文主义的反应。
它强调直观地了解上帝没有教会的帮助下，主张心灵的独立性。
2. Romanticism had appeared in England in the last years of the eighteenth century. It spread to conti nental Europe and then came to America early in the nineteenth century. It came into being as a re action against the prevailing neoclassical spirit and rationalism during the Age of Reason. 浪漫主义曾经出现在英国，在过去几年的十八世纪。
它蔓延到欧洲大陆，然后来到美国在十九世纪初。
它应运而生作为理性的时代中针对当时新古典主义精神和理性的反应。
3. Puritanism—it is the religious belief of the Puritans, who had intended to purify and simplify the religious ritual of the Church of England. 清教主义，它是清教徒，谁曾打算净化和简化英国教会的宗教礼仪的宗教信仰。
美国文学的名词解释_特点_流派
美国文学的名词解释_特点_流派美国文学的名词解释美国文学(American Literature 或Literature of the United States)指在美国产生的文学(也包括建国前殖民地时期的文学作品)。
用英语写成的美国文学可视为英语文学的一部分。
美国文学的历史不长，它几乎是和美国自由资本主义同时出现，较少受到封建贵族文化的束缚。
美国早期人口稀少，有大片未开发的土地，为个人理想的实现提供了很大的可能性。
美国人民富于民主自由精神，个人主义、个性解放的观念较为强烈，这在文学中有突出的反映。
美国又是一个多民族的国家，移民不断涌入，各自带来了本民族的文化，这决定了美国文学风格的多样性和庞杂性。
美国文学发展的过程就是不断吸取、融化各民族文学特点的过程。
美国文学的特点美国文学的历史不长，它几乎是和美国自由资本主义同时出现，较少受到封建贵族文化的束缚。
美国早期人口稀少，有大片未开发的土地，为个人理想的实现提供了很大的可能性。
美国人民富于民主自由精神，个人主义、个性解放的观念较为强烈，这在文学中有突出的反映。
美国又是一个多民族的国家，移民不断涌入，各自带来了本民族的文化，这决定了美国文学风格的多样性和庞杂性。
美国文学发展的过程就是不断吸取、融化各民族文学特点的过程。
许多美国作家来自社会下层，这使得美国文学生活气息和平民色彩都比较浓厚，总的特点是开朗、豪放。
内容庞杂与色彩鲜明是美国文学的另一特点。
个性自由与自我克制、清教主义与实用主义、激进与反动、反叛和顺从、高雅与庸俗、高级趣味与低级趣味、深刻与肤浅、积极进取与玩世不恭、明快与晦涩、犀利的讽刺与阴郁的幽默、精心雕琢与粗制滥造、对人类命运的思考和探索与对性爱的病态追求等倾向，不仅可以同时并存，而且形成强烈的对照。
从来没有一种潮流或倾向能够在一个时期内一统美国文学的天下。
美国作家敏感、好奇，往往是一个浪潮未落，另一浪潮又起。
作家们永远处在探索和试验的过程之中。
美国文学名词解释
American Puritanism清教主义:Puritanism is the practices and beliefs of the puritans. The Puritans were originally members of a division of the protestant church who wanted to purify their religious beliefs and practices. They accepted the doctrines of predestination, original sin and total depravity, and limited atonement through a special infusion of grace from God. American literature in the 17th century mostly consisted of Puritan literature. Puritanism had an enduring influence on American literature. It had become, to some extent, so much a state of mind, so much a part of national cultural atmosphere, rather than a set of tenets. Transcendentalism 超验主义: Transcendentalism was a group of new ideas in literature, religion, culture and philosophy that emerged in New England in the early to middle 19th century. Transcendentalists spoke for cultural rejuvenation and against the materialism of American society. It placed emphasis on spirit, or the Over soul, as the most important thing in the world. It stressed the importance of individual and offered a fresh perception nature ad symbolic of the spirit of God. Prominent transcendentalists included Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thorough.American Naturalism美国自然主义文学: American naturalism was a new and harsher realism. The naturalists attempt to achieve extreme objectivity and frankness, presenting characters of low social and economic classes who were determined by environment and heredity. It emphasized that the world was amoral, the men and women had no free will, that lives were controlled by heredity and environment, that the destiny of humanity was misery in life and oblivion in death. The pessimism and deterministic ideas naturalism pervaded the works of such American writers as Stephen Crane and Theodore Dreiser.American Naturalism(美国自然主义文学)：The American naturalists accepted the more negative interpretation of Darwin’s evolutionary theory and used it to account for the behavior of those characters in literary works who were regarded as more or less complex combinations of inherited attributes, their habits conditioned by social and economic forces.2) naturalism is evolved from realism when the author’s tone in writing becomes less serious and less sympathetic but more ironic and more pessimistic. It is no more than a gloomy philosophical approach to reality, or to human existence.3>Dreiser is a leading figure of his school.The Gilded Age镀金时代:the Gilded Age refers to the era of rapid economic and population growth in the United States during the post-Civil War and post-Reconstruction eras of the late 19th century. The term "Gilded Age" was coined by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner in their 1873 book, The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today.The Gilded Age is most famous for the creation of a modern industrial economy. The end of the Gilded Age coincided with the Panic of 1893, a deep depression. The depression lasted until 1897 and marked a major political realignment in the election of 1896. After that came the Progressive Era.The Lost Generation迷惘的一代:The Lost Generation is a group of expatriate American writers residing primarily in Paris during the 1920s and 1930s. The group was given its name by the American writer Ger trude Stein, who used “a lost generation” to refer to expatriate Americans bitter about their World War I experiences and disillusioned with American society. Hemingway later used the phrase as an epigraph for his novel The Sun Also Rises. It consisted of many influential American writers, including Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Carlos Williams and Archibald MacLeish.The Lost Generation(迷惘的一代）：The lost generation is a term first used by Stein to describe the post-war I generation of American writers:men and women haunted by a sense of betrayal and emptiness brought about by the destructiveness of the war.2>full of youthful idealism, these individuals sought the meaning of life, drank excessively, had love affairs and created some of the finest American literature to date.3>the three best-known representatives of lost generation are F.Scott Fitzgerald, Hemingway and John dos Passos. Tragedy:In general, a literary work in which the protagonist meets an unhappy or disastrous end. Unlike comedy, tragedy depicts the actions of a central character whois usually dignified or heroic. Through a series of events, this tragic hero is brought to a final downfall. The causes of the tragic hero’s downfall vary. In traditional dramas, the cause can be f ate, a flaw in character or an error in judgment. In modern dramas, where the tragic hero is often an ordinary individual, the causes range from moral or psychological weakness to the evils of society.Catch-22第22条军规:Catch-22 is a general critique of bureaucratic operation and reasoning. Resulting from its specific use in the book, the phrase "Catch-22" is common idiomatic usage meaning "a no-win situation" or "a double bind" of any type. The term was originally from Joseph Heller’s anti novel Catch-22.Beat Generation垮掉的一代:、Group of American writers of the 1950s whose writing expressed profound dissatisfaction with contemporary American society and endorsed an alternative set of values. The term sometimes is used to refer to those who embraced the ideas of these writers. The Beat Generation's best-known figures were writers Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac.The Beat Generation(垮掉的一代):The members of The Beat Generation were new bohemian libertines. Who engaged in a spontaneous, sometimes messy, creativity.2> The Beat writers produced a body of written work controversial both for its advocacy of non-conformity and for its non-conforming style.3> the major beat writings are Allen Ginsberg’s howl.Howl became the manifesto of The Beat Generation.Psychological Realism心理现实主义:It is the realistic writing that probes deeply into the complexities of characters’ thoughts and motivations. It places more than the usual amount of emphasis on interior characterization and on the motives, and internal action which springs from and develops external action. In Psychological Realism, character and characterization are more than usually important. Henry James is considered a great master of psychological realism.Free Verse自由诗体:Free verse is poetry that has an irregular rhythm and line length and that attempts to avoid any predetermined verse structure, instead, it uses the cadences of natural speech. While it alternates stressed and unstressed syllables as stricter verse form do, free verse dose so in a looser way. Walt Whitman’s poetry is an example of free verse.Confessional Poetry自白诗:It is a type of modern poetry in which poets speak with openness and frankness about their own lives, such as in poems about illness, sexuality and despondence. Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath and Allen Ginsberg and Theodore Roethke are the most important American poets.Imagism意象派:The 1920s saw a vigorous literary activity in America. In poetry there appeared a strong reaction against Victorian poetry. Imagists placed primary reliance on the use of precise, sharp images as a means of poetic expression and stressed precision in the choice of words, freedom in the choice of subject matter and form, and the use of colloquial language. Most of the imagist poets wrote in free verse, using such devices as assonance and alliteration rather than formal metrical schemes to give structure to their poetry.The movement which had these as its aims is known in literary history as Imagism. Its prime mover was Ezra Pound.Imagism(意象主义)：Imagism came into being in Britain and U.S around 1910 as a reaction to the traditional English poetry to express the sense of fragmentation and dislocation.2>the imagists, with Ezra Pound leading the way, hold that the most effective means to express these momentary impressions is through the use of one dominant image.3>imagism is characterized by the following three poetic principles:A.direct treatment of subject matter;B.economy of expression;C. as regards rhythm ,to compose in the sequence of the musical phrase, not in the sequence of metronome. 4> pou nd’s In a Station of the Metro is a well-known inagist poem. Black Humor:the use of morbid and the absurd for darkly comic purposes in modern fiction and drama. The term refers as much to the tone of anger and bitterness as it does to the grotesque and morbid situations, which often deal with suffering, anxiety, and death. Black humor is a substantial element in the Anti-novel and the Theatre of Absurd. Joseph Heller's Catch-22 is an almost archetypal example.Irony:A contrast or an incongruity between what is stated and what is really meant, or between what is expected to happen and what actually happens in drama and literature. There are types of irony: verbal irony, dramatic irony and irony of situation. Irony of situation typically takes the form of a discrepancy between appearance and reality, or between what a character expects and what actually happens. Both verbal and irony of situation share the suggestion of a concealed truth conflicting with surface appearances.A Jja zz age(爵士时代):Jazz Age describes the period of the 1920s and 1930s, the years between world war I and world war II. Particularly in north America. With the rise of the great depression, the values of this age saw much decline. Perhaps the most representative literary work of the age is American writer Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. Highlighting what some describe as the decadence and hedonism, as well as the growth of individualism. Fitzgerald is largely credited with coining the term” Jazz Age”.Nathaniel Hawthorneworks(1)Two collections of short stories: Twice-toldTales, Mosses from and Old Manse(2)The Scarlet Letter(3)The House of the Seven Gables(4)The Marble Faun1.point of view(1)Evil is at the core of human life, “thatblackness in Hawthorne”(2)Whenever there is sin, there is punishment.Sin or evil can be passed from generation togeneration (causality).(3)He is of the opinion that evil educates.(4)He has disgust in science.2.aesthetic ideas(1)He took a great interest in history andantiquity. To him these furnish the soil onwhich his mind grows to fruition.(2)He was convinced that romance was thepredestined form of American narrative. Totell the truth and satirize and yet not tooffend: That was what Hawthorne had inmind to achieve.3.style – typical romantic writer(1)the use of symbols(2)revelation of characters’ psychology(3)the use of supernatural mixed with theactual(4)his stories are parable (parable inform) – toteach a lesson(5)use of ambiguity to keep the reader in theworld of uncertainty –multiple point ofviewEdgar Allen PoeWorks1.short stories(1)ratiocinative storiesa.Ms Found in a Bottleb.The Murders in the Rue Morguec.The Purloined Letter(2)Revenge, death and rebirtha.The Fall of the House of Usherb.Ligeiac.The Masque of the Red Death(3)Literary theorya.The Philosophy of Compositionb.The Poetic Principlec.Review of Hawthorne’s Twice-told TalesI.Themes1.death –predominant theme in Poe’s writing“Poe is not interested in anything alive. Everythingin Poe’s writings is dead.”2.disintegration (separation) of life3.horror4.negative thoughts of scienceII.Aesthetic ideas1.The short stories should be of brevity, totality,single effect, compression and finality.2.The poems should be short, and the aim should bebeauty, the tone melancholy. Poems should not beof moralizing. He calls for pure poetry and stressesrhythm.III.Style – traditional, but not easy to read Reputation: “the jingle man” (Emerson)I. F. Scott Fitzgerald1.life – participant in 1920s2.works(1)This Side of Paradise(2)Flappers and Philosophers(3)The Beautiful and the Damned(4)The Great Gatsby(5)Tender is the Night(6)All the Sad Young Man(7)(8)The Last Tycoon3.point of view(1)He expressed what the young peoplebelieved in the 1920s, the so-called“American Dream” is false in nature.(2)He had always been critical of the rich andtried to show the integrating effects ofmoney on the emotional make-up of hischaracter. He found that wealth alteredpeople’s characters, making them mean anddistrusted. He thinks money brought onlytragedy and remorse.(3)His novels follow a pattern: dream – lack ofattraction – failure and despair.4.His ideas of “American Dream”It is false to most young people. Only those whowere dishonest could become rich.5.StyleFitzgerald was one of the great stylists in Americanliterature. His prose is smooth, sensitive, andcompletely original in its diction and metaphors. Itssimplicity and gracefulness, its skill inmanipulating the relation between the general andthe specific reveal his consummate artistry.6.The Great GatsbyNarrative point of view – NickHe is related to everyone in the novel and is calmand detected observer who is never quick to makejudgements.Selected omniscient point of viewII.Ernest Hemingway1.life2.point of view (influenced by experience in war)(1)He felt that WWI had broken America’sculture and traditions, and separated from itsroots. He wrote about men and women whowere isolated from tradition, frightened,sometimes ridiculous, trying to find theirown way.(2)He condemned war as purposeless slaughter,but the attitude changed when he took partin Spanish Civil War when he found thatfascism was a cause worth fighting for.(3)He wrote about courage and cowardice inbattlefield. He defined courage as “aninstinctive movement towards or away fromthe centre of violence with self-preservationand self-respect, the mixed motive”. He alsotalked about the courage with which to facetragedies of life that can never be remedied.(4)Hemingway is essentially a negative writer.It is very difficult for him to say “yes”. Heholds a black, naturalistic view of the worldand sees it as “all a nothing” and “all nada”.3.works(1)In Our Time(2)Men Without Women(3)Winner Take Nothing(4)The Torrents of Spring(5)The Sun Also Rises(6) A Farewell to Arms(7)Death in the Afternoon(8)To Have and Have Not(9)Green Hills of Africa(10)The Fifth Column(11)For Whom the Bell Tolls(12)Across the River and into the Trees(13)The Old Man and the Sea4.themes –“grace under pressure”(1)war and influence of war on people, withscenes connected with hunting, bull fightingwhich demand stamina and courage, andwith the question “how to live with pain”,“how human being live gracefully underpressure”.(2)“code hero”The Hemingway hero is an average man ofdecidedly masculine tastes, sensitive andintelligent, a man of action, and one of fewwords. That is an individualist keepingemotions under control, stoic andself-disciplined in a dreadful place. Thesepeople are usually spiritual strong, people ofcertain skills, and most of them encounterdeath many times.5.style(1)simple and natural(2)direct, clear and fresh(3)lean and economical(4)simple, conversational, common found,fundamental words(5)simple sentences(6)Iceberg principle: understatement, impliedthings(7)SymbolismI.Mark Twain – Mississippi1.life2.works(1)The Gilded Age(2)“the two advantages”(3)Life on the Mississippi(4) A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’sCourt(5)The Man That Corrupted Hardleybug3.style(1)colloquial language, vernacular language,dialects(2)local colour(3)syntactic feature: sentences are simple, brief,sometimes ungrammatical(4)humour(5)tall tales (highly exaggerated)(6)social criticism (satire on the different uglythings in society)I.Emily Dickenson1.life2.works(1)My Life Closed Twice before Its Close(2)Because I Can’t Stop for Death(3)I Heard a Fly Buzz – When I died(4)Mine – by the Right of the White Election(5)Wild Nights – Wild Nights3.themes: based on her ownexperiences/joys/sorrows(1)religion –doubt and belief about religioussubjects(2)death and immortality(3)love –suffering and frustration caused bylove(4)physical aspect of desire(5)nature – kind and cruel(6)free will and human responsibility4.style(1)poems without titles(2)severe economy of expression(3)directness, brevity(4)musical device to create cadence (rhythm)(5)capital letters – emphasis(6)short poems, mainly two stanzasrhetoric techniques: personification –make some of abstract ideas vivid。
美国文学名词解释
美国文学名词解释美国文学，作为世界文学的重要组成部分，有着丰富多彩的文化背景和独特的创作风格。
在这篇文章中，我将为您解释几个与美国文学相关的重要名词。
1. 美国文学：美国文学是指在美国国土上创作的文学作品，包括小说、诗歌、戏剧和散文等各种文体。
美国文学自17世纪初殖民地时期开始出现，并逐渐形成独特的风格和主题，如自由、探索、个人价值观等。
该文学受到欧洲文学、非裔美国文学、拉丁美洲文学等多个文学传统的影响。
2. 讽刺文学：讽刺文学是通过调侃、嘲笑或批评等手法，通过善意或恶意地对社会、人物、社会习俗等进行揭示和描述的一种文学形式。
美国文学中讽刺常常用来表达对社会问题的关注以及对不公正现象的讽刺批评。
作家马克·吐温的小说《哈克贝里·费恩历险记》便是美国文学中著名的讽刺作品之一。
3. 大都市文学：大都市文学是指以城市为背景、以城市生活为题材的文学作品。
美国是大都市文学的发源地之一，纽约市成为该文学流派的中心。
大都市文学反映了城市的动态与繁华，同时也揭示了城市中的社会问题和人际关系。
美国作家F·斯科特·菲茨杰拉德的小说《了不起的盖茨比》，以及薇拉·刘易斯和李欧·斯坦巴克的作品都是著名的大都市文学作品。
4. 美国本土文学：美国本土文学是指探讨、描写和反映美国本土历史、文化、民族特色的文学作品。
该文学形式着重于展示美洲原住民、欧洲移民、非裔美国人和其他少数族裔的文化传统和经验。
美国作家奥兰多·费斯特的小说《渐近线》以及路易斯·埃里斯的小说《米南多洛之歌》都是美国本土文学的代表作品。
5. 后现代主义文学：后现代主义文学是指具有反传统、颠覆常规、模糊现实与虚幻界限的文学形式。
在晚20世纪以后的美国文学中，后现代主义作品开始兴起。
该文学形式常常使用非线性叙事、多重视角和流派的混合等技巧来表达个体性、主观性和相对主义等概念。
美国作家托马斯·品钦的小说《地下时光》以及大卫·福斯特·华莱士的小说《无人生还》都是后现代主义文学的代表作品。
美国文学术语解释
美国文学术语解释美国文学术语解释American puritanism(美国清教主义)Colonial American(殖民时期的美国)Great Aweaking(宗教大觉醒运动)American Romanticism(美国浪漫主义)Gothic tradition(哥特传统) Historical novel(历史小说)Civil War（美国内战）Transcendentalism(超验主义) Individualism(个人主义) Unitarianism(上帝一位论) Allegory(寓言) American Renaissance(美国文艺复兴)Original Sin(原罪)American Enlightenment(美国启蒙运动)Free verse(自由诗) Alliteration(头韵) Assonance(类韵) Consonance(和音)Lyric(抒情诗)Sonnet(十四行诗)Point of view(视角)Realism(现实主义)Local Colorism(地方特色主义) Irony(反讽)Naturalism(自然主义)Social Darwinism(社会达尔文主义)Dadaism(达尔文主义) Expressionism(表现主义) Harlem Renaissance(哈姆雷特文艺复兴)Imagism(意象主义)Jazz Age(爵士乐时代) Surrealism(超现实主义)V orticism(漩涡派)Dramatic Monologue(戏剧性独白)Lost Generation(迷惘的一代) Metaphysical poets(玄学派诗人)Narrator(叙述者)Stream of Consciousness(意识流) The Beat Generation(垮掉的一代) The 1930s(美国30年代)New Criticism(新批评主义) Theatre of the Absurd(荒诞剧) Postmodernism(后现代主义) Metafiction(元小说) Confessional poetry(自白派诗歌) The New York School(纽约派诗人)The absurd(荒谬派)Parody(戏讽)Magic realism(魔幻现实主义) The National Association for the Advancement of ColoredPeople(NAACP)(美国有色人种协进会)The Native American Renaissance(土著美国人文艺复兴)。
美国文学术语解释
01. Humanism(人文主义)Humanism is the essence of the Renaissance.2> it emphasizes the dignity of human beings and the importance of the present life. Humanists voiced their beliefs that man was the center of the universe and man did not only have the right to enjoy the beauty of the present life, but had the ability to perfect himself and to perform wonders.02. Renaissance(文艺复兴)The word “Renaissance”means “rebirth”, it meant the reintroduction into westerm Europe of the full cultural heritage of Greece and Rome.2>the essence of the Renaissance is Humanism. Attitudes and feelings which had been characteristic of the 14th and 15th centuries persisted well down into the era of Humanism and reformation.3> the real mainstream of the english Renaissance is the Elizabethan drama with william shakespeare being the leading dramatist.03. Metaphysical poetry(玄学派诗歌)Metaphysical poetry is commonly used to name the work of the 17th century writers who wrote under the influence of John Donne.2>with a rebellious spirit, the Metaphysical poets tried to break away from the conventional fashion of the Elizabethan love poetry.3>the diction is simple as compared with that of the Elizabethan or the Neoclassical periods, and echoes the words and cadences of common speech.4>the imagery is drawn from actual life.04. Classcism(古典主义)Classcism refers to a movement or tendency in art, literature, or music that reflects the principles manifested in the art of ancient Greece and Rome. Classicism emphasizes the traditional and the universal, and places value on reason, clarity, balance, and order. Classicism, with its concern for reason and universal themes, is traditionally opposed to Romanticism, which is concerned with emotions and personal themes.05. Enlightenment(启蒙运动)Enlightenment movement was a progressive philosophical and artistic movement which flourished in france and swept through western Europe in the 18th century.2> the movement was a furtherance of the Renaissance from 14th century to the mid-17th century.3>its purpose was to enlighten the whole world with the light of modern philosophical and artistic ideas.4>it celebrated reason or rationality, equality and science. It advocated universal education.5>famous among the great enlighteners in england were those great writers like Alexander pope. Jonathan swift.etc.06.Neoclassicism(新古典主义)In the field of literature, the enlightenment movement brought about a revival of interest in the old classical works.2>this tendency is known as neoclassicism. The Neoclassicists held that forms of literature were to be modeled after the classical works of the ancient Greek and Roman writers such as Homer and Virgil and those of the contemporary French ones.3> they believed that the artistic ideals should be order, logic, restrained emotion and accuracy, and that literature should be judged in terms of its service to humanity.07. The Graveyard School(墓地派诗歌)The Graveyard School refers to a school of poets of the 18th century whose poems are mostly devoted to a sentimental lamentation or meditation on life. Past and present, with death and graveyard as themes.2>Thomas Gray is considered to be the leading figure of this school and his Elegy written in a country churchyard is its most representative work.08. Romanticism(浪漫主义)1>In the mid-18th century, a new literary movement called romanticism came to Europe and then to England.2>It was characterized by a strong protest against the bondage of neoclassicism, which emphasized reason, order and elegant wit. Instead, romanticism gave primary concern to passion, emotion, and natural beauty.3>In the history of literature. Romanticism is generally regarded as the thought that designates a literary and philosophical theory which tends to see the individual as the very center of all life and experience. 4> The English romantic period is an age of poetry which prevailed in England from 1798 to 1837. The major romantic poets include Wordsworth, Byron and Shelley.09. Byronic Hero(拜伦式英雄)Byronic hero refers to a proud, mysterious rebel figure of noble origin.2> with immense superiority in his passions and powers, this Byronic Hero would carry on his shoulders the burden of righting all the wrongs in a corrupt society. And would rise single-handedly against any kind of tyrannical rules either in government, in religion, or in moral principles with unconquerable wills and inexhaustible energies.3> Byron’s chief contr ibution to English literature is his creation of the “Byronic Hero”10. Critical Realism(批判现实主义)Critical Realism is a term applied to the realistic fiction in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.2> It means the tendency of writers and intellectuals in the period between 1875 and 1920 to apply the methods of realistic fiction to the criticism of society and the examination of social issues.3> Realist writers were all concerned about the fate of the common people and described what was faithful to reality.4> Charles Dickens is the most important critical realist.11. Aestheticism（美学主义）The basic theory of the Aesthetic movement--- “art for art’s sake” was set forth by a French poet, Theophile Gautier, the first Englishman who wrote about the theory of aestheticism was Walter Pater.2> aestheticism places art above life, and holds that life should imitate art, not art imitate life.3> According to the aesthetes, all artistic creation is absolutely subjective as opposed to objective. Art should be free from any influence of egoism. Only when art is for art’s sake, can it be immortal. They believed that art should be unconcerned with controversial issues, such as politics and morality, and that it should be restricted to contributing beauty in a highly polished style.4> This is one of the reactions against the materialism and commercialism of the Victorian industrial era, as well as a reaction against the Victorian convention of art for morality’s sake, or art for money’s sake.美学运动的基本原则”为艺术而艺术”最初由法国诗人西奥费尔.高缔尔提出,英国运用该美学理论的第一人是沃尔特.佩特.美学主义崇尚艺术高于生活,认为生活应模仿艺术,而不是艺术模仿生活.在美学主义看来,所有的艺术创作都是绝对主观而非客观的产物.艺术不应受任何功利的影响,只有当艺术为艺术而创作时,艺术才能成为不朽之作.他们还认为艺术不应只关注一些热点话题如政治和道德问题,艺术应着力于以华丽的风格张扬美.这是对维多利亚工业发展时期物质崇拜的一种回应,也是向艺术为道德或为金钱而服务的维多利亚传统的挑战.12.The Victorian period(维多利亚时期)In this period, the novel became the most widely read and the most vital and challenging expression of progressive thought. While sticking to the principle of faithful representation of the 18th century realist novel, novelists in this period carried their duty forward to criticism of the society and the defense of the mass.2> although writing from different points of view and with different techniques, they shared one thing in common, that is, they were all concerned about the fate of the common people. They were angry with the inhuman social institutions, the decaying social morality as represented by the money-worship and Utilitarianism, and the widespread misery, poverty and injustice.3>their truthful picture of people’s life and bitter and strong criticism of the society had done much in awakening the public consciousness to the social problems and in the actual improvement of the society.4> Charles Dickens is the leading figure of the Victorian period.13. Modernism(现代主义)Modernism is comprehensive but vague term for a movement , which begin in the late 19th century and which has had a wide influence internationally during much of the 20th century.2> modernism takes the irrational philosophy and the theory ofpsycho-analysis as its theoretical case.3> the term pertains to all the creative arts. Especially poetry, fiction, drama, painting, music and architecture.4> in England from early in the 20th century and during the 1920s and 1930s, in America from shortly before the first world war and on during the inter-war period, modernist tendencies were at their most active and fruitful.5>as far as literature is concerned, Modernism reveals a breaking away from established rules, traditions and conventions. fresh ways of looking at man’s position and function in the universe and many experiments in form and style. It is particularly concerned with language and how to use it and with writing itself.14. Stream of consciousness(意识流)(or interior monologue)In literary criticism, Stream of consciousness denotes a literary technique which seeks to describe an individual’s point of view by giving the written equivalent of the character’s thought processes. Stream of consciousness writing is strongly associated with the modernist movement. Its introduction in the literary context, transferred from psychology, is attributed to May Sinclair. Stream of consciousness writing is usually regarded as a special form of interior monologue and is characterized by associative leaps in syntax and punctuation that can make the prose difficult to follow, tracing as they do a character’s fragmentary thoughts and sensory feelings. Famous writers to employ this technique in the English language include James Joyce and William Faulkner.学术界认为意识流是一种通过直接描述人物思维过程来寻求个人视角的文学写作技巧。
美国文学名词解释
1. Naturalism:American naturalism was a new and harsher realism. America’s literary naturalists dismissed the validity of comforting moral truths. They attempted to achieve extreme objectivity and frankness, presenting characters of low social and economic classes who were determined by their environment and heredity.2 Puritanism: Puritanism is the practices and beliefs of the Puritans. They accepted the doctrine of predestination, original sin and total depravity, and limited atonement through a special infusion of grace form God.3. Realism: Realism emphasizes on a faithful rendering of the ordinary, a slice of life as it is really lived. It expresses the concern for commonplace and the low, and it offers an objective rather than an idealistic view of human nature and human experience.4. Romanticism:romantics frequently shared certain general characteristics: moral enthusiasm, faith in value of individualism and intuitive perception, and a presumption that the natural world was a source of goodness and man’s societies a source of corruption.5 Transcendentalism:They spoke for cultural rejuvenation and stressed the importance of the individual. They offered a fresh perception of nature as symbolic of the Spirit or God. Nature was, to them, alive, f illed with God’s overwhelming presence.6. Imagism意象主义:It’s a poetic movement of England and the U.S. flourished from 1909 to 1917.The movement insists on the creation of images in poetry by “the direct treatment of the thing” and the economy of wording.7. Local Colorism:fiction or poetry that focuses on specific features –including characters, dialects, customs, history, and landscape – of a particular region.8. Lost Generation:It describes the Americans who remained in Paris as a colony of “expatriates” or exiles. It describes the writers like Hem ingway who lived in semi poverty. It describes the Americans who returned to their native land with an intense awareness of living in an unfamiliar changing world.9. Beat Generation: It was a group of American post-World War II writers who came to prominence in the 1950s .They rejected conventional social and moral values; expressed their alienation in their works from c onventional “square” society by adopting a life style which featured sex, drugs, jazz and the freedom of the open road.10. Symbolism: Symbolism is the writing technique of using symbols. It enables poets to compress a very complex idea or set of ideas into one image or even one word. It’s one of the most powerful devices tha t poets employ in creation.11.Modernism：is loosely a synonym of anything contemporary. Strictly, Modernism began in the late 19th century and regarded the theory of psycho-analysis as its theoretical base. They pay more attention to the psychic time than the chronological one.12.A Jazz age(爵士时代):The Jazz Age describes the period of the 1920s and 1930s.With the rise of the great depression, the values of this age saw much decline. Highlighting what some describe as the decadence and hedonism, as well as the growth of individualism.。
美国文学名词解释
Stream of consciousness(意识流)(or interior monologue);In literary criticism, Stream of consciousness denotes a literary technique which seeks to describe an individual’s point of view by giving the written equivalent of the character’s thought processes. Stream of consciousness writing is strongly associated with the modernist movement. Its introduction in the literary context, transferred from psychology, is attributed to May Sinclair. Stream of consciousness writing is usually regarded as a special form of interior monologue and is characterized by associative leaps in syntax and punctuation that can make the prose difficult to follow,tracing as they do a character’s fragmentary thoughts and sensory feelings.famous writers to employ this technique in the english language include James Joyce and William Faulkner.American realism ：（美国现实主义）Realism was a reaction against Romanticism and paved the way to Modernism;2).During this period a new generation of writers, dissatisfied with the Romantic ideas in the older generation, came up witha new inspiration. This new attitude was characterized by a great interest in the realities of life. It aimed at the interpretation of the realities of any aspect of life, free from subjective prejudice, idealism, or romantic color. Instead of thinking about the mysteries of life and death and heroic individualism, people’s attention was now directed to the interesting features of everyday existence, to what was brutal or sordid, and to the open portayal of class struggle;3) so writers began to describe the integrity of human characters reacting under various circumstances and picture the pioneers of the far west, the new immigrants and the struggles of the working class; 4) Mark Twain Howells and Henry James are three leading figures of the American Realism.American Naturalism(美国自然主义文学)：The American naturalists accepted the more negative interpretation of Darwin’s evolutionary theory and used it to accout for the behavior of those characters in literary works who were reg arded as more or less complex combinations of inherited attributes, their habits conditioned by social and economic forces.2) naturalism is evolved from realism when the author’s tone in writing becomes less serious and less sympathetic but more ironic and more pessimistic. It is no more than a gloomy philosophical approach to reality, or to human existence.3>Dreiser is a leading figure of his school.Local Colorism(乡土文学)：Generally speaking, the writings of local colorists are concerned with the life of a small, weell-defined region or province. The characteristic setting is the isolated small town. 2) Local colorists were consciously nostalgic historians of a vanishing way of life, recorders of a present that faded before their eyes. Yet for all their sentimentality, they dedicated themselves to minutely accurate descriptions of the life of their regions, they worked from personal experience to record the facts of a local environment and suggested that the native life was shaped by the curious conditions of the local. 3) major local colorists is Mark Twain.Imagism(意象主义)：Imagism came into being in Britain and U.S around 1910 as a reaction to the traditional English poetry to express the sense of fragmentation and dislocation.2>the imagists, with Ezra Pound leading the way, hold that the most effective means to express these momentary impressions is through the use of one dominant image.3>imagism is characterized by the following three poetic principles:A.direct treatment of subject matter;B.economy of expression;C. as regards rhythm ,to compose in the sequence of the musical phrase, not in the sequence of metronome. 4> pound’s In a Station of the Metro is a well-known inagist poem.The Lost Generation(迷惘的一代）：The lost generation is a term first used by Stein to describe the post-war I generation of American writers:men and women haunted by a sense of betrayal and emptiness brought about by the destructiveness of the war.2>full of youthful idealism, these individuals sought the meaning of life, drank excessively, had love affairs and created some of the finest American literature to date.3>the three best-known representatives of lost generation are F.Scott Fitzgerald, hemingway and John dos Passos.The Beat Generation(垮掉的一代):The members of The Beat Generation were new bohemian libertines. Who engaged in a spontaneous, sometimes messy, creativity.2> The Beat writers produced a body of written work controversial both for its advocacy of non-conformity and for its non-conforming style.3> the major beat writings are All en Ginsberg’s howl.Howl became the manifesto of The Beat Generation.A J azz age(爵士时代):The Jazz Age describes the period of the 1920s and 1930s, the years between world war I and worldwar II. Particularly in north America. With the rise of the great depression, the values of this age saw much decline. Perhaps the most representative literary work of the age is American writer Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. Highlighting what some describe as the decadence and hedonism, as well as the growth of individualism. Fitzgerald is largely credited with coining the term” Jazz Age”.Feminisim(女权主义): Feminisim incorporates both a doctrine of equal rights for women and an ideology of social transformation aiming to create a world for women beyond simple social equality.2>in general, feminism is ideology of women’s liberation based on the belief that women suffer injustice because of their sex. Under this broad umbrella various feminisms offer differing analyses of the causes, or agents, of female oppression.3> definitions of feminism by feminists tend to be shaped by their training, ideology or race. So, for example, Marxist and socialist feminists stress the interaction within feminism of class with gender and focus on social distinctions between men and women. Black feminists argue much more for an integrated analysis which can unlock the multiple systems of oppression.Hemingway Code Hero(海明威式英雄): Hemingway Code Hero ,also called code hero, is one who, wounded but strong more sentitive, enjoys the pleasures of life( sex, alcohol, sport) in face of ruin and death, and maintains, through some notion of a code, an ideal of himself.2> barnes in the sun also Rises, henry in a Farewell to arms and santiago in the old man and the sea are typical of Hemingway Code HeroImpressionism(印象主义):Impressionism is a style of painting that gives the impression made by the subject on the artist without much attention to details. Writers accepted the same conviction that the personal attitudes and moods of the writer were legitimate elements in depicting character or setting or action.2>briefly, it is a style of literature characterized by the creation of general impressions and moods rather that realistic mood.Modernism(现代主义)：Modernism is comprehensive but vague term for a movement , which begin in the late 19th century and which has had a wide influence internationally during much of the 20th century.2> modernism takes the irrational philosophy and the theory of psycho-analysis as its theoretical case.3> the term pertains to all the creative arts. Especially poetry, fiction, drama, painting,music and architecture.4> in england from early in the 20th century and during the 1920s and 1930s, in America from shortly before the first world war and on during the inter-war period, modernist tendencies were at their most active and fruitful.5>as far as literature is concerned, Modernism reveals a breaking away from established rules, traditions and conventions.fresh ways of looking at man’s position and function in the universe and many experiments in form and style.it is particularly concerned with language and how to use it and with writing itself.the gilded age: Plains Indians were pushed in a series of Indian wars onto restricted reservations.This period also witnessed the creation of a modern industrial economy. A national transportation and communication network was created, the corporation became the dominant form of business organization, and a managerial revolution transformed business operations. By the beginning of the twentieth century, per capita income and industrial production in the United States exceeded that of any other country except Britain. Long hours and hazardous working conditions, led many workers to attempt to form labor unions despite strong opposition from industrialists and the courts.An era of intense political partisanship, the Gilded Age was also an era of reform. The Civil Service Act sought to curb government corruption by requiring applicants for certain governmental jobs to take a competitive examination. The Interstate Commerce Act sought to end discrimination by railroads against small shippers and the Sherman Antitrust Act outlawed business monopolies. These years also saw the rise of the Populist crusade. Burdened by heavy debts and falling farm prices, many farmers joined the Populist party, which called for an increase in the amount of money in circulation, government assistance to help farmers repay loans, tariff reductions, and a graduated income tax.Mark Twain called the late nineteenth century the "Gilded Age." By this, he meant that the period was glittering on the surface but corrupt underneath. In the popular view, the late nineteenth century was a period of greed and guile: of rapacious Robber Barons, unscrupulous speculators, and corporate buccaneers, of shady business practices, scandal-plagued politics, and vulgar display. It is easy to caricature the Gilded Age as an era of corruption, conspicuous consumption, and unfettered capitalism. But it is more useful to think of this as modern America’s formative period, when an agrarian society of small producers was transformed into an urban society dominated byindustrial corporations.Regionalism(地区主义)：In literature, regionalism or local color fiction refers to fiction or poetry that focuses on specific features –including characters, dialects, customs, history, and topography –of a particular region. Since the region may be a recreation or reflection of the author's own, there is often nostalgia and sentimentality in the writing.Although the terms regionalism and local color are sometimes used interchangeably, regionalism generally has broader connotations. Whereas local color is often applied to a specific literary mode that flourished in the late 19th century, regionalism implies a recognition from the colonial period to the present of differences among specific areas of the country. Additionally, regionalism refers to an intellectual movement encompassing regional consciousness beginning in the 1930s. Even though there is evidence of regional awareness in early southern writing—William Byrd's History of the Dividing Line, for example, points out southern characteristics—not until well into the 19th century did regional considerations begin to overshadow national ones. In the South the regional concern became more and more evident in essays and fiction exploring and often defending the southern way of life. John Pendleton Kennedy's fictional sketches in Swallow Barn, for example, examined southern plantation life at length.multiple points of view（多视角）：Multiple Point of View: 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.Confessional poetry ：Confessional poetry emphasizes the intimate, and sometimes unflattering, information about details of the poet's personal life, such as in poems about illness, sexuality, and despondence. The confessionalist label was applied to a number of poets of the 1950s and 1960s. John Berryman, Allen Ginsberg, Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, Theodore Roethke, Anne Sexton, and William De Witt Snodgrass have all been called 'Confessional Poets'. As fresh and different as the work of these poets appeared at the time, it is also true that several poets prominent in the canon of Western literature, perhaps most notably Sextus Propertius and Petrarch, could easily share the label of "confessional" with the confessional poets of the fifties and sixties.Ecocriticism：Ecocriticism is the study of literature and environment from an interdisciplinary point of view where all sciences come together to analyze the environment and brainstorm possible solutions for the correction of the contemporary environmental situation. Ecocriticism was officially heralded by the publication of two seminal works, both published in the mid-1990s: The Ecocriticism Reader, edited by Cheryll Glotfelty and Harold Fromm, and The Environmental Imagination, by Lawrence Buell.In the United States, Ecocriticism is often associated with the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE), which hosts biennial meetings for scholars who deal with environmental matters in literature. ASLE has an official journal—Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment (ISLE)—in which much of the most current American scholarship in the rapidly evolving field of ecocriticism can be found.Ecocriticism is an intentionally broad approach that is known by a number of other designations, including "green (cultural) studies", "ecopoetics", and "environmental literary criticism".Dramatic Conflict：At least not the special kind of conflict that drives plays, the gas that fuels the dramatic engine. Arguments in real life are usually circular -- nobody gets anywhere, except a little steam's been blown off. And they're boring for everyone except the folks doing the yelling.Dramatic Conflict draws from a much deeper vein, rooted in the Subtext of your central characters. It's driven by fundamentally opposing desires.Conflict is a necessary element of fictional literature. It is defined as the problem in any piece of literature and is often classified according to the nature of the protagonist or antagonist。
美国文学名词解释
1、puritan thought:i : to make pure their religious beliefs and practicesii: wish to restore simplicity to church services and the authority of the Bibleiii: Puritans should include all kinds of people, humblest loftiest(最高贵的) ,poor and rich.iiii: Puritans opposition to pleasure and their lives were disciplined and hardiiiii: Puritan religious teaching tended to emphasize the image of a wrathful (愤怒的)God and forget His mercy.2、Transcendentalism (超验主义)American Romanticism culminated around the 1840s in what has come to be known as “New England Transcendentalism” or “American Renaissance”. It served as an ethical guide to life for a young nation and brought about the idea that human can be pefected by nature. It stressed religious tolerance, called to throw off shackles of customs and traditions and go forward to the development of a new and distinctly American culture. The leading transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson, whose Nature has been called “The Manifesto of American Transcendentalism”and whose “The American Scholar”has been rightly regarded as America’s “Declaration of Intellectual Independence”, advocated a direct intuition of a spiritual and immanent God in nature. Like him, most transcendentalists advocated idealism that was great needed in a rapidly expanded economy where opportunity often became opportunism, and the desire to “get on” obscured the moral necessity for rising to spiritual height. The views they kept helped to create the first American Renaissance- one of the most prolific period in American literature.3、The Lost GenerationAfter the First World War, some young writers voluntarily left America and settled in Paris, and others who stayed behind felt themselves to be exiles in spirit. All of them were “outsiders”who observed America society and culture objectively , from distance and tried to create new types of writing . Many of them took part in the war in Europe , experiencing shock, wounds and the death of close friends . They shunned避开the false idea of success put forth by the social system and looked on art as both a refuge庇护from bourgeois society and mirror in which America could be shown its true face. Cut off from the life of their own country by choice , cut off from a sense of historical continuity by the First World War, they were named “the Lost Generation”. Hemingway, Cummings and Pound have been the representatives of such writers.(An American woman writer named Gertrude Stein (1874- 1949) , Who had lived in Paris since 1903, welcomed these young writers to her apartment which was already famous as a literary salon. Stein was the advisor, friend, and confidante of some of the great friend, and confidante of some of the great French and American artists and writers of the time . In the early 1920 Ezra Pound joined her group and together they encouraged and helped such young writers as Hemingway and Cummings , both had suffered in the war . She called them “The Lost Generation”a name which stuck to them, because they had cut themselves off from their past in America in order to create new types of writing which had never beentried before.)4、The Southern LiteratureThe American South is a very distinctive region. The inhabitants are distinguished from other Americans by their Southern accent口音, culture and outlook, and their special history. The Civil War defeated and destroyed the South . The landowners became poor and backward and embittered 受苦的. In time , a new class was formed by low-class, landless people. They learned modern methods of business and farming , and began to replaced the traditional ruling class in position of power . These harsh苛刻的conflicting social elements form the background of “Southern Fiction”, which is often twisted , violent and pessimistic.Southern fiction had its roots in Edgar Allen Poe(1809-1849), whose strange , frightening tales had a dark , nightmarish quality even before the Civil War . The foremost Southern writer of 20th century was William Faulkner (1897-1962). He wrote feelingly of the decaying white upper class and crude , energetic white upstarts 暴发户. Faulkner was followed by some outstanding writers as Thomas Wolfe, Robert Penn Warren and Katherine Anne Porter, Carson Mc-Cullers . The later two were female writer whose work contained more delicate nuances细微差别of feeling and were quite original.5、The Jewish LiteratureIt is difficult to state exactly what is meant by Jewish Literature in America because all Jewish writers do not concern themselves only with Jewish subject. Norman Mailer , Allen Ginsberg and the like are not necessarily identifiable as “Jewish writers”though they were from Jewish family ,but Saul Bellow, Bernard Malamud, Isaac Bashevis Singer are often identified as the representatives of Jewish Literature in US, for they habitually write from a Jewish point of view and usually choose Jew as the heroes of their books. The most important element in their point of view is the emphasis which Jew place upon the power of intellect 智力. The power to understand their own experience , to judge their lives rationally, to think well , is considered a high virtue.6、The Feminist LiteratureEducated women in US took an active part in the Anti-Slavery Movement. The two World Wars produced a demand for labor which again changed the role of women. But educated women still found their positions are lower than that of men’s in many walks of life, which gave rise to the Women’s Liberation. Serious women writers of the 1960’s and 1970”s have been influenced by the philosophy of the Women’s Lib, whether they took part in it or not . As a group , they are no longer willing to accept the traditional roles of women; they are self-conscious, determined pathfinders开创者in a society. Present-day women’s writing goes from political essays to high sensitive , pessimistic, even suicidal poetry . Gloria Steinem, Joyce Carol Oates , and Sylvia Plath are the three of best-known.7、The Beat GenerationIn the middle of the 1950’s, a group of writers in San Francisco put on a concerted商定的and well-publicized rebellion against “official”American life and culture. Jack Kerouac, a novelist, named the group Beat . The Beat Movement was a revolt against the frightened, conservative political mood, against the greedy, money-seeking “respectable”life of the dominant middle class and particularly against the literary formalism of American writing after the Second World War. The Beats read their outrageously critical poetry to the public in the coffee house and bars . They adopted an “unrespectable”way of life, growing their hair and bears very long, deliberately remaining poor and dressing like paupers, living in an unconventional and undisciplined way, and even smoking “pot” . They evolved a free , non-materialistic religion with no formal church, based loosely on the teachings of Buddha佛, comprising包含love , joy and anarchy无政府状态 . In rejecting the carefully written works of their contemporary writers, the Beats instead wanted to write with complete spontaneity自发性and honesty诚实, even if the effect was slap-dash匆促的. They wanted to express emotion “raw”处于自然状态，未加工的, exactly as it was felt, rather than “cooked”through memory and translation into art, which can be said as “counter-culture”. Unfortunately , the ideal became very degenerate退化的in practice. The leaders of “Beats”were poet Allen Ginsberg and novelist Jack Kerouac.8、The Black HumorThe term “Black Humor”was created in 1920’s ,but it was not noticed until 1960’s. It was particularly a literary phenomenon in America. Facing the absurd 荒诞and madness疯狂in the world , some sensitive intellectuals feel to have no alternative but to express their discontentment不满, anger and despair with the technique of self-mockery自嘲and humor. Black Humor often expresses a tragedy in the form of comedy to explore the oppression of the society . The heroes in the works of “black humor”are anti-heroic 反英雄full of suspicion and negation ,madness as well as holiness. Josegh Heller and Kurt Vonnegut are famous for their novels of “Black Humor”.9、The Black Literature ( Afro-American Literature )The Black Literature has developed with political movements as The Civil Rights Movement, Black Liberation Movement. In the 19th century appeared some outstanding writers as well as politicians. Harlem Renaissance in the 20’s of 20th century from the black community in Harlem was a cultural movement which took the reflection of the black culture as its responsibility and from which the figures of the New Negro came into being in American literature . Those New Negroes , independent , active ,and full of the pride of their race, have tried to create new idea of value and image of life for the Afro-American. In the 40’s of 20th century , the literary works by Negroes was no longer ignored and now Afro-American literature with some famous black writers as Langston Hughes , Richard Wright ,Ralph Ellison ,Toni Morrison who has just got the Noble Price , has become an important part of American Literature.10、Imagisma movement of poets who used ordinary but image-laden language, not poetic diction. The Imagists followed three principles:(1)“Direct treatment”The subject of poem must be expressed in such a way as toresemble象，类似it and reproduce it as closely as possible. Simple language must be used to create an “image”, which the reader can immediately see his own imagination.(2)“Economy of expression”No word must be used which does not contributedirectly to the image.(3)“Rhythm节奏，韵律”No unnecessary words may be included in order to makemeter or a rhyme韵. A poem should be composed with the phrasing of music, nota metronome节拍器 .11、The iceberg冰山principle:It is a principle that Hemingway usually abided by in his work. The phenomenon that an iceberg moving in the sea for only one third of it is on the surface of water with two third under it is consistent with the way of Hemingway’s writing in his work. Hemingway kept this principle and to embraced significant meaning 内涵with few words. Thus is formed his literary style :simplicity and economy of expression as a way to reach the goal; short , uncomplicated active sentences with very few adjectives to immerse使…陷入his readers in a “continuous present”.。
美国文学名词解释
1.Imagism（意象派Imagism was a movement in early 20th-century Anglo-American poetry that favored precision of imagery, and clear, sharp language. The Imagists rejected the sentiment and artifice typical of much Romantic and Victorian poetry. This was in contrast to their contemporaries, the Georgian poets, who were by and large content to work within that tradition. Based in London, the Imagists were drawn from Britain, Ireland and the United States. Somewhat unusually for the time, the Imagists featured a number of women writers among their major figures. At the time Imagism emerged, Longfellow and Tennyson were considered the paragons of poetry, and the public valued the sometimes moralizing tone of their writings.2. local colorismlocal colorism is an unique variation of American literary realism. Generally, the wor ks by local colorism are concerned with the life of a small region or province. This ki nd of fiction depicts the characters from a specific setting or of an era, which are mark ed by its customs, dialects, landscape, or other peculiarities that have escaped standar dizing cultural influence. Tasks of local colorism is to wirte or present local characters of their regions in truthful depicton distinguished from others, usually a very small pa rt of the world. they tended to idealize and glorify, but they never forget to keep an eye on the truthful color of local life. Mark Twain's the Adventures of Huckleberry F inn is the most representive one3.the Lost GeneraionThe term of "lost generation" was first used by The lost generation is a term first used by Gertrude Stern(1874--1946), one of the leaders of this group.to describe the post-war I generation of American writers:men and women haunted by a sense of betrayal and emptiness brought about by the destructiveness of the war.2>full of youthful idealism, these individuals sought the meaning of life, drank excessively, had love affairs and created some of the finest American literature to date.3>the three best-known representatives of lost generation are F.Scott Fitzgerald, hemingway and John dos Passos.4.Stream of consciousnessStream of consciousness: “Stream-of-Consciousness” or “interior monologue”, is one of the modern literary techniques. It is the style of writing that attempts to imitate the natural flow of a character’s thoughts, feelings, reflections, memories, and mental images as the character experiences them. It was first used in 1922 by the Irish novelist James Joyce. Those novels broke through the bounds of time and space, and depicted vividly and skillfully the unconscious activity of the mind fast changing and flowing incessantly, particularly the hesitant, misted, distracted and illusory psychology people had when they faced reality. The modern American writer WilliamFaulkner successfully advanced this technique. In his stories, action and plots were less important than the reactions and inner musings of the narrators. Time sequences were often dislocated. The reader feels himself to be a participant in the stories, rather than an observer. A high degree of emotion can be achieved by this technique.5.TranscendentalismTranscendentalism was a group of new ideas in literature, religion, culture and philoso phy that emerged in New England in the early to middle 19th century. Transcendentali sts spoke for cultural rejuvenation and against the materialism of American society. It placed emphasis on spirit, or the Over soul, as the most important thing in the world. I t stressed the importance of individual and offered a fresh perception nature ad symbo lic of the spirit of God. Prominent transcendentalists included Ralph Waldo Emersonand Henry David Thorough.Modernism6.Modernism:It is term referring to the art, poetry, literature, architecture, and philosophy of Europe and America in the early twentieth-century. In general, modernism is marked by the fo llowing characteristics: (1) the desire to break away from established traditions, (2) a quest to find fresh ways to view man's position or function in the universe, (3) experi ments in form and style, particularly with fragmentation--as opposed to the "organic" t heories of literary unity appearing in the Romantic and Victorian periods.7.Free Verse自由诗体:Free verse: free verse is the rhymed or unrhymed poetry composed without attention to conventional rules of meter. Free verse was first written and labeled by a group of French poets of the late 19th century. Their purpose was to deliver poetry from the restrictions of formal metrical patterns and to recreate the free rhythms of natural speech. Walt Whitman was the precursor who wrote lines of varying length and cadence, usually not rhymed. The emotional content or meaning of the work was expressed through its rhythm. Free verse has been characteristic of the work of many modern American poets, including Ezra Pound and Carl Sandburg.。
美国文学名词解释 -
迷惘的一代(Lost Generation)，又称：迷失的一代。
西方现代派文学的一种。
第一次世界大战以后出现于美国的一个文学流派。
第一次世界大战以后，美国有一批青年作家陆续登上文坛。
他们不仅年龄相仿，而且经历相似，思想情绪相近，在创作中表现出许多共同点，逐渐形成一新的文学流派。
代表作家有海明威(1899—1961)、福克纳(1897—1962)、约·多斯·帕索斯(1896—1970)、菲兹杰拉德(1896—1940)，和诗人肯明斯(1894—1962)等。
他们曾怀着民主的理想奔赴欧洲战场，目睹人类空前的大屠杀，经历种种苦难，深受“民主”、“光荣”、“牺牲”口号的欺骗，对社会、人生大感失望，故通过创作小说描述战争对他们的残害，表现出一种迷惘、彷徨和失望的情绪。
这一流派也包括没有参加过战争但对前途感到迷惘和迟疑的20年代作家，如菲兹杰拉德、艾略特和沃尔夫(1900～1938)等。
特别是菲兹杰拉德，对战争所暴露的资产阶级精神危机深有感触，通过对他所熟悉的上层社会的描写，表明昔日的梦想成了泡影，“美国梦”根本不存在，他的人物历经了觉醒和破灭感中的坎坷与痛苦。
沃尔夫的作品以一个美国青年的经历贯穿始终，体现了在探索人生的过程中的激动和失望，是一种孤独者的迷惘。
迷惘的一代作家在艺术上各有特点，他们的主要成就闪烁于20年代，之后便分道扬镳了意象派诗歌意象派（Imagists）是1909年至1917年间一些英美诗人发起并付诸实践的文学运动，它是当时盛行于西方世界的象征主义文学运动的一个分支。
其宗旨是要求诗人以鲜明、准确、含蓄和高度凝炼的意象生动及形象地展现事物，并将诗人瞬息间的思想感情溶化在诗行中。
它反对发表议论及感叹。
意象派的产生最初是对当时诗坛文风的一种反拨，代表人物是埃兹拉·庞德。
由于意象派诗人大多经历了象征诗歌创作，所以理论界也有人将意象派看做象征主义的分支，实际上意象派和象征主义诗歌有极大的本质差异。
美国文学文学名词解释
1 Modernism(现代主义)Modernism is comprehensive but vague term for a movement , which begin in the late19th century and which has had a wide influence internationally during much of the 20th century、2> modernism takes the irrational philosophy and the theory of psycho-analysis as its theoretical case、3> the term pertains to all the creative arts、Especially poetry, fiction, drama, painting, music and architecture、现代主义就是全面但运动模糊的术语,在19世纪末期开始,在国际上有广泛影响的在20世纪的大部分时间。
2 >现代主义以非理性哲学与精神分析理论为其理论的情况。
3 >这个词属于所有的创造性艺术。
特别就是诗歌、小说、戏剧、绘画、音乐与建筑。
2 Transcendentalism(超验主义)Transcendentalism is literature, philosophical and literary movement that flourished in new England from about 1836 to 1860、it is the summit of American Romanticism、it originated among a small group of intellectuals who were reacting against the orthodoxy of Calvinism and the rationalism of the Unitarian Church, developing instead their own faith centering on the divinity of humanity and the natural world、Transcendentalism derived some of its basic idealistic concepts from romantic German philosophy, and from such English authors as Coleridge and Wordsworth、Its mystical aspects were partly influenced by Indian and Chinese religious teachings、Although Transcendentalism was never a rigorously systematic philosophy, it had some basic tenets that were generally shared by its adherents、The beliefs that God is immanent in each person and in nature and that individual intuition is the highest source of knowledge led to an optimistic emphasis on individualism, self-reliance, and rejection of traditional authority、The ideas of Transcendentalism were most eloquently expressed by Ralph waldo Emerson in such essays as Nature, and by Henry David Thoreau in his book Walden、超验主义就是从1836至1860于新英格兰发起的一场文学,哲学以及艺术运动。
美国文学名词解释（★）
美国文学名词解释（★）第一篇：美国文学名词解释1.AmericanTranscendentalism:①transcendentalism has been defined philosophically as “ the recognition in man of the capability of knowing truth intuitively, or of attaining knowledge transcending the reach of the senses.②transcendentalists stress the importance of the Over-soul, the Individual and Nature.Other concepts that accompanied transcendentalism include the idea that nature is enabling and the idea that the individual is divine and, therefore, self-reliant.New England transcendentalism is the product of a combination of Native American Puritanism and European romanticism.③some prominent representatives include Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau.2.Free verse free verse means the rhymed or unrhymed poetry composed without paying attention to conversational rules of meter.Free verse was originated by a group of French poets of the late 19th century.Their purpose was to free themselves from the restrictions of formal metrical patterns and to recreate instead the free rhymes of nature period.Walt Whitman…s leaves of grass is perhaps the most notable example.3.American Puritanism: Puritanism is the practices and beliefs of the puritans.The Puritans were originally members of a division of the protestant church who wanted to purify their religious beliefs and practices.They accepted the doctrines of predestination, original sin and total depravity, and limited atonement through a special infusion of grace from God.American literature in the 17th century mostly consisted of Puritan literature.Puritanism had an enduring influence on American literature.It had become, to some extent, so much a state of mind, so much a part of nationalcultural atmosphere, rather than a set of tenets.it comes from the American puritans, who were the first immigrants moved to American continent in the 17th century.Original sin, predestination（预言）and salvation（拯救）were the basic ideas of American Puritanism.And, hard-working, piousness（虔诚,尽职），thrift and sobriety（清醒）were praised.4.American Dream: American dream means the belief that everyone can succeed as long as he/she works hard enough.It usually implies a successful and satisfying life.It usually framed in terms of American capitalism（资本主义）, its associated purported meritocracy,（知识界精华）and the freedoms guaranteed by the U.S.Bill of Rights.5.Imagism: the 1920s saw a vigorous literary activity in America.In poetry there appeared a strong reaction against Victorian poetry.Imagists placed primary reliance on the use of precise, sharp images as a means of poetic expression and stressed precision in the choice of words, freedom in the choice of subject matter and form, andthe use of colloquial language.Most of the imagist poets wrote in free verse, using such devices as assonance and alliteration rather than formal metrical schemes to give structure to their poetry..The movement which had these as its aims is known in literary history as Imagism.Its prime mover was Ezra Pound.6.American romanticism①it is one of the most important periods in the history of American literature that stretches from the 18th century to the outbreak of the civil war.It started with the publication of Washington Irving‟s The Sketch Book and ended with Walt Whitman‟s Leaves of Grass.②being a period of the great flowering of American literature, it is also called “the American Renaissance ”.③American romantic works emphasize theimaginative and emotional qualities of nature literature.The strong tendency to eulogize the individual and common man was typical of this period.Most importantly, the writings of American Romanticism are typically American.Works concentrate on uniquecharacteristics of the American land.④New England Transcendentalism is the summit of American R omanticism.⑤Romanticists include such literary figures as Washington Irving, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, William Cullen Bryant, Henry Wordsworth Longfellow, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville, Walt Whitman and some others.第二篇：美国文学名词解释1.Naturalism:American naturalism was a new and harsher realism.America’s literary naturalists dismissed the validity of comforting moral truths.They attempted to achieve extreme objectivity and frankness, presenting characters of low social and economic classes who were determined by their environment and heredity.Puritanism:Puritanism is the practices and beliefs of the Puritans.They accepted the doctrine of predestination, original sin and total depravity, and limited atonement through a special infusion of grace form God.3.Realism: Realism emphasizes on a faithful rendering of the ordinary, a slice of life as it is really lived.It expresses the concern for commonplace and the low, and it offers an objective rather than an idealistic view of human nature and human experience.4.Romanticism: romantics frequently shared certain general characteristics: moral enthusiasm, faith in value of individualism and intuitive perception, and a presumption that the natural world was a source of goodness and m an’s societies a source ofcorruption.Transcendentalism:They spoke for cultural rejuvenation and stressed the importance of the individual.They offered a fresh perception of nature as symbolic of the Spirit or God.Nature was, to them, alive, filled with Go d’s overwhelming presence.6.Imagism意象主义: It’s a poetic movement of England and the U.S.flourished from 1909 to 1917.The movement insists on the creation of images in poetry by “the direct treatment of the thing” and the economy of wording.7.Local Colorism: fiction or poetry that focuses on specific features – including characters, dialects, customs, history, and landscape –of a particular region.8.Lost Generation: It describes the Americans who remained in Paris as a colony of “expatriates” or exiles.It describes the writers like Hemingway who lived in semi poverty.It describes the Americans who returned to their native land with an intense awareness of living in an unfamiliar changing world.9.Beat Generation: It was a group of American post-World War IIwho came to prominence in the 1950s.They rejected conventional social and moral values;expressed their alienation in their works from conventional “square” society by adopting a life style which featured sex, drugs, jazz and the freedom of the open road.10.Symbolism: Symbolism is the writing technique of using symbols.It enables poets to compress a very complex idea or set of ideas into one image or even one word.It’s one of the most powerful devices that poets employ in creation.11.Modernism：is loosely a synonym of anything contemporary.Strictly, Modernism began in the late 19th century and regarded the theory of psycho-analysis as its theoretical base.They pay more attention to the psychic time than the chronological one.12.A Jazz age(爵士时代):The Jazz Age describes the period of the 1920s and 1930s.With the rise of the greatdepression, the values of this age saw much decline.Highlighting what some describe as the decadence and hedonism, as well as the growth of individualism.第三篇：文学名词解释文学名词解释提前注明：名词解释是有技巧性的，要交代年代，作者，代表作，文学特征，文学的历史作用等等，以及对后世的影响。
美国文学名词解释
美国文学名词解释美国文学是指美国国内所产生的文学作品，包括小说、诗歌、剧本等各种文学体裁。
它具有自己的特点和风格，反映了美国人的文化、价值观念和思想观念。
美国文学中有许多特殊的名词和术语，下面是其中一些常见的名词解释：1. Puritanism（清教主义）: 清教主义是美国文学发展的重要起点之一，它是在17世纪早期由清教徒带入美洲的思想和信仰体系。
清教徒强调个人责任和纯洁的生活方式，他们的文学作品通常传达着信仰、奋斗和自我批判的主题。
2. American Renaissance（美国文艺复兴）: 美国文艺复兴指的是19世纪中期到20世纪初期的一个时期，这个时期出现了一大批杰出的美国作家和作品。
其中包括威廉·福柯特、纳撒尼尔·霍桑、赫尔曼·梅尔维尔等人的文学作品。
这些作品在内容、风格上更加关注人性、自然和道德等问题。
3. Realism（现实主义）: 现实主义是19世纪末至20世纪初的一种文学流派，在美国文学发展史中具有重要的地位。
现实主义作家力求以客观、真实的方式描绘生活中的人和事，关注社会问题和个人命运。
马克·吐温和亨利·詹姆斯被认为是现实主义文学中最有影响力的作家。
4. Harlem Renaissance（哈莱姆文艺复兴）: 哈莱姆文艺复兴是20世纪20年代至30年代期间，在纽约哈莱姆区集中发展起来的一种文化和艺术运动。
这个运动推动了非洲裔美国人在文学、音乐、舞蹈和绘画等领域的发展。
其中包括作家朗斯顿·休斯、小说家托妮·莫里森等的作品被认为是哈莱姆文艺复兴的代表作。
5. Beat Generation（垮掉的一代）: 垮掉的一代是20世纪50年代和60年代期间在美国兴起的一种文学和文化运动。
这个运动反对传统社会规范和价值观，追求自由和个性的表达。
杰克·凯鲁亚克和艾伦·金斯堡是这个运动的代表作家，他们的作品通常以自由、追求和反叛为主题。
美国文学 名词解释
1.American PuritansThe American Puritans, (just like their brothers back in England), wanted to make pure their religious beliefs and practices (or to purify the Church of England). They accepted the doctrine of predestination, original sin and total depravity, and limited atonement (or the salvation of a selected few) preached by John Calvin. It was this kind of religious belief that they brought with them into the wilderness. (There they meant to prove that they were God’s chosen people enjoying His blessings on this earth as in heaven.)2. American RomanticismRomanticism came to America early in the nineteenth century (which coincided with the period of national expansion and the discovery of a distinctive American voice). Romantic ideas centered around art as inspiration (or as the best way to express universal truth), the spiritual and aesthetic dimension of nature. The general characteristics include moral enthusiasm, faith in the value of individualism and intuitive perception, and a presumption that the natural world was a source of goodness and man’s societies a source of corruption.3. TranscendentalismAs a philosophical and literary movement, transcendentalism flourished in New England from the 1830s to the Civil War. It exalted feelings over reason, individual expression over the restraints of law and custom. Transcendentalists believed in the transcendence of the “Oversoul”, and all pervading power for goodness from which all things come and of which all things are a part.What is Transcendentalism? Emerson’s answer in his essay, “The Transcendentalist,” is probably the most definitive, “What is popularly called Transcendentalism among us”, he declares, “is idealism; idealism as appears in 1842”. What happened about this time was that some New Englanders, not quite happy about this materialistic-oriented life of their time. The word, “Transcendental”, as Emerson puts it, “Whatever belongs to be the class of intuitive thought”. The major features of New England Transcendentalism can be summarized as follows:Firstly, the Transcendentalists placed emphasis on spirit, or the Oversoul, as the most important thing in the universe. The oversoul was an all-pervading power for goodness, from which all things came and of which all were a part. It existed in nature and man alike and constituted the chief element of the universe. Now this, obviously, represented a new way of looking at the world. Secondly, the Transcendentalists stressed the importance of the individual. To them the individual was the most important element of society. As the regeneration of the individual, his perfection, his self-culture and self-improvement, and no the effort to get rich, should become the first concern of his life. The ideal type of man was the self-reliant individual whom Emerson never stopped talking about all his life. The Transcendentalists like Emerson and Thoreau were telling people to depend upon themselves for spiritual perfection if they cared to make the effort because they thought that the individual soul communed with the Oversoul and was therefore divine. Now this new notion of the individual and his importance represented a new way of looking at man. Thirdly,the Transcendentalists offered a fresh perception of nature as symbolic of the Spirit or God. Nature was, to them, not purely matter. It was alive, filled with God’s overwhelming presence. It was the garment of the Oversoul. Therefore, it could exercise a healthy and restorative influence on the human mind. What the Transcendentalists seemed to be saying was: “Go back to nature, sink yourself back into its influence and you’ll become spiritually whole again.”The natural implication of all this was that things in nature tended to become symbolic and thephysical world as a symbol of the spiritual.4. American RealismRealism refers to the literary tendency appeared after the American Civil War. （The harsh realities of life as well as the disillusion of heroism resulting from the dark memories of the Civil War had set the nation against the romance. The Americans began to be tired of the sentimental feelings of Romanticism.）A new generation of writers, dissatisfied with the Romantic ideas in the older generation, came up with a new inspiration. This new attitude was characterized by a great interest in the realities of life. It aimed at the interpretation of the actualities of any aspect of life, free from subjective prejudice, idealism, or romantic color. Instead of thinking about the mysteries of life and death and heroic individualism, people’s attention was now directed to the interesting features of everyday existence, to what was brutal or sordid, and to the open portray of class struggle. This literary interest in the so-called “reality” of life stared a new period in the American literary writings known as the Age of Realism.5. American NaturalismIn America, Naturalism has been shaped by the war, by the social upheavals and by the disturbing teachings of Charles Darwin. It is a critical term that aims at a detached, scientific objectivity in the treatment of natural man. It evolved from realism when the author’s tone in writing becomes more ironic and pessimistic.6. Local ColorismLocal color is a term applied to fiction or verse which emphasizes its setting, being concerned with the character of a district or of an era, as marked by its customs, dialect, costumes, landscape, or other peculiarities that have escaped standardizing cultural influences.7. DarwinismThe term comes from Charles Darwin’s evolutionary theory. He thought that those who survive in the world are the fittest. These who are not will perish. So the whole world is a battle ground for animal’s competition for existence. (And also in his The Origin of Species and Descent of Man,) he hypothesized that over the millennia man had evolved from lower forms of life. (Humans were special, not because God had created them in his image, but because they had successfully adapted to changing environmental conditions and passed on there survival-making characteristics genetically. This idea has also been applied to explain the social phenomena of human beings.) Some American naturalist writers, influenced by this theory, also apply this idea in their writing.8. Free VerseIt is a form of poetry. It means that the poetry is without a fixed beat or regular rhyme. A looser and more open-ended syntactical structure is frequently favored. Lines and sentences of different lengths are left lying side by side just as things are, undisturbed and separate. （There are few compound sentences to draw objects and experiences into a system of hierarchy）。
美国文学名词解释完整版
1.Allusion: A reference to a person, a place, an event, or a literary work that a writer expects the reader to recognize and respond to. An allusion may be drawn from history, geography, literature, or religio n.2.American Naturalism: American naturalism was a new and harsher realism. American naturalism had been shaped by the war; by the social upheavals that undermined the comforting faith of an earlier age. America's literary naturalists dismissed the validity of comforting moral truths. They attempted to achieve extreme objectivity and frankness, presenting characters of low social and economic classes who were determined by their environment and heredity. In presenting the extremes of life, the naturalists sometimes displayed an affinity to the sensationalism of early romanticism, but unlike their romantic predecessors, the naturalists emphasized that the world was amoral, that men and women had no free will, that lives were controlled by heredity and environment, that the destiny of humanity was misery in life and oblivion in death. Although naturalist literature described the world with sometimes brutal realism, it sometimes also aimed at bettering (he world through social rcfonri.3 American Puritanism: Puritanism is the practices and beliefs of the Puritans・The Puritans were originally members of a division of the Protestant Church. The first settlers who became the founding fathers of the American nation were quite a few of them・ They were a group of serious, religious people, advocating highly religious and moral principles. As the word itself hints, Puritans wanted to purity their religious beliefs and practices. They accepted the doctrine of predestination, original sin and total depravity, and limited atonement through a special infusion of grace form God. As a culture heritage, Puritanism did have a profound influence on the early American mind. American Puritanism also had an enduring influence on Anlerican literature・4. American Realism: in American literature, the Civil War brought the Romantic Period to an end. The Age of Realism came into existence・ Il came as a reaction against the lie of romanticism and sentimentalism. Realism turned from an emphasis on the strange toward a faithful rendering of the ordinary, a slice of life as it is really lived・It expresses the concern for commonplace and the low, and it offers an objective rather than an idealistic view of human nature and human experience ・5・ American Romanticism: The Romantic Period covers the first half of the 19th century. A rising America with its ideals of democracy and equality, its industrialization, its westward expansion, and a variety of foreign influences were among the important factors which made literary expansion and expression not only possible but also inevitable in the period immediately following the nation's political independence ・ Yet, romantics frequently shared certain general characieristics: moral enthusiasm, faith in value of individualism and intuitive perception, and a presumption that the natural world was a source of goodness and man's societies a source of corruption. Romantic values were prominent in American politics, art, and philosophy until the Civil War. The romantic exaltation of the individual suited the nation's revolutionary heritage and its frontier egalitarianism.6. American Transcendentalism: Transcendentalists terrors from the romantic literature of Europe. They spoke for cultural rejuvenation and against the materialism of Americagogopirit, or the Oversoul, as the most important thing in the Universe・They stressed the importance of the individual. To them, the individual was the most important element of society. They offered a fresh perception of nature as symbolic of the Spirit or God. Nature was, to them, alive, filled with God's overwhelming presence・Transcendentalism is based on the belief that the most fundamental truths about life and death can be reached only by going beyond the world of the senses・ Emerson's Nature has been called the "Manifesto of American Transcendentalism" and his The American Scholar has been rightly regarded as America's ^Declaration of Intellectual Independence^・7.Dramatic monologue: 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.8.Enlightenment: With the advent of the 18th century, in England, as in other European countries, there sprang into life a public movement known as the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment on the whole, was an expression of struggle of the then progressive class of bourgeois against feudalism. The egogo inequality, stagnation. prejudices and other survivals of feudalism. The attempted to place all branches of science at the service of mankind by connecting them with the actual deeds and requirements of the people・9.Imagism: Il’s a poetic movement of England and the U.S. flourished from 1909 to 1917.The movement insists on the creation of images in poetry by "the direct treatment of the thing" and the economy of wording. The leaders of this movement were Ezra Pound and Amy Lowell.10.Local Colorism: Local Colorism or Regionalism as a trend first made its presence felt in the late lX6()s and early seventies in America・may be defined as the careful attegogoms in speech, dress or behavior peculiar to a geographical locality. The ultimate aim of the local colorists is to create the illusion of an indigenous little world with qualities that tell it apart from the world outside・ The social and intellectual climate of the country provided a stimulating milieu for the growth of local color fiction in America. Local colorists concerned themselves with presenting and inleqxeting the local character of their regions. They tended to idealize and glorify, but they never forgot to keep an eye on the truthful color of local life. They formed an imporlanl part of the realistic movement. Although it lost its momentum toward the end of the 19th century, the local spirit continued to inspire and fertilize the imagination of author.IL Lost Generation; This term has been used again and again to describe the people of the postwar years ・ 1( describes the Americans who remained in Paris as a colony of “ expatriates^ or exiles. Il describes the writers like Hemingway who lived in semi poverty. It describes the Americans who returned to their native land with an intense awareness of living in an unfamiliar changing world・ The young English and American expatriates, men and women, were caught in the war and cut off from the old values and yet unable to come to terms with the new era when civilization had gone mad. They wandered pointlessly and restlessly, enjoying things like fishing, swimming, bullfight and beauties of nature, but they were aware all the while that the world is crazy and meaningless and futile・ Their whole life is undercut and defeated・12.Beat Generation: the Beat writers were a small group of close friends first, and a movement later. The term "Beat Generation" gradually came to represent an entire period in lime, but the entire original Beat Generation in literature was small enough to have fit into a couple of cars. The lenn was created by Jack Kerouac in 1948・The original word meant nothing more than "bad" or “ruined" or '*spent M or "beaten-down, beaten-up and beaten-out M. The connotation is defeat, resignation, and disappointment.This kind of beatness is what Kerouac was describing in himself and his friends, bright young Americans who had come of age during WWII but couldn't fit in as clean-cut soldiers or complacent young businessmen. They were beat because they dicing believe in straight jobs and had to struggle to survive, living in dirty apartments, selling drugs or committing crimes for food money hitchhiking across the country because they couldn't stay still without getting bored. But the term "beat^ had a second meaning: beatific or sacred and holy. Kerouac, a devout Catholic, explained many times that bydescribing his generation as beat he was trying to capture the secret holiness of the down trodden. In fact, this is probably the most central theme in Kerouac's work・The Beats were essentially anarchic・ They rejected conventional social and moral values; expressedtheir alienation in their works from conventional “square" society by adopting a life style which featuredsex, drugs, jazz and the freedom of the open road. Literally, the Beats were all experimenters who sought to express spontaneity of thought and feeling in a seemingly formless verse as Ginsberg did or prose as Kerouac・ They tended to blur the line between poetry and prose in their writing, adopting rhythms of simple American speech and of so-called progressive jazz, so such so that the Beat style was criticized as likely to contribute more to American slang than to American letters. Perhaps in this sense they are postmodernist.13.Pre-Romanticism: It originated among the conservative groups of men and letters as a reaction against Enlightenment and found its most manifest expression in the **Gothic novel0. The term arising from the fact that the greater part of such romances were devoted to the medieval times.14.Psalm: A song or lyric poem in praise of God・15.Psychological Realism: It is the realistic writing that probes deeply into the complexities of characters, thoughts and motivations・ Henry James is considered the founder of psychological realism・His novel The Ambassadors is considered to be a masterpiece of psychological realism・16.Renaissance: The term originally indicated a revival of classical （Greek and Roman）arts and sciences after the dark ages of medieval obscurantism.17.Romanticism: A movement that flourished in literature, philosophy, music, and art in Western culture during most of the 19th cenlury、beginnigogom.18.Satire: A kind of writing that holds up to ridicule or contempt the weaknesses and wrongdoings of individuals, groups, institutions, or humanity in general. The aim of satirists is to set a moral standard for society, and they attempt to persuade rhe reader to see their point of view through the force of laughter.19.Symbol: A symbol is a sign which suggests more than its literal meaning. In other words, a symbol is both literal and figurative・ A symbol is a way of telling a story and a way of conveying meaning. The best symbols are those that are believable in the lives of the characters and also convincing as they convey a meaning beyond the literal level of the story. If the symbol is obscure or ambiguous, then the very obscurity and the ambiguity may also be part of the meaning of the story.20.Symbolism: Symbolism is the writing technique of using symbols. Il's a literary movement that arose in France in the last half of the 19th century and that greatly influenced many English writers, particularly poels, of the 20th century. Il enables poets to compress a very complex idea or set of ideas into one image or even one word. Il's one of the most powerful devices that poets employ in creation.2LModernisni：It was a con lplex and diverse international move mem in all the creative artsoriginoting about the end of the 19th century. It provided the greatest creative renaissance of the 20thcentury. It was made up of many facets, such as symbolism, surrealism （超现实上义），cubism （立体丄义），expressionism, futurism （未来上义），ect22Amcrican Drcam: American dream means the belief thau everyone can succeed as long as he/she works hard enough. Il usually implies a successful and satisfying life. It usually framed in terms of American capitalism （资木上义）,its associated purported meritocracy,（知识界精华）and the freedoms guaranteed by the U.S・ Bill of Rights.23.The Harlem Renaissance：refers to the flowering of African American literature, art, and drama during the 1920s and 1930s. Though centered in Harlem, New York, the movement impacted urban centers throughout the United States. Black novelists, poels, painters, and playwrights began creating works rooted in their own culture instead of imitating the styles of Europeans and white American.24.fret verse:: poetry without a fixed beat or regular rhyme scheme or line length and depends on naturalspeech rhythms, the ebb and flow or cadences of speech・ and the counterpoint of stressed and unstressed syllables・ In conventional verse the unit is the foot, or, perhaps, the line, while in free verse the unit is the stanza or strophe syllables. Fee verse is not written in definite stanzas. The great majority of his poems depends on parallelism and other reiterative devices for its structure and cadence・ 1（ is exactly as its name implies—free, free to wander the printed page that the poet's will, free to create pictures in random order. Imagery is very important in free verse since the poem has to capture the reader's imagination with words alone, unaided by these old favorite rhyme and mete匚。
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美国文学1.殖民地时期及独立革命战争时期的美国文学Philip Freneau（菲利普﹒弗瑞诺）(1)He was considered as the “Poet of the American revolution” as the most outstanding poet in America of the 18th century. (2)He was a satirist, a bitter polemicist. (3)He wrote many poems encouraging revolution and encouraging the glory that would be won by overcoming the British.The Wild Honey Suckle 《野金银花》The Indian Burying Ground 《印第安人的殡葬地》The British Ship《英国囚船》The Rising Glory of America 《美洲光辉的兴起》(1)The Wild Honey Suckle is Freneau’s best lyric (2)It anticipated the 19th—century use of simple nature imagery.The Indian Burying Ground anticipated romantic primitivism and the celebration of the “Noble Savage”.Thomas Jefferson（托马斯﹒杰弗逊）The Declaration of Independence《独立宣言》(1)The Declaration of Independence was adopted July 4, 1776. (2)It not only announced the birth of a new nation, but also expounded a philosophy of human freedom. (3)It lists 13 cruelties committed by the King of Britain. (4)The famous lines are: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”(5) Thomas Jefferson’s thought was inspired by the thoughts of John Locke.浪漫主义时期的美国文学Calvinism（加尔文主义）(1)Calvinism refers to the religious teachings of John Calvin and his followers. (2) Calvin taught that only certain persons, the elect, were chosen by God to be saved, and these could be saved only by God’s grace. (3) Calvinism forms the basis for the doctrines and practices of the Huguenots, Puritans, Presbyterians, and the Reformed churches.American Romanticism（美国浪漫主义）(1) American Romanticism is one of the most important periods in the history of American literature.(2) It was a rebellion against the objectivity of rationalism. For romantics, the feelings ,intuitions and emotions were more important than reason and common sense. They emphasized individualism, placing the individual against the group. They affirmed the inner life of the self, and cherished strong interest in the past, the wild, the remote, the mysterious and the strange. They stressed the element “Americanness” in their works.(3)It started with the publication of Washington Irving’s The Sketch Book and ended with Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Gra ss. (4) Being a period of the great flowering of American literature, it is also called “the American Renaissance.” (5) American Romantici sts include such literary figures as Washington Irving, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, WilliamCullen Bryant, Henry Wordsworth Longfellow, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville, Walt Whitman and some others.Transcendentalism（超验主义）(1) Transcendentalism refers to the religious and philosophical doctrines of Ralph Waldo Emerson and others in New England in the middle 1800’s, which emphasized the importance of individual inspiration and intuition, the Over—soul, and Nature. Other concepts that accompanied Transcendentalism include the idea that nature is ennobling and the idea that the individual is divine and, therefore, self—reliant. (2)New England Transcendentalism is the product of a combination of native American Puritanism and European Romanticism.Free verse（自由体诗歌）(1)Free verse means the rhymed or unrhymed poetry composed without paying attention to conventional rules of meter.(2) Free verse was originated by a group of French poets of the late 19th century. (3)Their purpose was to free themselves from the restrictions of formal metrical patterns and to recreate instead the free rhythms of natural speech. (4)Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass is, perhaps, the most notable example.Symbol（象征）(1) Symbol means an act, a person, a thing, or a spectacle that stands for something else, usually something less palpable than the named symbol. (2) The relationship between the symbol and its referent is not often one of simple equivalence. Allegorical symbols usually express a neater equivalence with what they stand for than the symbols found in modern realistic fiction.Theme（主题）(1) Theme means the unifying point or general idea of a literary work. (2) It provides an answer to such questions as “What is the work about”(3)Each literary work carries its own theme or themes. For example, King Lear has many themes, among which are blindness and madness.现实主义与自然主义时期的美国文学American Naturalism(美国自然主义)The American Naturalists accepted the more negative interpretation of Darwin’s evolutionary theory and used it to account for the behavior of those characters in literary works who were regarded as more or less complex combinations of inherited attributes, their habits conditioned by social and economic forces.American Naturalism is evolved from realism when the author’s tone in writing becomes less serious and less sympathetic but more ironic and more pessimistic. It is no more than a gloomy philosophical approach to reality, or to human existence.Dreiser is a leading figure of his school.Darwinism(达尔文主义)Darwinism is a term that comes from Charles Darwin’s evolutionary theory.Darwinist think that those who survive in the world are the fittest and those who fail to adapt themselves to the environment will perish. They believe that man has evolved from lower forms of life. Humans are special not because God created them in His image, but because they have successfully adapted to changing environmental conditions and have passed on their survival-making characteristics genetically.Influenced by this theory, some American naturalist writers apply Darwinism as an explanation of human nature and social reality.Local Colorists(乡土作家)Generally speaking, the writing of local colorists are concerned with the life of a small, well-defined region or province. The characteristic setting is the isolated small town.Local colorists were consciously nostalgic historian of a vanishing way of life, recorders of a present that faded before their eyes. Yet for all their sentimentality, they dedicated themselves to minutely accurate descriptions of the life of their regions. They worked from personal experience to record the facts of a local environment and suggested that the native life was shaped by the curious conditions of the locale.Major local colorists include Hamlin Garland, Mark Twain , Kate Chopin, etc.Theodore Dreiser(西奥多·德莱塞)He is generally acknowledged as one of America’s literary naturalists.Works Sister Carrie《嘉莉妹妹》(1) Sister Carrie tells about a poor country girl (Carrie Meeber) who goesto Chicago to pursue the American Dream.(2) The novel shows Dreiser’s naturalistic view about life by illustratingthe purposelessness of life.(3) The dominant symbol of the novel is the rocking chair that is the rocking chair that is indicative of the uncertainty of life.Jennie Gerhardt《珍妮姑娘》Trilogy of Desire《欲望》三部曲a. The Financier《金融家》b. The Titan《巨人》c. The Stoic《斯多葛》The Genius 《天才》An American Tragedy 《美国的悲剧》(1) An American Tragedy is Dreiser’s greatest work and the title of theBook implies Dreiser intention to tell us that it is the social pressurethat makes Clyde’s downfall inevitable.(2) Clyde’s tragedy is a tragedy that depends upon the American socialsystem which encouraged people to pursue the “dream of success ” atall costs.Sherwood Anderson (舍伍德·安德森)He has been called the first of America’s “psychological writers” because he first explored the motivations and frustrations of his fictional characters in terms of Sigmund Freud’s theories of psychology.He tremendously influenced such writers as Hemingway and Faulkner.Works Winesburg, Ohio《小镇畸人》(1) Winesburg, Ohio is a collection of 23 interrelated stories ofsamll-town life. These stories sound morbid and grotesque, butUnderneath them runs a strong desire to communicate, and love andbe loved.(2) It won the author a foremost position in contemporary Americanliterary.现代时期的美国文学The Lost Generation (迷惘的一代)The Lost Generation is a term first used by Gertrude Stein to describe the post-World War I generation of American writers: men and women haunted by a sense of betrayal and emptiness brought about by the destructiveness of the war.Full of youthful idealism, these individuals sought the meaning of life, drank excessively, had love affairs and created some of the finest American literature to date.The three best-know representatives of Lost Generation are F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and John Dos Passos.Others usually included among the list are Sherwood Anderson, Kay Boyle, Hart Crane, Ford Maddox Ford and Zelda Fitzgerald.Imagism (意象派诗歌)Imagism came into being in Britain ans U.S. around 1910 as a reaction to the traditional English poetry to express the sense of fragmentation and dislocation.The imagists, with Ezra Pound leading the way, hold that the most effective means to express these momentary impressions is through the use of one dominant image.Imagism is characterized by the following three poetic principles:i) direct treatment of subject matter;ii) economy of expression;iii) as regards rhythm, to compose in the sequence of the musical phrase, not in the sequence of metronome.Ezra Pound’s In a Station of the Metro is a well-known imagist poem.The Beat Generation (垮掉的一代)The members of the Beat Generation were new bohemian libertines, who engaged in a spontaneous, sometimes messy, creativity.The beat writers produced a body of written work controversial both for its advocacy ofnon-conformity and for its non-conforming style.The major beat writings are Jack Kerouac’s On the Road and Allen Ginsberg’s Howl. Howl became the manifesto of the Beat Generation.American Dream (美国梦)American Dream refers to the dream of material success, in which one, regardless of social status, acquires wealth and gains success by working hard and good luck.In literature, the theme of American Dream recurs. In The Great Gatsby, Gatsby comes from the west to the east with the dream of material success. By bootlegging and other illegal means he fulfilled his dream but ended up being killed. The novel tells the shattering of American Dream rather than its success.Expressionism (表现主义)Expressionism refers to a movement in Germany early in the 20th century, in which a number of painters sought to avoid the representation of external reality and, instead, to project a highly personal or subjective vision of the world.Expressionism is a reaction against realism or naturalism, aiming at presenting a post-war world violently distorted.Works noted for expressionism include: Eugene O’Neill’s The Emperor Jones, James Joyce’s Ulysses and Finnegans Wake, and T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, etc..In a further sense, the term is sometimes applied to the belief that literary works are essentially expressions of their own authors’ moods and thoughts; this has been the dominant assumption about literature since the rise of Romanticism.Feminism (女权主义)(1) Feminism incorporates both a doctrine of equal rights for women and an ideology of social transformation aiming to create a world for women beyond simple social equality.(2) In general, feminism is the ideology of women’s liberation based on the belief that women suffer injustice because of their sex. Under this broad umbrella various feminists offer differing analyses of the causes, or agents, of female oppression.(3) Definitions of feminism by feminists tend to be shaped by their training, ideology or race. So, for example, Marxist and Socialist feminists stress the interaction within feminism of class with gender and focus on social distinctions between men and women. Black feminists argue much more for an integrated analysis which can unlock the multiple systems of oppression.Hemingway Code Hero (海明威式英雄)Hemingway Hero, also called code hero, is one who, wounded but strong, more sensitive, enjoys the pleasures of life (sex, alcohol, sport) in face of ruin and death, and maintains, through some notion of a code, an ideal of himself.Barnes in The Sun Also Rises, Henry in A Farewell to Arms and Santiago in The Old Man and the Sea are typical of Hemingway Hero.Harlem Renaissance (哈莱姆文艺复兴)（1）Harlem Renaissance refers to a period of outstanding literary vigor and creativity that occurred in the United States during the 1920s.（2）The Harlem Renaissance changed the images of literature created by many black and white American writers. New black images were no longer obedient and docile, instead they showed a new confidence and racial pride.(3) The leading figures are Langston Hughs, James Weldon Johnson, Wallace Thurman, etc.. Impressionism (印象主义)Impressionism is a style of painting that gives the impression made by the subject on the artist without much attention to details. Writers accepted the same conviction that the personal attitudes and moods of the writer were legitimate elements in depicting character or setting or action. Briefly, it is a style of literature characterized by the creation of general impressions and moods rather than realistic moods.现代时期的美国文学Ezra Pound(1) He was identified as the father of modern American poetry and the most influential leader of the Imagist Movement.(2) He had an enormous influence on the modernist writers in Britain and America after WWII.Works The Cantos《诗章》In a Station of the Metro 《在地铁站里》(1) In a Station of the Metro serves as a typical example of the Imagist ideas.(2) The one-image poem is an observation of the poet of the human faces seen in a Paris subway station.(3) “Apparition” suggests a visible appearance of something not present, and especially of a dead person. Here the faces of people in the subway station are compared to petals on a wet, black bough.A Pact 《盟约》(1) A Pact is a poem in which Pound started to find some agreement between “Whitmanesque” free verse, which he had attacked for its carelessness in composition.(2) In the poem “broke the new wood” means that Whitman made experiments with the conventions of traditional poetry. “commerce” means the exchange of views or attitudes. The poem indicates that Pound would like to learn from the free verse and show respect to Whitman.。