美国文学

名词解释American romanticism:romanticism was rebellious in spirit, stand in reaction against the neoclassical spirit then the prevailing in American literary life. The romantic emphasized freedom and individualism, believing that imagination was superior to rationalism. The romantic preferred the innate or intuitive perception by the heart of man. Such characteristic as pursuit of freedom, emphasis of individualism, a reliance upon the good of nature and natural man, and an abiding faith in the boundless resources of the human spirit and imagination persisted in the works of many romantic writers.American Transcendentalism:was an important movement in philosophy and literature that flourished during the early to middles years of the 19th century. It is one who believes in and seeks for a higher, deeper truth than that which is revealed through the sense or by logical analysis. Among transcendentalists’beliefs was the belief in an ideal spiritual state that transcends the physical and empirical and is realized only through the individuals intuition, rather than through the doctrines of established religions.Free verse:is a form of poetry without a regular rhyme scheme or meter. Instead, it relies on alliteration, assonance, imagery and parallel structure.Local color literature:local color or regional literature is fiction and poetry that focuses on the characters, dialect, customs, topography and other features particular to a specific region. This mode of writing become dominant in American literature between the civil war and the end of the 19th century. Its weakness may include nostalgia or sentimentality.American naturalism:it refers to the theory that literature should arrive at a detached, scientific objectivity in the treatment of natural man. It is a more advanced stage of realism toward the close of the 19th century. The author’s tone in writing becomes less serious and less sympathetic, but more detached , ironic and more pessimistic.The lost generation: a term that used by Gertrude Stein to describe the post-world war 1 generation of American writers, man and woman haunted by the destructiveness of the war. The term is commonly applied to Ernest Hemingway ,F.Scott Fitzgerald and others.Black humor:black humor is a kind of humor caused by great anger. Black humorists often describe gruesome events in their writings that are normally associated with pleasant situations. It is a kind of desperate humor and laughter at tragic things, laughter that is inevitable followed by the acute awareness that it is based on the sufferings and misfortunes of their fellow creatures.The beat generation: it is a term used to describe a group of American writers who came to prominence in the 1950s. Central elements of beat culture include a rejection of materialism, experimentation with drugs and an interest in eastern religion. In the 1960s, the beat generation gradually gave way to the counterculture.The first of American literature was not written by an American, but by John Smith,a British solider of soldier.New England Trials, The General History of Virginia published in 1620 and 1624Thomas Paine: Common SenseThomas Jefferson:principal author of the Declaration of IndependenceBenjamin Franklin: Autobiography ;Poor Richards’ AlmanacPhilip Freneau: poet ,Father of American Poetry, the poet of American Revolution,the most significant poet of the 18th century of American, The Wild Honey SuckleJames Fenimore Coope r: first American novelist. The Spy, The Leather-Stocking Tales, The pathfinder, The Deer-slayer , The Pilot, The Red Rover, The Water-Witch, The Two Admirals ,The Wing-and WingWashington Irving: the first great stylists of American romanticism, short story writer, essayist , father of American imaginative literature, the first American author to achieve international distinction. Rip Van Winkle from The Sketch Book, a collection of essays, sketches, and stories,The Legend of Sleepy HollowWilliam Cullen Bryant: the first American lyric poet of distinction. To a Waterfowl, Thanatopsis, The Yellow Violet . The Flood of Years. Nature was the chief theme of Bryant’s poetry. Nature was the symbol of the Marker, the mighty Cause, and the infinite Sources.Thanatopsis:the poem, whose title means “ a meditation on death”, Bryant deals with thetheme of death, stoically compares death with the crumbling of the insensible clod, and describes death without any hint of the resurrection or immortality of the soul. The theme of death, the melancholy tone, and black verse in the poem resemble the poetry of graveyard school.To a Waterfowl: “the most perfect brief poem in the language”,was called by Matthew Arnold, Bryant exhausted and lonely in the wildness .sank into self-doubt and despair. Its successful representation of the poet’s grateful sense of a divine power guiding and protecting all the existences in the universe, the beauty and value of poem also lies in the clarify of its central image and the aptness and simplify of its moral analogy. The poem also has been admire for the “gliding”effect of the stanza form, which is appropriate to the visual image of the following stanza.Henry David Thoreau:a practical transcendentalist, Walden, his masterpiece and a great Transcendentalist work. Civil DisobedienceEdgar Allen Poe:one of the earliest writers of modern short stories. Father of the detective story; Father of the psychoanalytic criticism. Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque, To Helen,Poe called her “the first purely ideal love of my soul”, the personal element of the young poet was almost completely sublimated in the idealization of the tradition of supernal beauty in art.Raiph Waido Emerson: The American Scholar,this address having been considered American’s intellectual declaration of independence. Nature , 1836, which later xame to known as Transcendentalism. The Rhodora, the poem proceed from the rhodora, a common natural object,to the transcendental idea it suggests. The significance of the poem lies in such a masterly combination of the description of nature and the revelation of a philosophical idea. 1,the transcendentalists placed emphasis on spirit or the over-soul,as the most important thing in the universe.2,they offered a fresh perception of nature as symbolic of the spirit or God.3,believe in self-trust and self-reliance.5,dignity of manual labor.Nathaniel Hawthorne: poet, naturalist, tax resister,his work: The Scarlet Letter, Mosses from an Old Manse. The Scarlet Letter, the theme of the novel is depicting sin and its consequences, around which the moods created are those of remorse, sorrow,and despair. It is notable for its allegory and symbolism,and it has been considered the first American symbolic novel. “A”,which stood for adultery,alienation, able,angle,amour. Hester ,beauty,strong will and enduranc3 kindness. Arthur ,weak and coward. Roger ,chill cool,heartless and merciless,his miss happen body reflects or symbolizes the evil in his soul. Pearl ,symbol of the ardent love,serves as moral in the novel,symbolizes the revolt against Puritanism.Walt Whitman:end of American romantic. Leaves of Grass,1855,1867. Song of Myself, “I”or “Myself”,if in its largest and most frequent sense,it is generic and representative of all men,if in its universal meaning, it,as Whitman soul, is only a fragment of the World Soul,or the Oversoul.transcend both time to time,the imagery of the poem tends to be panoramic,flowing and expanding without end. When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d , this elegy on the death of Abraham Lincoln.1865.the meaning of the poem lies in the symbolism that is centered on three major symbols:the lilacs,stand for death of Lincoln;the fallen western star;the song of the hermit thrush.Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: Voice of the Night A Mystery: The Golden Legend ,The New England Tragedies ,The Divine Tragedy. A Psalm of Life, it is about nature and mankind ,although man may leave his footprints in the world ,nature will change it back states that mankind is temporary and nature is forever,nature goes on without mankind.Harriet Beecher Stowe:Uncle Tom’s Cabin,1851,anti-slavery movement,Lincoln praised her”the little women who wrote the book that made this great war”,and the first well-know sociological novel in American literature.Emily Dickinson :The Poetry of Emily Dickinson.Mark Twain: first realist and humorist, Tom Sawyer ,Huckleberry Finn.,Life on the Mississippi. Henry James:psychological realism, “stream-of-consciousness”. The American, The Portrait of Lady. The Art of Fiction. Watch and Ward. First real novel is Roderick HudsonCharles Darwin’s The Origin of Species.1859Edwin Arlington Robinson:the first major poet of the 20th century. The Torrent and the Night Before. Children of the Night ,Capital Craig and other Poems. The Town Down the River. Eros Turannos. Richard Cory:abab,cdcd,efef,gcgc. Money can not buy happiness,you can’t juge people by what they have, but only by what they are. Appearance and deceiving.Stephen Crane:first American naturalist. Maggie, A Girl of the Street. The Red Badge of Courage. Short story: The Open Boat . The Blue HotelTheodore Dreiser:Sister Carrie, An American TragedyRobert Lee Frost:was the unofficial laureate of America. Mending Wall. The Road Not Taken. Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening.William James :stream-of-consciousness. Cal Jung,collective unconscious and archetypal symbol.Ernest Hemingway: The Sun Also Rise. The lost generation. A Farewell to Arms. The Old Man and the Sea. His typical hero is one who,wounded but strong,enjoys the pleasures of life in face of ruin and death and maintains through some notion of a code and ideal of himself.Francis Scott Fitzgerald:jazz age ,The Great Gatsby.J ohn Ernst Steinbeck:The Grapes of Wrath,visionary. The Long Valley. Cup of Gold.Thomas Stearns Eliot:poet,critic,dramatist. The Waste Land,is modern spiritual barrenness, the despair and depression that followed the first world war ,the sterility and trubulence of the modern world ,and the decline and break down of Western culture.William Faulkner:Soldier’s Pay. The Sound and the Fury. As I Lay Dying,an original stream-of consciousness short novel. The Hamlet. Dry September. 1959 Nobel prize. Yoknapatawpha CountyEugene O’Neill:dramatist,1936,Nobel prize. Beyond the Horizon. The Emperor Jones. Long Day’s Journey Into Night. A Touch of the Poet. A Moon for the Misbegotten.Jewish novelists Saul Bellow , Humboldt’s gift , Seize the Day. Issac Singer,1976,1978,Nobel prize.Joseph Heller,Cat-22,a most typical work of black humor.。