英美文学主要知识点

Doctrines of Puritans: (1). Predestination: God decide everything before things occurred. (2). Original Sin: Human beings were born to be evil and this original sin.

(3). Total Depravity: A state of corruption due to original sin held in Calvinism to infect every part of man’s nature and to make the natural man unable to know or obey god. (4). Limited Atonement: Only the “elect” can be saved.

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, its associated purported meritocracy, and the freedoms guaranteed by the U.S. Bill of Rights.

American Naturalism Major Features: (1) Humans are controlled by laws of heredity and environment. (2) The universe is cold, godless, indifferent and hostile to human desires. (3) Naturalistic writers are pessimistic. They choose their subjects from the lower ranks of the society, and portray misery and poverty of the “underdogs”who demonstrably victims of society and nature. (4) One of the most familiar themes in American naturalism is the theme of human bestiality. (5) Naturalistic writings are usually unpolished in language.

American Naturalism: Naturalism designates a literary movement in the late 19th century and early 20th century in France, America and England. It applies the scientific determinism to fiction and drama. It viewed human beings as animals in the natural world responding to environmental forces and internal stresses and drives, or none of which they fully understand.

American Realism: 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 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 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.

Ice-berg Principle: (1) 1/8 is above the water, 7/8 is under the water. (2) Also known as the “theory of omission”, the Ice-berg Principle was proposed by Emest Hemingway:” if a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the readers, if the writer is writing truly enough will have a feeling of those things.” The dignity of movement of the ice-berg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water. (3) This principle is about the obvious makes writing more dignified. (4) These omissions help more a story along because the reader is permitted to witness just enough to figure out what is happening.

The Imagist Movement (Imagism): Led by Ezra Pound and flourished from 1909 to 1917, the movement advanced modernism in arts which concentrated on reforming the medium of poetry as opposed to Romanticism, especially Tennyson’s wordiness and high-flown language in poetry. The Three Principles Followed By Imagist Were: (1) Direct Treatment: The subject of the poem must be expressed in such a way as to resemble it and reproduce it as closely as possible. Simple language must be used to create an "image" which the reader can immediately see in his own imagination. Each word must be used with great exactitude to produce a precise image and nothing more.

(2) Economy of expression: No word must be used which does not contribute directly