美国文学简答题

1. Transcendentalism:1. a philosophical and literary movement that flourished in New England from about 1836 to1860. It stood in reaction against the rationalism of the Enlightenment.2. General features(1)Emphasis on the significance of imagination, spirit and individualism, exploring the innermost being of man(2)Opposition against neoclassical conception of formality and order(3)Divinity of man and nature, perception of nature as symbolic of Spirit or God(4) Further search into nature to acquire truth and knowledge than Romanticism3. Major figures of Transcendentalism: Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Margaret Fuller.P782. American naturalism：1. Flourished between1880 to 1940. It was a term created by Emile Zola. Charles Darwin’s evolutionary theory and French naturalism played an important role in American naturalism.2. General features:(1)A view of human beings as passive victims of natural forces and social environment.In naturalistic works, characters were conceived as complex combinations of inherited attributes and habits conditioned by social and economic forces. Naturalism emphasized：the world was around；men had no free will；religious“truth”were illusory；the destiny of human beings was misery in life and oblivion in death.(2)Scientific accuracy and lots of factual details(3)Attempt to achieve extreme objectivity and frankness(4)Tone of such works: ugly side of the society, gloom, hopelessness, despair3. Major figures of naturalism: Stephen crane，Frank Norris, Jack London and Theodore Dreiser. P275-P2773.The lost generation:1. The term came from Gertrude Stein who said in Hemingway's presence that “you are all a lost generation.”2. It refers to the generation after the World War I or the young writers who lived as expatriates in Western Europe for a short time. Most of them were caught in the war and cut from the old value.3. They were disillusioned with capitalist ideals and civilization and sense of loss after the world war.4. These writers adopted unconventional style of writing and reacted against the tendencies of the older writers in the 1920s.P333-3344.Jazz age:1. It refers to the time in 1930s after the World War I when there was a financial boom.2. It is about life and fate of young men who indulged in stimulus and pleasure, and about disillusionment of American dream.3. Fitzgerald was the literary spokesman for the Jazz age.P335, P3695．F ree verse:1. It is a style of poetry that has irregular rhythms and lines and attempts to avoid any predetermined verse structure. Instead, it uses the cadences of natural speech.2. While it alternates stressed and unstressed syllables as stricter verse forms do, free verse does so in a looser way.3. Whitman's poetry is the most impressive example of free verse. Other major figures of free verse include Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot and other major American can poets of the 20th century.6. The iceberg analogy:1. The Iceberg Theory is a writing theory by Ernest Hemingway: "The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one eighth of it being above water.”2. It means that a writer may omit things but the readers will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them if the writer is writing truly enough.3. It was well suited to evoke the stoic courage of his characters who face lonely and thankless tasks. P3431.Poe's Poetic Ideas1. The function of poetry is not to summarize and interpret earthly experience, but to create a mood in which the soul soars toward supernal beauty.2. T he elevation of excitement of the soul should be “the poetic principle” thus poetry must concer n itself only with “supernal beauty”.3. Everything that detains human soul must be excluded from the poetry, including moral sense.4. Poe defines poetry as “the rhythmical creation of beauty”, giving emphasis upon the importance of the rhythmical or musical element in poetry.P1302．Whitman's style1. Transcendentalism: optimism, divinity of man and nature, and emphasis on individualism and exploring the innermost of being of man.2. Democratic thought: celebration of ideal democratic society and attacks against corruption3. The sprawling lines of the poems are often extremely long.4. Parallelism: the parallel lines say the same thing but use different words.5. Envelope structure: the first line begins with the subject, and then more and more lines list modifiers till the verb appears in the last line of the stanza. This is like enclosing a whole list of ideas in an envelope.6. Catalogue technique: means listing. Typical poems by Whitman make long, long lists of images, of sights, sounds, smells, taste, and touch.7. No conventional meters and rhythms8. The verse unit is usually an independent clause.P1753．Formal features of Dickinson's poetry1. Based on her own experience2. Theme: love, nature, friendship, death and immorality3. Peculiar poetic form: abundant dashes, irregular punctuation and capitalization, faulty grammar, no title, no regular line4. Remarkable for its uncommon variety, original subtlety and unusual richness5. Poetic indirection: e.g. “There is certain slant of light” and “Tell all the truth but tell its slant!”6. On the ethical level Dickinson emphasizes free will and human responsibility.4．The theme and techniques in Eliot's "The Waste Land"Theme：1. Modern spiritual barrenness2. Despair and depression that followed the WWI3. Sterility and turbulence of the modern world, and the decline and break-down of western culture4. The search for regeneration by people living in a chaotic world.Technique：1. Varied length and rhythm to harmonize with the changing subject matter2. Unrhymed lines3. Lots of borrowings from different writers5．Analysis of "Richard Cory" by Edwin Arlington RobinsonTheme："Richard Cory" is a short dramatic poem about a man whose outward appearance belies his inner turmoil. The tragedy in the poem reflects in its spirit the tragedies in Edwin Arlington Robinson's own life: Both of his brothers died young, his family suffered financial failures, and Robinson himself endured hardship before his poetry gained recognition2. It seems that Cory’s life is happy and successful, but his inner world is far more complicated than what it appears to be. It tells us that success may be meaningless to some people and cannot reflect the true value of life. It also shows the hollowness and loneliness of modern people.2. TechniqueWording:(1)Lively words: “imperially”; “quietly”; “admirably”(2)Simple words: looked at；clean favored；was arrayed；glittered; was human; put a bullet through his head(3)Simple words to show contrast between the cheering life and the tragic ending(4)Ancient words: ‘clean favored’、‘arrayed’、‘schooled’to correspond the serious topicIt has an unexpected ending, and sharp contrast and mild sarcasm, thus leaving much room for readers to taste the topic.Poetic sounds: Traditional pentameter with a rhyming scheme of“abab, cdcd，elef, ghgh”ment on “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" by Robert FrostSummary and Theme:The speaker is stopping by some woods on a snowy evening. He or she takes in the lovely scene in near-silence, is tempted to stay longer, but acknowledges the obligations and duties yet to be fulfilled before he or she can rest for the night. In this poem, Robert Frost discusses the relation between mortal obligations and the eternal rest.Form:The poem consists of four (almost) identically constructed stanzas. Each line is iambic, with fourstressed syllables. Frost also uses alliteration and repetition in his poems. The rhyme scheme he uses is a-a-b-a.Features of content:1. Plain in words, but profound in meaning. Simple words with far-reaching meanings2. Since it is full of symbolic constructs, it is thought- provoking, and the readers can get great fun in developing the subtext.Detailed analysis:In the first stanza, the poet leads us to a piece of beautiful woods filled up with snow. The poet takes the woods as the eternal life. He is fed up with the routine duties, and wants to rest forever. The piece of woods happens to provide an ideal place.Then it comes to the snowy evening. The snow is cold and the evening dark, all of which indicate that the poet is depressed inside. His subconscious wants him to stop, but his “little horse” with the inspiring bells, which is actually a symbol of vitality, urges him to go. T he poet uses “frozen lake” to denote death. Why he transfers the embodiment of death from the beautiful “woods” to the deadly “frozen lake” is because the point of view has changed from the poet to the litt le horse.In the third stanza, the little horse wonders why the poet stops when he should go on. Only “the easy wind” and “downy flake” answer it with soft sweep. Actually t he poet’s answer is as slight and uncertain as the flakes, because he himself do esn’t know why he stops suddenly in the woods.Toward the end, the poet comes back from the illusion. Though the woods are attractive, he must move on, because he has promise to keep. “The promise” could be an obligation or a goal. One cannot die before fulfilling one’s dream. The poet uses “sleep” to represent death, just as we usually do.7.Theme and technique in The Great Gatsby by FitzgeraldTheme:It resents the decline of the American dream in1920s, the hollowness of the upper class and the falseness of ideals and moves toward disillusion.It also shows that American dream will not lead to a perfect country. Instead, it leads to total depravity. The nationals become hypocritical, indifferent, empty, and cruel, day and night indulged in material pursuing.Technique:1. Development of traditional narrative techniques and first-person narrator: The whole novel proceeded with Nick’s narration.2. Two main clues of the story: The main clue is the imbroglio between Gatsby and the family of Tom, and the minor one is the imbroglio between Tom and the family of Wilson.3. The contrastive techniques endow the novel with artistic glamour and profound connotation.4. Technique of delayed character revelation to emphasize the theatrical quality of Gatsby’s app roach to lifeP369ment on Hemingway's style and Farewell to Arms"Style:1. News reporting style: direct, concise, life-like dialogues, less ornaments2. exercised iceberg theory: omit something but the readers will still have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them thanks to the direct and true description.3. Hemingway’s book paints the image of a whole generation, the Lost generation: people disillusioned after the world war by old values and insensitivity and hollowness of society4. He wrote all his life about one theme, “grace under pressure”, and created one hero who acts that theme out. Hemingway code heroes: (1) physically strong, (2) endowed with certain skills, (3)strong will power(Man can be destroyed, not defeated; Courage=grace under pressure), (4)tested in difficulties。