美国文学名词解释

American Puritanism(美国清教主义) Puritanism was a religious reform that arose within the church of England in the late 16thcentury. Under siege from church and crown, it sent an offshoot in the third and fourth decades of the 17th to the northern English colonies in the new world---a migration that laid the foundation for the religious, intellectual, and social order of new England. Puritanism, however, was not only a historically specific phenomenon coincident with the founding of new England, it was also a way of being in the world---a style of response to lived experience---that has reverberated through American life ever since. Doctrinally, puritans adhered to the five points of Calvinism as codified at the synod of Dort in 1619: 1) unconditional election: the idea that God had decreed at the synod of damned and who was saved from before the beginning of the world;2) limited atonement: the idea that Christ died for the elect only;3) total depravity: humanity’s utter corruption since the fall;4) irresistible g race: regeneration as entirely a work of God, which cannot be re3sisted and to which the sinner contributes nothing;5) the perseverance of the saints: the elect, despite their backsliding and faintness of heart, cannot fall away from grace.
清教主义是16世纪晚期在英国教会内进行的一场宗教改革.在教会和皇权的双重压力之下,清教的一个分支于17世纪30,40年代迁至美洲新大陆的北方殖民地,他们为新英格兰奠定了宗教、知识和社会秩序的基础。

清教主义不仅符合新英格兰成立的特定历史，而且一直反映了美国生活的一种生活方式。

从教义上说，清教徒遵循加尔文派于1619年多特宗教会议上制定的五条信条：1）无条件拣选：神没有任凭人在罪中灭亡，而是在创世以前就拣选了一群人旅行拯救；2）有限救赎：基督的死只是为了特定数目的选民而死；3）完全堕落：自从亚当偷吃善恶果后，整个人类都堕落了；4）不可抗拒的恩典：圣灵的能力在罪人心里运行，一直到他认罪悔改方休；5）圣徒的坚守：圣徒是神所挑选的，无论他们如何退步，始终在神的感召下。

8 American Romanticism(美国浪漫主义) Romanticism refers to an artistic and intellectual movement originating in Europe in the late 18th century and characterized by a heightened interest in nature, emphasis on the individual’s expression of emotion and imagination, departure from the attitudes and forms of classicism, and rebellion against established social rules and conventions. The romantic period in American literature stretches from the end of the 18th century throught the outbreak of the civil war. It was an age of great westward expansion, of the increasing gravity of the slavery question, of an intensification of the spirit of embattled sectionalism in the south, and of a powerful impulse to reform in the north. In literature it was America’s first great creative period, a full flowering of the romantic impulse on American soil. Although foreign influences were strong, American romanticism exhibited from the very outset distinct features of its own. First, American romanticism was in essence the expression of “a real new experience” and contained “an alien quality” for the simple reason that “the spirit of the place” was radically new and alien. Second, puritan influence over American romanticism was conspicuously noticeable. Emerging as new writers of strength and creative power were the novelists Hawthorne, Melville, the poets Dickinson Whitman, the essayists Thoreau, Emerson. These American writers had made a great literary period by capturing on their pages the enthusiasm and the optimism of that dream.浪漫主义是于18世纪晚期发起于欧洲的一场艺术性及思想性的运动，它注重自然，强调个人情感表达与想像力，向既定的社会制度和传统挑战，与古典主义形式相分离。

美国的浪漫主义时期从18世纪末一直延续到内
战爆发前。

这个时期发生了大规模的西迁运动，日益严峻的奴隶问题，南部各州的地方保护主义的是益盛行以及北部呼声愈演愈烈火的革新运动。

在文学上，这个时期是美国第一次伟大的创作时期，浪漫主义的种子在北美的土壤里生根发芽。

尽管受到欧洲浪漫主义运动的影响，美国浪漫主义文学仍然呈现出自己的独特风格。

第一，美国浪漫主义在本质上是一个“全新的经历“的表达，因这个新大陆充满着生机和活力而使美国的浪漫主义蕴含异国的气质；第二，清教主义对美国浪漫主义有着显著的影响，作为新生创作力量的有小说家霍桑，麦尔维尔。

诗人狄金森和惠特曼，散文家梭罗，爱默生。

这些美国作家充满热情地记录下这个伟大时代的乐观主义精神
9. 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.即浪漫主义的顶点.由于一小群知识分子反对加尔文教派和唯一神论教派理性的形式主义,他们从而提出人与自然的神圣这一信念.超验主义受到德国浪漫主义哲学以及英国浪漫主义作家柯勒律治和沃兹华斯的影响,还在一定程度上受到东方古典哲学和宗教的影响.尽管超验主义思想并不能算是严格意义上的哲学, 但是它还是有一些基本原则的.超验主义者认为人人都有内在的神性,只有通过接触自然才能使神性与人的天性相互融合.从而超验主义十分强调个人主义,自立,拒绝传统权威思想.超验主义思想在爱默生的<论自然> 和梭罗的<瓦尔登湖>等书中表现得淋漓尽致。

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自然主义: 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 Lost Generation: 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 Gertrude 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.
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.
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> pound’s In a Station of the Metro is a well-known imagist poem.
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 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 portrayal 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.
Local Colorism(乡土文学)：Generally speaking, the writings of local colorists are concerned with the life of a small, well-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.
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 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”.
Hemingway Code Hero(海明威式英雄): Hemingway Code 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.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 Hero
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.
1、Romanticism浪漫主义a movement of the 18th and 19th century that affected
the whole of Europe and America.
It is the predominance of imagination over reason and formal rules and over the sense of fact or the actual, a psychological desire to escape from unpleasant realities.
Romanticism was a movement in literature, philosophy, music and art which developed in Europe in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
It emphasized individual values and aspirations above those of society as a reaction to the Industrial Revolution.
It looked to the Middle Ages and to direct contact with nature for inspiration
的特点：frequently shared certain general characteristics, moral enthusiasm, faith in the value of individualism and intuitive perception, and a presumption that he natural world was a source of corruption.浪漫主义之间大多是相通的，都注重道德，强调个人主义价值观和直觉感受，并且认为自然是美的源头，人类社会是腐败之源。

2、Transcendentalism 超验主义
1）as a moral philosophy, transcendentalism was neither logical nor systematized.
It exalted feeling over reason, individual expression over the restraints of law and custom.不讲逻辑，不讲系统，只强调超越理性的感受，超越法律和世俗束缚的个人表达。

2)they spoke for cultural rejuvenation and against the materialism of American
society.呼吁文化复兴，反对美国社会的拜金主义。

3）they believe in the transcendence of "over soul", an all-pervading power for goodness from which all things come and of which all things are a part. 相信精神上的超越，相信无所不能的善的力量，强调善为万物之源。

4）it could exercise a healthy and restorative influence on the human mind. “Go back to nature, sink yourself back into its influence and you’ll become spiritually whole again.” The natural implication of all this was, of course, that things in nature tended to become symbolic, and the physical world was a symbol of the spiritual.
This in turn added to the tradition of literary symbolism in American literature.
3、Realism：（现实主义）appeared in the United States in the literature of local
color, an amalgam of romantic plots and realistic descriptions of things was
immediately observable. the dialects, customs, sights.现实主义有浓厚的美国本土特色，是浪漫主义故事情节和现实主义描写相结合的产物：美国风味的方言、风俗、各种观点4、Naturalism：自然主义a new and harsher realism, 新型的更为冷峻的现实主义，产生悲观的流派，产生于the end of the century 十九世纪末，因为Perception of society’s disorders 对社会无序的感知。

Presenting characters of low social and economic classes who were dominated by their environment and heredity. 设法尽力客观真实地展现出受环境与出身局限的下层人民和各种经济阶层人物的真正生活。

The naturalists emphasized that the world was amoral, that men and women had no free will, that their lives were controlled by heredity and the environment, the religious “truths” were illusory, that the destiny of humanity was misery in life and oblivion in death. 强调世界的非道德性，人们没有意志的自由，宗教上的真理是虚幻的，现实生活是痛苦的。

5、Imagism 意象派：is a poetic movement of England and the United States, flourished from 1909-1917. Its credo, expressed in Some Imagist Poets, included the use of the language of common speech, project matter, the evocation of images in hard, clear poetry, and concentration.
6、Modernism现代主义：is loosely a synonym of anything contemporary. Strictly, especially in literary criticism, which began in the late 19th century and the theory of psycho-analysis as its theoretical base. They pay more attention to the psychic time than the chronological one.
英教1班邹珊珊2009090308
Living in simplicity
Henry David Thoreau is one of the greatest writers of America in 19th century. Walden is based on Thoreau’s experience at Walden pond where he lived alone for twenty six months. In that period materialism caused people to take the priority of economics benefits. America gradually shifted from an essentially agricultural economy to a commercial economy. In Thoreau’s opinion, this shift is harmful for the current development of human beings, and he advocates living in the way of simplicity.
Too much attachment to material world will make people lose
themselves and forget the true meaning of the life. Thoreau wants to awaken others to object materialism and revaluate and reconsider what is a really prosperous life. Most people work hard day and night for the money, just as slaves. They want to use that money to make their life happier and pleasant. But Thoreau says “It looks poore st when you are richest”. He advises us to spend our lives seeking after the truly important goals of life. Then we don’t need live so hurriedly, and miss the meaning of living any longer.
Thoreau urges to live simply, like in Walden. As for Thoreau, his home at Walden is a small cabin built by himself. His furniture, part of which he made himself, consists of only things that are essential for life. Besides, Thoreau eat simply and plainly while at Walden. And he restrained himself form meat, but lived on the beans and other vegetables he raised, the berries and herbs he picked and the fish he caught. Thoreau demonstrates that man with peaceful attitude can exist successfully in the midst of nature.
In Walden, Thoreau advocates a simple, self-sufficient way of life. While people all over the country, town and city become increasingly indulged in getting material wealth, w e should listen to our hearts’ feeling and enrich our inward need rather be controlled by social value and convention, as pursuing money, speeding up social development.。