美国文学问答题

What is Transcendentalism？什么是超验主义

In New England, an intellectual movement known as transcendentalism developed as an American version of Romanticism. The movement began among an influential set of authors based in Concord, Massachusetts, and was led by Ralph Waldo Emerson. Like Romanticism, Transcendentalism rejected both 18-century rationalism and established religion, which for the transcendentalists meant the Puritan tradition in particular. Instead, the transcendentalists celebrated the power of the human imaginations to commune with the universe and transcend the limitations of the material world. The transcendentalists found their chief source of inspiration in nature. Emerson’s essay Nature (1836) was the first major document of the transcendental school and stated the idea that were to remain central to it. His other key transcendentalist works include The American Scholar (1873), a volume in which he addressed the intellectual’s duty to culture, and Self-Reliance (1841), an essay in which he asserted the importance of being true to one’s own nature.

What is Free V erse?

Free V erse is the rhymed or unrhymed poetry composed without attention to conventional rules of meter. Free verse was first written and 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 re-create instead the free rhythms of natural speech. Pointing to the American poet Walt Whitman as their precursor, they wrote lines of varying length and cadence, usually not rhymed. Free verse has been characteristic of the work of many modern American poets, including Ezra Pound, and Carl Sandburg.

What is Puritanism?

The word Puritanism is originally used to refer the theology advocated by a party within the Church of England. The term Puritanism is also used in a broader sense to refer to attitudes and values considered characteristic of the Puritans. It has been employed to denote a rigid moralism, or the condemnation of innocent pleasure, or religious narrowness adhered by the early New England Puritans. The American Puritanism as a cultural heritage exerted great influences over American moral values, and this Puritan influences over American Romanticism was conspicuously noticeable. In addition, a preoccupation with the Calvinistic view of original sin and the mystery of evil marked the works by such famous writers as Hawthorn and Melville.

What are the artistic achievements of Edgar Allan Poe?

He is known as a poet and critic but most famous as the first master of the short story form. Whether or not Poe invented the short story, it is certain that he originated the novel of detection. Perhaps his best-known tale in this genre is The Murders in the Rue Morgue (1841). Many of Poe’s tales are distinguished by the author’s unique and grotesque inventiveness in addition to his superb plot construction. Such stories include The Fall of the House of Usher (1839), in which the penetrating gloominess of the atmosphere is accented equally with plot and characterization. Poe’s poems are remarkable for their flawless literary construction and foe their haunting themes and meters as in the poems”The Raven” and “Annabel Lee”.