美国文学史复习提纲 名词解释

I. Explain the following literary terms(名词解释).

1. Romanticism

The most profound and comprehensive idea of romanticism is the vision of a greater personal freedom for the individual. Appeals to imagination; Stress on emotion rather than reason; optimism, gen iality. Subjectivity: in form and meaning.

2 American transcendentalism

American transcendentalism was an important movement in philosophy and literature that flourished during the early to middle years of the nineteenth century (about 1836-1860). For the transcendentalists, the soul of each individual is identical with the soul of the world and contains what the world contains.

3 Realism: ―nothing more and nothing less than the truthful treatment of material.‖ the Civil war

a. verisimilitude of details derived from observation

b. representative in plot, setting and character

c. an objective rather than an idealized view of human experience

or（American Realism: In American literature, the Civil War brought the Romantic Period to an end. The Age of Realism came into existence. It came as a reaction against the lie of romanticism and sentimentalism. Realism turned from an emphasis on the strange toward a faithful rendering of the ordinary, a slice of life as it is really lived. It expresses the concern for commonplace and the low, and it offers an objective rather than an idealistic view of human nature and human experience.）

4. Modernism like modernism in general is a trend of thought that affirms the power of human beings to create, improve, and reshape their environment, with the aid of scientific knowledge, technology and practical experimentation, and is thus in its essence both progressive and optimistic. The general term covers many political, cultural and artistic movements rooted in the changes in Western society at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century. American modernism is an artistic and cultural movement in the United States starting at the turn of the 20th century with its core period between World War I and World War II and continuing into the 21st century.

5、American Puritanism: Puritanism is the practices and beliefs of the Puritans. The Puritans were originally members of a division of the Protestant Church. The first settlers who became the founding fathers of the American nation were quite a few of them. They were a group of serious, religious people, advocating highly religious and moral principles. As the word itself hints, Puritans wanted to purity their religious beliefs and practices. They accepted the doctrine of predestination, original sin and total depravity, and limited atonement through a special infusion of grace form God. As a culture heritage, Puritanism did have a profound influence on the early American mind. American Puritanism also had a enduring influence on American literature.

6、Transcendentalism: 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 18th century rationalism and established religion, which for the transcendentalists meant the Puritan tradition in particular. The transcendentalists celebrated the power of the human imagination to commune with the universe and transcend the limitations of the material world. They found their chief source of inspiration in nature. Emerson’s essay Nature was the major document of the transcendental school and stated the ideas that were to remain central to it.

7、Free verse: free verse is the rhymed or unrhymed poetry composed without attention to conventio nal 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 recreate the free rhythms of natural speech. Walt Whitman was the precursor who wrote lines of varying length and cadence, usually not rhymed. The emotional content or meaning of the work was expressed through its rhythm. Free verse has been characteristic of the work of many modern American poets, including Ezra Pound and Carl Sandburg.

8、Naturalism: A more deliberate kind of realism in novels, stories and plays, usually involving a view of human beings as passive victims of natural forces and social environment. Naturalism was a new and harsher realism. It

developed on the basis of realism but went a step further than it in portraying social reality.

9、Lost Generation: Also termed the Sad Young Men, which was created by F.S. Fitzgerald in his book All the Sad Young Men. The term in general refers to the post- World War I generation, but specifically a group of US writers who came of age during the war and established their reputation in the 1920s. It stems from a remark made by Gertrude Stein to Ernest Hemingway, ―You are all a lost generation.‖ Hemingway used it as an epigraph to The Sun Also Rises, a novel that captures the attitudes of a hard-drinking, fast living set of disillusioned young expatriates in postwar Paris. The generation was ―lost‖ in the sense that its inherited values were no longer relevant in the postwar world and because of its spiritual alienation from US, they seemed hopelessly provincial, materialistic, and emotionally barren. The term embraces Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Dos Passos, E.E. Cummings and so on.

10、International theme：The meeting of America and Europe, American innocence in contrast with European decadence and the moral and psychological complications arising therefore. The typical pattern of the conflict between the two cultures could be that of a young American man or girl who goes to Europe and affronts his or her destiny. Marriage and love are used by James as the focal point of the confrontation between the two value Systems, and the protagonist usually goes through a painful process of spiritual growth, gaining knowledge of good and evil from the conflict.

11、Symbolism: It is a movement in literature and the visual arts that originated in France in the poetry of Charles Baudelaire in the late 19th century. In literature, symbolism was an aesthetic movement that encouraged writers to express their ideas, feelings, and values by means of symbols or suggestions rather than by direct statements. Hawthorne and Melville are masters of symbolism in America in the 19th century.

II. Questions and Answers. Give brief answers to each of the following questions in English.

1. What is local color？

an amalgam of romantic plots and realistic descriptions of things immediately observable: the dialects, customs, sights, and sounds of regional America‖

2. What is American Puritanism

1). Total Depravity - the concept of Original Si

2). Unconditional Election - the concept of predestination

3). Limited Atonement - Jesus died for the chosen only, not for everyone.

4). Irresistible Grace - God's grace is freely given, it cannot be earned or denied.

5). Perseverance of the "saints" - those elected by God have full power to interpret the will of God, and to live uprightly. If anyone rejects grace after feeling its power in his life, he will be going against the will of God.

3. Analyze Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography.

themes in autobiography: Self- Improvement Mind: Self-education Body: Physical Activity Behavior: Moral Perfection Religion: The best service to God is to be good to man

Benjamin Franklin and aspects of The American Dream

Rags to Riches: Impotence to Importance: A Philosophy of Individualism:

Freewill vs. Determinism: Hope and Optimism:

The Autobiography is a record of self-examination and self-improvement.

Benjamin Franklin was a spokesman for the new order of the 18th century enlightenment

The Autobiography is a how-to-do-it book, a book on the art of self-improvement. (for example, Franklin’s 13 virtues)

Through telling a success story of self-reliance, the book celebrates, in fact, the fulfillment of the American dream. The Autobiography is in the pattern of Puritan simplicity, directness, and concision

4. What is Imagism?

It is a movement of English and American poets in revolt from Romanticism, which flourish 1910-1917. The characteristic products of the movement are more easily recognized than its theories defined: they tend to be short ,composed of short lines of musical cadence rather than metrical regularity, to avoid abstraction, and to treat

the image with a hard, clear precision rather than with overt symbolic intent.

As part of the modernist movement, away from the sentimentality and moralizing tone of nineteenth-century Victorian poetry, imagist poets looked to many sources to help them create a new poetic expression, aiming at clarity of expression through the use of precise visual images.

III. Topic discussion.

1. Discuss Allen Poe’s literary achievements with his works.

famous American poet, short-story writer and critic father of detective story master of gothic novel forerunner of symbolism a father of detective story

Poe introduced of a new form of short fiction--- the detective story.

The word ―detective‖ did not exist in English at the time that Poe was writing, but the genre has become

a )fundamental mode of twentieth-century literature and film.

b) master of gothic novel

Gothic novel, a genre that rose with Romanticism in Britain in the late eighteenth century, explores the dark side of human experience—death, alienation, nightmares, ghosts, and haunted landscapes. Poe brought the Gothic to America.

Gothic novels originated from The Castle of Otranto, written by Horace Walpole in Britain at the end of the 18th century, which created the early classical Gothic novel mode.

It leads habitually with darkness and horror. Gothic elements include horror, mystery, supernatural phenomenon, misfortune, death, haunted houses, and family curses.

c Literary critic

Poe is one of the few American writers who not only wrote poetry, but also wrote about how to write poetry. His critical essays on poetry include The Poetic Principle, and The Philosophy of Composition.

Poe remained the most controversial and most misunderstood literary figure in the history of American literature. 2. Analyze Freneau’s The Wild Honeysuckle.野金银花

Philip Freneau as Father of American Poetry as Leader of 18th Century Naturalism

The following poem was published in his Poems (1786) and was virtually unread in the time when he was living. In the poem the poet expresses his keen awareness of the liveliness and transience of nature celebrating the beauty of the frail forest flower, thus showing his deep love for nature.

The poem was written in six-line iambic tetrameter stanzas rhymed on ababcc pattern.

The poem is said to anticipate the nineteenth-century romantic use of simple nature imagery.

It is considered one of the author’s finest nature poems.

Comments on The Wild Honey Suckle

1. A flower may be the most beautiful and overlooked piece of nature. Cherish it while it lasts for by the change of each season it may dissipate only to become a desire. Perhaps Freneau knew of a beauty that only nature could describe, provoked by the insincerity of the British people.

2. Philip Freneau, in this poem, was expressing his dream of a paradise in nature, or rather, on the new continent of America. His dream was the originality of the paradise on the earth, i.e, USA. The wild honey suckle is something of freedom, tranquility, nature, and of no convention, no suppression, no traditional or anything beyond the pure nature.

This poem is not only a mere description of nature, but something ideal in the poet's construction of a real paradise of human beings. This paradise is of real freedom, pure nature, total independence, grand beauty. As we know, Freneau was against the British interference in the independence of the new land, and was hoping to establish a real free country of the people on the new Continent. So in my opinion, this poem was in fact the beautiful bode of a paradise in nature(on the earth), in very brief and true words. This paradise is independent without meeting any vicious interference, beautiful without catering to any viewer,tranquil but fearful of no hardships, wild in nature without any vulgar provocation.

in this poem the poet expressed a keen awareness of the loveliness and transience of nature.he not only meditat

ed on mortality but also celebrated nature.it implies that life and death are inevitable law of nature,

"the wild honey suckle"is philipfreneau's most widely read natureal lyric with the theme of transience.the central i mage is a nativewild flower,which makes a drastic difference from elite flower images typical of tradition english p oems.

the poem showed strong feelings for the natural beauty,which was the characteristic of romantic.

3. Analyze Poe’s To Helen and translate the third stanza in your own words.

The theme of this short poem is the beauty of a woman with whom Poe became acquainted when he was 14. Apparently she treated him kindly and may have urged him–or perhaps inspired him–to write poetry. Beauty, as Poe uses the word in the poem, appears to refer to the woman's soul as well as her body. On the one hand, he represents her as Helen of Troy–the quintessence of physical beauty–at the beginning of the poem. On the other, he represents her as Psyche–the quintessence of soulful beauty–at the end of the poem. In Greek, psyche means soul.

It was first published in 1831 collection Poems of Poe then reprinted in 1836 in the Southern Literary Messenger. Poe revised the poem in 1845, making several improvements, most notably changing "the beauty of fair Greece, and the grandeur of old Rome" to "the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome." These improved lines are the most well-known lines of the poem.

Imagery and Summary of the Poem

Poe opens the poem with a simile–―Helen, thy beauty is to me / Like those Nicéan barks of yore‖–that compares the beauty of Helen (Mrs. Stanard) with small sailing boats (barks) that carried home travelers in ancient times. He extends this boat imagery into the second stanza, when he says Helen brought him home to the shores of the greatest civilizations of antiquity, classical Greece and Rome. It may well have been that Mrs. Stanard’s beauty and other admirable qualities, as well as her taking notice of Poe’s writing ability, helped inspire him to write poetry that mimicked in some ways the classical tradition of Greece and Rome.

Certainly the poem’s allusions to mythology and the classical age suggest that he had a grounding in, and a fondness for, ancient history and literature. In the final stanza of the poem, Poe imagines that Mrs. Stanard (Helen) is standing before him in a recess or alcove in front of a window. She is holding an agate lamp, as the beautiful Psyche did when she discovered the identity of Eros (Cupid).

in the first stanza,helen's beauty is soothing.it provides security and safety.perhaps the reader is expected to a ssociate marlowe's famousline:was this the face that launched a thousand ships? to helen's beauty,for her beauty is as hypnotic for the speaker as the ships that transported another wanderer-Ulysses-home from Troy. throughout the poem,Poe uses allusions to classical names and places,as well as certain kinds of images to creat e the impression of a far-off idealized,unreal woman,like a Greek statue.words that support the image of an ideal woman are "hyacinth"and"classic""Naiad airs"and"statued like.helen stands,not like a real woman,but like a saint i n a "windows-niche.she becomes a symbol both of beauty and of frustration,a romantically idealized,yet inaccessi ble image of the heart's desire.

it's believed that few american poets can surpass Poe's ability in the use of english as a medium of pure musical and rhythmic beauty.Poe made good use of rhythm is not regular,which shows the poet was excited,the poem is a haunting melody done with extreme artistry of alliteration as in "weary"and"way-worn",assonance as in "wont to roam"and masculine end rhyme,for example,with"me"rhythm with "sea",the rhyme scheme is ababb,cdcec,fggfg.i n the poem words containing vowels or diphthongs were used to bring about the slow rhythm which reveals the s peaker's admiration and deep regret and suggest a theme that beauty is soothing yet inaccessible.in light of anal ysis above,the general tone of the poem is passionate and regretful.

4. Discuss Mark Twain’s art of fiction: the setting, th e language, and the characters, etc., based on his novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Huckleberry Finn (1884) was first considered adult fiction. Huck Finn, which painted a picture of Mississippi frontier life, was intended as a sequel to Tom Sawyer. Huck, who could not possibly write a story, tells us the story. Twain wrote a novel that embodies the search for freedom. He wrote during the post-Civil War period when there was an intense white reaction against blacks. According to some critics,[who?]Twain took aim squarely against racial prejudice, increasing segregation, lynchings, and the generally accepted belief that blacks were sub-human. He "made it clear that Jim was good, deeply loving, human, and anxious for freedom."[12]However, others have criticized the novel as racist, citing the use of the word "nigger" and Jim's Sambo-like character.[2][3]

Throughout the story, Huck is in moral conflict with the received values of the society in which he lives, and while he is unable to consciously refute those values even in his thoughts, he makes a moral choice based on his own valuation of Jim's friendship and human worth, a decision in direct oppositio n to the things he has been taught. Mark Twain in his lecture notes proposes that "a sound heart is a surer guide than an ill-trained conscience," and goes on to describe the novel as "...a book of mine where a sound heart and a deformed conscience come in to collision and conscience suffers defeat."[13]

5. Discuss James Cooper’s literary contributions.

Contributions of Cooper

The creation of the famous Leather stocking saga has cemented his position as our first great national novelist and his influence pervades American literature. In his thirty-two years (1820-1851) of authorship, Cooper produced twenty-nine other long works of fiction and fifteen books - enough to fill forty-eight volumes in the new definitive edition of his Works. Among his achievements:

1. The first successful American historical romance in the vein of Sir Walter Scott (The Spy, 1821).

2. The first sea novel (The Pilot, 1824).

3. The first attempt at a fully researched historical novel (Lionel Lincoln, 1825).

4. The first full-scale History of the Navy of the United States of America (1839).

5. The first American international novel of manners (Homeward Bound and Home as Found, 1838).

6. The first trilogy in American fiction (Satanstoe, 1845; The Chainbearer, 1845; and The Redskins, 1846).

7. The first and only five-volume epic romance to carry its mythic hero - Natty Bumppo - from youth to old age. James Fenimore Cooper was one of the first novelists to enjoy great fame as a result of his literary career and although some may argue that this is because the subject matter was entertaining (rather than instructive or socially conscious, for example) the fact remains that he was able to introduce Americans to their own frontier. A writer in the style of romanticism, James Fenimore Cooper was enamored with tales of the outdoors and encounters with strange and often hostile people or forces. This material was well-received and because of his literary success James Fenimore Cooper was able to produce his large body of works throughout his lifetime.

6. Analyze Whitman’s One’s Self I Sing.

Analysis of One’s Self I Sing

In 1855 he published Leaves of Grass by himself at his own expense. His intention was to create a truly American poem, one "proportionate to our continent, with its powerful races of men, its tremendous historic events, its great oceans, its mountains, and its illimitable prairies." In fact, his poem goes beyond American subject to deal with the universal themes of nature, fertility, and mortality.

"One’s-Self I sing, a simple separate person," run the opening lines of Leaves of Grass from 1871 on, "Yet utter the word Democratic." A poetic universe of productive tension is hinted by that "Y et"; the tense equipoise between individualism and democracy, this poem suggests, is the foundational theme of Whitman’s book. The poem then goes on to introduce the site and symbol for this reconciliation of individual to mass: the body, "physiology from top to toe." We receive individual identity through our body, . . . yet at the same time, physicality, and especially physical affection, are universal, binding us together in common humanity. Much of the boldly progressive politics of Whitman’s poetry will follow from this emphasis on the body; thus his introduction of the theme of "physiology" is

followed by his (then quite radical) insistence on the political equality of male and female.

In Whitman’s ―One’s Self I Sing‖, the theme of the poem, namely the celebration of both oneself and the whole human beings, is realized at various levels. In this renowned short poem, Whitman trumpets the individualism that underlies American democracy and society, interpreting the politics of democracy into terms of everyday life. The poem is also presented as a drama of democratic identity in which the poet seeks to balance and reconcile major conflicts in the body politic of America: the conflict between "separate person" and "en masse," individualism and equality, liberty and union, female and male, or even alluding to the conflict with the South and the North, the farm and the city, labor and capital, black and white, religion and science.

In Whitman’s ―One’s Self I Sing‖, the theme of the poem, namely the celebration of both oneself and the whole human beings, is realized at various levels. In this renowned short poem, Whitman trumpets the individualism that underlies American democracy and society, interpreting the politics of democracy into terms of everyday life. The poem is also presented as a drama of democratic identity in which the poet seeks to balance and reconcile major conflicts in the body politic of America: the conflict between "separate person" and "en masse," individualism and equality, liberty and union, female and male, or even alluding to the conflict with the South and the North, the farm and the city, labor and capital, black and white, religion and science.