英美文学名词解释
英美文学专有名词术语解释
Literary Terms（文学术语解释）*Legend（传说）: A song or narrative handed down from the past, legend differs from myths on the basis of the elements of historical truth they contain.*Epic（史诗）: 1)Epic, in poetry, refers to a long work dealing with the actions of gods and heroes. 2)Beowulf is the greatest national epic of the Anglo-Saxons. John Milton wrote three great epics: Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes.*Romance（罗曼史/骑士文学）: 1)Romance is a popular literary form in the medieval England. 2)It sings knightly adventures or other heroic deeds. 3)Chivalry(such as bravery, honor, generosity, loyalty and kindness to the weak and poor) is the spirit of romance. *Ballad（民谣）: 1)Ballad is a story in poetic form to be sung or recited. 2)Ballads were passed down from generation to generation. 3)Robin Hood is a famous ballad singing the goods of Robin Hood. Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is a 19th century English ballad.*The Heroic Couplet（英雄对偶句）:1)It means a pair of lines of a type once common in English poetry, in other words, it means iambic pentameter rhymed in two lines. 2)The rhyme is masculine. 3)Use of the heroic couplet was first pioneered by Geoffrey Chaucer.*Humanism（人文主义）:1)Humanism is the essence of the Renaissance. It emphasizes the dignity of human beings and the importance of the present life. 2)Humanists voiced their beliefs that man was the center of the universe and man did not only have the right to enjoy the beauty of the present life, but had the ability to prefect himself and to perform wonders.*Renaissance（文艺复兴）:1)It refers to the transitional period from the medieval to the modern world. It first started in Italy in the 14th century. 2)The Renaissance means rebirth or revival. 3)It was stimulated by a series of historical events, such as the rediscovery of ancient Roman and Greek classics, the new discoveries in geography and astrology, the religious reformation and the economic expansion. 4)Humanism is the essence of Renaissance. 5)The English Renaissance didn’t begin until the reign of Henry Ⅷ. It was reg arded as England’s Golden Age, especially in literature. 6)The real mainstream of the English Renaissance is the Elizabethan drama. 7)This period produced such literary giants as Shakespeare, Spenser, Marlowe, Bacon, Donne and Milton, etc.*University Wits（大学才子）: 1)It refers to a group of scholars during the Elizabethan age who graduate from either Oxford or Cambridge. They came to London with the ambition to become professional writers. Some of them later become famous poets and playwrights. 2)Thomas Greene, John Lily and Christopher Marlowe were among them. 3)They paved the way, to some degree, for the coming of Shakespeare.*Blank verse（无韵体）:1)It is verse written in unrhymed iambic pentameter. 2)It is the verse form used in some of the greatest English poetry, including that of William Shakespeare and John Milton.*Spenserian Stanza（斯宾塞诗节）:1)It is the creation of Edmund Spenser. 2)It refers to a stanza of nine lines, with the first eight lines in iambic pentameter and the last line in iambic hexameter（六音步）,r hyming ababbcbcc. 3)Spenser’s The Faerie Queene was written in this kind of stanza.*Sonnet(十四行诗)1)It is the one of the most conventional and influential forms of poetry in English.2)A sonnet is a lyric consisting of 14 lines, usually in iambic pentameter, restricted to a definite rhyme scheme.3)Shakespeare’s sonnets are well-known. *Soliloquy(独白)1)Soliloquy, in drama, means a moment when a character is alone and speaks his or her thoughts aloud. 2)In the line “To be, or not to be, that is the question”, which begins the famous soliloquy from Act3, Scene1 of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. In this soliloquy Hamlet questions whether or not life is worth living and speaks of the reasons why he does not end his life.*Metaphysical Poets（玄学派诗人）：They refer to a group of religious poets in the first half of the 17th century whose works were characterized by their wit, imaginative picturing, compressions, often cryptic expression, play of paradoxes and juxtapositions of metaphor.*Enlightenment Movement(启蒙运动)1)It was a progressive intellectual movement which flourished in France and swept through Western Europe in the 18th century.2)The movement was a furtherance of the Renaissance from 14th century to the mid-17th century.3)Its purpose was to enlighten the whole world with the light of modern philosophical and artistic ideas.4)It celebrated reason or nationality, equality and science. It advocated universal education. Literature at the time became a very popular means of public education.5)Famous among the great enlighteners in England were those great writers like John Dryden, Pope, Johnson, Swift, Defoe, Fielding, Sheridan, etc.Neoclassicism(新古典主义)1)In the field of literature, the 18th century Enlightenment Movement brought about a revival of interest in the old classical works. This tendency is known as neoclassicism.2)The neoclassicists hold that forms of literature were to be modeled after the classical works of the ancient Greek and Roman writers such as Homer and Virgil and those of the contemporary French ones.3)They believed that the artistic ideas should be order, logic, restrained emotion and accuracy, and that literature should be judged in terms of its service to humanity*Sentimentalism(感伤主义文学)1)It is a pejorative term to describe false or superficial emotion, assumed feeling, self-regarding postures of grief and pain.2)In literature it denotes overmuch use of pathetic effects and attempts to arouse feeling by pathetic indulgence.3)The Vicar of Wakefield by Oliver Goldsmith is a case in point.*The Graveyard School(墓地派诗歌)1)It refers to a school of poets of the 18th century whose poems are mostly devoted to a sentimental lamentation or meditation on life, past and present, with death and graveyard as theams.2)Thomas Gray is considered to be the leading figure of this school and his Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard is its most representative work.*Epistolary novel(书信体小说)1)It consists of the letters the characters write to each other. The usual form is the letter, but diary entries, newspaper clippings and other documents are sometimes used.2)The epistolary novel’s reliance on subjective poi nts of view makes it the forerunner of the modern psychological novel.3)Samuel Richardson’s Pamela is typical of this kind.*Gothic Romance(哥特传奇)1)A type of novel that flourished in the late 18th and early 19th century in England.2)Gothic romances are mysteries, often involving the supernatural and heavily tinged with horror, and they are usually against dark backgrounds of medieval ruins and haunted castles.*Picaresque novel(流浪汉小说)1)It is a popular sub-genre of prose fiction which is usually satirical and depicts in realistic and often humorous detail the adventures of a roguish hero of low social class who lives by his or her wits in a corrupt society. 2)As indicated by its name, this style of novel originated in Spain, flourished in Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries, and continues to influence modern literature.*English Romanticism(英国浪漫主义文学)1)The English Romantic period is an age of poetry. Poets started a rebellion against the neoclassical literature, which was later regarded as the poetic revolution. They saw poetry as a healing energy; they believed that poetry could purify both individual souls and the society.2)The Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge in 1798 acts as a manifesto for the English Romanticism.3)The Romantics not only eulogize the faculty of imagination, but also stress the concept of spontaneity and inspiration, regarding them as something crucial for true poetry.4)The natural world comes to the forefront of the poetic imagination. Nature is not only the major source of poetic imagery, but also provides the dominant subject matter.*Ode(颂歌)1)Ode is a dignified and elaborately lyric poem of some length, praising and glorifying an individual, commemorating an event, or describing nature intellectually rather than emotionally.2)John Keats wrote great odes. His Ode on a Grecian Urn is a case in point.*Lake Poets(湖畔派诗人)They refer to such romantic poets as William Wordsworth, Samuel Coleridge and Robert Southey who lived in the Lake District. They came to be known as the Lake School or “Lakers”.*Byronic hero（拜伦式英雄）: It refers to a proud, mysterious rebel figure of noble origin. With immense superiority in his passions and powers, this Byronic hero would carry on his shoulders the burden of righting all the wrongs in a corrupt society, and would rise single-handedly against any kind of tyrannical rules either in government, in religion, or in moral principles withunconquerable wills and inexhaustible energies.Terza rima(三行体)1)It is an Italian verse that consists of a series of three-lines stanzas in which the middle line of each stanza rhymes with the first and third lines of the following stanza with the rhyming scheme ab a, bcb, cdc,ded, etc..2)Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind” is a case in point*Critical Realism(批判现实主义)1)The Critical Realism of the 19th century flourished in the forties and in the beginning of fifties.2)The realists first and foremost set themselves the task of criticizing capitalist society from a democratic viewpoint and delineated the crying contradictions of bourgeois reality. But they did not find a way to eradicate social evils.3)Charls Dickens is the most important critical realist.*Psychological novel(心理小说)1)A vague term to describe that kind of fiction which is for the most part concerned with the spiritual, emotional and mental lives of the characters and with the analysis of characters rather than with the plot and the action.2)Thackeray’s charac terization of Rebecca Sharp is very much psychological.*Narration(叙述)1)Like description, narration is a part of conversation and writing. Narration is the major technique used in expository writing, such as autobiography.2)Successful narration must grow out of good observation, to-the-point selection and clear arrangement of details in logical sequence, which is usually chronological.3)Narration gives an exact picture of things as they occur.*Narrator(叙述者)1)It refers to one who narrates, or tells, a story.2)A story may be told by a first-person narrator, someone who is either a major or minor character in the story. Or a story may be told by a third-person narrator, someone who is not in the story at all.3)The word narrator can also refer to a character in a drama who guides the audience through the play, often commenting on the action and sometimes participating in it.*Plot(情节)1)Plot is the first and most obvious quality of a story. Plot is what happens in a story.2)It consists of the phrases of action in a story that are linked together by a chain of casual relationships.Point of view(叙述角度)1)The event of a story may be told as they appear to one or more participants or observers. In first-person narration the point of view is automatically that of the narrator.2)More variation is possible in third-person narration, where the author may choose to limit his or her report to what could have been observed or known by one of the characters at any given point in the action—or may choose to report the observations and thoughts of several characters. The author might choose to intrude his or her own point of view.*Naturalism(自然主义)1)A post Darwinian movement of the late 19th century that tried to apply the laws of scientific determinism to fiction. 2)The naturalist w ent beyond the realist’s insistence on the objective presentation of the details of everyday life to insist that the materials of literature should be arranged to reflect a deterministic universe in which a person is a biological creature controlled by environment and heredity.3)Major writers include Crane, Dreiser in America; Zola in France ; and Hardy and Gissing in England.*The Aesthetic Movement(唯美主义运动)1)It is a loosely defined movement in literature, fine art, the decorative arts and interior design in later nineteenth-century Britain. 2)It belongs to the anti-Victorian reaction and had post-Romantic roots, and as such anticipates modernism. It took place in the late Victorian Period from around 1868 to 1901, and is generally considered to have ended with the trial of Oscar Wilde (which occurred in 1895).3)The aesthetes believed that art did not have any didactic purpose; it need only be beautiful.Dramatic Monologue(戏剧独白)1)In literature, it refers to the occurrence of a single speaker saying something to a silent audience.2)Robert Browning is My Last Duchess is a typical example in which the duke, speaking to a non-responding audience, reveals not only the reasons for his disapproval of the behavior of his former duchess, but some tyrannical and merciless aspects of his own personality as well.。
英美文学名词解释整理版
英美文学名词解释1. Allegory: A tale in verse or prose in which characters, actions, or settings represent abstract ideas or moral qualities. An allegory is a story with two meanings, a literal meaning and a symbolic meaning.寓言：用诗歌或散文讲的故事，在这个故事中人物、事件或背景往往代表抽象的概念或道德品质。
所有的寓言都是一个具有双重意义、文学内涵或象征意义的故事。
2.Alliteration: The repetition of the initial consonant sounds in poetry.头韵：诗歌中单词开头读音的重复。
3.Allusion:A reference to a person, a place, an event, or a literary work that a writer expects the reader to recognize and respond to. An allusion may be drawn from history, geography, literature, or religion.典故：文学作品中作家希望读者能够认识或做出反应的一个人物、地点、事件或文学作品。
典故或来自历史、地理、文学或宗教。
4. American Naturalism: American naturalism was a new and harsher realism. American naturalism had been shaped by the war; by the social upheavals that undermined the comforting faith of an earlier age. America’s literary naturalists dismissed the validity of comforting moral truths. They attempted to achieve extreme objectivity and frankness, presenting characters of low social and economic classes who were determined by their environment and heredity. In presenting the extremes of life, the naturalists sometimes displayed an affinity to the sensationalism of early romanticism, but unlike their romantic predecessors, the naturalists emphasized that the world was amoral, that 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. Although naturalist literature described the world with sometimes brutal realism, it sometimes also aimed at bettering the world through social reform.美国自然主义：美国自然主义是一种新的、更具批判性的现实主义。
英美文学名词解释
名词解释（英国）Epic（叙事诗）: Epic is a narrative poem on the grand scale and in majestic style concerning the exploits and adventures of a superhuman hero (or heroes) engaged in a quest or some serious endeavor. Among noted epics are Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, old English Beowulf and Milton’s Paradise Lost.Romance（传奇）：A Romance is a long composition, in verse or in prose, describing the life and adventures of a noble hero. It generally concerns knights and involves a large amount of fighting as well as a number of miscellaneous adventures and a series of love stories.Ballad（民谣）：Ballad is an anonymous narrative song, usually in 4-line stanzas, with the second and the fourth lines rhymed.Renaissance（文艺复兴）：The word “Renaissance” means “rebirth”(of learning). The Renaissance period was marked by a reawakening of interest in learning, in the individual and in the world of nature. The revival of learning led scholars back to the culture of Greece and Rome. The rebirth of interest in the individual gave rise to a new appreciation of beauty, to a desire for self-expression in varied activities and to the creation of great works of art. The renewal of curiosity about the natural world ultimately drew men to discover new lands and new scientific truth. Humanism（人道主义）：Humanism was a literary and philosophic system of thought which attempted to place the affairs of mankind at the centre of its concerns. According to humanists, man should mould the world according to his own desires, and attains happiness by removing all external checks by the exercise of the human intellect.Sonnet（十四行诗）：A sonnet is a fourteen-line poem in iambic pentameter with a carefully patterned rhyme scheme. Puritanism（清教主义）：Puritanism was the religiousdoctrine of revolutionarybourgeoisie during the EnglishRevolution. It preached thrift,sobriety, hard work andunceasing labor, with noextravagant enjoyment of thefruits of labor. Worldlypleasures were condemned asharmful. Puritans opposedchurches,squandering property.Enlightenment（启蒙运动）：The movement, on the whole,an expression of the struggle ofthe bourgeoisie againstfeudalism, class inequality,stagnation and prejudices. Theenlighteners believed in thepower of reason and thewatchword was CommonSense.Neo-classicism（新古典主义）：Modeling itself on theliterature of ancient Greece andRome, neoclassicism exalts thevirtues of proportion, unity,harmony, grace, taste, manners,and restraint. It values realismand reason over imaginationand emotion. Wit and satireflourished in this period, as didthe ode and verse written inheroic couplets.Romanticism（浪漫主义）：Romanticism is a movementprevailing the Western world inthe 19th century in literature,art, music and philosophy,beginning as a reaction andprotest against the bondage ofrules and customs ofneo-classicism to unfetterhuman spirit. It returned tonature and plain humanity formaterial. It is a movement ofexpression of individualoriginality. Imagination ishighlighted and a dream ofgolden age is required againststern reality.Critical Realism（批判现实主义）：Critical realistsdescribed with much vividnessand artistic skill the chief traitsof the English society andcriticized the capitalist systemfrom a democratic viewpoint.In their best works, the greedand hypocrisy of the upperclasses are contrasted with thehonesty and good-heartednessof the obscure “simple people”of the lower classes. Humorand satire abound. Withoutfinding a way of solution, theydo not point toward revolutionbut rather evolution orreformism with happy endings.Aestheticism（唯美主义）：Thebasic theory of the Aestheticmovement---“art for art’s sake”.Aestheticism places art abovelife, and holds that life shouldimitate art, not art imitate life.According to the aesthetes, allartistic creation is absolutelysubjective as opposed toobjective. Only when art is forart’s sake, can it be immortal.Stream of Consciousness（意识流小说）：First, it reveals theaction or plot through themental processes of thecharacters. Second, characterdevelopment is achievedthrough revelation of extremelypersonal and often typicalthought processes. Third, theaction of the plot seldomcorresponds to realchronological time, but movesback and forth through presenttime to memories of pastevents and dreams of the future.Fourth, it replaces narration,description, and commentarywith interior monologue andfree association.Women’s Movement（女性运动）：feminism is a belief in thesocial, political and economicequality of the sexes, and amovement organized aroundthe conviction that biologicalsex should not be thepre-determinant factor shapinga person's social identity orsocio-political or economicrights.Oedipus Complex（恋母情结）：In Greek myth, Oedipus isthe king who is said to kill hisfather and marry his mother.According to Freud, childrenmay have sexual drivessubconsciously toward theopposite parent. Here, Oedipuscomplex refers to that boy’sobsession to his mother. InEnglish literature, Lawrence isthe first to introduce malecharacters’ impotence tofemales because of mother’sexcessive love.。
英美文学名词解释
Metaphysical Poetry玄学派诗歌: The term "metaphysical poetry" is commonly used to name the work of the 17th century writers who wrote under the influence of John Donne. Metaphysical poetry is characterized by verbal wit and excess, ingenious structure, irregular meter, colloquial language, elaborate imagery, and a drawing together of dissimilar ideas. The metaphysical poets tried to break away from the conventional fashion of the Elizabethan love poetry.Blank Verse素体诗：V erse written in unrhymed iambic pentameter. Blank verse has been the dominant verse form of English drama and narrative poetry since the mid-sixteenth century. It was introduced by Henry Howard from Italy, and then Shakespeare transformed blank verse into a supple instrument, uniquely capable of conveying speech rhymes and emotional overtones.Romance传奇文学: it was a long composition ,sometimes in verse, sometimes in prose, describing the life and adventure of a noble hero. //Any imagination literature that is set in an idealized world and that deals with a heroic adventures and battles between good characters and villains or monsters.Heroic Couplet英雄双韵体: Heroic couplet is a rhymed couplet of iambic pentameter. It is Chaucer who used it for the first time in English in his work The Legend of Good Woman.Epic史诗: An epic is a long oral narrative poem that operates on a grand scale and deals with legendary or historical events of national or universal significance. Many epics were drawn from an oral tradition and were transmitted by song and recitation before they were written down.Sonnet十四行诗: abab cdcd efef gg A fourteen-line lyric poem, usually written in rhymed iambic pentameter. It was introduced by Wyatt and developed by Surrey and was thereafter widely used, notably in the sonnet sequences of Shakespeare. A sonnet generally expresses a single theme or idea.Puritanism清教主义: Puritanism was the religious doctrine of the revolutionary bourgeoisie during the English Revolution. It stressed the virtue of self-discipline, thrift, hard work and unceasing labour. It advocated a strict moral code which prohibited many worldly pleasures.Naturalism自然主义: naturalism is a literary trend prevailing in Europe, especially in France and Germany, in the second half of the 19th century. According to the theory of naturalism, literature must be “true to life”and exactly reproduce real life, including all its details without any selection. Naturalism writers usually write life of the poor and oppressed, or the “slum life”, but by giving all the details of life without discrimination, they can only present the external appearance instead of the inner essence of real life. Humanism人文主义:Humanism is the key-note of the Renaissance. According the humanists, both man and world are hindered only by external checks from infinite improvement. They emphasizing the dignity of human beings and the importance of the present life. Man could mould the world according his desire, and attain happiness by removing all the external checks by the exercise of reason.Aestheticism唯美主义: prevailing at the middle of the 19th century. Aestheticism places art above life, and holds that life should imitate art, not art imitate life. All art creation is absolutely subjective and should be free from any influence of egoism. Only when art is for art’s sake, can it be immortal. They believe art should be unconcerned with controversial issues.Sentimentalism感伤主义: Sentimentalism came into being as a result of a bitter discontent among the enlighteners with social reality. The representatives of sentimentalism continued to struggle against feudalism, but they sensed the contradictions in the process of capitalist development at the same time. Dissatisfied with reason, which classicists appealed to, they appealed to sentiment, “the human heart”.Critical Realism批判现实主义：critical realism is one of the literary genres that flourished mainly in the 19th century. The English critical realists of the 19th century not only gave a satirical portrayal of the bourgeoisie and all the ruling classes, but also showed profound sympathy for the common people. Hence the use of humor and satire in the realistic novels. But the trend of their works is not of revolution but rather of reformism.Neo-Romanticism新浪漫主义:a literary trend prevailing at the end of the 19th century. Dissatisfied with the drab and the ugly social reality and yet trying to avoid the positive solution of the acute social contradictions, the neo-romanticists laid emphasis upon the invention of exciting adventures and fascinating stories to entertain the readers.Modernist现代主义：prevailing during the 20s and 30s of the 20th century. It was a movement of experiments in new technique of writing. Modernist fiction put emphasis on the description of character s’psychological activities, and so has sometimes been called modern psychological fiction.Stream of Conscience意识流:a psychological term indicating “the flux of conscious and subconscious thoughts and impressions moving in the mind at any given time independently of the person’s will”. In the 20th century, under the influence of Freud’s theory of psychological analysis, a number of writers adopted the “stream of conscious” method of novel writing. The striking feature of these novelists is their giving precedence to the depiction of the characters’ mental and emotional reaction to external events, rather than the events themselves.。
英美文学名词解释
I. terms:Free Verse 自由体诗Free verse is rhymed or unrhymed poetry free from conventional rules of meter. The aesthetic and musical effect of free verse is achieved through rhythms and cadence of natural speech. Poets famous for their works composed in free verse include Walt Whitman, Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot. Transcendentalism 超验主义The religious and philosophical doctrines of Ralph Waldo Emerson and others in New England in the middle 1800’s, which emphasized the importance of individual inspiration and had an important influence on American thought and literature. It gave the expression to several strains of thought: the weakening of Calvinistic views about the corruption of human nature; the rise of Romantic attitudes toward the pervasiveness of the divine and the inherent power of the individual imagination; and the frustration with what was seen as the polite and unemotional rationalism of Unitarian thought Stream-of-Consciousness Novel 意识流小说The type of psychological novel taking the uninterrupted, uneven, and endless flow of the stream of consciousness of one or more ofits characters as its subject matter. The stream of consciousness novels use various techniques to represent this consciousness adequately. In general, most psychological novels report the flow of consciousness and ordered intelligence, as in Henry James, or the flow of memory activated by association.Local Colorism 乡土文学, 地方色彩小说Local colorism as a trend first made its presence felt in the late 1860s and early seventies in America. Local colorists concerned themselves with presenting and interpreting the local character of their regions. They tended to idealize and glorify, but they never forgot to keep an eye on the truthful color of local life. Expressionism表现主义The term refers to a movement in Germany early in the 20th century, in which a number of painters sought to avoid the representation of external reality and, instead, to project a highly personal or subjective vision of the world. Theatrically, expressionism was a reaction against realism in that it emphasized the subjective expression of the inner experiences of the artist.The Lost Generation迷惘的一代A term used to describe a group of American writers of thepostwar years. When the First World War broke out, many young men volunteered to take part in 'the war to end wars' only to find that modern warfare was not glorious or heroic as they thought it to be. Disillusioned and disgusted by the frivolous, greedy and heedless way of life in America, they began to write and they wrote from their own experiences in the war. Among these young writers were the most prominent figures in American literature, especially in modern American literature. They were basically expatriates who left America and formed a community of writers and artists in Paris, involved with other European novelists and poets in their experimentation on new modes of thought and expression. These writers were later named by an American writer, Gertrude Stein, also an expatriate, “the Lost Generation”. Hemingway’s “iceberg principle”Hemingway once said “I always try to write on the principle of the iceberg. There is seven-eighths of it under water for every part that shows”. He believes that a good writer does not need to reveal every detail of a character or action; the one-eighth that is present will suggest all other meaningful dimensions of the story. According to him, good literary writing should be able to make readers feel the emotion of the characters directly and the bestway to produce the effect is to set down exactly every particular kind of feeling without any authorial comments, with a bare minimum of adjectives and adverbs.II. Text comprehension。
英美文学期末复习名词解释
1、international theme国际主义James often wrote the pattern of the conf1ict both amusing and serious between American and Eur opean manners and customs.2、metaphysical school玄学派Metaphysical poetry is a derogatory term invented by John Dryden and later adopted by Samuel Johnson describing a school of highly intellectual poetry marked by bold and ingenious conceits, incongruous imagery, complexity of thoughts, frequent use of paradox, and often by deliberate harshness or rigidity of expression. The main themes of the metaphysical poets are love, death, and religion.3、Realism现实主义The tradition of the brilliant school of critical realism in the 19th century continued its development in the early 20th century by the novelists such Butler. Meredith, Wells and Galsworthy. In their works criticism of the bourgeois world reaches considerable depth and poignancy. Their books condemned the capitalist order of things and uttered cries of suffering and protest.4、the “Lake Poets”or the “Lakers”They are Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southey, who have often been mentioned because they lived in the lake district in the northwestern part of England. They shared a community of literary and social outlook in their work. They traversed the same path in politics and in poetry, beginning as radicals and closing as conservatives.5、Local Colorism地方文学A. It is a unique variation of American literary realism.B. It is concerned with and emphasizes the characteristics of a small and well-defined region or province.C. Humor, tall-tales and vernacular are the sources of local colorism writing.6、Free Verse自由体诗is poetry that has an irregular rhythm and line length and that attempts to avoid any predetermined verse structure,( or poetry without a fixed beat or regular rhyme scheme.) instead, it uses the cadences of natural speech. While it alternates stressed and unstressed syllables as stricter verse forms do, free verse does so in a looser way. Though free verse had been used before Whitman it was he who pioneered the form and made it acceptable in American poetry.7、sonnet十四行诗a short song in the original meaning of the word. Later it became a poem of 14 lines, usually in iambic pentameter with various rhyming schemes. It was first written by the Italian poet Petrarch who wrote sonnets to a lady name Laura.8、blank verse无韵体诗Verse without rhymes. It is typically in iambic pentameter, the dominant verse form of English dramatic and narrative poetry since the mid-16th century. The first practitioner of English dramatic blank verse is Christopher Marlowe.9、Imagism in Poetry诗歌意象派Imagism is the name given to a movement in poetry, originating in 1912 and represented by Ezra Pound, Amy Lowell, and others, aiming at clarity of expression through the use of precise visual images. (when speaking of images in poetry we generally mean a word or sequence of words that refers to any sensory experience. Often this experience is a sight, but it may be a sound or a touch. It may be an odor or a state or perhaps bodily sensation such as pain, or the perception of something cold.。
《英美文学史》名词解释资料讲解
英美文学史名词解释1.English Critical RealismEnglish critical realism of the 19th century flourished in the forties and in the early fifties. The realists first and foremost criticized the capitalist society from a democratic viewpoint and delineated (portrayed) the crying (extremely shocking) contradictions of bourgeois reality. The greatness of the English realists lies not only in their satirical portrayal of bourgeoisie and in the exposure of the greed and hypocrisy of the ruling classes, but also in their sympathy for the laboring people. Humor and satire are used to expose and criticize the seamy (dark) side of reality. The major contribution of the critical realists lies in their perfection of the novel. Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray are the most important representative of English critical realism.2.The "Stream of Consciousness"The "stream of consciousness" is a psychological term indicating "the flux of conscious and subconscious thoughts and impressions moving in the mind at any given time independently of the person's will." In late 19th century, the literary device of "interior monologue" was originated in France as an application of modern psychological knowledge to literary creations. In the 20th century, under the influence ofFreud 's theory of psychological analysis, a number of writers adopted the "stream of consciousness" method of novel writing. The striking feature of these novelists is their giving precedence to the depiction of the characters' mental and emotional reactions to external events, rather than the events themselves. In doing so, the novelists abandoned the conventional usages of realistic plot structure, characterization and description, and their works became successions of "fleeting images of the external world mingled with thoughts and half-thoughts and shadows of thought attached to the immediate present or moving back and forth in memory." James Joyce and Virginia Woolf are the two best known novelists of the "stream of consciousness".3.TranscendentalismTranscendentalism is the summit of the Romantic Movement in the history of American literature in the 19th century. Transcendentalism has been defined philosophically as "the recognition in man of the capacity of knowing truth intuitively". Transcendentalists place emphasis on the importance of the Over-soul, the individual and Nature. The most important representatives are Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau.4.RenaissanceRenaissance in European history refers to the period from 14thcentury to 17th century. "Renaissance" means "revival", the revival of interest in Ancient Greek and Roman culture and getting rid of conservatism in feudalist Europe and introducing new ideas that express the interests of the rising bourgeoisie. It started in Italy and ended in England and Spain. Renaissance has two striking features. One is a thirsting curiosity for the classical literature; the other is the keen interest in the activities of humanity. Humanism is the key-note of the Renaissance. Thomas More and William Shakespeare are the best representatives of the English humanists.5.6.Passive RomanticismEnglish romanticism began when Lyrical Ballad was published in 1798 and ended in 1832. It in effect is a revolt of the English imagination against the neoclassical reason. The romanticists who saw both the corruption of the feudal societies and the inhumanity of capitalism and felt that the society denied people their essential human needs. They were discontented with, and opposed to the development of capitalism. Some romantic writers reflected the thinking of classes ruined by the bourgeoisie, and by way of protest against capitalism development turned to the feudal past, i.e., the "merry old English", as their ideal, or, "frightened by the coming of industrialism and the nightmare towns ofindustry, they were turning to nature to nature for protection." These were the elder and sometimes called passive or escapist romantics, represented by Wordsworth and Coleridge.6. ImagismImagism is a Movement in U.S. and English poetry characterized by the use of concrete language and figures of speech, modern subject matter, metrical freedom, and avoidance of romantic or mystical themes, aiming at clarity of expression through the use of precise visual images. It grew out of the Symbolist Movement in 1912 and was initially led by Ezra Pound, Amy Lowell, and others. The Imagist manifesto that came out in 1912 showed three Imagist poetic principles: direct treatment of the “thing” (no fuss, frill or or nament), exclusion of superfluous words (precision and economy of expression), the rhyme of the musical phrase rather than the sequence of a metronome (free verse form and music).7. The Local Color MovementThe local color movement came into particular prominence in America after the Civil War, perhaps as an attempt to recapture the glamour of a past era, or to portray the sections of the reunited country.Local color as a literary school emphasizes its setting, being concerned with the character of a district or of an era, as marked by its customs, dialects costumes, landscape or other peculiarities that have escaped standardizing cultural influences. In local color literature, one finds the dual influence of romanticism and realism since the author frequently looks away from ordinary life to distant lands, strange customs, or exotic scenes, but retains through minute detail a sense of fidelity and accuracy of description. Mark Twain is a representative of the American Local Colorism.8. The Lost GenerationThe Lost Generation is applied to the American writers who fought in the First World War, voluntarily exiled to Paris, and associated with the informal literary saloon of Gertrude Stein’s Paris home for a certain period of time. They were all disillusioned with the American Tradition of writing as well as the post-war American society. The most eloquent spokesman of the group is Earnest Hemingway. Other writers are Ezra Pound, Fitzgerald, etc..。
英美文学名词解释
Epic:A long narrative poem telling about the deeds of a great hero and reflecting th e values of the society from which it originated.The style of epic is grand宏伟的and elevated高尚的.John Milton wrote three great epics: Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained and S amson Agonistes.Sonnet(十四行诗A sonnet is a lyric consisting of 14 lines, usually in iambic pentameter restricted to a definition rhyme scheme Renaissancethe activity, spirit, or time of the great revival复活of art, literature, and learning in Europe beginning in the 14th century and extending to the 17th century, marking the transition过渡from the medieval to the modern world.the essence of the Renaissance is HumanismThe Renaissance PeriodA period of drama and poetry. The Elizabethan drama is the real mainstream of the English Renaissance.Humanism人文主义Humanism is the essence of the Renaissance.2> it emphasizes the dignity of human beings and the importan ce of the present life. Humanists voiced their beliefs that man w as the center of the universe and man did not only have the right to enjoy the beauty of the present life, but had the ability to perfect himself and to perform wonders.lake poets 湖畔诗人refer to The three romantic poets Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southey who lived in the Lake District in the Englandand wrote poems about nature .English Romanticism (浪漫主义):1)a movement in literature, philosophy, music and art from late 18th century to early 19th century in Europe.2)emphasized individual values (个人价值）and aspirations（志向，抱负）above those of society.4)the characteristics of Romanticism（浪漫主义文学特色）:Passion / emotion ,Individualism 5)Representative writers(代表作家）:Blake, shelley,Byron,WordsworthCritical Realism(批判现实主义)1)The Critical Realism of the 19th century flourished in the forties and in the beginning of fifties.2)The realists first and foremost最初的set themselves the task of criticizing capitalist society from a democratic viewpoint and delineated描绘the crying contradictions矛盾of bourgeois资产阶级的reality. But they did not find a way to eradicate socialevils.3) Charls Dickens is the most important critical realist.Gothic novel (哥特式小说):Gothic novel is a type of romance very popular late in the 18th century and at the beginning of the 19th century. emphasizes things whi ch are grotesque, violent, mysterious, supernatural, desolate and horrifyi ng. With its description描述 of the dark, irrational荒繆的 side of human nature.American Romanticism:1.from the end of the 18th century to the outbreak of the civil war . It started with the publication出版of Washington Irving’s The Sketch Book and ended with Whitman’s Leaves of Grass .2.It was a rebellion反抗against the objectivity of rationalism. For romantics, the feelings, intuitions直觉and emotions were more important than reason and common sense;3.emphasis on imagination, individualism.back to medieval and naturalThe Lost Generation(迷惘的一代）：Is a term used to characterize a general feeling of disillusionment ofAmerican literary notables名人who live in Europe,most notably著名的Paris after First World War. Figures identified with the Lost Generation included literary modernists such as Hemingway,F.Scott,PoundAmerica RealismAs a literary moment realism came in the latter half of the 19 century,as a reaction against “the lie”of Romanticism and sentimentalism.It expressed the concern for the world of experience,of the common place,and for the familiar and the lowPuritanismin the 16th and 17th cent., a movement for reform in the Church of England that had a profound深远的influence on the social, political, ethical道德的, and theological神学的ideas of England and AmericaNeo-classicism:A revival of classical standards of order, harmony, balance, simplicity简单 and restrained emotion克制情感 in literature in the 18th century. Symbolism象征主义:Symbolism is the writing technique of using symbols. It’s a literary move ment that arose in France in the last half of the 19th century and that greatly influenced many English writers, particularly poets, of the 20th centu ry. It enables poets to compress a very complex idea into one image or e ven one word. It’s one of the most powerful devices that poets employ in creation. 使用象征来写作的一种技巧。
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1. In the medieval period ， it is Chaucer alone who ， for the first time in English literature ， presented to usa comprehensive __picture of the English society of his time and created a whole galery of vivid ___ from all walks of life in his masterpiece “the Canterbury Tales ”。 A. visionary / women B. romantic /men C. realistic / characters D. natural / figures 2. Although ____ was essentially a medieval writer, he bore marks of humanism and anticipated a new era of literature to come. A. William Langland B. John Gower C. Geoffrey Chaucer D. Edmund Spenser 3. Humanism spume from the endeavor to restore a medieval reverence for the antique authors and is frequently taken as the beginning of the Renaissance on its conscious ， intellectual side ，for the Greek and Roman civilization was based on the conception that man is the ____ of all things . A. measure B. king C. lover D. rule 4. The essence of humanism is to ______. A. restore a medieval reverence for the church B. avoid the circumstances of earthly life C. explore the next world in which men could live after death D. emphasize human qualities 5. Many people today tend to regard the play “ The Merchant of Venice ” as a satire of the hypocrisy of ___ and their false standards of friendship and love ， their cunning ways of pursuing worldliness and their unreasoning prejudice against _________ . A. Christians / Jews B. Jews / Christians C. oppressors / oppressed D. people / Jews 6. In “ Sonnet 18 ” ， Shakespeare has a profound meditation on the destructive power of _________ and the eternal __________ brought forth by poetry to the one he loves . A. death/ life B. death/ love C. time / beauty D. hate / love 7.In The Pilgrim’s Progress, John Bunyan describes The Vanity Fair in a ______ tone. A. delightful B. satirical C. sentimental D. solemn 8. The religious reformation in the early 16th-century England was a reflection of the class struggles waged by the _____. A. rising bourgeoisie against the feudal class and its ideology B. working class against the corruption of the bourgeoisie C. landlord class against the rising bourgeoisie and its ideology D. feudal class against the corruption of the Catholic Church 9. The ______ was a progressive intellectual movement throughout western Europe in the 18th century . A. Renaissance B. Enlightenmrent C. Religious Reformation D. Chartist Movement 10.The 18th century witnessed a new literary form -the modern English novel, which, contrary to the medieval romance, gives a ______ presentation of life of the common English people. A. romantic B. idealistic C. prophetic D. realistic
1. The title of the novel “ A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man ” written by James Joyce suggests a character study with strong _________ elements . A. autobiographical B. sentimental C. joyful D. bitter 2. The title of the novel “ Vanity Fair ” was taken from Bunyan's masterpiece __________. A. The pilgrim‘s Progress B. Gulliver‘s Travels C. Hard Times D. Wuthering Heights 3.In his early novels ， Charles Dickens attacks one or more specific social evils in each ： for example ， the dehumanizing workhouse system and the dark ， criminal underworld life in “_____” . A.The pickwich Paper B.David Copperfield C.Oliver Twist D.A Tale of Two Cities 4. G.B. Shaw's play ， Mrs . Warren's frofession is a grotesquely realistic exposure of the _________. A. slum landlordism B. political corruption in England C. economic oppression of women D. religious corruption in England 5. The greatest Scottish poet in the pre-romanticism is ________. A. William Wordsworth B. Oliver Goldsmith C. Thomas Gray D. Robert Burns 6. _______ is written by William Blake, a great poet in the pre-romanticism. A. The Songs of Innocence B. Reliques of Ancient English poetry C. Songs and Sonnets D. Kubla Khan 7. “If Winter comes，can Spring be far behind.” is an epigrammatic line by___. A. John Keats B. William Blake C. William Wordsworth D.P. B. Shelley 8. The success of Jane Eyre is not only because of its sharp criticism of the existing society, but also due to its introduction to the English novel the first ______ heroine. A. explorer B. peasant C. worker D. governess 9._______ is a typical feature of Swift's writings. A.Bitter satire B.Elegant style C.Casual narration D.Complicated sentence structure 10. Tess of the D’Urbervilles, one of Thomas Hardy’s best known novels, portrays man as A. being hereditarily either good or bad B. being self-sufficient C. having no control over his own fate D. still retaining his own faith in a world of confusion