美国文学名词解释复习
美国文学期末考试——名词解释
1.Hemingway Code Hero It refers to some protagonists in Hemingway's works. In the general situation of Hemingway's novels, life is full of tension and battles; the world is in chaos and man is always fighting desperately a losing battle. Those who survive and perhaps emerge victorious in the process of seeking to master the code with a set of principles such as honor, courage, endurance, wisdom, discipline and dignity are known as "the Hemingway code". man can be physically destroyed but never defeated spiritually.2.Iceberg theory of Writing: it refers a writing style of Hemingway that is the sentences only give one small bit of the meaning. The rest is implied. One must go very deep beneath the surface to understand the full meaning of his writing.3.Imagism: imagism is the doctrine and poetic practice of a small but influential group of American and British poets calling themselves imagists between 1912 and 1917.aiming at a new clarity and exactness in the short lyric poem, the imagists cultivated concision and directness, building their short poems around single images; they also preferred looser cadences to traditional regular rhythms.4.free verse (自由诗体) without a fixed beat or regular rhyme scheme.5.Lost Generation：it defines a sense of moral loss or aimlessness. The WWI destroyed the innocent ideas, many good young men went to the war and died, or returned damaged, both physically and mentally; their moral faith were no longer valid they are lost. narrow sense means a group of American writers, including Hemingway, F.S.Fitzgerald, etc. broad sense: the entire post WWI American young generation.6.The Beat generation:it was a group of authors whose literature explored and influenced American culture in the post-WW2 era. The bulk of their work was published and popularized throughout the 1950s. Central elements of “Beat “ culture: rejection of standard narrative values, the spiritual quest, exploration of American and Eastern religions, rejection of materialism, explicit portrayals of the human condition, experimentation with psychedelic drugs, and sexual liberation, exploration.7.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.8.Realism: realism is a term applied to literary composition that aims at an interpretation of the actualities of any aspect of life ,free from subjective prejudice, idealism, or romantic color.9.Naturalism:naturalism is a critical term applied to the method of literary composition that aims at a detached, objectivity in the treatment of natural man.10.Local color:loc al color is a term applied to literature which emphasizes its setting, being concerned with the character of district or of an era, as marked by its customs, dialects, costumes, landscape or other peculiarities that have escaped standardizing cultural influences.11.American romanticism : Romanticism is 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 expressi on of emotion and imagination ,departure from the attitudes and forms of classicism ,and rebellion against established social rules and conventions.12.The Harlem Renaissance The first flowering of African-American literature. It was the African American artistic movement in the 1920s that celebrated black life and culture and Hughes is best-known for his work during the Harlem Renaissance.13. Stream-of-Consciousness Stream of Consciousness, in literature, is the technique that records the multifarious thoughts and feelings of a character without regard to logical argument or narrative sequence.15.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 thelimitations 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.16.The Jazz Age(享乐时代)：when New Orleans musicians moved “up the river”to Chicago, and the theatre of New Yorks Harlem pulsed with the music that had become a symbol of the times. Fitzgerald portrays the Jazz Age as a generation of “the beautiful and damned”, drowning in their pleasures.17.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.18.Darwinism:达尔文主义:an evident influence on naturalism, stress the animality of man, to suggest that be was dominated by the irresistible forces of evolution.19.Psychological realism:It is the realistic writing that probes deeply into the complexities of characters‟ thoughts and motivation. Henry James‟ novel The Ambassadors is considered to be a masterpiece of psychological realism.20. Puritanism: The word is originally used to refer to the theory advocated by a party within the Church of England. It is also used to refer to attitudes and values considered characteristics of the Puritans. It denotes a rigid moral, or the condemnation of innocent pleasure, or religious narrowness adhered by the early New England Puritans. It exerted great influence over American Romanticism. The preoccupation with the Calvinist view of original sin and the mystery of evil marked the works by such famous writers as Hawthorne and Melville.21.Multiple points of view The employment of several narrators or narrative points of views to tell a story, thus making the structure of the book somewhat radioactive. For example, The Sound and the Fury uses four different narrative voices to piece together the story and thus challenges the reader by presenting a fragmented plot told from multiple points of view.。
美国文学名词解释
1 The Enlightenment（启蒙运动）: The Enlightenment was an intellectual movement originating in France, which attracted widespread support among the ruling and intellectual classes of Europ e and North America in the second half of the 18th century. It characterizes the efforts by certain European writers to use critical reason to free minds from prejudice, unexamined authority and oppression by Church or State. Therefore, the Enlightenment is sometimes called the Age of Reason2 American Dream(美国梦): It is the faith held by many in the United States of America that through hard work, courage, and determination one can achieve a better life for oneself, usually through financial prosperity. These were values held by many early European settlers, and have been passed on to subsequent generations. Nowadays the American Dream has led to an emphasis on material wealth asmeasure of success or happiness3. Transcendentalism (超验主义、先验主义) : It was a group of new ideas in literature, religion, culture and philosophy that emerged in New England in the middle 19th century. It began as a protest against the general state of culture and society. Among transcendentalist’s core beliefs was an ideal spiritual state that “transcends” the physical and empirical(以观察或实验为依据的) and is only realized through the individual’s intuition, rather than through the doctrines of established religions. Prominent transcendentalists included Ralph Waldo Emerson（爱默生）, Henry David Thoreau（梭罗）, Walt Whitman（惠特曼）, etc. It is a kind of philosophy that stresses belief in transcendental things and the importanceof spiritual rather than material existence. （相信超凡的事物，认为精神存在比物质存在更重要).4. American Puritanism: It is the practices and beliefs of the Puritans. The Puritans were originally members of a division of the Puritan 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宿命论, original sin and total depravity性恶说, and limited atonement 有限的救赎 through a special infusion 浸渍 of grace from God. As a culture heritage, Puritanism did havea profound influence on the early American mind.5.Symbolism：It is the writing technique of using symbols. It’s a literary movement that arose in France in the last half of the 19th century and that greatly influenced many English writer, particularly poets, of the 20th century. It enables poets to compress a very complex idea or set of ideas into one image or even one word. It’s one of the most powerful devices thatpoets employ in creation.7.Gothic novel is a type of romance very popular late in the 18th century and at the beginning of the 19th century.Gothic novel emphasizes things which are grotesque怪异的， violent， mysterious， supernatural，desolate 荒凉 and horrifying. Gothic， originally in the sense of“medic医学，not classical”，with its descriptions of the dark，irrational side of human nature，Gothic novel has exerted a great influence over the writers of the Romantic period.8 Imagism: it’s a poetic movement of England and the U.S flourished from 1909 to 1917. The movement insists on the creation of images in poetry by “the direct treatment of the thing” and the economy of wording. The leaders of this movement were Ezra Pound and Amy Lowell艾米•洛威尔.8. Imagism: It 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. 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. Imagism is characterized by the following three poetic principles: direct treatment of subject matter; economy of expression; as regards rhythm, to compose in the sequence of the musical phrase, not in the sequence of metronome 节拍器. Pound’s “In a Station of the Metro” is a well-known imagist poem.9. Stream of Consciousness(意识流): It is a style used in the presentation of the character’s inner working of mind. The assumption is that an individual’s psychological processes are a continuous flow like a shifting, uninterrupted stream, highly changeable and confusing, often appearing illogical and contrary to reason. In tracing the stream of consciousness of an individual the writer may present interior monologue(内心独白) by his character, hint with symbols, reverse(颠倒) the order of time, and alternate（轮流的／交替的） recollections（回忆） with the present or sometime illusions（幻想） with given facts.10. Point of view( 视角)：It is a term referring to the vantage point (能观察某事物的有利位置) or position from which a story is told. To identify（识别） the narrator of a story is to identify the story’s point of view. Basically there are two narrative ways: first-person point of view and the third-personpoint of view.12. The Harlem Renaissance: it was the first important movement in black American literature. Immediately after the First World War, as a result of a massive black migration to Northern cities, a group of young, talented black artists congregated in Harlem, a predominantly black section of New York City, and made it the cultural, and intellectual capital of black America. They carried forward the cultural traditions of their people and demonstrated their achievements to the white society that habitually ignored them.13. Expressionism 表现主义: it arouse in German theater after World War I. Delighting in bizarre (奇异的) stage design and exaggerated makeup and costuming(服装), expressionists sought to reflect intense states of emotion. Its mode is “the externalization(外表性) of t he inner.”14.Black humor: It is a combination of humor with resentment(怨恨), gloom, anger, and despair. Seeing all that is unreasonable, hypocritical,ugly, and even frenzied(狂乱的)，writers of black humor nurse a grievance(不平) against their society which, according to them, is full of institutionalized(制度化的) absurdity. Yet they are cynical. They laugh a morbid(病态的) laugh when facing the hideous（丑恶的）. In hopeless indignation（愤慨） they take up freezing irony and burning satire as their weapons. Their novels are often in the form of anti-novel（反传统小说）, devoid of(缺乏) completeness of plot and characterized by fragmentation （零碎的） and dislocation（混乱）.（专业文档资料素材和资料部分来自网络，供参考。
美国文学名词解释
1. Transcendentalism—it is a philosophic and literary movement that flourish in New England, as a reaction against rationalism and Calvinism. It stressed intuitive understanding of god without the help of the church, and advocated independence of the mind. 超验主义，它是一个蓬勃发展的新英格兰的哲学和文学运动，反对理性主义和加尔文主义的反应。
它强调直观地了解上帝没有教会的帮助下，主张心灵的独立性。
2. Romanticism had appeared in England in the last years of the eighteenth century. It spread to conti nental Europe and then came to America early in the nineteenth century. It came into being as a re action against the prevailing neoclassical spirit and rationalism during the Age of Reason. 浪漫主义曾经出现在英国，在过去几年的十八世纪。
它蔓延到欧洲大陆，然后来到美国在十九世纪初。
它应运而生作为理性的时代中针对当时新古典主义精神和理性的反应。
3. Puritanism—it is the religious belief of the Puritans, who had intended to purify and simplify the religious ritual of the Church of England. 清教主义，它是清教徒，谁曾打算净化和简化英国教会的宗教礼仪的宗教信仰。
美国文学史复习名词解释
I. Explain the following literary terms. 1.Romanticism The most most profound profound and comprehensive idea idea of of of romanticism romanticism is is the the the vision vision of of a a greater personal freedom for the individual. Appeals to imagination; Stress on emotion rather than reason; optimism, geniality. Subjectivity: in form and meaning. 2American transcendentalism American American transcendentalism transcendentalism was an important movement in in philosophy 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. 3Realism : “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 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 the changes changes changes in in in Western Western Western society society at at the the the end end of of the the the nineteenth nineteenth and beginning of of the the the twentieth twentieth century. American American modernism modernism modernism is is an artistic and cultural movement in in the the United States starting at at the the turn of of the the 20th 20th century century with with its its core core period period between between World World World War War I I and and World World War War II and continuing into the 21st 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 is a a movement of of English English and American American poets poets in in revolt revolt from from Romanticism, Romanticism, which which flourish flourish 1910-1917. The characteristic products of of the the movement are are more more easily recognized than than its its theories defined: they tend to to be be be short short ,composed ,composed of of of short short lines of of musical musical cadence cadence rather rather than than metrical 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 aiming at at at clarity clarity of of expression expression through the use use of of of precise 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 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 of America. America. His His dream dream was the originality of of the 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 poem is 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 in nature(on nature(on the the earth), earth), in in very very very brief brief and true words. words. This This This paradise paradise is is independent 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 transien ce of nature.he not only meditated on mortality but also celebrated nature.it im plies that life and death are inevitable law of nature, "the wild honey suckle"is philipfreneau's most widely read natureal lyric with th e theme of transience.the central image is a nativewild flower,which makes a dra stic difference from elite flower images typical of tradition english poems. 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 as her her her body. body. On the one one hand, hand, hand, he he he represents represents her her as as as Helen Helen Helen of of of Troy Troy –the quintessence of of physical physical beauty –at at the the the beginning beginning of of the the poem. poem. On On the other, he he represents represents her her as as as Psyche 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 opens the the poem with with a a simile –“Helen, thy beauty is to to me me / / Like Like those Nic éan barks barks of of of yore yore ”–that compares compares the the beauty of of Helen Helen Helen (Mrs. (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 Greece and and Rome. It may well have have been been been that that Mrs. Mrs. Stanard Stanard ’s s beauty 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 s allusions allusions to to mythology mythology and the the classical classical age age suggest suggest that he he had 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. window. She She She is is holding an agate lamp, lamp, as as as the the the beautiful beautiful Psyche Psyche did did did when when she she discovered 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 associate 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 create the impression of a far-off idealized,unreal w oman,like a Greek statue.words that support the image of an ideal woman are "hy acinth"and"classic""Naiad airs"and"statued like.helen stands,not like a real woman,bu t like a saint in a "windows-niche.she becomes a symbol both of beauty and of frustration,a romantically idealized,yet inaccessible 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",assonanc e as in "wont to roam"and masculine end rhyme,for example,with"me"rhythm with "se a",the rhyme scheme is ababb,cdcec,fggfg.in the poem words containing vowels or diphthongs were used to bring about the slow rhythm which reveals the speaker's admiration and deep regret and suggest a theme that beauty is soothing yet inaccessible.in light of analysis above,the general tone of the poem is passionate a nd regretful. 4. Discuss Mark Twain Discuss Mark Twain’’s art of fiction: the setting, the 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 of Mississippi Mississippi frontier life, was intended as as a a sequel to to Tom Tom Sawyer. Huck, Huck, who who could could not not not possibly 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 he lives, lives, and while he he is is unable to to consciously consciously refute those values even even in in in his his thoughts, he he makes makes a moral moral choice choice based based on on his own valuation of of Jim's Jim's friendship and human worth, a decision in in direct direct opposition 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 into 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. 6. The The first trilogy in in American American American fiction fiction (Satanstoe, 1845; 1845; The The Chainbearer, 1845; 1845; and 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 Fenimore Cooper Cooper was one of of the the the first first novelists to to enjoy enjoy enjoy great great fame as a result of of his his his literary literary career and although some may argue argue that that this is is because because because the the the subject subject matter was entertaining (rather than than instructive instructive or or socially socially conscious, for for example) example) example) the the the fact fact remains remains that that he was able able to to to introduce introduce Americans to their own frontier . A writer in the style of romanticism, James Fenimore Cooper was enamored with with tales tales of of the the the outdoors outdoors and encounters with with strange strange and often hostile people people or or or forces. 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 Analyze Whitman’’s One s One’’s Self I Sing. Analysis of One ’s Self I Sing In In 1855 1855 he he published published Leaves Leaves of of of Grass Grass Grass by by by himself himself at at his his own expense. His His intention intention was to to create 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 his poem poem g oes goes goes beyond beyond beyond American American American subject subject to to deal deal deal with with with the the the universal universal themes themes of of of nature, nature, fertility, and mortality. "One "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 "Yet"; 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 of individual individual to to mass: mass: mass: the the body, "physiology from from top top top to to to toe." 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 In Whitman Whitman Whitman’’s s ““One ’s Self I I Sing Sing ”, , the the the theme theme theme of of of the the the poem, poem, namely namely the the the celebration celebration of of both both both oneself 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 In Whitman Whitman Whitman’’s s ““One ’s Self I I Sing Sing ”, , the the the theme theme theme of of of the the the poem, poem, namely namely the the the celebration celebration of of both both both oneself 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. 。
美国文学的名词解释_特点_流派
美国文学的名词解释_特点_流派美国文学的名词解释美国文学(American Literature 或Literature of the United States)指在美国产生的文学(也包括建国前殖民地时期的文学作品)。
用英语写成的美国文学可视为英语文学的一部分。
美国文学的历史不长，它几乎是和美国自由资本主义同时出现，较少受到封建贵族文化的束缚。
美国早期人口稀少，有大片未开发的土地，为个人理想的实现提供了很大的可能性。
美国人民富于民主自由精神，个人主义、个性解放的观念较为强烈，这在文学中有突出的反映。
美国又是一个多民族的国家，移民不断涌入，各自带来了本民族的文化，这决定了美国文学风格的多样性和庞杂性。
美国文学发展的过程就是不断吸取、融化各民族文学特点的过程。
美国文学的特点美国文学的历史不长，它几乎是和美国自由资本主义同时出现，较少受到封建贵族文化的束缚。
美国早期人口稀少，有大片未开发的土地，为个人理想的实现提供了很大的可能性。
美国人民富于民主自由精神，个人主义、个性解放的观念较为强烈，这在文学中有突出的反映。
美国又是一个多民族的国家，移民不断涌入，各自带来了本民族的文化，这决定了美国文学风格的多样性和庞杂性。
美国文学发展的过程就是不断吸取、融化各民族文学特点的过程。
许多美国作家来自社会下层，这使得美国文学生活气息和平民色彩都比较浓厚，总的特点是开朗、豪放。
内容庞杂与色彩鲜明是美国文学的另一特点。
个性自由与自我克制、清教主义与实用主义、激进与反动、反叛和顺从、高雅与庸俗、高级趣味与低级趣味、深刻与肤浅、积极进取与玩世不恭、明快与晦涩、犀利的讽刺与阴郁的幽默、精心雕琢与粗制滥造、对人类命运的思考和探索与对性爱的病态追求等倾向，不仅可以同时并存，而且形成强烈的对照。
从来没有一种潮流或倾向能够在一个时期内一统美国文学的天下。
美国作家敏感、好奇，往往是一个浪潮未落，另一浪潮又起。
作家们永远处在探索和试验的过程之中。
美国文学重点名词解释
2.6.Transcendentalism: is literature，philosophical and literary movement that flourished in New England from about 1836 to1860. It originated among a small group of intellectuals who were reaching against the orthodoxy of Calvinism and the rationalism of the Unitarian Church, their own faith centering on the divinity of humanity and the natural world instead. Transcendentalism derived some of its basic idealistic concepts from romantic German philosophy, and from such English authors as Carlyle，Coleridge, and Wordsworth. The ideas of transcendentalism were most eloquently expressed by Ralph Waldo Emerson in such essays as Nature and Self-Reliance and by Henry David Thoreau in his book Walden..Symbolism象征主义：It is the writing technique of using symbols. It’s a literary movement that arose in France in the last half of the 19th century and that greatly influenced many English writer, particularly poets, of the 20th century. It enables poets to compress a very complex idea or set of ideas into one image or even one word. It’s one of the most powerful devices thatpoets employ in creation.8.American naturalism：this term was cr eated by Emile Zola. Charles Darwin’s evolutionary theory played an important role in naturalism. In the works off naturalism，characters were conceived as complex combinations of inherited attributes and habits conditioned by social and economic forces. At the end of the 19th century，this pessimistic form of realism appeared in america. Naturalism attempted to achieve extreme objectivity and frankness. Characters in the works of naturalism were dominated by their environment and heredity. 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. The dominant figures in naturalism were Stephen crane，Frank Norris, Jack London and Theodore Dreiser.3.The lost generation: included the young English and American expatriates as well as men and women caught in the war and cut from the old value and yet unable to come to terms with the new era when civilization had gone mad. These writers adopted unconventional style of writing and reacted against the tendencies of the older writers in the 1920s. The term came from Gertrude Stein who said in Hemingway's presence that“you are all a lost generation.”4.Local colorismAs a trend became dominant in American literature in the 1860s and early 1870s，it is defined by Hamlin Garland as having such quality of texture and background that it could not have been written in any other place or by anyone else than a native stories of local colorism have a quality of circumstantial(详细的) authenticity(确实性), as local colorists tried to immortalize(使不朽) the distinctive natural, social and linguistic features. It is characteristic of vernacular(本.国语) language and satirical(讽刺的) humor. The major local colorist is Mark Twain.5.Jazz age: the novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald coined the term"Jazz Age" retroactively to refer to the decade after World War I and before the stock market crash in 1929, during which Americans embarked upon what he called "the gaudiest spree in history". Jazz Age is inextricably associated with the wealthy white"flappers" and socialites immortalized in Fitzgerald's fiction.6.Free verse: is a poetry that has an irregular rhythm and line length and that attempts to avoid any predetermined verse structure, 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. Whitman's poetry is an example of free verse at its most impressive. It has since been used by Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot and other major American can poets of the 20th century.7.The iceberg analogy: The Iceberg Theory is a writing theory by American writer Ernest Hemingway, as follows：if a writer of a prose knows enough about what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader，if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them.1.Poe's Poetic IdeasA.His conviction that 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.B.He insists that poetry must be disembarrassed of that moral sense.C.Poe believes that the elevation of excitement of the soul should be “the poetic principle” thuspoe try must concern itself only with “supernal beauty”.D.Poe defines poetry as “the rhythmical creation of beauty” a definition giving unexampledemphasis upon the importance of the rhythmical or musical element in poetry.2．Whitman's style1) The sprawling lines of the poems are often extremely long.2) Parallelism: the parallel lines say the same thing but use different words.3) 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.4) Catalogue technique: means listing. Typical poems by Whitman make long, long lists of images, ofsights, sounds, smells, taste, and touch.5) No regular pattern.6) The verse unit is usually an independent clause.3．Formal features of Dickinson's poetryA.Dickson's poems are usually based on her own experience, her sorrows and joys. Dickinson wasoriginal. She sounded idiosyncratic, sometimes.B.Love is another subject Dickinson dwells on.C.Many poems Dickinson wrote are about nature, in which her general skepticism about therelationship between man and nature is well-expressed. Dickinson sees nature as both gailybenevolent and cruel.D.Dickinson's poetry is unique and unconventional in its own way. Her poems have no titles, henceare always quoted by their first lines.E.On the ethical level Dickinson emphasizes free will and human responsibility.All these characteristics of her poetry were to become popular through Stephen Crane with the Imagists such as Ezra Pound and Amy Lowell in the 20th century. She became, with Stephen Crane, the precursor of the Imagist moverment.4．The theme and techniques in Eliot's "The Waste Land"Theme：The theme is modern spiritual barrenness, the despair and depression that followed the WWI, the sterility and turbulence of the modern world, and the decline and break-down of western culture. It also shows the search for regeneration by people living in a chaotic world.Technique：The poem’s noti ceable characteristics are varied length and rhythm to harmonize with the changing subject matter, the unrhymed lines, lots of borrowings from some thirty-five different writers, the employment of materials such as the legends of the Holy Grail, Frazer’s a nthropological work The Golden Bough several popular songs, and passages in six foreign languages, including Sanskrit. The poem, therefore, is obscure and hard to understand, needless to say its absence of logical continuity. The poem The Wast Land by T. S. Eliot, nevertheless, is broadly acknowledged as one of the most recognizable landmarks of modernism.5．Analysis of "Richard Cory" by Edwin Arlington Robinson"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 recognition—thanks in part to praise from an influential reader of them, Theodore Roosevelt.Robinson published the poem himself in 1897 as part of a poetry collection called Children of the Night. The poem is a favorite of students and teachers because of the questions it poses about the the title character.6．Comment on"Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" by Robert FrostA.It is a peaceful poem and makes man feel relaxed when we read the lines: "The only other sounds the sweep of easy wind and downy flake." Frost also uses alliteration and repetition in his poems. The rhyme scheme he uses is a-a-b-a.B.It is one of the most quietly moving of Frost’s lyrics. On the surface, it seems to be simple, descriptive verses, records of close observation, graphic and homely pictures.C.It uses the simplest terms and commonest words. But it is deeply meditative, adding far-reaching meanings to the homely music. It uses its superb craftsmanship to come to a climax of responsibility: the promises to be kept, the obligation to be fulfilled. Few poems have said so much in so little.7.Theme and technique in The Great Gatsby by Fitzgerald1. Themes of The Great Gatsby: It resents the decline of the American dream in1920s, the hollowness of the upper class and the falseness of ideals and moves toward disillusion.2. Now Gatsby’s life follow a clear pattern: there is, at first, a dream, then disenchantment, and finallya sense of failure and despair. Gatsby’s personal experience approximates the whole of the American experience up to the first few decades of the 20th century.3. The novel is the presentation of the 1920s, and of what has become known as American Dream. 8.ment on Hemingway's style and Farewell to Arms"1. Hemingway was a glamorous public hero of sorts whose style of writing and living was probably more imitated than any other writers in human memory.2. In one sense Hemingway wrote all his life about one theme, which is neatly summed up in the famous phrase, “grace under pressure”, and created one hero who acts that theme out.3. In the same way that Fitzgerald’s Tales of the Jazz Age becomes a symbol for an age, Hemingway’s book paints the image of a whole generation, the Lost Ge neration.4. Lieutenant Henry in A Farewell to Arms stands the Hemingway hero, an average man of decidedly masculine taste sensitive and intelligent, a man of action; and with other people, somewhat an outsider, keeping emotion under control, stoic and self-disciplined in a dreadful place where one cannot have happiness.5. Hemingway’s world is a world essentially chaotic and meaningless, in which man fights a solitary struggle against a force he does not even understand.6. The war dominates so that the love story represents a mere dream and the brutal and atrocious realities of life do not allow materializing it.10.Analyze "Dry September" by William Faulkner11.“Dry September” was written in 1931, and is a well-known story of Faulkner.This story touches upon the strange relationship between sex and violence, examines the psychological state of the main characters, and exposes the crime of racial discrimination which makes one bristle with anger.The tone of this story contributes much to its effectiveness, particularly to the imagery of infernal heat and dryness and to the setting itself.From the character Miss Minnie the reader could perceive the obvious impact of Freud’s ideas on William Faulkner.。
美国文学名词解释
名词解析1 American Romanticism 浪漫主义The Romantic Period stretches from the end of the 18th century to the outbreak of the Civil War. It is a period of the great flowering of American literature.1. It started with the publication of Washington Irving's The Sketch Book（1819）and ended with Whitman's Leaves of Grass（1855）;2. It was a rebellion against the objectivity of rationalism. For romantics, the feelings, intuitions and emotions were more important than reason and common sense;3. The writers emphasized individualism, placing the individual against the group. They affirmed the inner life of the self, and cherished strong interest in the past, the wild, the remote, the mysterious and the strange.4. the writers stressed the element of “Amerianness”in their works;5. Being a period of the great flowering of American literature, it is also called the American Renaissance;2 American TranscendentalismAs a philosophical and literary movement, American Transcendentalism (also known as “ American Renaissance”) flourished in New England from the 1830s to the Civil War. It is the high tide of American romanticism and its doctrines found their greatest literary advocates in Emerson and Thoreau. Transcendentalists spoke for the cultural rejuvenation and against the materialism of American society.Transcendentalism 超验主义(+ H. D. Thoreau; Nathaniel Hawthorne; )The major features of Transcendentalism:①The Transcendentalists placed emphasis on spirit, or the Oversoul, as the most important thing in the universe. 思想超灵宇宙②The Transcendentalists stressed the importance of the individual. To them, the individual is the most important element of Society. 个体+社会③The Transcendentalists offered a fresh perception of nature as symbolic of the Spirit or God. Nature was not purely matter. It was alive, filled with God’s overwhelming presence. 自然+上帝3 Stream of Consciousness 意识流or “interior monologue”,内心独白is one of themodern literary techniques. It is the style of writing that attempts to imitate the natural flow of a character’s thoughts, feelings, reflections, memories, and mental images as the character experiences them. It was first used in 1922 by the Irish novelist James Joyce.4 RealismAs a literary movement, the Age of Realism came into existence after Romanticism with the Civil War It was a reaction against “the lie” of Romanticism and sentimentalism, and paved the way to Modernism.This literary interest in the so-called “reality”of life started a new period in the American literary writing known as The Age of Realism.Psychological RealismIt is the realistic writing that probes deeply into the complexities of characters’thoughts andmotivations. And Henry James is considered the founder of psychological realism. He believed that reality lies in the impressions made by life on the spectator, and not in any facts of which the spectator is unaware. Such realism is therefore merely the obligation that the artist assumes to represent life as he sees it.The three dominant figures of the period are William Dean Howells豪威尔斯, Mark Twain, and Henry James. Mark Twain and Howells seemed to have paid more attention to the “life” of the Americans, and Henry James had apparently laid greater emphasis on the “inner world”of man.5 Puritanismwas a religious reform movement that arose within the Church of England in the late sixteenth century. Under siege from church and crown, it sent an offshoot in the third and fourth decades of the seventeenth century 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.6 American NaturalismAs a literary movement, naturalism grew out of the 19th century realism, the evolutionary theory in his “The Origin of Species”----“the fittest, the survival”in biological sphereThree major concepts of literary naturalism:1) Humans are controlled by laws of heredity and environment.2) The universe is cold, godless, indifferent and hostile to human desires.3) The naturalists think that the true reality is not found in the smiling aspects of middle class life, but in the dominant forces of Nature in stopping human desires, in keeping humans from accomplishing their dreams.They offered vivid pictures of the lives of the down-trodden and the abnormal7 Code HeroGeneral Features:1.He has great physical potential and courage.2. The “code heroes ”have strong willpower.3. Thirdly , another important feature of the “code heroes" is their loyalty.4. Fourthly , the" code heroes ”maintain great dignity in all situations.5. Fifthly , the “code heroes ”are endowed with certain specialized skills , such as fishing , bull fighting , and hunting , etc6, the “code heroes ”are always put in some touch-and go situations, what the heroes must always face up to is their own personal fear of death and the threat of destruction, and it is this obstacle, death, that they have to overcome.8 Local colorismIn literature, local color fiction refers to fiction or poetry that focuses on specific features –including characters, dialects, customs, history, and landscape –of a particular region.Local colorism as a trend first made its presence felt in the late 1860s and early 1870s. It did notcease to be a dominant fashion until the turn of the 20th century. It formed an important part of the realistic movement.Local colorism founds its own position in national literature by its own localism; at the same time, national literature improves its own status by local colorism. It is with local colorism American literature comes to mature and can compete with European one，after that，American Literature becomes really American one．。
美国文学名词解释
美国文学名词解释美国文学，作为世界文学的重要组成部分，有着丰富多彩的文化背景和独特的创作风格。
在这篇文章中，我将为您解释几个与美国文学相关的重要名词。
1. 美国文学：美国文学是指在美国国土上创作的文学作品，包括小说、诗歌、戏剧和散文等各种文体。
美国文学自17世纪初殖民地时期开始出现，并逐渐形成独特的风格和主题，如自由、探索、个人价值观等。
该文学受到欧洲文学、非裔美国文学、拉丁美洲文学等多个文学传统的影响。
2. 讽刺文学：讽刺文学是通过调侃、嘲笑或批评等手法，通过善意或恶意地对社会、人物、社会习俗等进行揭示和描述的一种文学形式。
美国文学中讽刺常常用来表达对社会问题的关注以及对不公正现象的讽刺批评。
作家马克·吐温的小说《哈克贝里·费恩历险记》便是美国文学中著名的讽刺作品之一。
3. 大都市文学：大都市文学是指以城市为背景、以城市生活为题材的文学作品。
美国是大都市文学的发源地之一，纽约市成为该文学流派的中心。
大都市文学反映了城市的动态与繁华，同时也揭示了城市中的社会问题和人际关系。
美国作家F·斯科特·菲茨杰拉德的小说《了不起的盖茨比》，以及薇拉·刘易斯和李欧·斯坦巴克的作品都是著名的大都市文学作品。
4. 美国本土文学：美国本土文学是指探讨、描写和反映美国本土历史、文化、民族特色的文学作品。
该文学形式着重于展示美洲原住民、欧洲移民、非裔美国人和其他少数族裔的文化传统和经验。
美国作家奥兰多·费斯特的小说《渐近线》以及路易斯·埃里斯的小说《米南多洛之歌》都是美国本土文学的代表作品。
5. 后现代主义文学：后现代主义文学是指具有反传统、颠覆常规、模糊现实与虚幻界限的文学形式。
在晚20世纪以后的美国文学中，后现代主义作品开始兴起。
该文学形式常常使用非线性叙事、多重视角和流派的混合等技巧来表达个体性、主观性和相对主义等概念。
美国作家托马斯·品钦的小说《地下时光》以及大卫·福斯特·华莱士的小说《无人生还》都是后现代主义文学的代表作品。
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1.Imagism（意象派）: It’s a poetic movement of England and the U.S. flourished from 1909 to 1917.The movement insists on the creation of images in poetry by “the direct treatment of the thing” and the economy of wording. The leaders of this movement were Ezra P ound and Amy Lowell.2.Local colorism: as a trend became dominant in American literature in the 1860s and early 1870s，it is defined by Hamlin Garland as having such quality of texture and background that it could not have been written in any other place or by anyone else than a native stories of local colorism have a quality of circumstantial(详细的) authenticity(确实性), as local colorists tried to immortalize(使不朽) the distinctive natural, social and linguistic features. It is characteristic of vernacular(本国语) language and satirical(讽刺的) humor3.Psychological Realism: James’s realism is characterized by his psychological a pproach to his subject matter. His fictional world is concerned more with the inner l ife of human beings than with overt human actions. His best and most mature wor ks will render the drama of individual consciousness and convey the moment-to-mo ment sense of human experience as bewilderment and discovery. And we observe people and events filtering through the individual consciousness and participate in h is experience. This emphasis on psychology and on the human consciousness prov es to be a big breakthrough in novel writing and has great influence on the comin g generations. James is generally regarded as the forerunner of the 20th century " stream-of-consciousness" novels and the founder of psychological realism.4.International theme:Henry James’s fame generally rests on his novels and stories with the international theme. These novels are always set against a large international background, usually between Europe and America, and centered on the confrontation of the two different cultures with two different groups of people representing two different value systems.The treatment of the international theme is characterized by the richness of syntax and characterization and the originality in point of view, symbolism, metaphoric texture, and organizing rhyme. James is now more mature as an artist, more at home in the craft of fiction.5. Modernism：It was a complex and diverse （复杂多样的）international movement in all the creative arts （创造性艺术），originating about the end of the 19th century. It provided （出现）the greatest creative renaissance of the 20th century. It was made up of many facets （方面），such as symbolism，surrealism （超现实主义），cubism （立体主义），expressionism，futurism （未来主义），ect6. 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.7.Surrealism(超现实主义):An anti-rational movement of imaginative liberation in European in art and literature in the 1920s and 1930s, which launched by Andre Breton after his break from the Dada group in 1922. Surrealism seeks to break down the boundaries between rationality and irrationality, exploring the resources and revolutionary energies of dreams, hallucinations and sexual desire. Influenced both by the symbolists and by Sigmund Freud’s theories of the unconscious, the surrealists experimented with automatic writing and with the free association of random images brought in surprising juxtaposition.8. Naturalism: American naturalism was a new and harsher realism. American naturalism had been shaped by the war; by the social upheavals（剧变）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. Although naturalist literature described the world with sometimes brutal realism, it sometimes also aimed at bettering the world through social reform.9. Hemingway Code Hero(海明威式英雄): Hemingway Code Hero ,also called code hero, is one who, wounded but strong more sentitive, 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 Hero10.Iceberg Theory :Ernest Hemingway’s “iceberg theory”suggests that the writer include in the text only a small portion of what he knows, leaving about ninety percent of the content a mystery that grows beneath the surface of the writing. If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about he may omit things that will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement ofan iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water. A good writer does not need to reveal every detail of a character or action11.American Dream:American dream means the belief that everyone can succeed as long as he/she works hard enough. It usually implies a successful and satisfying life. It usually framed in terms of American capitalism（资本主义）, its associated purported meritocracy,（知识界精华）and the freedoms guaranteed by the U.S. Bill of Rights.12. Jazz 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 wi th coining the term” Jazz Age”.（了解）13.Stream of consciousness（意识流）：It is one of the modern literary techniques. It is the style of writing that attempts to imitate the natural flow of a character’s thoughts, feelings, reflections, memories, and mental images as the character experiences them. It was first used in 1922 by the Irish novelist James Joyce. Those novels broke through the bounds of time and space, and depicted vividly and skillfully the unconscious activity of the mind fast changing and flowing incessantly。