美国文学名词解释

美国文学名词解释。

仅供参考1.American Puritanism:Puritanism is the practices and beliefs of the puritans.The Puritans were originally members of a division of the protestant church who wanted to purify their religious beliefs and practices. They accepted the doctrines of predestination, original sin and total depravity, and limited atonement througha special infusion of grace from God. Puritanism had an enduring influence onAmerican literature. It had become, to some extent, so much a state of mind, so much a part of national cultural atmosphere, rather than a set of tenets.2.Transcendentalism: transcendentalism was a group of new ideas in literature,religion, culture and philosophy that emerged in New England in the early to middle 19th century. It placed emphasis on spirit, or the Over soul, as the most important thing in the world. It stressed the importance of individual and offereda fresh perception nature ad symbolic of the spirit of God. Prominenttranscendentalists included Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thorough. 3.American Realism is a literary movement that came in the latter half of thenineteenth century in the form of local color as a reaction against “the lie” of romanticism and sentimentalism. It reacts against romanticism’s emphasis on intuition, imagination, a dreamy (or innocent) sense of wonder, idealism, faith in nature, and general optimistic belief in the goodness of things. It expressed the concern for the world of experience, of the commonplace, and for the familiar and the low. Representative writers include William Dean Howells, Henry James, Mark Twain etc.4.Local colorism is a literary movement first made its presence felt in late 1860sand early seventies. Local color may be defined as the careful attention to details of the physical scene and to those mannerisms in speech, dress, or behavior peculiar to a geographical locality. Local colorists concerned themselves with presenting and interpreting the local character of their regions. In America, local color is mainly shown in the fiction. Mark Twain is the most renowned writer of local color.5.Naturalism is a critical term applied to the method of literary composition thataims at a detached, scientific objectivity in the treatment of natural man. It was an outgrowth of Realism. It conceives of man as controlled by his instincts or his passions, or by its social and economic environment and circumstances. The pessimism and deterministic ideas naturalism pervaded the works of such American writers as Stephen Crane and Theodore Dreiser.6.Modernism is a general term applied to the wide range of experimental andavant-garde trends in literature of the early 20th century, including symbolism, futurism, expressionism, imagism, dadaism, and surrealism. It was characterized by a conscious rejection of established rules, traditions and convention. It also advocates revolution in form. American modernist writings are to be find in the works of Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, William Faulkner etc.7.Imagism came into being in Britain and U.S around 1910 as a reaction to thetraditional 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:1) direct treatment of subject matter; 2)economy of expression; 3). as regards rhythm ,to compose in the sequence of the musical phrase, not in the sequence of metronome. P ound’s “In a Station of the Metro” is a well-known imagist poem8.The Lost Generation is a term applied to the disillusioned intellectuals andaesthetes of the years following WWI, who rebelled against former ideals and values but could replace them only by despair or a cynical hedonism. This included the young English and American expatriates as well as men and women caught in the war and cut off from the old values and yet unable to come to terms with the new era when civilization had gone mad. It consisted of many influential American writers, including Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Carlos Williams and Archibald MacLeish.9.Free verse: Free verse is poetry that is based on the irregular rhythmiccadence(韵律) of the recurrence, with variations, of phrases, images, and syntactical patterns rather than the conventional use of meter. Rhyme may or may not be present in it, but when it is, it is used with great freedom. Walt Whitman’s poetry is an example of free verse.10.American Dream: The American Dream is the idea held by many in the UnitedStates of America that through hard work, courage, and determination one can achieve financial and personal success. In literature, the theme of American Dream recurs. The Great Gatsby by Fitzgerald is a famous example in case.11.Allusion: A reference, generally brief, to a person, place, thing or event withwhich the reader is presumably familiar. It is a device that allows a writer to compress great deal of meaning into a very few words. It “work” to the extent they are recognized and understood; when they are not, they tend to confuse. 12.New Criticism is an approach to understanding literature through close readingsand attentiveness to formal patterns (of imagery, metaphors, metrics, sounds, and symbols) and their suggested meanings. It became the dominant American critical approach in the 1940s and 1950s. The representatives include John C. Ransom, Allen Tate and Robert Penn Warren.。