美国文学文学名词解释
1 Modernism(现代主义)Modernism is comprehensive but vague term for a movement , which begin in the late19th century and which has had a wide influence internationally during much of the 20th century、2> modernism takes the irrational philosophy and the theory of psycho-analysis as its theoretical case、3> the term pertains to all the creative arts、Especially poetry, fiction, drama, painting, music and architecture、现代主义就是全面但运动模糊的术语,在19世纪末期开始,在国际上有广泛影响的在20世纪的大部分时间。
2 >现代主义以非理性哲学与精神分析理论为其理论的情况。
3 >这个词属于所有的创造性艺术。
特别就是诗歌、小说、戏剧、绘画、音乐与建筑。
2 Transcendentalism(超验主义)Transcendentalism is literature, philosophical and literary movement that flourished in new England from about 1836 to 1860、it is the summit of American Romanticism、it originated among a small group of intellectuals who were reacting against the orthodoxy of Calvinism and the rationalism of the Unitarian Church, developing instead their own faith centering on the divinity of humanity and the natural world、Transcendentalism derived some of its basic idealistic concepts from romantic German philosophy, and from such English authors as Coleridge and Wordsworth、Its mystical aspects were partly influenced by Indian and Chinese religious teachings、Although Transcendentalism was never a rigorously systematic philosophy, it had some basic tenets that were generally shared by its adherents、The beliefs that God is immanent in each person and in nature and that individual intuition is the highest source of knowledge led to an optimistic emphasis on individualism, self-reliance, and rejection of traditional authority、The ideas of Transcendentalism were most eloquently expressed by Ralph waldo Emerson in such essays as Nature, and by Henry David Thoreau in his book Walden、超验主义就是从1836至1860于新英格兰发起的一场文学,哲学以及艺术运动。
即浪漫主义的顶点。
由于一小群知识分子反对加尔文教派与唯一神论教派理性的形式主义,她们从而提出人与自然的神圣这一信念。
超验主义受到德国浪漫主义哲学以及英国浪漫主义作家柯勒律治与沃兹华斯的影响,还在一定程度上受到东方古典哲学与宗教的影响。
尽管超验主义思想并不能算就是严格意义上的哲学, 但就是它还就是有一些基本原则的。
超验主义者认为人人都有内在的神性,只有通过接触自然才能使神性与人的天性相互融合。
从而超验主义十分强调个人主义,自立,拒绝传统权威思想。
超验主义思想在爱默生的<论自然> 与梭罗的<瓦尔登湖>等书中表现得淋漓尽致3 American Naturalism(美国自然主义文学)The American naturalists accepted the more negative interpretation of Darwin‘s evolutionary theory and used it to accout for the behavior of those characters in literary workswho were regarded as more or less complex combinations of inherited attributes, their habits conditioned by social and economic forces、2) naturalism is evolved from realism when the author’s tone in writing becomes less serious and less sympathetic but more ironic and more pessimistic、It is no more than a gloomy philosophical approach to reality, or to human existence、3>Dreiser is a leading figure of his school、美国自然主义者接受了达尔文的进化理论的负面解读,用它来解释行为的那些被认为就是文学作品中的人物或多或少地继承的属性的复杂组合,她们的习惯受制于社会与经济力量。
2)自然主义就是从现实主义当作者在写作的语气变得严肃与同情,但更多的讽刺与悲观。
它只不过就是一个悲观的哲学方法现实,或人类生存。
3 >德莱塞就是学校的一位领军人物。
4 Local Colorism(乡土文学)Generally speaking, the writings of local colorists are concerned with the life of a small,well-defined region or province、The characteristic setting is the isolated small town、2) Local colorists were consciously nostalgic historians of a vanishing way of life, recordersof a present that faded before their eyes、Yet for all their sentimentality, they dedicated themselves to minutely accurate descriptions of the life of their regions, they worked from personal experience to record the facts of a local environment and suggested that the native life was shaped by the curious conditions of the local、3) major local colorists is Mark Twain、一般来说,地方色彩的著作关注的生活小,定义良好的地区或省。
特点设置就是孤立的小镇。
2)当地色彩设计师有意识地怀旧历史学家的消失的生活方式,记录消失在她们眼前的一份礼物。
然而,尽管她们的多愁善感,她们致力于详细准确描述她们生活的地区,她们从个人工作经验记录当地环境与事实表明,本地生活就是由当地的好奇的条件。
3)主要地方色彩就是马克·吐温。
5 The Lost Generation(迷惘的一代)The lost generation is a term first used by Stein to describe the post-war I generation of American writers: men and women haunted by a sense of betrayal and emptiness brought about by the destructiveness of the war、2>full of youthful idealism, these individuals sought the meaning of life, drank excessively, had love affairs and created some of the finest American literature to date、3>the three best-known representatives of lost generation are F、Scott Fitzgerald, Hemingway and John dos Passos、迷惘的一代就是第一次使用的一个术语来描述战后一代美国作家:男人与女人被背叛与空虚的感觉带来的破坏性的战争。
2 >充满年轻的理想主义,这些人寻求生命的意义,饮酒过度,有爱情,创建了一些最好的美国文学。
3 >这三个著名的迷惘的一代的代表就是菲茨杰拉德,海明威与约翰·多斯帕索斯。
6 The Beat Generation(垮掉的一代)The members of The Beat Generation were new bohemian libertines, who engaged in a spontaneous, sometimes messy, creativity、2> The Beat writers produced a body of written work controversial both for its advocacy of non-conformity and for its non-conforming style、3> the major beat writings are Allen Ginsberg‘s Howl、Howl became the manifesto of The Beat Generation、垮掉的一代”的成员就是新波西米亚自由思想者,从事自发,有时凌乱,创造力。
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。
美国文学术语解释(全面且简练)
美国文学术语解释(全面且简练)美国文学是指具有美国独特文化地域色彩的文学作品。
包括小说、戏剧、诗歌、散文以及加拿大和多明尼加等国家的文学作品。
其短篇小说及戏剧都有着浓厚的美国文化特色，其龙头主流的文学派别是在17世纪后期形成的新约克郡派，主要有约翰•德拉谢尔（John Dryden）、Jonathan Swift 等人，他们为美国文学写下了精彩绝伦的篇章。
新约克郡派把文章写成了装满宗教特质、歌颂胜利、崇高赞美的模式，也就是赞美诗，发掘探索细节、夸张搭配修辞，准确表达真实情境，是后期美国文学的重要基础；而在早期的美国文学发展史上，更多的是宗教文学。
随着美国政治的发展，社会文化的不断进步，宗教文学慢慢地被实用的文学文本所取代。
美国的文学活动开始贴近人文主义的文学脉络，表现出散文风格，致力于针对现状的批判性反思以及自我叙述性自觉。
然而，到了18世纪末，受英国文学传统影响，美国文学正式步入正轨，并开始向两群导向，即诗歌与小说。
第一类作品赞美自然风景、积极的立场或事实内容，通过句法、修辞手法和宋体表达，以“说服力”为特征；而小说，基本上描写人物及其情感，作者给予考量和评析，以构建一个小说世界。
有关美国文学习派别方面，它指的是具有某种特殊特性的作品、作者或趋势，这些特性可以汇聚成学派，如经典主义派、象征主义派、古典注重艺术形式翻新派、现代主义派、问题类型派、客观散文派等等。
美国文学家们也是新的运动的团体来提倡这些派别，如1820年墨西哥战争、当时的托马斯汉密尔顿著名的圣教徒笃信运动引起的“波厄特派”，其中的小说作家和写报人表达了一种激进的、反殖民主义的文学潮流。
波厄特派的影响很大，它声称小说应该坚持自然、客观原则，实证严谨，保持超验主义，而不是神话传说，也不是把文学作品改写成像诗歌一样的形式。
自19世纪初美国文学思想开始发展至今，美国文学进入了一个更加多样化、开放空间愈加广阔的阶段，无论是宗教、哲学还是政治新思想都将重新回归到文学之中，美国文学也变得更加丰富多彩了。
美国文学史名词解释
1.A m e r i c a n P u r i t a n i s m清教2.It comes from the American puritans, who were the first immigrants moved to American continent in the 17th century. Original sin, predestination（预言）and salvation（拯救）were the basic ideas of American Puritanism. And, hard-working, piousness（虔诚,尽职），thrift a n d s o b r i e t y（清醒）w e r e p r a i s e d. Characteristics: 特点1. Idealistic: Puritans pursue the purity and simplicity in worship. They focuse the glory of God, and the angry God.They believe in the doctrine of destiny, original sin, limited atonement2. Practical: Puritans come to Amrican to do business and make profits with the desire of chasing wealth and status. They have to struggle for survival under the severity of the western frontier.3 .The struggle between the spiritual and the material is the basics of the Puritan mind. On the one hand, Puritans chase the purity of the early church.On the other hand, they come to America to earn money. This contradictory will be reflected by their thoughts.4. In a word, it rests on purity, ambition, harding work, and an intense struggling for success.3.Romanticism浪漫主义: the literature term was first applied to the writers of the 18th century in Europe who broke away from the formal rules of classical writing. When it was used in American literature it referred to the writers of the middle of the 19th century who stimulated（刺激）the sentimental emotions of their readers. They wrote of the mysterious of life, love, birth and death. The Romantic writers expressed themselves freely and without restraint. They wrote all kinds of materials, poetry, essays, plays, fictions, history, works of travel, and biography.4.Transcendentalism先验说,超越论: is a philosophic and literary movement that flourished in New England, particular at Concord, asa reaction against Rationalism and Calvinism (理性主义and喀尔文主义). Mainly it stressed intuitive understanding of God, without the help of the church, and advocated independence of the mind. The representative writers are Emerson and Thoreau.5.American Realism现实主义: 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 experience6.Local colorism乡土文学: 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) humor7.Naturalism自然主义: 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.8.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。
美国文学名词解释
《美国文学》名词解释1. American PuritanismAmerican Puritanism was one of the most enduring shaping influences in American thought and American literature. It has become, to some extent, so much a state of mind, rather than a set of tenets, so much a part of the national cultural atmosphere that the Americans breathe. It stresses predestination, original sin, total depravity, and limited atonement (or the salvation of a selected few) from God’s grace. With such doctrines in their minds, Puritans left Europe for America in order to establish a theocracy in the New World. Over the years in the new homeland they built a way of life that stressed hard work, thrift, piety, and sobriety.2. The American DreamThe American Dream 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 as a measure of success and/or happiness.3. American RomanticismAmerican Romanticism stretches from the end of the 18th century through the outbreak of the Civil War. It was America’s f irst great creative period. Although foreign influences were strong, American romanticism exhibited distinct features of its own. First, American romanticism was in essence the expression of “a real new experience” and contained “an alien quality” for the simple reason that “the spirit of the place” was radically new and alien. Second, Puritan influence over American romanticism was conspicuously noticeable. Famous writers, such as the novelists Hawthorne and Melville; the poets Dickinson and Whitman; the essayists Thoreau and Emerson, had made a great literary period by capturing on their pages the enthusiasm and the optimism of that dream.4. American TranscendentalismAmerican Transcendentalism is literature, philosophical and literary movement that flourished in New England from about 1836 to 1860. It originated among a small group of intellectuals who were reacting against the orthodoxy of Calvinism and the rationalism of the Unitarian Church, developing instead their own faith centering on the divinity of humanity and the natural world. The beliefs that God is imminent in each person and in nature and that individual intuition is the highest source of knowledge led to an optimistic emphasis on individualism, self-reliance, and rejection of traditional authority. The ideas of transcendentalism were most eloquently expressed by Ralph Waldo Emerson in such essays as Nature(1836), and Self-Reliance and by Henry David Thoreau in his book Walden (1854).5. American NaturalismAmerican Naturalism is a literary movement that became popular in America in the late 19th century and is often associated with literary realism. Viewed as a combination of realism and romanticism, critics contend that the American form is heavily influenced by the concept of determinism—the theory that heredity and environment influence and determine human behavior. Although naturalism is often associated with realism, which also seeks toaccurately represent human existence, the two movements are differentiated by the fact that naturalism is connected to the doctrine of biological, economic and social determinism. Representative writers are, among others, Stephen Crane and Theodore Dreiser.6. International ThemeThe International theme was one of Henry James’s main subjects, which dealt w ith the relationship between American and European culture. He explored the attractions and conflicts between new and old, innocence and experience, candor and complexity, the puritanical and the aesthetic.7. Local ColorismLocal Colorism is a type of writing that was popular in the late 19th century, particularly among authors in the South of the United States. This style relied heavily on using words, phrases, and slang that were native to the particular region in which the story took place. The term has come to mean any device which implies a specific focus, whether it is geographical or temporal. A well-known local colorism author was Mark Twain with his books Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.8. ImagismImagism was a literary movement which 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: i) direct treatment of subject matter; ii) economy of expression; iii) as regard rhythm, to compose in the sequence of the mu sical phrase, not in the sequence of metronome. Ezra Pound’s “In a Station of the Metro” is a well-known imagist poem.9. Harlem RenaissanceHarlem Renaissance is a notable phase of black American writing centered in Harlem (a predominantly black area of New York City) in the 1920s. It brought a new self-awareness and critical respect to black literature in the US. Langston Hughes and Richard Wright are representatives of the movement with their works Weary Blues and Native Son respectively.10. The Lost GenerationThe term Lost Generation was coined by Gertrude Stein to refer to a group of American literary notables who lived in Paris from the time period which saw the end of World War I to the beginning of the Great Depression. Significant members included Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound, Sherwood Anderson, T. S. Eliot, and Gertrude Stein herself. Hemingway likely popularized the term, quoting Stein ( “You are all a lost generation” ) as epigraph to his novel, The Sun Also Rises. More generally, the term is being used for the young adults of Europe and America during World War I. They were “lost” because after the war many of them were disillusioned with the world in general and unwilling to move into a settled life.11. The Jazz AgeThe 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 ageis American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, highlighting what some describes as the decadence and hedonism, as well as the growth of individualism. Fitzgerald is largely credited with coining the term “The Jazz Age”.12. Hemingway (Code) HeroesThe works of Ernest Hemingway generally center on the concept of heroism. Each of his novels contains a “Hemingway hero”— a man of honor and integrity who expresses himself not with words, but with actions. The Hemingway hero is a noble but tragic hero fighting with the overwhelming force; though he knows that he will be defeated at last, he decides to act like a hero. He is not a Godlike figure, but an ordinary, often flawed mortal who must look to himself for strength. The Hemingway hero is actually a mirror image of the author himself. Santiago in The Old Man and the Sea is a typical Hemingway hero.13. The Beat GenerationIn the 1950s, there was a widespread discontent among the postwar generation, whose voice was one of protest against all the mainstream culture that America had come to represent. This has come to be known as the Beat Generation. The word “beat” represented anon-conformist, rebellious attitude toward conventional values concerning sex, religion, the arts, and the American way of life. It was an attitude that resulted from the feeling of depression and exhaustion and the need to escape into an unconventional, sometimes communal, mode of living. Central elements of “Beat” culture included experimentation with drugs, alternative forms of sexuality, an interest in Eastern religion, a rejection of materialism, and the idealizing of exuberant, unexpurgated means of expression and being. Allen Ginsberg’s Howl (1956), William S. Burroughs’s Naked Lunch (1959) and JackKer ouac’s On the Road (1957) are among the best known examples of Beat literature.14. Black HumorBlack humor, in literature, drama, and film, grotesque or morbid humor, used to express the absurdity, insensitivity, paradox, and cruelty of the modern world. Ordinary characters or situations are usually exaggerated far beyond the limits of normal satire or irony. Black humor uses devices often associated with tragedy and is sometimes equated with tragic farce. Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 is one of the kind.15. The Southern RenaissanceThe Southern Renaissance is the revival of American Southern literature that began in the 1920s and 1930s until the 1950s. Much of the writings in this unit featured the struggle between those who embraced social changes and those who were more skeptical or challenged social change outright. The writers and intellectuals of the South after the late 1920s were engaged in an attempt to come to terms not only with the inherited values of the Southern tradition, but also with a certain way of perceiving and dealing with the past. In the works of William Faulkner, Katherine Ann Porter, Allen Tate, and Tennessee Williams, among others, the diverse wealth of voices in the early 20th-century South came alive.。
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 as measure 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 andpractices. 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 have a profound influence on the early American mind.：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.novel is a type of romance very popular late in the 18th century and at the beginning of the 19th 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 flourished from 1909 to 1917. The movement insists on the creation of images in po etry 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 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.”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 laugha 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）.。
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
American Puritanism清教主义: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 through a special infusion of grace from God. American literature in the 17th century mostly consisted of Puritan literature. Puritanism had an enduring influence on American 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. Transcendentalism 超验主义: 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. Transcendentalists spoke for cultural rejuvenation and against the materialism of American society. It placed emphasis on spirit, or the Over soul, as the most important thing in the world. It stressed the importance of individual and offered a fresh perception nature ad symbolic of the spirit of God. Prominent transcendentalists included Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thorough.American Naturalism美国自然主义文学: American naturalism was a new and harsher realism. The naturalists attempt to achieve extreme objectivity and frankness, presenting characters of low social and economic classes who were determined by environment and heredity. It emphasized that the world was amoral, the 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. The pessimism and deterministic ideas naturalism pervaded the works of such American writers as Stephen Crane and Theodore Dreiser.American Naturalism(美国自然主义文学)：The American naturalists accepted the more negative interpretation of Darwin’s evolutionary theory and used it to account for the behavior of those characters in literary works who were regarded as more or less complex combinations of inherited attributes, their habits conditioned by social and economic forces.2) naturalism is evolved from realism when the author’s tone in writing becomes less serious and less sympathetic but more ironic and more pessimistic. It is no more than a gloomy philosophical approach to reality, or to human existence.3>Dreiser is a leading figure of his school.The Gilded Age镀金时代:the Gilded Age refers to the era of rapid economic and population growth in the United States during the post-Civil War and post-Reconstruction eras of the late 19th century. The term "Gilded Age" was coined by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner in their 1873 book, The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today.The Gilded Age is most famous for the creation of a modern industrial economy. The end of the Gilded Age coincided with the Panic of 1893, a deep depression. The depression lasted until 1897 and marked a major political realignment in the election of 1896. After that came the Progressive Era.The Lost Generation迷惘的一代:The Lost Generation is a group of expatriate American writers residing primarily in Paris during the 1920s and 1930s. The group was given its name by the American writer Ger trude Stein, who used “a lost generation” to refer to expatriate Americans bitter about their World War I experiences and disillusioned with American society. Hemingway later used the phrase as an epigraph for his novel The Sun Also Rises. It consisted of many influential American writers, including Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Carlos Williams and Archibald MacLeish.The Lost Generation(迷惘的一代）：The lost generation is a term first used by Stein to describe the post-war I generation of American writers:men and women haunted by a sense of betrayal and emptiness brought about by the destructiveness of the war.2>full of youthful idealism, these individuals sought the meaning of life, drank excessively, had love affairs and created some of the finest American literature to date.3>the three best-known representatives of lost generation are F.Scott Fitzgerald, Hemingway and John dos Passos. Tragedy:In general, a literary work in which the protagonist meets an unhappy or disastrous end. Unlike comedy, tragedy depicts the actions of a central character whois usually dignified or heroic. Through a series of events, this tragic hero is brought to a final downfall. The causes of the tragic hero’s downfall vary. In traditional dramas, the cause can be f ate, a flaw in character or an error in judgment. In modern dramas, where the tragic hero is often an ordinary individual, the causes range from moral or psychological weakness to the evils of society.Catch-22第22条军规:Catch-22 is a general critique of bureaucratic operation and reasoning. Resulting from its specific use in the book, the phrase "Catch-22" is common idiomatic usage meaning "a no-win situation" or "a double bind" of any type. The term was originally from Joseph Heller’s anti novel Catch-22.Beat Generation垮掉的一代:、Group of American writers of the 1950s whose writing expressed profound dissatisfaction with contemporary American society and endorsed an alternative set of values. The term sometimes is used to refer to those who embraced the ideas of these writers. The Beat Generation's best-known figures were writers Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac.The Beat Generation(垮掉的一代):The members of The Beat Generation were new bohemian libertines. Who engaged in a spontaneous, sometimes messy, creativity.2> The Beat writers produced a body of written work controversial both for its advocacy of non-conformity and for its non-conforming style.3> the major beat writings are Allen Ginsberg’s howl.Howl became the manifesto of The Beat Generation.Psychological Realism心理现实主义:It is the realistic writing that probes deeply into the complexities of characters’ thoughts and motivations. It places more than the usual amount of emphasis on interior characterization and on the motives, and internal action which springs from and develops external action. In Psychological Realism, character and characterization are more than usually important. Henry James is considered a great master of psychological realism.Free Verse自由诗体:Free verse is 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 form do, free verse dose so in a looser way. Walt Whitman’s poetry is an example of free verse.Confessional Poetry自白诗:It is a type of modern poetry in which poets speak with openness and frankness about their own lives, such as in poems about illness, sexuality and despondence. Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath and Allen Ginsberg and Theodore Roethke are the most important American poets.Imagism意象派:The 1920s saw a vigorous literary activity in America. In poetry there appeared a strong reaction against Victorian poetry. Imagists placed primary reliance on the use of precise, sharp images as a means of poetic expression and stressed precision in the choice of words, freedom in the choice of subject matter and form, and the use of colloquial language. Most of the imagist poets wrote in free verse, using such devices as assonance and alliteration rather than formal metrical schemes to give structure to their poetry.The movement which had these as its aims is known in literary history as Imagism. Its prime mover was Ezra Pound.Imagism(意象主义)：Imagism 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.2>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.3>imagism is characterized by the following three poetic principles:A.direct treatment of subject matter;B.economy of expression;C. as regards rhythm ,to compose in the sequence of the musical phrase, not in the sequence of metronome. 4> pou nd’s In a Station of the Metro is a well-known inagist poem. Black Humor:the use of morbid and the absurd for darkly comic purposes in modern fiction and drama. The term refers as much to the tone of anger and bitterness as it does to the grotesque and morbid situations, which often deal with suffering, anxiety, and death. Black humor is a substantial element in the Anti-novel and the Theatre of Absurd. Joseph Heller's Catch-22 is an almost archetypal example.Irony:A contrast or an incongruity between what is stated and what is really meant, or between what is expected to happen and what actually happens in drama and literature. There are types of irony: verbal irony, dramatic irony and irony of situation. Irony of situation typically takes the form of a discrepancy between appearance and reality, or between what a character expects and what actually happens. Both verbal and irony of situation share the suggestion of a concealed truth conflicting with surface appearances.A Jja zz age(爵士时代):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 with coining the term” Jazz Age”.Nathaniel Hawthorneworks(1)Two collections of short stories: Twice-toldTales, Mosses from and Old Manse(2)The Scarlet Letter(3)The House of the Seven Gables(4)The Marble Faun1.point of view(1)Evil is at the core of human life, “thatblackness in Hawthorne”(2)Whenever there is sin, there is punishment.Sin or evil can be passed from generation togeneration (causality).(3)He is of the opinion that evil educates.(4)He has disgust in science.2.aesthetic ideas(1)He took a great interest in history andantiquity. To him these furnish the soil onwhich his mind grows to fruition.(2)He was convinced that romance was thepredestined form of American narrative. Totell the truth and satirize and yet not tooffend: That was what Hawthorne had inmind to achieve.3.style – typical romantic writer(1)the use of symbols(2)revelation of characters’ psychology(3)the use of supernatural mixed with theactual(4)his stories are parable (parable inform) – toteach a lesson(5)use of ambiguity to keep the reader in theworld of uncertainty –multiple point ofviewEdgar Allen PoeWorks1.short stories(1)ratiocinative storiesa.Ms Found in a Bottleb.The Murders in the Rue Morguec.The Purloined Letter(2)Revenge, death and rebirtha.The Fall of the House of Usherb.Ligeiac.The Masque of the Red Death(3)Literary theorya.The Philosophy of Compositionb.The Poetic Principlec.Review of Hawthorne’s Twice-told TalesI.Themes1.death –predominant theme in Poe’s writing“Poe is not interested in anything alive. Everythingin Poe’s writings is dead.”2.disintegration (separation) of life3.horror4.negative thoughts of scienceII.Aesthetic ideas1.The short stories should be of brevity, totality,single effect, compression and finality.2.The poems should be short, and the aim should bebeauty, the tone melancholy. Poems should not beof moralizing. He calls for pure poetry and stressesrhythm.III.Style – traditional, but not easy to read Reputation: “the jingle man” (Emerson)I. F. Scott Fitzgerald1.life – participant in 1920s2.works(1)This Side of Paradise(2)Flappers and Philosophers(3)The Beautiful and the Damned(4)The Great Gatsby(5)Tender is the Night(6)All the Sad Young Man(7)(8)The Last Tycoon3.point of view(1)He expressed what the young peoplebelieved in the 1920s, the so-called“American Dream” is false in nature.(2)He had always been critical of the rich andtried to show the integrating effects ofmoney on the emotional make-up of hischaracter. He found that wealth alteredpeople’s characters, making them mean anddistrusted. He thinks money brought onlytragedy and remorse.(3)His novels follow a pattern: dream – lack ofattraction – failure and despair.4.His ideas of “American Dream”It is false to most young people. Only those whowere dishonest could become rich.5.StyleFitzgerald was one of the great stylists in Americanliterature. His prose is smooth, sensitive, andcompletely original in its diction and metaphors. Itssimplicity and gracefulness, its skill inmanipulating the relation between the general andthe specific reveal his consummate artistry.6.The Great GatsbyNarrative point of view – NickHe is related to everyone in the novel and is calmand detected observer who is never quick to makejudgements.Selected omniscient point of viewII.Ernest Hemingway1.life2.point of view (influenced by experience in war)(1)He felt that WWI had broken America’sculture and traditions, and separated from itsroots. He wrote about men and women whowere isolated from tradition, frightened,sometimes ridiculous, trying to find theirown way.(2)He condemned war as purposeless slaughter,but the attitude changed when he took partin Spanish Civil War when he found thatfascism was a cause worth fighting for.(3)He wrote about courage and cowardice inbattlefield. He defined courage as “aninstinctive movement towards or away fromthe centre of violence with self-preservationand self-respect, the mixed motive”. He alsotalked about the courage with which to facetragedies of life that can never be remedied.(4)Hemingway is essentially a negative writer.It is very difficult for him to say “yes”. Heholds a black, naturalistic view of the worldand sees it as “all a nothing” and “all nada”.3.works(1)In Our Time(2)Men Without Women(3)Winner Take Nothing(4)The Torrents of Spring(5)The Sun Also Rises(6) A Farewell to Arms(7)Death in the Afternoon(8)To Have and Have Not(9)Green Hills of Africa(10)The Fifth Column(11)For Whom the Bell Tolls(12)Across the River and into the Trees(13)The Old Man and the Sea4.themes –“grace under pressure”(1)war and influence of war on people, withscenes connected with hunting, bull fightingwhich demand stamina and courage, andwith the question “how to live with pain”,“how human being live gracefully underpressure”.(2)“code hero”The Hemingway hero is an average man ofdecidedly masculine tastes, sensitive andintelligent, a man of action, and one of fewwords. That is an individualist keepingemotions under control, stoic andself-disciplined in a dreadful place. Thesepeople are usually spiritual strong, people ofcertain skills, and most of them encounterdeath many times.5.style(1)simple and natural(2)direct, clear and fresh(3)lean and economical(4)simple, conversational, common found,fundamental words(5)simple sentences(6)Iceberg principle: understatement, impliedthings(7)SymbolismI.Mark Twain – Mississippi1.life2.works(1)The Gilded Age(2)“the two advantages”(3)Life on the Mississippi(4) A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’sCourt(5)The Man That Corrupted Hardleybug3.style(1)colloquial language, vernacular language,dialects(2)local colour(3)syntactic feature: sentences are simple, brief,sometimes ungrammatical(4)humour(5)tall tales (highly exaggerated)(6)social criticism (satire on the different uglythings in society)I.Emily Dickenson1.life2.works(1)My Life Closed Twice before Its Close(2)Because I Can’t Stop for Death(3)I Heard a Fly Buzz – When I died(4)Mine – by the Right of the White Election(5)Wild Nights – Wild Nights3.themes: based on her ownexperiences/joys/sorrows(1)religion –doubt and belief about religioussubjects(2)death and immortality(3)love –suffering and frustration caused bylove(4)physical aspect of desire(5)nature – kind and cruel(6)free will and human responsibility4.style(1)poems without titles(2)severe economy of expression(3)directness, brevity(4)musical device to create cadence (rhythm)(5)capital letters – emphasis(6)short poems, mainly two stanzasrhetoric techniques: personification –make some of abstract ideas vivid。
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。