美国文学名词解释.docx

1、美国文学名词解释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 guarantee

2、d by the U.S. Bill of Rights. 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, origi

3、nal 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 muc

4、h 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

5、 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 Wal

6、do Emerson and Henry David Thorough.American Naturalism自然主义: 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 emphasize

7、d 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 Cran

8、e and Theodore Dreiser.American Naturalism(美国自然主义文学)：The American naturalists accepted the more negative interpretation of Darwins 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 att

9、ributes, their habits conditioned by social and economic forces.2) naturalism is evolved from realism when the authors 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.

10、3Dreiser 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 Dudle

11、y 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

12、election of 1896. After that came the Progressive Era.The Lost Generation: 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 Gertrude Stein, who used “a lost generation” to refer t

13、o 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 Carl

14、os 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.2full of youthful idea

15、lism, these individuals sought the meaning of life, drank excessively, had love affairs and created some of the finest American literature to date.3the three best-known representatives of lost generation are F.Scott Fitzgerald, Hemingway and John dos Passos.Tragedy: in general, a literary work in wh

16、ich the protagonist meets an unhappy or disastrous end. Unlike comedy, tragedy depicts the actions of a central character who is usually dignified or heroic. Through a series of events, this tragic hero is brought to a final downfall. The causes of the tragic heros downfall vary. In traditional dram

17、as, the cause can be fate, 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

18、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 Hellers anti novel Catch-22.Beat Generation垮掉的一代: group of American writers of the 1950s whose writing ex

19、pressed 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 Generations best-known figures were writers Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac.The Beat Generatio

20、n(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

21、Allen Ginsbergs 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 mot

22、ives, 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

23、 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 Whitmans poetry is an example of free verse.Confession

24、al 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 192

25、0s 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 ma

26、tter 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. I

27、ts 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.2the imagists, with Ezra Pound leading the way, hold that the most effective means to express these

28、 momentary impressions is through the use of one dominant image.3imagism 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

29、pounds 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 suff

30、ering, anxiety, and death. Black humor is a substantial element in the Anti-novel and the Theatre of Absurd. Joseph Hellers 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 act

31、ually 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 s

32、ituation share the suggestion of a concealed truth conflicting with surface appearances.Allusion: A reference to a person, a place, an event, or a literary work that a writer expects the reader to recognize and respond to. An allusion may be drawn from history, geography, literature, or religion.Sat

33、ire讽刺: A kind of writing that holds up to ridicule or contempt the weaknesses and wrongdoings of individuals, groups, institutions, or humanity in general. The aim of satirists is to set a moral standard for society, and they attempt to persuade the reader to see their point of view through the force of laughter.Symbol: A symbol