美国文学术语解释全面且简练.docx

1、美国文学术语解释全面且简练术语解释（美国文学简史）1、American Puritanism Back grounding: American Puritanism appeared in the colonial period, from 1607 to 1775, in America. Representatives: There are many writers in this period, such as Captain John Smith, the author of the True Relation of Virginia (1608) and Description of

2、 New England (1616),Anne Bradstreet, who wrote the famous work called Tenth Muse Lately Sprung up in America (1650).Main ideas:They stress predestination, original sin, total depravity, and limited atonement from Gods grace. They go to America to prove that they are Gods chosen people who will enjoy

3、 Gods blessings on earth and in Heaven. Finally, they build a way of life that stresses hard work, thrift, piety, and sobriety. Influences: American Literature is based on a myth - the Biblical myth of the Garden of Eden. The American Puritans metaphorical made of perception - symbolism. It has a gr

4、eat influence not only on the Literary Scene in Colonial America, , but also on the literature in the 18th century, especially on Jonathan Edwards and Benjamin Franklin.American RomanticismBack grounding: It appeared in the end of the 18th century through the outbreak of the Civil War, from 1828 to

5、1865, and it was strongly influenced by European culture.Representative:There are some representative new England poets and out-sanding writers such as, James Fenimaore Cooper, the author of The Leather Stocking Tales, Washington Irving , whose famous work is The Sketch Book (1819). Main ideas:Roman

6、ticism is a rebellion against the objectivity of rationalism. .For romantics, the feelings, intuitions and emotions are more important than reason and common sense. They emphasize individualism, placing the individual against the group, against authority. Influence:It produces a feeling of “Newness”

7、 which inspires the romantic imagination.3、TranscendentalismsBack grounding: Transcendtalism flourished in the New England from about 1836 to 1860.Ralph Waldo Emerson published Nature in 1836 which represented a new way of intellectual thinking in America. Representatives:There are two representativ

8、e writers, namely Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), whose famous work called Nature, Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), the author of Walden.Main ideas: Believe people can learn things both from the outside world by means of the 5 senses and from the inner world by intuition; It places spirit first and

9、 matter second; It takes nature as symbolic of spirit or God. It emphasizes the significance of the individual; Religion is an emotional communication between an individual soul and the universal over soul.Influences: It is a manifestation of Romantic Movement in literature and philosophy and an eth

10、ical guide to life of America. However, it is never a systematic philosophy because of a lack of logical connection.4、RealismBack grounding:In American literature, the Civil War brought the Romantic Period to an end. The Age of Realism came into existence, from 1865 to 1918.Representatives:There are

11、 some famous writers in this period, such as William Dean Howells , the Dean of American Realism, whose famous work is A Chance Acquaintance 偶然相遇; O. Henry, the author of After Twenty Years; Henry James, the author of The Portrait of a Lady.Main ideas:Realism is the theory of writing in which famili

12、ar aspects of contemporary life and everyday scenes are represented in a straightforward or mother-of-fact manner. It often uses the open ending, focuses on the lives of the common people, and emphasizes objectivity.Influences:It comes as a reaction against the lie of romanticism and sentimentalism.

13、 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.5、Local ColorismBack grounding：Local colorism as a trend became dominant in American literature in the late 1860s and early 1870s；The frontier humoris

14、ts who had been popular with their “tall tales” before the Civil War paved the way for local color fiction.Representatives：There is a famous writers in this period, namely Mark Twain,(马克?吐温), whose masterpiece is Huckleberry Finn.Main ideas:Local color fiction presents a locale which is distinguishe

15、d from the outside world, and describes the exotic and the picturesque. It describes things that are not common in other regions, attempting to show things as they as they are. Local color fiction glorifies the past and stresses the influence of setting on character.Influences:Mark Twain is the repr

16、esentative in this period, and his style is the vernacular language, local color, and cracker-barrel philosopher.6、NaturismBack grounding：Naturalism is a literary trend prevailing in Europe, especially in France and Germany, in the second half of the 19th century. And, Charles Darwin stresses the st

17、ruggle of existence, survival of the fittest, natural selection.Representatives:There are some writers in this period, such as Stephen Crane, Frank Norris, and Jack London. Cranes Maggie: A Girl of the Streets is the first American naturalism work. Main ideas:Humans are controlled by laws of heredit

18、y and environment.The universe is cold, godless, indifferent and hostile to human desires.Influences:Although naturalist literature describes the world with sometimes brutal realism, it sometimes also aims at bettering the world through social reform. This combination of grim reality and desire for

19、improvements is typical of America as it moves into the twentieth century. 7、ImagismBack grounding:Imagism is a literary movement launched by a number of British and American poets from 1909 to 1917, which is prevalent in the Western world and is a branch of the Symbolist literary movement.Represent

20、atives:Four Quartets; Wallace Stevens; Robert Frost.Main ideas:In a sense, imagism is equivalent to naturalism in fiction. It produces free verse without imposing a rhythmical pattern. Imagism tries to record objective observations of an object or a situation without interpretation or comment by the

21、 poet.Influences:It is one of the most essential techniques of writing poetry in modern period, with a spirit of revolt against conventions; imagism is anti-romantic and anti Victorian.8、the Lost GenerationBack grounding: The term “lost generation” is coined by Gertrude Stein, a lost generation writ

22、er herself, after World War I. It is between the first and second World Wars.Representatives:There are some excellent writers, including Ernest Hemingway; whose famous work is The Old Man and the Sea (1952); Scott Fitzgerald, the author of the Great Gatsby.Main ideas:The Lost Generation is a term us

23、ed to describe a group of American writers who were rebelling against what America had become by the 1900s.It aims to seek the bohemian lifestyle and reject the values of American materialism and means this generation had lost the beautiful sense of the calm idyllic past.Influences: Being cut off fr

24、om their past, disillusioned in reality, and without a meaningful future to fall on, they are lost in disillusionment and existential voids.9、the code hero（网上找的）The Hemingway hero is an average man of decidedly masculine tastes, sensitive and intelligent, a man of action, and one of few words. That

25、is an individualist keeping emotions under control, stoic and self-disciplined in a dreadful place. These people are usually spiritual strong, people of certain skills, and most of them encounter death many times. The heroes in his book are all have something in common which Hemingway values: they h

26、ave seen the cold world and for one cause or another, they boldly and courageously face the reality; whatever the result is, they are ready to live with grace under pressure. The Hemingway code hero has an indestructible spirit for his optimistic view of life; though he is pessimistic that is Heming

27、way.10、Iceberg Theory(网上找的)It is a term used to describe the writing style of American writer Ernest Hemingway. The meaning of a piece is not immediately evident, because the crux of the story lies below the surface, just as most of the mass of a real iceberg similarly lies beneath the surface. 11、t

28、he Jazz AgeThe 20s are also referred to as “The Jazz Age,” a term coined by F. Scott FitzgeraldThe Jazz Age began with the end of WWI, at a time when, for the first time, the U.S. had emerged as a world power and ended with the stock market crash of 1929.The most representative literary work is Amer

29、ican writer F. Scott Fitzgeralds the great Gatsby.This decade saw changes in lifestyle and technology that revolutionized American life in such a way that it has never been the same since.12、Free verse:Free verse is poetry that has an irregular rhythm and line length, and that attempts avoid any pre

30、determined verse structure. While it alternates stressed and unstressed syllables as stricter verse forms do, free verse does so in a looser way. Whitemans poetry is an example of free verse at its most impressive, for example Song of Myself. It has since been used Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot and other major American poets of the 20th century. Walt Whitemans Leaves of Grass is, perhaps , the most notable example.