美國文學(xué)名詞解釋

1、1. 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 religio n.2. American Naturalism: American naturalism was a new and harsher realism. American nat

2、uralism had been shaped by the war; by the social upheavals that undermined the comforting faith of an earlier age. Americas literary naturalists dismissed the validity of comforting moral truths. They attempted to achieve extreme objectivity and frankness, presenting characters of low social and ec

3、onomic classes who were determined by their environment and heredity. In presenting the extremes of life, the naturalists sometimes displayed an affinity to the sensationalism of early romanticism, but unlike their romantic predecessors, the naturalists emphasized that the world was amoral, that men

4、 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. Although naturalist literature described the world with sometimes brutal realism, it sometimes also aimed at bettering (he world through social

5、rcfonri.3 American Puritanism: Puritanism is the practices and beliefs of the Puritans The Puritans were originally members of a division of the Protestant 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, religio

6、us 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, original sin and total depravity, and limited atonement through a special infusion of grace form God.

7、As a culture heritage, Puritanism did have a profound influence on the early American mind. American Puritanism also had an enduring influence on Anlerican literature4. American Realism: in American literature, the Civil War brought the Romantic Period to an end. The Age of Realism came into existen

8、ce Il 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 a

9、n idealistic view of human nature and human experience 5 American Romanticism: The Romantic Period covers the first half of the 19th century. A rising America with its ideals of democracy and equality, its industrialization, its westward expansion, and a variety of foreign influences were among the

10、important factors which made literary expansion and expression not only possible but also inevitable in the period immediately following the nations political independence Yet, romantics frequently shared certain general characieristics: moral enthusiasm, faith in value of individualism and intuitiv

11、e perception, and a presumption that the natural world was a source of goodness and mans societies a source of corruption. Romantic values were prominent in American politics, art, and philosophy until the Civil War. The romantic exaltation of the individual suited the nations revolutionary heritage

12、 and its frontier egalitarianism.6. American Transcendentalism: Transcendentalists terrors from the romantic literature of Europe. They spoke for cultural rejuvenation and against the materialism of Americagogopirit, or the Oversoul, as the most important thing in the Universe They stressed the impo

13、rtance of the individual. To them, the individual was the most important element of society. They offered a fresh perception of nature as symbolic of the Spirit or God. Nature was, to them, alive, filled with Gods overwhelming presence Transcendentalism is based on the belief that the most fundament

14、al truths about life and death can be reached only by going beyond the world of the senses Emersons Nature has been called the Manifesto of American Transcendentalism and his The American Scholar has been rightly regarded as Americas Declaration of Intellectual Independence7. Dramatic monologue: A k

15、ind of narrative poem in which one character speaks to one or more listeners whose replies are not given in the poem. The occasion is usually a crucial one in the speakers personality as well as the incident that is the subject of the poem.8. Enlightenment: With the advent of the 18th century, in En

16、gland, as in other European countries, there sprang into life a public movement known as the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment on the whole, was an expression of struggle of the then progressive class of bourgeois against feudalism. The egogo inequality, stagnation. prejudices and other survivals of

17、feudalism. The attempted to place all branches of science at the service of mankind by connecting them with the actual deeds and requirements of the people9. Imagism: Ils a poetic movement of England and the U.S. flourished from 1909 to 1917.The movement insists on the creation of images in poetry b

18、y the direct treatment of the thing and the economy of wording. The leaders of this movement were Ezra Pound and Amy Lowell.10. Local Colorism: Local Colorism or Regionalism as a trend first made its presence felt in the late lX6()s and early seventies in America may be defined as the careful attego

19、goms in speech, dress or behavior peculiar to a geographical locality. The ultimate aim of the local colorists is to create the illusion of an indigenous little world with qualities that tell it apart from the world outside The social and intellectual climate of the country provided a stimulating mi

20、lieu for the growth of local color fiction in America. Local colorists concerned themselves with presenting and inleqxeting the local character of their regions. They tended to idealize and glorify, but they never forgot to keep an eye on the truthful color of local life. They formed an imporlanl pa

21、rt of the realistic movement. Although it lost its momentum toward the end of the 19th century, the local spirit continued to inspire and fertilize the imagination of author.IL Lost Generation; This term has been used again and again to describe the people of the postwar years 1( describes the Ameri

22、cans who remained in Paris as a colony of “ expatriates or exiles. Il describes the writers like Hemingway who lived in semi poverty. It describes the Americans who returned to their native land with an intense awareness of living in an unfamiliar changing world The young English and American expatr

23、iates, men and women, were 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. They wandered pointlessly and restlessly, enjoying things like fishing, swimming, bullfight and beauties of nature, but they were aware all th

24、e while that the world is crazy and meaningless and futile Their whole life is undercut and defeated12. Beat Generation: the Beat writers were a small group of close friends first, and a movement later. The term Beat Generation gradually came to represent an entire period in lime, but the entire ori

25、ginal Beat Generation in literature was small enough to have fit into a couple of cars. The lenn was created by Jack Kerouac in 1948The original word meant nothing more than bad or “ruined or *spentM or beaten-down, beaten-up and beaten-outM. The connotation is defeat, resignation, and disappointmen

26、t.This kind of beatness is what Kerouac was describing in himself and his friends, bright young Americans who had come of age during WWII but couldnt fit in as clean-cut soldiers or complacent young businessmen. They were beat because they dicing believe in straight jobs and had to struggle to survi

27、ve, living in dirty apartments, selling drugs or committing crimes for food money hitchhiking across the country because they couldnt stay still without getting bored. But the term beat had a second meaning: beatific or sacred and holy. Kerouac, a devout Catholic, explained many times that by descri

28、bing his generation as beat he was trying to capture the secret holiness of the down trodden. In fact, this is probably the most central theme in Kerouacs workThe Beats were essentially anarchic They rejected conventional social and moral values; expressed their alienation in their works from conven

29、tional “square society by adopting a life style which featured sex, drugs, jazz and the freedom of the open road. Literally, the Beats were all experimenters who sought to express spontaneity of thought and feeling in a seemingly formless verse as Ginsberg did or prose as Kerouac They tended to blur

30、 the line between poetry and prose in their writing, adopting rhythms of simple American speech and of so-called progressive jazz, so such so that the Beat style was criticized as likely to contribute more to American slang than to American letters. Perhaps in this sense they are postmodernist.13. P

31、re-Romanticism: It originated among the conservative groups of men and letters as a reaction against Enlightenment and found its most manifest expression in the *Gothic novel0. The term arising from the fact that the greater part of such romances were devoted to the medieval times.14. Psalm: A song

32、or lyric poem in praise of God15. Psychological Realism: It is the realistic writing that probes deeply into the complexities of characters, thoughts and motivations Henry James is considered the founder of psychological realism His novel The Ambassadors is considered to be a masterpiece of psycholo

33、gical realism16. Renaissance: The term originally indicated a revival of classical （Greek and Roman） arts and sciences after the dark ages of medieval obscurantism.17. Romanticism: A movement that flourished in literature, philosophy, music, and art in Western culture during most of the 19th cenlury

34、、beginnigogom.18. Satire: 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 rhe reader to see their point of vi

35、ew through the force of laughter.19. Symbol: A symbol is a sign which suggests more than its literal meaning. In other words, a symbol is both literal and figurative A symbol is a way of telling a story and a way of conveying meaning. The best symbols are those that are believable in the lives of th

36、e characters and also convincing as they convey a meaning beyond the literal level of the story. If the symbol is obscure or ambiguous, then the very obscurity and the ambiguity may also be part of the meaning of the story.20. Symbolism: Symbolism is the writing technique of using symbols. Ils a lit

37、erary movement that arose in France in the last half of the 19th century and that greatly influenced many English writers, particularly poels, of the 20th century. Il enables poets to compress a very complex idea or set of ideas into one image or even one word. Ils one of the most powerful devices t

38、hat poets employ in creation.2LModernisni： It was a con lplex and diverse international move mem in all the creative arts originoting about the end of the 19th century. It provided the greatest creative renaissance of the 20th century. It was made up of many facets, such as symbolism, surrealism （超現(xiàn)實(shí)上義）， cubism （立體丄義），expressionism, futurism （未來上義），ect22Amcrican Drcam: American dream means the belief thau everyone can succeed as long as he/she works hard enough. Il usually implies a successful and satisfying life. It usually framed in terms of American capitalism （資木上