美国文学名词解释 (1)

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 Europe 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 Reason

2 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 happiness

3. Transcendentalism 超验主义: 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 and is only realized through the individual’s intuition, rather than through the doctrines of established religions. Prominent transcendentalists included Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman, etc. It is a kind of philosophy that stresses belief in transcendental things and the importance

of spiritual rather than material existence.

4. American Puritanism美国清教主义: 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, original sin and total depravity, and limited atonement through a special infusion of grace from God. As a culture heritage, Puritanism did have a profound influence on the early American mind.

5.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 that poets employ in creation.

7. Gothic novel哥特式小说：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，violent，mysterious，supernatural，desolate and horrifying. Gothic，originally in the sense of “medic，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意象派: 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.

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