美国文学史名词解释

1.American Transcendentalism:①transcendentalism has been defined philosophically as “ the recognition in manof the capability of knowing truth intuitively, or of attaining knowledgetranscending the reach of the senses.②transcendentalists stress the importance of the Over-soul, the Individual andNature. Other concepts that accompanied transcendentalism include the idea that nature is enabling and the idea that the individual is divine and, therefore,self-reliant. New England transcendentalism is the product of a combination of Native American Puritanism and European romanticism.③some prominent representatives include Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry DavidThoreau.2. Free versefree verse means the rhymed or unrhymed poetry composed without payingattention to conversational rules of meter. Free verse was originated by a group of French poets of the late 19th century. Their purpose was to free themselves from the restrictions of formal metrical patterns and to recreate instead the free rhymes of nature period. Walt Whitman…s leaves of grass is perhaps the most notableexample.3.American Puritanism: Puritanism is the practices and beliefs of t he puritans. The Puritans were originally members of a division of the protestant chur ch who wanted to purify their religious beliefs and practices. They accepted the doctri nes 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 co nsisted of Puritan literature. Puritanism had an enduring influence on American literat ure. It had become, to some extent, so much a state of mind, so much a part of nationa l cultural atmosphere, rather than a set of tenets.it comes from the American puritans, who were the first immigrants moved to Americ an 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 and sobriety（清醒） were praised.4.American Dream: American dream means the belief that everyone c an succeed as long as he/she works hard enough. It usually implies a successful and sa tisfying 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 guaranteed by the U.S. Bill of Rights.5.Imagism: the 1920s saw a vigorous literary activity in America. In poetry t here appeared a strong reaction against Victorian poetry. Imagists placed primary relia nce on the use of precise, sharp images as a means of poetic expression and stressed p recision in the choice of words, freedom in the choice of subject matter and form, andthe use of colloquial language. Most of the imagist poets wrote in free verse, using su ch devices as assonance and alliteration rather than formal metrical schemes to give st ructure to their poetry.. The movement which had these as its aims is known in literary history as Imagism. Its prime mover was Ezra Pound.6. American romanticism①it is one of the most important periods in the history of American literature thatstretches from the 18th century to the outbreak of the civil war. It started with the publication of Washington Irving‟s The Sketch Book and ended with WaltWhitman‟s Leaves of Grass.②being a period of the great flowering of American literature, it is also called“the American Renaissance ”.③American romantic works emphasize the imaginative and emotional qualitiesof nature literature. The strong tendency to eulogize the individual and common man was typical of this period. Most importantly, the writings of AmericanRomanticism are typically American. Works concentrate on uniquecharacteristics of the American land.④New England Transcendentalism is the summit of American Romanticism.⑤Romanticists include such literary figures as Washington Irving, Ralph WaldoEmerson, Henry David Thoreau, William Cullen Bryant, Henry WordsworthLongfellow, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville, WaltWhitman and some others.。

Part 1:Colonial and Revolutionary PeriodSeparatists①In the colonial period, the Puritans who gone to extreme were known as ―S eparatists‖.②Unlike the majority of Puritans, they saw no hope of reforming the Church of England from within. They felt that the influence of politics and the court had led to corruptions within the church. They wished to break free from the Church of England.③Among them was the Plymouth plantation group. They wished to follow Calvin’s model, and toset up ―particular‖ churches.①It refers to the people who believed in Puritanism.②In England they wanted to ―purify‖ the Church of England and was prosecuted.③They accept the doctrine and practice of predestination, original sin and total depravity and limited atonement through a special infusion of grace from god.①They were the people, mostly Puritans, who arrived in New England in 1620 in May Flower.②In a broad sense, they represented the ancestors of the American people.美国清教主义)①It arose in the early 17th century. Puritanism is the practices and beliefs of puritans.②The American puritans, like their English brothers, are idealist. They accept the doctrine andpractice of predestination, original sin and total depravity and limited atonement through a special infusion of grace from god.③But due to the grim struggle for living in the new continent, they become more and more practical. Besides, the American Puritanism as a cultural heritage exerted great influence over American moral values, and this Puritan influence over American Romanticism was conspicuously noticeable.原罪)①Original sin, in Christian theology, the sin of Adam: by which humankind fell from divine grace.②It is the central religious belief of the Puritans that people are sinful ever since their birth.③The purpose of baptism(洗礼) is to wash away original sin and to restore the individual to an innocent state, although even after baptism a tendency to sin remains as a result of original sin.神权政体)①It is a state system in which the state and church are combined into one, with the idea that God would govern through the church.②It was the major form of government in colonial American.Literary Journals①A journal is an individual’s day-by-day account of events. It provides valuable details that can be supplied only by a participant or an eyewitness. As a record of personal relations, a journal reveals much about the writers.②While offering insights into the life of the writer, a journal is not necessarily a reliable record of facts. The writer’s impression may color the telling of events, particularly when he or she is a participant.③Journals written for publication rather than private use are even less likely to be objective. TheEuropean encounters with and conquest of the Americas are recorded in the journals of the explorers.John Smith①He was one of England’s most famous explorers by helping to lead the first successful English colony in American,②Stories of his adventures, often embellished by his own pen, fascinated readers of his day and continue to provide details about early explorations of the Americans.①It refers to the literary period roughly from 1776 to 1823 in American literature.②The Enlightenment is the dominant literary movement in this period.③Reason is the key notion for writers of the Enlightenment like Franklin.It is a famous pamphlet by Thomas Paine, which appeared in 1776, and boldly advocates a ―Declaration for Independence‖ and brings the separatist agitation to a crisis.American Enlightenment (美国启蒙运动)th and early 17th centuries.) The American Enlightenment is the intellectual thriving period in America in the mid-to-late 18th century, especially as it relates to American Revolution on the one hand and the European Enlightenment on the other.②Influenced by the scientific revolution of the 17th century and the humanist period during the Renaissance, the Enlightenment took scientific reasoning and applied it to human nature, society, and religion. Politically, the age is distinguished by an emphasis upon liberty, democracy, republicanism and religious tolerance –culminating in the drafting of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution.③The most important leaders of the American Enlightenment include Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson.Autobiography（自传）①An autobiography is a person’s account of his or her life.②Generally written in the first person , with the author speaking as ―I‖. It presents life events as the writers views them, and offers insights into the beliefs and perceptions of the author.③Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography set the standard for what was then a new genre. Nonfiction①It refers to any prose narrative that tells about things as they actually happen or that presents factual information about something.②The purpose of this kind of writing is to give a presumably accurate accounting of a person’s life.③Autobiography, biology and essay are among the major forms of nonfiction.Almanac(历书)①An almanac is an annual publication that includes information such as weather forecasts, farmers' planting dates, tide tables, and tabular information in a particular field or fields often arranged according to the calendar etc.②Benjamin Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanac is a case in point.①It is an important and interesting literary work by Franklin, an annual collection of proverbs.②Franklin’s pragmatism and sense of humor are fully demonstrated in this work.Persuasion①Persuasion is a writing meant to convince readers to think or act in a certain way.②A persuasive writer appeals to emotions or reason, offers opinions, and urges actions..Part 2: Literature of Romanticism①During Romantic period in American literature, the major writers like Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Melville and most of the ―fireside school‖ were from New England.②Besides, New England has become the center of literary creation, with Transcendentalism as the most influential literary trend.③Thus critics call this period of literary flourishment in New England the New England Renaissance.美国浪漫主义)①Romanticism refers to an artistic and intellectual movement originating in Europe in the late 18th century and characterized by a heightened interest in nature, emphasis on the individual’s expression of emotion and imagination, departure from the attitudes and forms of classicism, and rebellion against established social rules and conventions.②The romantic period in American literature stretches from the end of the 18th century through the outbreak of the Civil war.③Irving, Whitman and Thoreau are the representatives.New England poets (新英格兰诗人)①The New England poets were representatives of imitation.②They tried to imitate the forms and themes of there English brothers, such as Robert Burns and William Wordsworth.③Washington Irving and William Cullen Bryant are some of its representatives.It is a fictitious person Washington Irving created, he was supposed to be the author of A History of New York, by Diedrich knickerbocker, a rollicking burlesque of a current serious history of the early Dutch settlers which became a classic of humor.①It is a serial consisting of five related novels by James Fenimore Cooper—T he Pioneers, The Last of Mohicans, The Prairie, The Pathfinder, The Deerslayer.②The protagonist of the novel, Natty Bumppo, is a frontier hero, a prototype for the Western cowboy.③With the memorable main characters and a vast group of supporting characters, it becomes the greatest American novels about its past.①Natty Bumppo is the protagonist of the Leatherstocking Tales by James Fenimore Cooper, who goes by various names of Leatherstocking, Deerslayer, Pathfinder and Hawkeye.②He is a frontier hero, a prototype for the Western cowboy.美国超验主义)①Transcendentalism is the summit of the Romantic Movement in the history of American literature in the 19th century, which flourished from about 1835 to 1860.②Transcendentalists place emphasis on the importance of the Oversoul, the individual and nature. Specifically, they stressed intuitive understanding of God, without the help of the church, and advocated independence of the mind.③The most important representatives are Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. Ralph Waldo Emerson①Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American essayist, philosopher and poet, best remembered for leading the Transcendentalist movement of the mid 19th century.②He expressed the philosophy of Transcendentalism in his 1836 essay, Nature.③Besides, his The American Scholar was considered to be American’s ―Intellectual Declaration of Independence‖.①It is an all-pervading power for goodness from which all things come of which all things are a part.②It is a key doctrine for Transcendentalists.Self-reliance①Self-reliance is an essay written by American Transcendentalist philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson.②It contains the most solid statement of one of his repeating themes, the need for each individual to avoid conformity and false consistency, and follow his or her own instincts and ideas.③These ideas are considered a reaction to a commercial identify. Emerson calls for a return to individual identity.Individualism(个人主义)①Individualism is a moral, political, and social philosophy, which emphasizes individual liberty, the primary importance of the individual, and the “virtues of self-reliance”.②It is thus directly opposed to collectivism, social psychology and sociology, which consider the individual’s rapport to the society or community.③It is often confused with ―egoism‖, but an individualist need not be an egoist.①It is one of the American classics written by Henry David Thoreau.②It records his experiment in living at Walden pond, his sympathetic understanding of nature, his meditation on the meanings of life and his social criticism.③Compared with Emerson’s Nature, it is more radical and social-minded.Calvinism (加尔文主义)①Calvinism refers to the religious teachings of John Calvin and his followers.②Calvin taught that only certain persons, the elect, were chosen by God to be saved, and these could be get only by God’s grace.③It marked the work of Hawthorne and Melville.①It is one of the famous New England experiments in communal living, where some of the region’s most remarkable people gathered.②Hawthorne once lived there for a few months; the experience was reflected in his Blithedale Romance.Ambiguity①Ambiguity means two or more simultaneous interpretation of a word, phrase, action, orsituation, all of which can be supported by the context of a work.②Deliberate ambiguity can contribute to the effectiveness and richness of a work, for example, the open-ended conclusion of Hawthorn e’s Young Goodman Brown.③However, unintentional ambiguity obscures meaning and can confuse readers.①Symbolism is a literary device with which the author deliberately makes concrete objects (the symbols) evolve into some abstractions, usually moralistic or philosophical.②Hawthorne and Melville used this device frequently in their works.①She is a character in The Scarlet Letter.②She was the innocent daughter of Hester and the minister.③She is more of a symbol than a character. To Hester, she was the fruit of human love and physical passion; to Dimmesdale, she was a reminder of his sin; to Chillingworth she was an unforgettable shame and the motivation to take his revenge.①It refers to a novel or story with an allegorical feature, that is, charactering name, an actual or symbolic journey and usually a ―good vs. evil‖ theme.②Hawthorn e’s Young Goodman Brown and Melville’s Moby Dick are typical allegorical novels.①He is the narrator of the Moby Dick.②He is a cool observer and judge of the whole incident.③His thoughtful mind added a strong philosophical notion to the novel and his good knowledge in whaling made the novel an interesting book on whaling.自由体诗歌)①Free verse is a general term referring to the modern form of verse with no fixed foot, rhythm or rime schemes.②It was first written and labeled by a group of French poets of the late 19th century.③Free verse has been characteristic of the work of many American poets, including Walt Whitman, Ezra Pound and Carl Sandburg.①It is the best known poem in Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman.②It is a celebration of the individual as well as the common people.Edgar Allan Poe suggested that any literary work should have a single effect, that is a single theme, tone and atmosphere.炉边诗人)①William Cullen Bryant, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and James Russell Lowell constituted a group sometimes called the Fireside Poets.②They earned this nickname because they frequently used the hearth as an image of comfort and unity, a place where families gathered to learn and tell stories.③They wrote familiar poems for the common reader and interpreted the aspirations of the age to their countrymen and brought honor to the nation by achieving international fame.关于死亡的感想)①―T hanatopsis‖ is William Cullen Bryant’s best-known poem in the form of blank verse withthe theme of death.②It follows the tradition of the English ―graveyard school‖ and the central image is the ―mighty sepulcher‖, which will bring contentment to the dead.③The title of the poem means ―view of death‖①The period ranging from 1865 to 1914 has been preferred to as the age of Realism.②It was a literary doctrine that called for ―reality and truth‖ in the depiction of ordinary life. It is, in literature, an approach that attempts to describe life without idealization or romantic subjectivity.③Three dominant figures are William Dean Howells, Mark Twain and Henry James.达尔文主义)①It is a term that comes from Charles Darwin’s evolutionary theory.②Darwinists think that those who survive in the world are the fittest and those who fail to adapt themselves to the environment will perish.③Influenced by Darwinism, some American naturalist writers apply it as an explanation of human nature and social reality.Social Darwinism(社会达尔文主义)①It was an application of Charles Darwin’s evolutionary theory to the field of social relation.②Social Darwinist argued that social progress resulted from conflicts in which the fittest or best adapted individuals, or entire societies, would prevail.心理现实主义)①It is the realistic writing that probes deeply into the complexities of characters’thoughts and motivation.②Henry James’novel The Ambassadors is considered to be a masterpiece of psychological realism.Henry James often wrote about the conflicts, both amusing and serious, between American and European manners and customs. This is widely known as the ―international theme‖.地方特色主义)①Local Colorism is popular in the late 19th century, particularly among authors in the south of the U.S.②This 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.③A well-know local colorism author was Mark Twain with his book The Adventure of Huckleberry Finn.①It refers to the period roughly from the Civil War to the beginning of the 20th century, an age of seeming wealth and prosperity.②It comes from a novel, by Mark Twain and Warner, of the same title.Tall story/ Tall tale①It is a humorously exaggerated story of impossible feats.②It flourished in the oral tradition of the American frontier in the 19th century.③Mark Twain is famous for writing tall tale.美国自然主义)①Naturalism is a literary school that originated in France and came to American literature at the end of the 19th century.②The naturalistic writers attempted to achieve extreme objectivity and frankness, presenting characters of low social and economic classes who were dominated by their environment and heredity. Besides, their works were usually in an ironic and pessimistic tone.③Theodore Dreiser is a leading figure of this school with his masterpiece Sister Carrie. Determinism(宿命论)①Determinism is the philosophical belief that events are shaped by forces beyond the control of human beings.②Determinism, important to the literature at the end of the 19th century, assigns control especially to heredity and environment, without seeking their origins further than science can trace.③Determinism usually leads to the tragic fate of the characters in novel.Caroline Meeber①She is the heroine in Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie. She is a pretty, small-town girl who drifts to Chicago with vague ambition in pursuit of a job and fortune.②As a result, she is used by men and uses them in turn to become a successful actress.③She is a case in point that shows Dreiser’s naturalistic ideas about human conditions.①It refers to Theodore Dreiser’s three novels: T he Financer,The Titan and The Stoic.②The trilogy is based on the life of Charles T. Yerkes, an American transportation magnate.③In this trilogy Dreiser’s focus shifted from the pathos of the helpless protagonists at the bottom of the society to the power of the American financial tycoons in the late 19th century.①It is a French poetic form of 19 lines employing only two rhymes.②―The House on the Hill‖ by Edwin Arlington Robinson uses this poetic form.①Nietzsche’s ideal conception of man is to realize his philosophical principle.②It influenced writers like jack London, who created Wolf Larsen to represent this ideal in The Sea wolf.①He is the protagonist of The Sea wolf, who is the ruthless and amoral captain of the Ghost.②He is the embodiment of London’s ideal superman.①It was one of London’s best novels, which show how, in the Alaskan wilderness, a gentle dog gradually reverts to the ways of his wolf ancestors in order to survive.②It was the best expression of his belief in the Darwinistic notion that man also had the capacity to return to his brute beginnings.Slave Narratives①A uniquely American literary genre, a slave narrative is an autobiographical account of life as aslave.②Often written to expose the horrors of human bondage, it documents a slave’s experiences from his or her own point of view.③Encouraged by abolitionists, many freed or escaped slaves published narratives in the years before the Civil War.th①Imagism was a poetic school at the beginning of the 20th century.②Imagist poets strived for a simple, clear and vivid image, which in itself is the expression of art and meaning. The imagist poetry is a kind of free verse shaking of conventional metres and emphasizing the use of common speech and new rhythms.③This movement was led by Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot.Imagery (意象)①Imagery means words and phrases that create pictures ,or images in the readers’ mind.②In a literary text, it occurs when an author uses an object that is not really there, in order to create a comparison between one that is, usually evoking a more meaningful visual experience for the reader.③It is useful as it allows an author to add depth and understanding to his work, like a sculptor adding layer and layer to his statue, building it up into a beautiful work of art.①Written by T.S.Eliot, it is a poem of mystical conflict between faith and doubt, beautiful in its language if difficult in its symbolism.②It shows the author’s positive turn toward faith in life.①It is a popular theme in modern American literature derived from the poem The Waste Land by T.S.Eliot.②Terms associated with this theme are dehumanization, infertility of modern civilization and alienation.Waste land Painters(荒原派作家)①Waste land Painters refers to such writers as T.S.Eliot, F. Scott. Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner.②With their writings, all of them paint the post-war Western world as a waste land, lifeless and hopeless.迷失的一代)①It is a term first used by Gertrude Stein to describe the post-World 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 idealism, 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, Ernest Hemingway and John Dos Passos.①It is Wallace Steven’s most important poetic collection of poems.②It was part of a revolution in American poetry.③He adapted a variety of experimental styles, odd sounds, curious analogies and inscrutable titles.爵士乐时代)①The Jazz Age refers to the 1920s, a time marked by hedonism and excitement in the life of flaming youth.②With the rise of the Great Depression, materially rich, spiritually lost, the generation felt frustrated with life and indulged in pleasure.③Perhaps the most r epresentative literary work of the age is American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, highlighting what some describe as the decadence and hedonism, as well as the growth of individualism.American Dream(美国梦)①The American Dream is the faith held in America that through hard working, 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 generation.②Nowadays the American dream has led to an emphasis on material wealth as a measure of success and happiness.③The Great Gatsby is a highly symbolic meditation on 1920s America as a whole, in particular the disintegration of the American dream.①It is one of the Eggs of Long Island, which are the main settings for The Great Gatsby by Fitzgerald.②It was where Nick and Gatsby lived, with a suggestion of roughness and unsophisticated compared with the East Egg where the Buccanans lived.The Snopes Trilogy①It includes The Hamlet, The Town and The Mansion by Faulkner.②It traced the rise of the Snopes family, the representative of the ―poor whites‖and the embodiment of the degraded values.Hemingway code hero(海明威式英雄)①As a concept from Hemingway’s work, code hero is defined by Hemingway as a man who lives correctly, following the ideals of honour, courage, and endurance in a world that is sometimes chaotic, often stressful, and always painful.②A code hero is an average man of decidedly masculine tastes, a man who is sensitive and intelligent, a man of actions and of new words. This kind of people are usually spiritually strong, with certain skills, and most of them encounter death many times.③Santiago in The Old Man and the Sea is a typical Hemingway code hero.Santiago①Santiago is the protagonist of The Old Man and the Sea, written by American novelist Ernest Hemingway.②He is an old man who hasn’t caught by any fishes for 84 days. On the final journey he has a fight with shakes.③He embodies Hemingway’s definition of courage as ―grace under pressure‖, who never losesdignity in the face of death.Southern Renaissance(南方文艺复兴)①It is the revival of American Southern literature that began in the 1920s until the 1950s.②The writers affirmed their position on the superiority of the Southern lifestyle over that of the industrialized north.③William Faulkner and Katherine Anne Porter are writers of this type.先锋派)①It is a French military and political term for the vanguard of an army or political movement.②This term extended since the late 19th century in literature, which refers to the innovative writer who is ahead of the time both in themes and style.③In the 20th century American literature, writers like Faulkner and e.e.cummings can be called avant-garde writers.Yoknapatawpha(约克纳帕塔法)①Most of Faulkner’s literary works were set in the small county of American South. It is the fictional modification of his hometown, Oxford, Mississippi.②To Faulkner, this small piece of land was worth a life’s work in literary writing and here Faulkner created a world of imagination.③Yoknapatawpha has become an allegory of the Old South, with which Faulkner has managed successfully to show a panorama of the experience of the whole Southern society.Multiple point of view①Point of view is the vantage point from which a narrative is told. Novels sometimes, but infrequently, mix point of views.②William Faulkner is a master at presenting multiple points of view, showing within the same story how characters react differently to the same person or the same events.③The use of this technique gives the story a circular from with one event as the center and various points of view radiating from it. This technique makes it difficult for the reader to see the truth of the story.①A saga is a series of literary works dealing with the history of a family or clan.②Faulkner’s novels and short stories were interrelated by the locality and sometimes by the characters and as a whole they were regarded as sages of the clan or family.①He was an important American novelist of the 1920s and the first American writer to win the Nobel Prize for literature.②His important works include Main Street and Babbitt.Camera eye①It is a literary device developed by John Dos Passos, which provides an autobiographical account of his life corresponding to the time of the fictional narrative.②Written usually in a stream-of-consciousness style, they record the author’s activities and reflections at roughly the same time that events in the fictional narratives are taking place.③These impressionistic accounts recreate his changing moods in a turbulent age, showing that his private life is part of a greater cultural complexity.New Criticism(新批评派)①New criticism was a dominant trend in English and American literary criticism of the mid-20thcentury, from the 1920s to the early 1960s.②Its adherents were emphatic in their advocacy of close reading and attention to texts themselves, and their rejection of criticism based on extra-textual sources, especially biography.③John Crowe Ransom is a leading figure in this literary trend.It refers to the dramatic works produced by the playwrights of the early 20th century represented by Eugene O’Neil.Willy Loman①He is a character in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, which is a sad vision of American dream.②He keeps dreaming on success and living in illusions and lies, but he never seems to be aware of that.③It should be noted that his kind of success is never measured except in terms of dollars. Impressionism(印象主义)①It is a style of painting that gives the impression made by the subject on the artist without much attention to details writers accepted the same conviction that the personal attitudes and moods of the writer were legitimate elements in depicting character or setting or action.②Briefly, it is a style of writing characterized by the creation of general impressions and moods rather than realistic moods.哈莱姆文艺复兴)①Harlem Renaissance was a period of remarkable creativity in literature by African-Americans, from the end of the First World War in the 1920s.②They presented new insights into the American experience and paved the way for the flourishment of Black literature in the mid 20th century.③Distinguished writers who were part of the movement included Langston Hughes and Richard Wright.Part 5: After the WWIIThe Black Mountain Poets(黑山派诗人)①It is a loosely associated group of poets that formed an important part of the avant-garde of American poetry in the 1950s.②They published innovative yet disciplined verse in the Black Mountain Review, which became a leading forum of experimental verse.③This school is linked with Charles Olson’s theory of ―projective verse‖, which insisted on an open form based on the spontaneity of the breath pause in speech and the typewriter line in writing.The New York School(纽约派诗人)①The New York School was an informal group of American poets and painters active in 1950s New York City.②Their poetic subject matter was often light, violent, or observational, while writing style was often described as cosmopolitan and world-traveled. The poets often drew inspiration from Surrealism and the contemporary avant-garde art movement, in particular the action painting of their friends in the New York City art circle.。

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）.。

Transcendentalism: It is a philosophical view, a notion, a concept, an idea, a way of looking at things, a set of attitudes about man, God, and the universe, a way of how to get to the basic truth of the universe. Transcendentalism was neither logical nor systematized. It exalted feeling over reason, individual expression over the restraints of law and custom.They believe in the transcendence of "over soul", an all-pervading power for goodness from which all things come and of which all things are a part. Representatives are Emerson，believed that man was a part of absolute good, Thoreau，beheld divinity in the “unspotted innocence” of nature.American Romanticism:①Romanticism was a rebellion against the objectivity of rationalism. For romantics, the feelings, intuitions and emotions were more important than reason and common sense. They stressed the close relationship between man and nature, emphasized individualism and affirmed the inner life of the self. ②American writers shared some common features with the English Romanticists, while American romanticism exhibited from the very outset distinct features of its own.③The American Puritanism asa cultural heritage exerted great influences over American moral values. ④Americanromantics tended more to moralize rather than to entertain.⑤Romantic values were prominent in American politics, art, and philosophy until the Civil War.American Puritanism: The “Puritan”was “a would-be purifier”. Puritans wanted to make pure their religious beliefs and practices, and believed that God decides everything and they are God’s chosen people. Their purposes are for religious freedom and political freedom. Hard work, thrift, piety, and sobriety were the Puritan spirit that dominated much of the earliest American writing (including the sermons, books, and letters of such noted Puritan clergyman as John Cotton and Cotton Mather). The major intellectual spokesmen of Puritanism are John Cotton, Roger Williams.Naturalism: A new and harsher realism,a view of human beings as passive victims of natural forces and social environment. The naturalists emphasized that the world was amoral, that men and women had no free will, that their lives were controlled by heredity and the environment; the religious “truths” were illusory, that the destiny of humanity was misery in life and oblivion in death. Representatives are：Stephen Crane, Frank Norris, Jack London , Theodore DreiserRealism: It appeared in the United States in the literature of local color, an amalgam of romantic plots and realistic descriptions of things was immediately observable. The dialects, customs, sights. Important figures of realism: William Howells; Hamlin Garland; Mark Twain; Henry JamesFree verse：A kind of poetry that doesn’t’t conform to any regular meter and rhyme.The difference between free verse and blank verse is that blank verse has no rhyme, but it should be iambic pentameter.Lost Generation：①It refers to the post-World War I generation, but specifically a group of expatriates who left America and formed a community of writers and artists in Paris, involved with other European novelists and poets in their experimentation on new modes of thought and expression. ②The term stems from a remark made by Gertrude Stein to Ernest Hemingway, “You are all a lost generation”, of which Hemingway used “the Lost Generat ion” as an epigram to The Sun Also Rises. ③The generation was “lost” in the sense that its inherited values were no longer relevant in the postwar world because of its spiritual alienation from a U. S. that seemed to its members to be hopelessly provincial, materialistic and emotional barren. ④The term embraces Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Pound, Williams, and many other writers who made Paris the center of their literary activities in the 1920sDeism: is a religious philosophy and movement that derives the existence and nature of God from reason and personal experience.Emersonian Transcendentalist:①It is actually a philosophical school which absorbed some ideological concerns of American Puritanism and European Roma nticism, with itsfocus on the intuitive knowledge of human beings to grasp the absolute in the universe and the divinity of man.②Ralph Emerson bases his religion on an intuitive belief in an ultimate unity, which he calls “over-soul.” He be lieves that there should be emotional communication between an individual soul and the universal “over-soul.”③Ralph Emerson puts stress on the ideal individual, a self-reliant man, who ④For Ralph Emerson, nature is emblematic of the spiritual world, alive with God’s overwhelming presence; hence, it exercises a healthy and restorative influence on human mind.Enlightenment and American Revolution:1). all the leaders of the revolution were influenced by the Enlightenment, representatives: Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, etc. 2). The new nation was set on the basic ideas and principles of the Enlightenment.Enlightenment：1).an intellectual movement 2)the power of human reason 3)the scientific idea;4)the idea of progressModernism：It is loosely a synonym of anything contemporary. Strictly, especially in literary criticism, this began in the late 19th century and the theory of psycho-analysis as its theoretical base. They pay more attention to the psychic time than the chronological one. 现代主义的标志：T. S. Eliot’s The Waste LandRomanticism Characteristics: Romantics frequently shared certain general characteristics: moral enthusiasm, faith in the value of individualism and intuitive perception, and a presumption that the natural world was a source of goodness and man’s societies a source of corruptionLocal colorism: Realism first appeared in the United States in the literature of local color, an amalgam of romantic plots and realistic descriptions of things was immediately observable;the dialects, customs, sights, and sounds of regional America. Bret Harte was the first American writer of local color to achieve wide popularity, presenting stories of western mining towns with colorful gamblers, outlaws, and scandalous women. Harte, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Kate Chopin, Joel Chandler Harris, and Mark Twain provided regional stories and tales of the life of America’s Westerners, Southerners, and Easterners. Local color fiction reached its peak of popularity in the 1880s, but by the turn of the century it had begun to decline.How does Sister Carrie embody Dreiser’s naturalistic belief?①In this novel, Dreiser expressed his naturalistic pursuit by expounding the purposelessness of life and attacking the conventional moral standards. ②The novel best embodies his naturalistic belief that while men are controlled by heredity, instinct and chance, a few extraordinary and unsophisticated human beings refuse to accept their fate wordlessly and instead strive, unsuccessfully, to find meaning and purpose for their existence. ③To Sister Carrie, the world is cold and harsh. Alone, helpless, she moves along like a mechanism driven by desire and catches blindly at any opportunities for a better existence, opportunities first offered by Drouet, and then by Hurstwood. A feather in the wind, she was totally at the mercy of forces she cannot comprehend, still less to say control. The famous picture of Carrie sitting in a rocking chair in her room in the evening, rocking back and forth, is a picture of Carrie’s drifting with the tide. She has no control, no freedom of will.。

美国文学史名词解释及五大流派分析Native American oral literature is of three types: origin stories, trickster tales, and historical narratives.Origin stories are those dramatizing tribal interpretations of how the earth originated or of how people established relationships with plants, animals and the cosmos Trickster tales are humorous tales featuring trickster characters. Trickster figures are people in the form of animals or half animal and half human. They often exist on the margins of the social worldHistorical narratives are diverse in kind. Of this vast historical literature, many stories recount European colonization from the perspective of Native Americans. Puritanism A Puritan was any person who tried to become more pure through worship and doctrine. The Puritans' way of life and set of beliefs were called Puritanism. The most important parts of Puritanism were piety (obeying religious rules), dressing simply, and living a modest life. And “original sin(原罪)” and “grace” are two important premises in Puritanism.Witchcraft trials in the 17th century were a deeply troubling yet significant phenomenon with the puritan community. In 1542, the English Parliament made a capital offense. Subsequently, several hundred people were accused and hanged. A witch was supposed to be someone who performed evil deeds in the service of Satan. They were believed to have familiars or animals that would do evil for them. Witchcraft trials-so it is argued- were perhaps a way to punish improper behavior or to restrict power.Enlightenment, starting in the 17th century with the scientific revolution, was a momentous intellectual movement that gradually established a system of modern values that emphasize reason, science, knowledge and progress. In America, enlightenment ideas nurtured a greater participatory and interest in worldly affairs: Americans gained greater confidence that a more reasonable political and social order could be established. Under the influence of the Enlightenment, Americans also learned to take actions to resist oppressive power and to criticize and reform government. The Enlightenment developed quite rigorously in France and otherEuropean countries in the 18th century. It was also in the 18th that influences of the Enlightenment reached the colonies of America.AutobiographyNegative capability was first used by the British romantic poet John Keats. In the letter written in December 1817, Keats defined is as the capability in good poets of including uncertainties and other negative emotions without stretching for reason and without losing reason. The negative capability, by immersing us in ambiguities, doubts and other negative emotions, in fact strengthens us and improves our judgment by complicating our existing system of judgment. It is therefore a sign of the kind of aesthetic sophistication found only in good poets.Free verse is the kind of poetry that does not follow a regular meter, does not rhyme and does not use regular line lengths. And it is known as Walt Whitman’s major technical innovation.Local colorism is a unique variation of American literary realism. Generally, the works by local colorists are concerned with the life of a small region or province. This kind of fiction depicts the characters from a specific setting or of an era, which are marked by its customs, dialects, landscape, or other peculiarities that have escaped standardizing cultural influence. Tasks of local colorists: to write or present local characters of their region in truthful depiction distinguished from others, usually a very small part of the world.local color writing, a kind of fiction that came to prominence in the USA in the late 19th century, and was devoted to capturing the unique customs, manners, speech, folklore, and other qualities of a particular regional community, usually in humorous short stories. Local color writings are just as dependent upon a specific geographical location, but they lend more emphasis to the local details by tapping into its folklore, history, mannerism, customs, beliefs and speech. Above all, dialect peculiarities are the defining characteristics of local color writings.Imagism was a movement in early 20th-century Anglo-American poetry that favored precision of imagery and clear, sharp language. Imagism called for a return to what were seen as more Classical values, such as directness of presentation and economy oflanguage, as well as a willingness to experiment with non-traditional verse forms. Transcendentalism is a religious and philosophical movement that developed during the late 1820s and 1830s in the Eastern region of the United States as a protest against the general state of spirituality. And Transcendentalism energized the Romantic Movement that had started earlier. Transcendentalists were strong believers in the power of the individual and divine messages. Their beliefs are closely linked with those of the Romantics.Among the transcendentalists' core beliefs was the inherent goodness of both people and nature. They believe that society and its institutions—particularly organized religion and political parties—ultimately corrupt the purity of the individual. They have faith that people are at their best when truly "self-reliant" and independent. It is only from such real individuals that true community could be formed.As an intensified expression of romanticism, Transcendentalism shares the characteristics of romanticism and its doctrines found their greatest literary advocates in Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau.The publication of Ralph Waldo Emerson's essay Nature is usually considered the moment at which transcendentalism became a major cultural movement.Emerson pronounces the fundamental premise about Nature in Transcendentalism, that is, Nature is not simply the Not-Me but also the universal mind whose signs can be read by the individual with his eyes, heart, and mind.And The Over-Soul, the soul of all individuals commune with the great universal soul, presents the more mystical side of Emerson and the basis of Transcendentalism. It refers to the profound and all-encompassing spiritual nature to which each individual soul should lie open.Thoreau, Emerson’s disciple, practiced the self-reflective and self-reliant Transcendentalism that Emerson preached. Today he is remembered by two of his work: Walden and the essay “Civil disobedience”.Romanticism The romantic period, one of the most important periods in the history of American literature, stretches from the end of the 18th century to the outbreak of the Civil War. It started with the publication of Washington Irving’s The Sketch Book.It is also called the “American Renaissance”Here is a summary of some general characteristics of romanticism.First, romanticism celebrates the triumph of feeling and intuition over reason. A philosophical cornerstone for the romantic resistance to rationalism was laid down by the German philosopher Immanuel Kant in his Critique of Pure Reason. Since romantic writers placed a higher value on the free expression of emotion and on the power of imagination, they showed greater interests in the psychic states. As a result, characters in romantic stories sometimes showed extremes of sensitivity.Second, Gothic styles, Oriental styles and other exotic styles were favored by romanticists.Third, romanticism exalted the individual over society, thus showing a strong disliking for the bondage of convention and customs. As it is sometimes the contradiction, nostalgia for the past traditions is also a romantic strain.Fourth, nature is believed to be the source of goodness and the antithesis of society as society tend to be corrupt. A related manifestation is the moral enthusiasm exhibited in some romantic writers.Fifth, cultural nationalism- the proud belief in one’s own cultural genius and heritage- is also a striking characteristic of romanticism. Johnann Gottfried von Herder proposed the idea of Volk which had since become synonymous with cultural nationalism. With Volk, Herder argued for the unique characteristics of a people or nation. Volkgeist , a derivative, thus connotes the celebration of geniuses created by and for a nationalist culture.American romanticism was influenced by European romanticism. While showing characteristics of European romanticism, American romantic writers differed from their European counterparts in that they did not show the kind of political racialism as seen in European romanticism.Realism Following a conventional view, 1865 and 1914 are regarded as the beginning and ending dates for the age of American realism. In the 50-year period, realism was the prevalent literary mode. But realism, as a broader term, is also inclusive of naturalism, regionalism, and local color writing.Realism reacts against romanticism’s emphasis on intuition, imagination, a dreamy sense of wonder, idealism, faith in nature, and general optimistic belief in the goodness of things.Realists claim that they seek truth that is verifiable by experience and has practical consequences.Realism is embedded in a mimetic theory of art.Realists try to describe a small portion of knowable world in order to maintain objectivity.Local color and regional writings constituted the early stage of realism. Naturalism is another variation of realism in that it follows or implies a biological or socioeconomic determination.The foremost American realists were William Dean Howells realism’s most vocal proponent.Henry James，the greatest of the realists and often called “the father of the psychological novel”. And his most three famous works are The Wing of Dove, The Ambassadors, and the Golden Bowl. The two best-known novellas are Daisy Miller and The Turn of the Screw.Edith Wharton, Ellen Glasgow and Mark Twain (1835-1910) is usually counted among the realists, although his fidelity in capturing the essence of a region and its people often departs from realism by presenting exaggerated characters in lurid action and improbable melodrama.Naturalism was a term created by Emile Zola, a French novelist. It refers to the idea that art and literature should show the world and people scientifically and exactly as they are. American literary naturalism developed out of literary realism and shares some o f its characteristics. Like realism, the naturalists in America strove for objectivity and were interested in the commonplace in contemporary life. But unlike the realists, they were more conscious of their philosophical foundations which draw upon scientific or socioeconomic determinations for its view of humanity. Applying these principles, naturalist writers tended to produce literature that is pessimistic, expressing their belief that humans react to thins they cannot control, such as thebiological need for sex and self-preservation, internal stresses, and environmental forces.Modernism is the term applied to an international movement dominating the arts of Western culture from shortly after the turn of the century until around 1950.In general, Modernism discloses a rejection of tradition and a hostile attitude toward the immediate past.Firstly, American modernism is the process of American literature merging into the mainstream of Western modern culture.Secondly, literary modernists are just as concerned with reality as the realists are. However, the modernists have a more complex view of reality. Modernists believe that reality is experienced from different perspectives and at different levels. Thirdly, there is the question of paradigm from modernism. For a long time, it was not uncommon to assume that modernism is an obsessive stylistic experimentation informed by “waste land” view of existence.Based on the afore-mentioned observations, American modernism is less nationalistic but more European and modernists are more aware of how language constitutes and shapes realityIn literature prominent Modernists were T. S. Eliot the waste land, Ezra Pound the cantos.。

美国文学史总结从第二次世界大战后到新世纪，美国文学还有一个值得一提的发展现象——通俗文学（Popular Literature）日益受到重视，过去以低级杂志（pulps）为阵地的通俗小说有了平装本和精装本，进了图书馆和大学。

战后兴起的后现代主义思潮为研究通俗文学起了推波助澜的作用，学术界和思想界对于通俗文学观念的变化，刺激了通俗文学的进一步发展。

不但许多传统的通俗小说保持强劲的发展势头，而且诞生了许多新型通俗小说。

这些传统型和创新型的小说，很多都进入了《纽约时报》的“畅销书排行榜”（New York Times Best Sellers）。

每一本畅销小说诞生后，都会被改编成电影、电视剧；原创电影、电视剧在走红后也很快派生出同名畅销小说。

畅销小说和火爆的影视剧交相辉映，构成战后美国通俗文学的繁荣景象。

50年代，历史西部小说（Historical Western）占据了通俗文学的主导地位，随后现代犯罪小说（Modern Crime Fiction）迅速崛起，在60年代末和70年代初压倒了其他一切通俗小说。

70、80年代是美国通俗小说大发展时期，诞生了诸如甜蜜野蛮小说（Sweet-Savage Romance）、高科技惊险小说（High-Technical Thriller）之类的新型通俗小说。

此外，传统的女性言情小说（Women's Fiction）、科幻小说（Science Fiction）和恐怖小说（Horror Fiction）也出现有力回潮。

90年代，社会暴露小说（Social Expose Fiction）逐渐成为美国通俗文学领域的主导力量，如此格局一直维持到世纪末。

像马里奥·普佐（Mario Puzo）的《教父》（The Godfather）、斯蒂芬·金（Stephen King）的系列恐怖小说、迈克尔·克莱顿（Michael Crichton）的《侏罗纪公园》（Jurassic Park）和《失落的世界》（The Lost World）、玛格丽特·杜鲁门（Margaret Truman）的“谋杀案”系列政治暴露小说等，都是我国读者较为熟悉的美国通俗文学作品。

美国文学1.殖民地时期及独立革命战争时期的美国文学Philip Freneau（菲利普﹒弗瑞诺）(1)He was considered as the “Poet of the American revolution” as the most outstanding poet in America of the 18th century. (2)He was a satirist, a bitter polemicist. (3)He wrote many poems encouraging revolution and encouraging the glory that would be won by overcoming the British.The Wild Honey Suckle 《野金银花》The Indian Burying Ground 《印第安人的殡葬地》The British Ship《英国囚船》The Rising Glory of America 《美洲光辉的兴起》(1)The Wild Honey Suckle is Freneau’s best lyric (2)It anticipated the 19th—century use of simple nature imagery.The Indian Burying Ground anticipated romantic primitivism and the celebration of the “Noble Savage”.Thomas Jefferson（托马斯﹒杰弗逊）The Declaration of Independence《独立宣言》(1)The Declaration of Independence was adopted July 4, 1776. (2)It not only announced the birth of a new nation, but also expounded a philosophy of human freedom. (3)It lists 13 cruelties committed by the King of Britain. (4)The famous lines are: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”(5) Thomas Jefferson’s thought was inspired by the thoughts of John Locke.浪漫主义时期的美国文学Calvinism（加尔文主义）(1)Calvinism refers to the religious teachings of John Calvin and his followers. (2) Calvin taught that only certain persons, the elect, were chosen by God to be saved, and these could be saved only by God’s grace. (3) Calvinism forms the basis for the doctrines and practices of the Huguenots, Puritans, Presbyterians, and the Reformed churches.American Romanticism（美国浪漫主义）(1) American Romanticism is one of the most important periods in the history of American literature.(2) It was a rebellion against the objectivity of rationalism. For romantics, the feelings ,intuitions and emotions were more important than reason and common sense. They emphasized individualism, placing the individual against the group. They affirmed the inner life of the self, and cherished strong interest in the past, the wild, the remote, the mysterious and the strange. They stressed the element “Americanness” in their works.(3)It started with the publication of Washington Irving’s The Sketch Book and ended with Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Gra ss. (4) Being a period of the great flowering of American literature, it is also called “the American Renaissance.” (5) American Romantici sts include such literary figures as Washington Irving, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, WilliamCullen Bryant, Henry Wordsworth Longfellow, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville, Walt Whitman and some others.Transcendentalism（超验主义）(1) Transcendentalism refers to the religious and philosophical doctrines of Ralph Waldo Emerson and others in New England in the middle 1800’s, which emphasized the importance of individual inspiration and intuition, the Over—soul, and Nature. Other concepts that accompanied Transcendentalism include the idea that nature is ennobling and the idea that the individual is divine and, therefore, self—reliant. (2)New England Transcendentalism is the product of a combination of native American Puritanism and European Romanticism.Free verse（自由体诗歌）(1)Free verse means the rhymed or unrhymed poetry composed without paying attention to conventional rules of meter.(2) Free verse was originated by a group of French poets of the late 19th century. (3)Their purpose was to free themselves from the restrictions of formal metrical patterns and to recreate instead the free rhythms of natural speech. (4)Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass is, perhaps, the most notable example.Symbol（象征）(1) Symbol means an act, a person, a thing, or a spectacle that stands for something else, usually something less palpable than the named symbol. (2) The relationship between the symbol and its referent is not often one of simple equivalence. Allegorical symbols usually express a neater equivalence with what they stand for than the symbols found in modern realistic fiction.Theme（主题）(1) Theme means the unifying point or general idea of a literary work. (2) It provides an answer to such questions as “What is the work about”(3)Each literary work carries its own theme or themes. For example, King Lear has many themes, among which are blindness and madness.现实主义与自然主义时期的美国文学American Naturalism(美国自然主义)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.American 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.Dreiser is a leading figure of his school.Darwinism(达尔文主义)Darwinism is a term that comes from Charles Darwin’s evolutionary theory.Darwinist think that those who survive in the world are the fittest and those who fail to adapt themselves to the environment will perish. They believe that man has evolved from lower forms of life. Humans are special not because God created them in His image, but because they have successfully adapted to changing environmental conditions and have passed on their survival-making characteristics genetically.Influenced by this theory, some American naturalist writers apply Darwinism as an explanation of human nature and social reality.Local Colorists(乡土作家)Generally speaking, the writing of local colorists are concerned with the life of a small, well-defined region or province. The characteristic setting is the isolated small town.Local colorists were consciously nostalgic historian of a vanishing way of life, recorders of 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 locale.Major local colorists include Hamlin Garland, Mark Twain , Kate Chopin, etc.Theodore Dreiser(西奥多·德莱塞)He is generally acknowledged as one of America’s literary naturalists.Works Sister Carrie《嘉莉妹妹》(1) Sister Carrie tells about a poor country girl (Carrie Meeber) who goesto Chicago to pursue the American Dream.(2) The novel shows Dreiser’s naturalistic view about life by illustratingthe purposelessness of life.(3) The dominant symbol of the novel is the rocking chair that is the rocking chair that is indicative of the uncertainty of life.Jennie Gerhardt《珍妮姑娘》Trilogy of Desire《欲望》三部曲a. The Financier《金融家》b. The Titan《巨人》c. The Stoic《斯多葛》The Genius 《天才》An American Tragedy 《美国的悲剧》(1) An American Tragedy is Dreiser’s greatest work and the title of theBook implies Dreiser intention to tell us that it is the social pressurethat makes Clyde’s downfall inevitable.(2) Clyde’s tragedy is a tragedy that depends upon the American socialsystem which encouraged people to pursue the “dream of success ” atall costs.Sherwood Anderson (舍伍德·安德森)He has been called the first of America’s “psychological writers” because he first explored the motivations and frustrations of his fictional characters in terms of Sigmund Freud’s theories of psychology.He tremendously influenced such writers as Hemingway and Faulkner.Works Winesburg, Ohio《小镇畸人》(1) Winesburg, Ohio is a collection of 23 interrelated stories ofsamll-town life. These stories sound morbid and grotesque, butUnderneath them runs a strong desire to communicate, and love andbe loved.(2) It won the author a foremost position in contemporary Americanliterary.现代时期的美国文学The Lost Generation (迷惘的一代)The Lost Generation is a term first used by Gertrude Stein to describe the post-World 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.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.The three best-know representatives of Lost Generation are F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and John Dos Passos.Others usually included among the list are Sherwood Anderson, Kay Boyle, Hart Crane, Ford Maddox Ford and Zelda Fitzgerald.Imagism (意象派诗歌)Imagism came into being in Britain ans 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 regards rhythm, to compose in the sequence of the musical phrase, not in the sequence of metronome.Ezra Pound’s In a Station of the Metro is a well-known imagist poem.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.The beat writers produced a body of written work controversial both for its advocacy ofnon-conformity and for its non-conforming style.The major beat writings are Jack Kerouac’s On the Road and Allen Ginsberg’s Howl. Howl became the manifesto of the Beat Generation.American Dream (美国梦)American Dream refers to the dream of material success, in which one, regardless of social status, acquires wealth and gains success by working hard and good luck.In literature, the theme of American Dream recurs. In The Great Gatsby, Gatsby comes from the west to the east with the dream of material success. By bootlegging and other illegal means he fulfilled his dream but ended up being killed. The novel tells the shattering of American Dream rather than its success.Expressionism (表现主义)Expressionism refers to a movement in Germany early in the 20th century, in which a number of painters sought to avoid the representation of external reality and, instead, to project a highly personal or subjective vision of the world.Expressionism is a reaction against realism or naturalism, aiming at presenting a post-war world violently distorted.Works noted for expressionism include: Eugene O’Neill’s The Emperor Jones, James Joyce’s Ulysses and Finnegans Wake, and T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, etc..In a further sense, the term is sometimes applied to the belief that literary works are essentially expressions of their own authors’ moods and thoughts; this has been the dominant assumption about literature since the rise of Romanticism.Feminism (女权主义)(1) Feminism incorporates both a doctrine of equal rights for women and an ideology of social transformation aiming to create a world for women beyond simple social equality.(2) In general, feminism is the ideology of women’s liberation based on the belief that women suffer injustice because of their sex. Under this broad umbrella various feminists offer differing analyses of the causes, or agents, of female oppression.(3) Definitions of feminism by feminists tend to be shaped by their training, ideology or race. So, for example, Marxist and Socialist feminists stress the interaction within feminism of class with gender and focus on social distinctions between men and women. Black feminists argue much more for an integrated analysis which can unlock the multiple systems of oppression.Hemingway Code Hero (海明威式英雄)Hemingway Hero, also called code hero, is one who, wounded but strong, more sensitive, enjoys the pleasures of life (sex, alcohol, sport) in face of ruin and death, and maintains, through some notion of a code, an ideal of himself.Barnes in The Sun Also Rises, Henry in A Farewell to Arms and Santiago in The Old Man and the Sea are typical of Hemingway Hero.Harlem Renaissance (哈莱姆文艺复兴)（1）Harlem Renaissance refers to a period of outstanding literary vigor and creativity that occurred in the United States during the 1920s.（2）The Harlem Renaissance changed the images of literature created by many black and white American writers. New black images were no longer obedient and docile, instead they showed a new confidence and racial pride.(3) The leading figures are Langston Hughs, James Weldon Johnson, Wallace Thurman, etc.. Impressionism (印象主义)Impressionism is a style of painting that gives the impression made by the subject on the artist without much attention to details. Writers accepted the same conviction that the personal attitudes and moods of the writer were legitimate elements in depicting character or setting or action. Briefly, it is a style of literature characterized by the creation of general impressions and moods rather than realistic moods.现代时期的美国文学Ezra Pound(1) He was identified as the father of modern American poetry and the most influential leader of the Imagist Movement.(2) He had an enormous influence on the modernist writers in Britain and America after WWII.Works The Cantos《诗章》In a Station of the Metro 《在地铁站里》(1) In a Station of the Metro serves as a typical example of the Imagist ideas.(2) The one-image poem is an observation of the poet of the human faces seen in a Paris subway station.(3) “Apparition” suggests a visible appearance of something not present, and especially of a dead person. Here the faces of people in the subway station are compared to petals on a wet, black bough.A Pact 《盟约》(1) A Pact is a poem in which Pound started to find some agreement between “Whitmanesque” free verse, which he had attacked for its carelessness in composition.(2) In the poem “broke the new wood” means that Whitman made experiments with the conventions of traditional poetry. “commerce” means the exchange of views or attitudes. The poem indicates that Pound would like to learn from the free verse and show respect to Whitman.。

（一）About Puritanism清教主义1.“would-be purifier”They wanted to purify the English Church and to restore church worship to the “pure and unspotted”condition of its earlier days .They opposed the elaborate rituals of the English Church. They believed that the Bible was the revealed word of God, therefore, people should guide their daily behavior with the Bible.2.Basic Puritan Beliefs（1）Total Depravity - through Adam's fall, every human is born sinful - concept of Original Sin.（2）Unconditional Election - God "saves" those he wishes - only a few are selected for salvation - concept of predestination（3）Limited Atonement - Jesus died for the chosen only, not for everyone.（4）Irresistible Grace - God's grace is freely given, it cannot be earned or denied. Grace is defined as the saving and transfiguring power of God.（5）Perseverance of the "saints" - those elected by God have full power to interpret the will of God, and to live uprightly. If anyone rejects grace after feeling its power in his life, he will be going against the will of God - something impossible in Puritanism.2.The impact of Puritanism (1)High standards of moral excellence and conscience ;(2) Emphasis on education(3)Hard working, thrifty, independent spirit;(4)“Chosen people”consciousness .(诺斯替教）（二）Enlightenment(启蒙运动)Enlightenment is man’s leaving his self-caused immaturity.Immaturity is the incapacity to use one's intelligence without the guidance of another.@A term used to describe the trends in thought and letters in Europe and the American colonies during the 18th century prior to the French Revolution. The precursors of the Enlightenment can be traced to the 17th century and earlier.@The phrase was frequently employed by writers of the period itself, convinced that they were emerging from centuries of darkness and ignorance into a new age enlightened by reason, science, and a respect for humanity.（三）Romanticism （浪漫主义）As an approach in literary creation, romanticism is ever present in literature of all times. But as a literary trend or movement, it occurred and developed in Europe and America at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries under the historical background of the Industrial Revolution around 1760 and the French Revolution (1789-1799). @ A movement in the literature of virtually every country of Europe, the United States, and Latin America that lasted from about 1750 to about 1870,@It was characterized by reliance on the imagination and subjectivity, freedom of thought and expression, and an idealization of nature.（四）Transcendentalism（超验主义）Transcendentalism is the summit of the Romantic Movement in theU.S. in the first half of the 19th century. It asserts the existence of an ideal spiritual reality that transcends the empirical and scientific and is knowable through intuition .Transcendentalists place emphasis on the importance of the Over-soul, the individual and Nature. It was, in essence, romantic idealism on Puritan soil.（五）Free versepoetry without a fixed beat or regular rhyme scheme.(六）Blank verse“Blank verse” is poetry written in regular metrical but unrhymed lines, almost always iambic pentameters.（七）American Realism (1865—1918)（现实主义）American Realism came in the latter half of the nineteenth century as a reaction against Romanticism. It stresses truthful treatment of material. It focuses on commonness of the lives of the common people, and emphasizes objectivity and offers an objective rather than an idealistic view of human nature and human experience. The three dominant figures of the period are William Howells, Mark Twain, and Henry James.（八）Definition of Local Color（乡土特色）1.Literature that focuses on the characters, dialect, customs, topography（地形）, and other features particular to a specific region that exploits the speech, dress, mannerisms, and habits of thatspecific region .2.Twain’s Local colorismTwain preferred to present social life through portraits of the local characters of his regions, including people living in that area, the landscape, and other peculiarities like the customs, dialects, costumes and so on. So the rich material of his boyhood experience on the Mississippi became endless resources for his fiction, and the Mississippi valley and the west became his major theme.（九）American Naturalism (1890s-1910s) （自然主义）1.Historical Background:—The spread of industrialization created extremes of wealth and poverty. —Farmers were still going westward, but frontiers were about the close. They had to depend on the transcontinental railway to transport their products.—The spread of Darwin’s theory of evolution changed people’s ideology.2. Thematically, naturalistic writers：-- wrote detailed descriptions of the lives of the downtrodden and of the abnormal-- had frank treatment of human passion and sexualit-- were concerned about how men and women were overwhelmed by the forces of environment and by the forces of heredity-- made detailed documentation of life: nothing but the truth, more naked and wicked than realism-- created gloomy and pessimistic atmosphere3. Here are the major features of naturalism.Humans are controlled by laws of heredity and environment.The universe is cold, godless, indifferent and hostile to human desires. @Naturalistic writers are pessimistic. They choose their subjects from the lower.(10)Modernism（现代主义）(1)appeared after World War I(2)cutting off history and a sense of despair and loss(3)refusing to accept the traditional concept of value and all traditional ideological influences.1. BackgroundIn the first world war, America got considerable benefits with animal cost, but many artist and thinkers with suffering consciousness felt the terribleness of modern wars.Their heroism in mind gradually disappeared. Some of them going into battle suffered the sight of blood and all kinds of disasters. After back to America, they found that the social reality had experienced great change.2.Features or changes of the period(1)Increasing industrialization (2)Deepening urbanization(3)High speed development of technology and science(4 )Trauma of the first world war(5)1930s economic depression(6)Collapse of social value system(7)Dropping moral standards(8)Common depression , fear ,sense of loss3. Features of the worksFreud’s psychoanalysis ,William James stream of consciousnesstheory and archetypal symbol had great impact on the writers of modern American writers. They pay special attention to the inner world of the people, during this period ,the most compelling literature movement is the writer’s self exile, also known as the second American renaissance .(十一）Novelists ——the Lost Generation“迷惘的一代”(1920s) The novelists who produced a literature of disillusionment in the aftermath of World War I, and some of them lived abroad:(1)Used their wartime experience as the basis for their works (2)were cut off from old values yet unable to come to terms with the new era(3)wondered pointlessly and restlessly(4)were frustrated by the war(5)spokesman ——Hemingway(十二）The Jazz AgeThe Jazz Age is the nickname in America of the decade of the 1920’s, beginning from 1919 to the Crash at the end of 1929.These ten years were, for Americans, a time of carefree prosperity, isolated from the world’s problem, bewildering great social change, and a feverish pursuit of pleasure.These were the ten years when the First World War was just over, when new inventions and manufacturing techniques greatly changed the way people lived; when people moved from the countryside in great numbers; when women won the right to vote and many started to earn their own money; when cars,washing machines,radios and vacuum cleaners became commonplace; and when millions of people lived beyond their means and went into debt in order to obtain such things while the middle class frantically pursued individual “success”and personal enjoyment. They lived a rich, extravagant, frivolous moneymaking life, and it was this style of living gave the decade of the 1920’s such nickname as the “Jazz Age”, the “Dollar Decade”, and the “Roaring Twenties.”（十三）Imagism(1900S-1910S)(意象派)The Imagist movement included English and American poets in the early twentieth century who wrote free verse and were devoted to "clarity of expression through the use of precise visual images." The Imagist Movement began in London and later spread to the US. It underwent three major phases in its development.（十四）IronyA contrast or discrepancy between what is said and what is meant or between what happens and what is expected to happen in life and in literature.。

美国文学史复习要点手动1.早期美国文学（17世纪-18世纪）-早期美国文学的发展受到清教徒移民和殖民地环境的影响。

-早期作品主题包括宗教信仰、苦难和恐惧。

-著名作家有威廉·布拉德福和乔纳森·爱德华兹。

2.启蒙时期文学（18世纪）-美国启蒙时期的文学受到欧洲启蒙思想的影响。

-作品主题包括理性、自由和平等。

-著名作家有本杰明·富兰克林和汤玛斯·潘恩。

3.罗曼主义时期文学（19世纪早期）-罗曼主义时期美国文学反对启蒙时期的理性主义。

-作品主题包括个人感情、自然和超自然。

-著名作家有华盛顿·欧文和爱默生。

4.特拉华文学（19世纪中期）-特拉华文学是19世纪中期美国文学的重要流派。

-作品主题包括农民和工人的生活以及美国西部探险精神。

-著名作家有赫尔曼·梅尔维尔和华尔特·惠特曼。

5.现实主义和自然主义时期文学（19世纪末-20世纪初）-现实主义和自然主义时期的文学关注社会问题和个人命运。

-作品主题包括工业化、城市化和阶级冲突。

-著名作家有马克·吐温和斯蒂芬·克莱恩。

6.现代主义时期文学（20世纪初-中期）-现代主义时期的文学反对传统形式和价值观。

-作品表现迷失、不安和心理困惑。

-著名作家有欧内斯特·海明威和F·斯科特·菲茨杰拉德。

7.后现代主义时期文学（20世纪中期-现在）-后现代主义时期的文学拒绝一切形式的正统和稳定性。

-作品表现多样化的语言和视觉实验。

-著名作家有托尼·莫里森和大卫·福斯特·华莱士。

1.Puritanism: Puritanism is the practices and beliefs o f t h e P u r i t a n s.1.simply speaking ; American Puritanism just refers to the spirit and ideal of puritans;who settled in the North American continent in the early part of the seventeenth century because of religious persecutions.2.In content it means scrupulous ;moralrigor ;especially hostility to social pleasure and religion .3.with time passing it became a dominant factor in American life ; one of the most enduring shaping influences in American thought and literature.to some extent it is a state of mind;a part of the national cultural atmosphere that the American breathes ;rather than a set of tenets.4.Actually it is a code of values;a philosophy of life and a point of view in American minds;also a two-faceted tradition of religious idealism and level -headed in common sense .2.The American Romanticism浪漫主义:a literary movement flourished as a cultural force the early period and the late period.associated with imagination and boundlessness; as an historical movement it arose in the 18th and 19th centuries.Walt Whitman; Nathaniel Hawthorne; Herman Melville; Edgar Allan Poe.II.Features of American romanticism1 It was the expression of “a real new experience全新体验”.2 American Puritanism was a cultural heritage. Many American romantic writings intended to edify启发 more than they entertained.3 American Romanticism is full of “newness新奇” . Ideals：Individualism; political equalityDream：America: a new Garden of Eden(4)American romanticism was both imitative and independent.3.Transcendentalism 超验主义The major features of Transcendentalism:① The Transcendentalists placed emphasis on spirit; or the Oversoul; as the most important thing in the universe. 思想超灵宇宙② The Transcendentalists stressed the importance of the individual. To them; the individual is the most important element of Society.③ The Transcendentalists offered a fresh perception ofnature as symbolic of the Spirit or God. Nature was not purely matter. It was alive; filled with God’s overwhelming presence. 自然+上帝Ralph Waldo Emerson.American Transcendentalism:As a philosophical and literary movement; American Transcendentalism also known as “ American Renaissance” flour ished in New England from the 1830s to the Civil War. It is the high tide of American romanticism and its doctrines found their greatest literary advocates in Emerson and Thoreau. Transcendentalists spoke for the cultural rejuvenation and against the materialism of American society.4.Naturalism: It views human beings as animals in the natural world responding to environmental forces and internal stresses and drives; over none of which they have control and none of which they fully understand. The literary naturalists have a major difference from the realists. They look at a different spot to find real life.5.Free verse: It 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.6.What is the Lost GenerationThe Lost Generation refers to the disillusioned intellectuals and artists of the years following the First World War; who rebelled against former ideals and values but could replace them only by despair of a cynical hedonism. The remark of GertrudeStein;Hemingway7.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; its associated purported meritocracy;and the freedoms guaranteed by the U.S. Bill of Rights8.American Realism: 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 objectiverather than an idealistic view of human nature and human experience .9.Black Humor:also called Black Comedy; writing that juxtaposes morbid or ghastly elements with comical ones. Black humor is a type of modern humor that is caused by anger. It often describes gruesome events; which are normally associated with pleasant occasions; thus producing the congruous effect for humor. Black humor attacks on social mores through shocking language and offensive imagery. Black humor is a kind of desperate humor. It is thelaughter at tragic things. In this meaningless world; according to Black Humorists; man’s fate is decided by incomprehensive powers. We can’t do anything about it; therefore we may as well laugh. Thomas Pynchon; John Barth;and Kurt Vonnegut;Nathanael West;Joseph Heller.10.Local colorism: as a trend became dominant in Ame rican literature in the 1860s and early 1870s;Local Colorism: The definition of local colorism is made clear by Hamlin Garland in his Crumble Idols; he clai ms that it has “such quality and texture and backgro und that it could not have been written in any other place or anyone else than a native.” Here “text” refers to the elements which characterizes a local c ulture; elements such as speech; customs; and mores peculiar to one particular place. And his “backgroun d” cove rs physical setting and those distinctive qua lities of landscape which condition human thought an d behavior. The ultimate aim of the local colorism i s to create the illusion of an indigenous little wor ld with qualities that differs from the world outsid e.11.Code Hero硬汉形象General Features:1.He has great physical potential and courage; have strong willpower.3. Thirdly;another important feature of the “code heroes" is their loyalty.4. Fourthly ; the" code heroes ”maintain great dignityin all situations.5. Fifthly ; the “code heroes ” are endowed with certain specialized skills ; such as fishing ; bull fighting ; and hunting ; etc6; the “code heroes ”are always put in some touch-and go situations; what the heroes must always face up to is their own personal fear of death and the threat of destruction; and it is this obstacle; death; that they have to overcome.13.iceberg theory:The dignity of movement of the iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water.。