美国文学名词解释 -

1.American Puritanism清教It comes from the American puritans, who were the first immigrants moved to American 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.Characteristics: 特点1. Idealistic: Puritans pursue the purity and simplicity in worship. They focuse the glory of God, and the angry God.They believe in the doctrine of destiny, original sin, limited atonement2. Practical: Puritans come to Amrican to do business and make profits with the desire of chasing wealth and status. They have to struggle for survival under the severity of the western frontier.3 .The struggle between the spiritual and the material is the basics of the Puritan mind. On the one hand, Puritans chase the purity of the early church.On the other hand, they come to America to earn money. This contradictory will be reflected by their thoughts.4. In a word, it rests on purity, ambition, harding work, and an intense struggling for success.2.Romanticism浪漫主义: the literature term was first applied to the writers of the 18th century in Europe who broke away from the formal rules of classical writing. When it was used in American literature it referred to the writers of the middle of the 19th century who stimulated（刺激）the sentimental emotions of their readers. They wrote of the mysterious of life, love, birth and death. The Romantic writers expressed themselves freely and without restraint. They wrote all kinds of materials, poetry, essays, plays, fictions, history, works of travel, and biography.3.Transcendentalism先验说,超越论:is a philosophic and literary movement that flourished in New England, particular at Concord, as a reaction against Rationalism and Calvinism (理性主义and喀尔文主义). Mainly it stressed intuitive understanding of God, without the help of the church, and advocated independence of the mind. The representative writers are Emerson and Thoreau.4.American Realism现实主义: 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 objective rather than an idealistic view of human nature and human experience5.Local colorism乡土文学: is a type of writing that was popular in the late 19th century, particularly among the authors in the south of the U.S.. this style relied heavily on using words, phrases, and slang that were native to the particular region in which the story took place. local colorists tried to immortalize(使不朽) the distinctive natural, social and linguistic features. It is characteristic of vernacular(本国语) language and satirical(讽刺的)humor. A well-known local colorism author was Mark Twain with his books Tom Sowyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.6.Naturalism自然主义: American naturalism was a new and harsher realism.It was initiated in France. American naturalism had been shaped by the war; by the social upheavals（剧变）that undermined the comforting faith of an ear lier age. America’s literary naturalists attempted to achieve extreme objectivity and frankness, presenting characters of low social and economic classes who were determined by their environment and heredity. Although naturalist literature described the world with sometimes brutal realism, it sometimes also aimed at bettering the world through social reform.7.Stream of consciousness意识流：It is one of the modern literary techniques. It is the style of writing thatattempts to imitate the natural flow of a character’s thoughts, feelings, reflections, memories, and mental images as the character experiences them. It was first used in 1922 by the Irish novelist James Joyce. Those novels broke through the bounds of time and space, and depicted vividly and skillfully the unconscious activity of the mind fast changing and flowing incessantly。

1.A m e r i c a n P u r i t a n i s m清教2.It comes from the American puritans, who were the first immigrants moved to American 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 a n d s o b r i e t y（清醒）w e r e p r a i s e d. Characteristics: 特点1. Idealistic: Puritans pursue the purity and simplicity in worship. They focuse the glory of God, and the angry God.They believe in the doctrine of destiny, original sin, limited atonement2. Practical: Puritans come to Amrican to do business and make profits with the desire of chasing wealth and status. They have to struggle for survival under the severity of the western frontier.3 .The struggle between the spiritual and the material is the basics of the Puritan mind. On the one hand, Puritans chase the purity of the early church.On the other hand, they come to America to earn money. This contradictory will be reflected by their thoughts.4. In a word, it rests on purity, ambition, harding work, and an intense struggling for success.3.Romanticism浪漫主义: the literature term was first applied to the writers of the 18th century in Europe who broke away from the formal rules of classical writing. When it was used in American literature it referred to the writers of the middle of the 19th century who stimulated（刺激）the sentimental emotions of their readers. They wrote of the mysterious of life, love, birth and death. The Romantic writers expressed themselves freely and without restraint. They wrote all kinds of materials, poetry, essays, plays, fictions, history, works of travel, and biography.4.Transcendentalism先验说,超越论: is a philosophic and literary movement that flourished in New England, particular at Concord, asa reaction against Rationalism and Calvinism (理性主义and喀尔文主义). Mainly it stressed intuitive understanding of God, without the help of the church, and advocated independence of the mind. The representative writers are Emerson and Thoreau.5.American Realism现实主义: 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 objective rather than an idealistic view of human nature and human experience6.Local colorism乡土文学: as a trend became dominant in American literature in the 1860s and early 1870s，it is defined by Hamlin Garland as having such quality of texture and background that it could not have been written in any other place or by anyone else than a native stories of local colorism have a quality of circumstantial(详细的) authenticity(确实性), as local colorists tried to immortalize(使不朽) the distinctive natural, social and linguistic features. It is characteristic of vernacular(本国语) language and satirical(讽刺的) humor7.Naturalism自然主义: American naturalism was a new and harsher realism. American naturalism had been shaped by the war; by the social upheavals（剧变）that undermined the comforting faith of an earlier age. America’s literary naturalists dismissed the validity of comforting moral truths. They attempted to achieve extreme objectivity and frankness, presenting characters of low social and economic classes who were determined by their environment and heredity. Although naturalist literature described the world with sometimes brutal realism, it sometimes also aimed at bettering the world through social reform.8.Stream of consciousness意识流：It is one of the modern literary techniques. It is the style of writing that attempts to imitate the natural flow of a character’s thoughts, feelings, reflections, memories, and mental images as the character experiences them. It was first used in 1922 by the Irish novelist James Joyce. Those novels broke through the bounds of time and space, and depicted vividly and skillfully the unconscious activity of the mind fast changing and flowing incessantly。

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）.。

【优质】美国文学名词解释（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）T otal 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 duringthe 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 butunrhymed 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)Commondepression , 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 theirmeans 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.- 高氯酸对阿胶进行湿法消化后, 用导数火焰原子吸收光谱技术测定阿胶中的铜、“中药三大宝, 人参、鹿茸和阿胶。

1 Naturalism: Naturalism is a movement in theater, film, and literature that seeks to replicate a believable everyday reality. Natural istic writers were influenced by the evolution theory of Charles Darwin. (3′)They believed that one's heredity and surroundings decide one's character. ( 2′)2.The Local Colorism: Hamlin Garland defined local colorism as having quality of texture and background that it could not have been written in any other place or by anyone else than a native.( 3′) Texture refers to the elements which character a local culture, elements such as speech, customs and mores peculiar to one particular place. ( 2′)3. American Realism: American Realism came in the latter half of the nineteenth century(1′) as a reaction against “the lie” of romanticism and sentimentalism. (1′) It expressed the concern for the world of experience, of the commonplace, and for the familiar and the low. (3′)4. Hemingway Hero: The Hemingway hero is an average man of decidedly masculine tastes, sensitive and intelligent, a man of action, and one of few words. ( 2′) That is an individualist keeping emotions under control, stoic and self-disciplined in a dreadful place. These people are usually spiritual strong, people of certain skills, and most of them encounter death many times. ( 3′)5. Harlem Renaissance: Black literature flourished in the 1920s in the Northeast part of New York City called Harlem. ( 2′)Black literature developed into a upsurge which has come to be known as the Harlem Renaissance, which reflects the feelings, the experience, the history and the ambition of the Black people. ( 3′)6. Puritanism is code of values, the philosophy of life and a point of view. Puritans take religion as the most important thing, (2′)living for glorying God, believing predestination, origin sin, limited atonement, total depravity. They live a frugal , diligent life. ( 2′)7. Image: An image is defined by Pound as that which presents an intellectual and emotional complex (1′)in an instant of time, “a vortex or cluster of fused ideas” “endowed with energy”. (1) The exact word must bring the effect of the object before the reader as it had presented itself to the poet’s mind at the time of writing. (1)8. Jewish Literature: Jewish literature refers to published creative writings by American Jews about their American experiences. (2′) This kind of writings is shown in Jewish perspective. (2′)9. American Realism: American Realism came in the latter half of the nineteenth century(1′) as a reaction against “the lie” of romanticism and sentimentalism. (1′) It expressed the concern for the world of experience, of the commonplace, and for the familiar and the low. (3′)10. The Black Humor: It refers to the use of morbid and absurd for darkly comic purpose. (1′) It carries the tone of anger, bitterness in the grotesque situation of suffering, anxiety, and death. (2′)It makes the reader laugh at the blackness of modern life. (1′)。

1.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 P ound and Amy Lowell.2.Local colorism: as a trend became dominant in American literature in the 1860s and early 1870s，it is defined by Hamlin Garland as having such quality of texture and background that it could not have been written in any other place or by anyone else than a native stories of local colorism have a quality of circumstantial(详细的) authenticity(确实性), as local colorists tried to immortalize(使不朽) the distinctive natural, social and linguistic features. It is characteristic of vernacular(本国语) language and satirical(讽刺的) humor3.Psychological Realism: James’s realism is characterized by his psychological a pproach to his subject matter. His fictional world is concerned more with the inner l ife of human beings than with overt human actions. His best and most mature wor ks will render the drama of individual consciousness and convey the moment-to-mo ment sense of human experience as bewilderment and discovery. And we observe people and events filtering through the individual consciousness and participate in h is experience. This emphasis on psychology and on the human consciousness prov es to be a big breakthrough in novel writing and has great influence on the comin g generations. James is generally regarded as the forerunner of the 20th century " stream-of-consciousness" novels and the founder of psychological realism.4.International theme:Henry James’s fame generally rests on his novels and stories with the international theme. These novels are always set against a large international background, usually between Europe and America, and centered on the confrontation of the two different cultures with two different groups of people representing two different value systems.The treatment of the international theme is characterized by the richness of syntax and characterization and the originality in point of view, symbolism, metaphoric texture, and organizing rhyme. James is now more mature as an artist, more at home in the craft of fiction.5. Modernism：It was a complex and diverse （复杂多样的）international movement in all the creative arts （创造性艺术），originating about the end of the 19th century. It provided （出现）the greatest creative renaissance of the 20th century. It was made up of many facets （方面），such as symbolism，surrealism （超现实主义），cubism （立体主义），expressionism，futurism （未来主义），ect6. 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 objective rather than an idealistic view of human nature and human experience.7.Surrealism(超现实主义):An anti-rational movement of imaginative liberation in European in art and literature in the 1920s and 1930s, which launched by Andre Breton after his break from the Dada group in 1922. Surrealism seeks to break down the boundaries between rationality and irrationality, exploring the resources and revolutionary energies of dreams, hallucinations and sexual desire. Influenced both by the symbolists and by Sigmund Freud’s theories of the unconscious, the surrealists experimented with automatic writing and with the free association of random images brought in surprising juxtaposition.8. Naturalism: American naturalism was a new and harsher realism. American naturalism had been shaped by the war; by the social upheavals（剧变）that undermined the comforting faith of an earlier age. America’s literary naturalists dismissed the validity of comforting moral truths. They attempted to achieve extreme objectivity and frankness, presenting characters of low social and economic classes who were determined by their environment and heredity. Although naturalist literature described the world with sometimes brutal realism, it sometimes also aimed at bettering the world through social reform.9. Hemingway Code Hero(海明威式英雄): Hemingway Code Hero ,also called code hero, is one who, wounded but strong more sentitive, 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.2> 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 Code Hero10.Iceberg Theory :Ernest Hemingway’s “iceberg theory”suggests that the writer include in the text only a small portion of what he knows, leaving about ninety percent of the content a mystery that grows beneath the surface of the writing. If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about he may omit things that will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement ofan iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water. A good writer does not need to reveal every detail of a character or action11.American Dream:American dream means the belief that everyone can succeed as long as he/she works hard enough. It usually implies a successful and satisfying life. It usually framed in terms of American capitalism（资本主义）, its associated purported meritocracy,（知识界精华）and the freedoms guaranteed by the U.S. Bill of Rights.12. Jazz age(爵士时代):The Jazz Age describes the period of the 1920s and 1930s, the years between world war I and world war II. Particularly in north America. With the rise of the great depression, the values of this age saw much decline. Perhaps the most representative literary work of the age is American writer Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. Highlighting what some describe as the decadence and hedonism, as well as the growth of individualism. Fitzgerald is largely credited wi th coining the term” Jazz Age”.（了解）13.Stream of consciousness（意识流）：It is one of the modern literary techniques. It is the style of writing that attempts to imitate the natural flow of a character’s thoughts, feelings, reflections, memories, and mental images as the character experiences them. It was first used in 1922 by the Irish novelist James Joyce. Those novels broke through the bounds of time and space, and depicted vividly and skillfully the unconscious activity of the mind fast changing and flowing incessantly。

southern writers名词解释美国文学南方文学（Southern Literature，The）这一文学流派形成于二十世纪二十年代，属一种美国文学倾向，以反映美国南方的风土人情为基本特征。

出了不少文学大师，其影响深远。

南方文学叙述传统从远甚至可以追溯到查尔斯•布罗克登和爱伦•坡那种哥特式作品。

爱伦•坡的创作实践使之成为了美国最早也是最为重要的南方作家之一。

爱伦•坡作品以阴暗为基本特色，他专门写梦、死亡与恶，是那个时代病态社会扭曲后的反映。

从二十年代开始，南方出版文学团体创办了不少的刊物，在诗歌、戏剧、小说以及文艺批评方面大量涌现代表性人物。

其中，一些作家先后形成“逃亡者”集团、重农派和“新批评家”，形成了一股巨大影响力。

南方作家取材大多数直接来自于南方的历史、事件，现实社会、经济困境，包括了作者故乡的神话和家庭以及祖辈的生存、生活。

暴力倾向、恐怖故事、战争经历、人情世故、风物、传说、道德沦陷及社会腐败都是他们常表现的主题。

南方文学毫无疑问继承了美国的浪漫主义文学传统并发扬光大。

其艺术风格、特色鲜明，主要在以下几个方面：一.心理描写细腻、深刻，往往采用意识流手法。

人物回忆、期待、内省、梦幻、欲望交织，时空经验错综复杂，身体感觉直击灵魂。

二.艺术氛围强烈、浓郁，有时候借助哥特式手法，大量描写背景、神秘现象，气氛阴森，大费周折渲染恐怖与暴力，从而烘托故事本身，极大地增强了艺术效果，令读者震撼。

其浓厚生活气息与独特的南方情调和风光使作品更具有感染力。

三.艺术风格怪诞不经。

事件背景色彩斑斓，人物畸形病态，叙述上颠倒时空关系，不断转换叙事角度，突破语法限制等等，对文学常规的打破以及叙述者把并不相容的事物并置所形成的张力，都是形成这种风格的因素。

威廉•福克纳被公认是南方文学最伟大的代表作家并获诺贝尔文学奖。

他的作品描写南方古老家族的衰败和北方工业势力在南方的兴起，并展现出一种特别复杂世态，刻划了形形色色的人物，对二十世纪的世界文学产生了完全绕不过去的巨大影响。

名词解释1.Impressionism(印象主义)Briefly, it is a style of literature characterized by the creation of general impressions and moods rather than realistic mood.2.American Realism (1865-1914)Realism was a reaction against Romanticism or a move away from the bias towards romance and self-creating fictions, and paved the way to Modernism. (书上P471 第一段)3.American Naturalism(自然主义）已改啦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. (书P476 第一段最后)4.Local colorism释义1：Local colorism as a trend became dominant in American literature in the 1860s and early 1870s，it is defined by Hamlin Garland as having such quality of texture and background that it could not have been written in any other place or by anyone else than a native. Stories of local colorism have a quality of circumstantial(详细的) authenticity(确实性), as local colorists tried to immortalize(使不朽) the distinctive natural, social and linguistic features. It is characteristic of vernacular(本国语) language and satirical(讽刺的) humor.释义2：Local colorism is a trend first made its presence felt in the late 1860s and early 1870s in America. It may be defined as the careful attention in speech, dress or behavior peculiar to a geographical locality.释义3：Local colorism is fiction and poetry that focuses on the characters, dialect, customs, topography, and other features particular to a specific region.5.The Lost generation释义1：It refers to a group of young intellectuals who came back from war，were injured both physically and mentally. Disillusioned and disgusted by the frivolous, greedy, and heedless way of life in America, they began to write and they wrote from their own experiences in the war. The best representative of the lost generation was Ernest Hemingway. (书P547)释义2：The lost generation is a term first used by Stein to describe the post-war I generation who are physically and psychologically scarred. (书P548)6.Imagism:释义1：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.释义2：Imagism came into being in Britain and U.S around 1910 as a reaction to the traditional English poetry to express the sense of fragmentation and dislocation.7.Free verseFree verse is poetry without a fixed beat or regular rhyme scheme.A looser and more open-ended syntactical structure is frequently favored. Whiteman’s poetry is an example of free verse at its most impressive.8.Transcendentalism:Transcendentalism is a philosophic and literary movement.It is a reaction against Rationalism and Calvinism. It appeared after 1830, marked the maturity of American Romanticism and the first Renaissance in the American literary history.9.Jazz AgeJazz age describe the period of 1920s and 1930s, the years between WW1 and WW2. With the rise of the Great Depression, the values of theage saw much decline. The most representative literature work is The Great Gatsby highlighting what some describe as the decadence and hedonism, as well as the growth of individualism.10.I ceberg Principle ：It is a term used to describe the writing style of American writer Ernest Hemingway. The meaning of a piece is not immediately evident, because the crux of the story lies below the surface, just as most of the mass of a real iceberg similarly lies beneath the surface.11.M odernism(现代主义)：Modernism is comprehensive but vague term for a movement, which began in the late 19th century and which has had a wide influence internationally during much of the 20th century. It is a reaction against realism. It rejects rationalism, which is the theoretical base of realism.12.O riginal sinThe wrong doing of one generation lives into the successive ones. Human beings are basically depraved and corrupted, hence, they should obey God to atone for their sins.13.P sychological Realism(心理现实主义)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 psychological realism.14.C olloquialismA colloquialism is a word, phrase or paralanguage that is employed in conversational or informal language but not in formal speech or formal writing.In a word, naturalism is evolved from realism when the author’s tone in writing becomes less serious and less sympathetic but more ironic and more pessimistic.。

美国古代文学史名词解释、简答、论述题本文旨在阐述美国古代文学发展史中的重要名词、简述相关内容及针对论述题展开适当讨论。

一、名词解释1. Puritanism（清教主义）：是17世纪时在英格兰和美洲流行的宗教改革运动。

清教徒最初移民纽英格兰是为了逃避英王的压迫。

清教徒的中包括坚信的意志对人的一切事宜具有决定性作用，反对世俗和欲望，鼓励个人的努力，强调个人的责任以及间接地强调了民主的概念。

2. Transcendentalism（超验主义）：是19世纪30年代美国文化中一股对启蒙运动的反动，反对理性主义和经验主义。

超验主义者认为人们应该依靠个人直觉和灵感开启心灵深处的真实，超越感官经验。

超验主义者强调个人的自由发展，自然的神秘和美好。

3. Regionalism（地方主义）：是19世纪晚期至20世纪初美国文学的一种流派。

运动的核心思想是反对现代工业化和全球化，提倡重视地方风景、文化和民俗，关注本土的人、事、物，并以此为原材料创作文学。

二、简答题1. Nathaniel Hawthorne的小说《红字》反映了哪些思想和文化特征？《红字》十分典型地表现了清教徒文化对美国文学的影响，其中包括对罪恶的强烈谴责和对个人自由的崇尚。

小说中的同情感是从人性中萃取出来的，同时还揭示了社会伦理和人性的冲突。

2. 简要说明Mark Twain的《哈克贝利·费恩历险记》中的重要主题。

《哈克贝利·费恩历险记》中最为重要的主题之一是反对奴隶制度和种族歧视。

小说通过边缘化非洲裔角色吉姆和他与哈克贝利的冒险来表达这一主题。

通过小说中的观点发表间接批判制奴政策和对黑人的压迫。

三、论述题威廉·福克纳的小说《荒野上的救世主》中如何体现了超验主义思想？《荒野上的救世主》小说通过多个角色的人生经历，呈现出一种东西方的宗教信仰和精神世界上的共性。

超验主义的思想在小说中得到了体现，例如鲍姆对科学和机械世界的愤恨，以及詹妮·霍查神秘的形象等等。

美国文学史名词解释Romanticism1. The American Romanticism covers the first half of the 19th century。

2. American Romanticism was both imitative and independent. Some of American romantic writing was modeled on English and European works. While it was in essence the expression of “a real new experience” and contained “an alien quality” for the simple reason that “the spirit of the place” was radically new and alien。

3。

The American national experience of “pioneering” into the west proved to be a rich fund of material for American writers to draw upon。

4。

The “newness” of the Americans as a nation is another major element connected with American Romanticism. Their ideals of individualism and political equality, and their dream that America was to be a new Garden of Eden for man were distinctly American. 5。

In technique they loved traditional meters and stanza forms； in language their English was usually British.6。