美国文学期末考试名词解释.pdf

1. American Naturalism American naturalism was a new and harsher realism, and like realism, it had come from Europe. Naturalism was an outgrowth of realism that responded to theories in science, psychology, human behavior and social thought current in the late nineteenth century. In the decade of the nineteenth century, with the development of industry and modern science, intelligent minds began to see that man was no longer a free ethical being in a cold, indifferent and essentially Godless universe. In this chance world he was both helpless and hopeless. European writers like Emile Zola had developed this acute social consciousness. They saw mans life as governed by the two forces of heredity and environment, forces absolutely beyond mans control. American naturalism had been shaped by the war, by the social upheavals that undermined the comforting faith of an earlier age, and by the disturbing teachings of Darwinism. American literary naturalists dismissed the validity of comforting moral truths. They attempted to achieve extreme economic classes who were determined by their environment and heredity. In presenting the extremes of life, the naturalists sometimes displayed an affinity to the sensationalism of early romanticism, but unlike their romanticism predecessors, the naturalism emphasized that the world was amoral, that men and women had no free will, that the destiny of humanity was misery in life and oblivion in death. The pessimism and deterministic ideas of naturalism pervaded the works of such American writers as Stephen Crane, Frank Norris, Jack London and Theodore Dreiser. 2. Imagist poetry/ Imagism 1) 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. 2) 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 dominate image. 3) Imagism is characterized by the following three poetic principles: A. direct treatment of subject matter; B. economy of expression; C. as regards rhythm, to compose in the sequence of the musical phrase, not in the sequence of metronome. 4) Pounds “In a Station of the Metro” is a well-known imagist poem. 3. The Lost Generation 1) The lost generation is a term first used by stein to describe the post-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. 2) 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. 3) The three best-known representatives of lost generation are F. Scott Fitzgerald, Hemingway and John dos Passos. 4. Yoknapatawpha saga Most of Faulkners works are set in the American South, with his emphasis on the Southern subjects and consciousness. They are about people from a small region in Northern Mississippi, Yoknapatawpha County, which is actually an imaginary place based on Faulkners childhood memory about the town of Oxford in his native Lafayette County. With his rich imagination, Faulkner turned the land, the people and the history of the region into a literary creation and a mythical kingdom. The Yoknapatawpha stories deal, generally, with the historical period from the Civil War up to the 1920s when the First World War broke out, and people of a stratified society, the aristocrats, the new rich, the poor whites, and the blacks. As a result, Yoknapatawpha County has become an allegory or a parable of the Old South, with which Faulkner has managed successfully to show a panorama of the experience and consciousness of the whole Southern society. The Yoknapatawpha saga is Faulkners real achievement. 5. Sister Carrie Author: Theodore Dreiser. His main works are Sister Carrie, American Tragedy; The Titan; Nigger Jeff”. Plots: Sister Carrie (1900) is a novel by Thedore Dreiser about a young county girl who moves to the big city where she starts realizing her own American Dream by first becoming a mistress to men that she perceives as superior and later as a famous actress. It tells the story of two characters: Carrie Meeber, an ordinary girl who rises from a low-paid wage earner to a high-paid actress, and Georango Hustwood, a member of the upper middle class who falls from his comfortable lifestyle to a life on the streets. Neither Carrie nor Husthood earn their fates through virtue or vice, but rather through random circumstance. Their successes and failures have no moral value; this stance marks Sister Carrie as a departure from the conventional literature of the period. 6. The Great Gatsby Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald First publishes in 1925, it is set on Long Islands North Shore and in New York City from spring to autumn of 1922. The novel takes place following the World War American society enjoyed prosperity during the “roaring” 1920s as the economy soared. At the same time, Prohibition, the ban on the sale and manufacture of alcohol as mandated by the Eighteenth Amendment, made millionaires out of bootleggers. After its republishing in 1945 and 1933, it quickly found a wide readership and is today widely regarded as a paragon of The Great Gatsby has become a standard test in high school and university course on American literature in countries around the world and is ranked second in the Modern Librarys lists of the 100 Best novels of the 20th century. 7. A Farewell to Arms A Farewell to Arms is a novel by Emest Hemingway set during the Italian campaign of WWI. The book, publish in 1929, is a Lieutenant in the ambulance corps of the Italian Army. The title is taken from a poem by 16th-century English dramatist George Peele. A Farewell to Arms is about a love affair between the expatriate American Henry and Catherine Barkley against the backdrop of the First World War, cynical soldiers, fighting and the displacement of population. The publication of A Farewell to Arms cemented Hemingways stature as a modern American writer, became his first best-seller, and is described by biographer Michael Reynolds as “the premier American war novel from that decade WWI”. 2. Mending Wall Mending Wall is a metaphorical poem written by Robert Frost in blank verse, published in 1914. This poem is set in the countryside and is about one man questioning why he and his neighbor must rebuild the stone wall dividing their farms each spring. The stone wall at Frosts farm in Derry, which he described in Mending Wall. While living in England with his family, Frost was exceptionally homesick for the farm in New Hampshire where he had lived with his wife from 1900 to 1909. Despite the eventual failure of the farm, Frost associated his time in New Hampshire with a peaceful, rural sensibility that he instilled in the majority of his subsequent poems. “Mending Wall” is autobiographical on an even more specific level: a French-Canadian named Napoleon Guay had been Frosts neighbor in New Hampshire, and the two had often walked along their property line and repaired the wall that separated their land. 3. The Road Not Taken Robert Frost is one of the finest of rural New Englands 20th century pastoral poets. His poems are great combination of wisdom, harmony and serenity. They are simple at first sight, but demand readers for deep reading to grasp further meaning beyond surface. This poem consists of four stanzas of five lines. The rhyme scheme is ABAAB. the rhymes are strict and masculine, with notable exception of the last line. There are four stressed syllables each line, varying on iambic tetrameter base. The Road Not Taken tells about life choice. Mans life is metaphorically related to a journey filled with twists and turns. One has to consider a lot before making a wise choice. Though the diverged roads seem identical, they actually lead to different directions, which symbolize different fates. A less than rigorous look at the poem may lead one to believe that Frosts moral is embodied in those lines. The poem is taken as a call to independence, preaching originality and Emersonian self-reliance. The poem deconstructs its conclusion stanza by stanza. 1、A Rose For Emily (1)The features of the novel with examples: Firstly, a rose is symbolizing love and a pledge of faithfulness. A rose for somebody can also mean a kind of memorial, an offering, in memory of somebody. Emily is denied by love and the title has an ironic meaning. Secondly, the narration of A Rose for Emily does not follow a normal chronological order. Instead, it shifts in time frequently and gives out bits of information about the main character, Miss Emily, in such a way that the reader has to piece them together by himself. The following implicit chronology has been worked out on the basis of the information from the text. Thirdly, in A Rose for Emily author chooses we, the people of the town, as the collective narrator. The first sentence of the story says, When Miss Emily Grierson died, our whole town went to the funeral. And in the following parts we frequently appear as the narrator. Fourthly, in this story, Faulkner makes best use of the Gothic devices in narration, and, the deformed personality and abnormality Emily demonstrates in her relationship with her sweetheart is dramatized in such a way that we feel shocked and thrilled as we read along. The whole room was just like a tomb, gloomy and macabre the story was also set under a depressive atmosphere. (2) Comments on Emily Under the suppression of her father, Emily became unsocial and isolated. Puritan value had great influence on Emily. As a kind of revolt, Emily fell in love with someone unacceptable at all cost. At last, she chose to destroy what she loved. 2、Discus with details on the theme about the American Dream in the Great Gatsby The Great Gatsby was written in the year 1925, when it was the high ly prosperous time of America after the World War I. In the book, the auth or F. Scott Fitzgerald creates the main character Jay Gatsby, a young man around thirty years old who rose from a poor childhood to become incredi bly wealthy. Through the whole life of Gatsby we can see that he is the re presentative of the people who pursue the American dream in the 1920s w ith easy money and relaxed social values. After attaining the material wea lth, there are no clearly outlined steps to take. Gatsbys dream falling down represents the American dream falling down. Then why the American dream should fail in the end. I think that t he following two reasons can explain it. Firstly, Gatsby builds up an illusionary dream. He instills Daisy with a kind of idealized perfection that she neither deserves nor possesses. Th ough later he comes to know that Daisy is not the girl she once was and s he doesnt love him. But he cannot stop dreaming and continues to pursue the old days. Gatsbys dream is ruined by the unworthiness of its object, j ust as the American dream in the 1920s is ruined by the unworthiness of it s objectmoney and pleasure. Gatsbys dream of a perfect Daisy collaps es in the book which represents the collapse of the whole American drea m. Secondly, from the beginning he uses a wrong way to achieve his dr eam and this would finally lead to his dream coming into failure. He gets rich through illegal way and hopes to attract Daisy by his money. The Am erican dream of Gatsby corrupts as the unrestrained desire for money and pleasure surpasses more noble goals. This certainly cannot win the love o f Daisy. More importantly, the sharp contrast between the ideal and the re ality will inevitably result in the breakup of the dream. The American dre am destroys not only for the profound social and historical reasons but als o being deeply concerned with the self-destructive characters of Gatsby. When Gatsbys simple and nave characters are confronted with the cold s ociety and moral decay of America which is represented by Daisy and To m, there will be no place for Gatsby to escape but he has to die in the end. The idea of Amercan dream still hold true in todays time. It may be wealt h, fame, love or power. But one thing never changes about American drea m. That is everyone desires something in life, and everyone strives to get it. Gatsby is a prime example of pursuing Amercan dream. 3、Comment on the major characters and the theme in A Farewell to Arms Theme: As the title suggests, its in many ways an antiwar novel, but it would not be fair to connect this novel with a literature of pacifism or social protest. In the novels system, violence is not necessarily wrongHenry feel no remorse for shooting the engineering sergeant, and the reader believes Henry when he tells Catherine that he will kill the police if they come to attest him. Nevertheless, A Farewell to Arms opposes the thoughtless violence, massive destruction. And sheer senselessness of war. It also criticizes the psychological damage that war inflicts on individuals and populations. The aim of the novel is not to protest war or encourage peace; it is simply to describe the hostility and violence of a universe in which such a conflict is possible. And there is another theme: the relationship between love and pain. At the beginning, Catherine wanted to distance herself from pain of loss, while Henry wanted to get as far away from talk of the war as possible. In each other, they found temporary comfort. But the couples feelings for each other quickly pass from an amusement that distracts them to the very fuel that sustains them. Major Characters: Henry, his attitude of war is from full-hearted to disgustful. The attitude of life is from taking the life as a game to pursuing love. And the attitude of setback and misfortune from hard fight to aimless. Catherine, she thinks the love should be life standards and life should be bright and wisdom. 4、Discuss with the details on the theme of the Sister Carrie Theodore Dreisers novel Sister Carrie is the early representative in American naturalism. It tells the story of two characters: Carrie Meeber, an ordinary girl who rises from a low-paid wage earner to a high-paid actress, and Geogre Hurstwood, a member of the upper middle class who falls from his comfortable lifestyle to a life on the streets. Neither Carrie nor Hurstwood earn their fates through virtue or vice, but rather through random circumstance. Their successes and failures have no moral value; this stance marks Sister Carrie as a departure from the conventional literature of the period.(以上可以简写) And the theme of this novel can be described as the following words: American Dreams: each of Dreisers characters in Sister Carrie search for their own “American Dreams”. Carrie is filled with the expectations of acquiring the finer things in life. And Drouet pursues the