Romanticism naturalism realism名词解释.doc

RomanticismDefinition It began in the eighteenth century, until the outbreak of civil war. It started with the publication of Washington Irvings The Sketch Book and ended with Whitmans Leaves of Grass. Romanticism is a boom period in American literature. It is also known as the “American Renaissance”.characteristic1. Expression of subject thinking and personal feeling2. Description and exaltation of nature3. Return to the middle age (folk culture and middle age pastoral life)In literature, Romanticism found recurrent themes in the evocation or criticism of the past, the cult of sensibility with its emphasis on women and children, the heroic isolation of the artist or narrator, and respect for a new, wilder, untrammeled and pure nature. Romanticism tended to regard satire as something unworthy of serious attention, a prejudice still influential today.RealismCharacteristic：1. truthful description of lifea. Realism is “fidelity to experience and probability of motive”.b. The aim is “talk of some ordinary traits of American life”.2. typical character under typical circumstance3. objective rather than idealized, close observation and investigation of life“Realistic writers are like scientists.”4. open-ending:Life is complex and cannot be fully understood. It leaves much room for readers to think by themselves.5. concerned with social and psychological problems, revealing the frustrations of characters in an environment of sordidness and depravityNaturalismCharacteristic：Pessimismis one of the primary characteristics of naturalism.Another characteristic of literary naturalism is detachment from the story. The author often tries to maintain a tone that will be experienced as objective. Another characteristic of naturalism isdeterminism- the opposite of free will, essentially. Often, a naturalist author will lead the reader to believe a characters fate has beenpredetermined, usually by environmental factors, and that he/she can do nothing about it. Another common characteristic is asurprising twistat the end of the story. Equally, there tends to be in naturalist novels and stories a strong sense that nature is indifferent to human struggle. These are, however, only a few of the defining characteristics of naturalism.definitionNaturalismwas a literary movement or tendency from the 1880s to 1930s that used detailedrealismto suggest that social conditions, heredity, and environment had inescapable force in shaping human character. It was a mainly unorganizedliterary movementthat sought to depictbelievableeveryday reality, as opposed to such movements asRomanticismorSurrealism, in which subjects may receive highly symbolic, idealistic or even supernat