American Literature Terms (2).doc

Puritanism：Puritanism is the practices and beliefs of puritans, English religious and political reformers who fled their native land in search of religious freedom, and settled and colonized New England in the 17th century. They at first wished to reform or “purify” their religious beliefs and practices. To them, religion should be a matter of personal faith rather than a ritual.Doctrines:- Predestination- Original sin and total depravity (human beings are basically evil.)- Limited atonement (or the Salvation of a selected few)Puritan values (creeds):Hard work, thrift, piety, sobriety, simple tastes.Puritans are more practical, tougher, and to be ever ready for any misfortune and tragic failure.They are optimistic.The Great Awakening (1730s1740s)：A series of religious revivals that swept over the American colonies about the middle of 18th century. It resulted in doctrinal changes and influenced social and political thought. In New England it was started by the rousing preaching of Jonathan Edwards. Enlightenment：An 18th-century movement that focused on the ideals of good sense, benevolence, and a belief in liberty, justice, and equality as the natural rights of man. Spiritual life of the coloniesEnlightenment.Philosophical and intellectual movement.Advocated reason or rationality, the scientific method, equality and human beingsability to perfect themselves and their society. Agreed on faith in human rationality and existence of discoverable and universally valid principles governing human beings, nature and society. Opposed intolerance, restraint, spiritual authority and revealed religionRomanticism：Definition: romanticism rose in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In contrast to classicism, it is associated with imagination and creation of individuality. Romantic writers attach importance to the portrayal of features of distinctive characters. They reproduce life in their writings according to their ideal and prefer imaginative, even fantastic vision to restriction of objective depiction, passion to elegance, and irregular beauty to perfect proportion.Transcendentalism：A broad, philosophical movement in New England during the Romantic era (peaking between 1835 and 1845). It stressed the role of divinity in nature and the individual s intuition, and exalted feeling over reasonThe Transcendentalists placed emphasis on spirit, or the Oversoul, as the most important thing in the universe.The Transcendentalists stressed the importance of the individual.The Transcendentalists offered a fresh perception of nature as symbolic of the Spirit or God.Free Verse：Poetry without fixed beat or regular rhyme. The rhythmical lines vary in length, and there is no fixed metrical pattern. It usually seems formless, but it does have a form or pattern based on repetition and parallel structure. Whitman is the first great American poet to use this form of poetry. He also used it more skillfully than any other poet.Realism：Realism was a model of writing that gives the impression of recording or reflecting faithfully an actual way of life. The term refers both to a literary method based on detailed accuracy of description and to a more general attitude that rejects idealization, escapism, and other extravagant qualities of romance in favor of recognizing soberly the actual problems of life.Local Colorism:First appeared in the late 1860s and early 1870s. Hamlin Garland defined it as “having such qualities of texture and background that it couldnt written in any other place or by any other else”. Texture refers to speech, customs, and mores. Background refers to physical setting and features of a place which conditioned human thought and behavior. Naturalism：Naturalism is a theory in literature emphasizing the role of heredity and environment upon human life and character development roughly between 1890s and early 1900s. There is no clear-cut chronological division between the American naturalists and the American realists.At the core of naturalism is determinism。An individuals course in life is wholly determined by some combination of animal instinct, heredity, and environment. Humans lack freedom of their own will. All of their actions are controlled, determined. The universe is cold, godless, indifferent and hostile to human desires. Life becomes a struggle for survival. Naturalism is a harsher and extreme form of realism. The naturalists have a major difference from the realists.Modernism：A complex and diverse international literary movement, originating at about the end of the 19th century and reaching its maturity in the mid 20th . Rooted in the social upheavals, promoted by the new ideas and thoughts:Nietzsches philosophy of unconsciousness; Sigmund Freuds psychoanalysis; Bergsons intuitionism; Darwinism. Anti-romantic:do not avoid the ugly, horrible, and sexual descriptions. Anti-traditional: experimenting with different techniques to reflect modern peoples inner mind. Anti-heroes:no totally good or bad characters. Anti-climax:Jazz Age：The Jazz Age describes the period of the 1920s and 1930s, the year 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 is American writer F. Scott Fitzgeralds The Great Gatsby, highlighting what some describe as the decadence and hedonism, as well as the growth of individualism, Fitzgerald is largely credited with coining the term “Jazz Age”.The Lost Generation：It defines a sense of moral loss or aimlessness. The WWI destroyed the innocent ideas, many good young men went to the war and died, or returned damaged, both physically and mentally; their moral faith were no longer valid- they were “Lost.”Narrow sense: a group of American writers, including Hemingway, F.S.Fitzgerald, J.Dos Passos, E.E.Cummings, A.Macleish, Sherwood Anderson, and Hart Crane, etc. Who left America and went to Europe.Broad Sense: the entire post -WWI American young generation.Hemingway Hero：They are the average man of decidedly masculine tastes, sensitive, intelligent. A man of action, and one of few words. They will keep emotions under control. They are stoic, self-disciplined, spiritual strong, and of certain skills. Stream of Consciousness：It is a literary technique that approximates the flow of thoughts and sensory impressions that pass through the mind each instant. Words are often run together with no capitalization and no proper punctuation. Sentences are not always clearly indicated; many long ones are put together in peculiar ways. One fragment runs into another without proper notice. The use of pronouns often causes irritating perplexity.Yoknapatwapha County ：It is Faulkners mythical kingdom, where most of his stories take place. It is based on his childhood hometown in Oxford. The characters in Faulkners novels reappear in several loosely connected works. Hence, his novels are often referred to as the Yoknapatwapha Series or Sagas. In a broad sense, the families in the novels can be every family of all human society. The Yoknapatwapha country is in fact both a fictional and a real place where a story of a particular family tells the universal truth.论述TheGiftoftheMagiiswrittenbytheshortstorywriterO.Henry.Itisoneofthetypicalrepresentativeworks.This novel told us a story-that was a really romantic Christmas Day ,a couple , Della and Jim , bought gifts for each other . Della cut and sold her beautiful hair to buy the chain for her husbands watch , while Jim sold his watch for buying the combs.The writer used a large amount of long sentences, short sentences, anastrophe sentences and so on to exaggerate the atmosphere and strengthen the language power. If the sentence of adjustment was strengthen the language of momentum, and rendering the emotional or atmosphere, then the skillful words showed the authors standard of language from the details. Thisisanotherlanguagefeatureofthenovel.The author also noticed the language of rhythm, morphology and syntax, and to tap the potential of language. So the author used alliteration and rhyme to strengthen the beauty of the novel. For example, Life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smilesbut mainly of sniffles.作家作品1. Washington Irving华盛顿欧文A History of New York; The Sketch Book(Rip Van Winkle; The Legend of Sleepy Hollow); The Tales of Traveler; A Tour on the Prairies 2. Ralph Waldo Emerson拉尔夫沃尔多爱默生Nature; Representative Men; The Conduct of Life; English Traits; The American Scholar3. Nathaniel Hawthorne纳撒尼尔霍桑The Scarlet Letter; The House of the Seven Gables; The Blithedale Romance; The Marble Faun; Twice-Told Tales; Mosses from an Old Manse4. Walt Whitman沃尔特惠特曼Leaves of Grass(Song of Myself, I hear America Singing, Captain); Franklin Evans; The Journalism; Democratic Vistas5. Mark Twain马克吐温The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County; Innocents Abroad; The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; The Prince and the Pauper; Life on Mississippi; The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthurs Court; The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg; The Tragedy of Puddn Head Wilson; The Gilded Age; Roughing It6. OHenry欧享利The Four Million(The Gift of the Magi, The Cop and the Anthem,The Skylight Room, Spring time a la Carte, The Furnished Room); The Last Leaf; The Clarion Call; The Ransom of Red Chief7. Jack London杰克伦敦The Son of the Wolf; The Call of the Wild; The Sea-wolf; White Fang; Marti Eden; The Iron Heel; Love of Life and Other Stories8. Theodore Dreiser西奥多德莱塞Sister Carrie; Jennie Gerhardt; The Financier; The Titan; An American Tragedy; The Genius9. Sherwood Anderson舍伍德安德森Windy McPhersons Son; Marching Men; Winesburg,Ohio; Poor White; The Triumph of the Egg; Many Marriages; Hands and Other Stories; Death in the Woods and Other Stories; Tar: A Midwest Childhood; Kit Brandon: A Portrait10. Ernest Hemingway欧内斯特海明威The Sun Also Rises; A Farewell to Arms; For Whom the Bell Tolls; The Old Man and Sea11. William Faulkner威廉福克纳The Sound and the Fury; As I Lay dying; Light in August; Absalom; Absalom!; Go Down; Moses12.Emily DickinsonWild Nights-Wild Nights; This is my letter to the World; I died for Beauty-but was scarce; I heard a fly buzz-when I died; Because I could not stop for Death; A narrow Fellow in the GrassEarly Romanticism-Washington IrvingTranscendentalism-Ralph Waldo EmersonLate Romanticism-Nathaniel Hawthorne，Walt Whitman，Emily Dickson，Local Colorism-Mark TwainNaturalism-O. Henry，Jack London，Theodore DreiserModernism-Sherwood Anderson，Ernest Hemingway，William FaulknerHenry James-Psychological Realism Ezra Pound-Imagism对比解释1. ComparisonbetweenAmericanPuritanismandChineseConfucianismSimilarity: They have a power shaping of culture.Differences: They have difference in social life. Puritanism- religion, original sin, values. Confucianism-thought, humanism, virtues (five constants: humaneness,justice, propriety, knowledge, integrity). They are different from the literature. Confucianism has the Four Books and the Five Classics. The Puritanism style of writing is fresh, simple and direct.2. Whitman vs. DickinsonSimilarities: Thematically, they both extolled, in their different ways, an emergent America, its expansion, its individualism a