美国文学-名词解释

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 Freneaus best lyric (2)It anticipated the 19thcentury 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 Jeffersons thought was inspired by the thoughts of John Locke.2. 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 Gods 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 Irvings The Sketch Book and ended with Walt Whitmans Leaves of Grass. (4) Being a period of the great flowering of American literature, it is also called “the American Renaissance.” (5) American Romanticists include such literary figures as Washington Irving, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, William Cullen 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 1800s, which emphasized the importance of individual inspiration and intuition, the Oversoul, and Nature. Other concepts that accompanied Transcendentalism include the idea that nature is ennobling and the idea that the individual is divine and, therefore, selfreliant. (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 Whitmans 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.3. 现实主义与自然主义时期的美国文学American Naturalism (美国自然主义)(1) The American Naturalists accepted the more negative interpretation of Darwins 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.(2) American Naturalism is evolved from realism when the authors 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.(3) Dreiser is a leading figure of his school.Darwinism (达尔文主义)(1) Darwinism is a term that comes from Charles Darwins evolutionary theory.(2) 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. (3) 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)(1) 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.(2) 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. (3) 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 Americas literary naturalists.Works Sister Carrie 嘉莉妹妹 (1) Sister Carrie tells about a poor country girl (Carrie Meeber) who goes to Chicago to pursue the American Dream. (2) The novel shows Dreisers naturalistic view about life by illustrating the 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 Dreisers greatest work and the title of the Book implies Dreiser intention to tell us that it is the social pressure that makes Clydes downfall inevitable. (2) Clydes tragedy is a tragedy that depends upon the American social system which encouraged people to pursue the “dream of success ” at all costs. Sherwood Anderson (舍伍德安德森) (1) He has been called the first of Americas “psychological writers” because he first explored the motivations and frustrations of his fictional characters in terms of Sigmund Freuds theories of psychology.(2) 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 of samll-town life. These stories sound morbid and grotesque, but Underneath them runs a strong desire to communicate, and love and be loved. (2) It won the author a foremost position in contemporary American literary.4. 现代时期的美国文学The Lost Generation (迷惘的一代)(1) 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. (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-know representatives of Lost Generation are F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and John Dos Passos.(4) 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)（1） 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.（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 dominant image.（3） 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.（4） Ezra Pounds In a Station of the Metro is a well-known imagist poem. The Beat Generation (垮掉的一代)（1） The members of the Beat Generation were new bohemian libertines, who engaged in a spontaneous, sometimes messy, creativity.（2） The beat writers produced a body of written work controversial both for its advocacy of non-conformity and for its non-conforming style.（3） The major beat writings are Jack Kerouacs On the Road and Allen Ginsbergs Howl. Howl became the manifesto of the Beat Generation.American Dream (美国梦)（1） 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.（2） 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)（1） 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.（2） Expressionism is a reaction against realism or naturalism, aiming at presenting a post-war world violently distorted.（3） Works noted for expressionism include: Eugene ONeills The Emperor Jones, James Joyces Ulysses and Finnegans Wake, and T. S. Eliots The Waste Land, etc.（4） 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 womens 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)（1） 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.（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 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)（1） Impressionism is a style of painting that gives the impression made by the subject on the artist without much a