比较齐全的美国文学名词解释

1、Stream of consciousness(意识流)(or interior monologue);In literary criticism, Stream of consciousness denotes a literary technique which seeks to describe an individuals point of view by giving the written equivalent of the characters thought processes. Stream of consciousness writing is strongly assoc

2、iated with the modernist movement. Its introduction in the literary context, transferred from psychology, is attributed to May Sinclair. Stream of consciousness writing is usually regarded as a special form of interior monologue and is characterized by associative leaps in syntax and punctuation tha

3、t can make the prose difficult to follow,tracing as they do a characters fragmentary thoughts and sensory feelings.famous writers to employ this technique in the english language include James Joyce and William Faulkner.American realism ：（美国现实主义）Realism was a reaction against Romanticism and paved t

4、he way to Modernism; 2).During this period a new generation of writers, dissatisfied with the Romantic ideas in the older generation, came up with a new inspiration. This new attitude was characterized by a great interest in the realities of life. It aimed at the interpretation of the realities of a

5、ny aspect of life, free from subjective prejudice, idealism, or romantic color. Instead of thinking about the mysteries of life and death and heroic individualism, peoples attention was now directed to the interesting features of everyday existence, to what was brutal or sordid, and to the open port

6、ayal of class struggle;3) so writers began to describe the integrity of human characters reacting under various circumstances and picture the pioneers of the far west, the new immigrants and the struggles of the working class; 4) Mark Twain Howells and Henry James are three leading figures of the Am

7、erican Realism. American Naturalism(美国自然主义文学)：The American naturalists accepted the more negative interpretation of Darwins evolutionary theory and used it to accout for the behavior of those characters in literary works who were regarded as more or less complex combinations of inherited attributes,

8、 their habits conditioned by social and economic forces.2) 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.3Dreiser

9、 is a leading figure of his school.Local Colorism(乡土文学)：Generally speaking, the writings of local colorists are concerned with the life of a small, weell-defined region or province. The characteristic setting is the isolated small town. 2) Local colorists were consciously nostalgic historians of a v

10、anishing 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 th

11、e native life was shaped by the curious conditions of the local. 3) major local colorists is Mark Twain.Imagism(意象主义)：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.2the imagists, with Ezra

12、Pound leading the way, hold that the most effective means to express these momentary impressions is through the use of one dominant image.3imagism is characterized by the following three poetic principles:A.direct treatment of subject matter;B.economy of expression;C. as regards rhythm ,to compose i

13、n the sequence of the musical phrase, not in the sequence of metronome. 4 pounds In a Station of the Metro is a well-known inagist poem.The Lost Generation(迷惘的一代）：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 se

14、nse of betrayal and emptiness brought about by the destructiveness of the war.2full 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.3the three best-known representatives of lost generat

15、ion are F.Scott Fitzgerald, hemingway and John dos Passos.The Beat Generation(垮掉的一代):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 no

16、n-conformity and for its non-conforming style.3 the major beat writings are Allen Ginsbergs howl.Howl became the manifesto of The Beat Generation.A 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.

17、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 Fitzgeralds The Great Gatsby. Highlighting what some describe as the decadence and hedonism, as well as the growth of individualism. Fitzgerald

18、is largely credited with coining the term” Jazz Age”.Feminisim(女权主义): Feminisim 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.2in general, feminism is ideology of womens liberation base

19、d on the belief that women suffer injustice because of their sex. Under this broad umbrella various feminisms 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

20、 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): Hemingway Code Hero

21、 ,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

22、man and the sea are typical of Hemingway Code HeroImpressionism(印象主义):Impressionism is a style of painting that gives the impression made by the subject on the artist without much attention to details. Writers accepted the same conviction that the personal attitudes and moods of the writer were legi

23、timate elements in depicting character or setting or action.2briefly, it is a style of literature characterized by the creation of general impressions and moods rather that realistic mood. Modernism(现代主义)：Modernism is comprehensive but vague term for a movement , which begin in the late 19th century

24、 and which has had a wide influence internationally during much of the 20th century.2 modernism takes the irrational philosophy and the theory of psycho-analysis as its theoretical case.3 the term pertains to all the creative arts. Especially poetry, fiction, drama, painting,music and architecture.4

25、 in england from early in the 20th century and during the 1920s and 1930s, in America from shortly before the first world war and on during the inter-war period, modernist tendencies were at their most active and fruitful.5as far as literature is concerned, Modernism reveals a breaking away from est

26、ablished rules, traditions and conventions.fresh ways of looking at mans position and function in the universe and many experiments in form and style.it is particularly concerned with language and how to use it and with writing itself.the gilded age: Plains Indians were pushed in a series of Indian

27、wars onto restricted reservations.This period also witnessed the creation of a modern industrial economy. A national transportation and communication network was created, the corporation became the dominant form of business organization, and a managerial revolution transformed business operations. B

28、y the beginning of the twentieth century, per capita income and industrial production in the United States exceeded that of any other country except Britain. Long hours and hazardous working conditions, led many workers to attempt to form labor unions despite strong opposition from industrialists an

29、d the courts.An era of intense political partisanship, the Gilded Age was also an era of reform. The Civil Service Act sought to curb government corruption by requiring applicants for certain governmental jobs to take a competitive examination. The Interstate Commerce Act sought to end discriminatio

30、n by railroads against small shippers and the Sherman Antitrust Act outlawed business monopolies. These years also saw the rise of the Populist crusade. Burdened by heavy debts and falling farm prices, many farmers joined the Populist party, which called for an increase in the amount of money in cir

31、culation, government assistance to help farmers repay loans, tariff reductions, and a graduated income tax.Mark Twain called the late nineteenth century the Gilded Age. By this, he meant that the period was glittering on the surface but corrupt underneath. In the popular view, the late nineteenth ce

32、ntury was a period of greed and guile: of rapacious Robber Barons, unscrupulous speculators, and corporate buccaneers, of shady business practices, scandal-plagued politics, and vulgar display. It is easy to caricature the Gilded Age as an era of corruption, conspicuous consumption, and unfettered c

33、apitalism. But it is more useful to think of this as modern Americas formative period, when an agrarian society of small producers was transformed into an urban society dominated by industrial corporations.Regionalism(地区主义)：In literature, regionalism or local color fiction refers to fiction or poetr

34、y that focuses on specific features including characters, dialects, customs, history, and topography of a particular region. Since the region may be a recreation or reflection of the authors own, there is often nostalgia and sentimentality in the writing.Although the terms regionalism and local colo

35、r are sometimes used interchangeably, regionalism generally has broader connotations. Whereas local color is often applied to a specific literary mode that flourished in the late 19th century, regionalism implies a recognition from the colonial period to the present of differences among specific are

36、as of the country. Additionally, regionalism refers to an intellectual movement encompassing regional consciousness beginning in the 1930s. Even though there is evidence of regional awareness in early southern writingWilliam Byrds History of the Dividing Line, for example, points out southern charac

37、teristicsnot until well into the 19th century did regional considerations begin to overshadow national ones. In the South the regional concern became more and more evident in essays and fiction exploring and often defending the southern way of life. John Pendleton Kennedys fictional sketches in Swal

38、low Barn, for example, examined southern plantation life at length. multiple points of view（多视角）：Multiple Point of View: It is one of the literary techniques William Faulkner used, which shows within the same story how the characters reacted differently to the same person or the same situation. The

39、use of this technique gave the story a circular form wherein one event was the center, with various points of view radiating from it. The multiple points of view technique makes the reader recognize the difficulty of arriving at a true judgment.Confessional poetry ：Confessional poetry emphasizes the

40、 intimate, and sometimes unflattering, information about details of the poets personal life, such as in poems about illness, sexuality, and despondence. The confessionalist label was applied to a number of poets of the 1950s and 1960s. John Berryman, Allen Ginsberg, Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, Theo

41、dore Roethke, Anne Sexton, and William De Witt Snodgrass have all been called Confessional Poets. As fresh and different as the work of these poets appeared at the time, it is also true that several poets prominent in the canon of Western literature, perhaps most notably Sextus Propertius and Petrar

42、ch, could easily share the label of confessional with the confessional poets of the fifties and sixties.Ecocriticism：Ecocriticism is the study of literature and environment from an interdisciplinary point of view where all sciences come together to analyze the environment and brainstorm possible sol

43、utions for the correction of the contemporary environmental situation. Ecocriticism was officially heralded by the publication of two seminal works, both published in the mid-1990s: The Ecocriticism Reader, edited by Cheryll Glotfelty and Harold Fromm, and The Environmental Imagination, by Lawrence

44、Buell.In the United States, Ecocriticism is often associated with the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE), which hosts biennial meetings for scholars who deal with environmental matters in literature. ASLE has an official journalInterdisciplinary Studies in Literature and

45、Environment (ISLE)in which much of the most current American scholarship in the rapidly evolving field of ecocriticism can be found.Ecocriticism is an intentionally broad approach that is known by a number of other designations, including green (cultural) studies, ecopoetics, and environmental liter

46、ary criticism.Dramatic Conflict：At least not the special kind of conflict that drives plays, the gas that fuels the dramatic engine. Arguments in real life are usually circular - nobody gets anywhere, except a little steams been blown off. And theyre boring for everyone except the folks doing the ye

47、lling.Dramatic Conflict draws from a much deeper vein, rooted in the Subtext of your central characters. Its driven by fundamentally opposing desires.Conflict is a necessary element of fictional literature. It is defined as the problem in any piece of literature and is often classified according to

48、the nature of the protagonist or antagonist。Confessional poetry(自白派诗歌)：designates a type of narrative and lyric verse, given impetus by Robert Lowells Life Studies, which deals with the facts and intimate mental and physical experiences of the poets own life. Confessional poetry was written in rebel

49、lion against the demand for impersonality by T. S. Elliot and the New Criticism. The representative writers of confessional school include Robert Lowell, Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath and so on.01. Allegory(寓言)Allegory is a story told to explain or teach something. Especially a long and complicated s

50、tory with an underlying meaning different from the surface meaning of the story itself.2allegorical novels use extended metaphors to convey moral meanings or attack certain social evils. characters in these novels often stand for different values such as virtue and vice.3Bunyans Pilgrims Progress, M

51、elvilles Moby Dick are such examples.02. Alliteration(头韵)Alliteration means a repetition of the initial sounds of several words in a line or group.2alliteration is a traditional poetic device in English literature.3Robert Frosts Acquainted with the Night is a case in point:” I have stood still and s

52、topped the sound of feet”03. Ballad(民谣)Ballad is a story in poetic from to be sung or recited. in more exact literary terminology, a ballad is a narrative poem consisting of quatrains of iambic tetrameter alternating with iambic trimester.(抑扬格四音步与抑扬格三音步诗行交替出现的四行叙事诗)2.ballads were passed down from ge

53、neration to generation. 3Coleridges The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is a 19th century English ballad.04. epic(史诗)Epic, in poetry, refers to a long work dealing with the actions of goods and heroes.2Epic poems are not merely entertaining stories of legendary or historical heroes; they summarize and e

54、xpress the nature or ideals of an entire nation at a significant or crucial period of its history.3Beowulf is the greatest national Epic of the Anglo-Saxons.05. Lay(短叙事诗)It is a short poem, usually a romantic narrative, intended to be sung or recited by a minstrel.06. Romance(传奇)Romance is a popular

55、 literary form in the medic England.2it sings knightly adventures or other heroic deeds.3 chivalry is the spirit of the romance.07. Alexandrine(亚历山大诗行)The name is derived from the fact that certain 12th and 13th century French poems on Alexander the Great were written in this meter.2it is an iambic

56、line of six feet, which is the French heroic verse.08. Blank Verse(无韵诗或素体广义地说)Blank verse is unrhymed poetry. Typically in iambic pentameter, and as such, the dominant verse forms of English dramatic and narrative poetry since the mid-16th century.09. Comedy(喜剧)Comedy is a light form of drama that a

57、ims primarily to amuse and that ends happily. Since it strives to provoke smile and laughter, both wit and humor are utilized. In general, the comic effect arises from recognition of some incongruity of speech, action, or character revelation, with intricate plot.10. Essay(随笔) The term refers to lit

58、erary composition devoted to the presentation of the writers own ideas on a topic and generally addressing a particular aspect of the subject. Often brief in scope and informal in style, the essay differs from such fomal forms as the thesis, dissertation or treatise.11. Euphuistic style(绮丽体)Its prin

59、ciple characteristics are the excessive use of antithesis, which is pursued regardless of sense, and emphasized by alliteration and other devices; and of allusions to historical and mythological personages and to natural history drawn from such writers as Plutarch(普卢塔克), Pliny(普林尼), and Erasmus(伊拉兹马斯).2 it is the peculiar style of Euphues(优浮绮斯)12. History Plays(历史剧)History plays aim to prese