美国文学名词解释

迷惘的一代(Lost Generation)，又称：迷失的一代。

西方现代派文学的一种。

第一次世界大战以后出现于美国的一个文学流派。

第一次世界大战以后，美国有一批青年作家陆续登上文坛。他们不仅年龄相仿，而且经历相似，思想情绪相近，在创作中表现出许多共同点，逐渐形成一新的文学流派。

代表作家有海明威(1899—1961)、福克纳(1897—1962)、约·多斯·帕索斯(1896—1970)、菲兹杰拉德(1896—1940)，和诗人肯明斯(1894—1962)等。

他们曾怀着民主的理想奔赴欧洲战场，目睹人类空前的大屠杀，经历种种苦难，深受“民主”、“光荣”、“牺牲”口号的欺骗，对社会、人生大感失望，故通过创作小说描述战争对他们的残害，表现出一种迷惘、彷徨和失望的情绪。这一流派也包括没有参加过战争但对前途感到迷惘和迟疑的20年代作家，如菲兹杰拉德、艾略特和沃尔夫(1900～1938)等。特别是菲兹杰拉德，对战争所暴露的资产阶级精神危机深有感触，通过对他所熟悉的上层社会的描写，表明昔日的梦想成了泡影，“美国梦”根本不存在，他的人物历经了觉醒和破灭感中的坎坷与痛苦。沃尔夫的作品以一个美国青年的经历贯穿始终，体现了在探索人生的过程中的激动和失望，是一种孤独者的迷惘。迷惘的一代作家在艺术上各有特点，他们的主要成就闪烁于20年代，之后便分道扬镳了

意象派诗歌

意象派（Imagists）是1909年至1917年间一些英美诗人发起并付诸实践的文学运动，它是当时盛行于西方世界的象征主义文学运动的一个分支。其宗旨是要求诗人以鲜明、准确、含蓄和高度凝炼的意象生动及形象地展现事物，并将诗人瞬息间的思想感情溶化在诗行中。它反对发表议论及感叹。意象派的产生最初是对当时诗坛文风的一种反拨，代表人物是埃兹拉·庞德。

由于意象派诗人大多经历了象征诗歌创作，所以理论界也有人将意象派看做象征主义的分支，实际上意象派和象征主义诗歌有极大的本质差异。意象派不满意象征主义要通过猜谜形式去寻找意象背后的隐喻暗示和象征意义，不满足于去寻找表象与思想之间的神秘关系，而要让诗意在表象的描述中，一刹那间地体现出来。主张用鲜明的形象去约束感情，不加说教、抽象抒情、说理。因此意象派诗短小、简练、形象鲜明。往往一首诗只有一个意象或几个意象。虽然，象征主义也用意象，两者都以意象为“客观对应物”，但象征主义把意象当做符号，注重联想、暗示、隐喻，使意象成为一种有待翻译的密码。意象派则是“从象征符号走向实在世界”，把重点放在诗的意象本身，即具象性上。让情感和思想融合在意象中，一瞬间中不假思索、自然而然地体现出来。

表现主义是艺术家通过作品着重表现内心的情感，而忽视对描写对象形式的摹写，因此往往表现为对现实扭曲和抽象化。的这个做法尤其用来表达恐惧的情感——欢快的表现主义作品很少见。从这个定义上来说马蒂斯·格吕内瓦尔德与格雷考的作品也可以说是表现主义的，但是一般来说表现主义仅限于20世纪的作品。

表现主义从来不是一个完全统一协调的运动，其成员的政治信仰和哲学观点之间存在着很大的差异。但他们大都受康德哲学、柏格森的直觉主义和弗洛伊德精神分析学的影响，强调反传统，不满于社会现状，要求改革，要求“革命”。在创作上，他们不满足于对客观事物的摹写，要求进而表现事物的内在实质；要求突破对人的行为和人所处的环境的描绘而揭示人的灵魂；要求不再停留在对暂时现象和偶然现象的记叙而展示其永恒的品质。其诗歌的主题多为厌恶都市的喧嚣，或暴露大城市的混乱、堕落和罪恶，充满了隐逸的伤感情绪或是对“普遍的人性”的宣扬。它的特点是不重视细节的描写，只追求强有力地表现主观精神和内心激情。其小说的人物和故事都是现实生活的异乎寻常的变形或扭曲，用以揭示工业社会的异化现象和人失去自我的严重的精神危机。代表人物有奥地利的卡夫卡等。其戏剧内容荒诞离奇，结构散乱，场次之间缺少逻辑联系，情节变化突兀，生与死、梦幻与现实之间没有明确的界线。多用简短、快速、高声调、强节奏的冗长的内心独白来表现人物的思想感情。同时也大量运用灯光、音乐、假面等来补充语言的效果。

意识流是心理学家们使用的一个短语。它是19世纪由美国实用主义哲学创始人、心理学家威廉·詹姆斯创造的，指人的意识活动持续流动的性质。他在1884年发表的《论内省心理学所忽略的几个问题》一文中，认为人类的思维活动是一股切不开、斩不断的“流水”。他说：“意识并不是片断的连接，而是不断流动着的。用一条…河?或者一股…流水?的比喻来表达它是最自然的了。此后，我们再说起它的时候，就把它叫做思想流、意识流或者主观生活之流吧。”

詹姆斯提出的“意识流”概念，强调了思维的不间断性，即没有“空白”，始终在“流动”；也强调其超时间性和超空间性，即不受时间和空间的束缚，因为意识是一种不受客观现实制约的纯主观的东西，它能使感觉中的现在与过去不可分割。这一概念及其内涵的思想直接影响了文学家，并被他们借用、借鉴，从而进入文学领域，作用于作家的创作，从而导致“意识流”文学的产生。

现实主义是文学批评和文学研究中最常见的术语之一。这个术语一般在两种意义上被人们使用：一种是广义的现实主义，泛指文学艺术对自然的忠诚，最初源于西方最古老的文学理论，即古希腊人那种"艺术乃自然的直接复现或对自然的模仿"的朴素的观念，作品的逼真性或与对象的酷似程度成为判断作品成功与否的准则。瓦萨拉的《画家的生活》曾叙述了一些有趣的艺术史轶事：孔雀啄食贝那左尼画得太逼真的樱桃；乔托的老师用刷子驱赶乔托在一幅人物肖像上增添的苍蝇。这种现实主义概念雄霸人类艺术史近两千年，至今仍残留在日常生活中。另一种是狭义的现实主义，是一个历史性概念，特指发生在19世纪的现实主义运动。历史地看，现实主义发端于与浪漫主义的论争，最终在与现代主义的论战中逐渐丧失了主流话语的位置。

它是这样一种文学：

1.日常生活事件和场景用一种逼真的手法写出。是反浪漫主义和感伤主义的。

2.人物从各种角度进行深度考察。远离象征。

3.开放式结局。很符合现实主义理念，因为生活就是无休无止，没有结束。

4.关注普通人的普通生活。这一点经常被以前的艺术忽略。

5.强调客观。提供的是客观的而不是理想化的关于人类的天性和经验的画卷。

6.有道德寓意。不是纯粹再现生活，而是有引人向善的目的。

达尔文运用大量地质学、古生物学、比较解剖学、胚胎学等方面的材料，特别是他在环球航行期间以及研究家养动植物时所获得的第一手材料，令人信服地证明了现存多种多样的生物是由原始的共同祖先逐渐演化而来的，揭示了自然选择是生物进化的主要动因，从而使进化论真正成为科学。自然选择的主要内容包括变异和遗传、生存竞争和选择等。变异是选择的原材料，在生存竞争中，有利的变异将较多地保存下来，有害的变异则被淘汰。有利变异在种内经过长期积累，导致性状分歧，最后形成新种。生物就是这样通过自然选择缓慢进化的。英国生物学家A.R.华莱士与达尔文同时提出了类似思想，并于1889年第一次把达尔文的学说称为“达尔文主义”。

自然主义（Le Naturalisme）是文学艺术创作中的一种倾向。作为创作方法，自然主义一方面排斥浪漫主义的想象、夸张、抒情等主观因素，另一方面轻视现实主义对现实生活的典型概括，而追求绝对的客观性，崇尚单纯地描摹自然，着重对现实生活的表面现象作记录式的写照，并企图以自然规律特别是生物学规律解释人和人类社会。在文学艺术上，以“按照事物本来的样子去摹仿”作为出发点的自然主义创作倾向，是同现实主义创作倾向一样源远流长的。但作为一个比较自觉的、具有现代含义的文艺流派，自然主义则是19世纪下半叶至20世纪初在法国兴起，然后波及欧洲一些国家，并影响到文化和艺术的许多部门。

地方色彩主义

随着现实主义到来美国也出现了地方色彩小说。有着浪漫情节但用的是现实的笔触，从现实中看到的习俗、方言、景观、光声色，都是美国化的。马克.吐温的某些作品可归入这一类，只是在他最好的作品中他冲破了地域色彩，闪烁出现实主义和人道主义的光芒，他和布雷特.哈特都写过逼真的地域色彩极浓反映普通人生活的小说。在十九世纪末，因为题材越来越窄，这股潮流减退了。汉姆林.加兰曾这样给地方色彩小说定义：“有这种资质，它只能出自某个地域，也只能出自本乡人之手”。在十九世纪八十年代，美国作家被号召去表现生活的：“光明面”，要配称为是“美国的”。这就是美国现实主义文学的早期，这一时期的文学总体上看充满乐观色彩。

清教主义，起源于英国,在北美殖民地得以实践与发展。其因信称义、天职思想、山颠之城等核心理念,虽然构成宗教行为规范要素,却在很大程度上起到了消解禁锢人们思想与行为的主流教会传统的作用,促进了社会世俗化进程,在早期的美国,推动了个性解放,促成建立现代劳动、职业和财富观,以宗教的理想勾勒出国家未来追求的目标。它们奠定了今日美国主流文化(wasp)价值观念的基础,铸就了美国民族特性。

清教徒并不是一种严格意义上派别，而是一种态度，一种倾向，一种价值观，它是对信徒群体的一种统称。清教徒是最为虔敬、生活最为圣洁的新教徒，他们认为“人人皆祭司，人人有召唤”。认为每个个体可以直接与上帝交流，反对神甫集团的专横、腐败和繁文缛节、形式主义。他们主张简单、实在、上帝面前人人平等的信徒生活。

超验主义(transcendentalism)的核心观点是主张人能超越感觉和理性而直接认识真理，认为人类世界的一切都是宇宙的一个缩影--"世界将其自身缩小成为一滴露水"（爱默生语）。超验主义者强调万物本质上的统一，万物皆受"超灵"制约，而人类灵魂与"超灵"一致。这种对人之神圣的肯定使超验主义者蔑视外部的权威与传统，依赖自己的直接经验。"相信你自己"这句爱默生的名言，成为超验主义者座右铭。这种超验主义观点强调人的主观能动性，有助于打破加尔文教的"人性恶"、"命定论"等教条的束缚，为热情奔放，抒发个性的浪漫主义文学奠定了思想基础。

美国超验主义也叫“新英格兰超验主义”或者说“美国文艺复兴”是美国的一种文学和哲学运动。与拉尔夫·沃尔多·爱默生和玛格丽特·富勒有关，它宣称存在一种理想的精神实体，超越于经验和科学之处，通过直觉得以把握。领导人是美国思想家、诗人拉尔夫·沃尔多·爱默生。

美国超验主义（American Transcendentalism）是美国的一个重要思潮，它兴起于十九世纪三十年代的新英格兰地区，但波及其他地方，成为美国思想史上一次重要的思想解放运动。它是与拉尔夫·沃尔多·爱默生以及梭罗相关的一种文学和哲学运动，宣称存在一种理想的精神实体，超越于经验和科学之处，通过直觉得以把握。超验主义是美国文学的第三个阶段，真正开始影响美国的文学风格。

象征主义重新回到以抒写个人感情为重点的老路。但它抒写个人情怀和浪漫主义的抒情大异其趣。它抒写的是不可捉摸的内心隐秘；或者如马拉梅所说，表现隐藏在普通事物背后的“唯一的真理”。为此，象征主义对于诗的语言进行了很大的改造。对于日常用的字和词加以特殊的、出人意外的安排和组合，使之发生新的含义。象征主义不满足于描绘事物的明确的线条和固定的轮廓，它所追求的艺术效果，并不是要使读者理解诗人究竟要说什么，而是要使读者似懂非懂，恍惚若有所悟；使读者体会到此中有深意。象征主义不追求单纯的明朗，也不故意追求晦涩；它所追求的是半明半暗，明暗配合，扑朔迷离。象征主义诗歌十分强调音乐效果，可是诗句的音乐性不是单纯通过机械的协韵表现出来，而在于诗句内在的节奏和旋律。散文诗的音乐感并不亚于格律诗，有时反而胜过格律诗，因此许多象征派诗人的散文诗都写得有特色。象征主义者反对现实主义和自然主义者如实地描写客观现实。他们认为现实的物质世界是虚幻而痛苦的，只有隐匿在背后的内在的世界才是真实的。作品中运用大量的暗示和象征来隐喻表现人的内心世界。

自由诗是诗体的一种。19世纪末20世纪初源于欧洲。其体结构自由﹐段数﹑行数﹑字数没有一定规格;语言有自然节奏而不用韵。在西方以美国诗人惠特曼为创始人。自由诗又称新诗，这是相对旧体诗而言的。它在章节、音步、押韵等方面都比较自由、灵活，没有格律诗那样严格、固定的限制和约束。

自由诗从旧式诗词格律的镣铐里脱胎而出，在体式、音节、语言方面力求解放，显示出新的特色：首先是破除僵化陈腐文言，以白话加入诗行。尤其是提倡以接近大众口语的简洁亲切的俗字俗语取代文言的艰涩滥调，实写社会状况，表现真挚的感情和崭新的思想。

其次是在音节韵律上破除旧体诗词的声韵、格律平仄，废除骈偶典故等僵化的束缚，讲究切合自然音乐而不必拘于音韵（康白情《新诗之我见》），诗歌的声气音节轻重缓急、抑扬顿挫只求合乎诗人自身情绪感兴的自然消涨和语气的自然节奏。

另外，在体式上有意追求一种无拘无束自由自在的表达方式。不为格律音韵所束缚，毫无顾忌的倾吐心里的东西，诗既不分行也不押韵，即使分节分行也完全按照作品内容而随意排列，以此形成了自由诗艺术形式上的主要特点。自由诗在思想内容上最引人注目的特点，便是对被压迫被奴役的下层工农劳动者的悲惨命运，表现出深切的同情和关怀。前所未有的以大量篇幅，展现了他们现实人生的苦难，以此来揭示旧社会贫富尖锐对立和封建专制的本质特征。

美国文学史复习提纲 名词解释

I. Explain the following literary terms(名词解释). 1. Romanticism The most profound and comprehensive idea of romanticism is the vision of a greater personal freedom for the individual. Appeals to imagination; Stress on emotion rather than reason; optimism, gen iality. Subjectivity: in form and meaning. 2 American transcendentalism American transcendentalism was an important movement in philosophy and literature that flourished during the early to middle years of the nineteenth century (about 1836-1860). For the transcendentalists, the soul of each individual is identical with the soul of the world and contains what the world contains. 3 Realism: ―nothing more and nothing less than the truthful treatment of material.‖ the Civil war a. verisimilitude of details derived from observation b. representative in plot, setting and character c. an objective rather than an idealized view of human experience or（American Realism: In American literature, the Civil War brought the Romantic Period to an end. The Age of Realism came into existence. It came as a reaction against the lie of romanticism and sentimentalism. Realism turned from an emphasis on the strange toward a faithful rendering of the ordinary, a slice of life as it is really lived. It expresses the concern for commonplace and the low, and it offers an objective rather than an idealistic view of human nature and human experience.） 4. Modernism like modernism in general is a trend of thought that affirms the power of human beings to create, improve, and reshape their environment, with the aid of scientific knowledge, technology and practical experimentation, and is thus in its essence both progressive and optimistic. The general term covers many political, cultural and artistic movements rooted in the changes in Western society at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century. American modernism is an artistic and cultural movement in the United States starting at the turn of the 20th century with its core period between World War I and World War II and continuing into the 21st century. 5、American Puritanism: Puritanism is the practices and beliefs of the Puritans. The Puritans were originally members of a division of the Protestant Church. The first settlers who became the founding fathers of the American nation were quite a few of them. They were a group of serious, religious people, advocating highly religious and moral principles. As the word itself hints, Puritans wanted to purity their religious beliefs and practices. They accepted the doctrine of predestination, original sin and total depravity, and limited atonement through a special infusion of grace form God. As a culture heritage, Puritanism did have a profound influence on the early American mind. American Puritanism also had a enduring influence on American literature. 6、Transcendentalism: In New England, an intellectual movement known as transcendentalism developed as an American version of Romanticism. The movement began among an influential set of authors based in Concord, Massachusetts and was led by Ralph Waldo Emerson. Like Romanticism, transcendentalism rejected both 18th century rationalism and established religion, which for the transcendentalists meant the Puritan tradition in particular. The transcendentalists celebrated the power of the human imagination to commune with the universe and transcend the limitations of the material world. They found their chief source of inspiration in nature. Emerson’s essay Nature was the major document of the transcendental school and stated the ideas that were to remain central to it. 7、Free verse: free verse is the rhymed or unrhymed poetry composed without attention to conventio nal rules of meter. Free verse was first written and labeled by a group of French poets of the late 19th century. Their purpose was to deliver poetry from the restrictions of formal metrical patterns and to recreate the free rhythms of natural speech. Walt Whitman was the precursor who wrote lines of varying length and cadence, usually not rhymed. The emotional content or meaning of the work was expressed through its rhythm. Free verse has been characteristic of the work of many modern American poets, including Ezra Pound and Carl Sandburg. 8、Naturalism: A more deliberate kind of realism in novels, stories and plays, usually involving a view of human beings as passive victims of natural forces and social environment. Naturalism was a new and harsher realism. It

美国文学名词解释

1. Transcendentalism The origin of it is a philosophical and literary movement centered in Concord and Boston, which marks the summit of American Transcendentalism. 19th-century movement of writers and philosophers in New England who were loosely bound together by adherence to an idealistic system of thought based on a belief in the essential unity of all creation, the innate goodness of man, and the supremacy of insight over logic and experience for the revelation of the deepest truths. The major features of American Transcendentalism are:It emphasis on spirit, or the Oversoul, as the most important thing in the universe. It stressed the importance of the individual. To them the individual was the most important element of society. It offered a fresh perception of nature as symbolic of the Spirit or God. 2.Romanticism The Romanticism period stretches from the end of the 18th century through the outbreak of the Civil War. It is a term associate with imagination boundlessness, and in critical usage is contrasted with classicism which is commonly associated with reason and restriction. The features of Romanticism are: American Romanticism was in a way derivative: American romantic writing was some of them modeled on English and European works. American romanticism was in essence the expression of "a real new experience "and contained"an alien quality".Representatives:William Cullen Bryant; Henry Longfellow and James Cooper, Washington Irving. 3.Realism: In American literature, the Civil War brought the Romantic Period to an end. The Age of Realism came into existence. It came as a reaction against the lie of romanticism and sentimentalism. Realism turned from an emphasis on the strange toward a faithful rendering of the ordinary, a slice of life as it is really lived. It expresses the concern for commonplace and the low, and it offers an objective rather than an idealistic view of human nature and human experience.The representatives are Howells, James, and Mark Twain. 4. Naturalism American naturalism was a new and harsher 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. The background of naturalism are: In the last 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.Major Features of it are:Humans are controlled by laws of heredity and environment.The universe is cold, godless, indifferent and hostile to human desires.Representatives of it such as Stephen Crane, Frank Norris and Theodore Dreiser. 5.New Criticism The New Criticism as a school of poetry and criticism established itself in the 1940s as an academic orthodoxy in the United States. The school has its beginning in the 1920s. It focus on the analysis of the text rather paying attention to external elements such as its social background, its author's intention and political attitude, and its impact on society. Then it explores the artistic structure of the work rather than its author's frame of mind or its reader's responses. It also see a literary work as an organic entity, the unity of content and form, and places emphasis on the close reading of the text. These New Critics included T.S. Eliot,I.A.Richards,John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate and some other critics. The New Criticism has tended to divorce criticism from social and moral concerns, which was to become one salient feature of the movement. 6.Imagism: Between 1912 and 1922 there came a great poetry boom in which about 1000 poets published over 1000 volumes of poetry. Indeed ,to express the modern spirit, the sense of fragmentization and dislocation, was in large measure the aim of quite a few modern literary movements, of which Imagism was one.The first Imagist theorist, the English writer T.E.Hulme. Hulme suggests that modern art deals with expression and communication of momentary phases in the poet's mind. The most effective means to express these momentary impressions is through the use of dominant image.It is a literary movement launched American poets early in the 20th century that advocated the use of free verse, common speech patterns, and clear concrete images as a reaction to Victorian sentimentalism. The representatives are Ezra pound, William Carlos Williams and some other poets.

美国文学史名词解释

1、the Lost Generation In general, the post-World War I generation, but specifically a group of U.S. writers who came of age during the war and established their literary reputations in the 1920s. The term stems from a remark made by Gertrude Stein to Ernest Hemingway, “You are all a lost generation.” Hemingway used it as an epigraph to The Sun Also Rises (1926). The generation was “lost” in the sense that its inherited values were no longer relevant in the postwar world and because of its spiritual alienation from a U.S. that, b asking under President Harding's “back to normalcy” policy, seemed to its members to be hopelessly provincial, materialistic, and emotionally barren. The term embraces Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Dos Passos, e.e. cummings and many other writers who made Paris the centre of their literary activities in the '20s. They were never a literary school. In the 1930s, as these writers turned in different directions, their works lost the distinctive stamp of the postwar period. The last representative works of the era were Fitzgerald's Tender Lost generation 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. Lost generation The Lost Generation is a group of expatriate American writers residing primarily in Paris during the 1920s and 1930s. The group was given its name by the American writer Gertrude Stein, who used “a lost generation” to refer to expatriate Americans bitter about their World War I experiences and disillusioned with American society. Hemingway later used the phrase as an epigraph for his novel The Sun Also Rises. It consisted of many influential American writers, including Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Carlos Williams and Archibald MacLeish. 2、Iceberg Theory It is a term used to describe the writing style of American writer Ernest Hemingway. The meaning of a piece is not immediately evident, because the crux of the story lies below the surface, just as most of the mass of a real iceberg similarly lies beneath the surface. Iceberg Theory Ernest Hemingway’s “iceberg theory” sugge sts that the writer include in the text only a small portion of what he knows, leaving about ninety percent of the content a mystery that grows beneath the surface of the writing. If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about he may omit things that will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of

美国文学名词解释

Allegory is a narrative that serves as an extended metaphor. Allegories are written in the form of fables, parables, poems, stories, and almost any other style or genre. The main purpose of an allegory is to tell a story that has characters, a setting, as well as other types of symbols, that have both literal and figurative meanings. One well-known example of an allegory is Dante’s The Divine Comedy.In Inferno, Dante is on a pilgrimage to try to understand his own life, but his character also represents every man who is in search of his purpose in the world. Alliteration is a pattern of sound that includes the repetition of consonant sounds. The repetition can be located at the beginning of successive words or inside the words. Poets often use alliteration to audibly represent the action that is taking place. Aside is an actor’s speech, directed to the audience, that is not supposed to be heard by other actors on stage. An aside is usually used to let the audience know what a character is about to do or what he or she is thinking. Asides are important because they increase an audience's involvement in a play by giving them vital information pertaining what is happening, both inside of a character's mind and in the plot of the play. Gothic is a literary style popular during the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th. This style usually portrayed fantastic tales dealing with horror, despair, the grotesque and other “dark” subjects. Gothic literature was named for the apparent influence of the dark gothic architecture of the period on the genre. Also, many of these Gothic tales took places in such “gothic” surroundings. Other times, this story of darkness may occur in a more everyday setting, such as the quaint house where the man goes mad fro m the "beating" of his guilt in Edgar Allan Poe's “The Tell-Tale Heart.”In essence, these stories were romances, largely due to their love of the imaginary over the logical, and were told from many different points of view. CATHARSIS is an emotional discharge that brings about a moral or spiritual renewal or welcome relief from tension and anxiety. According to Aristotle, catharsis is the marking feature and ultimate end of any tragic artistic work. IMAGERY: A common term of variable meaning, imagery includes the "mental pictures" that readers experience with a passage of literature. It signifies all the sensory perceptions referred to in a poem, whether by literal description, allusion, simile, or metaphor. Surrealism is an artistic movement doing away with the restrictions of realism and verisimilitude that might be imposed on an artist. In this movement, the artist sought to do away with conscious control and instead respond to the irrational urges of the subconscious mind. From this results the hallucinatory, bizarre, often nightmarish quality of surrealistic paintings and writings. Sample surrealist writers include Frank O'Hara, John Ashberry, and Franz Kafka.

美国文学史及选读复习重点

Captain John Smith (first American writer). Anne Bradstreet；The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America （colonists living） Edward Taylor(the best puritan poet) John Cotton ”the Patriarch of New England” teacher spiritual leader Benjamin Franklin The Autobiography Poor Richard’s Almanack Thomas Jefferson： Political Career Thoughts The Declaration of Independence we hold truth to be self-evidence Philip Freneau“Father of American Poetry” The Wild Honey Suckle American Romanticism optimism and hope Nationalism Washington Irving“Father of American Literature short story”The first “Pure Writer” A History of New York The Sketch Book marked the beginning of American Romanticism! “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”Rip Van Winkle James Fenimore Cooper Father of American sea and frontier novels Leather stocking Tales The Last of the Mohicans The Pioneers The Prairie The Pathfinder The Deerslayer Edgar Allan Poe father of detective story and horror fiction Tales of the Grotesque and the Arabesque “MS. Found in a Bottle” “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” “The Fall of the House of Usher”“The Masque of the Red Death”“The

美国文学简史名词解释定义

American Puritanism: Puritanism was a religious reform movement that arose within the Church of England in the late sixteenth century. Under siege from church and crown, it sent an offshoot in the third and forth decades of the seventeenth century to the northern English colonies in the New World--- a migration that laid the foundation for the religious, intellectual, and social order of New England, Puritanism, however,was not only a historically specific phenomenon coincident with the founding of New England; it was also a way of being in the world---a style of response to lived experience---that has reverberated through American life ever since. Doctrinally, Puritans adhered to the Five Points of Calvinism as codified at the Synod of Dort in 1619:(1) unconditional election ( the idea that God had decreed who was damned and who was saved from before the beginning of the world); (2) limited atonement ( the idea that Christ died for the elect only); (3) total depravity (humanity's utter corruption since the Fall); (4) irresistible grace (regeneration as entirely a work of God, which cannot be resisted and to which the sinner contributes nothing); and (5) the perseverance of the saints (the elect, despite their backsliding and faintness of heart , cannot fall away from grace). American Dream: The American Dream is the faith held by many in the United States of America that through hard work, courage, and determination one can achieve a better life for oneself, usually through financial prosperity. These were values held by many early European settlers, and have been passed on to subsequent generations. Nowadays the American Dream has led to an emphasis on material wealth as a measure of success and\ or happiness. Gothic tradition: Gothic novel or Gothic romance is a story of terror and suspense, usually set in a gloomy old castle or monastery. In an extended sense, many novels that do not have a medievalized setting, but which share a comparably sinister, grotesque, or chaustrophobic atmosphere have been classed as Gothic. It contributed to the new emotional climate of Romanticism. Historical novel: a novel in which the action takes place during a specific historical period well before the time of writing ( often one or two generations before, sometimes several centuries), and in which some attempt is made to depict accurately the customs and mentality of the period. The central character---real or imagined---is usually subject to divided loyalties within a larger historic conflict of which readers know the outcome. The pioneers of this genre were Walter Scott and James Fenimore Cooper American Romanticism:Romanticism refers to an artistic and intellectual movement originating in Europe in the late 18th century and characterized by a heightened interest in nature, emphasis on the individual's expression of emotion and imagination, departure from the attitudes and forms of classicism, and rebellion against established social rules and conventions. The romantic period in American literature stretched from the end of the 18th century through the outbreak of the Civil