美国文学期末考试-名词解释部分
Transcendentalism: transcendentalism was a group of new ideas in literature, religion, culture and philosophy that emerged in New England in the early to middle 19th century. Transcendentalists spoke for cultural rejuvenation and against the materialism o f American society. It placed emphasis on spirit, or the Over soul, as the most important thing in the world. It stressed the importa nce of individual and offered a fresh perception nature ad symbolic of the spirit of God. Prominent transcendentalists included Ra lph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thorough.
Black Humor: the use of morbid and the absurd for darkly comic purposes in modern fiction and drama. The term refers as muc h to the tone of anger and bitterness as it does to the grotesque and morbid situations, which often deal with suffering, anxiety, an d death. Black humor is a substantial element in the Anti-novel and the Theatre of Absurd. Joseph Heller's Catch-22 is an almost archetypal example.
Irony: a contrast or an incongruity between what is stated and what is really meant, or between what is expected to happen and what actually happens in drama and literature. There are types of irony: verbal irony, dramatic irony and irony of situation. Irony of situation typically takes the form of a discrepancy between appearance and reality, or between what a character expects and w hat actually happens. Both verbal and irony of situation share the suggestion of a concealed truth conflicting with surface appeara nces.
Individualism
It is a moral political and social philosophy which emphasizes individual liberty the primary importance of the individual and the unities of self-reliance.
Stream of consciousness(意识流)(or interior monologue);In literary criticism, Stream of consciousness denotes a literary technique which seeks to describe an individual’s point of view by giving the written equivalent of the character’s thought processes. Stream of consciousness writing is strongly associated 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 that can make the prose difficult to fol low,tracing as they do a character’s fragmentary thoughts and sensory feelings.famous writers to employ this technique in the english language include James Joyce and William Faulkner.
Symbolism means using symbols in literary works the symbol means something represents or stands for abstract deep meaning American realism ：（美国现实主义）Realism was a reaction against Romanticism and paved the 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 any aspect of life, free from subjective prejudice, idealism, or romantic color. Instead of thinking about the mysteries of life and death and heroic individualism, people’s attention was now directed to the interesting features of everyday existence, to what was brutal or sordid, and to the open portayal 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 American Realism.
American Naturalism: American naturalism was a new and harsher realism. The naturalists attempt to achieve extreme objectiv ity and frankness, presenting characters of low social and economic classes who were determined by environment and heredity. It emphasized that the world was amoral, the men and women had no free will, that lives were controlled by heredity and environ ment, that the destiny of humanity was misery in life and oblivion in death. The pessimism and deterministic ideas naturalism per vaded the works of such American writers as Stephen Crane and Theodore Dreiser.
American Puritanism: Puritanism is the practices and beliefs of the puritans. The Puritans were originally members of a divisio n of the protestant church who wanted to purify their religious beliefs and practices. They accepted the doctrines of predestinatio n, original sin and total depravity, and limited atonement through a special infusion of grace from God. American literature in the 17th century mostly consisted of Puritan literature. Puritanism had an enduring influence on American literature. It had become, to some extent, so much a state of mind, so much a part of national cultural atmosphere, rather than a set of tenets.
A J azz 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. With the rise of the great depression, the values of this age saw much decline. Perhaps the most representativ e literary work of the age is American writer Fitzgerald’s 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”. 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 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 local. 3) major local colorists is Mark Twain.
Imagism:is a poetic movement of England and the United States, flourished from 1909-1917. Its credo, expressed in Some Imag ist Poets, included the use of the language of common speech, project matter, the evocation of images in hard, clear poetry, and c oncentration.
The Lost Generation is a group of expatriate American writers residing primarily in Paris during the 1920s and 1930s. The grou p was given its name by the American writer Gertrude Stein, who used “a lost generation” to refer to expatriate Americans bitt er 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 Fitzge rald, William Carlos Williams and Archibald MacLeish.
Beat Generation: group of American writers of the 1950s whose writing expressed profound dissatisfaction with contemporary American society and endorsed an alternative set of values. The term sometimes is used to refer to those who embraced the ideas of these writers. The Beat Generation's best-known figures were writers Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac.
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.2>in general, feminism is ideology of women’s liberation based 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 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.
Free Verse: free verse is poetry that has an irregular rhythm and line length and that attempts to avoid any predetermined verse s tructure, instead, it uses the cadences of natural speech. While it alternates stressed and unstressed syllables as stricter verse form do, free verse dose so in a looser way. Walt Whitman’s poetry is an example of free verse.
Hemingway Code Hero(海明威式英雄): Hemingway Code Hero ,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 man and the sea are typical of Hemingway Code Hero
Impressionism(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 legitimate elements in depicting character or setting or action.2>briefly, 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 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> 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.5>as far as literature is concerned, Modernism reveals a breaking away from established rules, traditions and conventions.fresh way s of looking at man’s 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镀金时代:
the Gilded Age refers to the era of rapid economic and population growth in the United States during the post-Civil War and post -Reconstruction eras of the late 19th century. The term "Gilded Age" was coined by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner in t heir 1873 book, The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today.The Gilded Age is most famous for the creation of a modern industrial econom y. The end of the Gilded Age coincided with the Panic of 1893, a deep depression. （The depression lasted until 1897 and marke d a major political realignment in the election of 1896. After that came the Progressive Era.）
Tragedy: in general, a literary work in which the protagonist meets an unhappy or disastrous end. Unlike comedy, tragedy depict s the actions of a central character who is usually dignified or heroic. Through a series of events, this tragic hero is brought to a fi
nal downfall. The causes of the tragic hero’s downfall vary. In traditional dramas, the cause can be fate, a flaw in character or an error in judgment. In modern dramas, wher e the tragic hero is often an ordinary individual, the causes range from moral or psychological weakness to the evils of society. Regionalism(地区主义)：In literature, regionalism or local color fiction refers to fiction or poetry 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 author's own, there is often nostalgia and sentimentality in the writing.Although the terms regionalism and local color 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 areas 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 writing—William Byrd's History of the Dividing Line, for example, points out southern characteristics—not 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 Kennedy's fictional sketches in Swallow Barn, for example, examined southern plantation life at length. Confessional poetry emphasizes the intimate, and sometimes unflattering, information about details of the poet's 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, Theodore 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 Petrarch, 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 solutions 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 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 journal—Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and 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 literary 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 steam's been blown off. And they're boring for everyone except the folks doing the yelling.Dramatic Conflict draws from a much deeper vein, rooted in the Subtext of your central characters. It's 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 the nature of the protagonist or antagonist。Confessional Poetry: it is a type of modern poetry in which poets speak with openness and frankness about their own lives, such as in poems about illness, sexuality and despondence. Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath and Allen Ginsberg and Theodore Roethke ar e the most important American poets.
Catch-22 is a general critique of bureaucratic operation and reasoning. Resulting from its specific use in the book, the phrase "C atch-22" is common idiomatic usage meaning "a no-win situation" or "a double bind" of any type. The term was originally from J oseph Heller’s anti novel Catch-22.
Psychological Realism: it is the realistic writing that probes deeply into the complexities of characters’ thoughts and motivatio ns. It places more than the usual amount of emphasis on interior characterization and on the motives, and internal action which sp rings from and develops external action. In Psychological Realism, character and characterization are more than usually importan t. Henry James is considered a great master of psychological realism.
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)
Theme means t he unifying point or general idea of a literary work.
it provides an answer to such question as “what is the work about”
each literary work carries its own theme or themes.
First-person narrative(第一人称小说)
First person narrative is also called first person point of view. Which is used in the analysis and criticism of fiction of describe the way in which the writer presents the reader with the materials of the story.
Harlem Renaissance(哈姆莱复兴)
Harlem Renaissance refers to a period of outstanding literary vigor and creativity that occurred in the United states during the 1920s.
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.
the center of this movement was the vast black ghetto of Harlem. In New York City.
the leading figures are Langston Hughes, James W. Johnson、etc
Black humor(黑色幽默)is also known as black comedy. It is a kind of writing that places grotesque elements side by side with humorous ones in an attempt to shock the reader, forcing him or her to laugh at the horrifying reality of a disordered world. it is humor out of despair and laughter out of tears.
black humor conveys anguish and fury at conditions in which institutionalized absurdity gets the upper hand. It intends to satirize hypocrisy, materialism, racial prejudice, and above all, the dehumanization of the individual by a modern society. Black humor prevails in Modern American literature.
Blank verse consists of unrhymed lines of iambic pentameter (ten syllables with the second, fourth, sixth, eighth, and tenth syllables accented). The form has generally been accepted as the best for dramatic verse in English and is commonly used for long poems whether dramatic, philosophical, or narrative.（While blank verse appears easy to write, good blank verse demands more artistry and genius than most any other verse form. The freedom gained through the lack of rhyme is offset by the demands for required variety. Free Verse is poetry that is based on the irregular rhythmic cadence recurring, with variations of phrases, images, and syntactical patterns rather than the conventional use of meter. In other words, free verse has no rhythm scheme or pattern. However, much poetic language and devices are found in free verse. Rhyme may or may not be used in free verse, but, when rhyme is used, it is used with great freedom. In other words, free verse has no rhyme scheme or pattern.Free verse does not mean rhyme cannot be used, only that it must be used without any pattern.）
Theatre of the Absurd(荒谬剧)
The absurd is a kind of drama that explains an existential ideology and presents a view of the absurdity of the human condition by the abandoning of usual or rational devices and the use of nonrealistic form.
the most original playwright of the theater of absurd is Samuel beckett, who wrote about human beings living a meaningless life in a alien, decaying world.
Darwinism(达尔文主义)
Darwinism is a term that comes from Ch arles Darwin’s evolutionary theory.
Darwinists 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 genetically.
influenced by this theory, some American naturalist writers apply Darwinism as an explanation of human nature and social reality.
American Dream(美国梦)
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 comes from the west to the east with the dream of material success. the novel tells the shattering of American Dream rather than its success.
Anti-novel(反小说)
A term coined by French critic J.P. Sartre. It refers to any experimental work of fiction that avoids certain traditional elements of novel-writing like the analysis of characters’ states of mind.
2> the anti-novel usually fragments and distorts the experience of its characters, forcing the reader to construct the reality of the story from a disordered narrative.
Vorticism(漩涡派)
Vorticism is a short-lived 20th century art movement related to futurism. Its members sought to simplify forms into machinelike angularity.
Metafiction(元小说)
Metafiction, fiction about fiction; or more especially a kind of fiction that openly comments on its own fiction status. The term is normally used for works that involve a significant degree of self-consciousness about themselves as fictions, in ways that go beyond occasional apologetic addresses to the reader. A notable modern example is jo hn fowler’s The French lieutenant’s woman, in which fowles interrupts the narrative to explain his procedures, and offers the reader alternative endings.
Parody(滑稽模仿)
It is a mocking imitation of the style of a literary work or works, ridiculing the stylistic habits of an author or school by exaggerated mimicry, parody is related to burlesque in its application of serious styles to ridiculous subjects, to satire in its punishment of eccentricities, and even to criticism in its analysis of style. In English, two of the leading parodists are Henry Fielding and James Joyce.
Magie realism(魔幻现实主义)
It is a kind of modern fiction in which fabulous and fantastical events are included in a narrative that otherwise maintains the “reliable” tone of objective realistic report. the term has been extended to works from very different cultures, designating a tendency of the modern novel to reach beyond the confines of realism and draw upon the energies of fable, folktale and myth while retaining a strong contemporary social relevance.
14. Analogy(类比)
(a figure of speech) A comparison made between tow things to show the similarities between them. Analogies are often used for illustration or for argument.
15. Anapest(抑抑扬格)
It’s made up of two unstressed and one stressed syllables, with th e two unstressed ones in front.
16. Antagonist(次要人物)
A person or force opposing the protagonist in a narrative; a rival of the hero or heroine.
17. Antithesis(对立)
(a figure of speech) The balancing of two contrasting ideas, words phrases, or sentences. An antithesis is often expressed in a balanced sentence, that is, a sentence in which identical or similar grammatical structure is used to express contrasting ideas.
18. Aphorism(格言)
A concise, pointed statement expressing a wise or clever observation about life.
19. Apostrophe(顿呼法)
A figure of speech in which an absent or a dead person, an abstract quality, or something nonhuman is addressed directly.
20. Argument(论据)
A form of discourse in which reason is used to influence or change people’s idea or action s. Writers practice argument most often when writing nonfiction, particularly essays or speeches.
21. Autobiography(自传)
A person’s account of his or her own life. An autobiography is generally written in narrative form and includes some introspection.
22. Ballad stanza(歌谣段)
A type of four-line stanza. The first and third lines have four stressed words or syllables; the second and fourth lines have three stresses. Ballad meter is usually iambic. The number of unstressed syllables in each line may vary. The second and fourth lines rhyme.
23. Biography(传记)
A detailed account of a person’s life written by another person.
24. Caesura(诗间休止)
A break or pause in a line of poetry.
25. Caricature(漫画)
The use of exaggeration or distortion to make a figure appear comic or ridiculous. A physical characteristic, an eccentricity, a personality trait, or an act may be exaggerated.
26. Character(人物)
In appreciating a short story, characters are an indispensable element. Characters are the persons presented in a dramatic or narrative work. Forst divides characters into two types: flat character, which is presented without much individualizing detail; and round character, which is complex in temperament and motivation and is represented with subtle particularity.
27. Characterization(性格描绘)
The means by which a writer reveals that personality.
28. Climax(高潮)
The point of greatest intensity, interest, or suspense in a gadgetry’s turning point. The action leading to the climax and th e simultaneous increase of tension in the plot are known as the rising action. All action after the climax is referred to as the falling action, or resolution. The term crisis is sometimes used interchangeably with climax.
29. Conflict(冲突)
A struggle between two opposing forces or characters in a short story, novel, play, or narrative poem. Usually the events of the story are all related to the conflict, and the conflict is resolved in some way by the story’s end.
30. Connotation(隐含意义)
All the emotions and associations that a word or phrase may arouse. Connotation is distinct from denotation, which is the literal or “ dictionary” meaning of a word or phrase.
31. Couplet(对偶)
Two consecutive lines of poetry that rhyme. A heroic couplet is an iambic pentameter couplet.
32. Dactyl(扬抑抑格)
It’s made up of one stressed and two unstressed syllables, with the stressed in front.
33. Denotation(意义)
The literal or “dictionary” meaning of a word.
34. Denouement(结局)
The outcome of a plot. The denouement is that part of a play, short story, novel, or narrative poem in which conflicts are resolved or unraveled, and mysteries and secrets connected with the plot are explained.
35. Description(叙述)
It is a great part of conversation and of almost all writing. It is a part of autobiography, storytelling. With description, the writer tries terror, feel, and hear by showing rather than by merely telling. It’s through the use of specific details and concrete language that abstract ideas and half-formed thoughts are make vividly real. We have objective and subjective description.
36. Diction(措词)
A writer’s choice of words, particularly for clarity, effectiveness, and precision.
37. Dissonance(不协和音)
A harsh or disagreeable combination of sounds; discord.
38. Emblematic image(象征比喻)
A verbal picture or figure with a long tradition of moral or religious meaning attached to it.
39. Epigraph(题词)
A quotation or motto at the beginning of a chapter, book, short story, or poem that makes some point about the work.
40. Epilogue(收场白)
A short addition or conclusion at the end of a literary work.
41. Epitaph(碑文)
An inscription on a gravestone or a short poem written in memory of someone who has died.
42. Epithet(称号)
A descriptive name or phrase used to characterize someone or something.
43. Exemplum(说教故事)
A tale, usually inserted into the text of a sermon that illustrates a moral principle.
44. Exposition(解释说明)
(1) That part of a narrative or drama in which important background information is revealed.
(2) It is the kind of writing that is intended primarily to present information. Exposition is one of the major forms of discourse. The most familiar form it takes is in essays. Exposition is also that part of a play in which important background information is revealed to the audience.
45. Fable(寓言)
A fable is a short story, often with animals as its characters, which illustrate a moral.
46. Figurative language(比喻语言)
Language that is not intended to be interpreted in a literal sense. By appealing to the imagination, figurative language provides new ways of looking at the world. Figurative language consists of such figures of speech as hyperbole, metaphor, metonymy, oxymoron(矛盾修饰法), personification, simile, and synecdoche.
47. Figure of speech(修辞特征)
A word or an expression that is not meant to be interpreted in a literal sense. The most common kinds of figures of speech—simile, metaphor, personification, and metonymy—involve a comparison between unlike things.
48. Foil(衬托)
A character who sets off another character by contrast.
49. Foot(脚注)
It is a rhythmic unit, a specific combination of stressed and unstressed syllables.
50. Hyperbole(夸张)
A figure of speech using exaggeration, or overstatement, for special effect.
51. Iamb(抑扬格)
It is the most commonly used foot in English poetry, in which an unstressed syllable comes first, followed by a stressed syllable.
52. Image(影像)
We usually think with words, many of our thoughts come to us as pictures or imagined sensations in our mind. Such imagined pictures or sensations are called images.
53. Incremental repetitio(递增重复)
The repetition of a previous line, or lines but with a slight variation each time that advances the narrative stanza by stanza. This device is commonly used in ballads.
54. In medias res(中间部分)
A technique of plunging into the middle of a story and only later using a flashback to tell what has happened previously. In medias res is Latin for “in the middle of things”.
55. Inversion(倒置)
The technique of reversing, or inverting, the normal word order of a sentence. Writers may use inversion to create a certain tone or to emphasize a particular word or idea. A poet may invert a line so that it fits into a particular meter or rhyme scheme.
56. Invocation(祈祷)
At the beginning of an epic (or other poem) a call to a muse, god, or spirit for inspiration.
57. Kenning(代称)
In Old English poetry, an elaborate phrase that describes persons, things, or events in a metaphorical and indirect way.
58. Melodrama(通俗剧)
A drama that has stereotyped characters, exaggerated emotions, and a conflict that pits an all-good hero or heroine against an all-evil villain. The good characters always win and the evil ones are always punished. Also, each character in a melodrama had a theme melody, which was played each time he or she made an appearance on stage.
59. Metaphor(暗喻)
A figure of speech that makes a comparison between two things that are basically dissimilar. Unlike simile, a metaphor does not use a connective word such as like, as, or resembles in making the comparison.
60. Metonymy(转喻)
A figure of speech in which something very closely associated with a thing is used to stand for or suggest the thing itself.
61. Miracle play(奇迹剧)
A popular religious drama of medi England. Miracle plays were based on stories of the saints or on sacred history.
62. Motif(主题)
A recurring feature (such as a name, an image, or a phrase) in a work of literature. A motif generally contributes in some way to
the theme of a short story, novel, poem, or play. At times, motif is used to refer to some commonly used plot or character type in literature.
63. Motivation(动机)
The reasons, either stated or implied, for a character’s behavior. To make a story believable, a writer must provide characters with motivation sufficient to explain what they do. Characters may be motivated by outside events, or they may be motivated by inner needs or fears.
64. Multiple Point of View(多视角)
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 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.
65. Narrator(叙述者)
One who narrates, or tells, a story. A story may be told by a first-person narrator, someone who is either a major or minor character in the story. Or a story may be told by a third-person narrator, someone who is not in the story at all. The word narrator can also refer to a character in a drama who guides the audience through the play, often commenting on the action and sometimes participating in it.
66. Nonet
the nine-line stanza. Spenserian stanza: ababbcbcc.
67. Nonfiction(写实文学)
It refers to any prose narrative that tells about things as the actually happened or that presents factual information about something. The purpose of this kind of writing is to give a presumably accurate accounting of a person’s life. Writers of nonfiction use the major forms of discourse: description (an impression of the subject); narration (the telling of the story); exposition (explanatory information); persuasion (an argument to influence people’s thinking). Forms: autobiography, biograph y, essay, story, editorial, letters to the editor found in newspaper, diary, journal, travel literature.
68. Novel(小说)
A book-length fictional prose narrative, having may characters and often a complex plot.
69. Octave(八行体诗)
the eight-line stanza. 2 quatrains/ 2 triplets + 1 couplet.
70. Onomatopoeia(拟声法构词)
The use of a word whose sound in some degree imitates or suggests its meaning.
71. Oxymoron(矛盾修辞法)
a figure of speech that combines opposite or contradictory ideas or terms. An oxymoron suggests a paradox, but it does so very briefly, usually in two or three words.
72. Paradox(自相矛盾)
A statement that reveals a kind of truth, although it seems at first to be self-contradictory and untrue.
73. Parallelism(平行)
(a figure of speech) The use of phrases, clauses, or sentences that are similar or complementary in structure or in meaning. Parallelism is a form of repetition.
74. Pathos(哀婉)
The quality in a work of literature or art that arouses the reader’s feelings of pity, sorrow, or compassion for a character. The term is usually used to refer to situations in which innocent characters suffer through no fault of their own.
75. Persuasion(说服)
It’s the type of speaking or writing that is intended to make its audience adopt a certain opinion or perform an action or do both. Persuasion is one of the major forms of discourse.
76. Pictorialism(图像)
It’s an important poetic device characterized by efforts to achieve striking visual effects. Among its features are irregular ity of line, contrast or enchantment of light, color and image. Other means of pictorialism include personification, juxtaposition and the matching of colors with verbs of action.
77. Pre-Romanticism(先浪漫主义)
It originated among the conservative groups of men and letters as a reaction against Enlightenment and found its most manifest expression in the “Gothic novel”. The term arising from the fact that the greater part of such romances were devoted to the medi times.
7. 8Protagonist(正面人物)
The central character of a drama, novel, short story, or narrative poem. The protagonist is the character on whom the action centers and with whom the reader sympathizes most. Usually the protagonist strives against an opposing force, or antagonist , to accomplish something.
79. Psalm(圣歌)
A song or lyric poem in praise of God.
80. Psychological Realism(心理现实主义)
It is the realistic writing that probes d eeply into the complexities of characters’ thoughts and motivations. Henry James is considered the founder of psychological realism. His novel The Ambassadors is considered to be a masterpiece of psychological realism.
81. Pun(双关语)
The use of a word or phrase to suggest tow or more meaning at the same time. Puns are generally humorous.
82. Quatrain(四行诗)
Usually a stanza or poem of four lines. A quatrain may also be any group of four lines unified by a rhyme scheme. Quatrains usually follow an abab, abba, or abcb rhyme scheme.
83.Quintain(五行诗)
the five-line stanza.
84. Refrain(叠句)
A word phrase, line or group of lines repeated regularly in a poem, usually at the end of each stanza. Refrains are often used in ballads and narrative poems to create a songlike rhythm and to help build suspense. Refrains can also serve to emphasize a particular idea.
85. Rhythm(韵律)
It is one of the three basic elements of traditional poetry. It is the arrangement of stressed and unstressed syllables into a pattern. Rhythm often gives a poem a distinct musical quality. Poets also use rhythm to echo meaning.
86. Scansion(诗的韵律分析)
The analysis of verse in terms of meter.
87. Septet(七重唱)
the seven-line stanza. Chaucerian stanza: ababbcc.
88. Sestet(六重唱)
the six-line stanza. 3couplets/ a quatrain + a couplet/ 2 triplets.
89. Setting(背景)
The time and place in which the events in a short story, novel, play or narrative poem occur. Setting can give us information, vital to plot and theme. Often, setting and character will reveal each other.
90. Short Story(短篇小说)
A short story is a brief prose fiction, usually one that can be read in a single sitting. It generally contains the six major elements of fiction—characterization, setting, theme, plot, point of view, and style.
91. Simile(明喻)
(a figure of speech) A comparison make between two things through the use of a specific word of comparison, such as like, as than, or resembles. The comparison must be between two essentially unlike things.
92. Skaz
It’s a Russian word used to designate a type of first person narration that has the characteristics of the spoken rather than the written word. In this kind of novel, the narrator is a character who refers to himself as “I” and addresses the reader as “you”. He or she uses vocabulary and syntax characteristic of colloquial speech, and appears to be relating the story spontaneously rather than delivering a carefully constructed and polished written account.
93. Song(歌)
A short lyric poem with distinct musical qualities, normally written to be set to music. In expresses a simple but intense emotion.
94. Speech(说话能力)
It was defined by Aristotle as the faculty of observing all the available means of persuasion.
95. Spondee(扬扬格)
It consists of two stressed syllables.
96. Sprung Rhythm
A term created by the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins to designate a variable kind of poetic meter in which a stressed syllable may be combined with any number of unstressed syllables. Poems with sprung rhythm have an irregular meter and are meant to sound like natural speech.
97. Stereotype(老套模式)
A commonplace type or character that appears so often in literature that his or her nature is immediately familiar to the reader. Stereotypes, also called stock characters, always look and act the same way and reveal the same traits of character.
98. Style(风格)
An author’s characteristic way of writing, determined by the choice of words, the arrangement of words in sentences, and the relationship of the sentences to one another.
99. Suspense(悬念)
The quality of a story, novel, or drama that makes the reader or audience uncertain or tense about the outcome of events.
100. Synecdoche(举隅法)
A figure of speech that substitutes a part for a whole.
101. Tone(格调)
The attitude a writer takes toward his or her subject, characters, or audience. The tone of a speech or a piece of writing can be formal or intimate; outspoken or reticent; abstruse or simple; solemn or playful; angry or loving; serious or ironic.
102. Triplet(三行联句)
The three-line stanza. Tercet: aaa, bbb, ccc, and so on; terza rima: aba, bcb cdc, and so on.
103. Trochee(扬抑格)
the reverse of the iambic foot.
104. Villanelle(维拉内拉诗)
An intricate verse form of French origin, consisting of several three-line stanzas and a concluding four-line stanza.
105. Wit(才智)
A brilliance and quickness of perception combined with a cleverness of expression. In the 18th century, wit and nature were related-nature provided the rules of the universe; wit allowed the rules to be interpreted and expressed
Blank verse consists of unrhymed lines of iambic pentameter (ten syllables with the second, fourth, sixth, eighth, and tenth syllables accented). The form has generally been accepted as the best for dramatic verse in English and is commonly used for long poems whether dramatic, philosophical, or narrative.（While blank verse appears easy to write, good blank verse demands more artistry and genius than most any other verse form. The freedom gained through the lack of rhyme is offset by the demands for required variety. Free Verse is poetry that is based on the irregular rhythmic cadence recurring, with variations of phrases, images, and syntactical patterns rather than the conventional use of meter. In other words, free verse has no rhythm scheme or pattern. However, much poetic language and devices are found in free verse. Rhyme may or may not be used in free verse, but, when rhyme is used, it is used with great freedom. In other words, free verse has no rhyme scheme or pattern.Free verse does not mean rhyme cannot be used, only that it must be used without any pattern.）
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-知识点梳理
Part I The Literature of Colonial America I．Historical Introduction The colonial period stretched roughly from the settlement of America in the early 17th century through the end of the 18th. The first permanent settlement in America was established by English in 1607. ( A group of people was sent by the English King James I to hunt for gold. They arrived at Virginia in 1607. They named the James River and build the James town.) II．The pre-revolutionary writing in the colonies was essentially of two kinds: 1) Practical matter-of-fact accounts of farming, hunting, travel, etc. designed to inform people "at home" what life was like in the new world, and, often, to induce their immigration 2) Highly theoretical, generally polemical, discussions of religious questions. III．The First American Writer The first writings that we call American were the narratives and journals of these settlements. They wrote about their voyage to the new land, their lives in the new land, their dealings with Indians. Captain John Smith is the first American writer. A True Relation of such Occurrences and Accidents of Note as Hath Happened in Virginia Since the First Planting of That Colony (1608) A Map of Virginia: A Description of the Country (1612) General History of Virgini a (1624): the Indian princess Pocahontas Captain John Smith was one of the first early 17th-century British settlers in North America. He was one of the founders of the colony of Jamestown, Virginia. His writings about North America became the source of information about the New World for later settlers. One of the things he wrote about that has become an American legend was his capture by the Indians and his rescue by the famous Indian Princess, Pocahontas. IV．Early New England Literature William Bradford and John Winthrop John Cotton and Roger Williams Anne Bradstreet and Edward Taylor V．Puritan Thoughts 1. The origin of puritan In the mediaeval Europe, there was widespread religious revolution. In the 16th Century, the English King Henry VIII (At that time, the Catholics were not allowed to divorce unless they have the Pope's permission. Henry VIII wanted to divorce his wife because she couldn't bear him a son. But the Pope didn't allow him to divorce, so he) broke away from the Roman Catholic Church & established the Church of
《美国文学》期末考试试卷(A卷)答案
湖州师范学院外国语学院2008— 2009学年第二学期 《美国文学》期末考试试卷（A卷）答案暨评分标准 I. Write the names of the authors. (10%) ①Walt Whitman ②Edgar Allen Poe ③Wallace Stevens ④Franklin Norris ⑤Stephen Crane ⑥William Faulkner ⑦Sinclair Lewis ⑧John Steinbeck ⑨Langston Hughes ⑩Tennessee Williams II. Fill in the following blanks with appropriate information.（10%） ①New England ②Regionalism or Local color writing ③semi-autobiographical ④anti-realism ⑤Imagist ⑥Santiago ⑦multiple narrations or points of view ⑧1930 ⑨Harlem Renaissance ⑩Eugene O’Neill III. Choose only one answer form the four choices as the most appropriate answer. （20%） 1－5. A D C B B 6－10. D B E B A IV. Identify the author and the title of the work from which each of the following excerpts is taken. And then answer the question after each excerpt. (20%) Passage 1 the author: Walt Whitman (1%) the title of the work : Songs of Myself (1%) Question: What is the poet celebrating? (2%) The poet is celebrating individualism and nationalism, singing of all those people who form the American nationality.
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
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.
美国文学选读期末考试重点
1、The Colonial Period（1607-1765） American Puritanism ( in the early 17th century through the end of the 18th) 北美第一位女诗人Anne Bradstreet(宗教气息，夫妻恩爱) Edward Taylor 都受英国玄学派影响（metaphysical） 2、The Enlightenment and Revolution Period Benjamin Franklin:Poor Richard's Almanac The Autobiography---“美国梦”的根源 3、American Romanticism（end of 18th to the civil war） American writers emphasis upon the imaginative and emotional qualities of literature. 早期浪漫主义Washington Irving father of American Literature
大四美国文学期末考试题型及例题
大四美国文学期末考试题型及例题： 1.选择/对错60分（40道选择，20个对错） 2.名词解释10分（5个） 3.选段配对10分（5个） 4.问答20分（10/2） 1．历史：Father / poetess… 2. 名作家：Hemingway, Faulkner, Poe, Hawthorne, Emerson 3．作品：The W asteland/Moby Dick/Scarlet Letter 1.a)选择题（40个，40分） 1. At the age of reason and revolution, Americans were influenced by the European movement called the ________. A. Chartist Movement B. Romanticist Movement C. Enlightenment Movement D. Modernist Movement 2. Which is NOT connected to Benjamin Franklin? ________ A. He was born in a poor family. B. He was a pious puritan. C. He was phrased as “Jack of all trades”. D. He was a master of diplomacy. 3. Ernest Hemingway is noted for the following EXCEPT ________. A. Lost Generation B. Iceberg theory C. American Dream D. Code Heroes 4. Which character is NOT from The Scarlet Letter? ________ A. Hester Prynne B. Roger Chillingworth C. Captain Ahab D. Pearl 5. Jack London’s semi-biographical novel ________well presents the disillusionment of American Dream. A. The American Tragedy B. The Call of the Wild C. Martin Eden D. The Grapes of Wrath b)判断对错题（20个，20分） 1. Poe’s masterpiece “To Helen” is written to memorize his deceased wife. (F) 2. The tone of “Annabel Lee” is optimistic and hopeful. (F) 3. Mark Twain's novel Jumping Frog was an artistic failure, but it gave its name to the America of the postbellum period which it attempts to satirize. (F) 4. Sister Carrie ended up in tragedy because she could not control her fate. (F)