美国文学名词解释

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 follow,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.

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(美国自然主义文学)：The American naturalists accepted the more negative interpretation of Darwin’s evolutionary theory and used it to accout for the behavior of those characters in literary works who were reg arded as more or less complex combinations of inherited attributes, their habits conditioned by social and economic forces.2) naturalism is evolved from realism when the author’s tone in writing becomes less serious and less sympathetic but more ironic and more pessimistic. It is no more than a gloomy philosophical approach to reality, or to human existence.3>Dreiser is a leading figure of his school.

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. Y et 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(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.2>the imagists, with Ezra Pound leading the way, hold that the most effective means to express these momentary impressions is through the use of one dominant image.3>imagism is characterized by the following three poetic principles:A.direct treatment of subject matter;B.economy of expression;C. as regards rhythm ,to compose in the sequence of the musical phrase, not in the sequence of metronome. 4> pound’s 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 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.

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 non-conformity and for its non-conforming style.3> the major beat writings are All en Ginsberg’s howl.Howl became the manifesto of The Beat Generation.

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 representative 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”.

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 femin ists 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 ,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 creativ e 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 ways 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: Plains Indians were pushed in a series of Indian 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. By 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 and 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 discrimination 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 circulation, 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 century 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 capitalism. But it is more useful to think of this as modern America’s 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 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.

multiple points of view（多视角）：Multiple Point of V iew: 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.

Confessional poetry ：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(自白派诗歌)：designates a type of narrative and lyric verse, given impetus by Robert Lowell’s Life Studies, which deals with the facts and intimate mental and physical experiences of the poet’s own life. Confessional poetry was written in rebellion 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.

回答问题

1.O. Henry is famed for his 'twist' endings, and as such, many of his short stories fall into a formula. That said, it's a pretty good formula, and if more writers that are published could find themselves a formula that works as well it would be alot better world to read in. Y et, even the best of formulae lend themselves to needless repetition and predictability. While ther e are a handful of tales that are great, most are merely solid, for O. Henry lacks a modern feel to his character development. In one tale he can be as realistic as turn of the Twentieth Century fiction can be and in the next he can give merely sl ight caricatures and corny sight gags. Among his greatest tales are some of his most famous, like The Social Triangle which humorously skewers classism by having a down and out protagonist named Ikey Snigglefritz end up the object of affection to a gratuitous, social climber. Here is that tale's classic end: The big pale-gray auto with its shining metal work looked out of place moving slowly among the push carts and trash-heaps on the lower east side. So did Cortlandt V an Duyckink, with his aristocratic face and white, thin hands, as he steered carefully between the groups of ragged, scurrying youngsters in the streets. And so did Miss Constance Schuyler, with her dim, ascetic beauty, seated at his side.

2.Although James and Twain both worked for realism, there were obvious differences between them. In thematic terms, James wrote mostly of the upper reaches of American society, whereas Mark Twain dealt largely with the lower strata of society. Technically, James pursued the Psychological realism, but Mark Twain's contribution to the development of realism and to American literature as a whole was partly through his theories of Local Colorism in American fiction, and partly through his colloquial style.Henry James believed that reality lies in the impressions made by life on the spectator, and not in any facts of which the spectator is unaware, such realism is therefore merely the obligation that the artist assumes to represent life as he sees it, which may not be the same life as it "really" is. James shifted the ground of realistic art from the outer to the inner world.Mark Twain preferred to replresent social life through portraits of local places which he knew best. He drew heavily from his own rich fund of knowledge of people and places. He confined himself to the life with which he was familiar. By quoting from his own experience, Mark Twain managed to transform into art the freedom and humor, in short, the finest elements of western culture.

3.adverture things and animals：In general, naturalism is the literary movement that provides the best context for Jack London. Naturalism has been understood as a dialectic between free will and determinism, but it is probably most intelligible through social history. The appeal of naturalistic tales is often escape. The urban problems of unemployment, labor wars, and poverty are left behind for a spare scenario in which an individual can be tested. The Call of the Wild also fits this pattern, although here the hero is a dog. In another common naturalistic pattern, the hero who stays in the city either becomes an ineffectual dandy or degenerates into a lower-class brute. London treats these materials more realistically, yet employs the same pattern whereby the city is associated with degeneration and the open country with rebirth. "South of the Slot" departs from this pattern by portraying the city as the setting for a working-class victory.London wrote from a socialist viewpoint, which is evident in his novel The Iron Heel. Neither a theorist nor an intellectual socialist, London's socialism grew out of his life experience.London was more bored by the class struggle than he cared to admit." Starr maintains London's socialism always had a streak of elitism in it, and a good deal of pose.

5.Negro –coloured (legally free) –black (after civil rights movement)1.oral tradition(1)songs and ballads(2) spirituals: sorrow of the singers‘earlier condition and longing for freedom(3) blues: after civil war, derived from work songs –loneliness, separation, losses, wonderings, love, desperation, sense of doom(4)jazz: after WWI, developed from blues, died out in the Great Depression 2. written literature (from 1760s)(1)poetry: religious, enduring, patient to the white(2) slave narrative: autobiographical experience of the person(3) 1920s: Harlem Renaissance –New Y ork, black –black dialect and black folklore –“the new negro”–representatives: Langston Hughes (“black poet laureate”), Huston, Claude McKay （4) 1940s: Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison(5) 50s~60s: a lot of black writers emerged in the civil rights movement: James Baldwin, Brooks, Jones(6) 70s~80s: publishing of “Root”(Alex Haley), Walker –“The Colour Purple”, Morrison (the second woman writer and the only black who won Nobel Prize)

4.The early 20th century was a time of huge industrial expansion in America, and many writers found the conditions for

creating art unfavorable in a culture that was so focused on business and making money. Part of the struggle among modernist writers concerned the possibility or even desirability of continuing to develop a specifically American poetic tradition. Many writers exiled themselves in cultures that seemed more conducive to art, while others decided to stay and resist through their poetry the growing materialistic culture. One way to categorize the major modernist poets is to separate those who left the United States and wrote most of their poetry as expatriates in Europe from those who stayed in America. Among the expatriates are Ezra Pound, Hilda Doolittle (who wrote under the pen name H. D.), T. S. Eliot, and Gertrude Stein. Those who stayed in the United States include William Carlos Williams, Hart Crane, Wallace Stevens, Marianne Moore, Carl Sandburg, V achel Lindsay, Langston Hughes, and Robinson Jeffers. Most of the latter group visited Europe at some point and flirted with the idea of staying there to write. key words：Modernism，Imagism，Regionalism

6.无韵诗：blank verse 一译"素体诗"。英语格律诗的一种。每行用五个长短格音步――十个音节组成，每首行数不拘，不压韵。自由诗：free verse 诗歌的一种。语言不讲究格律，诗的段数、行数、字数也没有固定规格，但要有节奏，押大致相近的韵。美国诗人惠特曼为创始人。

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 V erse 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.

诗歌赏析

1. Literary stylesThere seems to be a strong Transcendentalist influence on the poem, a theory somewhat validated by Ralph Waldo Emerson's enthusiastic letter praising the first edition of Leaves of Grass. In addition to this romanticism, the poem seems to anticipate a kind of realism that would only come to the forefront of United States literature after the Civil War.

In this poem Whitman seems to put himself in the center, but the "self" of the poem's speaker - the "I" of the poem - should not be limited to or confused with the person of the historical Walt Whitman. This is an expansive persona, one that has exploded the conventional boundaries of the self. "I pass death with the dying, and birth with the new-washed babe .... and am not contained between my hat and boots" (section 7).There are several other quotes from the poem that make it apparent that Whitman does not see himself as the voice of one individual. Rather, he seems to be speaking for all:“in all people I see myself, none more and not one a barleycorn less/and the good or bad I say of myself I say of them”(Section 20) “it is you talking just as much as myself…I act as the tongue of you”(Section 47) “I am large, I contain multitudes.”(Section 51) “For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.”(Section 1)

2. Emily Dickinson was born into a family of heavy Puritan tradition, which had influenced her way of life as well as the style of creating deeply. She was reasonably social in her youth, but as time went by, the impression of the Puritanism began to appear gradually. So later, she devoted herself entirely to housework and poetry, and rarely stepped out of her own house, with even no connection with her neighbors.To the Puritans, a person by nature was wholly sinful and could achieve good only by severe and unremitting discipline. Hard work was considered as a religious duty and emphasis was laid on constant self-examination and self-discipline. So they believed that the physical phenomenal world is nothing but a symbol of God. And Dickinson’s poems just dwelled upon such metaphysical subjects as God, Death, and Immortality, following the claim of Puritanism. This one---" Because I Could Not Stop for Death", which brims over with religious theme is just a perfect evidence. As Dickinson’s poems usually had no titles, and the first sentence of a poem is taken as its title.The poem begins with a leisurely image. At first, the protagonist feels totally at ease and the usually frightening death is described as if a familiar friend, gentle and polite. Continuingly, the poem is developed upon a basic metaphor that life is a journey. It was

truly rather old a comparison, but Dickinson enriched it with her creativity and imagination: "School, where Children strove" --childhood; "Fields of Gazing Grain"--maturity; and "Setting Sun"--old age. Then “the Dews drew quivering and chill-”makes the protagonist feel terribly cold, which may mean that they are getting nearer and nearer to the tomb. But at last, his companions, Immortality and Death, finally desert him and leave him alone to go toward Eternity.So it seems that though death cheats him and at the same time deserts him, the experience of death itself is not painful. Emily Dickinson’s poems just explain this kind of essence of life, which then lead you to a world of imagination and thinking.

3. In a Station of the Metro" is an Imagist poem by Ezra Pound The poem attempts to describe Pound's experience upon visiting an underground metro station in Paris in 1912, and Pound suggested that the faces of the individuals in the metro were best put into a poem not with a description but with an "equation". Because of the treatment of the subject's appearance by way of the poem's own visuality, it is considered a quintessential Imagist text. The poem is essentially a set of images that have unexpected likeness and convey the rare emotion that Pound was experiencing at that time. Arguably the heart of the poem is not the first line, nor the second, but the mental process that links the two together. "In a poem of this sort," as Pound explained, "one is trying to record the precise instant when a thing outward and objective transforms itself, or darts into a thing inward and subjective." This darting takes place between the first and second lines. The pivotal semi-colon has stirred debate as to whether the first line is in fact subordinate to the second or both lines are of equal, independent importance. Pound contrasts the factual, mundane image that he actually witnessed with a metaphor from nature and thus infuses this “apparition”with visual beauty. There is a quick transition from the statement of the first line to the second line’s vivid metaphor; this ‘super-pository’technique exemplifies the Japanese haiku style. The word “apparition”is considered crucial as it evokes a mystical and supernatural sense of imprecision which is then reinforced by the metaphor of the second line. The plosive word ‘Petals’conjures ideas of delicate, feminine beauty which contrasts with the bleakness of the ‘wet, black bough’. What the poem signifies is questionable; many critics argue that it deliberately transcends traditional form and therefore its meaning is solely found in its technique as opposed to in its content. However when Pound had the inspiration to write this poem few of these considerations came into view. He simply wished to translate his perception of beauty in the midst of ugliness into a single, perfect image in written form.It is also worth noting that the number of words in the poem (fourteen) is the same as the number of lines in a sonnet. The words are distributed with eight in the first line and six in the second, mirroring the octet-sestet form of the Italian (or Petrarchan) sonnet.

4.On the surface, this poem is simplicity itself. The speaker is stopping by some woods on a snowy evening. He or she takes in the lovely scene in near-silence, is tempted to stay longer, but acknowledges the pull of obligations and the considerable distance yet to be traveled before he or she can rest for the night。The poem consists of four (almost) identically constructed stanzas. Each line is iambic, with four stressed syllables:Within the four lines of each stanza, the first, second, and fourt h lines rhyme. The third line does not, but it sets up the rhymes for the next stanza. For example, in the third stanza, queer, near, and year all rhyme, but lake rhymes with shake, mistake, and flake in the following stanza.The notable exception to this pattern comes in the final stanza, where the third line rhymes with the previous two and is repeated as the fourth line. Commentary：This is a poem to be marveled at and taken for granted. Like a big stone, like a body of water, like a strong economy, however it was forged it seems that, once made, it has always been there. Frost claimed that he wrote it in a single nighttime sitting; it just came to him. Perhaps one hot, sustained burst is the only way to cast such a complete object, in which form and content, shape and meaning, are alloyed inextricably. One is tempted to read it, nod quietly in recognition of its splendor and multivalent meaning, and just move on. But one must write essays. Or study guides.Like the woods it describes, the poem is lovely but entices us with dark depths--of interpretation, in this case. It stands alone and beautiful, the account of a man stopping by woods on a snowy evening, but gives us a come-hither look that begs us to load it with a full inventory of possible meanings. Part of what is irrational about the woods is their attraction. They are restful, seductive, lovely, dark, and deep--like deep sleep, like oblivion. Snow falls in downy flakes, like a blanket to lie under and be covered by. And here is where many readers hear dark undertones to this lyric. To rest too long while snow falls could be to lose one's way, to lose the path, to freeze and die. Does this poem express a death wish, considered and then discarded? Do the

woods sing a siren's song? To be lulled to sleep could be truly dangerous. Is allowing oneself to be lulled akin to giving up the struggle of prudence and self-preservation? Or does the poem merely describe the temptation to sit and watch beauty while responsibilities are forgotten--to succumb to a mood for a while

The woods sit on the edge of civilization; one way or another, they draw the speaker away from it (and its promises, its good sense). "Society" would condemn stopping here in the dark, in the snow--it is ill advised. The speaker ascribes society's reproach to the horse, which may seem, at first, a bit odd. But the horse is a domesticated part of the civilized order of things; it is the nearest thing to society's agent at this place and time.

5. This poem is written in classic five-line stanza, with the rhyme scheme a-b-a-a-b and conversational rhythm. The peom seems to be about the poet, walking in the woods in autumn, choosing which road he should follow on his walk. In reality, it concerns the important decisions which one must make in life, when one must give up one desirable thing in order to possess another. Then, whatever the outcome, one must accept the consequences of one's choice for it is not possible to go back and have another chance to choose differently.In the poem, the poet hesitates for a long time, wondering which road to take, because they are both pretty. In the end, he follows the one which seems to have fewer travelers on it. Synbolically, he choose to follow an unusual, solitary life; perhaps he was speaking of his choice to become a poet rather than some commoner profession. But he always remembers the road which he might have taken, and which would have given him a different kind of life.

6. It is only about a jar literally, but figuratively reflect more about the relationship between nature and humans, the meaning of art, as well as the philosophy of comphehending the world which we are living in every single second. Without a jar, the wilderness is the wilderness.The living things there have their own ways to live without any order among them. Birth, existence, survival and death, no emotion, no more thought, the circulation of species would be impassively on-going. This quiteness of nature can be maintained millions of years if no interruption occurs. Till appears the jar, everything in the wilderness changed dramatically. Imagine that you are standing in the wild Tennessee and looking around, you must see nothing but the jar---definitely the focus. Y ou would think how it is there? why it's been left there? Whether it is nice? What your feelings are when seeing it? etc. Suddenly, the whole place of Tennessee becomes meanful and it's nolonger desolate anymore. The jar means humanity, means culture, means art and artistic imaginations. With a jia being there, the wilderness got a center, and then, an order for everything. The soil, the sand, the patches of grass and clumps of bush are soon under dominance of it. The jar adds some thought to this place, just like art, turning the dead to live. Art is magic. It fantasize the nature. Without art, we are nothing and dead.

7. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock is a beautifully written and yet somewhat disturbing poem by the American poet T. S. Eliot. It tells the sad, lonely story of the dull and useless life of J. Alfred Prufrock, a man whose name even makes him sound like a wimp and a bore. The poem is carefully constructed to be perhaps a little overly pessimistic (it is written as if by Prufrock himself), and yet still does not really allow the reader to indulge in a glimmer of hope for this wretched individual. Eliot makes Prufrock out to be the kind of man that constantly worries - he has "time yet for a hundred indecisions, And for a hundred visions and revisions". This says two things about the character - first he seems to have a lot of time, suggesting that perhaps he is an upper-class man who does very little with his life, and as a consequence is a bit of a bore. It also shows Prufrock's constant worrying - not only about future events (the "visions") but also about past experiences (the "revisions").Eliot slowly, almost painfully, leads the reader through each of these revisions. He writes without an obvious verse structure, because the poem is written from the perspective of the character - it is an "internalising composition" and such is written as if the thoughts of Prufrock have been put onto paper. This style is typical of Laforgue - a French modernist poet whom Eliot greatly admired.Eliot describes how Prufrock recalls numerous ghastly coffee mornings - "I have measured out my life with coffee spoons," suggesting again that his life is somewhat pointless, and also deadly boring, which he hates. Another point is that coffee spoons are pretty small - if you measured your life with them it would take a very long and tedious amount of time and effort. And all through these long, dull periods of time he is in constant fear of seeming a fool - so much so that he does seem one. He is terrified of the eyes of these women he is with - "The eyes that fix you in a

formulated phrase." They stare at him - summing him up, and seeing that he is a boring, ugly man (or so he believes). He feels as if he were an insect "sprawling on a pin" - seeming very insignificant, and somewhat repellent - especially to the kind of ladies that he mixes with. After these terrifying women have summed him up, they attempt to engage him in conversation - which is also a struggle for him. He is forced to "spit out the butt-ends" of his "days and ways".And yet, this is The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. He certainly spends enough time worrying about "the question" as Eliot describes it - presumably asking a woman to marry him - and yet he never says it like that. He is described as if he hates all mention of the question - "Oh do not ask, 'What is it?'" - and yet constantly worries about how he should approach it. These are his visions - he sees himself in so many different situations asking the question, but yet is always too afraid to really do it. He makes up countless excuses for this, which serves to add even more to the feeling that his existence is entirely pathetic and petty - it might be acceptable for a teenager to be afraid of asking a girl to go out with him, but he is a fully-grown man. He should not be afraid, should not make up excuses. He imagines himself stepping, comparatively boldly, onto the stairs, watched by these women. He thinks even then that it is ok - he can just change his mind if he suddenly decides to - but then realises that they will see his bald spot, and talk about him behind his back 。It seems now that his excuses are wearing a little thin - why on earth would they say that? Perhaps he doesn't want to ask the question at all - but sees it as his duty to try.Eliot shows how Prufrock's visions get ever more desperate and self-loathing until he imagines his head brought in on a platter like that of John the Baptist It is at this point that Prufrock realises that he is afraid of death, and this horrible revelation finally makes him admit defeat. Rather than worrying how he would have asked the question, he wonders if it would have been worth it. He still feels completely inadequate, but suddenly seems a bit more rational and more likeable. The reader begins to feel sorry for this character, who is not Prince Hamlet, and admits that really in the great play that is life he is just an "attendant lord" - a minor character, and then with more thought, perhaps just the fool.He grows old alone, and listens to the songs of the mermaids, who he can only watch - they will not sing to him, will not even try to lure him to his death, he is such a pathetic individual. He dies alone.By the end of the poem, Eliot has made the reader feel as if they know this tragic figure very well. The poem develops so that you begin with a first impression of this man as almost normal - "Let us go then, you and I," but that quickly develops into a feeling of irritation at this strange and petty man. Eventually though you realise that he is just a somewhat sad man, who grows old alone not really through any fault of his own, with only his "visions and revisions" to comfort him. He tells you his story from the hell that he has become stuck in - just as Guido tells Dante in the section from Inferno at the beginning of the poem. He is surprised that you are not stuck in hell with him, but speaks to you anyway. Perhaps the telling of the story helps ease his pain. The reader, after embarking on the journey that was Prufrock's life, feels sorry for this man, a pathetic man, but a man nonetheless. He is a man who aspires, but never is, who wants to do, but never does, who desires, but never gets. His is worthy of pity, not of anger.

小说评论

1.In the 20th Century, no other book was discussed or fought over more then The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain. The book has been banned and reinstated in many school systems and libraries throughout this century. Controversy over the use of the word "nigger" has been one of the biggest arguments. The fact that people are still feeling the sting and abuse from the creation of this slang word is understandable. The other problem that many people have is that Jim, the black main character, was played off as a comical, half-wit character. This didn't help much when this character was used as the icon for the early minstrel shows of the 20th Century. Both of these arguments have been used since the 50's as reasons to ban the book and never have it in any public facility. The controversy that surrounds this book has followed it wherever it goes and it's a wonder that it still is used in classrooms around the country today.To commence with (as Huckleberry Finn would say), Twain at the time was a respected author and writer. When this book came out in the late 19th Century, The Civil War had been over for a few years, The Reconstruction era was ending as the country's scar were beginning to heal, and the African-Americans were going through their first trial period of being free Americans. This is the time when Huckleberry Finn came out. When critics first read the book, their reviews from what I read were mixed. Some liked the book for reasons that seemed superficial, such as, they loved the artwork and they loved the quaintness. One reviewer

thought The Undertaker in the final town was the most delightful and popular character in the book. The reason behind this was that he was the most quaint and kooky character. I'm of two minds in this analysis. The left half of my brain wants to call this guy a fraud, because how can you compare a masterpiece of Greek poetry to a middle American novel? How do you draw a comparison between an aging Greek General and a Good ole American Midwestern boy? Then the Right half of my brain says that there is a literal connection. When Ulysses is being tempted at every point in his journey and that Huck was also tempted at every point in his journey. This also shows Huck is a tragic hero, because he is struggling between what is right and what is wrong, just like Ulysses. While the good reviews were not thought through well enough, the bad reviews where just as pathetic and most are not more then a couple of sentences. They are for the most part direct and to the point。In the case of moral values, the critics of the favorable reviews seem to play off Huck as just another character with an irreverent attitude toward life or juvenile ignorance.

2. The Portrait of a Lady is the story of a spirited young American woman, Isabel Archer, who "affronts her destiny" and finds it overwhelming. She inherits a large amount of money and subsequently becomes the victim of Machiavellian scheming by two American expatriates. Like many of James's novels, it is set mostly in Europe, mostly England and Italy. Generally regarded as the masterpiece of James's early period, this novel reflects James's continuing interest in the differences between the New World and the Old, often to the detriment of the former. It also treats in a profound way the themes of personal freedom, responsibility, betrayal, and sexuality.Major themes: James's first idea for The Portrait of a Lady was simplicity itself: a young American woman confronting her destiny, whatever it might be. Only then did he begin to form a plot to bring out the character of his central figure. Ironically, the plot became an uncompromising story of the free-spirited Isabel losing her freedom—despite (or because of) suddenly coming into a great deal of money—and getting "ground in the very mill of the conventional." The theme of freedom vs. responsibility runs throughout The Portrait and helps explain Isabel's possible final decision to return to Osmond. In this sense it is rather existentialist, as Isabel is very committed to living with the consequences of her choice with integrity but also a sort of stubbornness.But that decision is affected by another major theme of the novel: Isabel's sexual fears and diffidence. Although she is eventually shown as capable of deep arousal, she rejects Lord Warburton and Goodwood, two very strong and masculine suitors, in favor of the seemingly less threatening and hopelessly cold Osmond. Although the conventions of 19th-century Anglo-American fiction prevented a completely frank treatment of this part of Isabel's character, James still makes it clear that her fate was at l east partially shaped by her uneasiness with passionate commitment.The richness of The Portrait is hardly exhausted by a review of Isabel's character. The novel exhibits a huge panorama of trans-Atlantic life, a far larger canvas than any James had previously painted. This moneyed world appears charming and leisurely but proves to be plagued with treachery, deceit, and suffering. It is only through disappointment and loss, James seems to say, that one can grow to complete maturity.Literary significance & criticism:The Portrait of a Lady received critical acclaim since its first publication in the pages of The Atlantic Monthly, and it remains the most popular of James's longer fictions. In particular, Isabel's final return to Osmond has fascinated critics, who have debated whether James sufficiently justifies this seemingly paradoxical rejection of freedom. One interpretation is that Isabel not only feels as honor-bound to the promise she has made to stepdaughter Pansy as she does to Osmond, but also considers that the scene her "unacceptable" trip to England will create with Osmond will leave her in a more justifiable position to abandon her dreadful marriage.The extensive revisions James made for the 1908 New Y ork Edition have generally been accepted as improvements, unlike the changes in other texts, such as The American or Roderick Hudson.

3.Sister Carrie (1900) is a novel by Theodore Dreiser about a young country girl who moves to the big city where she starts realizing her own American Dream by first becoming a mistress to men that she perceives as superior and later as a famous actress.The chief moral position of Dreiser was Spenser’s evolutional moral concept. It was because that what was implemented in his novel was a kind of indifferent doctrine. He described Carrie as “sincere and industrious”, and a very pretty girl from countryside. It was not because of her moral degeneration that her destiny met with so many setbacks. By contraries, Carrie could get promotion when others fell to a much lower situation. Another character Drouet should not be

considered as a gangster that would never be forgave as well. Although he liked to dress him up and pursue different girls frequently, he was still “kind-hearted”, and “not a cold-blooded,insidious rascal.”In a word, “there was not any evil aspect in his nature.”Other people’s destinies, especially Carrie’s, was determined by a kind of unknown, unchangeable power as well. There were two kinds of powers that had led her to go to cities. One is the intense pursuit and desire for happiness. Like other girls, Carrie also had creatural desire and appetency. She had never known clearly what the aim was that she was pursuing, and what had driven her forward was her nature. In this process, she was not active at all and had no feeling or love. The other was the social economic environment. In other words, it was the sharp contrasts between success and failure, richness and poorness, and between happiness and hardship. When Carrie came across Drouet, she began to realize how unequal between them. Especially after she heard Drouet’s description about the city of Chicago, she was determined to obtain what she lacked, such as money and high status. In order to realize her dream for happiness, she could sacrifice anything, including her conscience and chastity.In the world of Sister Carrie, to gain happiness and success was the final purpose, and to realize it, she could use any device. According to Spenser’s evolution theory, human being was a kind of animal with no free wish, and the real world was totally a physical and mechanical one. People’s life was just a momentary process compared with the long human history and it could almost be ignored. The evolution theory abolished the reprehensive function of traditional morals. It is not until the day when we reach the terminal of the evolvement, that is to say, when human beings get free wishes, that they are responsible for there own moral behaviors which then can be restricted by traditional.

4.The Entire story takes place in one summer in 1922. The novel describes the life and death of Jay Gatsby, as seen through the eyes of a narrator who does not share the some point of view as the fashionable people around him. The narrator learns that Gatsby became rich by breaking the law. Gatsby pretends to be a well-educated war hero, which he is not, yet the narrator portrays him as being far more noble than the rich, cruel, stupid people among whom he and Gatsby live. Gatsby's character is purified by a deep, unselfish love for Daisy, a beaufitul, silly woman who, earlier, married a rich husband instead of Gatsby and moved into high society. Gatsby has never lost his love for her and in an era when divorce has become easy, he tried to win her back by becoming extravagantly rich himself. He does not succeed, and in the end he is killed almost by accident because of his determination to shield Daisy from disgrace. None of Gatsby's upper class friends come to his funeral. The narrator is so disgusted that he leaves New Y ork and returns to his original home in the provinces. The Chapter 3, describes one of Gatsby's fabulous parties at his expensive, rented estate near New Y ork; it is the first such party that the narrator has attended. There is a passage which begins with a description of the elaborate preparations, which he watches from the house next door, and continues with his observations as one of the guests. He evokes a vivid atmosphere of contradiction; the party is crowded yet empty of warmth or friendship, the charm and sweetness of youth is spoiled by triviality and tawdriness, the splended house and garden have been purchased not for enjoyment but for the purpose of making an impression.

5.Theodore Dreiser was one of the most famous writers in American literature history, and his novel“Sister Carrie”had been regarded as the one of the most successful novels in the history of American literature.The novel recounts the westw ard journey of the Joads, a three-generation Oklahoma family pushed off their land through a combination of dust storms and foreclosures. Eldest son Tom returns home from the state penitentiary to find the family preparing to head to California in the hopes of obtaining work and eventually a farm of their own. Tom, along with parents, grandparents, an uncle, siblings, and a brother-in-law, are joined in their trek by Jim Casy, an ex-preacher looking to fill the void left by his loss of "the Holy sperit." After leaving Oklahoma, they discover that California is not the land of milk and honey where they can become independent farmers, but rather it is a cold, harsh, uninviting environment, in both the towns and the countryside. Through their journey, Tom and Casy learn about the exploitative practices of landowners and the avenues open to farm laborers to challenge the power of the farm owners. Ma Joad learns, over the course of the novel, that her responsibilities extend beyond the limits of the "fambly" to "the people." She learns the importance of solidarity in regaining and maintaining human dignity, just as Tom learns the value of solidarity in gaining respect in labor. This message is reinforced in the novel's final

scene, in which Tom's sister, Rosasharn (Rose-of-Sharon), having just given birth to a stillborn child, gives her maternal breast to a dying man. By the end of the novel, the Joad family has grown to include the family of man.The Grapes of W rath is a prime example of the proletarian novel that was popular during the Great Depression in which ordinary working class families (especially agricultural workers) became the focus. Steinbeck strongly believed in the power of literature to bring about change in society through education and example. By exposing the corrupt ways of agribusiness and the benefits of government intervention into the agricultural economy, Steinbeck sought to bring about the creation of a farm labor proletariat. The novel ignited an explosion of controversy over the problems of migrant labor. Accusations about the novel's accuracy led to debates such as the 1940 radio broadcast of "America's Town Meeting of the Air," which addressed the issue "What should America do for the Joads?" Criticisms about the representations of California growers and Oklahoma natives resulted in bans on the book in communities across the nation and most publicly in Kern County, California, a heavily agricultural region of the state.Stylistically, the novel also recalls the documentary movement of the 1930s in its use of interchapters which depart from the narrative of the Joad family and describe phenomena representative of the migrant population as a whole. The interchapters authenticate the narrative by placing the plight of the Joads within the larger context of Dust Bowl migrants, the agricultural economy, and the American proletariat. Steinbeck portrayed the "Okie" migrants as uneducated, unsophisticated, earthy, and decent folk whose humanity provided a counterpoint to the inhumanity of industrial/agribusiness exploitation. Much like the photography of Margaret Bourke-White, Dorothea Lange, and Walker Evans; and documentary books like Bourke-White and Erskine Caldwell's Y ou Have Seen Their Faces (1937), Lange and Paul Taylor's An American Exodus: A Record of Human Erosion (1939), and Evans and James Agee's Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1941), The Grapes of Wrath sought to improve society through the presentation of information in a highly emotionally charged narrative.

6.The Sound and the Fury (1929)《喧哗与骚动》(1) The main story of the novel is about the family history of the Compsons, who were once the owner of a plantation.(2) The title of the novel comes from a drama written by William Shakespeare. (P238)(3)The story was divided into four parts and narrated by four characters.Benjy Compson: an idiot

Quentin Compson: a student in Harvard, full of imagination, felt modern life unbearable, at last suicide Jason Compson: all vices of modern world, rationalism over passion Dilsey: a black woman, a servant in the Compsons, a natural woman who had the common feeling and compassion(4)Most parts of the novel were written in stream-of-consciousness. The traditional time order of the novel was totally broken in this novel. (no capitalization, no proper punctuations; most parts are fragments with mistaken information)Stream-of-consciousness: telling the story by recording the thoughts of the characters

The Sound and the Fury is a Southern Gothic novel。The novel takes place in the fictional Y oknapatawpha County and is split into four sections. The first is from the viewpoint of Benjy Compson, a thirty-three year old man with mental retardation. The second segment is from the point of view of Quentin Compson, the Harvard-educated student who commits suicide after a series of events involving his sister Caddy. The third is from the point of view of their cynical, embittered brother, Jason, and the fourth is from a third person limited narrative point-of-view focused on Dilsey, the Compson family's black servant, and her unbiased point of view, which allows the reader to make his or her own assumptions from the actions of the other characters. The story overall summarizes the lives of people in the Compson family that has by now fallen into ruin. Many passages are written in a stream of consciousness. This novel is a classic example of the unreliable narrator technique.

The Sound and the Fury has also, like much of Faulkner's work, been read as a microcosm for the South as a whole. Faulkner was very much preoccupied with the question of how the ideals of the old South could be maintained or preserved in the post-Civil War era. Seen in this light, the decline of the Compson family might be interpreted as an examination of the corrosion of traditional morality only to be replaced by a modern helplessness. The most compelling characters are also the most tragic, as Caddy and Quentin both cannot survive within the context of the traditional society whose values they reject as best they can, and it is left to Jason, unappealing but competently pragmatic, to maintain the status quo, as evidenced by the novel's ending. There are also echoes of existential themes in the novel, as Sartre argued in his famous essay on Faulkner.

Many of the characters also draw upon classical, Biblical and literary sources: Some believe Quentin (like Darl from As I Lay Dying) to have been inspired by Hamlet and Caddy by Ophelia; and Benjamin received his name after the brother of Joseph in the book of Genesis.

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