美国文学名词解释

American Puritanism清教主义:

Puritanism is the practices and beliefs of the puritans. The Puritans were originally members of a division of the protestant church who wanted to purify their religious beliefs and practices. They accepted the doctrines of predestination, 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. 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. 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 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. Transcendentalism 超验主义:

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 of American society. It placed emphasis on spirit, or the Over soul, as the most important thing in the world. It stressed the importance of individual and offered a fresh perception nature ad symbolic of the spirit of God. Prominent transcendentalists included Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thorough. American Naturalism美国自然主义文学: American naturalism was a new and harsher realism. The naturalists attempt to achieve extreme objectivity 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 environment, that the destiny of humanity was misery in life and oblivion in death. The pessimism and deterministic ideas naturalism pervaded the works of such American writers as Stephen Crane and Theodore Dreiser.

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 account for the behavior of those characters in literary works who were regarded as more or less complex combinations of inherited attributes, their habits conditioned by social and economic forces.2) naturalism is evolved from realism when the author’s

late 19th century. The term \"Gilded Age\" was coined by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner in their 1873 book, The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today.The Gilded Age is most famous for the creation of a modern industrial economy. The end of the Gilded Age coincided with the Panic of 13, a deep depression. The depression lasted until 17 and marked a major political realignment in the election of 16. After that came the Progressive Era. The Lost Generation迷惘的一代:

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.

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. Tragedy:

In general, a literary work in which the protagonist meets an unhappy or disastrous end. Unlike comedy, tragedy depicts the actions of a central character who

is usually dignified or heroic. Through a series of events, this tragic hero is brought to a final 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, where the tragic hero is often an ordinary individual, the causes range from moral or psychological weakness to the evils of society.

Catch-22第22条军规:

Catch-22 is a general critique of bureaucratic operation and 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 are the most important American poets. Imagism意象派:

The 1920s saw a vigorous literary activity in America. In poetry there appeared a strong reaction against Victorian poetry. Imagists placed primary reliance on the use of precise, sharp images as a means of poetic expression and stressed precision in reasoning. Resulting from its specific use in the book, the phrase \"Catch-22\" is common idiomatic usage meaning \"a no-win situation\" or \"a double bind\" of any type. The term was originally from Joseph Heller’s anti novel Catch-22. Beat Generation垮掉的一代: 、

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. 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 Allen Ginsberg’s howl.Howl became the manifesto of The Beat Generation.

Psychological Realism心理现实主义:

It is the realistic writing that probes deeply into the complexities of characters’ thoughts and motivations. It places more than the usual amount of emphasis on interior characterization and on the motives, and internal action which springs from and develops external action. In Psychological Realism, character and characterization are more than usually important. Henry James is considered a great master of psychological realism. Free Verse自由诗体:

Free verse is poetry that has an irregular rhythm and line length and that attempts to avoid any predetermined verse structure, 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. Confessional Poetry自白诗:

It is a type of modern poetry in which poets speak with openness

the choice of words, freedom in the choice of subject matter and form, and the use of colloquial language. Most of the imagist poets wrote in free verse, using such devices as assonance and alliteration rather than formal metrical schemes to give structure to their poetry.The movement which had these as its aims is known in literary history as Imagism. Its prime mover was Ezra Pound.

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. Black Humor:

the use of morbid and the absurd for darkly comic purposes in modern fiction and drama. The term refers as much to the tone of anger and bitterness as it does to the grotesque and morbid situations, which often deal with suffering, anxiety, and 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 what actually happens. Both verbal and irony of situation share the suggestion of a concealed truth conflicting with surface appearances.

A Jjazz age(爵士时代):

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”. Nathaniel Hawthorne

works

(1) Two collections of short stories: Twice-told Tales, Mosses from and Old Manse (2) The Scarlet Letter

(3) The House of the Seven Gables (4) The Marble Faun

1.

point of view (1) Evil is at the core of human life, “that blackness in Hawthorne”

(2)

Whenever there is sin, there is punishment. Sin or evil can be passed from generation to generation (causality). (3) He is of the opinion that evil educates. (4) He has disgust in science.

2.

aesthetic ideas

(1)

He took a great interest in history and antiquity. To him these furnish the soil on which his mind grows to fruition. (2)

He was convinced that romance was the predestined form of American narrative. To tell the truth and satirize and yet not to offend: That was what Hawthorne had in mind to achieve.

3.

style – typical romantic writer (1) the use of symbols

(2) revelation of characters’ psychology (3) the use of supernatural mixed with the actual

(4) his stories are parable (parable inform) – to teach a lesson

(5)

use of ambiguity to keep the reader in the world of uncertainty – multiple point of view

Edgar Allen Poe Works

1.

short stories (1) ratiocinative stories a. Ms Found in a Bottle

b. The Murders in the Rue Morgue c. The Purloined Letter (2) Revenge, death and rebirth a. The Fall of the House of Usher b. Ligeia

c. The Masque of the Red Death (3) Literary theory

a.

The Philosophy of Composition

b. The Poetic Principle

c.

Review of Hawthorne’s Twice-told Tales

I.

Themes

1.

death – predominant theme in Poe’s writing “Poe is not interested in anything alive. Everything in Poe’s writings is dead.” 2. disintegration (separation) of life 3. horror

4.

negative thoughts of science II.

Aesthetic ideas

1. The short stories should be of brevity, totality, single effect, compression and finality.

2. The poems should be short, and the aim should be beauty, the tone melancholy. Poems should not be of moralizing. He calls for pure poetry and stresses rhythm.

III.

Style – traditional, but not easy to read

Reputation: “the jingle man” (Emerson) I.

F. Scott Fitzgerald 1. life – participant in 1920s 2.

works (1) This Side of Paradise (2) Flappers and Philosophers (3) The Beautiful and the Damned (4) The Great Gatsby (5) Tender is the Night (6) All the Sad Young Man (7)

(8) The Last Tycoon

3. point of view

(1)

He expressed what the young people believed in the 1920s, the so-called “American Dream” is false in nature. (2)

He had always been critical of the rich and tried to show the integrating effects of money on the emotional make-up of his character. He found that wealth altered people’s characters, making them mean and distrusted. He thinks money brought only tragedy and remorse. (3)

His novels follow a pattern: dream – lack of attraction – failure and despair. 4. His ideas of “American Dream”

It is false to most young people. Only those who were dishonest could become rich. 5. Style

Fitzgerald was one of the great stylists in American literature. His prose is smooth, sensitive, and completely original in its diction and metaphors. Its simplicity

and

gracefulness,

its

skill

in

manipulating the relation between the general and the specific reveal his consummate artistry. 6. The Great Gatsby

Narrative point of view – Nick

He is related to everyone in the novel and is calm and detected observer who is never quick to make

judgements.

Selected omniscient point of view

Ernest Hemingway 1. life

2.

point of view (influenced by experience in war) (1)

He felt that WWI had broken America’s culture and traditions, and separated from its roots. He wrote about men and women who were isolated from tradition, frightened, sometimes ridiculous, trying to find their own way. (2)

He condemned war as purposeless slaughter, but the attitude changed when he took part in Spanish Civil War when he found that fascism was a cause worth fighting for. (3)

He wrote about courage and cowardice in battlefield. He defined courage as “an instinctive movement towards or away from the centre of violence with self-preservation and self-respect, the mixed motive”. He also talked about the courage with which to face tragedies of life that can never be remedied. (4)

Hemingway is essentially a negative writer. It is very difficult for him to say “yes”. He holds a black, naturalistic view of the world and sees it as “all a nothing” and “all nada”.

3.

works (1) In Our Time (2) Men Without Women (3) Winner Take Nothing (4) The Torrents of Spring (5) The Sun Also Rises (6) A Farewell to Arms (7) Death in the Afternoon (8) To Have and Have Not (9)

Green Hills of Africa

(10) The Fifth Column (11) For Whom the Bell Tolls

(12) Across the River and into the Trees (13) The Old Man and the Sea 4.

themes – “grace under pressure” (1)

war and influence of war on people, with scenes connected with hunting, bull fighting which demand stamina and courage, and with the question “how to live with pain”, “how human being live gracefully under pressure”. (2)

“code hero”

The Hemingway hero is an average man of decidedly masculine tastes, sensitive and intelligent, a man of action, and one of few words. That is an individualist keeping emotions

under

control,

stoic

and

self-disciplined in a dreadful place. These people are usually spiritual strong, people of certain skills, and most of them encounter death many times.

5.

style

(1) simple and natural (2) direct, clear and fresh (3) lean and economical

(4)

simple, conversational, common found, fundamental words (5) simple sentences

(6) Iceberg principle: understatement, implied things (7) Symbolism

I.

Mark Twain – Mississippi

1. life 2.

works (1) The Gilded Age (2) “the two advantages” (3) Life on the Mississippi

(4)

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

(5) The Man That Corrupted Hardleybug 3.

style (1)

colloquial language, vernacular language, dialects (2) local colour

(3) syntactic feature: sentences are simple, brief, sometimes ungrammatical (4) humour

(5) tall tales (highly exaggerated)

(6) social criticism (satire on the different ugly things in society)

I.

Emily Dickenson

1. life 2.

works (1) My Life Closed Twice before Its Close (2) Because I Can’t Stop for Death (3) I Heard a Fly Buzz – When I died (4) Mine – by the Right of the White Election (5)

Wild Nights – Wild Nights

3. themes: based

on

her

own

experiences/joys/sorrows

(1) religion – doubt and belief about religious subjects

(2) death and immortality

(3) love – suffering and frustration caused by love

(4) physical aspect of desire (5) nature – kind and cruel

(6)

free will and human responsibility 4. style (1) poems without titles (2) severe economy of expression (3) directness, brevity

(4) musical device to create cadence (rhythm) (5) capital letters – emphasis (6)

short poems, mainly two stanzas

rhetoric techniques: personification – make some of abstract ideas vivid

II.