美国文学名词解释

（一）About Puritanism清教主义 1.“would-be purifier”They wanted to purify the English Church and to restore church worship to the “pure and unspotted”condition of its earlier days .They opposed the elaborate rituals of the English Church. They believed that the Bible was the revealed word of God, therefore, people should guide their daily behavior with the Bible. 2.Basic Puritan Beliefs（1） Total Depravity - through Adam's fall, every human is born sinful - concept of Original Sin.（2） Unconditional Election - God "saves" those he wishes - only a few are selected for salvation - concept of predestination（3） Limited Atonement - Jesus died for the chosen only, not for everyone.（4）Irresistible Grace - God's grace is freely given, it cannot be earned or denied. Grace is defined as the saving and transfiguring power of God.（5）Perseverance of the "saints" - those elected by God have full power to interpret the will of God, and to live uprightly. If anyone rejects grace after feeling its power in his life, he will be going against the will of God - something impossible in Puritanism. 2.The impact of Puritanism (1)High standards of moral excellence and conscience ;(2) Emphasis on education(3)Hard working, thrifty, independent spirit;(4)“Chosen people”  consciousness .(诺斯替教） （2）Enlightenment(启蒙运动)   Enlightenment is man’s leaving his self-caused immaturity. Immaturity is the incapacity to use one's intelligence without the guidance of another.@A term used to describe the trends in thought and letters in Europe and the American colonies during the 18th century prior to the French Revolution. The precursors of the Enlightenment can be traced to the 17th century and earlier.@The phrase was frequently employed by writers of the period itself, convinced that they were emerging from centuries of darkness and ignorance into a new age enlightened by reason, science, and a respect for humanity. （3）Romanticism （浪漫主义）   As an approach in literary creation, romanticism is ever present in literature of all times. But as a literary trend or movement, it occurred and developed in Europe and America at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries under the historical background of the Industrial Revolution around 1760 and the French Revolution (1789-1799). @ A movement in the literature of virtually every country of Europe, the United States, and Latin America that lasted from about 1750 to about 1870,@It was characterized by reliance on the imagination and subjectivity, freedom of thought and expression, and an idealization of nature. （4）Transcendentalism（超验主义）   Transcendentalism is the summit of the Romantic Movement in the U.S. in the first half of the 19th century. It asserts the existence of an ideal spiritual reality that transcends the empirical and scientific and is knowable through intuition .Transcendentalists place emphasis on the importance of the Over-soul, the individual and Nature. It was, in essence, romantic idealism on Puritan soil. （5）Free verse   poetry without a fixed beat or regular rhyme scheme. (6）Blank verse “Blank verse” is poetry written in regular metrical but unrhymed lines, almost always iambic pentameters. （7）American Realism (1865—1918)（现实主义）   American Realism came in the latter half of the nineteenth century as a reaction against Romanticism. It stresses truthful treatment of material. It focuses on commonness of the lives of the common people, and emphasizes objectivity and offers an objective rather than an idealistic view of human nature and human experience. The three dominant figures of the period are William Howells, Mark Twain, and Henry James. （8）Definition of Local Color（乡土特色） 1.Literature that focuses on the characters, dialect, customs, topography（地形）, and other features particular to a specific region that exploits the speech, dress, mannerisms, and habits of that specific region . 2. Twain’s Local colorism Twain preferred to present social life through portraits of the local characters of his regions, including people living in that area, the landscape, and other peculiarities like the customs, dialects, costumes and so on. So the rich material of his boyhood experience on the Mississippi became endless resources for his fiction, and the Mississippi valley and the west became his major theme. （9）American Naturalism (1890s-1910s) （自然主义） 1. Historical Background:—The spread of industrialization created extremes of wealth and poverty. —Farmers were still going westward, but frontiers were about the close. They had to depend on the transcontinental railway to transport their products.—The spread of Darwin’s theory of evolution changed people’s ideology. 2. Thematically, naturalistic writers： -- wrote detailed descriptions of the lives of the downtrodden and of the abnormal-- had frank treatment of human passion and sexualit-- were concerned about how men and women were  overwhelmed by the forces of environment and by the forces of heredity-- made detailed documentation of life: nothing but the truth, more naked and wicked than realism-- created gloomy and pessimistic atmosphere 3. Here are the major features of naturalism. Humans are controlled by laws of heredity and environment. The universe is cold, godless, indifferent and hostile to human desires. @Naturalistic writers are pessimistic. They choose their subjects from the lower. (10)Modernism（现代主义） (1)appeared after World War I(2)cutting off history and a sense of despair and loss(3)refusing to accept the traditional concept of value and all traditional ideological influences. 1. Background In the first world war, America got considerable benefits with animal cost, but many artist and thinkers with suffering consciousness felt the terribleness of modern wars.Their heroism in mind gradually disappeared. Some of them going into battle suffered the sight of blood and all kinds of disasters. After back to America, they found that the social reality had experienced great change. 2. Features or changes of the period(1)Increasing industrialization (2)Deepening urbanization(3)High speed development of technology and science(4 )Trauma of the first world war(5)1930s economic depression(6)Collapse of social value system(7)Dropping moral standards(8)Common depression , fear ,sense of loss 3. Features of the works   Freud’s psychoanalysis ,William James stream of consciousness theory and archetypal symbol had great impact on the writers of modern American writers. They pay special attention to the inner world of the people, during this period ,the most compelling literature movement is the writer’s self exile, also known as the second American renaissance . (11）Novelists —— the Lost Generation“迷惘的一代”(1920s) The novelists who produced a literature of disillusionment in the aftermath of World War I, and some of them lived abroad:(1)Used their wartime experience as the basis for their works (2)were cut off from old values yet unable to come to terms with the new era(3)wondered pointlessly and restlessly(4)were frustrated by the war(5)spokesman —— Hemingway (十二）The  Jazz  Age The Jazz Age is the nickname in America of the decade of the 1920’s, beginning from 1919 to the Crash at the end of 1929.These ten years were, for Americans, a time of carefree prosperity, isolated from the world’s problem, bewildering great social change, and a feverish pursuit of pleasure.These were the ten years when the First World War was just over, when new inventions and manufacturing  techniques greatly changed the way people lived; when  people moved from the countryside in great numbers; when women won the right to vote and many started to  earn their own money; when cars, washing machines,radios and vacuum cleaners became commonplace; and when millions of people lived beyond their means and went into debt in order to obtain such things while the middle class frantically pursued individual “success” and personal enjoyment. They lived a rich, extravagant, frivolous moneymaking life, and it was this style of living gave the decade of the 1920’s such nickname as the “Jazz Age”, the “Dollar Decade”, and the “Roaring Twenties.” （13）Imagism(1900S-1910S)(意象派) The Imagist movement included English and American poets in the early twentieth century who wrote free verse and were devoted to "clarity of expression through the use of precise visual images." The Imagist Movement began in London and later spread to the US. It underwent three major phases in its development. （14）Irony A contrast or discrepancy between what is said and what is meant or between what happens and what is expected to happen in life and in literature.