美国文学名词解释 (自动保存的)

1、美国文学名词解释1. American romanticismit is one of the most important periods in the history of American literature that stretches from the 18th century to the outbreak of the civil war. It started with the publication of Washington Irvings The Sketch Book and ended with Walt Whitmans Leaves of Grass.being

2、 a period of the great flowering of American literature, it is also called “the American Renaissance ”.American romantic works emphasize the imaginative and emotional qualities of nature literature. The strong tendency to eulogize the individual and common man was typical of this period. Most import

3、antly, the writings of American Romanticism are typically American. Works concentrate on unique characteristics of the American land.New England Transcendentalism is the summit of American Romanticism.Romanticists include such literary figures as Washington Irving, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David T

4、horeau, William Cullen Bryant, Henry Wordsworth Longfellow, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville, Walt Whitman and some others.2. Free versefree verse means the rhymed or unrhymed poetry composed without paying attention to conversational rules of meter. Free verse was originated by

5、 a group of French poets of the late 19th century. Their purpose was to free themselves from the restrictions of formal metrical patterns and to recreate instead the free rhymes of nature period. Walt Whitmans leaves of grass is perhaps the most notable example.3. Transcendentalism transcendentalism

6、 has been defined philosophically as “ the recognition in man of the capability of knowing truth intuitively, or of attaining knowledge transcending the reach of the senses. transcendentalists stress the importance of the Over-soul, the Individual and Nature. Other concepts that accompanied transcen

7、dentalism include the idea that nature is enabling and the idea that the individual is divine and, therefore, self-reliant. New England transcendentalism is the product of a combination of Native American Puritanism and European romanticism. some prominent representatives include Ralph Waldo Emerson

8、, Henry David Thoreau.4. realism realism was a reaction against Romanticism and paved the way to Modernism.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

9、 of life, free from subjective prejudice, idealism, or romantic color. Instead of thinking about the mysteries of life and death and heroic individualism, peoples attention was now directed to the interesting features of everyday existence, to what was brutal or sordid and to the open portrayal of c

10、lass struggle.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.Mark Twain, Howells, Henry James are three leading figures of the American Realism.5.

11、point of view the events of a story may be told as they appear to one or more participants or observers. In first-person narration the point of view is automatically that of the narrator.more variation is possible in third-person narration., where the author may choose to limit his or her report to

12、what could have been observed or known by one of the characters at any given point in the action-or may choose to report the observations and thoughts of several characters. The author might to choose to intrude his or her own point of view.6. Local colorismPost-was American was large and diverse en

13、ough to sense its own local differences. Regional voices had emerged. Generally, the works by local colorists are concerned with the life of a small, well-defined region or province. The characteristic setting is the isolated town.Local colorists were consciously nostalgic historians of a vanishing

14、way of life, recorders of a present that faded before your eyes. Yet for all their sentimentality, they dedicated themselves to minutely accurate descriptions of the life of their regions. They worked from personal experience to record the facts of a local environment and suggested that the native l

15、ife was shaped by the curious conditions of the locale.Major local colorists include Hamlin Garland, Mark Twain, and Kate Chopin, etc.7. American naturalism the American naturalists accepted the more negative interpretation of Darwins evolutionary theory, and used it to account for the behavior of t

16、hose characters in literary works who were regarded as more or less complex combinations of inherited attributes, their habits conditioned by social and economic forces.naturalism evolved from realism when the authors tone in writing becomes less serious and less sympathetic but more ironic and more

17、 pessimistic. It is no more than a gloomy philosophical approach to reality, or to human existence.the most familiar themes in American naturalism is the theme of human, especially as explanation of sexual desires. Philosophically, the naturalists believe that the real and true is always partially h

18、idden from the eyes of the individual, or beyond his control.8. stream of consciousness 以下是考研书上的答案。it is used to depict the mental and emotional reactions of characters to external events, rather than the event themselves. It adopts the psycho-analytic approach in literary creation to explore the ex

19、istence of sub-consciousness and unconscious elements in the mind more thoroughly and see more clearly how men are thrown into existence.as opposed to usages of conventional plot structure, description, and characterization, the action is presented in terms of images and attitudes within the mind of

20、 figures, often to get at the psychic nature of the characters at a level distinct from that of their expression of ordered ,verbalized thought.我们老师上课讲的是it is a phrase coined by William James in his Principle of Psychology to describe the flow of thought of the human minds. Now it is widely used in

21、a literary context to describe the narrative method with which certain novelists describe the unspoken thoughts and feelings of their characters without using objective description or conventional dialogue.Henry James is generally regarded as the forerunner of the 20th century Stream of Consciousnes

22、s novels.9. International themeHenry Jamess fame generally rests on his novels and stories with the international theme. These novels are always set against a large international background, usually between Europe and America, and centered on the confrontation of the two different cultures with two

23、different groups of people representing two different value systems.The treatment of the international theme is characterized by the richness of syntax and characterization and the originality in point of view, symbolism, metaphoric texture, and organizing rhyme. James is now more mature as an artist, more at home in the craft of fiction.10. psychological realism以下是老师上课的笔记，不过我看着不像是解释，仅供参考。大家有更好地定义请告诉我。Henry Jamess realism is characterized by his psychological approach to his subject