美国文学史名词解释

1. American Puritanism清教

It comes from the American puritans, who were the first immigrants moved to American continent in the 17th

century. Original sin, predestination（预言）

and salvation（拯救）

were the basic ideas of American Puritanism. And,

hard-working, piousness（虔诚,尽职），thrift and sobriety（清醒）

were praised.

Characteristics:

特点

1. Idealistic: Puritans pursue the purity and simplicity in worship. They focuse the glory of God, and the angry

believe in the doctrine of destiny, original sin, limited atonement

2. Practical: Puritans come to Amrican to do business and make profits with the desire of chasing wealth and status.

They have to struggle for survival under the severity of the western frontier.

3 .The struggle between the spiritual and the material is the basics of the Puritan mind. On the one hand, Puritans

chase the purity of the early the other hand, they come to America to earn money. This contradictory

will be reflected by their thoughts.

4. In a word, it rests on purity, ambition, harding work, and an intense struggling for success.

2. Romanticism浪漫主义:

the literature term was first applied to the writers of the 18thcentury in Europe who

broke away from the formal rules of classical writing. When it was used in American literature it referred to the

writers of the middle of the 19thcentury who stimulated（刺激）the sentimental emotions of their readers. They wrote

of the mysterious of life, love, birth and death. The Romantic writers expressed themselves freely and without

restraint. They wrote all kinds of materials, poetry, essays, plays, fictions, history, works of travel, and biography.

3. Transcendentalism先验说,超越论: is a philosophic and literary movement that flourished in New England,

particular at Concord, as a reaction against Rationalism and Calvinism

(理性主义and喀尔文主义). Mainly it stressed

intuitive understanding of God, without the help of the church, and advocated independence of the mind. The

representative writers are Emerson and Thoreau.

4. American Realism现实主义:

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

5. Local colorism乡土文学: is a type of writing that was popular in the late 19th century, particularly among the

authors in the south of the U.S.. this style relied heavily on using words, phrases, and slang that were native to the

particular region in which the story took place. local colorists tried to immortalize(使不朽)

the distinctive natural,

social and linguistic features. It is characteristic of vernacular(本国语)

language and satirical(讽刺的) humor. A

well-known local colorism author was Mark Twain with his books Tom Sowyer and The Adventures of

Huckleberry Finn.

6. Naturalism自然主义:

American naturalism was a new and harsher realism. It was initiated in France.

American naturalism had been shaped by the war; by the social upheavals（剧变）

that undermined the comforting

faith of an earlier age. America’s literary naturalists attempted to achieve extreme objectivity and frankness,

presenting characters of low social and economic classes who were determined by their environment and heredity.

Although naturalist literature described the world with sometimes brutal realism, it sometimes also aimed at

bettering the world through social reform.

7. Stream of consciousness意识流：It is one of the modern literary techniques. It is the style of writing that

attempts to imitate the natural flow of a character’s thoughts, feelings, reflections, memories, and mental images as

the character experiences them. It was first used in 1922 by the Irish novelist James Joyce. Those novels broke

through the bounds of time and space, and depicted vividly and skillfully the unconscious activity of the mind fast

changing and flowing incessantly。

8. Modernism现代主义：It was a complex and diverse（复杂多样的） international movement in all the creative arts（创造性艺术），originating about the end of the 19th century. It provided（出现） the greatest creative renaissance of

the 20th century. It was made up of many facets

（方面）， such as symbolism，surrealism（超现实主义），

cubism（立体主义），expressionism，futurism （未来主义），ect

9. Imagism意象派:

It’s a poetic movement of England and the U.S. flourished from 1909 to movement

insists on the creation of images in poetry by “the direct treatment of the thing” and the economy of wording. The

leaders of this movement were Ezra Pound and Amy Lowell.

10. Jazz 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”。

11. The Lost generation迷惘的一代：It refers to a group of young intellectuals

（知识分子）who came back from

war，were injured（受伤害）

both physically（身体上）

and mentally（精神上）. They lived by indulging（放任）

themselves

in the Bohemian（波西米亚）

way of life. Their American dream was disillusioned（破灭了）.

The best representative

of the lost generation was Ernest Hemingway.

12. Hemingway Code Hero海明威式的英雄: also called code hero，is one who，wounded but strong more

sensitive，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.

13. Stream of consciousness意识流：It is one of the modern literary techniques. It is the style of writing that

attempts to imitate the natural flow of a character’s thoughts, feelings, reflections, memories, and mental images as

the character experiences them. It 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.

（特点是联想行，以句法和标点的跳跃、文章晦涩难懂为特征，表现人物的断片思维和感官性的直觉）It was first used in 1922 by the Irish

novelist James Joyce. Famous writers to employ this technique in the English language include Virginia Woolf,

James Joyce and William Faulkner.

14. Postmodernism后现代主义:

It is a disputed term that has occupied much recent debate about contemporary

culture since the early 1980s. in its simplest and least satisfactory sense it refers generally to the phase of 20th

century western culture that succeeded the reign of hign modernism，thus indicating the products of the “space

age” after some time in the 1950s. More often though it is applied to a cultural condition prevailing in the

advanced capitalist societies since the 1960s，characterized by a superabundance of disconnected images and styles.

In this sense post modernity is said to be a culture of fragmentary sensations，eclectic nostalgia，disposable

simulacra，and promiscuous superficiality in which the traditionally valued qualities of depth，coherence，meaning

originality and authenticity are evacuated or dissolved amid the random swirl of empty signals.

15. American Dream美国梦: American dream means the belief that everyone can succeed as long as he/she

works hard enough. It usually implies a successful and satisfying life. These were values held by any 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 happiness.

16. The Harlem Renaissance哈莱姆文艺复兴：refers to the flowering of African American literature, art, and

drama during the 1920s and 1930s. Though centered in Harlem, New York, the movement impacted urban centers

throughout the United States. Black novelists, poets, painters, and playwrights began creating works rooted in their

own culture instead of imitating the styles of Europeans and white Americans.