美国文学期末考试——名词解释

way Code Hero It refers to some protagonists in Hemingway's works. In the general

situation of Hemingway's novels, life is full of tension and battles; the world is in chaos and man

is always fighting desperately a losing battle. Those who survive and perhaps emerge victorious in

the process of seeking to master the code with a set of principles such as honor, courage,

endurance, wisdom, discipline and dignity are known as "the Hemingway code". man can be

physically destroyed but never defeated spiritually.

g theory of Writing: it refers a writing style of Hemingway that is the sentences only give

one small bit of the meaning. The rest is implied. One must go very deep beneath the surface to

understand the full meaning of his writing.

m: imagism is the doctrine and poetic practice of a small but influential group of

American and British poets calling themselves imagists between 1912 and at a new

clarity and exactness in the short lyric poem, the imagists cultivated concision and directness,

building their short poems around single images; they also preferred looser cadences to

traditional regular rhythms.

verse (自由诗体) without a fixed beat or regular rhyme scheme.

Generation：it defines a sense of moral loss or aimlessness. The WWI destroyed the

innocent ideas, many good young men went to the war and died, or returned damaged, both

physically and mentally; their moral faith were no longer valid they are lost. narrow sense means

a group of American writers, including Hemingway, rald, etc. broad sense: the entire

post WWI American young generation.

Beat generation: it was a group of authors whose literature explored and influenced

American culture in the post-WW2 era. The bulk of their work was published and popularized

throughout the 1950s. Central elements of “Beat “ culture: rejection of standard narrative values,

the spiritual quest, exploration of American and Eastern religions, rejection of materialism,

explicit portrayals of the human condition, experimentation with psychedelic drugs, and sexual

liberation, exploration.

ism现代主义：is loosely a synonym of anything contemporary. Strictly, especially in

literary criticism, which began in the late 19th century and the theory of psycho-analysis as its

theoretical base. They pay more attention to the psychic time than the chronological one.

m: realism is a term applied to literary composition that aims at an interpretation of the

actualities of any aspect of life ,free from subjective prejudice, idealism, or romantic color.

lism: naturalism is a critical term applied to the method of literary composition that

aims at a detached, objectivity in the treatment of natural man.

color: loc al color is a term applied to literature which emphasizes its setting, being

concerned with the character of district or of an era, as marked by its customs, dialects, costumes,

landscape or other peculiarities that have escaped standardizing cultural influences.

an romanticism : Romanticism is 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.

Harlem Renaissance The first flowering of African-American literature. It was the African

American artistic movement in the 1920s that celebrated black life and culture and Hughes is

best-known for his work during the Harlem Renaissance.

13. Stream-of-Consciousness Stream of Consciousness, in literature, is the technique that records

the multifarious thoughts and feelings of a character without regard to logical argument or

narrative sequence.

endentalism: 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

thelimitations 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.

Jazz Age(享乐时代)：when New Orleans musicians moved “up the river” to Chicago, and

the theatre of New Yorks Harlem pulsed with the music that had become a symbol of the times.

Fitzgerald portrays the Jazz Age as a generation of “the beautiful and damned”, drowning in

their pleasures.

ism: It is a movement in literature and the visual arts that originated in France in the

poetry of Charles Baudelaire in the late 19th century. In literature, symbolism was an aesthetic

movement that encouraged writers to express their ideas, feelings, and values by means of

symbols or suggestions rather than by direct statements. Hawthorne and Melville are masters of

symbolism in America in the 19th century.

ism: 达尔文主义:an evident influence on naturalism, stress the animality of man, to

suggest that be was dominated by the irresistible forces of evolution.

logical realism: It is the realistic writing that probes deeply into the complexities of

characters‟ thoughts and motivation. Henry James‟ novel The Ambassadors is considered to be a

masterpiece of psychological realism.

20. Puritanism: The word is originally used to refer to the theory advocated by a party within the

Church of England. It is also used to refer to attitudes and values considered characteristics of the

Puritans. It denotes a rigid moral, or the condemnation of innocent pleasure, or religious

narrowness adhered by the early New England Puritans. It exerted great influence over American

Romanticism. The preoccupation with the Calvinist view of original sin and the mystery of evil

marked the works by such famous writers as Hawthorne and Melville.

le points of view The employment of several narrators or narrative points of views to

tell a story, thus making the structure of the book somewhat radioactive. For example, The Sound

and the Fury uses four different narrative voices to piece together the story and thus challenges

the reader by presenting a fragmented plot told from multiple points of view.