美国文学史名词解释.doc

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名词解释Terms
1. Transcendentalism
Transcendentalism refers to the religious and philosophical doctrines of Ralph Waldo Emerson and others in New England in the middle 1800’s, which emphasized the importance of individual inspiration and intuition, the Oversoul, and Nature. Other concepts that accompanied Transcendentalism include the idea that nature is ennobling 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.
特点：1）as a moral philosophy, transcendentalism was neither logical nor systematized. It exalted feeling over reason, individual expression over the restraints of law and custom.不讲逻辑，不讲系统，只强调超越理性的感受，超越法律和世俗束缚的个人表达。
2)they spoke for cultural rejuvenation and against the materialism of American society.呼吁文化复兴，反对美国社会的拜金主义。
3）they believe in the transcendence of "over soul", an all-pervading power for goodness from which all things come and of which all things are a part. 相信精神上的超越，相信无所不能的善的力量，强调善为万物之源。
代表作家Ralph Waldo Emersion 拉尔夫.沃尔多.爱默生
③作品：“Nature”《论自然》、“Essays”《随笔录》、 “The American Scholar”《美国学者》, our intellectual Declaration of Independence.我们知识分子的独立宣言。
④his most important works are “Representative Men ”《代表》and “English Traits”《英国人》、“Poems”《诗集》
⑤摘自《论自然》：Standing on the bare ground, -my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, -all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball. 人形的约束没有了。
2. Naturalism
Naturalism, a more deliberate kind of realism, usually involves a view of human beings as passive victims of natural forces and social environment. As a literary movement, naturalism was initiated in France and it came to be led by Zola, who claimed at “scientific” status for his studies of impoverished characters miserably subjected to hunger, sexual obsession, and hereditary defects. Natural fiction aspired to a sociological objectivity, offering detailed and fully researched investigations into unexplored corners of modern society. The naturalists emphasized that the world was amoral, that men and women had no free will, that their lives were controlled by heredity and the environment, the religious “truths” were illusory, that the destiny of humanity was misery in life and oblivion in death. The most significant work of naturalism in English being Dreiser’s Sister Carrie.
3. American Dream
The American Dream is the faith held by many people in the United States of America that through hard work, courage and determination one can achieve a better life for oneself, usually through financial prosperity. These were values held by many early European settlers, and have been passed on to subsequent generations.
4. The Lost Generation
The term Lost Generation was coined by Gertrude Stein to refer to a group of American Literary notables who lived in Paris from the time period which saw the end of World War I to the beginning of the Great Depression. Significant members included Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound, Sherwood Anderson, T. S. Eliot, and Gertrude Stein herself. Hemingway likely popularized the term, quoting Stein (“You are all a lost generation”) as epigraph to his novel The Sun Also Rises. More generally, the term is being used for the young adults of Europe and America during World War I. They were “lost” because after the war many of them were disillusioned with the world in general and unwilling to more into a settled life.
Scott Fitzgerald, “The Great Gatsby” 《了不起的盖茨比》 novel
Ernest Hemingway “The Sun Also Rises”《太阳照样升起》 “A Farwell to Arms”《告别了，武器》
5. Modernism
Modern writing is marked by a strong and conscious break with traditional forms and techniques of expression; it believes that we create the world in the act of perceiving it. Modernism implies historical discontinuity, a sense of alienation, of loss, and of despair. It elevates the individual and his inner being over social man and prefers the unconscious to the self-conscious.
T. S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land”, the most significant American poem of the twentieth century, helped to establish a modern tradition of literature rich with learning and allusive thought.
6. Romanticism
Romanticism as a literary movement came into being in England in the later half of the 18th century. It first made its appearance in England as a renewed interest in medieval literature. William Blake and Robert Burns represented the spirit of what is usually called Pre-Romanticism. With the publication of William Wordsworth’s Lyrical Ballads in collaboration with S. T. Coleridge, romanticism began to bloom and found a firm place in history of English literature. In fact, the first half the 19th century recorded the triumph of Romanticism.
Romanticism的特点：frequently shared certain general characteristics, moral enthusiasm, faith in the value of individualism and intuitive perception, and a presumption that he natural world was a source of corruption.浪漫主义之间大多是相通的，都注重道德，强调个人主义价值观和直觉感受，并且认为自然是美的源头，人类社会是腐败之源。
Washington Irving华盛顿.欧文① the first great prose stylist of American romanticism. 美国第一位浪漫主义散文文体作家
7. Puritanism
The principles and practices of puritans were popularly known as Puritanism. Puritanism accepted the doctrines of Calvinism: the sovereignty of God; the supreme authority of the Bible; the irresistibility of God’s will for man in every act of life from cradle to grave. These doctrines led the Puritans to examine their souls to find whether they were of the elect and to search the Bible to determine God’s will. the best of Puritan poets is Edward Tayor.

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