waterborne英美文学名词解释(一)

1.

Allegory:

A

tale

in

verse

or

prose in

which

characters,

actions,

or

settings

represent

abstract

ideas

or

moral

qualities.

An

allegory

is

a

story

with

two

meanings,

a

literal

meaning and a symbolic meaning.

2. Alliteration: The repetition of the initial consonant sounds in poetry.

3. Allusion:

A reference to a person, a place, an event, or a literary work that a

writer

expects the reader to recognize and respond to. An allusion may be drawn from history,

geography, literature, or religion.

4. American Naturalism: American naturalism was a new and harsher realism. American

naturalism

had

been

shaped

by

the

war;

by

the

social

upheavals

that

undermined

the

comforting faith of an earlier age. America’s literary naturalists dismissed the validity of

comforting

moral

truths.

They

attempted

to

achieve

extreme

objectivity

and

frankness,

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

environment

and

heredity.

In

presenting

the

extremes

of

life,

the

naturalists

sometimes

displayed an affinity to the sensationalism of early romanticism, but unlike their romantic

predecessors, the naturalists emphasized that the world was amoral, that men and women

had no free will, that lives were controlled by heredity and environment, that the destiny

of

humanity

was

misery

in

life

and

oblivion

in

death.

Although

naturalist

literature

described the world with sometimes brutal realism, it sometimes also aimed at bettering

the world through social reform.

5.

American

Puritanism:

Puritanism

is

the

practices

and

beliefs

of

the

Puritans.

The

Puritans were originally members of a division of the Protestant Church. The first settlers

who became the founding fathers of the American nation were quite a few of them. They

were

a

group

of

serious,

religious

people,

advocating

highly

religious

and

moral

principles. As the word itself hints, Puritans wanted to purity their religious beliefs and

practices. They accepted the doctrine of predestination, original sin and

total depravity,

and limited atonement through a special infusion of grace form God. As a culture heritage,

Puritanism

did

have

a

profound

influence

on

the

early

American

mind.

American

Puritanism also had a enduring influence on American literature.

6. American Realism: In American literature, the Civil W

ar 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.

7. American Romanticism: The Romantic Period covers the first half of the 19th century.

A

rising

America

with

its

ideals

of

democracy

and

equality,

its

industrialization,

its

westward

expansion,

and

a

variety

of

foreign

influences

were

among

the

important

factors

which

made

literary

expansion

and

expression

not

only

possible

but

also

inevitable in the period immediately

following

the

nation’s political independence. Y

et,

romantics

frequently

shared

certain

general

characteristics:

moral

enthusiasm,

faith

in

value of individualism and intuitive perception, and a presumption that the natural world

was a source of

goodness and

man’s societies a source of corruption. Romantic values

were

prominent

in

American

politics,

art,

and

philosophy

until

the

Civil

W

ar.

The

romantic

exaltation

of

the

individual

suited

the

nation’s

revolutio

nary

heritage

and

its