美国文学复习重点 全

名词解析

1 American Romanticism

浪漫主义

The Romantic Period stretches from the end of the 18th century to the outbreak of the Civil War.

It is a period of the great flowering of American literature.

1. It started with the publication of Washington Irving's The Sketch Book

（

1819

）

and ended with

Whitman's Leaves of Grass

（

1855

）

;

2. It was a rebellion against the objectivity of rationalism. For romantics, the feelings, intuitions

and emotions were more important than reason and common sense;

3. The writers emphasized individualism, placing the individual against the group. They affirmed

the

inner

life

of

the

self,

and

cherished

strong

interest

in

the

past,

the

wild,

the

remote,

the

mysterious and the strange.

4.

the writers stressed the element of

“

Amerianness

”

in their works;

5.

Being

a

period

of

the

great

flowering

of

American

literature,

it

is

also

called

the

American

Renaissance;

2 American Transcendentalism

As

a

philosophical

and

literary

movement,

American

Transcendentalism

(also

known

as

“ American Renaissance”)

flourished in New England from the 1830s to the Civil War. It is the high

tide of American romanticism and its doctrines found their greatest literary advocates in Emerson

and Thoreau. Transcendentalists spoke for the cultural rejuvenation and against the materialism

of American society.

Transcendentalism

超验主义

(+ H. D. Thoreau; Nathaniel Hawthorne; )

The major features of Transcendentalism:

①

The

Transcendentalists

placed

emphasis

on

spirit,

or

the

Oversoul,

as

the

most

important

thing in the universe.

思想

超灵

宇宙

②

The Transcendentalists stressed the importance of the individual. To them, the individual is

the most important element of Society.

个体

+

社会

③

The Transcendentalists offered a fresh perception of nature as symbolic of the Spirit or God.

Nature was not purely matter. It was alive, filled with God

’

s overwhelming presence.

自然

+

上帝

3 Stream of Consciousness

意识流

or “interior monologue”,

内心独白

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.

4 Realism

As a literary movement, the Age of Realism came into existence after Romanticism with the Civil

War It was a reaction against “the lie” of Romanticism and sentimentalism, and paved the way to

Modernism

.

This

literary

interest

in

the

so-called

“

realit y

”

of

life

started

a

new

period

in

the

American

literary writing known as The Age of Realism.

Psychological Realism

It is the realistic writing that probes deeply into the complexities of characters

’

thoughts and

motivations.

And

Henry

James

is

considered

the

founder

of

psychological

realism.

He

believed

that reality lies in the impressions made by life on the spectator, and not in any facts of which the

spectator is unaware. Such realism is therefore merely the obligation that the artist assumes to

represent life as he sees it.

The three dominant figures of the period are William Dean Howells

豪威尔斯

, Mark Twain, and

Henry James. Mark Twain and Howells seemed to have paid more attention to the

“life” of the

Americans, and Henry James had apparently laid greater emphasis on the

“

inner world

”

of man.

5 Puritanism

was a religious reform movement that arose within the Church of England in the late sixteenth

century. Under siege from church and crown, it sent an offshoot in the third and fourth decades

of the seventeenth century to the northern English colonies in the New World--a migration that

laid the foundation for the religious, intellectual, and social order of New England. Puritanism,

however, was not only a historically specific phenomenon coincident with the founding of New

England; it was also a way of being in the world--a style of response to lived experience --that has

reverberated through American life ever since.

6 American Naturalism

As a literary movement, naturalism grew out of the 19th century realism, the evolutionary theory

in his

“

The Origin of Species

”

----

“

the fittest, the survival

”

in biological sphere

Three major concepts of literary naturalism:

1) Humans are controlled by laws of heredity and environment.

2) The universe is cold, godless, indifferent and hostile to human desires.

3) The naturalists think that the true reality is not found in the smiling aspects of middle class life,

but

in

the

dominant

forces

of

Nature

in

stopping

human

desires,

in

keeping

humans

from

accomplishing their dreams.

They offered vivid pictures of the lives of the down-trodden and the abnormal

7 Code Hero

General Features:

has great physical potential and courage.

2. The

“

code heroes

”

have strong willpower.

3. Thirdly , another important feature of the

“

code heroes

4. Fourthly , the

”

maintain great dignity in all situations.

5. Fifthly , the

“

code heroes

”

are endowed with certain specialized skills , such as fishing , bull

fighting , and hunting , etc

6, the

“

code heroes

”

are always put in some touch-and go situations, what the heroes must

always face up to is their own personal fear of death and the threat of destruction, and it is this

obstacle, death, that they have to overcome.

8 Local colorism

In

literature,

local

color

fiction

refers

to

fiction

or

poetry

that

focuses

on

specific

features

–

including characters, dialects, customs, history, and landscape

–

of a particular region.

Local colorism as a trend first made its presence felt in the late 1860s and early 1870s. It did not