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1、术语解释（美国文学简史）1、 American PuritanismBack grounding:American Puritanism appeared in the colonial period, from 1607 to 1775, in America.Representatives:There are many writers in this period, such as Captain JohnSmith, the author of theTrue Relation of Virginia (1608) andDescription of New England (1616)
2、, Anne Bradstreet, who wrote the famous work called Tenth Muse Lately Sprung up in America (1650).Main ideas:They stress predestination, original sin, total depravity, and limited atonement from God's grace. They go to America to prove that they are God's chosen people who will enjoy God'
3、; s blessings on earth and in Heaven. Finally, they build a way of life that stresses hard work, thrift, piety, and sobriety.Influences:American Literature is based on a myth the Biblical myth of the Garden of Eden. The American Puritan' s metaphoricalmadeof perception symbolism. It has a great
4、influence notonly on the Literary Scene in Colonial America, , but also onthe literature in the 18th century, especially on JonathanEdwards and Benjamin Franklin.American RomanticismBack grounding:It appeared in the end of the 18 th century through the outbreak of the Civil War, from 1828 to 1865, a
5、nd it was strongly influenced by European culture.Representative:There are somerepresentative newEngland poets and out-sanding writers such as, James Fenimaore Cooper, the author ofTheLeather Stocking Tales, Washington Irving , whose famous work is The Sketch Book (1819) .Main ideas:Romanticismisa r
6、ebellionagainst theobjectivityofrationalism. .Forromantics,the feelings,intuitionsandemotions aremore important than reason and commonsense.Theyemphasize individualism, placing the individual against the group, against authority.Influence:It produces a feeling of “ Newness”which inspires the romanti
7、c imagination.3、TranscendentalismsBack grounding:Transcendtalism flourished in the New England from about 1836 to 1860.Ralph Waldo Emerson published Nature ' in 1836 which represented a new way of intellectual thinking in America. Representatives:There are two representative writers, namely Ralp
8、h Waldo Emerson (1803 1882), whose famous work called Nature, Henry David Thoreau (1817 1862), the author ofWalden.Main ideas:Believe people can learn things both from the outside world by means of the 5 senses and from the inner world by intuition;It places spirit first and matter second; It takes
9、nature as symbolic of spirit or God. It emphasizes the significance of the individual; Religion is an emotional communication between an individual soul and the universalover soul ' .Influences:It is a manifestation of Romantic Movement in literature and philosophy and an ethical guide to life o
10、f America. However, it is never a systematic philosophy because of a lack of logical connection.4、RealismBack grounding:In American literature, the Civil War brought the RomanticPeriod to an end. The Age of Realism came into existence, from 1865 to 1918.Representatives:There are some famous writers
11、in this period, such as WilliamDean Howells , the Dean of American Realism, whose famous work is A Chance Acquaintance 偶然相遇 ; O. Henry, the author of After Twenty Years; Henry James, the author of The Portrait of a Lady.Main ideas:Realism is the theory of writing in which familiar aspects of contemp
12、orary life and everyday scenes are represented in a straightforward or mother-of-fact manner. It often uses the open ending, focuses on the lives of the common people, and emphasizes objectivity.Influences:It comes as a reaction againstthe lie of romanticism andsentimentalism. It expresses the conce
13、rn for commonplace and the low, and it offers an objective rather than an idealistic view of human nature and human experience.5、Local ColorismBack grounding ：Local colorism as a trend became dominant in American literature in the late 1860s and early 1870s； The frontierhumorists whohad been popular
14、 with their “tall tales ” before the Civil War paved the way for local color fiction.Representatives ：There is a famous writers in this period, namely Mark Twain,（ 马 克?吐温 ）, whose masterpiece isHuckleberry Finn.Main ideas:Local color fiction presents a locale which is distinguishedfrom the outside w
15、orld, and describes the exotic and the picturesque. It describes things that are not common in other regions, attempting to show things as they as they are.Local color fiction glorifies the past and stresses the influence of setting on character.Influences:Mark Twain is the representative in this pe
16、riod, and his style is the vernacular language, local color, and cracker-barrel philosopher.6、NaturismBack grounding ：Naturalism is a literary trend prevailing in Europe, especially in France and Germany, in the second half of the 19th century. And, Charles Darwin stresses the struggle of existence,
17、 survival of the fittest, natural selection.Representatives:There are some writers in this period, such as Stephen Crane,Frank Norris, and Jack London . Crane' s Maggie: A Girl of the Streets is the first American naturalism work.Main ideas:Humans are controlled by laws of heredity and environme
18、nt.The universe is cold, godless, indifferent and hostile to human desires.Influences:Although naturalist literature describes the world with sometimes brutal realism, it sometimes also aims at bettering the world through social reform. This combination of grim reality and desire for improvements is
19、 typical of America as it moves into the twentieth century.7、ImagismBack grounding:Imagism is a literary movementlaunched by a number of British and American poets from 1909 to 1917, which is prevalent in the Western world and is a branch of the Symbolist literary movement.Representatives:Four Quart
20、ets ; Wallace Stevens; Robert Frost.Main ideas:In a sense, imagism is equivalent to naturalism in fiction. It produces free verse without imposing a rhythmical pattern.Imagism tries to record objective observations of an object or a situation without interpretation or comment by the poet.Influences:
21、It is one of the most essential techniques of writing poetryin modern period, with a spirit of revolt against conventions;imagism is an ti-roma ntic and anti Victoria n.8、the Lost GenerationBack grounding:The term “lost generation ” is coined by Gertrude Stein, a lost generation writer herself, afte
22、r World WarI. It is between the first and second World Wars.Representatives:There are some excellent writers, including Ernest Hemingway; whose famous work is The Old Man and the Sea (1952); Scott Fitzgerald, the author of the Great Gatsby.Main ideas:The Lost Generation is a term used to describe a
23、group ofAmerican writers who were rebelling against what America had become by the 1900 's.It aims to seek the bohemian lifestyle and reject the values of American materialism and meansthis generation had lost the beautiful sense of the calm idyllic past.Influences:Being cut off from their past,
24、 disillusioned in reality, and without a meaningful future to fall on, they are lost in disillusionment and existential voids.9、the code hero （网上找的）The Hemingway hero is an average man of decidedly masculine tastes, sensitive and intelligent, a manof action, and one of few words. That is an individu
25、alist keeping emotions under control, stoic and self-disciplinedin a dreadful place. Thesepeople are usually spiritual strong, people of certain skills, and most of them encounter death many times. The heroes in his book are all have something in common which Hemingway values: they have seen the col
26、d world and for one cause or another, they boldly and courageously face the reality; whatever the result is, they are ready to live with grace underpressure. TheHemingway code hero has an indestructible spirit for his optimistic view of life; though he is pessimistic that isHemingway.10、Iceberg Theo
27、ry（ 网上找的 ）It is a term used to describe the writing style of American writer ErnestHemingway. The meaning of a piece is not immediately evident, because the crux of the story lies below the surface, just as most of the mass of a real iceberg similarly lies beneath the surface.11、the Jazz AgeThe 20&#
28、39;s are also referred to as “The Jazz Age,” a term coined by F. Scott FitzgeraldThe Jazz Age began with the end of WWI, at a time when, for the first time, the U.S. had emerged as a world power and ended with the stock market crash of 1929.The most representative literary work is American writer F.
29、Scott Fitzgerald 's the great Gatsby.This decade saw changes in lifestyle and technology that revolutionized American life in such a way that it has never been the same since.12、Free verse:Free verse is poetry that has an irregular rhythm and line length, and that attempts avoid any predetermine
30、d verse structure. While it alternates stressed and unstressed syllables as stricter verse forms do, free verse does so in a looser way. Whiteman ' s poetry is an example of free verse at its most impressive, for example Song of Myself. It has since been used Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot and other major American poets of the 20th century. Walt Whiteman' s Leaves of Grass is, perhaps , the most notable example.