英美文学名词解释

英国 Renaissance:The term originally indicated a revival of classical(Greek and Roman) arts and sciences after the dark ages of medieval obscurantism(蒙昧主义). Humanism is the essence of Renaissance. The real mainstream of English Renaissance is the Elizabethan drama with William Shakespeare being the leading dramatist. Humanism: Humanism is the essence of the Renaissance. It emphasizes the dignity of human beings and the importance of the present life. Humanists voiced their beliefs that man was the center of the universe and man did not only have the right to enjoy the beauty of the present life, but had the ability to perfect himself and to perform wonders. Romance:Any imagination literature that is set in an idealized world and deals with heroic adventures and battles between good characters and villains or monsters. Originally, the term referred to a medieval tale dealing with the loves and adventures of kings, knights and ladies, and including unlikely or supernatural happenings. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is the best of medieval romances. University Wits:University Wits refers to a group of scholars during the Elizabethan Age who graduated from either Oxford or Cambridge. They came to London with the ambition to become professional writers. Some of them later became famous poets and playwrights. They were called “University Wits”. Christopher Marlowe is the most gifted of the University Wits. Metaphysical Poetry:Metaphysical poetry is a derogatory(贬义的)term invented by John Dryden and later adopted by Samuel Johnson describing a school of highly intellectual poetry marked by bold(大胆的) and ingenious (有独创性的) conceits, imagery, complexity of thought, frequent use of paradox. The main themes are love, death, and religion. The chief representative of this school was John Donne. Cavalier Poets:The cavaliers are royalists, whose poetry was marked by courtliness, urbanity(雅致,礼貌), and polish(优雅). They were lyrical poets, and dealt chiefly with the theme of love and the theme of “carpe diem”(及时行乐). The chief representative of this school was Ben Jonson. Neoclassicism:A revival in the 17th and 18th centuries of classical standards of order , balance, and harmony in literature, John Dryden and Alexander Pope were major exponents of the neoclassical school. British Romanticism: A movement that flourished in literature, philosophy, music, and art in Western culture during most of the 19th century, beginning as a revolt against classicism. Romanticism gave primary concern to passion, emotion, and natural beauty. The English Romantic period is an age of poetry. Characteristics: subjectivism; spontaneity; singularity; worship of nature; simplicity. Modernism:It is an international movement in literature and arts, especially in literary criticism, which began in the late 19th century. Modernism takes the irrational philosophy(非理性哲学) and the theory of psycho-analysis(精神分析) as its theoretical base. The modernist writers concentrate more on the private and subjunctive than on the public and objective, mainly concerned with the inner of an individual. The characteristics of modernists writings are as below: complexity and obscurity(晦涩); the use of symbols; allusion; irony. Stream of consciousness:“Stream-of-Consciousness”or “interior monologue”, 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 by the Irish novelist James Joyce.Those novels broke through the bounds of time and space, and depicted vividly and skillfully the unconscious activity of the mind fast changing and flowing incessantly, particularly the hesitant, misted(模糊的), distracted(心烦意乱的)and illusory(错觉的)psychology people had when they faced reality. The modern American writer William Faulkner successfully advanced this technique. In his stories, action and plots were less important than the reactions and inner musings(沉思)of the narrators. Time sequences were often dislocated. The reader feels himself to be a participant in the stories, rather than an observer. A high degree of emotion can be achieved by this technique. Black Humor: It is mostly employed to describe baleful(恶意的), naive, or inept(笨拙的) characters in a fantastic or horrible modern world playing out their roles in a“tragic farce(闹剧)”,in which the events are often simultaneous comic, horrifying, and absurd. Joseph Heller’ s Catch-22 can be taken as an example of the employment of this technique. The Theater of the Absurd: It refers to a kind of drama that explains an existential ideology and presents a view of the absurdity of the human condition by abandoning of usual or rational devices and the use of nonrealistic form. The Angry Young Man: The Angry Young Men is a journalistic catchphrase(标 语) applied to a number of British playwrights and novelists from the mid-1950s. Their works mainly express the bitterness of the lower classes towards the established sociopolitical system and hypocrisy of the middle and upper classes. The playwright John Osborne was the example of these angry young men with his play Look Back in Anger. 美国 American Romanticism: The Romantic Period covers the first half of the 19th century. A rising America with its ideals of democracy and equality, the booming economy, the flourishing publications and a variety of foreign influences made its literary expansion possible and inevitable. Romantics shared some characteristics: moral enthusiasm, individuality and intuitive perception. Romantic values were prominent in American politics, art, and philosophy until the Civil War. American Transcendentalism: American Transcendentalism is more than an attitude of Transcendentalists. To transcend something is to rise above(克服) it , to pass beyond its limits. The transcendentalists speak for cultural rejuvenation and against the materialism of American society. The major features of the American Transcendentalism can be summarized as follows : First, transcendentalists placed emphasis on spirit, or the Oversoul, as the most important thing in Universe; Second, they stressed the importance of individuals; Third, they offered a fresh perception of nature as symbolic of the Spirit or God. American Naturalism: The American Naturalism accepted the more negative interpretation of Darwin’s evolutionary theory and used it to account for the behavior of those characters in literary works who were regarded as more or less complex combinations of inherited attributes, their habits were conditioned by social and economic forces. American Naturalism was evolved from realism when the author’s tone in writing became less serious and less sympathetic but more ironic and more pessimistic. It was no more than a gloomy philosophical approach to reality, or to human existence. Dreiser is a leading figure of this school. American Realism: In American literature, the Civil War 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(现) 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. American Puritanism: Puritanism is the practices and beliefs of Puritans . The American puritans, like their English Brothers, are idealists. They accept the doctrine and practice of predestination, original sin, total depravity, and limited atonement through a special infusion of grace from God. But due to the grim struggle for living in the new continent, they become more and more practical. American Puritanism is so much a part of the national atmosphere rather than a set of tenets. Local Colorism: Local Colorism or regionalism as a trend to first made its presence felt in the late 1860s and early 1870s in America. The ultimate aim of the local colorists is to write or to present local characters of their regions in truthful depiction distinguished from others, usually a very small part of the world. Determinism: Determinism is the philosophical belief that events are shaped by forces beyond the control of human beings. Determinism, important to the literature at the end of the 19th century, assigns control especially to heredity and environment, without seeking their origins further than science can trace. Determinism usually leads to the tragic fate of the characters in novel. Psychological realism: It is the realistic writing that probes deeply into(探 究) the complexities of characters’ thoughts and motivations. Henry James’s novel The Ambassadors is considered to be a masterpiece of psychological realism. And Henry James is considered the founder of psychological realism. He believed tha t reality lies in the impressions made by life on the spectator, and not in any facts of w hich the spectator is unaware. Imagism: Imagism was a poetic vogue(流行) that flourished in England, and even more vigorously in America. It was planned and exemplified by a group of English and American writers in London as a revolt against the sentimental and discursive(散漫的) poetry at the turn of the century. The typical imagist poetry likes to express the writers’ momentary impression of a visual object or scene and often the impression is rendered(提出) by means of metaphor without indicating a relation. The most imagist poem, In a station of the Metro is written by Ezra Pound. Southern Renaissance: The Southern Renaissance is the revival of American Southern literature that began in the 1920s and 1930s until the 1950s. Much of the writings in this unit featured the struggle between those who embraced social changes and those who were more skeptical or challenged social change outright. The writers and intellectuals of the South after the late 1920s were engaged in an attempt to come to terms not only with the inherited values of the Southern tradition, but also with a certain way of perceiving and dealing with the past. The Lost Generation:This term has been used to describe the people of the postwar years. It describes the Americans who remained in Paris as a colony of “expatriates”or exiles. Writers like Hemingway were caught in the war and cut off from the old values and yet unable to come to terms with the new era when civilization had gone mad. They wandered pointlessly and restlessly, enjoying things like fishing, swimming, and beauties of nature, but they were aware all the while that the world is crazy and meaningless and futile. The Beat Generation: The Beat Generation refers to a loosely-knit group of poets and novelists, writing in the second half of the 1950s and early 1960s. They shared a set of social attitudes——anti-establishment, anti-political, anti-intellectual, opposed to the prevailing cultural, literal, and moral values, and were in favor of unfettered(无拘无束的)self-realization and self-expression. Hemingway Code Hero: As a concept from Hemingway’s works, code hero is defined by Hemingway as a man who lives correctly, following the ideals of honour, courage and endurance in a world that is sometimes chaotic(混乱的),often stressful, and always painful. A code hero is an average man of decidedly masculine tastes, a man who is sensitive and intelligent, a man of actions and of few words. This kind of people are usually spiritually strong,with certain skills, and most of them encounter death many times. Jazz Age: The Jazz Age describes the period from 1918 to 1929, the years after the end of World War I, continuing through the Roaring Twenties and ending with the rise of the Great Depression in America. Among the prominent concerns and trends of the period are the public embrace of technological developments as well as new modernists trends in social behavior, arts and culture. The representative writer is F·Scott Fitzgerald with his novel The great Gatsby. Waste Land Painters: Waste Land Painters refer to such writers as F·Scott Fitzgerald, T·S Eliot, Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner. With their writings, all of them paints the post-war western world as a waste land, lifeless and hopeless.