美国文学名词解释

名词解释

1. Impressionism(印象主义)

Briefly, it is a style of literature characterized by the creation of general impressions and moods rather than realistic mood.

2. American Realism (1865-1914)

Realism was a reaction against Romanticism or a move away from the bias towards romance and self-creating fictions, and paved the way to Modernism. (书上P471 第一段)

3. American Naturalism(自然主义）已改啦

Naturalism is evolved from realism when the author’s tone in writing becomes less serious and less sympathetic but more ironic and more pessimistic. It is no more than a gloomy philosophical approach to reality, or to human existence. (书P476 第一段最后)

4. Local colorism

释义1：Local colorism as a trend became dominant in American literature in the 1860s and early 1870s，it is defined by Hamlin Garland as having such quality of texture and background that it could not have been written in any other place or

by anyone else than a native. Stories of local colorism have a quality of circumstantial(详细的) authenticity(确实性), as local colorists tried to immortalize(使不朽) the distinctive natural, social and linguistic features. It is characteristic of vernacular(本国语) language and satirical(讽刺的) humor.

释义2：Local colorism is a trend first made its presence felt in the late 1860s and early 1870s in America. It may be defined as the careful attention in speech, dress or behavior peculiar to a geographical locality.

释义3：Local colorism is fiction and poetry that focuses on the characters, dialect, customs, topography, and other features particular to a specific region. 5. The Lost generation

释义1：It refers to a group of young intellectuals who came back from war，were injured both physically and mentally. Disillusioned and disgusted by the frivolous, greedy, and heedless way of life in America, they began to write and they wrote from their own experiences in the war. The best representative of the lost generation was Ernest Hemingway. (书P7)

释义2：The lost generation is a term first used by Stein to describe the post-war I generation who are physically and psychologically scarred. (书P8)

6. Imagism:

释义1：It’s a poetic movement of England and the U.S. flourished from 1909 to 1917. The movement insists on the creation of images in poetry by “the direct treatment of the thing” and the economy of wording.

释义2：Imagism came into being in Britain and U.S around 1910 as a reaction to the traditional English poetry to express the sense of fragmentation and dislocation.

7. Free verse

Free verse is poetry without a fixed beat or regular rhyme scheme. A looser and more open-ended syntactical structure is frequently favored. Whiteman’s poetry is an example of free verse at its most impressive.

8. Transcendentalism:

Transcendentalism is a philosophic and literary movement. It is a reaction against Rationalism and Calvinism. It appeared after 1830, marked the maturity of American Romanticism and the first Renaissance in the American literary history.

9. Jazz Age

Jazz age describe the period of 1920s and 1930s, the years between WW1 and WW2. With the rise of the Great Depression, the values of the age saw much decline. The most representative literature work is The Great Gatsby highlighting

what some describe as the decadence and hedonism, as well as the growth of individualism.

10. Iceberg Principle ：

It is a term used to describe the writing style of American writer Ernest Hemingway. 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. Modernism(现代主义)：

Modernism is comprehensive but vague term for a movement, which began in the late 19th century and which has had a wide influence internationally during much of the 20th century. It is a reaction against realism. It rejects rationalism, which is the theoretical base of realism.

12. Original sin

The wrong doing of one generation lives into the successive ones. Human beings are basically depraved and corrupted, hence, they should obey God to atone for their sins.

13. Psychological Realism(心理现实主义)

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

characters’ thoughts and motivations. Henry James is considered the founder of psychological realism. His novel The Ambassadors is considered to be a masterpiece of psychological realism.

14. Colloquialism

A colloquialism is a word, phrase or paralanguage that is employed in conversational or informal language but not in formal speech or formal writing.

In a word, naturalism is evolved from realism when the author’s tone in writing becomes less serious and less sympathetic but more ironic and more pessimistic.