英美文学史名词解释
作文中秋赏月-武警学院
American Literature
an puritanism
In the early part of the 17
th
century,
the settlement of the North American continent by
the English began. Quite a few of the first
settlers were Puritans. They carried with
them
to American a code of values, a philodophy of life
and a point of view, whivh is
popularly known
as American Puritarism.
American Puritanism
was one of the most enduring shaping influences in
American
thought and literature.
1.
puritans accepted the doctrine of predestination,
original sin, total depravity and
limited
atonement from God’s grace.
2. they went to
prove that they are God’s chosen people enjoying
his blessing on this
earth as in heaven.
3. they are both doctrinaire and oppotunist.
Influence on American literature:
1.
American literature is based on a myth-the
Biblical myth of the Garden of Eden.
Puritans
dreamed of building a new Garden of Eden in
America.
Fired with such a sence of mission,
the puritans were optimistic, which has a great
influence on American literature.
2. The
American Puritan’s metaphorical mode of perception
helps swvelop a literary
symbolism which is
distinctly American.
3. With regard to their
writing, the style is fresh, simple and direct,
the rhetoric is
plain and honest, whith have
great influence on American writing.
an
Romanticism
Time: from the end of the
18
th
century to the outbreak of the Civil
War.
Background:
political, economic and
cultural independence developed fast.
influences stimulated the growth of romanticism in
American.
Features:
1. American national
experience of pioneering into the west provided
rich material
for American writers.
2.
puritanism had a noticeable influence on American
Romanticism. American
Romantic authors tended
more to moralize than their English and European
cournterparts.
3. American’s ideals of
indiividualism and political equality and their
dream that
American was to be a new Garden of
Eden did probably produce a feeling of
newness, a feeling stronge enough to inspire
the romantic imagination.
4. American
Romanticism was both imitative and independent.
Main contents:
The exotic landscape, the
frontier life, the westward expansion, the myth of
a New
Garden of Eden in America(the native
materials),New England Poems.
Representatives:
New England Poets-Longfellow and so on.
Writers: Washington Irving, James Fenimore
Cooper
England Transcendentalism
Background:
1. Ralph Waldo Emerson
published Nature in 1836 which represented a new
way of
intellectual thinking in American: the
universe is composed of Nature and the soul.
Spirit is present everywhere.
2. in 1836,
some New Englanders organized the Transcendental
Club.
Major features:
1. the
Transcendentalists placed emphasis on spirit, or
the oversoul, as the most
important things in
the universe.
2. the Transcendentalists
stressed the importance of the individual.
3.
the Transcendectalists regard nature as symbolic
of the spirit or God.
Representatives: Ralph
Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Dickinson.
The phrase of New England Transcendentalism
was the product of a combination of
foreign
influences and the American Puritan tradition(it
begun with the introduction of
idealistic
philosophy from Germany and France; it was
actually Romanticism on the
Puritan Soul). It
never had a systematic philosophy, it borrowed
from many sourses,
but lacked of logical
connection, finally, it turned to mysticism.
Age of Realism
Background:
1. after
American Civil War, increasing industrialization
and mechanization of the
country produced
extremes of wealth and poverty.
2. the fact
that the frontier was closing ruined people’s hope
th escape troubles over
the next hill and have
a better life ahead.
3. by the 1870s, New
England Renaisance had waned. The age of
Romanticism and
Transcendentalism was by and
large over. Meanwhile, younger writers oppeared
on the scene.
Time:
In the batter half
of the 19
th
century, realism came as a
literary movement against the
lie of
romanticism and sentimentalism.
Major
features:
1. realism is the theory of writing
in which familiar aspects of contemporany life
and everyday scences are represented in a
straightforward or mother-of-fact
manner.
2. open ending(means real life is complex and
cannot be fully understood).
3. focus on the
lives of the common people.
4. emphasize
objectivity.
Represenrarives: William Dean
Howells, Herry James, Mark Twain.
colorism
Local colorism became dominant in the late
1860s and early 1870s. It originated from
the
frontier humorists with their “tall tales”. It
presents a locale which is distinguished
from
the outside world；It describes the exotic and the
picturesque；It describes things
that are not
common in other regions；It shows things as they
are；It glorifies the past；
It stresses the
influence of setting on character.
Representative: Mark Twain—“The adventures of
Huckleberry Finn”; “The
adventures of Tom
Sawyer”.
The local colorists formed an
important part of the realistic movement. Their
truthful
depiction of the common people in
their commonplace lives added strength to the
fight for realism.
an naturalism
New
idea about man and man’s place in the universe
bagan to take root in Amarican.
Living in a
cold, indifferent and essentially Godless world,
man was no longer free in
any sense of the
word. He was completely thrown upon himself for
survival. The
outlook of many rising authors
and intellectuals have changed, and an attitude of
gloom and despair which characterize American
literature of this period.
an Imagism:
Imagism was flourished from 1909-1917. It was
one of the most essential techniques
of
writing poetry in modern period with a spirit of
revolt against conventions,
anti—romantic and
produced free verse without imposing a
rhythmical pattern. Imagism tried to record
objective observations of an object or a
situation without interpretation or comment by
the poet. (suggestion rather than
compete
statement). Imagism helped to open the first
pages of modern American
most outstanding
figures: Ezra Pound ( His famous books are Cathy,
Canto)
and T.S. Eliot ( The Wasteland, Four
Quarters)
English Literature
English
Renaissance
The English Renaissance or the
rebirth of letters was a cultural and artistic
movement
in England dating from the early 16th
century to the early 17th century。it sprang first
in Italy in the 14th century and gradually
spread all over Europe. Two features are
striking of this movement. the one is a
thirsting curiosity for the classical literature.
Another feature of the renaissance is the keen
interest in the activities of humanity.
The
major literary figures in the English Renaissance
include:Francis Bacon（essays
“of
studies”）,Christopher Marlowe
Thomas More (
utopia), William Shakespeare ( many great comedies
and tragedies,
sonnet ), Edmund Spenser.
metaphysical poets
The metaphysical poets
were a loose group of British lyric poets of the
17th century,
who shared an interest in
metaphysical concerns and a common way of
investigating
them, and whose work was
characterized by mysticism in content and
fantasticality in
form. Its founder is John
Donne and representatives are George Herbert,
Andrew
Marvell.
tenment
Enlightenment was an intellectual movement in
Europe begun in 18th century. With
the effect
of Industrial Revolution, social life changed a
lot. Enlightenment was an
expression of
struggle of the bourgeoisie against feudalism. The
enlighteners fought
against class inequality,
stagnation, prejudice and other survivals of
feudalism. They
attempt to place all branches
of science at the service of mankind by connecting
them
with the actual needs and requirements of
people. English enlighteners of 18th century
strove to bring it to an end by clearing away
the feudal ideas with the bourgeois
ideology. The representatives were
Joseph Addison and Richard Steel ,the essayists,
and Alexander Pope ,the poet.
ssicism
A revival in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries of classical standards of order,
balance, and harmony in literature. Alexander
Pope, John Dryden and Samuel
Johnson were
major exponents of the neoclassical school.
It found its artistic models in the classical
literature of the ancient Greek and Roman
writers like Homer, Virgil, Horace, etc. and
in the contemporary French writers such
as
Voltaire and Diderot. It put the stress on the
classical artistic ideal of order, logic,
proportion, restrained emotion, accuracy, good
taste and decorum.
entalism
1, by the
middle of 18th century, sentimentalism made its
appearance. Sentimentalism
came into being as
the result of a bitter discontent among the
enlightened people with
social reality. The
representatives of sentimentalism continued to
struggle against
feudalism, but they sensed at
the same time the contradictions in the process of
capitalist development. Dissatisfied with
reason, sentimentalists appealed to sentiment,
“to the human heart.” Sentimentalism turned to
the countryside for its material, and so
is in
striking contrast to classicism. Meanwhile, the
poetry of the sentimentalists is
marked by a
sincere sympathy for the poverty-stricken,
expropriated peasants. They
wrote the “simple
annals of the poor,’ though still in a classical
style.
2, the appearance and development of
sentimentalist poetry marks the midway in the
transition from classicism to its opposite,
Romanticism, in English poetry.
3, Elegy
Written in a Country Churchyard, which is written
by Thomas Gray is a
model of sentimentalist
poetry. It shows a keen interest in the English
countryside and
a sincere feeling for the life
of common Task, written by William Cowper,
is
a long poem written in blank verse. It is well-
known for its description of country
scenes,
of woods and brooks, of plowmen and teamsters and
the letter-carrier on his
Village, written by
George Crabbe, a clergyman lived in the country
among poor people, is a powerful description
of the miseries of the life of the English
peasants.
icism
A movement that
flourished in literature, philosophy, music, and
art in western culture
during most of the
19
th
century, beginning as revolt against
classicism. Romanticism
gave primary concern
to passion, emotion, natural beauty and the
spiritual and
emotional life of man. The
English Romantic period is an age of poetry. The
general
feature of the works of the
Romanticists is a dissatisfaction with the
bourgeois society.
The main escapist
romanticists were poets such as Wordsworth,
Coleridge, and
Southey, and active
romanticists such as Byron, Shelley and Keats. The
Romantic
prose was represented by Lamb,
Hazlitt, De Quincey and Hunt. The only great
novelist in this period was Walter Scott who
marked the transition from romanticism
to the
period of realism.
h Critical Realism
English Critical Realism flourished in the
forties and in the early fifties. The critical
realists not only gave a satirical portrayal
of the bourgeoisie and all the ruling classes,
but also showed profound sympathy to
the common people. They use humor and
satire
skill criticized the chief traits of the English
society and the capitalist system
from a
democratic viewpoint. With their artistic
representation of vital social
movements such
as Charitism and their description of conflicts of
the time, the 19th
century tealistic novels
become “the epic of the bourgeois society.” The
greatest
realist of the time was Charles
Dickens . He creats pictures of bourgeois
civilization,
describing the misery and
sufferings of the common are the main critical
realists and their masterpieces. Charlotte and
his Oliver Twist, A Tale of Two Cities
and
Great Expectations , Whilliam Makepeace Thackeray
and his Vanity Fair,
Charlotte Bronte and her
Jane Eyre and Thomas Hardy and his Tess of
D’Urbervilles.
lism
Naturalism is a
literary trend prevailing in Europe, especially in
France and Germany,
in the second half of the
19
th
century. according to the theory of
naturalism, literature
must be “true to life”
and exactly reproduce real life, including all its
details without
any selection. Naturalist
writers usually write about the lives of the poor
and
oppressed, or the “slum life,” but by
giving all the details of life without
discrimination, they can only represent the
external appearance instead of the inner
essence of real life.
-romanticism
A
literary trend prevailing at the end of the
19
th
century was neo-romanticism.
Dissatisfied with the drab and ugly social
reality and yet trying to avoid the positive
solution of the acute social contradictions,
some writers adopted this new trend which
laid
emphasis upon the invention of exciting adventures
and fascinating stories to
entertain the
reading public. They led the novel back towards
story-telling and to
romance. Stevenson was
representative of neo-romanticism in English
literature.
ticism
Aestheticism began to
prevail in Europe at the middle of the 19th
century. The theory
of “art for art’s sake”
was first put forward by French poet Theophile
Gautier.
Aestheticism was a cultural
phenomenon of“fin de siele”in Europe. it was a
kind of
escapism in essence. Aestheticism
emphasized aesthetic values over moral or social
themes in literature, fine art, the decorative
arts, and interior design. The main
characteristics of the movement were:
suggestion rather than statement, sensuality,
massive use of symbols, and synaesthetic
effects—that is, correspondence between
words,
colors and music. It was the music that set the
mood. The most important
representatives of
aestheticists in English literature are Walter
Pater and Oscar Wilde.
Pater：Works：Studies in
the history of Renaissance；Marius the
Epicurean，
a philosophic novel and the author’s
autobiography. Wilde: Works：Salome，
a play
about the horrible sadism of an ancient Jewish
woman. The Decay of Lying and
The Picture of
Dorian gray are typical unwholesome products of
the decadent literary
trend.
m (象征主义)
Imagism was an Anglo-American poetic movement
flourishing in the 1910s that
favored
precision of imagery, and clear, sharp language.
Its program was formulated
about 1912
by the American poet, Erza Pond. The Imagists
rejected the sentiment and
artifice typical of
much Romantic and Victorian poetry. So the imagist
poetry is a kind
of vers libre(i.e. free
verse) shaking off the conventional metres and
emphasizing on
the use of common speech, new
rhythms and clear images. Group publication of
work
under the Imagist name appearing between
1914 and 1917 featured writing by many
of the
most significant figures in modernist poetry in
English, as well as a number of
other
Modernist figures prominent in fields other than
poetry. Then the movement
soon broke up. But
it left a notable impact on the development of
both English and
American poetry. The two most
important English poets of the first half of 20th
century are W.B Yeats and .