英美文学名词解释
1.The characteristic features in romantic
period:①subjectivism主观主义: The spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.强烈情感的自然流露
②spontaneity自然性: The role of instinct, intuition is stressed in this period.
③singularity奇特性: Poets in this period have a favor in describing unusual things
④worship of nature对自然的崇拜: a main feature in this period
⑤ simplicity质朴性: Common people gradually become the center of attention in this period.
⑥ melancholy feelings deeply entrenched in this period.愁思的情绪充斥着这个时期。
⑦poets show their favor to outpour their feelings through their lines. 作家较喜欢通过诗句抒发情感。
2.literary points in the lyrical ballads:
1.It mainly talked about Common people.
2. Use vivid imagination
to constitute their poems.3.they respect Laws of humanity 4.
Use Simple language 5. Focus on Morale principl e.
3. Lake poets and their works:①William wordsworth: Lyrical ballads, the solitary reaper ②Samuel Taylor Coleridge :lyrical ballads, kubla khan ③Robert southey: a vision of trail, the doctor.
4. The common features of Victorian novels:
①the plot is unfolded against background which is broader than what it had been in previous novels.
②the course-effect sequence is much more striking than in previous novels.围绕主人公经历而形成的原因与其影响比以往小说更显精彩。
③most of the Victorian novels were first published in serial form.
④the Victorian novels were effected by the spirit of Puritanism of Victorian age.
⑤the Victorian novels were characterized by their moral purpose.出于某种道德目的
5.The three Victorian poets and their works:
①Alfred Tennyson: break,break,break
Ulysses
②Robert Browning: My last duchess
③Matthew Arnold: Dover beach.
They wrote highly lyrical poems as Romanists did and their works reflected the spiritual search.对精神领域的探求。
6. The philosophy ideas of Thomas hardy:
His philosophy was that everything in the universe is determined by the immanent will（内在意志）, which is present in all parts of the universe and is impartially hostile towards human being s’ desire for joy and happiness.
哈代本身是个悲观主义者，随着他对社会认识日渐深入，他认为宇宙本身存在缺陷，并不存在一个全能的神来安排人的命运，却有一个冥冥之中的无形的手在操纵着这一切，人性不能得以充分体现，则总是充斥着痛苦和悲伤。
7. The interpretation of alienation and loneliness: these two words represent the basic themes of modernism. For modernist writers, they considered the modern world as a chaotic（混乱的） one and is incomprehensible. Though richer in material level, it is spiritually barren(精神贫瘠).Human beings are helpless before such world and no longer able to do things that their ancestors once did.
8. The characteristics of modernist writings:
①complexity and obscurity复杂性和模糊
性:Their works express the subjective world of individual writers, which time and space are mixed up.
②the use of symbols象征主义：Writers in this period usually use symbol to enhance the obscurity of their work.
③allusion典故引用：Allusion is an indirect reference to another work of literature, art, history and religion to express one’s specific feeling.
④irony反讽：Irony is an expression of one’s meaning by using words that mean the direct
opposite of what one really intends to convey. 利用正话反说的方式来表示辛讽。
9. The theatre of the absurd荒诞学派:
The theatre of absurd is a term applied to a group of dramatists who were active in the 50’s.
The name was probably coined by Marlin Esslin in his book The Theatre of Absurd, published in 1961.
The absurdity of human conditions（人类生存条件的荒诞性）is the main theme of the plays of the school of the theater of the absurd. In the plays the dramatists express that life has no pattern of meaning or ultimate significance and that no activity is more or less valuable than another.全方位的表达人世与世事的荒诞，人生毫无意义可言。
10. Angry Young Men:The "angry young men" were
a group of mostly working and middle class British
playwrights and novelists who became prominent
in the 1950s. The group's leading members
included John Osborne and Kingsley Amis .They
showed an equally uninhibited disdain（无法掌控的蔑视）for the dullness of the postwar welfare state, and their writings frequently expressed raw anger and frustration 。Their language is ordinary and sometimes
dirty. The settings are mostly gloomy and the main characters in their works are mostly bitter defeated men.
英美文学名词解释(1)
Epic: A long narrative poem telling about the deeds of a great hero and reflecti ng the values of the society from which it originated. The style of epic is grand宏伟的 and elevated高尚的. John Milton wrote three great epics:Paradise Lost,Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes. Sonnet(十四行诗 A sonnet is a lyric consisting of 14 lines, usually in iambic pentameter restricted to a definition rhyme scheme Renaissance the activity, spirit, or time of the great revival复活 of art, literature, and learning in Europe beginning in the 14th century and extending to the 17th century, marking the transition过渡from the medieval to the modern world.the essence of the Renaissance is Humanism The Renaissance Period A period of drama and poetry. The Elizabethan drama is the real mainstream of the English Renaissance. Humanism人文主义 Humanism is the essence of the Renaissance. 2>it emphasizes the dignity of human beings and the impo rtance of the present life.Humanists voiced their belie fs that man was the center of the universe and man did not
英美文学史名词解释
英美文学史名词解释 TYYGROUP system office room 【TYYUA16H-TYY-TYYYUA8Q8-
英美文学史名词解释 1.English Critical Realism English critical realism of the 19th century flourished in the forties and in the early fifties. The realists first and foremost criticized the capitalist society from a democratic viewpoint and delineated (portrayed) the crying (extremely shocking) contradictions of bourgeois reality. The greatness of the English realists lies not only in their satirical portrayal of bourgeoisie and in the exposure of the greed and hypocrisy of the ruling classes, but also in their sympathy for the laboring people. Humor and satire are used to expose and criticize the seamy (dark) side of reality. The major contribution of the critical realists lies in their perfection of the novel. Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray are the most important representative of English critical realism. 2.The "Stream of Consciousness" The "stream of consciousness" is a psychological term indicating "the flux of conscious and subconscious thoughts and impressions moving in the mind at any given time independently of the person's will." In late 19th century,
美国文学名词解释
1. Transcendentalism The origin of it is a philosophical and literary movement centered in Concord and Boston, which marks the summit of American Transcendentalism. 19th-century movement of writers and philosophers in New England who were loosely bound together by adherence to an idealistic system of thought based on a belief in the essential unity of all creation, the innate goodness of man, and the supremacy of insight over logic and experience for the revelation of the deepest truths. The major features of American Transcendentalism are:It emphasis on spirit, or the Oversoul, as the most important thing in the universe. It stressed the importance of the individual. To them the individual was the most important element of society. It offered a fresh perception of nature as symbolic of the Spirit or God. 2.Romanticism The Romanticism period stretches from the end of the 18th century through the outbreak of the Civil War. It is a term associate with imagination boundlessness, and in critical usage is contrasted with classicism which is commonly associated with reason and restriction. The features of Romanticism are: American Romanticism was in a way derivative: American romantic writing was some of them modeled on English and European works. American romanticism was in essence the expression of "a real new experience "and contained"an alien quality".Representatives:William Cullen Bryant; Henry Longfellow and James Cooper, Washington Irving. 3.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 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.The representatives are Howells, James, and Mark Twain. 4. Naturalism American naturalism was a new and harsher realism, it had come from Europe. Naturalism was an outgrowth of realism that responded to theories in science, psychology, human behavior and social thought current in the late nineteenth century. The background of naturalism are: In the last decade of the nineteenth century, with the development of industry and modern science, intelligent minds began to see that man was no longer a free ethical being in a cold, indifferent and essentially Godless universe. In this chance world he was both helpless and hopeless.Major Features of it are:Humans are controlled by laws of heredity and environment.The universe is cold, godless, indifferent and hostile to human desires.Representatives of it such as Stephen Crane, Frank Norris and Theodore Dreiser. 5.New Criticism The New Criticism as a school of poetry and criticism established itself in the 1940s as an academic orthodoxy in the United States. The school has its beginning in the 1920s. It focus on the analysis of the text rather paying attention to external elements such as its social background, its author's intention and political attitude, and its impact on society. Then it explores the artistic structure of the work rather than its author's frame of mind or its reader's responses. It also see a literary work as an organic entity, the unity of content and form, and places emphasis on the close reading of the text. These New Critics included T.S. Eliot,I.A.Richards,John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate and some other critics. The New Criticism has tended to divorce criticism from social and moral concerns, which was to become one salient feature of the movement. 6.Imagism: Between 1912 and 1922 there came a great poetry boom in which about 1000 poets published over 1000 volumes of poetry. Indeed ,to express the modern spirit, the sense of fragmentization and dislocation, was in large measure the aim of quite a few modern literary movements, of which Imagism was one.The first Imagist theorist, the English writer T.E.Hulme. Hulme suggests that modern art deals with expression and communication of momentary phases in the poet's mind. The most effective means to express these momentary impressions is through the use of dominant image.It is a literary movement launched American poets early in the 20th century that advocated the use of free verse, common speech patterns, and clear concrete images as a reaction to Victorian sentimentalism. The representatives are Ezra pound, William Carlos Williams and some other poets.
美国文学名词解释
1. Transcendentalism—it is a philosophic and literary movement that flourish in New England, as a reaction against rationalism and Calvinism. It stressed intuitive understanding of god without the help of the church, and advocated independence of the mind. 超验主义，它是一个蓬勃发展的新英格兰的哲学和文学运动，反对理性主义和加尔文主义的反应。它强调直观地了解上帝没有教会的帮助下，主张心灵的独立性。 2. Romanticism had appeared in England in the last years of the eighteenth century. It spread to conti nental Europe and then came to America early in the nineteenth century. It came into being as a re action against the prevailing neoclassical spirit and rationalism during the Age of Reason. 浪漫主义曾经出现在英国，在过去几年的十八世纪。它蔓延到欧洲大陆，然后来到美国在十九世纪初。它应运而生作为理性的时代中针对当时新古典主义精神和理性的反应。 3. Puritanism—it is the religious belief of the Puritans, who had intended to purify and simplify the religious ritual of the Church of England. 清教主义，它是清教徒，谁曾打算净化和简化英国教会的宗教礼仪的宗教信仰。 4. Imagism is to present an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time. An imagistic poem must present the object exactly the way the thing is seen. And the reader can form the image of the object through the process of reading the abstract and concrete words. Imagism 意象派：is a poetic movement of England and the United States, flourished from 1909-1917. Its credo, expressed in Some Imagist Poets, included the use of the language of common speech, project matter, the evocation of images in hard, clear poetry, and concentration. 英国是与美国的诗意动作，从1909-1917蓬勃发展。它的信条，在表达意象的一些诗人，包括使用共同的讲话，不管项目，图像的硬盘，明确诗歌和浓度唤起的语言。 5、Realism：（现实主义）appeared in the United States in the literature of local color, an amalgam of romantic plots and realistic descriptions of things was immediately observable. the dialects, customs, sights.现实主义有浓厚的美国本土特色，是浪漫主义故事情节和现实主义描写相结合的产物：美国风味的方言、风俗、各种观点 6.Naturalism：自然主义 a new and harsher realism, 新型的更为冷峻的现实主义，产生悲观的流派，产生于the end of the century 十九世纪末，因为Perception of society’s disorders 对社会无序的感知。Presenting characters of low social and economic classes who were dominated by their environment and heredity. 设法尽力客观真实地展现出受环境与出身局限的下层人民和各种经济阶层人物的真正生活。The naturalists emphasized that the world was amoral, that men and women had no free will, that their lives were controlled by heredity and the environment, the religious “truths” were illusory, that the destiny of humanity was misery in life and oblivion in death. 强调世界的非道德性，人们没有意志的自由，宗教上的真理是虚幻的，现实生活是痛苦的。Deterministic 决定论，宿命的， 代表作家：Stephen Crane 史蒂芬.克莱恩, Frank Norris 弗朗克.诺里斯, Jack London 杰克.伦敦, Theodore Dreiser 西奥多.德莱塞. 6. The naturalists tend to depict the dark side of the socity, and always take the low classes as their heros or heroes. Compare to the realism and romanticism, they have a more pessimistic view toward the society, the life. Take Theodore Dreiser for example, his Sister Carrie or American Tragedy reveal that man can not control themselves, and is at the mercy of the nature, the heredity, the society and instinct.博物学家倾向于描绘社会的阴暗面,总是以低类为他们的英雄和英雄。比较现实主义和浪漫主义,他们对社会有更悲观的观点,生活。以西奥多·德莱塞为例,他的嘉莉妹妹还是美国的悲剧表明,男人不能控制自己,自然的摆布,遗传,社会和本能。
英美文学名词解释
1. In the medieval period ， it is Chaucer alone who ， for the first time in English literature ， presented to usa comprehensive __picture of the English society of his time and created a whole galery of vivid ___ from all walks of life in his masterpiece “the Canterbury Tales ”。 A. visionary / women B. romantic /men C. realistic / characters D. natural / figures 2. Although ____ was essentially a medieval writer, he bore marks of humanism and anticipated a new era of literature to come. A. William Langland B. John Gower C. Geoffrey Chaucer D. Edmund Spenser 3. Humanism spume from the endeavor to restore a medieval reverence for the antique authors and is frequently taken as the beginning of the Renaissance on its conscious ，intellectual side ，for the Greek and Roman civilization was based on the conception that man is the ____ of all things . A. measure B. king C. lover D. rule 4. The essence of humanism is to ______. A. restore a medieval reverence for the church B. avoid the circumstances of earthly life C. explore the next world in which men could live after death D. emphasize human qualities 5. Many people today tend to regard the play “ The Merchant of Venice ” as a satire of the hypocrisy of ___ and their false standards of friendship and love ， their cunning ways of pursuing worldliness and their unreasoning prejudice against _________ . A. Christians / Jews B. Jews / Christians C. oppressors / oppressed D. people / Jews 6. In “ Sonnet 18 ”， Shakespeare has a profound meditation on the destructive power of _________ and the eternal __________ brought forth by poetry to the one he loves . A. death/ life B. death/ love C. time / beauty D. hate / love 7.In The Pilgrim’s Progress, John Bunyan describes The Vanity Fair in a ______ tone. A. delightful B. satirical C. sentimental D. solemn 8. The religious reformation in the early 16th-century England was a reflection of the class struggles waged by the _____. A. rising bourgeoisie against the feudal class and its ideology B. working class against the corruption of the bourgeoisie C. landlord class against the rising bourgeoisie and its ideology D. feudal class against the corruption of the Catholic Church 9. The ______ was a progressive intellectual movement throughout western Europe in the 18th century . A. Renaissance B. Enlightenmrent C. Religious Reformation D. Chartist Movement 10.The 18th century witnessed a new literary form -the modern English novel, which, contrary to the medieval romance, gives a ______ presentation of life of the common English people. A. romantic B. idealistic C. prophetic D. realistic 1. The title of the novel “ A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man ” written by James Joyce suggests a character study with strong _________ elements .
英美文学名词解释总结.doc
英美文学名词解释总结 Romance:Anyimaginationliteraturethatissetinanidealizedworldandth atdealswithaheroicadventuresandbattlesbetweengoodcharactersandvi llainsormonsters.传奇故事：指以理想化的世界为背景并且描写主人公的英雄冒险事迹和善与恶的斗争的想象文学作品。 Alliteration:Therepetitionoftheinitialconsonantsoundsinpoetry.头韵：诗歌中单词开头读音的重复。 Couplet:Itisapairofrhymingverselines,usuallyofthesamelength;oneoft hemostwidelyusedverse-sinEuropeanpoetry.Chaucerestablishedtheus eofcoupletsinEnglish,notablyintheCanterburyTales,usingrhymingiam bicpentameterslaterknownasheroiccoupletsBlankverse:Versewritteni nunrhymediambicpentameter.素体诗：用五音步抑扬格写的无韵诗。 Conceit:Akindofmetaphorthatmakesacomparisonbetweentwostartlin glydifferentthings.Aconceitmaybeabriefmetaphor,butitusuallyprovid estheframeworkforanentirepoem.Anespeciallyunusualandintellectual kindofconceitisthemetaphysicalconceit.新奇的比喻：将两种截然不同的食物进行对比的一种隐喻。 它虽被视为是一种隐喻，但是它往往构建了整首诗的框架，
美国文学名词解释
Allegory is a narrative that serves as an extended metaphor. Allegories are written in the form of fables, parables, poems, stories, and almost any other style or genre. The main purpose of an allegory is to tell a story that has characters, a setting, as well as other types of symbols, that have both literal and figurative meanings. One well-known example of an allegory is Dante’s The Divine Comedy.In Inferno, Dante is on a pilgrimage to try to understand his own life, but his character also represents every man who is in search of his purpose in the world. Alliteration is a pattern of sound that includes the repetition of consonant sounds. The repetition can be located at the beginning of successive words or inside the words. Poets often use alliteration to audibly represent the action that is taking place. Aside is an actor’s speech, directed to the audience, that is not supposed to be heard by other actors on stage. An aside is usually used to let the audience know what a character is about to do or what he or she is thinking. Asides are important because they increase an audience's involvement in a play by giving them vital information pertaining what is happening, both inside of a character's mind and in the plot of the play. Gothic is a literary style popular during the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th. This style usually portrayed fantastic tales dealing with horror, despair, the grotesque and other “dark” subjects. Gothic literature was named for the apparent influence of the dark gothic architecture of the period on the genre. Also, many of these Gothic tales took places in such “gothic” surroundings. Other times, this story of darkness may occur in a more everyday setting, such as the quaint house where the man goes mad fro m the "beating" of his guilt in Edgar Allan Poe's “The Tell-Tale Heart.”In essence, these stories were romances, largely due to their love of the imaginary over the logical, and were told from many different points of view. CATHARSIS is an emotional discharge that brings about a moral or spiritual renewal or welcome relief from tension and anxiety. According to Aristotle, catharsis is the marking feature and ultimate end of any tragic artistic work. IMAGERY: A common term of variable meaning, imagery includes the "mental pictures" that readers experience with a passage of literature. It signifies all the sensory perceptions referred to in a poem, whether by literal description, allusion, simile, or metaphor. Surrealism is an artistic movement doing away with the restrictions of realism and verisimilitude that might be imposed on an artist. In this movement, the artist sought to do away with conscious control and instead respond to the irrational urges of the subconscious mind. From this results the hallucinatory, bizarre, often nightmarish quality of surrealistic paintings and writings. Sample surrealist writers include Frank O'Hara, John Ashberry, and Franz Kafka.
美国文学名词解释
American Dream: American dream means the belief that everyone can succeed as long as he/she works hard enough. It usually implies a successful and satisfying life. It usually framed in terms of American capitalism（资本主义）, its associated purported meritocracy,（知识界精华）and the freedoms guaranteed by the U.S. Bill of Rights. American Puritanism清教主义: Puritanism is the practices and beliefs of the puritans. The Puritans were originally members of a division of the protestant church who wanted to purify their religious beliefs and practices. They accepted the doctrines of predestination, original sin and total depravity, and limited atonement through a special infusion of grace from God. American literature in the 17th century mostly consisted of Puritan literature. Puritanism had an enduring influence on American literature. It had become, to some extent, so much a state of mind, so much a part of national cultural atmosphere, rather than a set of tenets. Transcendentalism 超验主义: Transcendentalism was a group of new ideas in literature, religion, culture and philosophy that emerged in New England in the early to middle 19th century. Transcendentalists spoke for cultural rejuvenation and against the materialism of American society. It placed emphasis on spirit, or the Over soul, as the most important thing in the world. It stressed the importance of individual and offered a fresh perception nature ad symbolic of the spirit of God. Prominent transcendentalists included Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thorough. American Naturalism自然主义: American naturalism was a new and harsher realism. The naturalists attempt to achieve extreme objectivity and frankness, presenting characters of low social and economic classes who were determined by environment and heredity. It emphasized that the world was amoral, the men and women had no free will, that lives were controlled by heredity and environment, that the destiny of humanity was misery in life and oblivion in death. The pessimism and deterministic ideas naturalism pervaded the works of such American writers as Stephen Crane and Theodore Dreiser. American Naturalism(美国自然主义文学)：The American naturalists accepted the more negative interpretation of Darwin’s evolutionary theory and used it to account for t he behavior of those characters in literary works who were regarded as more or less complex combinations of inherited attributes, their habits conditioned by social and economic forces.2) 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.3>Dreiser is a leading figure of his school. The Gilded Age镀金时代:the Gilded Age refers to the era of rapid economic and population growth in the United States during the post-Civil War and post-Reconstruction eras of the late 19th century. The term "Gilded Age" was coined by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner in their 1873 book, The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today.The Gilded Age is most famous for the creation of a modern industrial economy. The end of the Gilded Age coincided with the Panic of 1893, a deep depression. The depression lasted until 1897 and marked a major political realignment in the election of 1896. After that came the Progressive Era. The Lost Generation: The Lost Generation is a group of expatriate American writers residing primarily in Paris during the 1920s and 1930s. The group was given its name by the American writer Gertrude Stein, who used “a lost generation” to refer to expatriate Americans bitter about their World War I experiences and disillusioned with American