Literature Terms文学术语

Literature Terms

Neo-classicism新古典主义

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 neo-classical school. Sentimentalism感伤主义

Sentimentalism came into being as a result of a bitter discontent on the part of certain enlighteners in social reality.

Romanticism浪漫主义

A movement that flourished in literature, philosophy, music, and art in western culture during most of the 19th century, beginning as revolt against classicism. Romanticism gave primary concern to passion, emotion, and natural beauty. The English Romanticism period is an age of poetry.

Critical Realism批判现实主义

The Critical Realism of the 19 century flourished in the forties and in the beginning of fifties. The realists first and foremost set themselves the task of criticizing capitalist society from a democratic viewpoint and delineated the crying contradictions of bourgeois reality. But they did not find a way to eradicate social evils.

Naturalism自然主义

Naturalism was a literary trend developed out of Realism and prevailed in European literature in the second half of the 19th century. The main influence of the formation of Naturalism was Darwin’s biological theories. The Naturalist’s vision of the estate of man tended to be subjective and was very often somber. Emile Zola is the master of Naturalism. George Gissing is the representative in English literature.

Modernism现代主义

It is an international movement in literature and arts, especially in literary criticism, which began in the late 19th century and flourished until 1950s. Modernism takes the irrational philosophy and the theory of psycho-analysis as its theoretical case. The modernist writers concentrate more on the private and subjunctive than on the public and objective, mainly concerned with the inner of an individual.

美国文学史名词解释

1、the Lost Generation In general, the post-World War I generation, but specifically a group of U.S. writers who came of age during the war and established their literary reputations in the 1920s. The term stems from a remark made by Gertrude Stein to Ernest Hemingway, “You are all a lost generation.” Hemingway used it as an epigraph to The Sun Also Rises (1926). The generation was “lost” in the sense that its inherited values were no longer relevant in the postwar world and because of its spiritual alienation from a U.S. that, b asking under President Harding's “back to normalcy” policy, seemed to its members to be hopelessly provincial, materialistic, and emotionally barren. The term embraces Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Dos Passos, e.e. cummings and many other writers who made Paris the centre of their literary activities in the '20s. They were never a literary school. In the 1930s, as these writers turned in different directions, their works lost the distinctive stamp of the postwar period. The last representative works of the era were Fitzgerald's Tender Lost generation The lost generation is a term first used by Stein to describe the post-war I generation of American writers: men and women haunted by a sense of betrayal and emptiness brought about by the destructiveness of the war.2>full of youthful idealism, these individuals sought the meaning of life, drank excessively, had love affairs and created some of the finest American literature to date.3>the three best-known representatives of lost generation are F.Scott Fitzgerald, Hemingway and John dos Passos. 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 society. Hemingway later used the phrase as an epigraph for his novel The Sun Also Rises. It consisted of many influential American writers, including Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Carlos Williams and Archibald MacLeish. 2、Iceberg Theory 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. Iceberg Theory Ernest Hemingway’s “iceberg theory” sugge sts that the writer include in the text only a small portion of what he knows, leaving about ninety percent of the content a mystery that grows beneath the surface of the writing. If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about he may omit things that will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of

美国文学史复习提纲 名词解释

I. Explain the following literary terms(名词解释). 1. Romanticism The most profound and comprehensive idea of romanticism is the vision of a greater personal freedom for the individual. Appeals to imagination; Stress on emotion rather than reason; optimism, gen iality. Subjectivity: in form and meaning. 2 American transcendentalism American transcendentalism was an important movement in philosophy and literature that flourished during the early to middle years of the nineteenth century (about 1836-1860). For the transcendentalists, the soul of each individual is identical with the soul of the world and contains what the world contains. 3 Realism: ―nothing more and nothing less than the truthful treatment of material.‖ the Civil war a. verisimilitude of details derived from observation b. representative in plot, setting and character c. an objective rather than an idealized view of human experience or（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 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.） 4. Modernism like modernism in general is a trend of thought that affirms the power of human beings to create, improve, and reshape their environment, with the aid of scientific knowledge, technology and practical experimentation, and is thus in its essence both progressive and optimistic. The general term covers many political, cultural and artistic movements rooted in the changes in Western society at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century. American modernism is an artistic and cultural movement in the United States starting at the turn of the 20th century with its core period between World War I and World War II and continuing into the 21st century. 5、American Puritanism: Puritanism is the practices and beliefs of the Puritans. The Puritans were originally members of a division of the Protestant Church. The first settlers who became the founding fathers of the American nation were quite a few of them. They were a group of serious, religious people, advocating highly religious and moral principles. As the word itself hints, Puritans wanted to purity their religious beliefs and practices. They accepted the doctrine of predestination, original sin and total depravity, and limited atonement through a special infusion of grace form God. As a culture heritage, Puritanism did have a profound influence on the early American mind. American Puritanism also had a enduring influence on American literature. 6、Transcendentalism: In New England, an intellectual movement known as transcendentalism developed as an American version of Romanticism. The movement began among an influential set of authors based in Concord, Massachusetts and was led by Ralph Waldo Emerson. Like Romanticism, transcendentalism rejected both 18th century rationalism and established religion, which for the transcendentalists meant the Puritan tradition in particular. The transcendentalists celebrated the power of the human imagination to commune with the universe and transcend the limitations of the material world. They found their chief source of inspiration in nature. Emerson’s essay Nature was the major document of the transcendental school and stated the ideas that were to remain central to it. 7、Free verse: free verse is the rhymed or unrhymed poetry composed without attention to conventio nal rules of meter. Free verse was first written and labeled by a group of French poets of the late 19th century. Their purpose was to deliver poetry from the restrictions of formal metrical patterns and to recreate the free rhythms of natural speech. Walt Whitman was the precursor who wrote lines of varying length and cadence, usually not rhymed. The emotional content or meaning of the work was expressed through its rhythm. Free verse has been characteristic of the work of many modern American poets, including Ezra Pound and Carl Sandburg. 8、Naturalism: A more deliberate kind of realism in novels, stories and plays, usually involving a view of human beings as passive victims of natural forces and social environment. Naturalism was a new and harsher realism. It

外国文学名词解释

外国文学名词解释 拜伦式的英雄 1813—1816年，拜伦写了《东方叙事诗》，塑造了一系列的“拜伦式的英雄”。《东方叙事诗》是一组典型的浪漫诗，包括《异教徒》、《海岛》等篇。这些诗以抒情格调为主，抒发诗人自己的感受，诗中描写的环境和情节，都是东方或南欧的，充满异国情调，情节富有传奇性，比较紧张。诗中的主人公都是与社会对立的、孤独的反叛者，被称为“拜伦式的英雄”。这些人物有非凡的性格，追求自由、独立，敢于蔑视现存制度，不向社会妥协，顽强坚定，宁愿为自由而死，不屈辱而生。但同时又十分高傲、孤独，脱离群众，个人奋斗，因而往往前途渺茫，悲愤忧郁，注定悲剧的结局。他们既是社会的叛逆者，又是社会的牺牲者。这些形象反映了当时诗人自身的苦闷失望情绪和渴求斗争的意愿，表达了广大资产阶级民主主义者的思想感情，又巨大的进步意义。但作者写的这些英雄是个人主义英雄，追求的是个人的自由幸福，表现出无政府主义和忧郁悲观的情绪，反映了诗人思想的局限。 拜伦式英雄 “拜伦式英雄”是指拜伦在“东方叙事诗”等作品中塑造的一系列孤立傲世、富有叛逆精神的主人公形象，最早萌芽于《恰尔德?哈洛尔德》。他们是海盗、异教徒、造反者、无家可归者等，都具有出众的才华、坚强的意志、反叛的热情，敢于蔑视传统秩序和专制暴政，但是他们的反抗总是和孤独、忧郁结合在一起，乃至傲世独立，离群索居，并以悲剧而告终。最典型的形象是《海盗》中的康拉德。 小人物 19世纪俄罗斯文学中由普希金开创的一类艺术形象。他们在社会中官阶卑微，地位低下，生活贫苦，但又逆来顺受，安分守已，性格懦弱，胆小怕事，成为显赫的大人物治下被侮辱、被损害的牺牲者。普希金以其短篇小说《驿站长》开了俄国文学中描写“小人物”的先河。随后，果戈理、陀思妥耶夫斯基、契诃夫等，都在自己的创作中塑造了“小人物”形象。 多余人 最早由赫尔岑在《往事与随想》中提出。“多余人”是19世纪俄国文学中所描绘的贵族知识分子的一种典型。他们的特点是出身贵族，生活在优裕的环境中，受过良好的文化教育。他们虽有高尚的理想，却远离人民；虽不满现实，却缺少行动，他们是“思想上的巨人，行动上的矮子”，只能在愤世疾俗中白白地浪费自己的才华。他们既不愿站在政府的一边，与上流社会同流合污，又不能和人民站在一起，反对专制制度和农奴制度。他们很是心仪西方的自由思想，他们也很不满俄国的现状，又无能为力改变这种现状，然而他们又是大贵族和权

美国文学史名词解释

1.American Puritanism清教 2.It comes from the American puritans, who were the first immigrants moved to American continent in the 17th century. Original sin, predestination（预言）and salvation（拯救）were the basic ideas of American Puritanism. And, hard-working, piousness（虔诚,尽职），thrift and sobriety（清醒）were praised. Characteristics: 特点 1. Idealistic: Puritans pursue the purity and simplicity in worship. They focuse the glory of God, and the angry believe in the doctrine of destiny, original sin, limited atonement 2. Practical: Puritans come to Amrican to do business and make profits with the desire of chasing wealth and status. They have to struggle for survival under the severity of the western frontier. 3 .The struggle between the spiritual and the material is the basics of the Puritan mind. On the one hand, Puritans chase the purity of the early the other hand, they come to America to earn money. This contradictory will be reflected by their thoughts. 4. In a word, it rests on purity, ambition, harding work, and an intense struggling for success. Romanticism浪漫主义: the literature term was first applied to the writers of the 18th century in Europe who broke away from the formal rules of classical writing. When it was used in American literature it referred to the writers of the middle of the 19th century who stimulated（刺激）the sentimental emotions of their readers. They wrote of the mysterious of life, love, birth and death. The Romantic writers expressed themselves freely and without restraint. They wrote all kinds of materials, poetry, essays, plays, fictions, history, works of travel, and biography. Transcendentalism先验说,超越论: is a philosophic and literary movement that flourished in New England, particular at Concord, as a reaction against Rationalism and Calvinism (理性主义and喀尔文主义). Mainly it stressed intuitive understanding of God, without the help of the church, and advocated independence of the mind. The representative writers are Emerson and Thoreau. American Realism现实主义: 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 Local colorism乡土文学: 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 Naturalism自然主义: American naturalism was a new and harsher realism. American naturalism had been shaped by the war; by the social upheavals（剧变）that undermined the comforting faith of an earlier age. America’s literary naturalists dismissed the validity of comforting moral truths. They attempted to achieve extreme objectivity and frankness, presenting characters of low social and economic classes who were determined by their environment and heredity. Although naturalist literature described the world with sometimes brutal realism, it sometimes also aimed at bettering the world through social reform. Stream of consciousness意识流：It 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 in 1922 by the Irish novelist James Joyce. Those novels broke

英美文学术语(英文版)_literary_terms

英国文学 Alliteration:押头韵repetition of the initial sounds（不一定是首字母） Allegory:寓言a story with two meanings, a literal meaning and a symbolic meaning. Allusion:典故a reference in a literary work to person, place etc. often to well-known characters or events. Archetype:原型 Irony:反讽intended meaning is the opposite of what is stated Black humor:黑色幽默 Metaphor: 暗喻 Ballad: 民谣about the folk loge Epic:史诗in poetry, refers to a long work dealing with the actions of gods and heroes. Romance: 罗曼史/骑士文学is a popular literary form in the medieval England./Chivalry Euphuism: 夸饰文体This kind of style consists of two distinct elements. The first is abundant use of balanced sentences, alliterations and other artificial prosodic means. The second element is the use of odd similes and comparisons. Spenserian stanza: It refers to a stanza of nine lines, with the first eight lines in iambic pentameter and the last line in iambic hexameter. 斯宾塞诗节新诗体，每一节有9排，前8排是抑扬格五步格诗，第9排是抑扬格六步格诗。The Faerie Queene Conceit:奇特的比喻is a far-fetched simile or metaphor, occurs when the speaker compares two highly dissimilar things. 不像的事物 Sonnet: 十四行诗a lyric consisting of 14 lines, usually in iambic pentameter, restricted to a definite rhyme scheme. Blank verse: 无韵体诗written in unrhymed iambic pentameter. Elegy 挽歌 The Heroic Couplet:英雄对偶句 Lyric:抒情诗is a short poem that expresses the poet’s thoughts and emotion or illustrates some life principle. often concerns love. A red, red Rose. Byronic Hero: refers to a proud, mysterious rebel figure of noble origin. Stream of Consciousness:意识流the author tells the story through the freely flowing thoughts and associations of one of the characters. James Joyce and Virginia Woolf are two major advocates of this technique. Renaissance:文艺复兴14-15th, originated in Italy, encouraged the reformation of the Church and humanism. Humanism: 人文主义it is the essence of the Renaissance. It emphasizes the dignity of human beings and the importance of the present life. Metaphysical poetry:玄学派诗歌it is commonly used to name the work of the 17th-century writers who wrote under the influence of John Donne. With the rebellious spirit, they tried to break away from the conventional fashion of the Elizabethan love poetry. The diction is simple. John Donne, George Herbert. The Enlightenment Movement:启蒙运动18th century flourished in France. Enlighten the whole world with the light of modern philosophical and artistic ideas. reason, rationality, equality and science and universal education. John Dryden, Alexander Pope. Neoclassicism:新古典主义17-18th centuries of classical standards of standards of order, balance, and harmony in literature. Alexander Pope, Samuel Johnson. Sentimentalism:感伤主义18世纪60-80年代，came into being as a result of a bitter discontent on the part of certain enlighteners i n social reality. use of pathetic effects and attempts to arouse feeling by “pathetic” indulgence. The Graveyard School: 墓畔派whose poems are mostly devote to sentimental lamentations or meditation on

外国文学名词解释

多余人 “多余人”是19世纪俄国文学中贵族知识分子的一种典型。这些形象大多具有较高的文化修养，接受启蒙思想的影响，厌倦上流社会的生活，渴望有所作为，他们的出现是社会意识觉醒的一种体现。但是这一类形象往往以自我为中心，没有明确的生活目标，缺乏行动的能力和勇气，因此在社会上无所适从，结局是悲剧性的。普希金笔下的奥涅金成为俄国文学史上第一个“多余人”的形象，莱蒙托夫笔下的毕巧林，屠格涅夫笔下的罗亭，冈察洛夫笔下的奥勃洛摩夫等人都属于这一类典型。 小人物 19世纪俄罗斯文学中由普希金开创的一类艺术形象。他们在社会中官阶卑微，地位低下，生活贫苦，但又逆来顺受，安分守已，性格懦弱，胆小怕事，成为显赫的大人物治下被侮辱、被损害的牺牲者。普希金以其短篇小说《驿站长》开了俄国文学中描写“小人物”的先河。随后，果戈理、陀思妥耶夫斯基、契诃夫等，都在自己的创作中塑造了“小人物”形象。 批判现实主义 批判现实主义是19世纪30年代在法国出现，后在19世纪中后期和20世纪初期的欧美具有极大影响的一种文学思潮。批判现实主义文学突出特点就是真实和广阔地反映社会生活，深刻地揭露现实矛盾和批判社会罪恶；同情社会下层的小人物，反映他们的悲惨命运和内心痛苦；塑造典型环境中的典型人物，并注意细节的真实。但不少作家以抽象的人道主义为出发点来批判黑暗现实，难以找到准确变革社会的道路。批判现实主义文学取得了很高的成就，各种文学体裁均有佳作，其中尤以长篇小说为最。优秀作家众多，如巴尔扎克、托尔斯泰、易卜生等。 自然派 是俄国19世纪40-50年代形成的现实主义文学流派的别称，奠基人是果戈理，名称由别林斯基提出；自然派的特点是，真实地反映现实生活，批判黑暗腐朽的专制农奴制，描写下层小人物的不幸命运，具有民主主义和人道主义倾向；果戈理是当时现实主义文学的盟主，自他以后的一系列现实主义作家屠格涅夫、赫尔岑、冈察洛夫、涅克拉索夫等都是自然派作家。 新人 “新人”指的是19世纪中叶在俄国文学中出现的具有民主主义思想倾向的平民知识分子形象。这些形象尽管个性相异，但大多出身平民，具有坚定的意志、明确的理想，以及实干精神和自我牺牲精神。屠格涅夫在小说《前夜》中最早塑造出了“新人”英沙洛夫的形象，但车尔尼雪夫斯基小说《怎么办？》中的“新人”罗普霍夫等形象则更为典型。 “含泪的笑” 果戈理独特的艺术手法。他认为艺术家不仅应当真实地反映生活，而且应当对生活进行审判，即“通过世界上人们看得见的笑容和人们看不见的、不知道的眼泪来观察生活。”正是这种“笑声”和“眼泪”的交集、喜剧和悲剧的结合，加强了果戈理讽刺艺术的揭露和抬批判力量。 《人间喜剧》 《人间喜剧》是巴尔扎克主要创作的总称，内分风俗研究、哲学研究和分析研究三大类。

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.