An Outline of American Literature
by Kathryn VanSpanckeren
glossary
Abolitionism
Active movement to end slavery in the U.S. North before the Civil War in the 1860s.
Allusion
党的奉献精神An implied or indirect reference in a literary text to another text.
Beatnik
Artistic and literary rebellion against established society of the 1950s and early 1960s, asso
ciated with Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and others. "Beat" suggests holiness ("beatification") and suffering ("beaten down").
Boston Brahmins
Influential and respected 19th-century New England writers who maintained the "genteel tradition"of upper- class values.
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Calvinism
Strict theological doctrine of the French Protestant church reformer John Calvin (1509-1564) and the basis of Puritan society. Calvin held that all humans were born sinful and only God s grace (not the church) could save a person from hell.
Captivity narrative
Account of capture by Native American tribes, such as tho created by writers Mary Rowlandson and John Williams in colonial times.
Character writing
Popular 17th- and 18th-century literary sketch of a character who reprents a group or type.
美白小偏方Civil War
The war (1861-1865) between the northern U.S. states, which remained in the Union, and the southern states, which ceded and formed the Confederacy. The victory of the North ended slavery and prerved the Union.
Conceit
Extended metaphor. Term ud to describe Renaissance metaphysical poetry in England and colonial poetry, such as that of Anne Bradstreet, in colonial America.
Decadents
Late 19th- and early 20th-century "aesthetic" artists and writers, chiefly British and French, involved with "turn of century" ideas of endings, decay, and artificiality.
Deconstruction
Controversial mode of textual analysis that can reveal hidden ideological assumptions. Questions hierarchical thinking in which one term is privileged over another (e.g. culture versus nature, man versus woman). Draws on thought of French theorist Jacques Derrid
a, who elaborated on linguist Ferdinand de Saussure s vision of language as a system of differences.
Deism
海贼王2年后是第几集An 18th-century Enlightenment religion emphasizing reason, not miracles; partly a reaction against Calvinism and religious superstition.
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Election
A Puritan doctrine in which God "elects," or choos, the individuals who will enter heaven according to His divine will.
Ellipsis
Omission from a text of one or more words that are obviously understood but that must be supplied to make a construction gramatically correct.
Enlightenment
An 18th-century movement that focud on the ideals of good n, benevolence, and a belief in liberty, justice, and equality as the natural rights of man.
Existentialism
tinyosA philosophical movement embracing the view that the suffering individual must create meaning in an unknowable, chaotic, and emingly empty univer.
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fabricationExpressionism
Post-World War I artistic movement, of German origin, that distorted appearances to communicate inner emotional states.
Faust
Literary character who lls his soul to the devil in order to become all-knowing, or godlike; protagonist of plays by English Renaissance dramatist Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593) and German Romantic writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832).
Feminism
The view, articulated in the 19th century, that women are inherently equal to men and derve equal rights and opportunities. More recently, a social and political movement that took hold in the United States in the late 1960s, soon spreading globally.
英语四级总分
Genre
A category of literary forms (novel, lyric poem, epic, for example).
Hartford Wits
Patriotic but conrvative late 18th-century literary circle centered at Yale College in Connecticut (also known as the Connecticut Wits).
Hudibras
A mock-heroic satire by English writer Samuel Butler (1612-1680). Hudibras was imitated by early revolutionary-era satirists.
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Image
Concrete reprentation of an object, or something en.
Imagists
A group of mainly American poets, including Ezra Pound and Amy Lowell, who ud sharp visual images and colloquial speech; active from 1912 to 1914.
Irony
A meaning (often contradictory) concealed behind the apparent meaning of a word or phra.
Knickerbocker School
New York City-bad writers of the early 1800s who imitated English and European literary fashions. "Light" literature - Popular literature written for entertainment.
