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 t 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 stresd 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美国自然主义文学: American naturalism was a new and harsher realism. The naturalists attempt to achieve extreme objectivity and frankness, prenting characters of low social
and economic class 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 miry in life and oblivion in death. The pessimism and deterministic ideas naturalism pervaded the works of such American writers as Stephen Crane and Theodore Dreir.
American Naturalism(美国自然主义文学)：
The American naturalists accepted the more negative interpretation of Darwin’s evolutionary theory and ud it to account for the behavior of tho 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 rious 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>Dreir 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迷惘的一代:
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 Ger trude Stein, who ud “a lost generation” to refer to expatriate Americans bitter about their World War I experiences and disillusioned with American society. Hemingway later ud the phra as an epigraph for his novel The Sun Also Ris. It consisted of many influential American writers, including Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Carlos Williams and Archibald MacLeish.
The Lost Generation(迷惘的一代）：
The lost generation is a term first ud by Stein to describe the post-war I generation of American writers:men and women haunted by a n of betrayal and emptiness brought about by the destruc
tiveness of the war.2>full of youthful idealism, the 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 reprentatives of lost generation are F.Scott Fitzgerald, Hemingway and John dos Passos. Tragedy:
In general, a literary work in which the protagonist meets an unhappy or disastrous end. Unlike comedy, tragedy depicts the actions of a central character who
is usually dignif ied or heroic. Through a ries of events, this tragic hero is brought to a f inal downfall. The caus of the tragic hero’s downf all vary. In traditional dramas, the cau can be f ate, a f l aw in character or an error in judgment. In modern dramas, where the tragic hero is of ten an ordinary individual, the caus range f rom moral or psychological weakness to the evils of society.
Catch-22第22条军规:
Catch-22 is a general critique of bureaucratic operation and reasoning. Resulting f rom its speci f ic u in the book, the phra "Catch-22" is common idiomatic usage meaning "a no-win situation" or "a double bind" of any type. The term was originally from Joph Heller’s anti novel Catch-22.
Beat Generation垮掉的一代:
、
Group of Am erican writers of the 1950s who writing expresd prof ound dissatisf action with contemporary American society and endord an alternative t of values. The term sometimes is ud to ref er to tho who embraced the ideas of the writers. The Beat Generation's best-known f igures were writers Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac.
The Beat Generation(垮掉的一代):
The members of The Beat Generation were new bohemian libertines. Who engaged in a spontaneous, sometimes messy, creativity.2> The Beat writers produced a body of written work controversial both f or its advocacy of non-conf ormity and f or its non-conf orming style.3> the major beat writings are Allen Ginsberg’s howl.Howl became the manif esto of The Beat Generation.
Psychological Realism心理现实主义:
It is the realistic writing that probes deeply into the complexities of characters’ thoughts and motivations. It places more than the usual amount of emphasis on interior characterization and on the motives, and internal action which springs f rom and develops external action. In Psychological R
introealism, character and characterization are more than usually important. Henry James is considered a great master of psychological realism.
Free V er自由诗体:
Free ver is poetry that has an irregular rhythm and line length and that attempts to avoid any predetermined ver structure, instead, it us the cadences of natural speech. While it alternates stresd and unstresd syllables as stricter ver f orm do, f ree ver do so in a loor way. Walt Whitman’s poetry is an example of f ree ver.
Confessional Poetry自白诗:
It is a type of modern poet ry in which poets speak with openness and f rankness about their own lives, such as in poems about illness, xuality and despondence. Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath and Allen Ginsberg and Theodore Roethke are the most important American poets.
Imagism意象派:
The 1920s saw a vigorous literary activity in America. In poetry there appeared a strong reaction against V ictorian poetry. Imagists placed primary reliance on the u of preci, sharp images as a
means of poetic expression and stresd precision in the choice of words, f reedom in the choice of subject matter and f orm, and the u of colloquial language. Most of the imagist poets wrote in f ree ver, using such devices as assonance and alliteration rather than f ormal metrical schemes to give structure to their poetry.The movement which had the as its aims is known in literary history as Imagism. Its prime mover was Ezra Pound.
Imagism(意象主义)：
Imagism came into being in Britain and U.S around 1910 as a reaction to the traditional English poetry to express the n of fragment ation and dislocation.2>the imagists, with Ezra Pound leading the way, hold that the most effective means to express the momentary impressions is through the u of one dominant image.3>imagism is charact erized by the f ollowing three poetic principles:A.direct treatment of subject y of expression;C. as regards rhythm ,to compo in the quence of the musical phra, not in the quence of metronome. 4> pou nd’s In a Station of the Metro is a well-known inagist poem. Black Humor:
the u of morbid and the absurd f or darkly comic purpos in modern f iction and drama. The term refers as much to the tone of anger and bitterness as it does to the grotesque and morbid situations,
which of ten deal with suf fering, anxiety, and death. Black humor is a substantial element in the Anti-novel and the Theatre of Absurd. Joph Heller's Catch-22 is an almost archetypal example.
Irony:
A contrast or an incongruity between what is stated and what is really meant, or between what is expect ed to happen and what actually happens in drama and literature. There are types of irony: verbal irony, dramatic irony and irony of situation. Irony of situation typically takes the f orm of a discrepancy between appearance and reality, or between what a charact er expects and what actually happens. Both verbal and irony of situation share the suggestion of a concealed truth conf licting with surf ace appearances.
A Jja zz age(爵士时代):
Jazz Age describes the period of the 1920s and 1930s, the years between world war I and world war II. Particularly in north America. With the ri of the great depression, the values of this age saw much decline. Perhaps the most reprentative literary work of the age is American writer Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. Highlighting what some describe as the decadence and hedonism, as well as the growth of individualism. Fitzgerald is largely credited with coining the term” Jazz Age”.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
works
(1)Two collections of short stories: Twice-told
Tales, Moss f rom and Old Man
(2)The Scarlet Letter
(3)The Hou of the Seven Gables
(4)The Marble Faun
1.point of view
(1)Evil is at the core of human life, “that
blackness in Hawthorne”
(2)Whenever there is sin, there is punishment.
Sin or evil can be pasd f rom generation to
generation (causality).
(3)He is of the opinion that evil educates.
(4)He has disgust in science.
2.aesthetic ideas
(1)He took a great interest in history and
antiquity. To him the f urnish the soil on
which his mind grows to f ruition.
(2)He was convinced that romance was the
predestined f orm of American narrative. To
tell the truth and satirize and yet not to
offend: That was what Hawthorne had in狗屎英语
mind to achieve.
3.style – typical romantic writer
(1)the u of symbols
(2)revelation of charact ers’ psychology
(3)the u of supernatural mixed with the
actual
(4)his stories are parable (parable inf orm) –to
teach a lesson
(5)u of ambiguity to keep the reader in the
world of uncertainty –multiple point of
view
Edgar Allen Poe
Works
1.short stories
(1)ratiocinative stories
a.Ms Found in a Bottle
b.The Murders in the Rue Morgue
c.The Purloined Letter
(2)Revenge, death and rebirth
a.The Fall of the Hou of Usher
b.Ligeia
c.The Masque of the Red Death
(3)Literary theory
a.The Philosophy of Composition
b.The Poetic Principle
c.Review of Hawthorne’s Twice-told Tales
I.Themes
1.death –predominant theme in Poe’s writing
“Poe is not interested in anything alive. Everything
in Poe’s writings is dead.”
2.disintegration (paration) of li f e
3.horror
mentalII.Aesthetic ideas
1.The short stories should be of brevity, totality,
single effect, compression and f inality.
2.The poems should be short, and the aim should be
beauty, the tone melancholy. Poems should not be
of moralizing. He calls f or pure poetry and stress
rhythm.
III.Style – traditional, but not easy to read Reputation: “the jingle man” (Emerson)
I. F. Scott Fitz gerald
1.lif e – participant in 1920s
2.works
(1)This Side of Paradi
(2)Flappers and Philosophers
(3)The Beautif ul and the Damned
(4)The Great Gatsby
(5)Tender is the Night
(6)All the Sad Y oung Man
(7)
wonderwall什么意思
(8)The Last Tycoon
3.point of view
(1)He expresd what the young people
结算英文
believed in the1920s, the so-called
“A merican Dream” is f al in nature.
(2)He had always been critical of the rich and
tried to show the integrating effects of
money on the emotional make-up of his
character. He f ound that wealth altered
people’s characters, making them mean and
distrusted. He thinks money brought only
tragedy and remor.
(3)His novels f ollow a pattern: dream – lack of
attraction – failure and despai r.
4.His ideas of“American Dream”
It is f al to most young people. Only tho who
were dishonest could become rich.
5.Style
Fitzgerald was one of the great stylists in American
literature. His pro is smooth, nsitive, and
completely original in its diction and metaphors. Its
simplicity and gracef ulness, its skill in
manipulating the relation between the general and
the speci f ic reveal his consummate artistry.
6.The Great Gatsby
Narrative point of view – Nick
He is related to everyone in the novel and is calm
and detected obrver who is never quick to make
judgements.
Selected omniscient point of view
II.Ernest Hemingway
1.lif e
vcm2.point of view (inf luenced by experience in war)
(1)He f elt that WWI had broken America’s
雅思住宿班culture and traditions, and parated f rom its
roots. He wrote about men and women who
were isolated from tradition, f rightened,
sometimes ridiculous, trying to f ind their
own way.
(2)He condemned war as purpoless slaughter,
but the attitude changed when he took part
in Spanish Civil War when he f ound that
fascism was a cau worth f ighting f or.
(3)He wrote about courage and cowardice in
battlef ield. He def ined courage as “an
instinctive movement towards or away from
the centre of violence with l f-prervation
and l f-respect, the mixed motive”. He also
talked about the courage with which to f ace
tragedies of life that can never be remedied.
(4)Hemingway is esntially a negative writer.
It is very dif f i cult f or him to say “yes”. He
holds a black, naturalistic view of the world
and es it as “all a nothing” and “all nada”.
3.works
(1)In Our Time
(2)Men Without Women
(3)Winner Take Nothing
(4)The Torrents of Spring
(5)The Sun Also Ris
(6)A Farewell to Arms
(7)Death in the Af t ernoon
(8)To Have and Have Not
(9)Green Hills of Africa
(10)The Fif th Column
(11)For Whom the Bell Tolls
(12)Across the River and into the Trees
(13)The Old Man and the Sea
4.themes –“grace under pressure”
(1)war and inf luence of war on people, with
scenes connected with hunting, bull f ighting
which demand stamina and courage, and
with the question “how to live with pain”,
“how human being live gracefully under
pressure”.
(2)“code hero”
The Hemingway hero is an average man of
decidedly masculine tastes, nsitive and
intelligent, a man of action, and one of few
words. That is an individualist keeping
emotions under control, stoic and
lf-disciplined in a dreadf ul place. The
people are usually spiritual strong, people of
certain skills, and most of them encounter
death many times.
英汉字典下载5.style
(1)simple and natural
(2)direct, clear and f resh
(3)lean and economical
(4)simple, conversational, common f ound,
f undamental words
(5)simple ntences
(6)Iceberg principle: understatement, implied
things
(7)Symbolism
I.Mark Twain – Mississippi
1.lif e
2.works
(1)The Gilded Age
(2)“the two advantages”
(3)Life on the Mississippi
(4)A Connecticut Y ankee in King Arthur’s
Court
(5)The Man That Corrupted Hardleybug
3.style
(1)colloquial language, vernacular language,
dialects
(2)local colour
(3)syntactic f eature: ntences are simple, brief,
sometimes ungrammatical
(4)humour
(5)tall tales (highly exaggerated)
(6)social criticism (satire on the diff erent ugly
jago
things in society)
I.Emily Dickenson
1.lif e
英语导游2.works
(1)My Lif e Clod Twice bef ore Its Clo
(2)Becau I Can’t Stop f or Death
(3)I Heard a Fly Buzz – When I died
(4)Mine – by the Right of the White Election
(5)Wild Nights – Wild Nights
3.themes: bad on her own
experiences/joys/sorrows
(1)religion –doubt and belief about religious
subjects
(2)death and immortality
(3)love –suff ering and f rustration caud by
love
(4)physical aspect of desire
(5)nature – kind and cruel
(6)free will and human responsibility
4.style
(1)poems without titles
(2)vere economy of expression
(3)directness, brevity
(4)musical device to create cadence (rhythm)
(5)capital letters – emphasis
(6)short poems, mainly two stanzas
rhetoric techniques: personi f ication –make some of abstract ideas vivid
