美国文学名词解释

美国文学名词解释 Terms of American Literature IMAGERY意象: 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. Modernism is vague term referring to the art, poetry, literature, architecture, and philosophy of Europe and America in the early twentieth-century. In general, modernism is marked by the following characteristics: (1) the desire to break away from established traditions, (2) a quest to find fresh ways to view man's position or function in the universe, (3) experiments in form and style, particularly with fragmentation--as opposed to the "organic" theories of literary unity appearing in the Romantic and Victorian periods. The Lost Generation: This term is applied to the American writers, most of whom were basically expatriates. They left America and formed a community of writers and artists in Paris, involved with other European novelists and poets in their experimentation on new modes of thought and expression. The term "Lost Generation " came from Gertrude Stein's remark to a mechanic in Hemingway's presence that "You are all a lost generation. " Hemingway used it as a motto in his novel The Sun Also Rises. Among those greatest figures in "The Lost Generation" and Ezra Pound, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Hart Crane who lost the traditional values as a result of the war and fought hard to seek new values and beliefs to fill the void of the post - war world which was full of physical wounds as well as mental chaos. Imagism意象派: Imagist is applied to a group of poets prominent in America between 1909 and 1918. Imagism was a spirit of revolt against conventionalities rather than a goal set up as in itself a permanently lasting objective. All poetic language is the language of exploration. The point of Imagism is that it does not use images as ornaments. The image is itself the speech. The image is the word beyond formulated language. The most conspicuous figures of the imagist movement were Ezra Pound, Amy Lowell, Carl Sandburg and William Carlos Williams. Puritanism清教主义,American Puritanism was practice and belief of Puritans. Puritans were the people who wanted to purify the Church of England and then were persecuted in England. They came to America for various reasons. But because they were a group of serious and religious people, they carried a code of value and a philosophy of life. To them, religion was the most important thing. They accepted the doctrine of predestination, original sin, total depravity and limited atonement for God’s grace. They also believed in hard working, piety and sobriety. In a word, American Puritanism exerted great influences upon American thought and literature. Transcendentalism超验主义,Transcendentalism has been defined philosophically as "the recognition in man of the capacity of knowing truth intuitively, or of attaining knowledge transcending the reach of the senses." It was started by a group of members of the Transcendental Club in New England in the 1830s, whose leaders were Emerson, who was greatly influenced by Carlyle, Coleridge and others, and his young friend Thoreau. Principal ideas of Transcendentalism are based on doctrines of ancient and modern European philosophers, particularly Kant. As the 1 Terms of American Literature movement developed, it sponsored two important activities: the publication of The Dial during 1840 - 1844 and Brook farm. Their main notions include: a) living close to nature; b) the dignity of manual labor; c) the divinity in man in his own right; d) one great brotherhood among all the people; e) self - trust and self – reliance. 2