美国文学名词解释

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. It expresses the concern for common place and the low, and it offers an objective rather than an idealistic view of human nature and human experience. Realist literature finds the drama and the tension beneath the ordinary surface of life. A realist writer is more objective than subjective, more descriptive than symbolic. Realists looked for truth in everyday truths. Representative writers are William Dean Howells, Mark Twain and Henry James. Psychological Realism:

It is the realistic writing that probes deeply into the complexities of characters’ thoughts and motivations. Henry James’s novel The Ambassadors is considered to be a masterpiece of psychological realism. And Henry James is considered the founder of psychological realism. He believed that reality lies in the impressions made by life on the spectator, and not in any facts of which the spectator is unaware. Such realism is therefore merely the obligation that the artist assumes to represent life as he sees it, which may not be the same life as it “really ” is. James shifted the ground of realistic art from the outer to the inner world. Naturalism

The practice of describing precisely the actual circumstances of human life in literature.It’s a more deliberate kind of realism in novels, stories, and plays, usually involving a view of human being as passive victims of natural forces and environment. Naturalists reported truthfully and objectively, got great amounts of data from actual life. They painted life as it was.They wrote about the helplessness of man, his insignificance in a cold world and his lack of dignity.They are concerned with the less elegant aspects of life. Its typical settings are the slum, the sweatshop, the factory and the farm. They represented the life of the lower class truthfully and broke into such forbidden regions as violence, sex and death. Impressionism

(The practice of expressing or developing one's subjective response to a work of art or to actual experience)A literary style characterized by the use of details and mental associations to evoke subjective and sensory impressions rather than the re-creation of objective reality. Imagism: The 1920s saw a vigorous literary activity in America. In poetry there appeared a strong reaction against Victorian poetry.The emphasis was now on the economy of expression and on the use of a dominant image. The movement which had these as its aims is known in literary history as Imagism. Its prime mover was Ezra Pound, an expatriate American poet who wrote The Cantos, quoting extensively from Chinese history and Confucius. Although short-lived, the Imagist movement had a tremendous influence on modern poetry. Most of the important twentieth-century American poets were related with it: William Carlos Williams, Wallace Stevens, E.E. Cummings, Carl Sandburg, and T. S. Eliot, to name just the important few Hemingway Hero －Code Hero They show something in common: desperate courage and grace under pressure. His heroes maintain dignity, honor, courage and grace in face of danger, violence and death. They are wounded but strong, more sensitive, enjoys the pleasure of life in face of ruin and death. They hold such a concept of life: it is dangerous and always ready to defeat and destroy you, but that, if you keep calm and stand on your set of principles, you may win on your own terms.Santiago in The old man and the sea / henry in A farewell to arms Iceberg theory---iceberg style:

1/8 is above the water, 7/8 is under the water. Hemingway said that: “ There is seven-eights of it under water for every part that shows. Anything you know you can eliminate and it only strengthens your iceberg. It is the part that doesn't show.”

Stream of consciousness:

It is a widely used method and technique in modern literature. It is a kind of literary technique employed to demonstrate subjective as well as objective reality. It reveals the characters’ feelings, thoughts and actions, often following an associative rather than a logic sequence without commenting by the author. Jazz age 1920's America - known as the Jazz Age, the Golden Twenties or the Roaring Twenties–

It refers to the ten years from the end of World War I to the great Depression. At that time，many young people became the upper class generation since they got a lot of money from Stock Market，everybody seemed to have money. But the old moral codes were breaking down. And they suffered from spiritual disillusionment and indulged themselves in pleasure-seeking. The 1920’s saw a break with the traditional set-up in America. The Great War had destroyed old perceived social conventions and new ones developed. International theme ---to set a novel against a larger international background, usually between Europe and America, and centered on the confrontation of the two different cultures each with its peculiar value systems.

Existentialism is a philosophical movement which claims that individual human beings have full responsibility for creating the meanings of their own lives.

Cosmic Irony:A type of irony in which Fate, the Universe, God, or whichever omnipotent force you choose makes it their sole purpose to mess with your life. They like to screw you over, and watch the mayhem while laughing at your misfortune. American Dream:

(1)American Dream refers to the dream of material success, in which one, regardless of social status, acquires wealth and gains success by working hard and good luck.(2) in literature, the theme of American Dream recurs. In The Great Gatsby, Gatsby comes from the west to the east with the dream of material success.by bootlegging and other illegal means he fulfilled his dream but ended up being killed. The novel tells the shattering of American Dream rather than its success. Harlem Renaissance:

(1) Harlem Renaissance refers to a period of outstanding literary vigor and vreativity that occurred in the United States during the 1920s.(2) the Harlem Renaissance changed the images of literature created by many black an white american writers. New black images were no longer obedient and docile, instead they showed a new confidence and racial pride.(3) the center of this movemet was the vast black ghetto of harlem, in New York City.(4) the leading figures are Langston Hughes, James Weldon Johnson,Wallace Thurman,etc.. The Lost Generation:

(1) the Lost Generation is a term first used by Gertrude Stein to describe the post-World War 1 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,Ernest Hemingway and John Dos Passos.(4) Others usually included among the list are Sherwood Anderson, Kay Boyle, Hart Crane, Ford Maddox Ford and Zelda Fitzgerald. The works of “the Lost Generation” showed a period of disillusionment with the past , hopelessness about the future ,and escapism . Southern Ladies(belles):

foreign to Americans from other places. A Southern Belle never appears ruffled or stressed. She may be boiling inside but you’d never know it to look at her. No matter how informal the meal,ie. A picnic, a belle always presents it fancy. A Belle never reveals her age. Her timeless inner beauty speaks for it’s self. Slacks are never worn in

public. Nor is gum chewed. Yoknapatawpha: Novelist William Faulkner created the legendary Yoknapatawpha County. Many of Faulkner’s works are one connected story that happens in Yok… He knew the South well. He spent most of his life there, and wrote with compassion about family, community, and the people he knew. Its fictitious population includes Southern white aristocrats, merchants, farmers, poor whites, and persecuted blacks. Faulkner told how the South is still affected by its past. \"The past is never dead,\" he wrote. \"It's not even past.”