美国文学名词解释

1.Imagism（意象派

Imagism was a movement in early 20th-century Anglo-American poetry that favored precision of imagery, and clear, sharp language. The Imagists rejected the sentiment and artifice typical of much Romantic and Victorian poetry. This was in contrast to their contemporaries, the Georgian poets, who were by and large content to work within that tradition. Based in London, the Imagists were drawn from Britain, Ireland and the United States. Somewhat unusually for the time, the Imagists featured a number of women writers among their major figures. At the time Imagism emerged, Longfellow and Tennyson were considered the paragons of poetry, and the public valued the sometimes moralizing tone of their writings.

2. local colorism

local colorism is an unique variation of American literary realism. Generally, the works by local colorism are concerned with the life of a small region or province. This kind of fiction depicts the characters from a specific setting or of an era, which are marked by its customs, dialects, landscape, or other peculiarities that have escaped standardizing cultural influence. Tasks of local colorism is to wirte or present local characters of their regions in truthful depicton distinguished from others, usually a very small part of the world. they tended to idealize and glorify, but they never forget to keep an eye on the truthful color of local life. Mark Twain's the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is the most representive one

3.the Lost Generaion

The term of \"lost generation\" was first used by The lost generation is a term first used by Gertrude Stern(1874--1946), one of the leaders of this group.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.

4.Stream of consciousness

Stream of consciousness: “Stream-of-Consciousness” or “interior monologue”, 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 through the bounds of time and space, and depicted vividly and skillfully the unconscious activity of the mind fast changing and flowing incessantly, particularly the hesitant, misted, distracted and illusory psychology people had when they faced reality. The modern American writer William Faulkner successfully advanced this technique. In his stories, action and plots were less important than the reactions and inner musings of the narrators. Time sequences were often dislocated. The reader feels himself to be a participant in the stories, rather than an observer. A high degree of emotion can be achieved by this technique.

5.Transcendentalism

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 stressed 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.Modernism

6.Modernism:

It is 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 Vi

ctorian periods.

7.Free Verse自由诗体:

Free verse: free verse is the rhymed or unrhymed poetry composed without attention to conventional 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.