corrections美国文学考试学生复习提纲--刘现合老师

2021年1月20日发(作者：secretariat)
2009
年
07
春英语班美国文学考试学生复习提纲


#Literary Term:

Romanticism


Romanticism is known as Romantic movement or Romantic Revival. Its chief emphasis
was upon freedom of individual self-expression: sincerity, spontaneity, and originality became
the new standards in literature, replacing the decorous imitation of classical models favored
by
18th-century
neoclassicism.
Rejecting
the
ordered
rationality
of
the
enlightenment
as
mechanical,
impersonal,
and
artificial,
the
Romantics
turned
to
the
emotional
directness
of
personal experience and to the boundlessness of individual imagination and aspiration.
#

Harlem Renaissance





A notable phase of black American writing centered in Harlem ( a predominantly black area
of New York City) in the 1920s. Announced by Alain Locke‘s
anthology
The New Negro
( 1925),
the
movement
included
the
poets
Langston
Hughes,
Jean
Toomer,
Countee
Cullen,
and
Claude
Mckay,
continuing
into
the
1930s
with
novels
of
Zora
Neale
Hurston
and
Arna
Bontemps.
It
brought a new self- awareness and critical respect to black literature in the United States
A
burst
of
literary
achievement
in
the
1920s
by
Negro
playwrights,
poets,
novelists
who
presented
new
insight
into
American
experience
and
prepared
the
way
for
the
emergence
of
numerous black writers after mid-century.
# Features of American Romanticism
1.
Although
foreign
influences
were
strong,
American
Romanticism
exhibited
from
the
very
outset distinct features of its own. It was different from its English and European counterpart
because
it
originated
from
an
amalgam
of
factors
that
were
together
American
rather
than
anything else.
2. American Romanticism was in essence the expression of a real new experience and contained
an alien quality for the simple reason that the spirit of the place was radically new and alien.

3. There is American Puritanism as a cultural heritage to consider. American moral values were
essentially
Puritan.
American
Romantic
authors
tended more
to
moralize
than
their
English
and European brothers. Many American romantic writings intended to edify more than they
entertained.

4. Another thing to mention in connection with American Romanticism was
the ―Newness‖ of
the Americans as a nation. This feeling was strong enough to inspire the romantic imagination
and channel it into a different vein of writing.
5. As a logical result of the foreign and native factors at work, American Romanticism was both
imitative and independent.
#

Free Verse
Free
Verse:
a
poetic
style,
i.e.,
poetry
without
a
fixed
beat
or
regular
rhyme
scheme,
devised by Walt Whiteman who was one of the great innovators in American Literature.
Free Verse: a kind of poetry that does not

conform to any regular meter: the length of its
lines is irregular, as is its use of rhyme
–
if any. Instead of a regular metrical pattern it uses
more flexible cadences or rhythmic groupings. Sometimes supported by anaphora and other
devices of repetition. Now the most widely practiced verse form in English.

#

Moby Dick
Herman Melville‘
s

longest novel,
Moby-Dick
, won recognition in the 20th century as one
of the chief literary masterpieces of both American and world literature.
1.

It
is
an
encyclopedia
of
everything,
history,
philosophy,
religion,
etc.
in
addition
to
a
detailed account of the operations of the whaling industry. But it is first a Shakespearean
tragedy
of
man
fighting
against
overwhelming
odds
in
an
indifferent
and
even
hostile
world.
2.

Moby Dick
is a sprawling colossus into which the author kept dumping everything he saw
as necessary to prove his point.
3.

It represents the sum total of Melville‘s bleak view of the world in which he lived. It is at
once Godless and purposeless. Man in this universe lives a meaning less and futile life,
meaningless because of futile.
4.

One of the major themes in Melville is alienation, which he sensed existing in the life of
his time on different levels, between man and man, man and society, and man and nature.
5.

Ahab
may
have
been
Melville‘s
portrait
of
an
Emersonian
self
–
reliant
individual.
Melville
lost
no
opportunity
in
his
criticism
of
New
England
Transcendentalism.
Constantly under his attack is its emphasis on individualism and Oversoul. To say that the
whole of
Moby Dick
is a negative reflection upon Transcendentalism is not in fact

an
exaggeration.
6.

Moby Dick
reveals the basic pattern of nineteenth- century American life: loneliness and
suicidal individualism in a self-styled democracy.
7.

V
oyaging for Ishmael has become a journey in quest for knowledge and values, and this
leads
to
the
symbolism
of
the
book.
The
voyage
itself
is
a
metaphor
for
―search
and
discovery, the search for the ultimate truth of experience.
8.

Like
Hawthorne,
Melville
manages
to
achieve
the
effect
of
the
ambiguity
through
employing the technique of multiple view in his narratives.
#


American Puritanism:
Puritans opposed much of the
Catholic summations
in the
Church of England
,

Puritanism was a religious reform movement that arose within the church of England in
the late sixteenth century. Under siege from church and crown, it sent an offshoot in the 3rd
and
4th
decades
of
the
17th
century
to
the
nothern
English
colonies
in
the
New
World
–

a
migration
that
laid
the
foundation

for
the
religious,
intellectual
and
social
order
of
New
England.
Puritanism,
however,
was
not
only
a
historically
specific
phenomenon
coincident
with
the
founding
of

New
England;
it
was
also
a
way
of
being
in
the
world
–
a
style
of
response
to
lived
experience
—
that
has
reverberated
through
American
life
ever
since.
Doctrinally,
Puritans
adhered
to
the
Five
Points
of
Calvinism
as
codified

at
the
Synod
of
Dort in 1619: (1)Unconditional election( the idea that God has decreed who was damned and
who was saved from before the beginning of the world);(2)limited atonement( the idea that
Christ died for the elect only); (3) total depravity (huma
nity‘s utter

corruption since the Fall);
(4) Irresistible grace (regeneration as entirely

a work of God, which cannot be resisted and
to
which
the
sinner
contributes
nothing);
and
(5)
the
perseverance
of
the
saints(
the
elect
,
despite their backsliding and faintness of heart, cannot fall away from grace).
Puritanism
is
reflected
in
American
literature
in
such
works
as
Autobiography

by
Benjamin Franklin,
The Scarlet Letter
By Nathaniel Hawthorn.
#


Characteristics

of Realism






ul description of life
l character under typical circumstance
ive rather than idealized, close observation and investigation of life, Realistic writers
are like scientists.
-ending:
Life
is
complex
and
cannot
be
fully
understood.
It
leaves
much
room
for
readers to think by themselves.
ned with social and psychological problems, revealing the frustrations of characters in
an environment of sordidness and depravity
#


Comparison of the Three Giants of American Realism




Howells : middle class

James : upper class

Twain : lower class
que

Howells : smiling/genteel realism

James : psychological realism

Twain : local colorism and colloquialism

#

Local Colourism


(1)

Tasks
of
local
colourists:
to
write,
present
local
characters
of
their
regions
in
truthful
depiction distinguished from others, usually a very small part of the world.
(2)

Local Colorism is a type of writing that was popular in the late 19th-century, particularly
among authors in the South of the U. S.. This style relied heavily on using words, phrases,
and slang that were native to the particular region in which the story took place. The term
has come to mean any device which implies

a specific focus, whether it be geographical
or
temporal.
A
well-known
local
colorism
author
was Mark Twain
with
his
books
Tom
Sawyer
and
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
.
# American Naturalism
Naturalism, a more deliberate kind of realism, usually involves a view of human beings and
social environment. As a literary movement, naturalism was initiated in France and it came to
be
led
by
Emile
Zola,
who
claimed
a

―scientific‖
status
for
his
studies
of
impoverished
character,
miserably
subjected
to
hunger,
sexual
obsession,
and
hereditary
defects.
Natural
fiction
aspired
to
a
sociological
objectivity,
offering
detailed
and
fully
researched
investigations into unexplored corners of modern society.

Other novelists and storytellers associated with naturalism include Guy de Maupassant in
France,
Theodore
Dreiser
and
Frank
Norris
in
the
united
States
and
George
Gissing
in
England;
the
most
significant
work
of
naturalism
in
English
being
Dreiser‘s
Sister
Carrie

(1900).

#

Lost Generation




The term Lost Generation was coined by Gertrude Stein

to refer to a group of American
literary notables who lived in Paris from the time period which saw the end of World War I to
the beginning of the Great Depression. Significant members included Ernest Hemingway, F.
Scott
Fitzgerald,
Ezra
Pound,
Sherwood
Anderson,
T.
S.
Eliot,
and
Gertrude
herself.
Hemingway
likel
y
popularized
the
term,
quoting
Stein
(You
are
all
a
lost
generation‖)
as
epigraph
to
his
novel,
The
Sun
Also
Rises.
More
generally,
the
term
is
being
used
for
the
young adults of Europe and America during World War I. They were ―lost ― because after the