名词解释
1. Imagism is a movement in early 20th-century Anglo-American poetry, as a reaction to the traditional English poetry to express the sense of fragmentation and dislocation. The imagist, with Ezra Pound leading the way, hold that the most effective means to express these momentary impressions is through the use of one dominant image. Pound’s In a Station of the Metro is a well-known imagist poem.
2. Naturalism ,a literary movement,initiated in France, is related to and sometimes described as an extreme form of realism but which may be more appropriately considered as a parallel to philosophic Naturalism. As a more deliberate kind of realism in novels, stories, and plays, usually involving a view of human beings as passive victims of natural forces and social environment. Naturalist fiction aspires to a sociological objectivity, offering detailed and fully researched investigations into unexplored corners of modern society. Major American naturalist writers include Stephen Crane, Frank Norris, Theodore Dreiser.
3. The stream of consciousness: In literary criticism, Stream of consciousness denotes a literary technique which seeks to describe an individual’s point of view by giving the written equivalent of the character’s thought processes. Stream of consciousness writing is strongly associated with the modernist movement, usually regarded as a special form of interior monologue and is characterized by associative leaps in syntax and punctuation that can make the prose difficult to follow, tracing as they do a character’s fragmentary thoughts and sensory feelings. Famous writers to employ this technique include James Joyce and William Faulkner.
4. The lost generation is a term first used by Stein to describe the post-war generation of American writers: men and women haunted by a sense of betrayal and emptiness brought about by the destructiveness of the war. 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. The three best known are F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and John Dos Passos.
5. Transcendentalism refers to the religious and philosophical doctrines of Ralph Waldo Emerson and others in New England in the middle 1800’s, which emphasized the importance of individual inspiration and intuition, the over-soul, and nature. Other concepts that accompanied Transcendentalism include the idea that nature is ennobling and the idea that the individual is divine and, therefore, self-reliant. It appeared in America as a kind of reaction against the materialistic-oriented life of the time, and was, in actuality, Romantic idealism. Major transcendentalist prose writers include Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau.
6. Point of view can be divided by the narrator’s relationship with the character, represented by the grammatical person: the first-person narrative, the third-person narrative, and omniscient narrator.
7. Realism originated in France, a literary doctrine that called for “reality and truth” in the depiction of ordinary life. American Realism came in the latter half of the nineteenth century as a reaction against romanticism and sentimentalism. It stresses truthful treatment of material and focuses on commonness of the lives of the common people. It emphasizes objectivity and offers an objective rather than an idealistic view of human nature and human experience. In terms of subject matter and theme, it took representation of life as its main object and was often concerned with the soul, the life, and the speech of the people. Major American realist writers include William Dean Howells, Henry James, Mark Twain.
8. Romanticism is a literary movement which first emerged in the 1790s in Germany and Britain and in the 1820s in France and else. It is also called the Romantic Movement. Its chief emphasis was on 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. Major American romantic writers include Washington Irving, James Fenimore Cooper.
9.Modernism, a general term referring to the trends in literature (and other arts ) of the early 20th-century, including Symbolism, Futurism, Expressionism, Imagism, Vorticism, Dada, and Surrealism, along with the innovations of the unaffiliated writers. Modernist literature is characterized chiefly by a rejection of 19th century traditions and of their consensus between author and reader.
10.Narrator: One who narrates, or tells, a story. A story may be told by a first-person narrator, someone who is either a major or minor character in the story. Or a story may be told by a third-person narrator, someone who is not in the story at all. The word narrator can also refer to a character in a drama who guides the audience through the play, often commenting on the action and sometimes participating in it.
作品赏析
1. One’s Self I sing
Author: Walt Whitman
Theme: value individuality, democracy, social solidarity(brotherhood), equality and freedom
Form: free verse (rejecting the conventional poetic form such as iambic pentameter, regular rhyme scheme and regular length of a line)
* “the modern man” means an individual who values individuality, democracy, social solidarity(brotherhood), equality and freedom and is therefore passionate, powerful, cheerful and full of pulse, and this man is an American.
2. O Captain! My Captain!
Author: Walt Whitman
Metrical pattern: iambic
Rhyme scheme: aabbcded ffgghiji kkllmnon
Main features: three octaves. phonetic recurrence, oral English (free verse)
Theme: This poem eulogizes Abraham Lincoln’s monumental contributions and expresses the poet’s deep grief over Lincoln’s death with the background of the victory of the Civil War.
Tone: happy/cheerful-sad/melancholy
Rhetorical figure: Metaphor(ship-America/difficulty-experience of US), synecdoche, parallelism
*Metaphor: the ship (America) / our fearful trip (American national experience from being British colonies to being an independent country) / captain (Abraham Lincoln)
Synecdoche: eyes (the people) / keel (the ship)
Spatial arrangement: the falling of heart: full-empty/excited-distressed/hopeful-hopeless
Stanzas: reality / surprise (stanza 1) dream / hope (stanza 2) reality / reflection / meditation / loss into deep thought
Writing skills: symbol, imagery, and repetition
3. To Make a Prairie
Author: Emily Dickinson
Theme: Imagination is very important for literary creation.
Elements of creation: material and imagination/imagination
Artistic features: original choice of words
repetition of expressions without repetition of words
4. Success Is Counted Sweetest
Author: Emily Dickinson
Theme: different experiences lead people to different understandings of and attitude to the same thing.
Metrical pattern: iambic
Rhyme scheme: abcb defe ghih
Rhetorical figure: analogy(success-wine)
Stanzas: philosophical understanding of success (stanza 1) examples to illustrate the theme expressed in stanza 1 (stanzas 2-3)
5. I’m Nobody
Author: Emily Dickinson
Theme: Being nobody is better than being somebody. / Being an ordinary person (small potato) is better than being a celebrity (big apple).
Figures of speech:
Simile: somebody/frog
Contrast: nobody(cheerful)
Somebody(dreary)boring and lack in privacy
6. I Shot an Arrow
Theme: Time passes but friendship remains.
Form:
Metrical pattern: Iambic tetrameter
Rhyme scheme: aabb aacc ddee
7. A Psalm of Life
Argument (stanza 1): Life is not an empty dream but real.
Reasons (stanzas 2-3):
Life is real and earnest and life’s goal is not grave for the soul can last even after one dies.
Life’s end is not enjoyment or sorrow but to act so as to go ahead.
Attitudes to life (stanzas 4-8):
Life is short and we should be active.
Do not dwell on the past, act in the present.
Act and we will be remembered.
Act and try to encourage those who will come.
Conclusion (stanza 9): Life means: action achievement pursuit
Form:
Metrical pattern: trochaic tetramter
Rhyme scheme: abab cdcd efef ghgh…
8. Sonnet-To Science
Theme: Science is the antithesis of poetry.
Form:
Shakespearean sonnet (rhyme scheme: abab cdcd efef gg)
Dialogue (between the speaker Figures of speech: Metaphor: science is … Contrast: science (dull reality / rationality / reason) / poetry (dream / imagination / emotion) 9. To Helen Theme: The beauty of Helen (Helen is so beautiful that she can carry a tired wandered to his native shore and remind one of the glory of Greece and the grandeur of Rome.) Artistic features: Rhyme: ababb cdcdc effef Simile: Helen is like … Comparison: Helen and Goddesses Use of classic words: to highlight the classic nature of Helen The wanderer / the poet / me 美国历届诺贝尔文学获获得者： 1930 辛克莱·刘易斯Sinclair Lewis 1936 尤金·奥尼尔 Engene O′Neill 1938 赛珍珠Pearl S. Buck 1949 威廉·福克纳 William Faulkner 1954 欧内斯特·海明威 Ernest Hemingway 1962 约翰·斯坦贝克 John Steinbeck 1978 艾萨克·巴什维斯·辛格 Isaac Bashevis Singer 1987 约瑟夫·布罗茨基 Joseph Brodsky 1993 托尼·莫里森 Toni Morrison下载本文
