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英美文学名词解释Terms in English and American Literature
1. Aestheticism/the Aestheticism Movement (唯美主义)
A European phenomenon during the middle of the 19th century that had its chief headquarters in France. This movement was introduced to late Victorian England mainly Walter Pater as a reaction against the materialism and commercialism of an industrialized society. It was also a reaction against the Victorian convention of art for morality’s sake, or art for money’s sake. The major tenets of this movement include the belief in the autonomy of a work of art, the emphasis on craft and artistry--the theory of “art for art’s sake”. The most outstanding Victorian representatives of this movement included Oscar Wilde.
2. Allegory（寓言）
A tale in verse or prose in which characters, actions, or settings represent abstract ideas or moral qualities. An allegory is a story with two meanings, a literal meaning and a symbolic meaning.
寓言：用诗歌或散文讲的故事，在这个故事中人物、事件或背景往往代表抽象的概念或道德品质。所有的寓言都是一个具有双重意义、文学内涵或象征意义的故事。
3. Alliteration (头韵)
It is the repetition of the same initial consonant sound within a line or a group of words in poetry. In Old English alliterative meter, alliteration is the principal organizing device of the verse line, such as in Beowulf.
头韵：在一组词的开头或重读音节中对相同辅音或不同元音的重复。
4. Allusion: A reference to a person, a place, an event, or a literary work that a writer expects the reader to recognize and respond to. An allusion may be drawn from history, geography, literature, or religion.
典故：文学作品中作家希望读者能够认识或做出反应的一个人物、地点、事件或文学作品。典故或来自历史、地理、文学或宗教。
5. American Naturalism (美国自然主义)
The American naturalism accepted the more negative interpretation of Darwin’s evolutionary theory and used it to account for the behavior of those characters in literary works who were regarded as more or less complex combinations of inherited attributes, their habits were conditioned by social and economic forces. American naturalism was evolved from realism when the author’s tone in writing became less serious and less sympathetic but more ironic and more pessimistic. It was no more than a gloomy philosophical approach to reality, or to human existence. Dreiser was a leading figure of this school.
6. American Puritanism (美国清教主义)
Puritanism is the practices and beliefs of the Puritans. The American puritans, like their English brothers, are idealists. They accepted the doctrine of predestination, original sin
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and total depravity, and limited atonement through a special infusion of grace form God. But due to the grim struggle for living in the new continent, they become more and more practical. American puritanism is so much a part of the national atmosphere rather that a set of tenets.
美国清教主义：他们相信宿命论、原罪说、全体堕落和有限的赎罪。
7. American Realism (美国现实主义)
In American literature, the Civil War brought the Romantic Period to an end. The Age of Realism came into existence. George Eliot introduce realism into England, and William Dean Howells introduced it into the United States. It came as a reaction against the lie of romanticism and sentimentalism. Realism turned from an emphasis on the strange toward a faithful rendering of the ordinary, a slice of life as it is really lived. It has been chiefly concerned with the commonplaces of everyday life among the middle and lower classes, and it offers an objective rather than an idealistic view of human nature and human experience. Realistic literature finds the drama and tension beneath the surface of ordinary life. Later, many writers, notably Henry James, turned to psychological realism that closely examined the complex workings of the mind.
美国现实主义：在美国文学史上，内战宣告了浪漫主义的终结和现实主义的开始。现实主义反对浪漫主义和感伤主义的谎言，它从一个陌生的世界转向了普通人的真实生活的描写。它所关心的是普通的下层劳动人民而非理想中的人类本性和现实经历。
8. American Romanticism (美国浪漫主义)
The Romantic Period covers the first half of the 19th century. A rising America with its ideals of democracy and equality, the booming economy, the flourishing publications, and a variety of foreign influences made its literary expansion possible and inevitable. Romantics shared some characteristics: moral enthusiasm, individuality and intuitive perception. Irving played an important role in inspiring American romanticism with his masterpieces Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. American romanticism culminated around the 1840s, which can be called “Transcendentalism or American Renaissance”. One of the major figure in this period was Emerson. His Nature had been called “the manifesto of American Transcendentalism”. In the poetry aspect, Whitman and Dickson were two major American poets in this period. In the novel aspect, Hawthorne and Melville belonged to another type of romanticism. They placed increasing value on the free expression on emotion and the psychic states of their characters. The New England poets, such as Longfellow and Bryant formed a different school from Whitman, Dickson, Thoreau and Poe.
9. Angry Young Men (愤怒的青年)
The Angry Young Men is a journalistic catchphrase applied to a number of British playwrights and novelists from the mid-1950s. Their works mainly express the bitterness of the lower classes towards the established sociopolitical system and towards the mediocrity and hypocrisy of the middle and upper classes. The playwright John Osborne was the archetypal example of these angry young men with his signature play Look Back in Anger in 1956.
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10. Antagonist (反面人物):
A person or force opposing the protagonist in a narrative; a rival of the hero or heroine. 反面人物：一个故事中和主人公相对立的人物或一种力量，是男女主人公的对手。
11. American Transcendentalism (美国超验主义)
American Transcendentalism is more than an attitude of transcendentalists. To “transcend” something is to rise above it, to pass beyond its limits. The transcendentalists speak for cultural rejuvenation and against the materialism of American society. The major features of American Transcendentalism are: 1. Transcendentalists place emphasis on spirit, or the Oversoul, as the most important thing in the Universe. 2. They stress the importance of the individual. To them, the individual was the most important element of society. 3. They offer a fresh perception of nature as symbolic of the Spirit or God. Nature was, to them, alive, filled with God’s overwhelming presence.
12. Aphorism (警句)
A concise, pointed statement expressing a wise or clever observation about life. 警句：蕴含关于人生真理的明智的看法的精练的语句。
13. Aside (旁白)
In drama, lines spoken by a character in an undertone or directly to the audience and. An aside is supposedly not heard by other actors on stage.
14. Assonance (类韵)
The repetition of similar vowel sounds, especially in poetry. Assonance is often employed to please the ear or emphasize certain sounds. 类韵：在诗歌中相同或相似元音的重复，它的目的主要是用来使句子悦耳动听或用来强调某个音。
15. Autobiography (自传)
The literary form of autobiography is a person’s account of his or her own life. An autobiography is generally written in narrative form and includes some introspection, such as The Autobiography written by Benjamin Franklin.
自传：一个人对他或她自己生活的描述，自传是一种叙述性的文体，多包含回忆性的描写。
16. Ballad (民谣) It is a relatively short narrative poem, written to be sung, with a simple and dramatic action. The ballads tell of love, death, the supernatural, or a combination of these. Two characteristics of the ballad are incremental repetition and the ballad stanza. Incremental repetition repeats one or more lines with small but significant variations that advance the action. The ballad stanza has four line; commonly, the first and third lines contain four feet or accents, the second and fourth lines contain three feet. Ballad often open abruptly, present brief descriptions and use concise dialogues.
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The folk ballad is usually anonymous and the presentation is impersonal. The literary ballad deliberately imitates the form and spirit of a folk ballad. The Romantic poets were attracted to this form, as Longfellow with The Wreck of the Hesperus, Coleridge with The Rime of the Ancient Marine, which is longer and more elaborate than the folk ballad.
17. Ballad Stanza (民谣诗节)
A type of four-line stanza, the first and the third lines have four stressed words or syllables; the second and fourth lines have three stresses.
18. Beat Generation (垮掉的一代)
The Beat Generation refers to a loosely-knit group of poets and novelists, writing in the second half of thee 1950s and early 1960s. They shared a set of social attitudes-- anti-establishment, anti-political, anti-intellectual, oppose to the prevailing cultural, literary, and moral values, and were in favor of unfettered self-realization and self-expression. Representatives of the group were Allen Ginsberg with his long poem Howl and Jack Kerouac with his On the Road.
19. Bildungsroman (成长小说)
Bildungsroman defines a genre of the novel which focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from youth to adulthood, and in which characters’ change is thus extremely important. In a Bildungsroman, the goal is maturity. Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield is a classical Bildungsroman.
20. Biography (传记)
A detailed account of a person‘s life written by another person. 传记：由他人篆写的关于某人生平的详细记录。
21. Black comedy/Black humor (黑色幽默)
It is mostly employed to describe baleful, naive, or inept characters in a fantastic or nightmarish modern world playing out their roles in what Ionesco called a “tragic farce”, in which the evets are often simultaneously comic, horrifying, and absurd. Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 can be taken as an example of the employment of this technique.
22. Black Mountain Poets (黑山派诗人)
It is sometimes called projective poets（投射诗人）, a group of the mid-20th century American avant-garde or postmodern poets centering on Black Mountain College. In the essay Projective Verse, Charles Olson calls “for poetry of open field” composition to replace traditional closed poetic forms with an improvised form that should reflect exactly the content of the poem. This essay became the manifesto for the Black Mountain Poets.
23. Blank Verse (无韵体诗)
Verse written in unrhymed iambic pentameter. It is the verse form used in some of the
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greatest English poetries, including that of William Shakespeare and John Milton. 素体诗：用五音步抑扬格写的无韵诗。
24. Byronic hero (拜伦式英雄)
Byronic hero refers to a proud, mysterious rebel figure of noble origin. With immense superiority in his passions and powers, he would carry on his shoulders the burden of righting all the wrongs in a corrupt society, and would rise single-handedly against any kind of tyrannical rules either in government, in religion, or in moral principles with unconquerable wills and inexhaustible energies.
25. Calvinism (加尔文主义)
Calvinism refers to the religious teachings of John Calvin and his followers. Calvin taught that only certain persons, the elect, were chosen by God to be saved, and this can be gotten only be God’s grace. Calvinism forms the basis for the doctrines and practices of the Huguenots, Puritans, Presbyterians, and the Reformed churches.
26. Carpe Diem (及时行乐)
A tradition dating back to classical Greek and Latin poetry and particularly popular among English Cavalier poets. Carpe Diem means literally “seize the day”, that is, “live for today”.
27. Canto (篇/章)
A section or division of a long poem. In English poetry, Alexander Pope’s the Rape of the Lock and Byron’s Don Juan are divided into cantos. 诗章：长诗的一部分。
28. Character (角色)
In appreciating a short story, characters are an indispensable element. Characters are the persons presented in a dramatic or narrative work. Forst divides characters into two types: flat character, which is presented without much individualizing detail; and round character, which is complex in temperament and motivation and is represented with subtle particularity.
人物：在短篇小说的欣赏中，人物是必不可少一个元素。人物是喜剧或小说中所描写的人。福斯特把人物划分为两类，扁平型人物和圆型人物。扁平型人物往往缺乏个人化的细节描写而圆型人物则在性格和行为动机上较为复杂。
29. Classicism (古典主义)
A movement or tendency in art, literature, or music that reflects the principles manifested in the art of ancient Greece and Rome. Classicism emphasizes the traditional and the universal, and places vale on reason clarity, balance, and order. Classicism, with its concern for reason and universal themes, is traditionally opposed to Romanticism, which is concerned with emotions and personal themes.
古典主义：一种在文学，艺术，音乐领域体现古代希腊，罗马风格的运动。
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考研英美文学名词解释
