2024年3月10日发(作者：)

美国文学史及选读的名词解释（全）

The American Enlightenment is the intellectual thriving

period in America in the mid-to-late 18th century (1715–1789),

especially as it relates to American Revolution on the one hand

and the European Enlightenment on the other. Influenced by the

scientific revolution of the

17th century and the humanist period during the

Renaissance, the Enlightenment took scientific reasoning and

applied it to human nature, society, and religion.

Politically, the age is distinguished by an emphasis upon

liberty, democracy, republicanism and religious tolerance –

culminating in the drafting of the United States Declaration of

Independence and Constitution. Attempts to reconcile science

and religion resulted in a rejection of prophecy, miracle and

revealed religion, often in preference for Deism. Historians have

considered how the ideas of John Locke and republicanism

merged to form republicanism in the United States. The most

important leaders of the American Enlightenment include

Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson.

1.

2. American Puritanism

it comes from the American puritans, who were the first

immigrants moved to American continent in the 17th century.

Original sin, predestination（预言）and salvation（拯救）were

the basic ideas of American Puritanism. And, hard-working,

piousness（虔诚,尽职），thrift and sobriety（清醒）were praised.

3. Romanticism: the literature term was first applied to the

writers of the 18th century in

Europe who broke away from the formal rules of classical

writing. When it was used in American literature it referred to the

writers of the middle of the 19th century who stimulated（刺激）

the sentimental emotions of their readers. They wrote of the

mysterious of life, love, birth and death. The Romantic writers

expressed themselves freely and without restraint. They wrote all

kinds of materials, poetry, essays, plays, fictions, history, works of

travel, and biography.

4. Transcendentalism (先验说,超越论): is a philosophic and

literary movement that

flourished in New England, particular at Concord, as a

reaction against Rationalism and Calvinism (理性主义and喀尔文

主义). Mainly it stressed intuitive understanding of God, without

the help of the church, and advocated independence of the mind.

The representative writers are Emerson and Thoreau.

5. Local colorism: as a trend became dominant in American

literature in the 1860s and early

1870s，it is defined by Hamlin Garland as having such

quality of texture and background that it could not have been

written in any other place or by anyone else than a native stories

of local colorism have a quality of circumstantial(详细的)

authenticity(确实性), as

local colorists tried to immortalize(使不朽) the distinctive

natural, social and linguistic features. It is characteristic of

vernacular(本国语) language and satirical(讽刺的) humor 6.

Stream of consciousness（意识流）：It 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