美国文学考试必知识点.docVIP

? Romantic period ? Washington Irving ? Edgar Allan Poe ? Nathanial Hawthorne ? Walt Whitman ? Emily Dickinson ?II. Realist period ? Mark Twain ? Sherwood Anderson ? Stephen Crane ? Theodore Dreiser ?III. Modern period ? F. S. Fitzgerald ? Ernest Hemingway ? William Faulkner 1.Transcendentalism 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 Oversoul, 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. New England Transcendentalism is the product of a combination of native American Puritanism and European Romanticism. 2.Naturalism Naturalism, a more deliberate kind of realism, usually involves a view of human beings as passive victims of natural forces and social environment. As a literary movement, naturalism was initiated in France and it came to be led by Zola, who claimed at “scientific” status for his studies of impoverished characters 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. The most significant work of naturalism in English being Dreiser’s Sister Carrie. 3.American Dream The American Dream is the faith held by many people in the United States of America that through hard work, courage and determination one can achieve a better life for oneself, usually through financial prosperity. These were values held by many early European settlers, and have been passed on to subsequent generations. 4.The Lost Generation The term Lost Generation was coined by Gertrude Stein to refer to a group of American Literary notables who lived in Paris fro