美国文学史及选读名词解释 .pdfVIP

美国文学史及选读名词解释 1. Transcendentalism 19th-century movement of writers and philosophers in New England who were loosely bound together by adherence to an idealistic system of thought based on a belief in the essential unity of all creation, the innate goodness of man, and the supremacy of insight over logic and experience for the revelation of the deepest truths. In their religious quest, the Transcendentalists rejected the conventions of 18th-century thought; and what began in a dissatisfaction with Unitarianism developed into a repudiation of the whole established order. 2. Langston Hughes American poet and writer emphasized on lower-class black life. He established himself as a major force of the Harlem Renaissance. In 1926, in theNation, he provided the movement with a manifesto when he skillfully argued the need for both race pride and artistic independence in his most memorable essay, The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain. In many ways Hughes always remained loyal to the principles he had laid down for the younger black writers in 1926. His art was firmly rooted in race pride and race feeling even as he cherished his freedom as an artist. He was both nationalist and cosmopolitan. As a radical democrat, he believed that art should be accessible to as many people as possible. He could sometimes be bitter, but his art is generally suffused by a keen sense of the ideal and by a profound love of humanity, especially black Americans. 3. Henry David Thoreau American essayist, poet, and practical philosopher, renowned for having lived the doctrines of Transcendentalism as recorded in his masterwork,Walden (1854), and for having been a vigorous advocate of civil liberties, as evidenced in the essay “Civil Disobedience ” (1849). In his writings Thoreau wasconcerned primarily with the possibilities for human culture provided by the American natural environment. He adapted ideas garnered from th