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1. Edgar Allan Poe [北航2007研]
Key: Edgar Allan Poe (1809—1849) was an American writer,poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American RomanticMovement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one ofthe earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered theinventor of the detective-fiction genre. He is further credited withcontributing to the emerging genre of science fiction. He was the firstwell-known American writer to try to earn a living through writing alone,resulting in a financially difficult life and career.
2. Santiago [北航2009研]
Key: Santiago is the protagonist of TheOld Man and the Sea, written by American novelist Ernest Hemingway. He isan old man who hasn’t caught any fishes for eighty-four days. On the finaljourney he has a fight with sharks. This character depicted by Hemingway is atypical “tough guy”. Santiago embodies Hemingway’s definition of courage as“grace under pressure”. He never loses dignity in the face of death. The gloryand honor Santiago comes not from the battle itself but from his pride anddetermination to fight. His famous words are “A man is not made for defeat…… aman can be destroyed but not defeated.”
3. Walt Whitmanand Leaves of Grass [南开大学2010研]
Key: WaltWhitman (1819—1892) was a great American poet in the 19th century. He added tothe literary independence of the new nation and devoted all his life to thecreation of the “single” poem, Leaves of Grass. In this giant work,openness, freedom, and above all, individualism are all that concern him.Whitman broke from the traditional iambic pentameter and wrote “free verse”.His long “catalogs” of lines gave free rein to his imagination in his life-longattempt to celebrate life in the new life.
4. The SouthernRenaissance in American Literature [四川大学2011研；北航2008研]
Key: The Southern Renaissance (alsoknown as Southern Renascence) was the reinvigoration of American Southernliterature that began in the 1920s and 1930swith the appearance of writers such as William Faulkner, TennesseeWilliams, and RobertPenn Warren and so on. Before the SouthernRenaissance, the Southern literature was dominated by writers who supported the“Lost Cause”—the heroism of theConfederate army and civilian population during the CivilWar and the supposedly “idyllic culture” thatexisted in the South before the war. The Southern Renaissance changed this byaddressing three major themes in their works. they are 1) The burden of historyin a place where many people still remembered slavery, Reconstruction, and adevastating military defeat, 2) the South’s conservative culture, specificallyon how an individual could exist without losing a sense of identity in a regionwhere family, religion, and community were more highly valued than one’spersonal and social life, 3) the South’s troubled history in regards to racialissues. They also brought new modernistic techniques such as stream ofconsciousness and complex narrative techniques to their works (as Faulkner didin his novel As I Lay Dying).
5. Transcendentalism [南开大学2008研，北二外2010研；北航2010研]
Key: Transcendentalismis a New England movement, which flourished from about 1835 to 1860. It had itsroots in romanticism and in post-Kantian idealism by which Coleridge wasinfluenced. It had a considerable influence on American art and literature.Basically religious, it emphasized the role and importance of the individualconscience, and the value of intuition in matters of moral guidance andinspiration. The actual term was coined by opponents of the movement, butaccepted by its members. The group of people was also social reformers. Some ofthe members, besides Emerson, were famous, including Bronson Alcott, HenryDavid Thoreau and Nathaniel Hawthorne.
6. Henry James [四川大学2009研]
Key: Henry James(1843-1916) is a famous American writer and one of the key figures of 19 th century literary realism. In his novels, he usually describes the upper classof the American society. He is also famous for psychological realism. His majorworks include: The Portrait of a Lady, The Ambassadors, DaisyMiller etc.
7. Imagism [北外2009研；南开大学2009研； 北京邮电大学2010研]
Key: Imagism isa literary movement which came into being in Britain and U. S. around 1910 as areaction to the traditional English poetry to express the sense offragmentation and dislocation. The imagists, with Ezra Pound leading the way,hold that the most effective means to express these momentary impressions isthrough the use of one dominant image. Imagism is characterized by thefollowing three poetic principles: i) direct treatment of subject matter; ii)economy of expression; iii) as regards rhythm, to compose in the sequence ofthe musical phrase, not in the sequence of metronome. Ezra Pound’s “In aStation of the Metro” is a well-known imagist poem.
8. Black humor [厦门大学2010研]
Key: It is akind of writing that places grotesque elements side by side with humorous onesin an attempt to shock the readers, forcinghim or her to laugh at the horrifying reality of a disordered world. It is ahumor out of despair and laughter out of tears. Black humor conveys anguish andfury at conditions in which institutionalized absurdity gets the upper hand. Itintends to satirize hypocrisy, racial prejudice, and above all thedehumanization of the individual by a modern society. Black humor prevails inmodern American Literature. Joseph Heller’s Novel Cater-22 is considereda superb example of the use of Black humor. Kurt Vonnegut’s SlaughterhouseFive is also a case in point.
9.Avant-Garde [上海交大2007研]
Key: Avant-garde,the French military and political term for the vanguard of an army or politicalmovement, extended since the late 19th century to avant-garde that body ofartists and writers who are dedicated to the idea of art as experiment andrevolt against tradition. Ezra Pound’s view that ‘Artists are the antennae ofthe race, is a distinctly modern one, implying a duty to stay ahead of one’stime through constant innovation in forms and subjects.
10. Ezra Pound and The Cantos [南开大学2009研]
Key: Ezra WestonLoomis Pound (1885 –1972) was an American expatriate poet, critic andintellectual who was a major figure of the Modernist movement in the first halfof the 20th century. His significant contributions to poetry begin with hispromotion of Imagism.
The Cantos by Ezra Pound is a long, incomplete poem in 120 sections,each of which is a canto. Most of it was written between 1915 and 1962,although much of the early work was abandoned and the early cantos, as finallypublished, date from 1922 onwards. Strong claims have been made for it as themost significant work of modernist poetry of the twentieth century. The moststriking feature of the text, to a casual browser, is the inclusion of Chinesecharacters as well as quotations in European languages other than English.
11. “Self-reliance” [北二外2009研]
Key: “Self-Reliance”is an essay written by American Transcendentalist philosopher and essayist,Ralph Waldo Emerson. It contains the most solid statement of one of Emerson’srepeating themes, the need for each individual to avoid conformity and falseconsistency, and follow his or her own instincts and ideas. Emerson’s ideas areconsidered a reaction to a commercial identity; he calls for a return toindividual identity.
12. First-person narrative [上海交大2003研]
Key: First-person narrative is alsocalled first person point of view, which is used in the analysis and criticismof fiction to describe the way in which the writer presents the reader with thematerials of the story. The first person point of view relates events as theyare perceived by a single character, “I”. The narrator “I” may be part ofthe action or an observer, a major or minor participant in the action. Asreaders, we cannot know or witness anything the narrator does not tell us. Wetherefore share all the limitations of the narrator. This technique has theadvantage of a sharp and precise focus. Moreover, you feel part of thestory because the narrator’s “I” echoes the “I” already in your own mind”. MarkTwain’s novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is presented from the first personviewpoint.