美国文学一些专业术语.docx

Free verse: A kind of poetry that lacks regular meter of pattern. Five verses is the rhymed or unrhymed poetry free from conventional rules of meter.Jazz Age: Epithet applied, often invidiously, to the era of the 1920s in the U.S., whose frenetic youth of the postwar period were conceived as more juvenile and hedonistic than the contemporary lost generation of expatriates. Lost Generation: Lost Generation has been used to describe the Americans who remained in Paris as a colony of “expatriates” or exiles after World War Ⅰ. They wandered pointlessly and restlessly. At the same time, they were aware all the while that the world is crazy and meaningless and futile.Postmodernism: The term Postmodernism is used to describe certain tendencies in post-World War Ⅱ literature. The first generation of postmodernists produced texts that simultaneously questioned and violated the convention of traditional narrative.Regionalism: Local Colorism or Regionalism as a tread first made its presence felt in the last 1860s and early seventies in America. The ultimate aim of the local colorists is to write or present local characters of their region in truthful depiction distinguished from others, usually a very small part of the world.American Romanticism: The romantic period covers the first half of the 19th century. Arising America with its ideal of democracy and equality, the booming economy, the flourishing publications and a variety of foreign influences made its literary expansion not only possible but also inevitable.American Naturalism: The American Naturalism describes a type of literature that attempts to apply scientific principles of objectivity and detachment to its study of human beings. Symbolism: Symbolism is the writing technique of using symbols. It’s a literary movement that arose in France in the last half of 19th century and that greatly influenced many English writers, particularly poets of the 20th century. It enables poets to compress a very complex idea or set