1.American Naturalism: American naturalism was a new and harsher realism.American naturalism had been shaped by the war; by the social upheavals that undermined the comforting faith of an earlier age.America’s literary naturalists dismied the validity of comforting moral truths.They attempted to achieve extreme objectivity and frankne, presenting characters of low social and economic claes who were determined by their environment and heredity.In presenting the extremes of life, the naturalists sometimes displayed an affinity to the sensationalism of early romanticism, but unlike their romantic predeceors, the naturalists emphasized that the world was amoral, that men and women had no free will, that lives were controlled by heredity and environment, that the destiny of humanity was misery in life and oblivion in death.Although naturalist literature described the world with sometimes brutal realism, it sometimes also aimed at bettering the world through social reform.

美国自然主义：美国自然主义是一种新的、更具批判性的现实主义。美国自然主义是在战争和影响人们早期信念的社会*的影响之下形成的。美国的自然主义者往往否定了广为接受的道德真理的正确性，他们想达到极端的客观与直率，他们所展现的人物往往都是下层社会的人，他们的命运受到环境和遗传的制约。在反应生活方面，自然主义作家往往表现出早期浪漫主义中感伤主义特征，但和浪漫主义不同的是，自然主义者认为，世界缺乏道德，人不论男女都没有自由的意愿，他们的生活都受到遗传和环境的控制，人在生前过着悲惨的生活，死后便被人所遗忘。虽然自然主义文学通过更为苛刻的现实主义手法来展现这个世界，但是他有时也是为了通过社会改革来改善这个世界。

2.American Puritanism: Puritanism is the practices and beliefs of the Puritans.The Puritans were originally members of a division of the Protestant Church.The first settlers who became the founding fathers of the American nation were quite a few of them.They were a group of serious, religious people, advocating highly religious and moral principles.As the word itself hints, Puritans wanted to purity their religious beliefs and practices.They accepted the doctrine of predestination, original sin and total depravity, and limited atonement through a special infusion of grace form God.As a culture heritage, Puritanism did have a profound influence on the early American mind.American Puritanism also had a enduring influence on American literature.美国清教主义：清教主义是新教徒的原来的一个分支——清教徒的行为和信仰。在美国的第一批居民中有很多就是清教徒，他们有着严格的宗教信仰和道德准则。就像这个词所暗指的那样，清教徒们想“清化”他们的宗教信仰和行为习惯。他们相信宿命论、原罪说、全体堕落和有限的赎罪。作为一种文化遗产，美国清教主义在早期美国人的思想上有着深刻的影响，他对美国文学的影响也是颇为持久的。

3.American Realism: In American literature, the Civil War brought the Romantic Period to an end.The Age of Realism came into existence.It came as a reaction against the lie of romanticism and sentimentalism.Realism turned from an emphasis on the strange toward a faithful rendering of the ordinary, a slice of life as it is really lived.It exprees the concern for commonplace and the low, and it offers an

objective rather than an idealistic view of human nature and human experience.

美国现实主义：在美国文学史上，内战宣告了浪漫主义的终结和现实主义的开始。现实主义反对浪漫主义和感伤主义的谎言，它从一个陌生的世界转向了普通人的真实生活的描写。它所关心的是普通的下层劳动人民而非理想中的人类本性和现实经历。

4 American Romanticism: The Romantic Period covers the first half of the 19th century.A rising America with its ideals of democracy and equality, its industrialization, its westward expansion, and a variety of foreign influences were among the important factors which made literary expansion and expreion not only poible but also inevitable in the period immediately following the nation’s political independence.Yet, romantics frequently shared certain general characteristics: moral enthusiasm, faith in value of individualism and intuitive perception, and a presumption that the natural world was a source of goodne and man’s societies a source of corruption.Romantic values were prominent in American politics, art, and philosophy until the Civil War.The romantic exaltation of the individual suited the nation’s revolutionary heritage and its frontier egalitarianism.

美国浪漫主义：浪漫主义阶段涵盖了19世纪前半页。美国的不断壮大和发展以及随之而来的明珠和平等的思想、工业化的发展、西北边疆的不断扩展和国外的各种影响使浪漫主义作家文学不但成为一种可能，而且使它成为美国政治独立后的一种必然。然而，浪漫主义文学往往有很多共性：他们热心于道德、相信个人主义价值观和对世界的直观感受，并且他们认为自然世界是真、善、美的源泉而人类社会则是堕落的根源。在内战以前，浪漫主义价值观占据是政治、艺术、和哲学等领域，浪漫主义者对个人的赞扬正好迎合了美国的革命遗风和边疆开拓者的品均主义。

5.American Transcendentalism: the emergence of the Transcendentalists as an identifiable movement took place during the late 1820s and 1830s, but the roots of their religious philosophy extended much farther back into American religious history.Transcendentalism and evangelical Protestantism followed separate evolutionary branches from American Puritanism, taking as their common ancestor the Calvinism of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.They spoke for cultural rejuvenation and against the materialism of American spirit, or the Oversoul, as the most important thing in the Universe.They streed the importance of the individual.To them, the individual was the most important element of society.They offered a fresh perception of nature as symbolic of the Spirit or God.Nature was, to them, alive, filled with God’s overwhelming presence.Transcendentalism is based on the belief that the most fundamental truths about life and death can be reached only by going beyond the world of the senses.Emerson’s Nature has been called the “Manifesto of American Transcendentalism” and his The American Scholar has been rightly regarded as America’s “Declaration of Intellectual Independence”.

美国超验主义：美国超验主义出现的19世纪20年代末期到三十年代，但是它的根源在宗教史上要远得多。超验主义和福音派新教分别是美国清教主义的两个分支，他们的祖先是17世纪和18世纪的加尔文神教。超验主义者主张文化的复兴，

认为“超灵”是宇宙中最重要的事物。他们强调个人的重要性，反对精神上的物质主义。对他们来说，个人是一个社会最重要的元素。他们认为自然就是“精神”或“上帝”的象征，它是有生命的，而上帝又无处不在。他们认为生与死最基本的真理可以超越感官的世界而获得。艾默生的《自然》被称为是“美国超验主义的宣言”，他的《美国学者》则被认为是美国的“文化独立宣言书”。

6.Local Colorism: The definition of local colorism is made clear by Hamlin Garland in his Crumble Idols, he claims that it has “such quality and texture and background that it could not have been written in any other place or anyone else than a native.” Here “text” refers to the elements which characterizes a local culture, elements such as speech, customs, and mores peculiar to one particular place.And his “background” covers physical setting and those distinctive qualities of landscape which condition human thought and behavior.The ultimate aim of the local colorism is to create the illusion of an indigenous little world with qualities that differs from the world outside.

7.Imagism: It’s a poetic movement of England and the U.S.flourished from 1909 to 1917.The movement insists on the creation of images in poetry by “the direct treatment of the thing” and the economy of wording.The leaders of this movement were Ezra Pound and Amy Lowell.

意象主义：意象主义是在1909到1917年之间在英国和美国的一次诗歌运动。意象主义主张在诗歌通过“直接描写事物”和简介的用词来产生意象，领导人物为庞德和艾米•罗威尔

8.The Harlem Renaiance was a cultural movement that spanned the 1920s.At the time, it was known as the \"New Negro Movement\", of which Harlem was the largest center.Writers and artists emphasized black liberation, retaining black cultural pride, and not giving in to white standards.They began to produce a wide variety of fine and highly original works dealing with African-American life.These works attracted many black readers.New to the wider culture, they also attracted commercial publishers and a large white readership.Writers aociated with the Harlem Renaiance include Langston Hughes Who wrote The Weary Blues.HR was more than just a literary movement in AM history.9.Free Verse: Verse that has either no metrical pattern or an irregular pattern.

自由诗：按照语言的抑扬顿挫和意象模式，而不是按照固定韵律写出的诗。它的韵律建立在音素、语词、短语、句子和段落等形式的基础上，而不是建立在音步传统格律单位上。因此，自由诗消除了很多不自然的成分和诗体表现的某些审美差距。20世纪初，在英国诗法中自由诗已经流行。

10.Blank verse: Verse written in unrhymed iambic pentameter.

素体诗：用五音步抑扬格写的无韵诗。

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