第一篇：美國文學(xué)史的相關(guān)問題

一。超驗主義的特征和影響Features

1.spirit/oversoul(The Oversoul was an all-pervading power for goodness, omnipresent and omnipotent, from which all things came and of which all were a part.It existed in nature and man alike and constituted the chief element of the universe.)

2.importance of individualism(Individual was the most important element of society.)

3.nature – symbol of spirit/God(Nature was not purely matter.It was alive, filled with God’s overwhelming presence.It was garment of the OversoulTherefore it could exercise a healthy and restorative influence on the human mind.“Go back to nature, sink yourself into its influence, and you’ll become spiritually whole again.”)

4.focus in intuition(irrationalism and subconsciousness)

Influence

1.It served as an ethical guide to life for a young nation and brought about the idea that human can be perfected by nature.It stressed religious tolerance, called to throw off shackles of customs and traditions and go forward to the development of a new and distinctly American culture.2.It advocated idealism that was great needed in a rapidly expanded economy where opportunity often became opportunism, and the desire to “get on” obscured the moral necessity for rising to spiritual height.3.It helped to create the first American renaissance – one of the most prolific period in American literature.二。3.Comparison(比較): Whitman vs.Dickinson

1.Similarities:(1)Thematically,? they both extolled, in their different ways, an emergent America, its expansion, its individualism and its Americanness, their poetry being part of “American Renaissance”.(2)Technically, they both added to the literary? independence of the new nation by breaking free of the convention of the iambic pentameter and exhibiting a freedom in form unknown before: they were pioneers in American poetry.2.differences:(1)Whitman seems to keep his eye? on society at large;Dickinson explores the inner life of the individual.(2)Whereas Whitman is “national” in his outlook, Dickinson is “regional”.?(3)Dickinson has the “catalogue technique”(direct, simple style)which? Whitman doesn’t have.三。4.Comparison of the three “giants” of American Realism（三個的比較）

1.Theme: Howells? – middle class, James – upper class?,Twain – lower class?2.Technique: Howells – smiling/genteel realism，James –? psychological realism，Twain – local colourism and colloquialism3.William Dean Howells – “Dean of American Realism”(1)①Realistic principles：a.Realism is “fidelity to experience and probability of motive”.b.The aim is “talk of some ordinary traits of American life”.c.Man in his natural and unaffected dullness was the object of Howells’s fictional representation.d.Realism is by no means mere photographic pictures of externals but includes a central concern with “motives” and psychological conflicts.e.He condemns novels of sentimentality and morbid self-sacrifice, and avoids such themes as illicit love.f.Authors should minimize plot and the artificial ordering of the sense of something “desultory, unfinished, imperfect”.g.Characters should have solidity of specification and be real.h.Interpreting sympathetically the “common feelings of commonplace people” was best suited as a technique to express the spirit of America.i.He urged writers to winnow tradition and write in keeping with current humanitarian ideals.j.Truth is the highest beauty, but it includes the view that morality penetrates all things.k.With regard to literary criticism, Howells felt that the literary critic should not try to impose arbitrary or subjective evaluations on books but should follow the detached scientist in accurate description, interpretation, and classification②Aesthetic ideas：a.The aim of novel: represent lifeb.Common, even ugly side of lifec.Social function of artd.Avoiding omniscient point of viewPoint of view：a.Psychological analysis, forefather of stream of consciousness b.Psychological realismc.Highly-refined languageStyle

– “stylist” a.Language: highly-refined, polished, insightful, accurate b.Vocabulary: large c.Construction: complicated, intricate③style

(1)colloquial language, vernacular language, dialects(2)local colour(3)syntactic feature:

sentences are simple, brief, sometimes ungrammatical(4)humour(5)tall tales(highly exaggerated)(6)social criticism(satire on the different ugly things in society)

四?，F(xiàn)代主義和后現(xiàn)代主義的不同Tell the difference between Modernism and Post-Modernism in American literature.Time：Modernism—before the Second World War(1939—1945)Postmodernism—after the Second World War(1939—1945)

Modernism: ①Tends to present a fragmented view of human subjectivity and history, but presents that fragmentation as something tragic, something to be mourned as a loss②Modernists uphold the idea that art can provide unity, coherence and meaning which has been lost in most of modern life ③Knowledge is scientific: learn things just to know them Post modernism: ①Celebrates, not mourns, the idea of fragmentation or incoherence ② The idea of not to pretend that art can make meaning, but let’s just play with nonsense③Knowledge becomes functional: learn things to use the information

第二篇：美國文學(xué)史梗概

美國文學(xué)史梗概

一、殖民地時代和美國建國初期

最早來自這片新大陸的歐洲移民主要是定居在新英格蘭的清教徒和馬薩諸塞的羅馬天主教徒，二者雖然在教義上有很多不同之處，但他們都信奉加爾文主義：人生在世只是為了受苦受難，而他們唯一的希望是爭做上帝的“選民”，死后進(jìn)天國，相信“原罪”。這時的文學(xué)作品也主要反映了這些思想，和歐洲文學(xué)一脈相承。

代表作家：考頓·馬瑟，喬納森·愛德華茲，安妮·布拉茲特里特，愛德華·泰勒。

二、18世紀(jì)獨立戰(zhàn)爭勝利后，美國經(jīng)濟(jì)社會進(jìn)入穩(wěn)步發(fā)展時期

這一時期是啟蒙主義文學(xué)運動的時期，主要文學(xué)指導(dǎo)思想是“自然神論（”Deism），強調(diào)理性，認(rèn)為“宇宙的運動始于上帝”；自然萬物是“神的體現(xiàn)”，人生在世，不再是受苦受難以換取來世的新生，而是要消滅種族、性別和信仰的不平等，建立自己的“人間樂園”。

主要特點：作家多是美國獨立戰(zhàn)爭的積極擁護(hù)者和參加者；文學(xué)指導(dǎo)思想除了自然神論之外還有“唯理主義”和“新古典主義”，18世紀(jì)末還開始萌發(fā)了“早期浪漫主義”；文學(xué)種類主要有歷史、日記和政論，也有詩歌，諷刺小品和勸人向善的故事，18世紀(jì)末還產(chǎn)生了話劇。

啟蒙運動中出現(xiàn)大量優(yōu)秀的散文作品，并多出自開國元勛之手，如本杰明·富蘭克林，托馬斯·潘恩，以及托馬斯·杰斐遜。

三、19世紀(jì)南北戰(zhàn)爭時期

這一時期的文學(xué)先后發(fā)展了浪漫主義，現(xiàn)實主義和自然主義。

浪漫主義：18世紀(jì)70年代－19世紀(jì)30年代是浪漫主義發(fā)展的初期，南北戰(zhàn)爭前30年（1830－1860）為極盛時期，南北戰(zhàn)爭后10年逐漸衰微并向現(xiàn)實主義過度。浪漫主義注重“想象”、“激情”和“個性解放”，認(rèn)為人本質(zhì)是善良的，鏟除邪惡和拯救人類的手段是拋棄一切傳統(tǒng)束縛，摧毀一切陳規(guī)陋習(xí)而回歸到“自然的原始狀態(tài)中去。超驗主義是其一分支，強調(diào)“天人合一”，認(rèn)為上帝、人類和自然都是“超靈”的組成部分。

代表作家及作品：愛默生《自然》，索羅《瓦爾登湖》，霍桑《紅字》，麥爾維爾《白鯨》，惠特曼《草葉集》。

現(xiàn)實主義：是美國政治、經(jīng)濟(jì)發(fā)展的必然產(chǎn)物，西部開拓運動、工業(yè)化、科學(xué)技術(shù)的進(jìn)步都促進(jìn)了其發(fā)展?，F(xiàn)實主義的作家一般為實用主義和民主主義的信徒，他們追求和反映的是具有顯而易見效果并被經(jīng)驗證實了的相對真理，他們創(chuàng)作題

材的是普通人平常事，是中產(chǎn)階級藝術(shù)的最高表現(xiàn)。

豪威爾斯是現(xiàn)實主義的奠基人，他發(fā)現(xiàn)了馬克·吐溫，鼓勵和幫助了亨利·詹姆斯，影響了自然主義作家弗蘭·克諾里斯和斯蒂芬·克萊恩。

自然主義：是現(xiàn)實主義的發(fā)展和繼續(xù)，是現(xiàn)實主義與19世紀(jì)科學(xué)所強調(diào)的“分析法”和“因果律”互相結(jié)合的產(chǎn)物，有時被稱為“悲觀的現(xiàn)實主義”，認(rèn)為人是一種軟弱無能的動物，被置于機械化的世界匯總而成為這一世界中難以駕御的幾種勢力（包括環(huán)境、自然、遺傳等）的犧牲品

其里程碑是：19世紀(jì)70、80年代左拉的小說的出版，90年代克萊恩的《紅色英勇徽章》，1900年德萊塞《嘉莉妹妹》，1912年《金融家》，1925年《美國的悲劇》。

四、20世紀(jì)美國文學(xué)經(jīng)歷了兩次世界大戰(zhàn)，跨越了三個時代

a)斯文時代（1880－1914，The Genteel Age）：這是一個跨世紀(jì)的，美國經(jīng)濟(jì)繁榮的時代。此時的美國文學(xué)與歐洲文學(xué)之間有著某種曖昧關(guān)系，本質(zhì)上是歐洲式的和美國的小歐洲新英格蘭式的。此時以西奧多·羅斯福為代表的民族主義在文學(xué)上有著強烈的反映，人們還念念不忘美國與歐洲的文化聯(lián)系與差異。

b)爵士時代（1918－1929, The Jazz Age）：一戰(zhàn)后，產(chǎn)生了一代不受約束，幻想破滅了和玩世不恭的年青人，被格特魯?shù)隆に固挂蚍Q為“迷惘的一代”。

c)經(jīng)濟(jì)蕭條時代（1929－1941，The Depression Era）：20年代的玩世不恭的態(tài)度在此時轉(zhuǎn)化為一種憤憤不平的悲觀主義，30年代美國文學(xué)轉(zhuǎn)向了“社會抗議文學(xué)”，“心理之學(xué)”和追求人的精神世界。

美國文學(xué)先后經(jīng)歷了現(xiàn)代主義，和后現(xiàn)代主義思潮：

現(xiàn)代主義：一戰(zhàn)后到50年代，是一場自覺地反傳統(tǒng)的文學(xué)藝術(shù)運動，表現(xiàn)無意識的荒謬心態(tài)，如斯坦因，喬伊斯的小說，運用意識流的手法，如?？思{的《喧嘩與騷動》和《我彌留之際》；在組織構(gòu)架上偏愛用神話，如艾略特的《荒原》，龐德的《詩章》，喬伊斯的《尤利西斯》；風(fēng)格上以“意象”為主，語言上主張簡潔、準(zhǔn)確；題材上主要反映一戰(zhàn)參與者的生活、思想、感情和前途命運，如多斯珀索斯的《三個士兵》，海明威的《太陽照樣升起》，《永別了，武器》，描寫了精神崩潰與幻想破滅的一代人。

邪惡是這是文學(xué)的主要題材之一，艾略特、弗羅斯特、奧尼爾、卡明斯、埃利森的作品中都有體現(xiàn)。

后現(xiàn)代主義：在二戰(zhàn)后，納粹極權(quán)主義大屠殺、原子彈、自然環(huán)境的破壞、世界人口過剩和饑荒造成西方人的精神摧殘與危機，作家繼續(xù)進(jìn)行現(xiàn)代主義反傳統(tǒng)的文藝實驗，而且企圖與當(dāng)時業(yè)已形成規(guī)范的現(xiàn)代主義文藝形式?jīng)Q裂。后現(xiàn)代主義

主張否定社會秩序，表現(xiàn)支離破碎的世界，認(rèn)為文藝批評就是現(xiàn)象學(xué)形式的理論。此時，美國黑人文學(xué)，猶太文學(xué)，南方文學(xué)，反戰(zhàn)文學(xué)和女權(quán)主義文學(xué)競相發(fā)展。

小說家托馬斯·品欽，詩人西爾維亞·普萊斯，戲劇家艾瑪穆·阿米里·巴拉卡為典型的后現(xiàn)代主義作家。

索爾·貝婁，艾倫·金斯伯格，拉爾夫·埃里森，田納西·威廉斯，阿瑟·密勒和愛德華·阿爾比是從現(xiàn)代主義向后現(xiàn)代主義過渡的著名作家。

20世紀(jì)美國文學(xué)的兩個特征：

1.現(xiàn)代主義作家一般是反對傳統(tǒng)觀念而提倡“個人主義”的或者說他們打破了美國社會、道德和文學(xué)的常規(guī)。

2.現(xiàn)代作家潛心探索一種真正屬于美國人民的寫作手法和語言風(fēng)格，他們試圖以純美國的方式進(jìn)行創(chuàng)作。

第三篇：美國文學(xué)史名詞解釋

It were flourishing from the beginning of 17th to the middle period of 18th.They stressed predestination, original sin, total depravity, and limited atonement from God?s grace.They went to America to prove that they were God?s chosen people who would enjoy God?s blessings on earth and in Heaven.Finally, they built a way of life that stressed hard work, thrift, piety, and sobriety.Both doctrinaire and an opportunist.Its Influence on literary were as follows:（影響）(1)American Literature is based on a myth------the Biblical myth of the Garden of Eden.(2)The American Puritan?s metaphorical made of perception----symbolism.The representatives were Edwards(The Freedom of the Will), Franklin(On the Art of Self-improvement), Crevecoeur(Letters from an American Farmer).代表作家及代表作：Captain John SmithTrue Relation of Virginia(1608)

Anne Bradstreet“To My Dear and Loving Husband”

Benjamin Franklin:The Autobiography of Benjamin FranklinRomanticism was a complex artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution.Elements of Romanticism

1.Frontier: vast expanse, freedom, no geographic limitations.2.Optimism: greater than in Europe because of the presence of frontier.不要這么多，我就刪掉了3、4、5條。。

Romantic Attitude

1.Appeals to imagination;use of the “willing suspension of disbelief.”

2.Stress on emotion rather than reason;optimism, geniality.3.Subjectivity: in form and meaning.Characteristics of Romanticism:

a.Romanticism was a rebellion against the objectivity of rationalism.(subjectivity)

b.For romantics, the feelings, intuitions and emotions were more important than reason and common sense.c.They emphasized individualism, placing the individual against the group, against authority.d.The affirmed the inner life of the self, and wanted to be free to develop and express his own inner thoughts.e.Typical literary forms of romanticism include ballad, lyric, sentimental comedy, problem novel, historical novel ,gothic romance, metrical romance, sonnet.Representatives:

? New England Poets: William Cullen Bryant;Henry Wadsworth Longfellow;

? Writers: James Fenimaore Cooper, Washington Irving“The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Grayon”

? 浪漫主義的影響： The romantic exaltation of the individual suited the nation?s revolutionary heritage and its

frontier egalitarianism.As a philosophical and literary movement, transcendentalism flourished in New England from 1830s to the Civil War.Its doctrines found their greatest literary advocates in Emerson who published ?Nature? in 1836 which represented a new way of intellectual thinking in America and presented?The Universe is composed of Nature and the Soul, Spirit is present everywhere.? and romantic idealism on Puritan soil as well as Thoreau.Emerson?s Nature has been called the “Manifesto of American Transcendentalism”.As a philosophy, transcendentalism was neither logical nor systematical.It exalted feeling over reason, individual expression over the restraints of law and custom.Yet transcendentalism was a powerful expression of the intellectual mood of the age.What is Transcendentalism?

In the realm of art and literature it meant the shattering of pseudo-classic rules and forms in favor of a spirit of freedom, the creation of works filled with the new passion for nature and common humanity and incarnating a fresh sense of the wonder, promise, and romance of life.Major Concepts(main ideas)

1, ?transcend ere?: to rise above, to pass beyond the limits

2, Believe people could learn things both from the outside world by means of the 5 senses and from the inner world by intuition.3, It placed spirit first and matter second

4, It took nature as symbolic of spirit or God.5, It emphasized the significance of the individual

6, Religion was an emotional communication between an individual soul and the universal ?oversoul?.Major writers and Literary Works

Ralph Waldo Emerson(1803----1882)Self-Reliance

Henry David Thoreau(1817----1862)Walden

超驗主義的影響：it could exercise a healthy and restorative influence on the human mind.The natural implication that things in nature tended to become symbolic, and the physical world was a symbol of the spiritual.This in turn added to the1

tradition of literary symbolism in American literature.the ideas it represented have remained a strong influence on great American writers from the days of Hawthorne and Whitman to the present.——latter half of the nineteenth century

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 expresses the concern for commonplace and the low, and it offers an objective rather than an idealistic view of human nature and human experience.Major Features:

1）Realism is the theory of writing in which familiar aspects of contemporary life and everyday scenes are represented in a straightforward or mother-of-fact manner.2）Open ending(means real life is complex and cannot be fully understood)

3）Focuses on the lives of the common people

4）Emphasize objectivity

Representatives:

Howells, Henry James

代表作：William Dean HowellsThe Rise of Silas Lapham

Henry James“The American”、“Daisy Miller”、“ in the Portrait of a Lady”

現(xiàn)實主義影響：Realism was a reaction against Romanticism and paved the way to Modernism。

thlocal colorism is a type of writing that was popular in the late 19(1860s—1870s).Local Color Fiction:

Local colorism as a trend became dominant in American literature in the late 1860s and early 1870.The frontier humorists who had been popular with their “tall tales” before the Civil War paved the way for local color fiction.Basic Features

Local color fiction presents a locale which is distinguished form the outside world.Local color fiction describes the exotic and the picturesque.It describes things that are not common in other regions.Local color fiction also attempts to show things as they as they are.Local color fiction glorifies the past.(nostalgic about the past)

Local color fiction stresses the influence of setting on character.Masters：

Mark Twain（筆名）

Samuel Langhorne Clemens

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

6.American naturalism

American naturalism was a new and harsher realism, and like realism, it had come from Europe.Naturalism was an outgrowth of realism that responded to theories in science, psychology, human behavior and social thought current in the late nineteenth century.Background:

In the last decade of the nineteenth century, with the development of industry and modern science, intelligent minds began to see that man was no longer a free ethical being in a cold, indifferent and essentially Godless universe.In this chance world he was both helpless and hopeless.Major Features:

Humans are controlled by laws of heredity and environment

The universe is cold, godless, indifferent and hostile to human desires.Representatives:

The pessimism and deterministic ideas of naturalism pervaded the works of such American writers as Stephen Crane,Crane?s is the first American naturalism work.Norris?s McTeague is the manifesto of American naturalism.Dreiser?s is the work in which naturalism attained maturity.These writers? detailed description of the lives of the downtrodden and the abnormal, their frank threatment of human passion and sexuality, and their portrayal of men and women overwhelmed by blind forces of nature still exert a powerful influence on modern writers.Influence:

Although naturalist literature described the world with sometimes brutal realism, it sometimes also aimed at bettering the world through social reform.This combination of grim reality and desire for improvements is typical of America as it moved into the twentieth century.A poetic movement of England and the U.S.that 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.“poetic techniques to record exactly the momentary impressions”

Major features:

---it was one of the most essential technique of writing poetry in modern period.---with a spirit of revolt against conventions, imagism was anti—romantic and anti-victorian

---In a sense, imagism was equivalent to naturalism in fiction

---it produced free verse without imposing a rhythmical pattern.---Imagism tried to record objective observations of an object or a situation without interpretation or comment by the poet.---it produced free verse without imposing a rhythmical pattern.---Imagism tried to record objective observations of an object or a situation without interpretation or comment by the poet.The most outstanding figures:

Ezra Pound Amy Lowell Hilda Doolittle

The form of free verse(Ezra Loomis Pound)

影響：.its influence

1)the imagist theories call for brief language, describing the precise picture in as few words as possible.This new way of poetry composition has a lasting influence in the 20th century poetry.2)the second lasting influence of Imagism is the form of free verse.There are no metrical rules.There are apparent indiscriminate line breaks, which reflects the discontinuity of life itself.That is art of the poem.The poet uses the length of the lines and the strange groupings of words to show how life itself can be broken up into somehow meaningless clustersFree verse was originated by a group of French poets of the late 19th century.Poetry that is based on the irregular rhythmic cadence(韻律)of the recurrence, with variations, of phrases, images, and syntactical(依照句法的)patterns rather than the conventional use of meter（音步）.Rhyme may or may not be present in it, but when it is , it is used with great freedom.Their purpose was to free themselves from the restrictions of formal metrical patterns and to recreate instead the free rhymes of nature period.Walt Whitman?s leaves of grass is perhaps the most notable example.thIt has since been used Ezra Pound, T.S.Eliot and other major American poets of the 20 century.Walt Whiteman?s Leaves of Grass is, perhaps , the most notable example.9.The Lost Generation is a group of expatriate American writers residing primarily in Paris during the 1920s and 1930s.The group was given its name by the American writer Gertrude Stein, who used “a lost generation” to refer to expatriate Americans bitter about their World War I experiences and disillusioned with American society.Hemingway later used the phrase as an epigraph for his novel The Sun Also Rises.It consisted of many influential American writers, including Ernest Hemingway, F.Scott Fitzgerald, William Carlos Williams and Archibald MacLeish.The lost generation is a term first used by Stein to describe the post-war I generation of American writers: men and women haunted by a sense of betrayal and emptiness brought about by the destructiveness of the war.2>full of youthful idealism, these individuals sought the meaning of life, drank excessively, had love affairs and created some of the finest American literature to date.3>the three best-known representatives of lost generation are F.Scott Fitzgerald, Hemingway and John dos Passos.10.The Hemingway hero is an average man of decidedly masculine tastes, sensitive and intelligent, a man of action, and one of few words.That is an individualist keeping emotions under control, stoic and self-disciplined in a dreadful place.These people are usually spiritual strong, people of certain skills, and most of them encounter death many times.The heroes in his book are all have something in common which Hemingway values: they have seen the cold world and for one cause or another, they boldly and courageously face the reality;whatever the result is, they are ready to live with grace under pressure.The Hemingway code hero has an indestructible spirit for his optimistic view of life, though he is pessimistic that is Hemingway.Ernest Hemingway?s “iceberg theory” suggests that the writer include in the text only a small portion of what he knows, leaving about ninety percent of the content a mystery that grows beneath the surface of the writing.If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about he may omit things that will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them.The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water.A good writer does not need to reveal every detail of a character or action

The Jazz Age describes the period of the 1920s and 1930s, the years between World War I and World War II.Particularly in North America.With the rise of the great depression, the values of this age saw much decline.Perhapsthe most representative literary work of the age is American writer Fitzgerald?s The Great Gatsby.Highlighting what some describe as the decadence and hedonism, as well as the growth of individualism.Fitzgerald is largely credited with coining the term” Jazz Age”.

第四篇：美國文學(xué)史論文

以《乞力馬扎羅山的雪》為例淺談海明威作品的悲觀主義

2009級英語專業(yè) 黃娜

從《老人與?！?《太陽照樣升起》,《永別了，武器》到《喪鐘為誰而鳴》,我都能隱隱約約的感覺到海明威在作品中透露出的悲觀。

在幫助海明威獲得羅貝爾文學(xué)獎的《老人與?！分?，海明威極力地把圣地亞哥塑造成一個百折不撓、堅強不屈、敢于面對暴力和死亡的“硬漢子”形象，但是圣地亞哥最終還是沒有獲得大馬哈魚，仍然是悲劇的。又例如海明威在1940年發(fā)表了以西班牙內(nèi)戰(zhàn)為背景的反法西斯主義的長篇小說《喪鐘為誰而鳴》。作品描寫了主人公美國青年喬頓，他志愿參加西班牙人民的反法西斯斗爭，奉命在一支山區(qū)游擊隊的配合下，在指定時間炸毀一座具有戰(zhàn)略意義的橋梁。這本來是英雄史詩般的行為，讀者大多盼望這樣一個偉大的英雄能夠高唱凱歌回到祖國，受到英雄般的待遇，人民需要英雄。但是小說的結(jié)果又是悲觀的。喬頓雖然成功完成了任務(wù)，炸毀了橋梁，但他自己也身負(fù)重傷，在敵強我弱的情況下阻擊敵人，毋庸置疑等待他只有死亡，結(jié)局僑頓確實死了。

這樣的情節(jié)在海明威的作品中很多。但是筆者今天重點談?wù)勗凇镀蛄︸R扎羅山的雪》中海明威這種悲觀主義。

1.故事中透露著對死亡的悲觀。首先聲明我是個樂觀主義者。雖然小

時候這種價值觀的作文，老師一般會發(fā)回重寫。因為這和歌頌美好的生活的主題嚴(yán)重不搭調(diào)。為什么說故事透露出對死亡的悲觀呢？這部《乞力馬扎羅的雪》是海明威晚年的一部短篇小說。故事大致上是對于一個臨死前的人的精彩描述。主要講述一個作家哈里去非洲狩獵,途中汽車拋錨,皮膚被刺劃破,染上壞疽病。他和他的妻子在等待一架飛機來把他送到醫(yī)院治療。故事圍繞“死亡”和“即將死亡”來寫,但根本的主題是哈里回到過去,從過去走到現(xiàn)在的歷程回顧。哈里熱愛這個世界,他有很多經(jīng)歷,跟不同女人的經(jīng)歷,以及自己所從事的不同職業(yè)的經(jīng)歷,他都想寫下來但卻沒來得及寫,他最終沒有能達(dá)到心中的目標(biāo),死前,他悔恨至極。雖然故事說的是哈里，但是可以看出也體現(xiàn)了作者真實情況的反應(yīng)。他和故事主人公有很多相似之處。例如都是作家，都經(jīng)歷了不同的女人，也都是喜愛狩獵，敢于冒險。但是在面對死亡的時候都充滿了恐懼。道出了所有人與生俱來的害怕死亡的事實。

2.文章開始就體現(xiàn)了對生活的悲觀。生活本來可以很美好的?？墒恰镀蛄︸R扎羅的雪》一開篇就把獵隊的所有人送入到絕境，小說的主人公哈里的壞疽危及生命，煩躁不安的他認(rèn)為自己就要死了，而且是由于一點點的小小的疏忽釀成此悲劇。他覺得這樣悄無聲息的，毫無價值的死太冤了。這種故事情節(jié)的設(shè)計固然增加了故事的可看性，但是把生活描述太過于坎坷和悲劇。

3.對人的描寫過于悲觀和狹隘。人本來是偉大的，我喜歡正面描寫的人，堂堂正正，光明磊落。死而后已的形象。但是在故事中哈里由于害怕死亡，所以他恨不得毀掉一切以換取自己的生存，無法容忍別人還在健康的活著，他不停的找機會和海倫吵架，用各種各樣的難聽的、攻擊性的話去刺激她，把自己遭受的一切不行強加在她的身上，而其實這種內(nèi)心的憤怒與發(fā)泄又都源于內(nèi)心的對于死的恐懼，死亡的憂懼?jǐn)_得他五內(nèi)俱焚。他想以寫作掩飾心靈驚顫，想借酒澆滅精神痛苦，想以往日的榮耀抵平今日的失誤，其實這些都沒有用，只是更加使得自己遭受著百般的折磨，墜入毀滅自己的深淵。不可否認(rèn)，任何一個垂死的人，都同哈里一樣，知道死亡近在咫尺的時候，有著無法抗拒的恐懼和對人世間的留戀。

4.把死亡描寫的過于恐懼?？謶謥碓从谌说膬?nèi)心。雖然我們都知道：無論我們?nèi)绾慰範(fàn)?，作為生命、希望，只有死亡具有終結(jié)一切的意義。但是只要我們活著，能做些有意義的事情，死亡就不可怕。故事中哈里等待死亡一步步逼近的時候，他懼怕的過分敏感，毛骨悚然，不禁讓人覺得心疼他，可是死神不管你是否愿意或者是如何掙扎，怎奈恐懼，終將如期降臨在哈里的身上。哈里這樣去對待死亡是完全沒有意義的。

5.反映了海明威的世界觀的局限。從全文的思想意義上看，里面的人物都帶有一定的悲觀主義色彩。主人公哈里，是寫作生涯取得一定成就之后在奢靡中迷失自己的人。但作為一個作家的警覺，他意識到了自己的迷失。他企圖回到非洲，那個曾經(jīng)給過他歷練的地方，找回自己。但其實他明白，過去的自己，再也找不回了。傷口生壞疽而死不是真正的原因，“哀大莫過于心死”，但好在，死的時候他已清醒認(rèn)識了自己，認(rèn)識了人生。

悲觀主義也許就是海明威想要表現(xiàn)的思想之一，也是海明威獨具風(fēng)格的藝術(shù)形式。若干年以后，以硬漢形象著稱的海明威把雙筒獵槍塞進(jìn)自己的嘴里但求一死，也許海明威早在許多年前就借哈里的相同身份體驗了美麗而殘酷的死亡。并以這樣的方式詮釋了其悲觀主義。

第五篇：美國文學(xué)史及選讀名詞解釋

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 dismissed the validity of comforting moral truths.They attempted to achieve extreme objectivity and frankness, presenting characters of low social and economic classes 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 predecessors, 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.美國自然主義：美國自然主義是一種新的、更具批判性的現(xiàn)實主義。美國自然主義是在戰(zhàn)爭和影響人們早期信念的社會**的影響之下形成的。美國的自然主義者往往否定了廣為接受的道德真理的正確性，他們想達(dá)到極端的客觀與直率，他們所展現(xiàn)的人物往往都是下層社會的人，他們的命運受到環(huán)境和遺傳的制約。在反應(yīng)生活方面，自然主義作家往往表現(xiàn)出早期浪漫主義中感傷主義特征，但和浪漫主義不同的是，自然主義者認(rèn)為，世界缺乏道德，人不論男女都沒有自由的意愿，他們的生活都受到遺傳和環(huán)境的控制，人在生前過著悲慘的生活，死后便被人所遺忘。雖然自然主義文學(xué)通過更為苛刻的現(xiàn)實主義手法來展現(xiàn)這個世界，但是他有時也是為了通過社會改革來改善這個世界。

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.美國清教主義：清教主義是新教徒的原來的一個分支——清教徒的行為和信仰。在美國的第一批居民中有很多就是清教徒，他們有著嚴(yán)格的宗教信仰和道德準(zhǔn)則。就像這個詞所暗指的那樣，清教徒們想“清化”他們的宗教信仰和行為習(xí)慣。他們相信宿命論、原罪說、全體墮落和有限的贖罪。作為一種文化遺產(chǎn)，美國清教主義在早期美國人的思想上有著深刻的影響，他對美國文學(xué)的影響也是頗為持久的。

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 expresses the concern for commonplace and the low, and it offers an

objective rather than an idealistic view of human nature and human experience.美國現(xiàn)實主義：在美國文學(xué)史上，內(nèi)戰(zhàn)宣告了浪漫主義的終結(jié)和現(xiàn)實主義的開始?，F(xiàn)實主義反對浪漫主義和感傷主義的謊言，它從一個陌生的世界轉(zhuǎn)向了普通人的真實生活的描寫。它所關(guān)心的是普通的下層勞動人民而非理想中的人類本性和現(xiàn)實經(jīng)歷。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 expression not only possible 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 goodness 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.美國浪漫主義：浪漫主義階段涵蓋了19世紀(jì)前半頁。美國的不斷壯大和發(fā)展以及隨之而來的明珠和平等的思想、工業(yè)化的發(fā)展、西北邊疆的不斷擴(kuò)展和國外的各種影響使浪漫主義作家文學(xué)不但成為一種可能，而且使它成為美國政治獨立后的一種必然。然而，浪漫主義文學(xué)往往有很多共性：他們熱心于道德、相信個人主義價值觀和對世界的直觀感受，并且他們認(rèn)為自然世界是真、善、美的源泉而人類社會則是墮落的根源。在內(nèi)戰(zhàn)以前，浪漫主義價值觀占據(jù)是政治、藝術(shù)、和哲學(xué)等領(lǐng)域，浪漫主義者對個人的贊揚正好迎合了美國的革命遺風(fēng)和邊疆開拓者的品均主義。

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 stressed 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”.美國超驗主義：美國超驗主義出現(xiàn)的19世紀(jì)20年代末期到三十年代，但是它的根源在宗教史上要遠(yuǎn)得多。超驗主義和福音派新教分別是美國清教主義的兩個分支，他們的祖先是17世紀(jì)和18世紀(jì)的加爾文神教。超驗主義者主張文化的復(fù)興，認(rèn)為“超靈”是宇宙中最重要的事物。他們強調(diào)個人的重要性，反對精神上的物質(zhì)主義。對他們來說，個人是一個社會最重要的元素。他們認(rèn)為自然就是“精神”或“上帝”的象征，它是有生命的，而上帝又無處不在。他們認(rèn)為生與死最基本的真理可以超越感官的世界而獲得。艾默生的《自然》被稱為是“美國超驗主義的宣言”，他的《美國學(xué)者》則被認(rèn)為是美國的“文化獨立宣言書”。

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.意象主義：意象主義是在1909到1917年之間在英國和美國的一次詩歌運動。意象主義主張在詩歌通過“直接描寫事物”和簡介的用詞來產(chǎn)生意象，領(lǐng)導(dǎo)人物為龐德和艾米?羅威爾

8.The Harlem Renaissance 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 associated with the Harlem Renaissance 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.自由詩：按照語言的抑揚頓挫和意象模式，而不是按照固定韻律寫出的詩。它的韻律建立在音素、語詞、短語、句子和段落等形式的基礎(chǔ)上，而不是建立在音步傳統(tǒng)格律單位上。因此，自由詩消除了很多不自然的成分和詩體表現(xiàn)的某些審美差距。20世紀(jì)初，在英國詩法中自由詩已經(jīng)流行。

10.Blank verse: Verse written in unrhymed iambic pentameter.素體詩：用五音步抑揚格寫的無韻詩。