[转载]英美文学术语
2013-11-17 18:58阅读：
文学术语汇编1
1.Literature of the absurd:
(荒诞派文学) The term
is applied to a number of
works in drama and prose
fiction which have in common
the sense that the human
condition is essentially absurd,
and that this condition can
be adequately represented only
in works of literature that
are themselves absurd. The
current movement emerged in
France after the Second World
War, as a rebellion against
essential beliefs and values of
traditional culture
and traditional literature. They
hold the belief that a
human being is an isolated
existent who is cast into
an alien universe and the
human life in its fruitless
search for purpose and meaning
is both anguish and absurd.
2.Theater of the absurd:
(荒诞派戏剧) belongs to
literature of the absurd. Two
representatives of this school
are Eugene Ionesco, French
author of The Bald Soprano
(1949) (此作品中文译名<秃头歌女>),
and Samuel Beckett, Irish author
of Waiting for Godot (1954)
(此作品是荒诞派戏剧代表作<等待戈多>).
They project the irrationalism,
helplessness and absurdity of
life in dramatic forms that
reject realistic settings, logical
reasoning, or a coherently
evolving plot.
3.Black comedy or black
humor: (黑色幽默) it mostly
employed to describe baleful,
naïve, or inept characters in
a fantastic or nightmarish
modern world playing out their
roles in what Ionesco called
a “tragic farce”, in which
the events are often
simultaneously comic, horrifying, and
absurd. Joseph Heller’s Catch-22
(美国著名作家约瑟夫海勒<二十二条军规>)
can be taken as an
example of the employment of
this technique.
文学术语汇编2
4. Aestheticism or the
Aesthetic Movement（唯美主义）: it began
to prevail in Europe at
the middle of the 19th
century. The theory of “art
for art’s sake” was first
put forward by some French
artists. They declared that art
should serve no religious, moral
or social purpose. The two
most important representatives of
aestheticists in English literature
are Walt Pater and Oscar
Wilde.
5. Allegory（寓言）: a tale
in verse or prose in
which characters, actions, or
settings represent abstract ideas
or moral qualities, such as
John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s
Progress. An allegory is a
story with two meanings, a
literal meaning and a symbolic
meaning.
6. Fable（寓言）: is a
short narrative, in prose or
verse, that exemplifies an
abstract moral thesis or
principle of human behavior.
Most common is the beast
fable, in which animals talk
and act like the human
types they represent. The fables
in Western cultures derive
mainly from the stories
attributed to Aesop, a Greek
slave of the sixth century
B. C.
7. Parable（寓言）: is a
very short narrative about human
beings presented so as to
stress analogy with a general
lesson that the narrator is
trying to bring home to
his audience. For example, the
Bible contains lots of parables
employed by Jesus Christ to
make his flock understand his
preach.
(注意以上三个词在汉语中都翻译成语言，但是内涵并不相同，不要搞混)
8. Alliteration（头韵）: the repetition
of the initial consonant sounds.
In Old English alliterative
meter, alliteration is the
principal organizing device of
the verse line, such as
in Beowulf.
9. Consonance is
the repetition of a sequence
of two or more consonants
but with a change in the
intervening vowel, such as “live
and love”.
10. Assonance is
the repetition of identical or
similar vowel, especially in
stressed syllables, in a
sequence of nearby words, such
as “child of silence”.
11. Allusion （典故）is a reference
without explicit identification, to
a literary or historical person,
place, or event, or to
another literary work or
passage. Most literary allusions
are intended to be recognized
by the generally educated
readers of the author’s time,
but some are aimed at a
special group.
12. Ambiguity（复义性）: Since William
Empson（燕卜荪） published Seven Types of
Ambiguity（《复义七型》）,
the term has been widely
used in criticism to identify
a deliberate poetic device: the
use of a single word or
expression to signify two or
more distinct references, or to
express two or more diverse
attitudes or feeling.
文学术语汇编3
13. Antihero（反英雄）：the chief character in
a modern novel or play
whose character is totally
different from the traditional
heroes. Instead of manifesting
largeness, dignity, power, or
heroism, the antihero is petty,
passive, ineffectual or dishonest.
For example, the heroine of
Defoe’s Moll Flanders is a
thief and a
prostitute.
14. Antithesis（对照）：(a figure of speech)An
antithesis is often expressed in
a balanced sentence, that is,
a sentence in which identical
or similar syntactic structure
is used to express contrasting
ideas. For example, “Marriage
has many pains, but
celibacy（独身生活）has no
pleasures.” by Samuel Johnson
obviously employs antithesis.
15. Archaism（拟古）：the literary use of
words and expressions that have
become obsolete in the common
speech of an era. For
example, the translators of the
King James Version of Bible
gave weight and dignity to
their prose by employing
archaism.
16. Atmosphere（氛围）: the
prevailing mood or feeling of
a literary work. Atmosphere is
often developed, at least in
part, through descriptions of
setting. Such descriptions help
to create an emotional climate
to establish the reader’s
expectations and attitudes.
文学术语汇编4
17. Ballad（民谣）：it is a song,
transmitted orally, which tells
a story. It originated and
was communicated orally among
illiterate or only partly
literate people. It exists in
many variant forms. The most
common stanza form, called
ballad stanza is a quatrain
in alternate four- and
three-stress lines; usually only
the second and fourth lines
rhyme. Although many traditional
ballads probably originated in
the late Middle Age, they
were not collected and printed
until the eighteenth
century.
18. Climax：as a rhetorical device
it means an ascending sequence
of importance. As a literary
term, it can also refer
to the point of greatest
intensity, interest, or suspense
in a story’s turning point.
The action leading to the
climax and the simultaneous
increase of tension in the
plot are known as the
rising action. All action after
the climax is referred to
as the falling action, or
resolution. The term crisis is
sometimes used interchangeably with
climax.
19. Anticlimax（突降）：it denotes a writer’s
deliberate drop from the serious
and elevated to the trivial
and lowly, in order to
achieve a comic or satiric
effect. It is a rhetorical
device in English.
20. Beat Generation（垮掉一代）：it refers to a
loose-knit group of poets and
novelists, writing in the second
half of the 1950s and
early 1960s, who shared a
set of social attitudes
– antiestablishment,
antipolitical, anti-intellectual, opposed
to the prevailing cultural,
literary, and moral values, and
in favor of unfettered
self-realization and self-expression.
Representatives of the group
include Allen Ginsberg, Jack
Kerouac and William Burroughs.
And most famous literary
creations produced by this group
should be Allen Ginsberg’s long
poem Howl and Jack Kerouac’s
On the Road.
文学术语汇编5
21. Biography（传记）：a
detailed account of a person’s
life written by another person,
such as Samuel Johnson’s Lives
of the English Poets and
James Boswell’s Life of Samuel
Johnson.
22. Autobiography（自传）：a
person’s account of his or
her own life, such as
Benjamin Franklin’s
autobiography.
23. Blank
verse（无韵体）: Verse written
in unrhymed iambic pentameter.
It is the verse form used
in some of the greatest
English poetry, including that
of William Shakespeare and John
Milton.
24. A
parody（模仿）imitates
the serious manner and
characteristic features of a
particular literary work, or the
distinctive style of a
particular author, or the
typical stylistic and other
features of a serious literary
genre, and deflates the original
by applying the imitation to
a lowly or comically
inappropriate subject.
文学术语汇编6
25. Celtic Revival
also known as the Irish
Literary Renaissance （爱尔兰文艺复兴）identifies
the remarkably creative period
in Irish literature from about
1880 to the death of
William Butler Yeats in 1939.
The aim of Yeats and
other early leaders of the
movement was to create a
distinctively national literature by
going back to Irish history,
legend, and folklore, as well
as to native literary models.
The major writers of this
movement include William Butler
Yeats, Lady Gregory, John
Millington Synge and Sean
O’Casey and so on.
26. Characters（人物）are the persons
represented in a dramatic or
narrative work, who are
interpreted by the reader as
being endowed with particular
moral, intellectual, and emotional
qualities by inferences from the
dialogues, actions and motivations.
E. M. Forster divides characters
into two types: flat character,
which is presented without much
individualizing detail; and round
character, which is complex in
temperament and motivation and
is represented with subtle
particularity.
27. Chivalric Romance (or
medieval romance) （骑士传奇或中世纪传奇）is a type
of narrative that developed in
twelfth-century France, spread to
the literatures of other
countries. Its standard plot is
that of a quest undertaken
by a single knight in
order to gain a lady’s
favor; frequently its central
interest is courtly love,
together with tournaments fought
and dragons and monsters slain.
It stresses the chivalric ideals
of courage, loyalty, honor,
mercifulness to an opponent, and
elaborate manners.
28. Comedy:（喜剧）in general, a
literary work that ends happily
with a healthy, amicable
armistice between the protagonist
and society.
29. Farce （闹剧）is a type
of comedy designed to provoke
the audience to simple and
hearty laughter. To do so
it commonly employs highly
exaggerated types of characters
and puts them into improbable
and ludicrous situations.
30. Confessional poetry（自白派诗歌） designates a
type of narrative and lyric
verse, given impetus by Robert
Lowell’s Life Studies, which
deals with the facts and
intimate mental and physical
experiences of the poet’s own
life. Confessional poetry was
written in rebellion against the
demand for impersonality by T.
S. Elliot and the New
Criticism. The representative writers
of confessional school include
Robert Lowell, Anne Sexton and
Sylvia Plath and so
on.
31. Critical Realism:（批判现实主义）The critical
realism of the 19th century
flourished in the fouties and
in the beginning of fifties.
The realists first and foremost
set themselves the task of
criticizing capitalist society from
a democratic viewpoint and
delineated the crying contradictions
of bourgeois reality. But they
did not find a way to
eradicate social evils. Representative
writers of this trend include
Charles Dickens and William
Makepeace Thackeray and so on.
32. Drama:（戏剧）The form of
composition designed for performance
in the theater, in which
actors take the roles of
the characters, perform the
indicated action, and utter the
written dialogue. (The common
alternative name for a dramatic
composition is a play.)
文学术语汇编7
33. Dramatic Monologue:（戏剧独白）a monologue is
a lengthy speech by a
single person. Dramatic monologue
does not designate a component
in a play, but a type
of lyric poem that was
perfected by Robert Browning. By
using dramatic monologue, a
single person, who is patently
not the poet, utters the
speech that makes up the
whole of the poem, in a
specific situation at a critical
moment. For example, Robert
Browning’s famous poem “My Last
Duchess” was written in dramatic
monologue.
34. Elegy（哀歌或挽歌）：a poem of mourning,
usually over the death of
an individual. An elegy is
a type of lyric poem,
usually formal in language and
structure, and solemn or even
melancholy in tone.
35. Enlightenment（启蒙运动）：The name applied to
an intellectual movement which
developed in Western Europe
during the seventeenth century
and reached its height in
the eighteenth. The common
element was a trust in
human reason as adequate to
solve the crucial problems and
to establish the essential norms
in life, together with the
belief that the application of
reason was rapidly dissipating
the remaining feudal traditions.
It influenced lots of famous
English writers especially those
neoclassic writers, such as
Alexander Pope.
36. Epic（史诗）：it is a long verse
narrative on a serious subject,
told in a formal and
elevated style, and centered on
a heroic or quasi-divine figure
on whose actions depends the
fate of a tribe, a
nation, or the human
race.
37. Epiphany:（顿悟）In the early
draft of A Portrait of
the Artist as a Young
Man, James Joyce employed this
term to signify a sudden
sense of radiance and revelation
that one may feel while
perceiving a commonplace object.
“Epiphany” now has become the
standard term for the
description, frequent in modern
poetry and prose fiction, of
the sudden flare into revelation
of an ordinary object or
scene.
38.
Epithet（移就）: as
a term in criticism, epithet
denotes an adjective or
adjectival phrase used to define
a distinctive quality of a
person or thing. This method
was widely employed in ancient
epics. For example, in Homer’s
epic, the epithet like “the
wine-dark sea” can be found
everywhere.
39. Essay:（散文）any short
composition in prose that
undertakes to discuss a matter,
express a point of view,
persuade us to accept a
thesis on any subject, or
simply entertain. The essay can
be divided as the formal
essay and the informal essay
(familiar essay).
40. Euphemism（委婉语）: An inoffensive
expression used in place of
a blunt one that is felt
to be disagreeable or
embarrassing, such as “pass
away” instead of “die”
41. Expressionism（表现主义）：a German movement in
literature and the other arts
which was at its height
between 1910 and 1925
– that is,
in the period just before,
during, and after WWⅠ. The
expressionist artist or writer
undertakes to express a personal
vision – usually a troubled
or tensely emotional vision –
of human life and human
society. This is done by
exaggerating and distorting. We
recognize its effects, direct or
indirect, on the writing and
staging of such plays as
Arthur Miller’s Death of a
Salesman as well as on
the theater of the
absurd.
42. Free verse（自由体诗）：Like traditional verse, it
is printed in short lines
instead of with the continuity
of prose, but it differs
from such verse by the
fact that its rhythmic pattern
is not organized into a
regular metrical form
– that is,
into feet, or recurrent units
of weak and strong stressed
syllables. Most free verse also
has irregular line lengths, and
either lacks rhyme or else
uses it only occasionally. Walt
Whitman is a representative who
employed this poem form
successfully.
文学术语汇编8
43. Gothic novel:（哥特式小说）It is a
type of prose fiction. The
writers of this type of
fictions mostly set their
stories in the medieval period
and in a Catholic country,
especially Italy or Spain. The
locale was often a gloomy
castle. The typical story
focused on the sufferings
imposed on an innocent heroine
by a cruel villain. This
type of fictions made bountiful
use of ghosts, mysterious
disappearances, and other supernatural
occurrences. The principle aim
of such novels was to
evoke chilling terror and the
best of this type opened
up to the fiction the
realm of the irrational and
of the perverse impulses and
nightmarish terrors that lie
beneath the orderly surface of
the civilized mind. Some famous
novelists liked to employ some
Gothic elements in their novels,
such as Emily Bronte’s Wuthering
Heights.
44. Graveyard poets（墓园派诗歌）: A term
applied to eighteenth-century poets
who wrote meditative poems,
usually set in a graveyard,
on the theme of human
mortality, in moods which range
from pensiveness to profound
gloom. The vogue resulted in
one of the most widely
known English poems, Thomas
Gray’s “Elegy Written in a
Country Churchyard”.
45. Harlem Renaissance（哈莱姆文艺复兴）：a period of remarkable
creativity in literature, music,
dance, painting, and sculpture
by African-Americans, from the
end of the First World
War in 1917 through the
1920s. As a result of the
mass migrations to the urban
North in order to escape
the legal segregation of the
American South, and also in
order to take advantage of
the jobs opened to African
Americans at the beginning of
the War, the population of
the region of Manhattan known
as Harlem became almost
exclusively Black, and the vital
center of African American
culture in America. Distinguished
writers who were part of
the movement included Langston
Hughes and Jean Toomer. The
Great Depression of 1929 and
the early 1930s brought the
period of buoyant Harlem culture
– which had been fostered
by prosperity in the publishing
industry and the art world
– effectively to an
end.
46. Heroic Couplet（英雄双韵体）refers to
lines of iambic pentameter which
rhyme in pairs: aa, bb,
cc, and so on. The
adjective “heroic” was applied
in the later seventeenth century
because of the frequent use
of such couplets in heroic
poems and dramas. This verse
form was introduced into English
poetry by Geoffrey Chaucer. From
the age of John Dryden
through that of Samuel Johnson,
the heroic couplet was the
predominant English measure for
all the poetic kinds; some
poets, including Alexander Pope,
used it almost to the
exclusion of other meters.
47. Hyperbole（夸张）:this figure of
speech called hyperbole is bold
overstatement, or the extravagant
exaggeration of fact or of
possibility. It may be used
either for serious or ironic
or comic effect.
48. Understatement（轻描淡写）：this figure of speech
deliberately represents something as
very much less in magnitude
or importance than it really
is, or is ordinarily considered
to be. The effect is
usually ironic.
49. Imagism（意象派）：it was a poetic vogue
that flourished in England, and
even more vigorously in America,
between the years 1912 and
1917. It was planned and
exemplified by a group of
English and American writers in
London, partly under the
influence of the poetic theory
of T. E. Hulme, as a
revolt against the sentimental
and mannerish poetry at the
turn of the century. The
typical Imagist poetry is
written in free verse and
undertakes to be as precisely
and tersely as possible.
Meanwhile, the Imagist poetry
likes to express the writers’
momentary impression of a visual
object or scene and often
the impression is rendered by
means of metaphor without
indicating a relation. Most
famous Imagist poem, “In a
Station of the Metro”, was
written by Ezra Pound. Imagism
was too restrictive to endure
long as a concerted movement,
but it influenced almost all
modern poets of Britain and
America.
50. Irony（反讽）：This term derives from
a character in a Greek
comedy. In most of the
modern critical uses of the
term “irony”, there remains the
root sense of dissembling or
hiding what is actually the
case; not, however, in order
to deceive, but to achieve
rhetorical or artistic
effects.
51. Local Colorism（地方色彩）was a literary
trend belonging to Realism. It
refers to the detailed
representation in prose fiction
of the setting, dialect,
customs, dress and ways of
thinking and feeling which are
distinctive of a particular
region. After the Civil War
a number of American writers
exploited the literary possibilities
of local color in various
parts of America. The most
famous representative of local
colorism should be Mark Twain
who took his hometown near
the Mississippi as the typical
setting of nearly all his
novels.
52. Lyric（抒情诗）：in the most common
use of the term, a lyric
is any fairly short poems
consisting of the utterance by
a single speaker, who expresses
a state of mind or a
process of perception,
thought and feeling.
