1、American Modernism is a cultural movement which began in the beginning of the 20th century with its core period between World War I and World War II and continuing into the 21st century. I its key elements are experimentation, anti-realism, individualism and a stress on the cerebral 大脑的 rather than
2、emotive aspects. It was a movement of artists and designers who rebelled against late 19th century academic and historical tradition,and embraced the new economic, social and political aspects of the emerging modern world. Among American writers, the best-known Modernists are T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound
3、, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner and so on. The term “the lost generation“ was coined by Gertrude Stein when she commented on Ernest Hemingway and used it to describe the people of the 1920s who rejected American post World War I valuesThe “Lost Generation“ defines a sense of moral loss or aimle
4、ssness apparent in literary figures during the 1920s. The word “lost” not only means many writers depression and disappointment towards the society, but also young peoples who disregards conventional standards of lifestyle, among them, majority took part in World Warand were hurt both in spirit and
5、physic because of American hypocritical democracy and freedom. The main representatives of Lost Generation include T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Ernest Hemingway Transcendentalism is a philosophical and literary movement that flourished in new England from about the early 19th century. It is the summit of
6、 American Romanticism. It holds that one must transcend, in a sense go beyond, logic and experience through intuition in order to find the deepest truths. The Transcendentalists stressed spirit or the Oversoul. They affirmes the role of individual and saw nature as symbolic of the Spirit or God. The
7、 main representatives are Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau and Magart Fuller.American Realism came in the latter half of the nineteenth century as a reaction against Romanticism. It stresses truthful treatment of material. It focuses on commonness of the lives of the common people, and empha
8、sizes objectivity and offers an objective rather than an idealistic view of human nature and human experience. The three dominant figures of the period are William Howells, Mark Twain, and Henry James.Naturalism designates a literary movement in the late 19th to early 20th centuries in France, Ameri
9、ca and England. It was inspired by the principles and the methods of natural science. In literature, naturalism extended the tradition of realism, the major features of naturalism are (1) Humans are controlled by laws of heredity 遗传 and environment. (2) The universe is cold, indifferent and hostile
10、to human desires. (3) Naturalistic writers are pessimistic. They choose their subjects from the lower ranks of the society, and portray misery and poverty of the “underdogs” .The main representatives of Naturalism include O. Henry，Jack London 。Stephen Crane Lost Generation is a literature school ori
11、ginal in American in the twentieth century. Lost Generation refers to the generation after the World War I.The are caught in the war and cut off from the old . Meanwhile, it values and yet unable to come to terms with the new era when civilization had gone mad,meaninfless and futile.It also refers t
12、o the young writers who lived as expatriates in Western Europe for a short time. Besides Hemingway, there is Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, Matthew and many other novelists. The representative works are The Big Money,The Sun Also Rise. The main representatives of Lost Generation include T.S. Eliot Ernest
13、Hemingway American modernism is an artistic and cultural movement in the United States starting at the turn of the 20th century with its core period between World War I and World War II and continuing into the 21st century. Modernism takes the irrational philosophy and the theory of psycho-analysis
14、as its theoretical base. The major themes of the modernist literature are the distorted, alienated and ill relationships between man and nature, man and society, man and man and man and himself. The modernist writers concentrated more on the private than on the public, more on the subjective than on
15、 the objective. They are mainly concerned with the inner being of an individual. In literature, the key people associated with the movement are Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, W.B. Yeats , Virginia Woolf, Robert Frost,and Wallace Stevens. The representative works are The Second Coming by W.B. Yeats, Mrs. Da
16、lloway by Virginia Woolf.American realism was an early 20th century idea in art, music and literature that showed through these different types of work, reflections of the time period. Whether it was a cultural portrayal, or a scenic view of downtown New York City, these images and works of literatu
17、re, music and painting depicted a contemporary view of what was happening; an attempt at defining what was real. In America at the beginning of the 20th century a new generation of painters, writers and journalists were coming of age. Many of the painters felt the influence of older American artists
18、 such as Thomas Eakins, Mary Cassatt, Winslow Homer, Childe Hassam, J. Alden Weir.However they were interested in creating new and more urbane works that reflected city life and a population that was more urban than rural in America as it entered the new century. The representative authors are Mark
19、Twain, Stephen Crane William Dean Howells,.The representative works are works Tom Sawyer , A Modern Instance.Naturalism Naturalism is the outgrowth of literary realism, a prominent literary movement in mid-19th-century France and elsewhere. The term naturalism describes a type of literature that att
20、empts to apply scientific principles of objectivity and detachment to its study of human beings. Unlike realism, which focuses on literary technique, naturalism implies a philosophical position: for naturalistic writers, since human beings are, in Emile Zolas phrase, “human beasts,“ characters can b
21、e studied through their relationships to their surroundings.American naturalismIn literature, it refers to the theory that literary composition should aim at a detached( 客 观 的 ), scientific objectivity( 客 观 事 实 ) in the treatment of natural man. The movement is an outgrowth of 19thcentury scientist
22、thought, following the biological determinism of Darwins theory. It is a more advanced stage of realism toward the close of the 19th century.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.The pessimism and deterministic ideas of naturalism pervaded the works of such American writers as Stephen Crane, Robert Frost, Jack London. Works: Maggie,A Boys Will
