英语国家概况名词解释复习范围

英语国家概况名词解释复习范围

1. Puritanism: 清教徒主义

Puritans were those who followed the doctrine of Jonh Calvin and wanted

to purify the Church of England. They believe that human beings were

predestined by God before they were born. Some were God’s chosen people

while others were damned to hell. No church nor good works could save

people. The sign of being God’s elect was the success in his work or

the prosperity in his calling. They also argued that everyone must read

the Bible in order to find God’s will and establish a direct contact

with God. These beliefs had great impact on American culture.

2. The Declaration of Independence : 独立宣言

The Declaration of Independence was mainly drafted by Thomas Jefferson

and adopted by the Congress on July 4, 1776, where the people of 13

English colonies in North America were fighting for their freedom and

independence from the British colonial rule. The document declared

that all men were equal and that they were entitled to have some

unalienable rights such as life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

It also explained the philosophy of government: the powers of

governments came from the consent of the governed and the purpose of

governments were to secure the rights mentioned above. The theory of

polities and the guiding principles of the American Revolution mainly

came from John Lock.

3. George Washington :

George Washington was one of the founding fathers of the American

Republic. He was the Commander-in-chief of the Continental Army in the

War of Independence against the British colonial rule and the first

President of the United States.

4. WASP: The early immigrants were generally known as the White Anglo-Saxon

Protestants because most of them believed in the protestant church. They

played the main role in the founding of the 13 colonies and established

the ruling position of their English language. They transplanted English

values and traditions to the colonies and played the decisive role in

winning independence from England. Today it is estimated that about 33%

of Americans are of British origin.

5. Three Faiths in the US : By the 1950's,the three faiths model of American religion

had developed. American were considered to come in three basic varieties:

protestants, Catholic and Jewish. In terms of numbers, the Protestants

are the strongest, the Catholica are next to the Protestants and the

Jewish are the smallest among the three groups.

6. Religious liberty in the US : The Declaration of Independence guaranteed the

basic right of religious freedom and this right was a political necessity.

The First Amendment to the US Constitution explicitly forbade the federal

government to give special favors to any religion or to hinder the free

practice, or exercise, of religion. When desputes about the relationship

between government and religion arise, American courts must settle them.

But American institutions presuppose a Supreme Being, therefore

Christianity is often, in practice, more favored than other religions.

7. The “Lost Generation”: 迷惘的一代In the aftermath of World War Ⅰ, many

novelists produced a literature of disillusionment. Some lived in Europe.

They were known as the “Lost Generation.” Two of the most

representative writers of the The “Lost Generation” were Hemingway and

Fitzgerald.

8.Hemingway : 海明威 an American writer of fiction who won the Nobel Prize for

literature in 1954 (1899-1961). Among his best booiks were The Sun Also

Rises, A Farewell to Arms and For Whom the Bell Tolls.

9. High education in the US

In America, higher education refers to education on the college level.

America higher education includes four categories of institution .

They are the university , the four-year undergraduate

institution( the college) the technical training institution and the

two-year or community college. Some are supported by public funds and

some by private funds. Many universities and colleges have won

reputations for providing their students with a higher quality of

education. The great majority are generally regarded as quite

satisfactory.

10 The civil rights movement

It is one of the most important of all social movements in the 1960s

in America. Rose Parks’ spontaneous action in 1955 was believed to

be true beginning of the civil rights movement. The black students’

sit-in at a department lunch counter in the North Carolina touched

off the nationwide civil rights movement. During the first half of

the decade, civil rights organizations like the SNCC,CORE,and SCLC

struggled for racial integration by providing leadership, tactics,

network and the people. In the latter half of the decade, some black

organizations changed their nonviolent tactics, and emphasized on

more radical means to end discrimination and raised the self-image

of the blacks. The civil rights movement produced such great leaders

as Martin Luther King.Jr., and Malcolm X, who inspired a generation

of both blacks and whites to devote their lives to fighting for racial

equality in the US.

11. Martin Luther King.Jr.

A black Baptist minister, he was the leader of the Southern Christian

Leadership Conference during the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

To promote his philosophy of nonviolent protest against segregation

and other kinds of social injustice,King organized a series of

“marches”, including the march on Washington of August, 1963, when

King delivered his famous” I Have a

Dream”speech.As a civil rights leader, King worked ont only to end

racial discrimination and poverty , but also to raise the self image

of the blacks.Due to his strong belief in non-violent peaceful

protest,King was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964.He was

assassinated in the city of Memphis in April 1968.

12. The House of Lords and Commons in the UK

The House of Lords

The House of Lords consists of the Lords Spiritual, who are the

Archbishops and most prominent bishops of the Church of England; and

the Lords Temporal , which regers to those lords who either have

inherited the seat from their forefathers or they have been

appointed .The lords mainly represent themselves instead of the

interests of the pubilc.

The House of Commons

The House of Commons is the real center of British life because it

is the place where about 650 elected representatives(Members of

Parliament) make and debate policy. These MPs are elected in the

General Elections and should represent the interests of the people

who vote for them.

13. Romanticism

Roughly the first third of the 19th century makes up English

literat ure’s romantic period. Writers of romantic literature are

more concerned with imagination and feeling than with the power of

reason. A volume of poems called Lyrical Ballads written by William

Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge is regard as the romantic

poetry’s “Declaration of Independence.” Keats, Byron and Shelly,

the three great poets, brought the Romantic Movement to its height.

The spirit of Romanticism also occurred in the novel.

14. Shakespeare

William Shakespeare (1561-1616) was a famous dramatist and poet. He

created a large number of masterpieces, including comedy, tragedy and

historical dramas. Shakespeare’s plays fall into categories, or

classes. He excels in each kind. The tragedies include Romeo and

Juliet, Hamlet , Othello, King lear, and Macbeth. Among the comedies

are The Taming of the Shrew, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Twlfth Night ,

and The Tempest.His history plays, based on English history, include

Richard III, Richard II, Henry IV, and Henry V.

16. Terra Nullius

Terra Nullius is from Latin. It means a land that is owned by no one. The British declared the Australian continent Terra Nullius to

justify their invasion of the indigenous people’s land. It served

to legitimize their taking possession of the land and devalue the

indigenous people as uncivilized and not fully human.

17. The “Washminster” form policy in Australia

The “Washminster” form of polity is adopted by the Australian government. It is a mixture of the US Washington system of government

and the British Westminster system. This means that the political

structure of the government is based on a Federation of States with

a three-tire system of government. However, the chief executive is

a Prime Minister, instead of a President as in the US system.

18. The Bloc Quebecois

The Bloc Quebecois was founded in 1990 by a former Conservative cabinet minister and later separatist Lucien Bouchard. It is a Quebec

separatist party intended to complement the provincial Parti

Quebecois (PQ) on the federal level. Its main concern is only to do

the best for Quebec, and wants to separate entirely from the federal

government. In the 1993 elections the party became the second largest

in the Canadian parliament, and the charismatic Bouchard became

leader of the opposition.

19. The Cold War

By the end of World War II, the United States, which had not suffered as much as other allied countries, became the strongest

country in the world. As the possessor of atomic tombs and much of

the world’s gold reserv e and industrial production in his hand, the

policy-makers of the US wanted a world order dominated by the US, a

world market free and open to American goods and services. In pursuing

this gold, the US encountered determined resistance from the Soviet

Union. Gradually the two wartime allies fell apart and the Cold War

began.

20. Unilateralism (the US)

When George W. Bush became president in 2001, he and his top

advisers pursued a strategy that has significantly changed some of

the principles that have been practiced in American foreign policy

for years. This strategy has two prominent elements: unilateralism

and faith in military strength. The review policies and international

agreements from the point of view of American national interests. If

they think any international agreement is not in line with American

national interests, they will not hesitate to discard it.

20. London : London is the largest city located in the south of the country. It is

dominant in Britain in all sorts of ways. It is not only the financial

center of the nation, but also one of the three major international

financial centers in the world.

21. Percy Bysshe Shelley : 雪莱His writing has a wide range. The lovely musical

quality of his work appears in the fine verses of “Ode to the West Wind”

and “To a Skylark.” “The Revolt of Islam,” renamed as “The Rise of

Islam,” preaches revolution, and Defense of Poetry upholds the place

of imagination and love in the arts. The long poem Adonais is a beautiful

lament written on the death of Keats. A month before his 30th birthday

he drowned while sailing in the Mediterranean. His ashes lie in the same

Roman cemetery where Keats is buried.

22. the relationship between the UK and the US :The British foreign policy is also

affected by its relationship with the United States. During World War

2, the two countries were closely allied and continued to work together

closely in the postwar years, because they had many things in common about

the past and the world situation. Even today, British and American

policy-makers share the general ideas in many respects. However,

Britain’s “special relationship” with the United Stated has gone

through many ups and downs. The British are beginning to realize that

their own foreign policy actions can be limited by the United States.

But both sides have worked hard to maintain the “special relationship.”

23. the Great Barrier Reef : 大堡礁The Great Barrier Reef, the largest coral

structure in the world, extends for over 2000 kilometers along the coast

of Queensland, Australia. It is an important part of the marine

ecosystems, and abounds a lot of rare marine plants and animals in some

of the island and coral reef. Great Barrier Reef has been listed as the

World Natural Heritage.

24. the Dreaming (Australia) : 创梦信仰The Dreaming is the belief system from

ancient times that has bound indigenous groups together. The central

principle of the Dreaming is that the people who live on the continent

have special responsibilities to the land. The people don’t own the land;

instead the land owns the people. The stories of the Dreaming provide

principles of how people should live and interact with each other. They

also provide knowledge of the land so that the indigenous people can

survive in the life-threatening environment.

25. James Joyce : 詹姆士乔伊斯The novelist James Joyce is famous s the writer who

changed the nature of the novel forever. In common with many of the

writers before him, Joyce was extraordinarily self-conscious about the

language in which he was writing. As he has his hero say in The Portrait

of the Artist as a Young Man, he didn’t feel that the English was his

native tongue: it was a foreign language, even although it pretended to

be the same as the one he had learned himself, which was in fact a regional

variant, knows as Hiberno-English.