2008年4月高等教育自学考试英美文学选读北京试卷

2008年4月高等教育自学考试全国统一命题考试
英美文学选读试卷
PART ONE (50 Points)
I. Multiple Choice (50 points in all, 1 for each) Select from the four choices of each item the one that best answers the question or completes the statement. Mark your choice by blackening the corresponding letter [ A ], [ B ], [ C ] or [ D ] on the ANSWER SHEET.
1. Concerning Middle English literature, which of the following statements is NOT true?
A. In the second half of the 14th century, English literature started to flou:dsh with the appearance of writers like Geoffrey Chaucer, William Lang land, John Gower, and others.
B. Popular folk literature also occupied an important place in this period. Its presentation of life was accurate, lively and colorful, and it never lacked the originality of thought.
C. Middle English literature strongly reflects the principles of the mediewtl Christian doctrine, which were primarily concerned with the issue of personal salwltion.
D. Romance was a popular literary form in the medieval period. The importance of romance itself can be seen as a means of showing medieval aristocratic men and women in relation to their idealized view of the world.
2. The early period of the English Renaissance was one of imitation and assimilation. Sidnc) introduced __ into England.
A. blank verse
B. iambic pentameter
C. the Petrarchan sonnet
D. sestina and terza rima
3. "One short sleep past, we wake eternally / And death shall be no more; I)eath, thou shah
die. " These lines were written by __
A. T. S. Eliot
B. John Keats
C. Thomas Gray
D. John Donne
4. "...What though the field be lost? / All is not lost: the unconquerable will, / And study
of revenge, immortal hate, / And courage never to submit or yield : / And what is else not
to be overcome?" These few lines are taken from
A. Hamlet
B. Dr. Faustus
C. The Isles of Greece
D. Paradise Lost
5. "The plowman homeward plods his weary way, / And leaves the world to darkness and to
me. " These lines are
A. heroic couplet
B. iambic pentameter
C. iambic hexameter
D. anapest pentameter
6. Which of the following works by Marlowe is a play about an ambitious and pitiless Tartar
conqueror in the 14~ century, who rose from a shepherd to an overpowering king?
A. Tamburlaine
B. The Jew of Malta
C. Dr. Faustus
D. Edward H
7. Which of the following plays by Shakespeare is a tragedy?
A. Julius Caesar
B. The Taming of the Shrew
C. A Midsummer Night's Dream
D. Much Ado About Nothing
8. Which of the following statements about John Donne is NOT true?
A. Idealism and cynicism about love coexist in Donne's love poetry.
B. In his poetry, Donne frequently applies conceits.
C. As a stout Puritan, Donne had made a conscientious study of the Bible and firmly be-
lieved in salvation through spiritual struggle.
D. Donne's poetry involves a certain kind of argument, sometimes in rigid syllogistic
form.
9. Which of the following matches is WRONG?
A. Vanity Fair The Pilgrim's Progress
B. Lilliput Gulliver's Travels
C. Thrushcross Grange Wuthering tleights
D. Thomfield Middlemarch
10. The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan is often said to be concerned with the search for
A. material wealth
B. spiritual salvation
C. universal truth
D. self-fulfillment
11. Swift is a master satirist. Which of the following satirical works is NOT written by him?
A. "A Modest Proposal"
B. The Battle of Books
C. The Drapier's Letters
D. "The Shortest Way with the Dissenters"
12. In The Life of Jonathan Wild the Great, the word "great" is used __.
A. euphemistically
B. allegorically
C. satirically
D. objectively
13. Which of the following statements about Samuel Johnson is NOT true?
A. He was very concerned with the theme of the vanity of human wishes.
B. He was rather conservative, openly showing his dislike for much of the newly rising
form of literature.
C. He insisted that a writer must write to please and to instruct.
D. He was particularly contemptuous of moralizing and didacticism.
14. All the following works were written by William Blake EXCEPT
A. Songs of Innocence
B. Songs of Experience
C. Marriage of Heaven and Hell
D. The Sketch Book
15. "Those ungrateful drones who would / Drain your sweat -- nay, drink your blood?" The
word "drones" is used as a (n) __
A. irony
B. metaphor
C. metonymy
D. synecdoche
16. Coleridge's poems can be divided into two groups: the demonic and the conversational.
Which of the following poems belongs to the conversational group?
A. "Frost at Midnight"
B. "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner"
C. " Christabel"
D. "Kubla Khan"
17. One of Shelly's greatest achievements is his four-act poetic drama, Prometheus Unbound.
The play is an exultant work in praise of
A. humankind's potential
B. primitive deity
C. comfortable mysticism
D. the primal amorality of nature itself
18. The Victorian age produced a host of great prose writers, such as Thomas Carlyle, Mat-
thew Arnold, John Ruskin and others. Which of the following works was written by Rus-
kin?
A. The French Revolution
B. History of England
C. Modern Painters
D. Chartism
19. Charles Dickens is famous for the depiction of those horrible and grotesque characters.
Which of the foUowing characters is NOT a grotesque character?
A. Bill Sikes
B. Fagin
C. Mr. Micawber
D. Quilp
20. "What is any respectable girl brought to do but catch some rich man's fancy and get the
benefit of his money by marrying him? -- as if a marriage ceremony could make any
difference in the right or wrong of the thing! Oh! The hypocrisy of the world makes me
sick!" This quotation is from __
A. The School for Scandal
B. The Rivals
C. Mrs. Warren's Profession
D. Widowers' Houses
21. "How dull it is to pause, to make an end, / To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use! /
As tho' to breathe were life..." These lines are taken from
A. "Parting at Morning"
B. "Ulysses"
C. "Crossing the Bar"
D. "The Lake of Innisfree"
22. Which of the following statements about George Eliot is NOT true?
A. She initiates a new type of realism and sets into motion a variety of developments,
leading in the direction of both the naturalistic and psychological novel.
B. In her works, she seeks to present the inner struggle of a soul and to reveal the mo-
tives, impulses and hereditary influences which govern human action.
C. She shows a particular concern for the destiny of women, especially those with great
intelligence, potential and social aspirations.
D. She writes in a very narrow scope. Yet in her narrowness also lie her strong points. It
allows her to have a close study of characters and a detailed description of recurring situa- tions so that she can portray them with absolute accuracy and sureness.
23. Which of the following statements about modernism is NOT true?
A. Modernism is, in many aspects, a reaction against realism.
B. Modernism takes the irrational philosophy and the theory of psycho-analysis as its theo-
retical base.
C. The modernist writers concentrate more on the private than on the public, more on the
subjective than on the objective.
D. Modernist writers like
E. M. Forster, James Joyce and Virginia Woolf concentrated all
their efforts on digging into the human consciousness.
24. __ is considered to be the best-known English playwright since Shakespeare, and his
representative works are plays inspired by social criticism.
A. Richard Sheridan
B. John Galsworthy
C. Oscar Wilde
D. Bernard Shaw
25. Which of the following best describes the speaker of T. S. Eliot's " The Love Song of J.
Alfred Prufroek" ?
A. He is a man of action.
B. He is a man of apathy.
C. He is a man of inactivity.
D. He is a man of passion.
26. __ by D. H. Lawrence is rich in its symbolic meanings. Gerald Crich is a symbolic
figure of spiritual death. Whereas Birkin is presented as a symbolic figure of human
warmth, standing for the spontaneous Life Force.
A. The Rainbow
B. Women in Love
C. Sorts and Lovers
D. The White Peacock
27. With joint efforts, some Irish playwrights brought about the Irish National Theater Move-
ment in the early 20'h century, thus starting an Irish dramatic revival. All the following
writers belong to the school EXCEPT
A. Samuel Beckett
B.W.B. Yeats
C. Lady Gregory DI J. M. Synge
28. "Come live with me and be my love, / And we will all the pleasures prove / That valleys,
groves, hills, and fields, / Woods, or steepy mountain yields. " These lines were written
by__
A. Christopher Marlowe
B. John Donne
C. Robert Browning
D. William Butler Yeats
29. The desire for an escape from society and a return to nature became a permanent conven-
tion of American literature. Such a desire is particularly evident in the following works
EXCEPT
A. Sister Carrie
B. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
C. Leather-Stocking Tales
D. Walden
30. "I was myself Last night, but I fen asleep on the mountain, and they've changed my gun,
and everything's changed, and I'm changed" is taken from's work.
A. Washington Irving
B. Herman Melville
C. Nathaniel Hawthorne
D. Ralph Waldo Emerson
31. The most clearly defined American literary movement in the early half of the 19th century is
called
A. Imagism
B. Modernism
C. Naturalism
D. Transcendentalism
32. Walt Whitman mourned the death of Abraham Lincoln in his famous poem called __
A. "There Was a Child Went Forth"
B. "Cavalry Crossing a Ford"
C. "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd"
D. "Song of Myself"
33. Which of the following is NOT a proper understanding of the symbols in the novel Moby-
Dick?
A. Different people on board the ship are representations of different ideas and different
social and ethnic groups.
B. The white whale, Moby Dick, symbolizes the beautiful nature for the character Ahab.
C. Moby Dick represents an ultimate mystery of the universe for the author.
D. The whaling voyage is a symbolic one of the mind in quest of the truth and knowledge
of the universe.
34. Mark Twain referred tb the post-Civil War era as
A. "The Jazz Age"
B. "The Gilded Age"
C. "The Lost Generation"
D. "The Beat Generation"
35. The line" 'All right, then, I'll go to hell' -- and tore it up" is taken from __'s work.
A. Mark Twain
B. Henry James
C. Theodore Dreiser
D. Emily Dickinson
36. Which of the following is a distinctively Ame~can protagonist established in the Realistic
Period?
A. the noble savage
B. the frontier man
C. the vernacular hero
D. the alienated youth
37. Which of the following authors is NOT a local colorist?
A. Sarah Orne Jewett
B. Mark Twain
C. Hamlin Garland
D. Henry James
38. Which of the following statements about Henry James is NOT true?
A. He is famous for the international theme.
B. His literary criticism is an indispensable part of his contribution to literature.
C. One of his literary innovations is his use of "point of view. "
D. His language is highly colloquial.
39. George Hurstweod is a failed character in Theodore Dreiser's __
A. Sister Carrie
B. The Financier
C. The Genius
D. An American Tragedy
40. Sigrnund Freud, whose ideas had great impact on the Modem Period, was famous for his
theory on
A. "stream-of-consciousness"
B. "unconscious"
C. "collective unconscious"
D. "archetypal symbol"
41. The following poets all belong to the Modem Period EXCEPT __
A. Emily Dickinson
B. Ezra Pound
C. William Carlos Williams
D. Wallace Stevens
42. The lines "The woods are lovely, dark and deep,/But I have promises to keep" is taken
from a poem by_
A. Ezra Pound
B. Robert Frost
C. Emily Dickinson
D. Walt Whitman
43. Which of the following works can be read as a record of the dispossessed and the wretched
farmers during the Great Depression?
A. Babbit
B. The Great Gatsby
C. Winesburg, Ohio
D. The Grapes of Wrath
44. "By seven o'clock the orchestra has arrived, no thin five-piece affair, but a whole pitful o-
boes and trombones and saxophones and viols and cornets and piccolos, and low and high drums...The bar is in full swing, and floating rounds of cocktails permeate the garden out- side, until the air is alive with chatter and laughter, and casual innuendo and introduc-
tions forgotten on the spot, and enthusiastic meetings between women who never knew each other's names. " The above quotation is a reflection of
A. the southern society before the Civil War
B. the middle class society in the Gilded Age
C. the affluent society after the Second World War
D. the upper class society in the Jazz Age
45. In The Great Gatsby, the romantic hero Gatsby was killed in the end by __
A. his rival Tom Buchanan
B. his lover Daisy
C. Tom's mistress Myrtle
D. Myrtle's husband, Mr. Wilson
46. Nick Adams is the first Hemingway hero in his work entitled
A. In Our Time
B. The Sun Also Rises
C. A Farewell to Arms
D. For Whom the Bell Tolls
47. All the following American writers have received Nobel Prize EXCEPT
A. Eugene O'Neill
B.F. Scott Fitzgerald
C. Ernest Hemingway
D. William Faulkner
48. Which of the following writers had affinity to Chinese literature?
A. Ezra Pound
B. Robert Lee Frost
C. Ernest Hemingway
D. Mark Twain
49. Which of the following is NOT a characteristic of WiUiam Faulkner's works?
A. The breaking up of the chronological time.
B. The use of multiple points of view.
C. The use of simple and concise language.
D. The use of symbolism and mythological and biblical allusions.
50. "When Miss Emily Grierson died, our whole town went to her funeral: the men through a
sort of respectful affection for a fallen monument, the women mostly out of curiosity to see the inside of her house. " The above sentence is taken from 's work.
A. Mark Twain
B.F. Scott Fitzgerald
C. Ernest Hemingway
D. William Faulkner
PART TWO ( 50 Points)
H. Questions and Answers (30 points in all, 6 for each)
Give brief answers to each of the following questions in
English. Write your answers in the corresponding space
on the TEST PAPER.
51. I consulted several things in my situation which I found would be proper for me: 1st,
health and fresh water I just now mentioned; 2ndly, shelter from the heat of the sun;
3rdly, security from ravenous creatures, whether men or beasts; 4thly, a view to the sea,
that if God sent any ship in sight, I might not lose any advantage for my deliverance, of
which I was not willing to banish all my expectation yet.
Questions
A. Identify the author and the work.
B. Who does "I" refer to7
C. What idea does the above quoted express7
52. North Richmond Street, being blind, was a quiet street except at the hour when the Chris-
tian Brothers' School set the boys free. An uninhabited house of two storeys stood at the
blind end, detached from its neighbours in a square ground. The other houses of the
street, conscious of decent lives within them, gazed at one another with brown imperturble faces.
Questions
A. The above quotation is from Joyce's "Araby". What is the torte of the narrator in the
quoted passage?
B. What idea does the above quoted express.'?
53. Some to conceit alone their taste confine,
And glittering thoughts struck out at every line;
Pleased with a work where nothing's just or fit,
One glaring chaos and wild heap of wit.
Poets, like painters, thus unskilled to trace
The naked nature and the living grace,
With gold and jewels cover every part,
And hide with ornaments their want of art.
Questions
A. Identify the poet and the poem.
B. What does "conceit" mean, and what does "want of art" mean?
C. What is the main idea of the quoted lines?
54. It seemed as if he thought a while, for now he arose and turned the gas out, standing
calmly in the blackness, hidden from view. After a few moments, in which he reviewed
nothing, but merely hesitated, he turned the gas on again, but applied no match. Even
then he stood there, hidden wholly in that kindness which is night, while the uprising
fumes filled the room. When the odor reached his nostrils, he quit his attitude and fumbled for the bed.
"What's the use?" he said, weakly, as he stretched himself to rest.
Questions
A. The above passage is taken from Theodore Dreiser's Sister Carrie. Who does this man
refer to? What is he actually doing and why?
B. Why is this novel a representative work of literary naturalism?
55. "L o! There ye stand, my children," said the figure, in a deep and solemn tone, almost
sad, with its despairing awfulness, as if his once angelic nature could yet mourn for our
miserable race. "Depending upon one another's hearts, ye had still hoped, that virtue
were not all a dream. Now are ye undeceived! Evil is the nature of mankind. Evil must be your happiness, Welcome, again, my children, to the communion of your race !"
Questions
A. Identify the author and the title of the work.
B. Who is the figure? Whom is he speaking to?
C. What is the major theme of this work and what kind of vision of life does it reflect? HI. Topic Discussion (20 points in all, 10 for each)
Write no less than 150 words on each of the following
topics in English in the corresponding space on the TEST
PAPER.
56. How is Romanticism different from Neoclassicism? Provide brief evidence from the literary
works you know best.
57. Use examples to explain how Mark Twain and Henry James, both great novelists in the Re-
alistic Period, are different in terms 0f their thematic concerns, characterization and stylis- tic features.。