20世纪英国文学课上问题

20世纪英国文学课上问题
Reading Hardy’s Poetry
1.What is the setting of each of the three poems?
2.What happened to Whom in each of the three poems?
3.What are the themes of the three poems? How can you describe the poet’s tone
expressed in the three poems?
4.What does the change in tens e in the last of “Neutral Tones” imply?
5.How can we compare the darkling thrush and the “Romantic” birds?
6.“The Wind and the Rain” involves the third person narration. What effects does
the third person narration create?
Reading “ Odor of Chrysanthemums”
1.Wh en and where does the story begin? What’s the implication of the setting? How is it related to Mr. Bates’ death?
2.What’s Mrs. Bates like? What’s Mr. Bates like?
3.How does Mrs. Bates’ feeling about her husband change in the course of the story?
4.What does the relationship between Mr. And Mrs. Bates reveal?
5.How are Mrs. Bates’ relationships with her father and her mother-in-law? What do they have in common?
6.Why does the story take “Odor of Chrysanthemums” as its title? What’s significance of chrysanthemum?
7.What do the children in the story tell us about?
The Lake Isle of Innisfree
1.What’s the place like that the poet dreams of living in ?
2.What can the poet have in this place?
3.Where is the poet? What feeling does the poet convey through the contrast?
4.What images ?
(visual, audio and kinaesthetic images)
5.What elements of this poem show that the poet was under the influence of Romanticism? (Love of nature, imagination, emotional tone, personal involvement) To the Rose Upon the Rood of Time
1.Whom does the poet address in this poem?
What’s its symbolic meaning?
2.What’s the significance of mentioning Cuchlan and Fergus in the first stanza?
3.How do you understand “leave me still a little space”? Why does the poet need it?
4.What’s the general tone of this poem?
5.How do you compare this poem with the first in style?
The Second Coming
1.What’s the Second Coming?
2.How do you understand “gyre,”“falcon,” and “falconer”?
3.What’s the world like, according to the poet?
4.What does the poet envision?
5.What does the coming of the rough beast indicate?
6.How do you compare the previous two and with Hardy’s “The Darkling Thrush”?
T. S. Eliot: “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”
Spiritual paralysis and stagnation of the modern man
Prufruck’s psychological journey: diffidence & pretence—eagerness, diffidence & uncertainty—self-debasement—
fantasy—disillusionment
Virginia Woolf: “The Mark on the Wall”
How is the stream of consciousness technique related to the topics discussed here?
The Daughters of the Late Colonel
Use of details
1.The daughters’ character traits (e.g. Ch.1 and Ch.2)
2.The daughters’ feeling (e.g.Ch.6)
3.The daughters’ relationship with other people (e.g. Ch.2, Ch. 7, Ch. 10&11)
4.The daughters’ situation
Linguistic features:
1.Repetition of words
2.Employment of dashes and ellipsis (to indicate hesitation to say sth, omission of sth, the speaker dare not say, etc.) Major Narrative points of view
1.The narrator’s observation
2.The narrator seeing into Constantia
3.The narrator seeing into Josephine
To Room Nineteen
1.How do you understand “intelligence”? How do you understand the first sentence of the story?
2.What has caused Susan’s rest lessness, irritation, panic and near- madness?
3.
4.What are the meanings and significance of the “demon” and “ the madwoman in the mirror”?
5.To Room 19 vs. Chrysanthemums
Differences:
●Set in different scenes(London vs. Mining area)
●Different classes ( middle class vs. Working classes, though Elizabeth assuming
middle class)
●Different family situations( economic affluence vs. Economic insecurity) Similarities:
Lack of communication
Victory of rationality
James Joyce: “The Dead”
Use of Symbols
/doc/1e14938440.html,s as symbols: Lily, Mr. Browne, Monkstown, Nuns’ Island, Parkinson
2.Places as symbols: the Continent, the west of Ireland
3.Structure as symbol: the three parts of the story
4.Characters as symbols: Michael Furey, monks, King Billy’s statue, Dan
5.Objects as symbols: galoshes, brooch
6.Scenes as symbols: snow, rain, party
Heart of Darkness
●What’s the significance of the Russian youth in the novel?
●What kind of person is Kurtz? What’s Marlow’s opinion of Kurtz?
●What’s Marlow’s opinion of the manager? How can we compare his attitudes
towards these two men?
●What’s the significance of the two women in the novel, Kurtz’s Intended and the
African mistress?
The French Lieutenant’s Woman
1.Chapter 44 & 61 provide two endings for the story. How are they different? Which suits the Victorian norms better? Which
is existentialist?
2.One striking feature of this novel is the intrusion of writer-narrator. Find out the places in these chapters where the writer-narrator becomes evident and discuss his identity and significance.
3.This novel includes excerpts from different kinds of historical documents or earlier literary works as epigraphs of the novel’s chapters. What’s their significance?
4.In what way is this novel postmodernism?
Hawk in the Rain
1.What are Stanza 1 and 2 respectively about? Have you noticed the contrast between them?
2.What important qualities does the hawk have, as can be seen from descriptions “The diamond point of will”and “master-Fulcrum of violence”? Why are the y
important?
3.What kind of power relation between man and animal is shown in Stanza 3 and 4?
4.Some people have called Hughes’ poetry “poetry of violence”. Do you see violence in this poem?
5.How is nature in this poem different from that in Wordsworth’s?
Thrushes
1.What’s your imagination of a thrush? What are the thrushes doing in this poem?
2.How does the poet describe the thrushes’ action?
3.What is it in the thrushes that links them with Mozart’s brain or the shark’s mouth?
4.In Stanza 3, the poet says, “With a man it is otherwise.”
H ow is man different from the thrushes or the shark?
5.What do “silent waters” mean?
6.Is there violence in this poem, too?
That Morning
1.What is the plot in this poem?
2.Do you see similarities between this poem and the previous two?
3.Some critics have noticed a move “from a world made of blood to a world made of light” in Hughes’ later poetry. Does this poem support this comment?。