大学英语欧美文学欣赏考试重点

1.The work that presented,for the first time in English literature, a comprehensive realistic
picture of the medieval English society and created a whole gallery of vivid characters from all walks of life is Geoffrey Chaucer`s The Canterbury Tales.
2.Geoffrey Chaucer is regarded as the father of English poetry.
3.The verse from of heroic couplet（英雄双韵体）was introduced into English poetry and
employed in the poem with true ease and charm for the first time in the history of English literature by Geoffrey Chaucer.
4.The Canterbury Tales presents a whole gallery of vivid characters,the team of
pilgrims,people from all walks of life , including 31members altogether.
5.Generally,Renaissance(文艺复兴) refers to the intellectual movement during the period
between 14th ad mid-17th centuries,its essence was humanism（人文主义）,
6.English Renaissance Period was an age of poetry and drama.
7.William Shakespeare`s writing is widely regarded as one of the three main sources of the
English literature,while the other two are Greek and Roman myths （古希腊罗马神话）and the Bible（圣经）.
8.William Shakespeare leaves a great body of literary works to the world,including 37
plays,154 sonnets and 2 narrative poems.
9.In reading Shakespeare, you must have come across the line “To be or not to be-that is
the question”by Hamlet in Hamlet.
10.“So long as men can breathe,or eyes can see,/So long lives this ,and this gives life to
thee.”(Shakespeare,”Sonnet 18”)The work “this”refers to poetry.
11.S hakespeare`s four great tragedies include Hamlet,King Lear,Othello,and Macbeth,
usually considered as some of the finest works in the English language.
12.I n Romeo and Juliet,Shakespeare`s humanism is evidently seen in his praise of human
love and in his defiance of feudal discord（无视封建纷争）.
13.A sonnet is a poem of 14 lines, usually in iambic pentameter（五步抑扬格），with rhymes
arranged according to a certain definite patterns.
14.F rancis Bacon（弗兰西斯培根）`s works,”Some books are to be tasted ,others to be
swallowed,and some few to be chewed and digested;that is ,some books are to be read in parts; others are to be read ,but not curiously ;and some few to be read wholly,and with diligence and attention,”describes the importance of reading and different ways to deal with different books as well.
15.T he Glorious Revolution in 1688 meant the supremacy of Parliament,the beginning of
modem England and the triumph of the principle of political liberty.
16.M etaphysical poetry refers to the works of the 17th-century writers who wrote under the
influence of John Donne,with the general theme of carpe diem.
17.J ohn Donne in his poem “The Flea”claim that killing the lover ,the flea and thus
committing sacrilege constitute “three sins”.
18.E pic 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, nation or the human race.
19.E nlighteners believed that freedom,democracy,and reason are the primary values of
society.
20.I n Robinson Crusoe,Defoe traces the growth of Robinson from a naive &simple youth into
a mature &hardened man, tempered by numerous trials in his 28 years of living on an
isolated island.
21.I n Robinson Crusoe,the hero Crusoe teaches a slave named Friday to speak English and
believed in God and eat like a civilized man.
22.T he revolutionary enthusiasm of the bourgeois revolution and the bitter hatred for the
despotic ruler are best shown in the works of John Milton.
23.G ulliver`s Travels written by Jonathan Swift is one of the most effective and devastating
criticism and satires of all aspects of the English and European life of the time.
24.A ccording to Swift,Gulliver made voyages to Lilliput,Brobdingnag,Laputa（拉普塔岛会飞
的岛）,the Country of the Houyhnhnms（慧姻国，格列弗游记中的一个国家）,etc.
25.T he 18th century witnessed that in England there appeared two political parties,the
Whig`s and the Tories,which were satired(讽刺的）by Swift in His Gulliver`s Travels.
26.J onathan Swift defines a good style as “proper words in proper places”.
27.J onathan Swift in his “A Modest Proposal”exposes a fact that the English are devouring
the Irish.
28.O ne of the characteristics of neoclassicism（新古典主义的）is that reason rather than
emotion, and from rather than content are emphasized.（强调）
29.P aradise Lost is actually a story taken from the Old Testament.
30.R omanticism emphasized individual values and aspirations above those of society with its
keynote intensity and watchword imagination..
31.R omanticism as a main literary trend prevailed in England during the period of
1798-1832,beginning with the publication of Lyrical Ballads in 1798,ending with Walter Scott`s death in 1832.
32.W illiam Wordsworth,Samuel Taylor Coleridge,and Robert Southey were known as “Lake
Poets”because they lived and knew one another in the district of the great lakes in Northwestern England.
33.W illiam Wordsworth was a major English Romantic poet who,with Samuel T aylor
Coleridge,helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with their joint publication Lyrical Ballads (17980).
34.A s a worshipper（崇拜者）of nature,William Wordsworth`s famous poems include “I
Wandered Lonely as a Cloud ”,“Tintern Abbey”,and ‘The Solitary Reaper’.
35.W illiam Wordsworth defines a good poetry as the spontaneous overflow of powerful
feelings.
36.I n ‘I wandered lonely as a cloud ’,the poet says ‘my with pleasure fills,/And dances with
the daffodils. ’
37.B yron`s influence was manifested by many authors and artists of the Romantic movement
during the 19th century and beyond. An example of Byronic hero is Heath cliff from Emily Bronte`s Wuthering Heights.（呼啸山庄）
38.P ercy Bysshe Shelley （雪莱）in his poems called on the people to overthrow the rule of
tyranny and injustice and prophesied a happy and free life for mankind.
39.P ercy Bysshe Shelley,through the speaker in his ‘Ode to the West Wind’,imagines
himself to be a leaf ,a cloud and a wave under the influence of the west wind .
40.F rankenstein, by Mary Shelley,was supposed to be the first science fiction in the world.
41.B yron and Shelley are usually considered as the Second Generation of the Romantic
Movement.
42.I n the poem, “Ode to a Nightingale”, Keats identifies himself with the ideal beauty and
hope that the song of the bird will help him to escape from the world of suffering,where “to think is to be full of sorrow”,into the world of eternal happiness.
43.T he prose writing of the romantic period was represented by Charles Lamb,William
Hazlitt,and Thomas de Quincey.（德昆西）
44.J ohn Keats wrote such immortal odes as “Ode to a Nightingale”, “Ode to Autumn ”
and ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’.
45.S helley wrote an elegy “Adonis ”lamenting the early death of his fellow-poet John
Keats .
46.‘Beauty is truth ,truth beauty”is from Keats` ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’.
47.T he dominant theme of John Keats` poems is that the world of nature is beautiful ,the
realm of art and poetry is wonderful, but the human society is full of miseries.
48.R obert Burns collected, edited ,restored ,and imitated traditional Scottish songs, or wrote
verses of his own too traditional tune . Thus , he rescued and preserved the literary heritage.
49.R obert Burns often wrote with light-hearted humor and in Scottish dialect.
50.“Auld Lang Syne ”（友谊地久天长）,originally a Scottish folksong（民谣）edited and collect
by Robert Burns, was incorporated into the classic Hollywood movie Waterloo Bridge in 1940.
51.J ane Austen`s novels include Northanger Abbey （诺桑觉寺）,Sense and Sensibility ,Pride
and Prejudice,Mansfield Park ,Emma and Persuasion.
52.J ane Austen,although living and writing in the “age of poetry”,was an novelist instead.
53.P ride and Prejudice is about the love and marriage story of five daughters in one family.
54.J ane Austen wrote six novels all through her life,
55.J ane Austen `s novels are mainly about love and marriage, mainly focusing on everyday
country life of the upper middle class, and successful in the employment of irony.
56.D ances figure prominently in Jane Austen`s novels.Whether performed in public
assembly rooms or in private,dances offered social opportunities for young people to mix and mingle and converse in an acceptable fashion.
57.A usten sets all of her novels during the Regency Period when the new landed gentry who
came into money through commercial enterprise and ascended from the middle class.
58.P ride and Prejudice portrays life in the genteel rural society of the day , and tells of the
initial misunderstandings and later mutual enlightenment between Elizabeth and the haughty Darcy.
59.A usten,employing irony, begins her most famous novel Pride and Prejudice with this
sentence “it is a truth universally acknowledged,that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.”
60.I n the 19th century English literature,a new literary trend ,critical realism,appeared,and
flourished in the forties and early fifties.
61.J ane Austen`s writing,drawing vivid and realistic pictures of everyday life of the country
society in her novels, was consider to be “a fine engraving made upon a little piece of
ivory”.
62.C hronologically, the Victorian Period refers to 1831-1901.
63.A lthough writing from different points of view and with different techniques,writers in the
Victorian Period shared one thing in common, that is ,they were all concerned about the fate of the common people .
64.P ip,Estella,Havisham,Magwitch,and Joe Gargery （前均为远大前程里的人物名称）are names
of characters from the novel Great Expectations by Charles Dickens.
65.“Do you think ,because I am poor ,obscure,plain , and little, I an soulless and
heartless?...And if God had gifted me with some beauty , and much wealth,I should have made it as hard as for you to leave me , as it is now for me to leave you.”The passage is taken from Jane Eyre,
66.E nglish critical realism found its expression chiefly in the form of novel.
67.O ne of the greatest English critical realist novelist was Charles Dickens,who criticized the
bourgeois civilization and showed the misery of the common people.
68.D avid Copperfield is often regarded as the semi-autobiography of the author Charles
Dickens,in which the early life of the hero is largely based on the author’s early life. 69.I n the novel Oliver Twist.Dickens gives a truthful presentation of the sufferance of the
poor ,and makes a complete exposure of the terrible conditions in the English workhouse of the time and the brutality and corruption of the oppresoors（压迫者暴君）under the mask of philanthropy.
70.C harles Dickens begins his famous novel A Tale of Two Cities this way ; “it was the best of
times.It was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom,it was the age of foolishness. It was”the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us , we had nothing before us , we were all going direct to Heaven,we were all going direct the other way…”
71.H ardy is one of the representatives of English critical realism at the turn of the 19th
century.
72.A s to Tess of the D `Urbervilles: Tess was a pure woman ;Tess was a victim of economic
oppression and social injustice ;the author`s pessimistic and naturalistic view of life is fully expressed in it.
73.A lec,Clare,Angel,all are characters appearing in the novel Tess of the D`Urbervilles.（小说
《苔丝》）
74.E mily Bronte wrote only one novel entitled Wuthering Heights.
75.B ronte Sisters were all talented writers, they all died young and all went to charity school.
76.J ane Eyre is one of the most popular and important novels of the Victorian age. It is noted
for its sharp criticism of the existing society, especially the bourgeois system of education.
77.T homas Hardy was once an architect,born in Dorsetshire,（多塞特郡）a county in the south
of England , and his principle works are the Wessex novels.
78.N ovels of character and Environment are also called Wessex novels,taking the southwest
counties of England for their setting, which include The Return of the Native,The Mayor of Casterbridge,（《卡斯特桥市长》）Tess of the D`Urbervilles, and Jude the Obscure.
79.T ess Durbeyfield（苔丝德贝菲尔人物名称）in Tess of the D`Urbervilles is the daughter of
a poor villager.
80.O ne of the chief representative figures of the School of Aestheticism is Oscar Wilde.
81.M ost of Hardy`s novels are set in Wessex,the fictional primitive and crude region which is
really the home place he both loves and hates.
82.J ames Joyce`s representative works are Dubliners,（都柏林人）A Portrait of the Artist as a
Young Man,Ulysses and Finnegans Wake.（《芬根尼的守灵夜》）
83.J ames Joyce, Virginia Woolf and William Faulkner all belong to the school of the Stream of
Consciousness.
84.W ashington Irving is the first American writer to earn an international reputation, and
regarded as an early famous Romantic writer in American Literary history.
85.I rving was best known for his famous short stories such as “Rip Van Winkle”and “The
Legend of Sleepy Hollow”.
86.T he finest example of Hawthorne`s symbolism is reflected in his The Scarlet Letter.
87.N athaniel Hawthorne depicts the prison as a symbol for puritanical severity of law and
the rigorous enforcement of law and the impossibility to break free of it , while the rosebush to symbolize the passionate wilderness in the form of Hester Prynne.（海丽斯白兰《红字》女主人公）
88.A s a leading spokesman of the Imagist Movement ,Ezra Pound wrote a famous
one-image poem “In a Station of the Metro ”,which has been regarded as a classic specimen of Imagist poetry.（意象派诗歌）
89.P ostmodernism can be described as a set of critical,strategic and rhetorical practices
employing concepts such as difference,repetition,simulacrum,and hyper reality to destabilize other concepts such as presence,identity ,historical progress,and epistemic （认识的）certainty.
90.P ostmodernism upholds the belief that there is no absolute truth and the way in which
different people perceive the world is subjective.
91.R epresentative writers of postmodernism are Derrida,Foucault,Kristiva,Lacan,etc.
92.E xamples of intertextuality（互文-写作手法）can be found in Ulysses retelling Homer`s
Odyssey(奥赛德),The Dead Fathers Club retelling Hamlet,A Thousand Acres retelling King Lear,and Wide Sargasso Sea retelling Jane Eyre.
93.P rincipal characters in Bellow`s fiction have heroic potential,and many times they stand in
contrast to the negative forces of society .Often these characters are Jewish and have a sense of alienation or otherness.
94.D eath of a Salesman tells us a story about an American tragedy,but the tragedy rooted in
the American Dream.
95.P ynchon`s novels are broad in scope and use scientific theories ,historical facts,and details
of popular culture with great accuracy.
96.T here is only scene,in Waiting for Godot,throughout both acts:two men are waiting on a
country road by a tree.
97.I n1993,T oni Morrison , “Who in novels characterized by visionary force and poetic import
gives life to an essential aspect of American reality”,was awarded the Novel Prize in literature.
98.E normously important in shaping the artistic contributions of the Harlem Renaissance of
the 1920s,Langston Hughes（兰斯顿人名）is the most popular and versatile of the black writers.
99.“Poor Rip was at last reduced almost to despair :and his only alternative,to escape from
the labor of the farm and the clamor of his wife,was to take gun in hand ,and stroll away into the wood ”This sentence vividly describes the characteristics of Rip Van Winkle,especially unwilling to engage himself in labor as well as slow response to what happened around .
100.“To wage by force or guile eternal war./Irreconcilable to out grand Foe ”,here the Foe refers to God.。