完善版美国文学期末重点

2014 Final Exam Study Guide for American Literature ClassPlan of Final Exam1.Best Choice Question 10%2.True or False Question 10%3.Definition 10%4.Give Brief Answers to Questions 30%5.Critical Comments 40%American Literature ReviewPoe’s Poetic Ideas;Major Ideas in Emerson’s “Nature”;Whitman’s Style;Formal Features of Dickinson’s Poetry;Analysis of “Miniver Cheevy” by Edwin Arlington Robinson; Comment on “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost; Naturalistic reading of Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser;The Theme and Techniques in Eliot’s “The Waste Land”;Theme and Technique in The Great Gatsby by Fitzgerald;Comment on Hemingway’s style and theme in A Farewell to Arms; Analysis of “Dry September” by William Faulkner;Literary terms:TranscendentalismAmerican NaturalismThe Lost GenerationThe Jazz AgeFree VerseThe Iceberg AnalogyLiterary terms1.Transcendentalism: is literature，philosophical and literary movement that flourished in New England from about 1836 to1860. It originated among a small group of intellectuals who were reaching against the orthodoxy of Calvinism and the rationalism of the Unitarian Church, their own faith centering on the divinity of humanity and the natural world instead. Transcendentalism derived some of its basic idealistic concepts from romantic German philosophy, and from such English authors as Carlyle，Coleridge, and Wordsworth. The ideas of transcendentalism were most eloquently expressed by Ralph Waldo Emerson in such essays as Nature and Self-Reliance and by Henry David Thoreau in his book Walden.2. American naturalism：this term was created by Emile Zola. Charles Darwin’s evolutionary theory played an important role in naturalism. In the works off naturalism，characters were conceived as complex combinations of inherited attributes and habits conditioned by social and economic forces. At the end of the 19th century，this pessimistic form of realism appeared in America. Naturalism attempted to achieve extreme objectivity and frankness. Characters in the works of naturalism were dominated by their environment and heredity. Naturalism emphasized：the world was around；men had no free will；religious “truth”were illusory；the destiny of human beings was misery in life and oblivion in death. Thedominant figures in naturalism were Stephen crane，Frank Norris, Jack London and Theodore Dreiser.3. The lost generation:included the young English and American expatriates as well as men and women caught in the war and cut from the old value and yet unable to come to terms with the new era when civilization had gone mad. These writers adopted unconventional style of writing and reacted against the tendencies of the older writers in the 1920s. The term came from Gertrude Stein who said in Hemingway's presence that “you are all a lost generation.”4. Jazz age: the novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald coined the term "Jazz Age" retroactively to refer to the decade after World War I and before the stock market crash in 1929, during which Americans embarked upon what he called "the gaudiest spree in history". Jazz Age is inextricably associated with the wealthy white "flappers" and socialites immortalized in Fitzgerald's fiction.5. Free verse: is a poetry that has an irregular rhythm and line length and that attempts to avoid any predetermined verse structure, instead, it uses the cadences of natural speech. While it alternates stressed and unstressed syllables as stricter verse forms do, free verse does so in a looser way.Whitman's poetry is an example of free verse at its most impressive. It has since been used by Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot and other major American can poets of the 20th century.6. The iceberg analogy: The Iceberg Theory is a writing theory by American writer Ernest Hemingway, as follows：if a writer of a prose knows enough about what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader，if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them.1、Poe's Poetic IdeasA.His conviction that the function of poetry is not to summarize and interpret earthly experience, but to create a mood in which the soul soars toward supernal beauty.B. He insists that poetry must be disembarrassed of that moral sense.C. Poe believes that the elevation of excitement of the soul should be “the poetic principle”thus poetry must concern itself only with “supernal beauty”.D. Poe defines poetry as “the rhythmical creation of beauty”a definition giving unexampled emphasis upon the importance of the rhythmical or musical element in poetry.Whitman's style1) The sprawling lines of the poems are often extremely long.2) Parallelism: the parallel lines say the same thing but use different words.3) Envelope structure: the first line begins with the subject, and then more and more lines list modifiers till the verb appears in the last line of the stanza. This is like enclosing a whole list of ideas in an envelope.4)Catalogue technique: means listing. Typical poems by Whitman make long, long lists of images, of sights, sounds, smells, taste, and touch.5) No regular pattern.6) The verse unit is usually an independent clause.Formal features of Dickinson's poetryA.Dickson's poems are usually based on her own experience, her sorrows and joys. Dickinson was original. She sounded idiosyncratic, sometimes.B. Love is another subject Dickinson dwells on.C. Many poems Dickinson wrote are about nature, in which her general skepticism about the relationship between man and nature is well-expressed. Dickinson sees nature as both gaily benevolent and cruel.D. Dickinson's poetry is unique and unconventional in its own way. Herpoems have no titles, hence are always quoted by their first lines.E. On the ethical level Dickinson emphasizes free will and human responsibility. All these characteristics of her poetry were to become popular through Stephen Crane with the Imagists such as Ezra Pound and Amy Lowell in the 20th century. She became, with Stephen Crane, the precursor of the Imagist movement.The theme and techniques in Eliot's "The Waste Land"Theme：The theme is modern spiritual barrenness, the despair and depression that followed the WWI, the sterility and turbulence of the modern world, and the decline and break-down of western culture. It also shows the search for regeneration by people living in a chaotic world.Technique：The poem’s noticeable characteristics are varied length and rhythm to harmonize with the changing subject matter, the unrhymed lines, lots of borrowings from some thirty-five different writers, the employment of materials such as the legends of the Holy Grail, Frazer’s anthropological work The Golden Bough several popular songs, and passages in six foreign languages, including Sanskrit. The poem, therefore, is obscure and hard to understand, needless to say its absence of logical continuity. The poem The West Land by T. S. Eliot, nevertheless, is broadly acknowledged as one of the most recognizablelandmarks of modernism.Analysis of "Richard Cory" by Edwin Arlington Robinson "Richard Cory" is a short dramatic poem about a man whose outward appearance belies his inner turmoil. The tragedy in the poem reflects in its spirit the tragedies in Edwin Arlington Robinson's own life: Both of his brothers died young, his family suffered financial failures, and Robinson himself endured hardship before his poetry gained recognition —thanks in part to praise from an influential reader of them, Theodore Roosevelt. Robinson published the poem himself in 1897 as part of a poetry collection called Children of the Night. The poem is a favorite of students and teachers because of the questions it poses about the title character..Comment on"Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" by Robert FrostA. It is a peaceful poem and makes man feel relaxed when we read the lines: "The only other sounds the sweep of easy wind and downy flake." Frost also uses alliteration and repetition in his poems. The rhyme scheme he uses is a-a-b-a.B. It is one of the most quietly moving of Frost’s lyrics. On the surface, it seems to be simple, descriptive verses, records of close observation, graphic and homely pictures.C. It uses the simplest terms and commonest words. But it is deeply meditative, adding far-reaching meanings to the homely music. It uses its superb craftsmanship to come to a climax of responsibility: the promises to be kept, the obligation to be fulfilled. Few poems have said so much in so little.7.Theme and technique in The Great Gatsby by Fitzgerald(1). Themes of The Great Gatsby: It resents the decline of the American dream in1920s, the hollowness of the upper class and the falseness of ideals and moves toward disillusion.(2)Now Gatsby’s life follow a clear pattern: there is, at first, a dream, then disenchantment, and finally a sense of failure and despair. Gatsby’s personal experience approximates the whole of the American experience up to the first few decades of the 20th century.(3) The novel is the presentation of the 1920s, and of what has become known as American Dream.8. Comment on Hemingway's style and Farewell to Arms"(1)Hemingway was a glamorous public hero of sorts whose style of writing and living was probably more imitated than any other writers in human memory.(2)In one sense Hemingway wrote all his life about one theme, which is neatly summed up in the famous phrase, “grace under pressure”, and created one hero who acts that theme out.(3). In the same way that Fitzgerald’s Tales of the Jazz Age becomes a symbol for an age, Hemingway’s book paints the image of a whole generation, the Lost Generation.(4)Lieutenant Henry in A Farewell to Arms stands the Hemingway hero, an average man of decidedly masculine taste sensitive and intelligent, a man of action; and with other people, somewhat an outsider, keeping emotion under control, stoic and self-disciplined in a dreadful place where one cannot have happiness.(5)Hemingway’s world is a world essentially chaotic and meaningless, in which man fights a solitary struggle against a force he does not even understand.(6)The war dominates so that the love story represents a mere dream and the brutal and atrocious realities of life do not allow materializing it.9. Analyze "Dry September" by William Faulkner“Dry September”was written in 1931, and is a well-known story of Faulkner. This story touches upon the strange relationship between sex and violence, examines the psychological state of the main characters,and exposes the crime of racial discrimination which makes one bristle with anger.The tone of this story contributes much to its effectiveness, particularly to the imagery of infernal heat and dryness and to the setting itself. From the character Miss Minnie the reader could perceive the obvious impact of Freud’s ideas on William Faulkner.10.Analysis of ‘Miniver Cheevy’by Edwin Arlington RobinsonType:Miniver Cheery is a dramatic lyric poem centering on a twentieth-century misfit who dreams of living in the heroic age of sword and horse.Theme :Miniver longs for a better world rather than the one he lives in. He escaped reality by dreaming of bygone day and soothing himself with liquor.It is normal to think about the past.But it is abnormal to dwell on it constantly.Miniver rationalizes that fate is at fault for his failure.How could he be blamed for being born in the wrong place at the wrong time ?His dissatisfaction with and disappointment makes the reader think the problems of a modern man.Structure:Miniver Cheery is written in a traditional form. Each stanza is characterized by a quatrain with a regular rhyme scheme of abab. the structure of this poem is neatly symmetrical,containing eight four-line stanzas.PS:米尼弗.契维译文：米尼弗.契维，傲世的青年，日瘦一日，因为他愤世嫉俗，他痛哭，为什么降生人间，他理由十足。