美国文学史及选读期末复习
美国文学史期末复习资料全
美国⽂学史期末复习资料全美国⽂学（本科）试题5I. Complete each of the following statements with proper words or phrases andput your answers on the Answer Sheet. (20%, 1 point for each)1. The first permanent English settlement in North America was established atJamestown, Virginia in 1607 .2. became the first American writer.3. Hard work, thrift, piety and sobriety were the values that dominated much of the early American writing.4. In American literature, the 18th century was an age of and Revolution.5. Franklin’s best writing is found in his masterpiece.6. On January 10, 1776, Thomas Paine’s famous pamphlet appeared.7. The signing of symbolized the birth of an independent American nation.8. The most outstanding poet in America of the 18th century was .9. Washington Irving’s became the first work by an American writer to win international fame.10. is the summit of American Romanticism.11. With the publication of Emerson’s in 1836,American Romanticism reached its summit.12. Hester Prynne is the heroine in Hawthorne’s novel.13.Henry James’ major fictional theme is.14. brought the Romantic period to an end. So the age of Realism came into existence.15. The Poetic style invented by Whitman is now called .16. “Because I could not stop for Death---” is written by.17. The term The Gilded Age is given by to describe the post-civil war years.18. Theodore Dreiser’s first novel is.19. The leader of the literary movement Imagism is .20. is the spokesman for Lost Generation.II. Each of the following statements below is followed by four alternative answersor completions. Choose the one that is the best in each case and put your answers on the Answer Sheet. (30%, 1 point for each)1. The first American writer of local color to achieve wide popularity was .A. Bret HarteB. Mark TwainC. Henry JamesD. William Dean Howells2. Which of the following is the masterpiece of Mark Twain?A. The Gilded AgeB. The Adventures of Tom SawyerC. The Adventures of Huckleberry FinnD. Jumping Frog3. Which writer has no naturalist tendency?A. Mark TwainB. Jack LondonC. Theodore DreiserD. Frank Norris4. Transcendentalist doctrines found their greatest literary advocates in andThoreau.A. JeffersonB. EmersonC. FreneauD. Oversoul5. Which of the following doesn’t belong to Dreiser’s “Trilogy of Desire”?A. The FinancierB. The TitanC. The StoicD. An American Tragedy6. Which is the character who appears in the novel Moby Dick?A. Hester PrynneB. Mr. HooperC. AhabD. PearlC. transcendentalismD. veritism9. Jack London was at his height of his powers when he wrote , which is deeply influenced by Darwinism.A. The Sea WolfB. To Build a FireC. The Call of the WildD. Martin Eden10. The Cop and the Anthem is written by .A. O. HenryB. Henry JamesC. Jack LondonD. Mark Twain11. “Two small people, without dislike or suspicion.” is a line in the poem The River-Merchant’s Wife:A Letter written by .A. T. S. EliotB.Robert FrostC.Ezra PoundD. Carl Sandburg12. The imagist poets followed three principles, they are , direct treatment and economy of expression.A. blank verseB. rhythmC. free verseD. common speech13. Of the following American writers, who has NOT been an expatriate in Paris?A. Ernest HemingwayB. Ezra PoundC. F. S. FitzgeraldD. Emily Dickinson14. Who was the foremost novelist of the American Depression of the 1930s?A. Ernest HemingwayB. Ezra PoundC. John SteinbeckD. F. S. Fitzgerald15. The first writings that we call American were the narratives and of the early settlements.A. journalsB. poetryC. dramaD. folklores16. An American Dictionary of the English Language was published in 1828 by .A. Samuel JohnsonB. Noah WebsterC. Daniel WebsterD. Daniel Defoe17. Walden is written by .A. EmersonB. ThoreauC. PoeD. Hawthorne18. is famous for psychological realism.A. Mark TwainB. William Dean HowellsC. Henry JamesD. Walt Whitman19. Which is generally regarded as the Bible of New England Transcendentalism?A. NatureB. WaldenC. On BeautyD. Self-Reliance20. Which is regarded as the “Declaration of Intellectual Independence”?A.The American ScholarB. English TraitsC. The Conduct of LifeD. Nature21. Santiago is the character in Hemingway’s novel.A. In Our TimeB. The Old Man and the SeaC. For Whom the Bell TollsD. The Sun Also Rises22. Which of the following is a much harsher realism?A. local colorismB. naturalismC. romanticismD. imagism23. Who is the arbiter of 19th century literary realism in America?A. Mark TwainB. Bret HarteC. William Dean HowellsD. Henry James24. F. S. Fitzgerald is NOT the author of .A. The Great GatsbyB. Tender is the NightC. A Farewell to the ArmsD. This Side of Paradise25. The pessimism and deterministic ideas of naturalism pervaded the works of such American writers as .A. Mark TwainB. F. S. FitzgeraldC. Walt WhitmanD. Stephen Crane26. Charles Drouet is a character in the novel of______.A. The AmericanB. The Portrait of a LadyC.Sister CarrieD. The Gift of the Magi27. American literature produced only one female poet during the 19th century. She was .A. Anne BradstreetB. Jane AustenC. Emily DickinsonD. Harriet Beecher28. read his poetry at the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy.A. Robert FrostB. T. S. EliotC. Carl SandburgD. Ezra Pound29. With Howells, James and Mark Twain active on the scene, became the major trend in the 70s and 80s of the 19th century.A. sentimentalismB. romanticismC. realismD. naturalism30. “The apparition of these faces in the crowd; Petals on a wet, black bough”. This is the shortest poem written by .A. T. S. EliotB. Robert FrostC.Ezra PoundD. Wallace StevensIII. Comment on the following poems. Put your answers on the Answer Sheet. (20%, 10 points for each) 1.Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Eveningby: Robert FrostWhose woods these are I think I know.His house is in the village though;He will not see me stopping hereTo watch his woods fill up with snow.My little horse must think it queerTo stop without a farmhouse nearBetween the woods and frozen lakeThe darkest evening of the year.He gives his harness bells a shakeTo ask if there is some mistake.The only other sound’s the sweepOf easy wind and downy flake.The woods are lovely, dark and deep.But I have promises to keep,And miles to go before I sleep,And miles to go before I sleep.1. I Heard a Fly Buzz—When I Died—by: Emily DickinsonI heard a Fly buzz — when I died —The Stillness in the RoomWas like the Stillness in the Air —Between the Heaves of Storm —The Eyes around — had wrung them dry —And Breaths were gathering firmFor that last Onset — when the KingBe witnessed — in the Room —I willed my Keepsakes — Signed awayWhat portion of me beAssignable — and then it wasThere interposed a Fly —With Blue — uncertain stumbling Buzz —Between the light — and me —And then the Windows failed — and thenI could not see to see —IV. Give brief answers to the following and write your answers on the Answer Sheet. (30%, 15 points for each)1. Being a period of the great flowering of American literature, the Romantic Period is called “the American Renaissance”. Briefly discuss what the features of American literature in this period are.2. How does Sister Carrie embody Dreiser’2008-2009学年度第⼆期《美国⽂学史及作品选读》（2006级本科）期末考试A卷参考答案命题⼈：王琪、丁华良、祝⼩丁I. Complete each of the following statements with proper words or phrases andput your answers on the Answer Sheet. (20%, 1 point for each)1. 16072. John Smith3. Puritan4. Reason5. The Autobiography6. Common Sense7. The Declaration of Independence8. Philip Freneau 9. Sketch Book 10. Transcendentalism11. Nature 12. The Scarlet Letter 13. international theme 14. The civil war15. free verse 16. Emily Dickinson 17. Mark Twain18. Sister Carrie 19. Ezra Pound 20. Ernest HemingwayII. Each of the following statements below is followed by four alternative answers or completions. Choose the one that is the best in each case and put your answers on the Answer Sheet. (30%, 1 point for each)1 --- 5: A C A B D 6 --- 10: C D B C A11 ---15:C B D C A 16 --- 20: B B C A A21 ---25: B B C C D 26 --- 30: C C A C CIII. Comment on the following poems. Put your answers on the Answer Sheet. (20%, 10 points for each)1. "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" was Frost's favorite of his own poems and Frost in a letter to Louis Untermeyer called it "my best bid for remembrance."This poem illustrates many of the qualities most characteristic of Frost, including the attention to natural detail, the relationship between humans and nature, and the strong theme suggested by individual lines. The speaker in the poem, a traveler by horse on the darkest night of the year, stops to watch a woods filling up with snow. He thinks the owner of the woods is someone who lives in the village and will not see him stopping there. While he is attracted by the beauty of thewoods and nature, he is reminded by his little horse and realizes that he has obligations which pull him away from the lure of nature. The speaker describes the beauty and temptation of the woods as “lovely, dark and deep,” but reminds himself that he must not remain there, because he has “promises to keep,” and a long journey ahead of him. He has to complete his obligations and then make his aspirations to be realized. Through the symbolic woods and horse, we also get to know that the speaker has strong self-awareness and self-discipline.In another way, the poem can be analyzed from the perspective of aspiration and realization. Aspiration is something to be worked at. We enjoy the fruit of our realization only when we reach our destination. But from the spiritual point of view, we notice something else that is the transformation of aspiration and realization. Today's aspiration transforms itself into tomorrow's realization. Again, tomorrow's realization is the pathfinder of a higher and deeper goal. There is no end to our realization, and there is no end of our aspiration as long as you are alive. Our journey is eternal, and the road that we are taking on is also eternal. All aspirations become realization till the end of one’s life.The poem is written in iambic tetrameter in the Rubaiyat stanza created by Edward Fitzgerald. Each verse (save the last) follows an a-a-b-a rhyming scheme, with the following verse's a's rhyming with that verse's b, which is a chain rhyme. Overall, the rhyme scheme is AABA-BBCB-CCDC-DDDD.2. The poetess is watching her own death and recording the process. Instead of seeing God and hearing the songs of angels yearned for by Puritans upon death she heard a fly buzz, which is really ironic. Fly: sets off the stillness in the room;blocks off the light (from heaven);suggests a coming decadence→ the speaker loses the opportunity of gaining immortality after deathThe fly plays an important role in the speaker’s experience of death. The poem is, in part, about “the conflict between preconception and perception.” The person on his or her deathbed shifts perspective from “the ritual of dying” to “the fact of death.” The fly, by interrupting the dying speaker with its “Blue —uncertain stumbling Buzz —” obliterates his or her false notions of death. The sound of the fly represents “the last conscious link with reality.” The poem lacks any hint of a life after death.IV. Give brief answers to the following and write your answers on the Answer Sheet. (30%, 15 points for each)1.(1) The whole nation had a strong sense of optimism and the mood of “feeling good”, giving birth tothe spectacular outburst of romantic feeling.(2) The English counterpart exerted a stimulating impact on the writers of the young nation.(3) Taking foreign influence in consideration, the great works of American writers still carriedtypically American romantic color.(4) The young nation had brought forth its own philosophy. Transcendentalism stresses man’scapacity of knowing truth intuitively, and of attaining knowledge transcending the reach of the senses.2.(1) In this novel, Dreiser expressed his naturalistic pursuit by expounding the purposelessness of lifeand attacking the conventional moral standards.(2) The novel best embodies his naturalistic belief that while men are controlled by heredity, instinctand chance, a few extraordinary and unsophisticated human beings refuse to accept their fate wordlessly and instead strive, unsuccessfully, to find meaning and purpose for their existence.(3) To Sister Carrie, the world is cold and harsh. Alone, helpless, she moves along like a mechanismdriven by desire and catches blindly at any opportunities for a better existence, opportunities first offered by Drouet, and then by Hurstwood. A feather in the wind, she was totally at the mercy of forces she cannot comprehend, still less to say control. The famous picture of Carrie sitting in a rocking chair in her room in the evening, rocking back and forth, is a picture of Carrie’s drifting with the tide. She has no control, no freedom of will.美国⽂学（本科）试题6I. Complete each of the following statements with proper words or phrases: (20%, 1 point for each)1. In 1817, the stately poem called “Thanatopsis” introduced the best poet, ______, to appear in America up to that time.2. James Fennimore Cooper launched two kinds of immensely popular stories: the sea adventure and______.3. Ralph Emerson was recognized throughout his life as the leader of ______ movement, yet henever applied the term to himself or to his beliefs and ideas.4. Herman Melville’s novel ______ is a tremendous chronicle of a whaling voyage in pursuit of aseemingly supernatural white whale.5. In the early 19th century, Washington Irving wrote ______ which became the first work by anAmerican writer to win financial success on both sides of the Atlantic.6. In 1845, Henry David Thoreau began a two-year residence at ______ Pond.7. After his death, ______ became the only American to be honored with a bust in the Poet’s Cornerof Westminster Abbey.8. The American Romantic period stretches from the end of the 18th century through the outburst ofthe ______.9. The arbiter of 19th century literary realism in America was ______.10. The poetic style Walt Whitman devised is now called ______, which is poetry without a fixed beator regular rhyme scheme.11. ______ is considered the founder of psychological realism. He believed that reality lies in theimpressions made by life on the spectator.12. ______ is the novel into which Jack London put most of himself.13. O. Henry’s ______ is a very moving story of a young couple who sell their best possessions inorder to get money for a Christmas present for each other.14. ______ was the leader of a new movement in poetry which he called the “Imagist” movement.15. In 1925, F. Scott Fitzgerald completed his best novel ______. It is the story of an idealist who wasdestroyed by the influence of the wealthy, pleasure-seeking people around him.16. Ernest Hemingway’s stature as a writer was confir med with the publication of his novel ______ in1929. The novel portrayed a farewell both to war and to love.17. ______ was the foremost novelist of the American Depression of the 1930s.18. William Faulkner considered __________ to be “the first truly American writer”.19. As a genre, naturalism emphasized heredity and ______ as important deterministic forces shaping individualized characters that were presented in special and detailed circumstances.20. A series of sixteen pamphlets by Thomas Paine was entitled ______.II. Each of the following statements below is followed by four alternative answers or completions.Choose the one that is the best in each case: (30%, 1 point for each) 1. Moby Dick was dedicated to ____.。
美国文学期末复习题
美国文学期末复习题2013-2014-1 美国文学史及选读期末复习材料I Multiple choices1. Which is not connected with Thomas Paine?A. Common SenseB. The American CrisisC. The Rights of ManD. The Autobiography2. “These are the times that try men's souls”, these words were once read to Washington's troops and did much to spur excitement to further action with hope and confidence. Who is the author of these words?A.Benjamin FranklinB.Thomas PaineC. Thomas JeffersonD. George Washington3. At the Reason and Revolution Period, Americans were influenced by the European movement called theA. Chartist MovementB. Romanticist MovementC. Enlightenment Movement Modernist MovementD.4. In American literature, the Enlighteners were favorable to .A. the colonial orderB. religious obscurantismC. the Puritan traditionD.the secular literature5. The English colonies in North America rose in arms against their parent country and the Continental Congress adopted _____________ in 1776.A. Declaration of IndependenceB.the Sugar ActC. the Stamp ActD.the Mayflower Compact6. ____ usually was regarded as the first Americanwriter.A. William BradfordB. Anne BradstreetC. Emily DickinsonD. Captain John Smith7. Anne Bradstreet was a Puritan poet. Her poems made such a stir in England that she became known as the “”who appeared in America.A. Ninth MuseB. Tenth MuseC. Best MuseD. First Muse8. Who was considered as the “poet of American Revolution”?A. Anne BradstreetB. Edward TaylorC. Michael WigglesworthD. Philip Freneau9. In 1817, the stately poem called Thanatopsis introduced the best poet _____ to appear in Americaup to that time.A. Edward TaylorB. Philip FreneauC. William Cullen BryantD. Edgar Allen Poe10. The finest example of Nathaniel Hawthorne 's symbolism is the recreation of Puritan Boston in _____ A. The Scarlet Letter B. Young Goodman BrownC. The Marble FaunD. The Ambitious Guest11. The universe is composed of Nature and the soul Spirit is present everywhere”. This is the voice of the book Nature written by Emerson, which pushed American Romanticism into a new phase, the phase of New England.A. RomanticismB. TranscendentalismC. NaturalismD. Symbolism12. Which is generally regarded as the Bible of New England Transcendentalism?A. NatureB. WaldenC. On BeautyD. Self-Reliance13. Mark Twain created, in _______ , a masterpiece of American realism that is also one of the great books of world literature.A. The Adventure of Huckleberry FinnB. The Adventure of Tom SawyerC. The Man That Corrupted HadleyburgD. The Gilded Age14. ________ marks the climax of Mark Twain 'sliterary creativity.A . The Adventureof Huckleberry Finn B. The Gilded AgeC. Life on the MississippiD. The Adventure of Tom Sawyer15. Choose the novel which is not written by Henry James.A. The AmbassadorsB. The Wings of the DoveC. The BostoniansD. The Mysterious Stranger16. Generally speaking, all those writers with anaturalistic approach to human reality tend to beA. transcendentalistsB. idealistsC. pessimistsD. impressionists17. Ezra Pound 's long poem ________ contained more than one hundred poems loosely connected.A. The Waste LandB. The CantosC. Don JuanD. Queen Mab18. T. S. Eliot 's first major poem _______ (1917), has been called the first masterpiece of modernism in English.A. The Love Song of J. Alfred PrufrockB. The Waste LandC. Four QuartetsD. Preludes19. Ernest Hemingway was badly wounded in Italy and sent to a hospital where he fell in love with a nurse. These two persons later became the characters of his novel . A. The Old Man and the Sea B. For Whom the Bell TollsC. The Sun Also RisesD. A Farewell to Arms20. In William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury, he useda technique called ____________ , in which the whole story was told through the thoughts of one character.A. stream of consciousness C. symbolism naturalismB. imagismD.21. Led by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo Emersonand , there arose a kind of teachings of transcendentalism in the early nineteenth century.A. H erman Melville David Thoreau C. Mark Twain Theodore DreiserB. HenryD.22. A New _____ had appeared in England in the last years of the eighteenth century. It spread to continental Europe and then came to America early in the nineteenth century.A. realismB. critical realismC. romanticismD. naturalism23. From Henry David Thoreau 's jail experience, came his famous essay, _________ which statesThoreau's belief that no man should violate his conscience at the command of a government.A. WaldenB. NatureC. Civil DisobedienceD. Common Senseth24. Mark Twain, one of the greatest 19th century American writers, is well known for his ________________ .A. international themeB. waste-land imageryC. local colorD. symbolism25. Herman Melville '__s ____ is an encyclopedia of everything: history, philosophy religion, etc. in addition toa detailed account of the operations of the whaling industry.A. The Old Man and the SeaB. Moby DickC. White Jacket C. Billy Budd26. The ship “_______ ”carried about one hundred Pilgrims and took 66 days to beat its way across the Atlantic. In December of 1620, it put the Pilgrims ashore at Plymouth, Massachusetts.A. SunflowerB. ArmadaC. MayflowerD. Pequod27. From 1733 to 1758, Benjamin Franklin wrote and published his famous _____ , an annual collection of proverbs.A. The AutobiographyB. Poor Richard 's AlmanacC. Common SenseD. The General Magazine28. In American literature, the eighteen-century was the age of the Enlightenment. ______ was the dominant spirit.A. HumanismB. RationalismC. RevolutionD. Evolution29. ____ was the most leading spirit of theTranscendental Club.A. Henry David ThoreauB. Ralph Waldo EmersonC. Nathaniel HawthorneD. Walt Whitman30. Edgar Allen Poe 's first collection of short stories isA. Tales of a TravelerTalesC. Canterbury Tales Grotesque ofArabesque31. _____ was a romanticized account of Herman Melville 's stay among the Polynesians.The successof the book soon made Melville well known as the “man who lived among cannibal ”s.A. Moby DickB. TypeeC. OmooD. Billy Budd B. LeatherstockingD. Tales of the32. Which is regarded as the“Declaration of Intellectual Independence”?A. The American ScholarB. English TraitsC. The Conduct of LifeD. Representative Men33. The three dominant figures of the realistic period in American literature are ________ .A. Theodore Dreiser, Emily Dickinson and William Dean HowellsB. Mark Twain, Henry James and William Dean HowellsC. Mark Twain, Theodore Dreiser and William Dean HowellsD. Mark Twain, Emily Dickinson and William Dean Howells34. American literature produced only one female poet during the nineteenth century. This was ________ .A. Anne BradstreetB. Jane AustenC. Emily DickinsonD. Harriet Beecher35. In 1900, London published his first collection of short stories, named ____________ .A. The Son of the WolfB. The Sea WolfC. The Law of LifeD. White Fang36. In Henry James'Daisy Miler, the author tries to portray the young woman as an embodiment ofA. the force of conventionB. the free spirit of the New WorldC. the decline of aristocracyD. the corruption of the newly rich37. “ Theapparition of these faces in the crowd; Petals on a wet, black bough.” This is the shortest poem written by .A. T.S. EliotB. Robert FrostC. Ezra PoundD.E.E.Cumings38. The Fitzgerald lived so extravagantly that they frequently spent more money than F. Scot Fitzgerald earned for parties, liquor, entertaining their friends and traveling. It was this living style that nicknamed the decade of the 1920s as ________ .A. The Roaring TwentiesB. The Jazz AgeC. The Dollar DecadeD. all of the above39. In 1954, ________ was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for his “mastery of the art of modern narration”.A. T.S EliotB. Ernest HemingwayC. John SteinbeckD. William Faukner40. William Faukner' snovel _________ describes the decay and downfall of an old southern aristocratic family, symbolizing the old social order, told from four different points of view.A. The Sound and the FuryB. StartorisC. The UnvanquishedD. The Town41. “The Lure of the Spirit: The Flesh in Pursuit ” si the title of one chapter in Dreise'rs novel _______ .A. An American DreamB. Sister CarrieC. Dreiser Looks at RussiaD. Jannie Gerhardt42. The main theme of _________ The Art of Fiction reveals his literary credo that representation of life should be the main object of the novel.A. Henry James'B. William Dean Howells'C. Mark Twain 'sD. O. Henry 's43. With William Dean Howells, James, and Mark Twain active on the scene, _____________ became the major trend in the seventiesand eighties of the nineteenth century.A. sentimentalismB. romanticismC. realismD. naturalism44. While embracing the socialism of Marx, London also believed in the triumph of the strongest individuals. This contradiction is most vividly projected in the patently autobiographical novel ________ .A. The Call of the WildB. The Sea WolfC. Martin EdenD. The Iron Heel45 ________ is a novella about a young American girlwho gets“killed”by the winter in Rome, and it broughtHenry James international fame for the first time.A. The AmericanB. The EuropeansC. Daisy MillerD. The Portait of a LadyAnswers: 1-5 DBCDA 6-10 DBDCA 11-15 BAAAD 16-20 CBADA21-25 BCCCB 26-30 CBBBD 31-35 BABCA36-40 BCDBA 41-45 BACCCn Filling the following blanks with proper answers 1. Captain John Smith became the first American writer. 2. The puritans looked upon themselves as a chosen people.3. The first major intellectual spokesman of theMassachusetts Bay colony was John Cotton, sometimes called the Patriarch of New England ”4. Anne Bradstreet published The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America, andtenth Muse. 5. Poor Richard ' Almanac is proverbs written by Benjamin Frankli n.6. Thomas Paine ' famous pamphlet Common Sense boldly advocated a Declaration for Independence.7. Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration ofIndependencewith John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert Livingsto n.8. Philip Freneau developed a natural, simple, andconcrete diction, best illustrated in such nature lyrics as “ The Wild Honey Suckle ” and The Indian Burying Ground ”.9. Philip Freneau has been called the Father of American she was nicknamed the an annual collection ofPoetry”.10. In Washington Irving ' Sketch Book appeared the first modern short stories and the first great American juvenile literature.11. Cooper' enduring fame rests on his frontier stories, especially the five novels that comprise the Leatherstocking tales12. To a Waterfowl”is perhaps the peak of William Cullen Bryant' wok.13. Thanatopsis, William Cullen Bryant' best-known poem, consistsof four stanzas in iambic tetrameter abab. The title means view of death”.14. Edgar Allan Poe is considered “father of American detective stories and Ameican gothic stories. ”15. Emerson believed above all in individualism, independence of mind, and self-reliance.16. In Walden Thoreau thought it better for a man to work one day a week and rest six, and the rest of the time could be devoted to thought.17. Hawthorne' stories touch the deepest roots of man' moral nature.18. Moby Dick is a tremendous chronicle of a whaling voyage in pursuit of a seeminglysupernatural white whale.19. After his death, Longfellow became the only American to be honored with a bust in the Poet' Corner _of Westminster Abbe y.20. Harriet Beecher Stowe, the author of Uncle Tom' Cabin, had become an American institution and the most famous literary woman in the world.21. William Dean Howells found his subject matter in the experiences of the American middle class.22. William Dean Howells called for the treatment of the smiling aspects of life” as being the moreAmerica n.23. The naturalists emphasized that the world was amoral, that men and women had no free will, that their lives were controlled by heredity and the environment.24. The poetic style Walt Whitman devised is now called free verse.25. O • Henry"s stories are usually short and interesting; Famous for their surprising end.26. Henry James is famous for his international theme of the traditionless American confronting the complexity of European life.27. Jack London believed in the inevitable triumph of the strongest individuals.28. Dreiser' greatest and most successfulnovel, AnAmerican Tragedy, is about a young man who acts as if the only way he can be truly fulfilled is by acquiring wealth—through marriage if necessary.29. Writers of the first postwar era self-consciously acknowledged that they were a Lost Generation,” devoid of faith and alienated from a civilizatio n.30. Wallace Stevens work is primarily motivated by the belief that ideas of orde”.31. With the publication of The Sun Also Rises Hemingway became the spokesman for what Gertrude Stein had called a lost generation”川Decide whether the statements are true or false (T/F).1. John Winthrop ' reports of exploration, published in the early 1600s, have been regarded as the first distinct American literature written in English.2. In 1612, William Bradford published in England a book calledA Map of Virginia; With a description of the country.3. Philip Freneau was neoclassical by training and taste yet romantic in essential spirit.4. Ralph Waldo Emerson was recognizedas the leader of transcendentalistmovement, but he always applied theterm “Transcendentalis”t to himself or to his beliefs and ideas.5. To Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville, the telling of a tale was a way of inquiring into the meaning of life.6. Walt Whitman was attacked in his lifetime for his offensive subject matter of sexuality and for his conventional style.7. Tom Sawyer walked out of Twain 's pages directly from his fresh memory of his boyhood in the west.8. Hurstwood is a character in Theodore Dreise'rs Sister Carrie.9. In the decade of the 1910s, American literature achieveda new diversity and reached its greatest heights.10. Edwin Arlington Robinson began his career as a novalist in bleakness and poverty.11. T he greatest of America's realists, such as Henry James and Mark Twain, moved well beyond a superficial portrayal of nineteenth-century America.12. H enry James was a realist in the same way as one views the realism of Mark Twain or William Dean Howells.13.Sister Carrie is generally regarded as TheodoreDreiser's masterpiece.14. G enerally speaking, Jack London was much more interested in ideas than Stephen Crane and lesssentimental than Frank Norris.15. R alph Waldo Emerson's prose style was sometimes as highly individual as his poetry.16. American literature is the oldest of all national literature.17. Georgia, Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, New York, New England, all were named after French monarchs and lands.18. Benjamin Franklin was a prose stylist whose writing reflected the neoclassic ideals of clarity, restraint, simplicity and balance.19. The Fall of the House of Usheris one of Edgar Allan Poe's poems.20. The Scarlet Letteris set in the seventeenth century. It is an elaboration of a fact which the author took out of the life of the Puritan past.21. Walt Whitman was so great that he won respect and love during his lifetime for hisLeaves of Gras.s22. Many of O. Henry 's stories contain a lot of slang and colloquial expressions, just like his own speech.23. Henry James was a realist in the same way as one views the realism of Mark Twain or William Dean Howells.24. Robert Frost rejected the revolutionary poetic principles of his contemporaries, and chose “the old-fashioned way to be new”instead.25. John Steinbeck's theme was usually that simple human virtues such as kindness and fair treatment were far superior to official hard-heartedness, or the dehumanizing cruelty of exploiters for their own commercial advantage.26. Transcendentalistsspoke for cultural rejuvenation and against the materialism of American society.27. Washington Irving was the first great belletrist, writing always for pleasure, and to produce pleasure. 28. James Fennimore Cooper launched two kinds of immensely popular stories: the sea adventure tale and the frontier saga.29. Puritan influence over American Romanticism was conspicuously noticeable.30. “Young Goodman Brown”seemsto prove everyone possesses some evil secrets1-5 FFTFT 6-10FTTFF 11-15 TFFTT 16-20 FFTFT 21-25FFFTT 26-30 TTTTTIV Answer the following questions briefl y1. These are the times that try men's souls: The summersoldier and the sunshine patriot will in this crisis shrink from the service of their country; but he that standsit now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly—This dearness only that gives everything its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods.Questions:(1) Which book is this passage taken from?(2) Who is the author of this book?(3) Whom is the author praising? Whom is the author criticizing?(4) What do you think of the language?Answers:(1) The American Crisis.(2) Thomas Paine(3) Paine is praising those who stand“it”, it referring to “the service of their country”. In the meantime, Paine is criticizing those who shrink from the service of their country in this crisis.(4) The language is plain, impressive and forceful. Painehimself once said that his purpose as a writer was to use plain language to make those who can scarcely read understand and to fit the powers of thinking and the turn of language to the subject, so as to bring out a clear conclusion that shall hit the point in question and nothing else.2. It was not very long after speaking the Goney that another homeward-bound whaleman, the Town-Ho, was encountered. She was manned almost wholly by Polynesians.In the short gam that ensued she gave us strong news of Moby Dick. To some the general interest in the White Whale was now widly heightened by circumstance of the Town-Ho's story, which seemed obscurely to involve with the whale a certain wondrous, inverted visitation of one of those so called judgments of God which at times are said to overtake some men. This latter circumstance, with its own particular accompaniments, forming what may be called the secret part of the tragedy about to be narrated, never reached the ears of Captain Ahab or his mates…Nevertheless, so potent and influence did this thing have on those seamen in the Pequod who came to the full knowledge of it, and by such a strange delicacy, to call it so, were they governedin this matter, that they kept the secret among themselves so that it never transpired abaft the Pequod's main-mast. Interweaving in its proper place this darker thread with the story as publicly narrated on the ship, the whole of this strange affair I now proceed to put on lasting record. Questions:(1) From which novel is this paragraph taken?(2) What is the name of the novelist?(3) Who is Ahab?(4) What is Pequod?(5) What is the theme of the novel?Answers:(1) Moby Dick(2) Herman Melville(3) The captain of the whaling ship(4) The name of the whaling ship(5) The rebellious struggle of Captain Ahab against the overwhelming, mysterious vastnessof the universe and its awesome sometimes merciless forces.3. When a girl leaves her home at eighteen, she does one of two things. Either she falls into saving hands and becomes better, or she rapidly assumes the cosmopolitan standard of virtue and becomes worse. Of an intermediatebalance, under the circumstances, there is no possibility. The city has its cunning wiles, no less than the infinitely smaller and more human temper. There are large forces which allure with all the soulfulness of expressionpossible in the most cultured human. The gleam of a thousand lights is often as effective as the persuasivelight in a wooing and fascinating eye. Half the undoing of the unsophisticated and natural mind is accomplished by forces wholly superhuman. A blare of sound, a roar of life, a vast array of human hives, appealto the astonishedsensesin equivocal terms. Without a counselorat hand to whisper cautious interpretations, what falsehoodsmay not these things breathe into the unguarded ear! Unrecognized for what they are, their beauty, like music, too often relaxes, then weakens then perverts the simpler human perceptions.Questions:(1) From which novel is this paragraph taken?(2) Who is the author of this novel?(3) How do you understand “the cosmopolitan standard of virtue”?(4) Is there any naturalist tendency in this passage? Answers:(1) Sister Carrie(2) Theodore Dreiser(3) “The cosmopolitan standard of virtue”is something that makes a person becomelow in virtue and become worse.(4) Yes.4. Briefly discuss the noveTlhe Great GatsbyThe Great Gatsby, a novel written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, is one of the greatest novels in American literature. It fully explores the disillusionment and despair of the lost generation through the personal tragedy of a young man whose “incorruptible Dream”is easily smashed into pieces by the crude reality. The protagonist, Gatsby, is a mythical figure whose intensity of dream partakes of a state of mind that embodies American itself. His failure magnifies the end of the American Dream. The style of the story is explicit and chilly. Fitzgerald's accurate dialogues, his careful observation of mannerism and the colorful images provide the reader with a vivid and profound scene of the reality.5. What are the three main principles that Ezra Pound endorsed?(1) Directly treat poetic subjects.(2) Eliminate merely ornamental or superfluous words.(3) Rhythmical composition in the sequence of the musical phrase rather than in the sequence of metronome.6. Tell the differences between Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman⑴ Emily Dickinson expresses the inner life of individuals, while Walt Whitman keeps his eyes on the society at large.(2) Emily Dickinson is regional", while Walt Whitman is national” in his outlook.(3) Formally, Emily Dickinson uses concise, simple dictions and syntax, while Walt Whitman uses endless, all-inclusive catalogs.V Essay Writing (这个部分给大家的答案只是罗列了回答的要点，要将其连缀成文，如果简单按复习题给的答案罗列，只得一半分数)1. Write a short essayabout the novel The Grapes ofWrathWriter: John Steinbeck----won Nobel Prize forLiterature in 1962; spoke for the oppressed and suffered Background information: (1) Oklahoma used to be a major agricultural state .In the 1930s, a draught ruined this place. People had to leave here to seek a way out. Many of them went to California in hope of finding jobs there to support their famil y. (2)The Great Depressio n. Meaning of title: (1) Hope to despair; (2) Wrath of people; (3) Indications of revolutio n.Theme: (1) Embodying the mass misery of farmers; (2) Praising the spirit of love and unity; (3) Advocating fight and struggle for better life.Structure: (1) Its structure is dictated by the bible; (2) There are two blocks of material: a. the westward trek of the Joads; b. the depressed Oklahomans, and the general picture of the Great Depression.Symbols: ⑴ dust---evil forces; (2) grapes---hop e rage2. Write a short essay about the novel A Farewell to Arms Writer: Hemingway --- (1) in 1954, he was awarded the Nobel Prize; (2) Main works: The Sun also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls, The old Manand the Sea. (3) His major contribution: a. Code hero---grace under pressure; b. Iceberg Theory--- economy of expression; (4) the lost generation Background information: World War n Theme: shows the filth, meaningless,calamity of war; the death, the nothingnessof life; the disillusionment with future, hope and love, happiness.The universe is indifferent. There is no God to watch over man. Characters: Henry--- initially detached fromlife --- though well-disciplined and friendly, he feels as if he has nothing to do with the war. After falling in love with Catherine he became a code hero in some way. Catherine---code hero: unfaltering devotion to Henry, brave, considerate, optimisticSymbols: rain---sadness, desperation, depression. It is raining outside almost every time something bad occurs. mud---nature's hostility to man.3. Write a short essay about the noveTl he Adventures of Tom SawyerAuthor: Mark Twain —the first truly American writer, a local colorist; he used short, concrete and colloquial language; his sentences are simple, and even ungrammatical; good at writing children's adventures;masterpiecesincluding: The Adventuresof Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer About the novel: The first famous novel about growing up and showing the contradictions between adults ' world and teenagersw'orld, a story of his seeking for freedom, fame, fortune, love, manhood; reveals the American values such as hero complex and American dream; records the rising Age of American Bourgeois system; bears the irony and satire toward the religion and rigid, didactic children education, which curbed theimagination of children and their innate nature for freedom and adventures and molded them into a stereotype of lifeless man.4. Comment briefly on Theodore Dreiser's theme and writing style?Theme: Dreiser's works are mainly concerned with the tragic nature of the human condition by depicting the coarse, vulgar, cruel, and terrible aspects of life like sex and crime.Style: In terms of style, Dreiser has sometimes been censured for his clumsy syntax, deficient characterization, and inept and dull prose. Yet his accumulated detail, carefully selected and faithfully recorded, is a technique ofpower. Like the other naturalists, he refused to judge—to consider people as good or evil. He clothes his concepts symbolically in the details of reality. It is his journalistic method that has made him one of America's foremost novelists.。
西南大学网络教育0171美国文学史及选读期末考试复习题及参考答案
0171美国文学史及选读1、艾伦坡（Edgar Allan Poe）的小说表现出怎样的艺术特征？答：作品主题爱伦·坡的恐怖小说带有浪漫主义的特色。
纵观爱伦·坡的恐怖小说创作，其故事主题大都“揭示了人类意识及潜意识中的阴暗面”，这一点显然迥异于同时代的其他浪漫主义作家。
爱伦·坡以恐怖小说这样一种特殊的文学形式深入刻画与呈现了非现实状态下人的精神状态和心理特征，试图“以非现实、非理性的表达方式来揭示现代人的精神因顿”。
他借助想象奇特、恐怖怪异的故事情节，通过夸张、隐喻和象征等修辞手段表现人性的危机，激起读者浓厚阅读兴趣的同时，震撼心灵，发人深省。
爱伦·坡的创作原则是其“效果说”理论，他选择“死亡”作为其文学创作的主题是由他的这个创作原则决定的。
坡认为，无论是创作诗歌还是小说，作家必须讲究效果的统一，必须时刻想到预定的结局，要使每一个情节变得必不可少。
他在《评霍桑的“故事重述”》中曾经这样阐述自己的创作原则：“聪明的艺术家不是将自己的思想纳入他的情节，而是事先精心策划，想出某种独特的、与众不同的效果，然后再杜撰出这样一些情节——他把这些情节联结起来，而他所做的一切都将最大限度地有利于实现在预先构思的效果”。
使“每一事件，每一描写细节，甚至一字一句都收到一定的统一效果，一个预想的效果，印象主义的效果”。
他强调作品对读者所能唤起的情绪和产生的效果。
在“创作的哲学”中，他认为，故事的首要目的是要在情感上扣住读者的心弦，产生最激动人心的效果。
死亡主题是通过谨严紧凑的结构和作品的简洁而表现的。
爱伦坡的作品形式精美，技巧圆熟。
爱伦坡在《评霍桑的“故事重述”》里，强调了作品的简洁和统一效果。
在写作中，他还平萍理留情节和结构的高度简洁，小说中通常只有两个，最多三个人物，也没有离题的枝节和无关的装饰品。
在他看来，一位技巧高明的文学家在写作之前，必须成竹在胸，深思熟虑，为实现预期效果而选择和组织情节，并且不应该有一个词的意向直接或间接与预先的构思无关。
美国文学期末复习题
2013-2014-1 美国文学史及选读期末复习材料实用标准文案Ⅰ Multiple choices1. Which is not connected with Thomas Paine?A. Common SenseB. The American CrisisC. The Rights of ManD. The Autobiography2. “These are the times that try men’s souls”, these words were once read to Washington’s troops and did much to spur excitement to further action with hope and confidence. Who is the author of these words?A.Benjamin FranklinB. Thomas PaineC. Thomas JeffersonD. George Washington3. At the Reason and Revolution Period, Americans were influenced by the European movement called the ______.A. Chartist MovementB. Romanticist MovementC. Enlightenment MovementD. Modernist Movement4. In American literature, the Enlighteners were favorable to______.A. the colonial orderB. religious obscurantismC. the Puritan traditionD. the secular literature5. The English colonies in North America rose in arms against their parent country and the Continental Congress adopted ______ in 1776.A. Declaration of IndependenceB. the Sugar ActC. the Stamp ActD. the Mayflower Compact6. ______ usually was regarded as the first American writer.A. William BradfordB. Anne BradstreetC. Emily DickinsonD. Captain John Smith7. Anne Bradstreet was a Puritan poet. Her poems made such a stir in England that she became known as the “______” who appeared in America.A. Ninth MuseB. Tenth MuseC. Best MuseD. First Muse8. Who was considered as the “poet of American Revolution”?A. Anne BradstreetB. Edward TaylorC. Michael WigglesworthD. Philip Freneau9. In 1817, the stately poem called Thanatopsis introduced the best poet ______ to appear in America up to that time.A. Edward TaylorB. Philip FreneauC. William Cullen BryantD. Edgar Allen Poe10. The finest example of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s symbolism is the recreation of Puritan Boston in ______.A. The Scarlet LetterB. Young Goodman BrownC. The Marble FaunD. The Ambitious Guest11. “The universe is composed of Nature and the soul… Spirit is present everywhere”. This is the voice of the book Nature written by Emerson, which pushed American Romanticism into a new phase, the phase of New England ______.A. RomanticismB. TranscendentalismC. NaturalismD. Symbolism12. Which is generally regarded as the Bible of New England Transcendentalism?A. NatureB. WaldenC. On BeautyD. Self-Reliance实用标准文案 13. Mark Twain created, in _________, a masterpiece of American realism that is also one of the great books of world literature.A. The Adventure of Huckleberry FinnB. The Adventure of Tom SawyerC. The Man That Corrupted HadleyburgD. The Gilded Age14. _________ marks the climax of Mark Twain ’s literary creativity.A . The Adventure of Huckleberry Finn B. The Gilded AgeC. Life on the MississippiD. The Adventure of Tom Sawyer15. Choose the novel which is not written by Henry James.A. The AmbassadorsB. The Wings of the DoveC. The BostoniansD. The Mysterious Stranger16. Generally speaking, all those writers with a naturalistic approach to human reality tend to be _________.A. transcendentalistsB. idealistsC. pessimistsD. impressionists17. Ezra Pound ’s long poem _________ contained more than one hundred poems loosely connected.A. The Waste LandB. The CantosC. Don JuanD. Queen Mab18. T. S. Eliot ’s first major poem _________(1917), has been called the first masterpiece of modernism in English.A. The Love Song of J. Alfred PrufrockB. The Waste LandC. Four QuartetsD. Preludes19. Ernest Hemingway was badly wounded in Italy and sent to a hospital where he fell in love with a nurse. These two persons later became the characters of his novel _________.A. The Old Man and the SeaB. For Whom the Bell TollsC. The Sun Also RisesD. A Farewell to Arms20. In William Faulkner ’s The Sound and the Fury , he used a technique called _________, in which the whole story was told through the thoughts of one character.A. stream of consciousnessB. imagismC. symbolismD. naturalism21. Led by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo Emerson and ______, there arose a kind of teachings of transcendentalism in the early nineteenth century.A. Herman MelvilleB. Henry David ThoreauC. Mark TwainD. Theodore Dreiser22. A New ______ had appeared in England in the last years of the eighteenth century. It spread to continental Europe and then came to America early in the nineteenth century.A. realismB. critical realismC. romanticismD. naturalism23. From Henry David Thoreau ’s jail experience, came his famous essay, ______ which states Thoreau ’s belief that no man should violate his conscience at the command of a government.A. WaldenB. NatureC. Civil DisobedienceD. Common Sense24. Mark Twain, one of the greatest 19th century American writers, is well known for his _________.A. international themeB. waste-land imageryC. local colorD. symbolism25. Herman Melville ’s ______ is an encyclopedia of everything: history, philosophy religion, etc. in addition to a detailed account of the operations of the whaling industry.A. The Old Man and the SeaB. Moby DickC. White Jacket C . Billy Budd26. The ship “______” carried about one hundred Pilgrims and took 66 days to beat its way across the Atlantic. In December of 1620, it put the Pilgrims ashore at Plymouth, Massachusetts.A. SunflowerB. ArmadaC. MayflowerD. Pequod实用标准文案 27. From 1733 to 1758, Benjamin Franklin wrote and published his famous ______, an annual collection of proverbs.A. The AutobiographyB. Poor Richard ’s AlmanacC. Common SenseD. The General Magazine28. In American literature, the eighteen-century was the age of the Enlightenment. ______ was the dominant spirit.A. HumanismB. RationalismC. RevolutionD. Evolution29. ______ was the most leading spirit of the Transcendental Club.A. Henry David ThoreauB. Ralph Waldo EmersonC. Nathaniel HawthorneD. Walt Whitman30. Edgar Allen Poe ’s first collection of short stories is ______.A. Tales of a TravelerB. Leatherstocking TalesC. Canterbury TalesD. Tales of the Grotesque of Arabesque31. ______ was a romanticized account of Herman Melville ’s stay among the Polynesians. The success of the book soon made Melville well known as the “man who lived among cannibals ”.A. Moby DickB. TypeeC. OmooD. Billy Budd32. Which is regarded as the “Declaration of Intellectual Independence ”?A. The American ScholarB. English TraitsC. The Conduct of LifeD. Representative Men33. The three dominant figures of the realistic period in American literature are _________.A. Theodore Dreiser, Emily Dickinson and William Dean HowellsB. Mark Twain, Henry James and William Dean HowellsC. Mark Twain, Theodore Dreiser and William Dean HowellsD. Mark Twain, Emily Dickinson and William Dean Howells34. American literature produced only one female poet during the nineteenth century. This was _________.A. Anne BradstreetB. Jane AustenC. Emily DickinsonD. Harriet Beecher35. In 1900, London published his first collection of short stories, named _________.A. The Son of the WolfB. The Sea WolfC. The Law of LifeD. White Fang36. In Henry James ’ Daisy Miler , the author tries to portray the young woman as an embodiment of _________.A. the force of conventionB. the free spirit of the New WorldC. the decline of aristocracyD. the corruption of the newly rich37. “The apparition of these faces in the crowd; Petals on a wet, black bough.” This is the shortest poem written by _________.A. T.S. EliotB. Robert FrostC. Ezra PoundD.E.E.Cumings38. The Fitzgerald lived so extravagantly that they frequently spent more money than F. Scot Fitzgerald earned for parties, liquor, entertaining their friends and traveling. It was this living style that nicknamed the decade of the 1920s as _________.A. The Roaring TwentiesB. The Jazz AgeC. The Dollar DecadeD. all of the above39. In 1954, _________ was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for his “mastery of the art of modern narration ”.A. T.S EliotB. Ernest HemingwayC. John SteinbeckD. William Faukner40. William Faukner ’s novel _________ describes the decay and downfall of an old southern aristocratic family, symbolizing the old social order, told from four different points of view.A. The Sound and the FuryB. Startoris实用标准文案 C. The Unvanquished D. The Town41. “The Lure of the Spirit: The Flesh in Pursuit ” is the title of one chapter in Dreiser ’s novel _________.A. An American DreamB. Sister CarrieC. Dreiser Looks at RussiaD. Jannie Gerhardt42. The main theme of _________ The Art of Fiction reveals his literary credo that representation of life should be the main object of the novel.A. Henry James ’B. William Dean Howells ’C. Mark Twain ’sD. O. Henry ’s43. With William Dean Howells, James, and Mark Twain active on the scene, _________became the major trend in the seventies and eighties of the nineteenth century.A. sentimentalismB. romanticismC. realismD. naturalism44. While embracing the socialism of Marx, London also believed in the triumph of the strongest individuals. This contradiction is most vividly projected in the patently autobiographical novel _________.A. The Call of the WildB. The Sea WolfC. Martin EdenD. The Iron Heel45_________ is a novella about a young American girl who gets “killed ” by the winter in Rome, and it brought Henry James international fame for the first time.A. The AmericanB. The EuropeansC. Daisy MillerD. The Portait of a LadyAnswers: 1-5 DBCDA 6-10 DBDCA 11-15 BAAAD 16-20 CBADA21-25 BCCCB 26-30 CBBBD 31-35 BABCA 36-40 BCDBA 41-45 BACCCⅡ Filling the following blanks with proper answers1. Captain John Smith became the first American writer.2. The puritans looked upon themselves as a chosen people.3. The first major intellectual spokesman of the Massachusetts Bay colony was John Cotton, sometimes called “the Patriarch of New England.”4. Anne Bradstreet published The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America , and she was nicknamed the tenth Muse.5. Poor Richard ’s Almanac is an annual collection of proverbs written by Benjamin Franklin.6. Thomas Paine ’s famous pamphlet Common Sense boldly advocated a “Declaration for Independence ”.7. Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence with John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert Livingston.8. Philip Freneau developed a natural, simple, and concrete diction, best illustrated in such nature lyrics as “The Wild Honey Suckle ” and “The Indian Burying Ground ”.9. Philip Freneau has been called the “Father of American Poetry ”.10. In Washington Irving ’s Sketch Book appeared the first modern short stories and the first great American juvenile literature.11. Cooper ’s enduring fame rests on his frontier stories, especially the five novels that comprise the Leatherstocking tales .12. “To a Waterfowl ” is perhaps the peak of William Cullen Bryant ’s wok.13. “Thanatopsis ”, William Cullen Bryant ’s best-known poem, consists of four stanzas in iambic tetrameter abab. The title means “view of death ”.14. Edgar Allan Poe is considered “father of American detective stories and American gothic stories ”.实用标准文案 15. Emerson believed above all in individualism, independence of mind, and self-reliance.16. In Walden , Thoreau thought it better for a man to work one day a week and rest six, and the rest of the time could be devoted to thought.17. Hawthorne ’s stories touch the deepest roots of man ’s moral nature.18. Moby Dick is a tremendous chronicle of a whaling voyage in pursuit of a seemingly supernatural white whale.19. After his death, Longfellow became the only American to be honored with a bust in the Poet ’s Corner of Westminster Abbey.20. Harriet Beecher Stowe, the author of Uncle Tom ’s Cabin , had become an American institution and the most famous literary woman in the world.21. William Dean Howells found his subject matter in the experiences of the American middle class.22. William Dean Howells called for the treatment of the “smiling aspects of life ” as being the more “American.”23. The naturalists emphasized that the world was amoral, that men and women had no free will, that their lives were controlled by heredity and the environment.24. The poetic style Walt Whitman devised is now called free verse.25. O ·Henry ’s stories are usually short and interesting; Famous for their surprising end.26. Henry James is famous for his international theme of the traditionless American confronting the complexity of European life.27. Jack London believed in the inevitable triumph of the strongest individuals.28. Dreiser ’s greatest and most successful novel, An American Tragedy, is about a young man who acts as if the only way he can be truly fulfilled is by acquiring wealth —through marriage if necessary.29. Writers of the first postwar era self-consciously acknowledged that they were a “Lost Generation,” devoid of faith and alienated from a civilization.30. Wallace Stevens ’ work is primarily motivated by the belief that “ideas of order ”.31. With the publication of The Sun Also Rises , Hemingway became the spokesman for what Gertrude Stein had called “a lost generation.”Ⅲ Decide whether the statements are true or false (T/F).1. John Winthrop ’s reports of exploration, published in the early 1600s, have been regarded as the first distinct American literature written in English.2. In 1612, William Bradford published in England a book called A Map of Virginia ; With a description of the country.3. Philip Freneau was neoclassical by training and taste yet romantic in essential spirit.4. Ralph Waldo Emerson was recognized as the leader of transcendentalist movement, but he always applied the term “Transcendentalist ” to himself or to his beliefs and ideas.5. To Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville, the telling of a tale was a way of inquiring into the meaning of life.6. Walt Whitman was attacked in his lifetime for his offensive subject matter of sexuality and for his conventional style.7. Tom Sawyer walked out of Twain ’s pages directly from his fresh memory of his boyhood in the west.8. Hurstwood is a character in Theodore Dreiser ’s Sister Carrie .9. In the decade of the 1910s, American literature achieved a new diversity and reached its greatest heights.10. Edwin Arlington Robinson began his career as a novalist in bleakness and poverty.实用标准文案 11.The greatest of America ’s realists, such as Henry James and Mark Twain, moved well beyond a superficial portrayal of nineteenth-century America.12.Henry James was a realist in the same way as one views the realism of Mark Twain or William Dean Howells.13.Sister Carrie is generally regarded as Theodore Dreiser ’s masterpiece.14.Generally speaking, Jack London was much more interested in ideas than Stephen Crane and less sentimental than Frank Norris.15.Ralph Waldo Emerson ’s prose style was sometimes as highly individual as his poetry.16. American literature is the oldest of all national literature.17. Georgia, Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, New York, New England, all were named after French monarchs and lands.18. Benjamin Franklin was a prose stylist whose writing reflected the neoclassic ideals of clarity, restraint, simplicity and balance.19. The Fall of the House of Usher is one of Edgar Allan Poe ’s poems.20. The Scarlet Letter is set in the seventeenth century. It is an elaboration of a fact which the author took out of the life of the Puritan past.21. Walt Whitman was so great that he won respect and love during his lifetime for his Leaves of Grass .22. Many of O. Henry ’s stories contain a lot of slang and colloquial expressions, just like his own speech.23. Henry James was a realist in the same way as one views the realism of Mark Twain or William Dean Howells.24. Robert Frost rejected the revolutionary poetic principles of his contemporaries, and chose “the old-fashioned way to be new ” instead.25. John Steinbeck ’s theme was usually that simple human virtues such as kindness and fair treatment were far superior to official hard-heartedness, or the dehumanizing cruelty of exploiters for their own commercial advantage.26. Transcendentalists spoke for cultural rejuvenation and against the materialism of American society.27. Washington Irving was the first great belletrist, writing always for pleasure, and to produce pleasure.28. James Fennimore Cooper launched two kinds of immensely popular stories: the sea adventure tale and the frontier saga.29. Puritan influence over American Romanticism was conspicuously noticeable.30. “Young Goodman Brown ” seems to prove everyone possesses some evil secrets1-5 FFTFT 6-10FTTFF 11-15 TFFTT 16-20 FFTFT 21-25FFFTT 26-30 TTTTTⅣ Answer the following questions briefly.1. These are the times that try men ’s souls: The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will in this crisis shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly —This dearness only that gives everything its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods.Questions:(1)Which book is this passage taken from?实用标准文案 (2)Who is the author of this book?(3)Whom is the author praising? Whom is the author criticizing?(4)What do you think of the language?Answers:(1) The American Crisis.(2) Thomas Paine(3) Paine is praising those who stand “it ”, it referring to “the service of their country ”. In the meantime, Paine is criticizing those who shrink from the service of their country in this crisis.(4) The language is plain, impressive and forceful. Paine himself once said that his purpose as a writer was to use plain language to make those who can scarcely read understand and to fit the powers of thinking and the turn of language to the subject, so as to bring out a clear conclusion that shall hit the point in question and nothing else.2. It was not very long after speaking the Goney that another homeward-bound whaleman, the Town-Ho, was encountered. She was manned almost wholly by Polynesians. In the short gam that ensued she gave us strong news of Moby Dick. To some the general interest in the White Whale was now widly heightened by circumstance of the Town-Ho ’s story, which seemed obscurely to involve with the whale a certain wondrous, inverted visitation of one of those so called judgments of God which at times are said to overtake some men. This latter circumstance, with its own particular accompaniments, forming what may be called the secret part of the tragedy about to be narrated, never reached the ears of Captain Ahab or his mates …Nevertheless, so potent and influence did this thing have on those seamen in the Pequod who came to the full knowledge of it, and by such a strange delicacy, to call it so, were they governed in this matter, that they kept the secret among themselves so that it never transpired abaft the Pequod ’s main-mast. Interweaving in its proper place this darker thread with the story as publicly narrated on the ship, the whole of this strange affair I now proceed to put on lasting record.Questions:(1)From which novel is this paragraph taken?(2) What is the name of the novelist?(3) Who is Ahab?(4) What is Pequod?(5) What is the theme of the novel?Answers:(1) Moby Dick(2) Herman Melville(3) The captain of the whaling ship(4) The name of the whaling ship(5) The rebellious struggle of Captain Ahab against the overwhelming, mysterious vastness of the universe and its awesome sometimes merciless forces.3. When a girl leaves her home at eighteen, she does one of two things. Either she falls into saving hands and becomes better, or she rapidly assumes the cosmopolitan standard of virtue and becomes worse. Of an intermediate balance, under the circumstances, there is no possibility. The city has its cunning wiles, no less than the infinitely smaller and more human temper. There are large forces which allure with all the soulfulness of expression possible in the most cultured human. The gleam of a thousand lights is often as effective as the persuasive light in a wooing and fascinating eye. Half the undoing of the unsophisticated and natural mind is accomplished实用标准文案 by forces wholly superhuman. A blare of sound, a roar of life, a vast array of human hives, appeal to the astonished senses in equivocal terms. Without a counselor at hand to whisper cautious interpretations, what falsehoods may not these things breathe into the unguarded ear! Unrecognized for what they are, their beauty, like music, too often relaxes, then weakens then perverts the simpler human perceptions.Questions:(1) From which novel is this paragraph taken?(2) Who is the author of this novel?(3) How do you understand “the cosmopolitan standard of virtue ”?(4) Is there any naturalist tendency in this passage?Answers:(1)Sister Carrie(2) Theodore Dreiser(3) “The cosmopolitan standard of virtue ” is something that makes a person become low in virtue and become worse.(4) Yes.4. Briefly discuss the novel The Great GatsbyThe Great Gatsby, a novel written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, is one of the greatest novels in American literature. It fully explores the disillusionment and despair of the lost generation through the personal tragedy of a young man whose “incorruptible Dream ” is easily smashed into pieces by the crude reality. The protagonist, Gatsby, is a mythical figure whose intensity of dream partakes of a state of mind that embodies American itself. His failure magnifies the end of the American Dream. The style of the story is explicit and chilly. Fitzgerald ’s accurate dialogues, his careful observation of mannerism and the colorful images provide the reader with a vivid and profound scene of the reality.5. What are the three main principles that Ezra Pound endorsed?(1) Directly treat poetic subjects.(2) Eliminate merely ornamental or superfluous words.(3) Rhythmical composition in the sequence of the musical phrase rather than in the sequence of metronome.6. Tell the differences between Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman(1) Emily Dickinson expresses the inner life of individuals, while Walt Whitman keeps his eyes on the society at large.(2) Emily Dickinson is “regional ”, while Walt Whitman is “national ” in his outlook.(3) Formally, Emily Dickinson uses concise, simple dictions and syntax, while Walt Whitman uses endless, all-inclusive catalogs.Ⅴ Essay Writing (这个部分给大家的答案只是罗列了回答的要点，要将其连缀成文，如果简单按复习题给的答案罗列，只得一半分数)1. Write a short essay about the novel The Grapes of WrathWriter: John Steinbeck----won Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962; spoke for the oppressed and suffered实用标准文案 Background information: (1) Oklahoma used to be a major agricultural state. In the 1930s, a draught ruined this place. People had to leave here to seek a way out. Many of them went to California in hope of finding jobs there to support their family. (2)The Great Depression.Meaning of title: (1) Hope to despair; (2) Wrath of people; (3) Indications of revolution. Theme: (1) Embodying the mass misery of farmers; (2) Praising the spirit of love and unity; (3) Advocating fight and struggle for better life.Structure: (1) Its structure is dictated by the bible; (2) There are two blocks of material: a. the westward trek of the Joads; b. the depressed Oklahomans, and the general picture of the Great Depression.Symbols: (1) dust---evil forces; (2) grapes---hope →rage2. Write a short essay about the novel A Farewell to ArmsWriter: Hemingway---- (1) in 1954, he was awarded the Nobel Prize; (2) Main works: The Sun also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls, The old Man and the Sea. (3) His major contribution: a. Code hero---grace under pressure; b. Iceberg Theory--- economy of expression;(4) the lost generationBackground information: World War ⅡTheme: shows the filth, meaningless, calamity of war; the death, the nothingness of life; the disillusionment with future, hope and love, happiness. The universe is indifferent. There is no God to watch over man.Characters: Henry--- initially detached from life----though well-disciplined and friendly, he feels as if he has nothing to do with the war. After falling in love with Catherine he became a code hero in some way. Catherine---code hero: unfaltering devotion to Henry, brave, considerate, optimisticSymbols: rain---sadness, desperation, depression. It is raining outside almost every time something bad occurs. mud---nature's hostility to man.3. Write a short essay about the novel The Adventures of Tom SawyerAuthor: Mark Twain —the first truly American writer, a local colorist; he used short, concrete and colloquial language; his sentences are simple, and even ungrammatical; good at writing children ’s adventures; masterpieces including: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom SawyerAbout the novel: The first famous novel about growing up and showing the contradictions between adults ’ world and teenagers ’ world, a story of his seeking for freedom, fame, fortune, love, manhood; reveals the American values such as hero complex and American dream; records the rising Age of American Bourgeois system; bears the irony and satire toward the religion and rigid, didactic children education, which curbed the imagination of children and their innate nature for freedom and adventures and molded them into a stereotype of lifeless man.4. Comment briefly on Theodore Dreiser ’s theme and writing style?Theme: Dreiser ’s works are mainly concerned with the tragic nature of the human condition by depicting the coarse, vulgar, cruel, and terrible aspects of life like sex and crime.Style: In terms of style, Dreiser has sometimes been censured for his clumsy syntax, deficient characterization, and inept and dull prose. Yet his accumulated detail, carefully selected and faithfully recorded, is a technique of power. Like the other naturalists, he refused to judge —to consider people as good or evil. He clothes his concepts symbolically in the details of reality. It is his journalistic method that has made him one of America ’s foremost novelists.实用标准文案。
美国文学选读复习
History And Anthology of American Literature (VolumeⅠⅡ)美国文学史及选读1、2PartⅠThe Literature of Colonial America殖民主义时期的文学(at the beginning of 17th century)Part Ⅱ The Literature of Reason And Revolution理性和革命时期文学(by the mid-18th century)1．Thomas Jefferson: Declaration of Independence 独立宣言(1776年18世纪中后期)（仔细阅读知道意思）Benjamin Franklin: The AutobiographyThomas Paine: The American Crisis*一、Benjamin Franklin 本杰明·富兰克林1706-1790Symbol of America in the Age of Enlightenment殖民地时期作家。
独立战争前惟一的杰出的美国作家in the colonial period, the only good American author before the Revolutionary War.1．其还是美国第一位主要作家the first major writer非凡表达能力，简洁明了，有点幽默，还是一位讽刺天才as an author he had power of expression, simplicity, a subtle humor. He was also sarcastic.2．他最好作品收录在《自传》“Autobiography”。
“对这个年青的国家来说，他的损失比其它任何人的都要大“his shadow lies heavier than any other man’s on this young nation.二、Thomas Jefferson托马斯·杰弗逊（1743-1826）1．美国历史上最为广泛影响人物his thought and personality have influenced his countryman more deeply and remained more effectively alive.同富兰克林一样具人道主义精神vigorous humanitarian sympathies.启蒙运动的产物a product of the Enlightenment.2．1776年同约翰·亚当斯、本杰明·富兰克林、罗杰·谢尔曼、罗伯特·R·利文斯顿一起起草《独立宣言》with John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman and Robert R Livingston, he drafted the Declaration of Independence.3．1790-1793任华盛顿内阁中第一任国务卿，as the first American secretary of state. 1800起担任两届美国总统。
美国文学史及选读复习重点
Captain John Smith (first American writer).Anne Bradstreet；The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America （colonists living）Edward Taylor(the best puritan poet)John Cotton ”the Patriarch of New England” teacher spiritual leader Benjamin Franklin The Autobiography Poor Richard’s Almanack Thomas Jefferson：Political Career Thoughts The Declaration of Independence we hold truth to be self-evidencePhilip Freneau“Father of American Poetry” The Wild Honey Suckle American Romanticism optimism and hopeNationalism Washington Irving“Father of American Literature short story”The first “Pure Writer” A History of New York The Sketch Book marked the beginning of American Romanticism! “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”Rip Van WinkleJames Fenimore Cooper Father of American sea and frontier novels Leather stocking Tales The Last of the Mohicans The Pioneers The Prairie The Pathfinder The DeerslayerEdgar Allan Poe father of detective story and horror fiction Tales of the Grotesque and the Arabesque “MS. Found in a Bottle” “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”“The Fall of the House of Usher”“The Masque of the Red Death”“TheCask of Amontillado”效果论art for arts sake诗歌The Raven 《乌鸦》Annabel Lee 《安娜贝尔•李》To Helen 《致海伦》•Henry Wadsworth Longfellow be honored by having his bust placed in the Poets’ Corner of Westminster Abbey.the first American poet to write the narrative poems.•Works:•Voices of the Night《夜吟》•Ballads and Other Poems《民谣及其他》• A Psalm of Life《人生礼赞》•The Slave’s Dream《奴隶的梦》•The Tide Rises, The Tide Falls《潮起潮落》•My Lost Youth《逝去的青春》•The Song of Hiawatha《海华沙之歌》•The Courtship of Miles Standish《迈尔斯斯坦迪什的求婚》••New England Transcendentalism summit of American •Romanticism.Leaders: Emerson and Thoreau“The Universe is composed of Nature and the Soul.”•Ralph Waldo Emerson New England Transcendentalism. •Nature (论自然) American Scholar （美国学者）Divinity School Address （神学院演说）Representative Men 代表English Traits（英国人的特征）•The Over-Soul (论超灵) Self-Reliance（论自立）•Henry David Thoreau Walden, or Life in the Woods Civil Disobedience•Transcendentalism Emerson Thoreau •Nathaniel Hawthorne Twice-Told Tales Mosses from an Old Manse The Scarlet Letter•The House of the Seven Gables 1851••The Blithedale Romance 1852••The Marble Faun 1860g)“Young Goodman Brown”(Mosses from an Old Manse)g)“The Minister’s Black Veil”（Twice-Told Tales ）g)“Dr. Rappacini’s Daughter” (Mosses from an Old Manse)Herman Melville Typee the whaler Acushnet Omoo Mardi Pierre White Jacket Billy Budd Moby Dick RedburnHenry Wadsworth Longfellow be honored with a bust in the Poet’s corner of Westminster Abbey.Naturalism：自然主义 a new and harsher realism Deterministic 决定论，宿命的pessimism代表作家：Stephen Crane 史蒂芬.克莱恩, Frank Norris 弗朗克.诺里斯, Jack London 杰克.伦敦, Theodore Dreiser 西奥多.德莱塞.Darwinism: 达尔文主义:an evident influence on naturalism, stress the animality of manWalt Whitman Leaves of Grass the first genuine epic poem •Emily Dickinson•Because I could not Stop for Death•I Heard a Fly Buzz—When I Died•My Life Closed Twice before its Close•I Died for Beauty—but was ScarceHarriet Beecher Stowe Uncle Tom’s CabinMark Twainn 1.The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County (1865) (卡拉弗拉斯县的著名跳蛙)n 2.Innocents Abroad (1869)（成功傻子出国记）n 3.Roughing It (1872) （艰苦岁月）n 4.The Gilded Age (with Charles Dudley waenner,1873) （镀金时代）n 5.The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876)（汤姆索耶历险记）The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn realismO. Henry The Gift of the Magi the cop and AnthemHenry James Daisy Miller The Portrait of a Lady 国际化Jack London The Call of the Wild Martin Eden”(autobiographical novel自传体小说)•Theodore Dreiser•Sister Carrie 1900•An American Tragedy 1925 the greatest successful•The Financier 1912•The Titan 1914•The Stoic the protagonist Trilogy of desire欲望三部曲•Dreiser Looks at Russia 1928•F. Scott Fitzgerald•This Side of Paradise (1920)•Flappers and Philosophers (1920)•The Beautiful and Damned (1920)•Tales of the Jazz Age (1922)•The Great Gatsby (1925)•Tender Is the Night (1934)•The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (short story)•Ernest Hemingway representative of “The Lost Generation •The Sun Also Rises(1926)• A Farewell to Arms(1929)•eg. For Whom the Bell Tolls(1937)•eg. The Old Man and the Sea(1952)T. S. Eliot The Waste LandO.Henry the gift of Magi the cop and the AnthemJack London The call of the wild Martin EdenEzra pound in a station of the metroEdwin Arlington Robinson Richard CoryRobert Frost the road not taken stopping by woods on a snowy evening 崇尚自然Carl Sandburg fogWallace Stevens Anecdote of the jarJohn Steinbeck the grapes of wrathWilliam Faulkner the sound and the fury as I lay dying sanctuary light in August Absalom the Hamlet go down Moses50stars 13stripes任期8年New England northeast1492 哥伦比亚发现新大陆。
美国文学史期末考试复习资料全
I.Multiple choice. Please choose the best answer among the four items.(10 x 1’= 10’)1.In American literature, the 18th century was the age of Enlightenment. ______was the dominant.2.The short story “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” is taken from Irving’s worknamed ______.3.Which of the following is not the characteristic of American Romanticism?4.The short story “Rip Van Winkle” reveals the ____ attitude of its author.5.Stylistically, Henry James’ fiction is characterized by _____.6.Transcendentalist doctrines found their greatest literary advocates in_____ and Thoreau.7.Which is regarded as the “Declaration of Intellectual Independence”?8.____ is considered Mark Twain’s greatest achievement.9._____ is not among those greatest figures in “Lost Generation”.10.Naturalism is evolved from realism when the author’s tone in writing b ecomesless serious and less sympathetic but more ironic and more ____.1-5，BBACD 6-10 BADCDII.Multiple choice. Please choose the best answer among the four items.(10 x 1’= 10’)11.______ is the father of American Literature.12._____ is a fantasy tale about a man who somehow stepped outside the mainstream of life.13._____ was the most leading spirit of the Transcendental Club.14.Which of following is NOT a typical feature of Mark Twain’s language?15.From Thoreau’s jail experience, came his famous essay, _____ which stateshis belief that no man should violate his conscience at the command of agovernment.A. WaldenB. NatureC. Civil DisobedienceD. Common Sense16.Which is regarded as the “Declaration of Intellectual Independence”?17.Most of the poems in Whitman’s Leaves of Grass sing of the “en-mass” andthe ____ as well.18.What did Fitzgerald call the 1920s?19.Naturalism is evolved from realism when the author’s tone in writing becomesless serious and less sympathetic but more ironic and more ____.20.For Melville, as well as for the reader and ____, the narrator, Moby Dickis still a mystery, an ultimate mystery of the universe.1-5 D A B C C 6-10 A C C D C II. Identify Works as Described Below (1’×15 =15’):1.The novel has a sole black protagonist who tells his own story but whose namein unknown to us.a.Native Sonb.Uncle Tom’s Cabinc.Invisible Mand. Go Tell It on theMountains2.The main conflict of the play is the protagonist’s false value of fineappearance and popularity with people and the cruel reality of the societyin which money is everything.a.A Street Car Named Desireb. The Hairy Apec.Long Day’s Journey intoNightd. Death of Salesman3.It is an autobiographical play and Edmund in the play is based on theplaywright himself.a. Long Day’s Journey into Nightb. Henderson the Rain Kingc. The Hairy Aped. The Glass Menageries4.The novel tells of how a black man kills a white woman by accident and howthe society is responsible for the murder.a.Native Sonb.Uncle Tom’s Cabinc.Invisible Mand. Go Tell It on theMountains5._________ is one of the best works in American literature about the SecondWorld War.a.A Farewell to Armsb.The Catcher in the Ryec.The Red Badge of Couraged. The Naked and the Dead6. The novel by Hemingway is the best of its kind about World War I.a.A Farewell to Armsb.The Sun Also Risesc.The Old Man and the Sead. The Naked and the Dead7.The novel is about how a family of farmers cannot survive in Oklahoma andtravel to California to seek a living and how they suffer hunger in California.a.The Grapes of Wrathb. U.S. A.c.Babbittd. The Adventures of Augie March8.It is a trilogy including The 42nd Parallel, 1919, and The Big Money, withsuch techniques as biographies, newsreels and camera eye.a.Babbittb. Light in Augustc. U.S.A.d. The Grapes of Wrath9.It is a novel which uses the stream of consciousness technique and whosetitle is taken from Shakespeare’s Macbeth.a. Absolom, Absolom!b. The Sound and the Furyc.A Farewell to Armsd. The Great Gatsby10. It is a naturalistic work about how a country girl is seduced and how shebecomes a famous actress and how her lover falls into a beggar and finally commits suicide.a.An American Tragedyb. Sister Carriec. McTeagued.Maggie, A Girl of the Streets11. The novel is set on the Mississippi with the protagonist telling us the storyin the local dialect. It is a representative work of local colorism.a.Sister Carrieb.The Adventures of Tom Sawyerc. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finnd.The Portrait of a Lady12.The novel is a psychological study of a soldier (Henry Fleming)’s reactionsin the Civil War.a.An American Tragedyb. Sister Carriec.The Red Badge of Couraged. McTeague13. The poem is written in free verse in 52 cantos with the theme of theuniversality and equality in value of all people and all things.a.Cantosb. The Ravenc. Song of Myselfd.Chicago14. The novel is about how a group of people on a whaling ship kill a great whalebut themselves are killed by the whale, with the conflict between man and his fate.a.The Octopusb. Moby-Dickc. The Rise of Silas Laphamd. Leaves of Grass15. It is a philosophical essay in 8 chapters plus an introduction mainlyconcerned with the four uses of nature.a. Waldenb. Naturec. The Scarlet Letterd. The American Scholar1-5.cdaad 6-10.aacbb cbbI.C hoose the Best Answer for Each of the Following (1’×15=15’):1.An English ship brought 102 people from Plymouth, England on September 16,1620 and arrived in the present Provincetown harbor on November 21 in the same year. This ship was named ____________.a. The Pilgrimsb. Mayflowerc. Americad. Titanic2._________ is father of American drama and in his dramatic career he wrote 49 plays.a. Tennessee Williamsb. Eugene O’Neillc. Arthur Millerd. Elmer Rice3._________ was the first American writer to write entirely American literature.a. Anne Bradstreetb. Washington Irvingc. Mark Twaind. Ernest Hemingway4. _______ was the leader of American transcendentalism.a. Benjamin Franklinb. Washington Irvingc. Ralph Waldo Emersond. Henry David Thoreau5._______was the greatest woman poet in American literature and she wrote about1,700 short lyric poems in her life time.a. Pearl S. Buckb.Harriet Bicher Stowec. Emily Dickensond. Walter Whitman6._________ is father of the detective story and of psychoanalytic criticism.a. Washington Irvingb. Ralph Waldo Emersonc. Walt Whitmand. Edgar Allan Poe7.William Dean Howells is concerned with the middle class life; ______ writes about the upper class society, and Mark Twain deals with the lower class reality.a. Stephen Craneb. Frank Norrisc. Theodore Dreiserd. Henry James8. Which of the following is a naturalistic writer?a. William Dean Howellsb. Mark Twainc. Ernest Hemingwayd.Theodore Dreiser9. His writings are characterized by simple, colloquial language and deep thoughts. He is______.a. Ernest Hemingwayb. William Faulknerc. F. Scott Fitzgeraldd. Mark Twain10. He wrote 18 novels all set in Jefferson Town, Yoknapatwapha County in thedeep south. He is ______.a. William Faulknerb. John Steinbeckc. Ernest Hemingwayd. Mark Twain11. ________is Jewish in origin and in many of his novels the American Jews aremajor characters.a. Sinclair Lewisb. Saul Bellowc. Norman Mailerd. Jerome David Salinger12._________ is often regarded as the greatest American woman poet and she wrote over 1,700 short lyric poems in her life time.a. Anne Bradstreetb. Robert Frostc. H.D.d. Emily Dickinson13.________ is father of American drama and won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1936.a. John Steinbeckb. William Faulknerc. Euge ne O’Neilld. Arthur Miller14. He was the first black American to write a book about black life with greatimpact on the consciousness of the nation and his masterpiece is one of the three classics about black Americans. Who is he?a.Richard Wrightb. Harriet Beecher Stowec. Langston Hughesd. RalphEllison15. Hemingway wrote about American compatriots in Europe whereas ________ wroteabout the Jazz age, life in American society.a.William Carlos Williamsb. William Faulknerc. John Steinbeckd. F. ScottFitzgerald1-5 bbccc 6-10.dddaa 11-15.bdcadI.Choose the Best Answer for Each of the Following (1×15 %):2.The American Civil War broke out in 1861 between the Northern states and theSouth states, which are known respectively as the ______and the______. a. N, S b. Revolutionaries, Reactionaries c. Union, Confederacy d. Slavery, Anti-Slavery2._____________was praised by the British as the “Tenth Muse in America”.a.Anne Bradstreetb. Edward Taylorc. Thomas Pained. Philip Freneau3.Mark Twain was a representative of ________ in American literature.a. transcendentalismb. naturalismc. local colorismd. imagism4. _______ was the leader of American transcendentalism.a. Benjamin Franklinb. Washington Irvingc. Ralph Waldo Emersond. Henry David Thoreau5.The greatest American poet and the first writer of free verse is ____________.a. Washington Irvingb.Ezra Poundc. Walt Whitmand. Emily Dickinson6._________ is father of the detective story and of psychoanalytic criticism.a. Washington Irvingb. Ralph Waldo Emersonc. Walt Whitmand. Edgar Allan Poe7.Henry James is concerned with the upper class life; ______ writes about the middle class society, and Mark Twain deals with the lower class reality.a. Stephen Craneb. Frank Norrisc. Theodore Dreiserd. William Dean Howells8. Which of the following is a naturalistic writer?a. William Dean Howellsb. Mark Twainc. Ernest Hemingwayd.Theodore Dreiser9. ________’s writings are characterized by simple, colloquial language and deep thoughts.a. Ernest Hemingwayb. William Faulknerc. F. Scott Fitzgeraldd. Mark Twain10. ______ wrote 18 novels all set in Jefferson Town, Yoknapatwapha County inthe deep south. .a. William Faulknerb. John Steinbeckc. Ernest Hemingwayd. MarkTwain11. ________is Jewish in origin and in many of his novels the American Jews aremajor characters.a. Sinclair Lewisb. Saul Bellowc. Norman Mailerd. Jerome David Salinger12._________ is often regarded as the greatest American woman poet and she wrote over 1,700 short lyric poems in her life time.a. Anne Bradstreetb. Robert Frostc. H.D.d. Emily Dickinson13.________ is father of American drama and won the Nobel Prize for literaturein 1936.a. John Steinbeckb. William Faulknerc. Eugene O’Neilld. Arthur Miller14. _______ was the first black American to write a book about black life withgreat impact on the consciousness of the nation and his masterpiece is one of the three classics about black Americans.b.Richard Wright b. Harriet Beecher Stowec. Langston Hughesd. Ralph Ellison15. ________ first used the “Jazz age” as the title of a collection of shortstoriesa. F. Scott Fitzgeraldb. William Faulknerc. John Steinbeckd. ErnestHemingway1-5.caccc 6-10.dddaa 11-15.bdcbaII. Identify Works as Described Below (1×15 %):6.The play is about a stoker whose identity as a human being is not recognizedby his fellow human beings and who tries to find affinity with a monkey in the zoo and is finally killed by the animal.a. The Hairy Apeb. Henderson the Rain Kingc. Long Day’s Journey into Nightd. The Glass Menageries7.The protagonist in this play is a crippled girl named Amanda.a.A Street Car Named Desireb. The Hairy Apec.Long Day’s Journey intoNightd.The Glass Menageries8.The hero of this novel tells about his own story to us but his name is unknown.a.Native Sonb.Uncle Tom’s Cabinc.Invisible Mand. Go Tell It on the Mountains4. It is an autobiographical play and Edmund in the play is based on theplaywright himself.a. Long Day’s Journey into Nightb. Henderson the Rain Kingc. The Hairy Aped. The Glass Menageries5.The novel tells of how a black man kills a white woman by accident and howhe is finally arrested and tried and sentenced to death.a.Native Sonb.Uncle Tom’s Cabinc.Invisible Mand. Go Tell It on theMountains6._________ is one of the best works in American literature about the SecondWorld War.a.A Farewell to Armsb.The Catcher in the Ryec.The Red Badge of Couraged. The Naked and the Dead6. The novel by Hemingway is the best of its kind about World War I.a.A Farewell to Armsb.The Sun Also Risesc.The Old Man and the Sead. The Naked and the Dead10.The novel is about how a family of farmers cannot survive in Oklahoma andtravel to California to seek a living and how they suffer hunger in California.b.The Grapes of Wrath b. U.S. A.c.Babbittd. The Adventures of Augie March11.It is a trilogy including The 42nd Parallel, 1919, and The Big Money, withsuch techniques as biographies, newsreels and camera eye.b.Babbitt b. Light in Augustc. U.S.A.d. The Grapes of Wrath12.It is a novel which uses the stream of consciousness technique and whosetitle is taken from Shakespeare’s Macbeth.a. Absolom, Absolom!b. The Sound and the Furyc.A Farewell to Armsd. The Great Gatsby10. It is a naturalistic work about how a country girl is seduced and elopeswith Hurstwood and how she becomes a famous actress and how her lover falls into beggary and finally commits suicide.a.An American Tragedyb. Sister Carriec. McTeagued.Maggie, A Girl of the Streets11. It is a novel with 135 chapters plus an epilog; in it a group of people ona whaling ship kill a great whale but they themselves are killed by the whalein the end, except Ishmael the narrator who survives by adhering to a coffin.b.Sister Carrie b.The Adventures of Tom Sawyerc. Moby Dickd. The Portrait of a Lady12.The novel is a psychological study of a soldier (Henry Fleming)’s reactionsin the Civil War, in which wound is called the red badge which symbolizes courage.a.An American Tragedyb. Sister Carriec.The Red Badge of Couraged. McTeague13. The poem is written in free verse in 52 cantos with the theme of theuniversality and equality in value of all people and all things.a.Cantosb. The Ravenc. Song of Myselfd.Chicago14. The novel is about how a man falls economically and socially but who risesmorally because he gives up the opportunity to sell his factory to an English Syndicate, which would otherwise mean a ruin to that syndicate.a.The Octopusb. The Rise of Silas Laphamc. Moby-Dickd. Leaves of Grass15. It is a speech delivered at Harvard University. It is often hailed as the“declaration of intellectual independence” in America.a. The American Scholarb. Naturec. The Scarlet Letterd. Walden 1-5.adcad 6-10.aacbb cbaII. Match the following (1×20%)A. Match Works with Their Authors1.Hugh Selwyn Mauberly2.Walden3. Autobiography4. The Scarlet Letter5.Leaves of Grass6.The Raven7. The Rise of Silas Lapham8. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer9. Long Day’s Journey into Night10. The Old Man and the Seaa.Mark Twain b . Ernest Hemingwayc. Eugene O’Neilld. William Dean Howellse. Edgar Allan Poef. Walt Whitmang. Nathaniel Hawthorne h. Benjamin Franklini.Henry David Thoreau j. Ezra Poundk.Thomas Jefferson l. T.S. EliotB. Match the Characters with the works in which they appear.1.Hester Prynne2.Mrs. Touchett3.Frederick Henry4.Benjy Compson5.the Joads6.General Edward Cummings7.Holden Caulfield 7.Bigger Thomas8.Yank 9.Happya.The Portrait of a Ladyb. The Scarlet Letterc. The Hairy Aped. A Farewell to Armse.The Sound and the Furyf. The Grapes of Wrathg. The Naked and the Deadh. The Catcher in the Ryei. Native Sonj. Death of a Salesmank.Invisible Man l.Catch-22A. Match Works with Their Authors1-5.jihgf 6-10.edccbB. Match the Characters with the works in which they appear. 1-5.badef 6-10.ghicjIII. Match the following (1’×20=20’)A. Match works with their authors1.Nature2.Rip Van Winkle3. Nature4. The Scarlet Letter5.Leaves of Grass6.The Raven7. The Rise of Silas Lapham8. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn9. Cantos10. The Old Man and the Seaa.Ezra Poundb. Ernest Hemingwayc. Mark Twaind. William Dean Howellse. Edgar Allan Poef. Walt Whitmang. Nathaniel Hawthorne h. Ralph Waldo Emersoni.Washington Irving j. Waldo Emersonk.T.S. Eliot l. Robert FrostB. Match characters with the works in which they appear.2.Captain Ahab and Starbuck 2.Isabel Archer3.Frederic Henry and Catherine4.Benjy Compson5.the Joads6.General Edward Cummings7.Holden Caulfield 8.Bigger Thomas9.The Tyrones 10.Willy Lomana.The Portrait of a Ladyb. Moby-Dickc. Death of a Salesmand. A Farewell to Armse.The Sound and the Furyf. The Grapes of Wrathg. The Naked and the Dead h. The Catcher in the Ryei. Native Son j. Long Day’s Journey into Nightk.Absalom, Absalom l. The Old Man and the SeaA. Match Works with Their Authors1-5.jihgf 6-10.edcabB. Match the Characters with the works in which they appear.1-5.badef 6-10.edcabV. Essay Questions (30%; c hoose only ONE of the following three topics and write a short essay of at least 200 words. Note: [1]Your essay should have at least 2 paragraphs; you are not simply to make a list of facts.[2] You may give a title to your essay, but you are required to indicate which of the 3 topics it belongs to. [3]You are not to write on a topic of your own.1.To the best of your knowledge, analyze and make comments on Emerson’sNaturement on any American poet you like.3.Analyze and/or comment on any one of the American novels or plays you haveread.V. Essay Questions (30%; c hoose only ONE of the following three topics andwrite a short essay of at least 200 words. Note: [1]Your essay should haveat least 2 paragraphs; you are not simply to make a list of facts.[2] You maygive a title to your essay, but you are required to indicate which of the 3topics it belongs to. [3]You are not to write on a topic of your own.)4.Make comments on an American novel we have discussed in this course.ment on an American poet.6.Describe how your knowledge of American literature is improved after takingthis course..IV. Please answer the following questions briefly. (2 x 10’ = 20’)1.Why do people think Franklin is the embodiment of American dream?2.What is “Lost Generation”?V. Discussion. (1 x 20’ = 20’)State your own interpretations of Hemingway’s iceberg theory of writing?IV. Please answer the following questions briefly. (2 x 10’ = 20’)3.Wha t is Hawthorne’s style? Explain the style with examples.4.At the end of the 19th century, there were three fighters for Realism. Whoare they? What are their differences?________True or False. (10 x 2’= 20’)1. American literature is the oldest of all national literature.2. Thomas Jefferson was the only American to sign the 4 documents that created the US.3. All his literary life, Hawthorne seemed to be haunted by his sense of sin and evil.4. Most of the poems in Leaves of Grass are about human psychology.5. Hurstwood is a character in Dreiser’s An American Tragedy.6. Faulkner’s region was the Deep North, with its bitter history of slavery, civil war and destruction.7. Placed in historical perspective, Howells is found lacking in qualities and depth. But anyhow he is a literary figure worthy of notice.8. Faulkner’s works have been termed the Yoknapatawpha Saga, “one connected story”.9. As a moral philosophy, transcendentalism was neither logical nor systematical.10. Emily Dickinson expr esses her deep love in the poem “Annabel Lee”.1-5 F F T F F 6-10 F F T F FII. Decide whether the statements are True or False. (10 x 2’= 20’)1. Early in the 17th century, the English settlements in Virginia and began the main stream of what we recognize as the American national history.2. American Romantic writers avoided writing about nature, medieval legends and with supernatural elements.3. As a moral philosophy, transcendentalism was neither logical nor systematical.4. “Young Goodman Brown” wants to prove everyone possesses kindness in heart.5. Henry James was a realist in the same way as one views the realism of Twain or Howells.6. The American realists sought to describe the wide range of American experience and to present the subtleties of human personality.7. Frost’s concern with nature reflected his deep moral uncertainties.8. Faulkner’s works have been termed the Yoknapatawpha Saga, “one connected story”.9. Roger Chillingworth is a character in Dreiser’s An American Tragedy.10. After the Civil War, the Frontier was closing. Disillusionment and frustration were widely felt. What had been expected to be a “Golden Age” turned to be a “Gilded” one.1-5 T F T F T 6-10 F T T F TIII. Please explain the follo wing terms. (5 x 6’ = 30’)1. Puritanism2. Free verse3. International novel:4．Romanticism 5. Naturalism 6. American Realism7.American Naturalism Modernism Imagism1.Puritanism: Puritanism is the practices and beliefs of the Puritans.2.Free verse: It is poetry that has an irregular rhythm and line length andthat attempts to avoid any predetermined verse structure; instead, it usesthe cadences of natural speech.3.International novel: IN brings together persons of various nationalities whorepresent certain characteristics of their own countries.4. Naturalism: It views human beings as animals in the natural world respondingto environmental forces and internal stresses and drives, over none of whichthey have control and none of which they fully understand. The literarynaturalists have a major difference from the realists. They look at adifferent spot to find real life.III. Please explain the following terms. (5 x 6’ = 30’)1. Puritanism2. international novel3. the lostgenerationHemingway heroes4. free verse5.Americantranscendentalism1.Puritanism: Puritanism is the practices and beliefs of the Puritans.2.international novel: IN brings together persons of various nationalities whorepresent certain characteristics of their own countries.3.the lost generation: reveals the huge destruction of the wars to the younggeneration. It describes the Americans who remained in Paris as a colony of“expatriates”. They were lost in disillusionment.4.free verse: It is poetry that has an irregular rhythm and line length andthat attempts to avoid any predetermined verse structure; instead, it usesthe cadences of natural speech.5.transcendentalism: It stressed the power of intuition, believing that peoplecould learn things both from the outside world by means of the five sensesand from the inner world by intuition. It took nature as symbolic of spirit or God. All things in nature were symbols of the spiritual, of God’s presence. It emphasized the significance of the individual and believed that the individual was the most important element in society and that the ideal kind of individual was self-reliant and unselfish. Transcendentalists envisioned religion as an emotional communication between an individual soul and the universal “Oversoul”.。
美国文学史及选读期末复习
美国文学史及选读期末复习.美国文学史复习1（colonialism)第一部分殖民主义时期的文学一、时期综述1、清教徒采用的文学体裁：a、narratives 日记b、journals 游记2、清教徒在美国的写作容：1）their voyage to the new land2) Adapting themselves to unfamiliar climates and crops3) About dealing with Indians4) Guide to the new land, endless bounty, invitation to bold spirit3、清教徒的思想：1）puritan want to make up pure their religious beliefs and practices 净化信仰和行为方式2) Wish to restore simplicity to church and the authority of the Bible to the theology. 重建教堂，提供简单服务，建立神圣地位3）look upon themselves as chosen people, and it follow logically that anyone whochallenged their way of life is opposing God's will and is not to be accepted. 认为自己是上帝选民，对他们的生活有异议就是反对上帝4）puritan opposition to pleasure and the arts sometimes has been exaggerated. 反对对快乐和艺术的追求到了十分荒唐的地步5）religious teaching tended to emphasize the image of a wrathful God.强调上帝严厉的一面，忽视上帝仁慈的一面。
美国文学史及选读期末复习题
1.Captain John Smith became the first American writer。
2.The puritans looked upon themselves asa chosen people。
is an annual collection of proverbs written by Benjamin Franklin。
4.Thomas Paine’s famousboldly advo cated a “Declaration for Independence”.5.Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence with John Adams，Benjamin Franklin，Roger Sherman，and Robert Livingston。
has been called the “Father of American Poetry”。
7.In Washington Irving'sappeared the first modern short stories and the first great American juvenile literature。
8.Cooper’s enduring fame rests on hisWilliam Cullen Bryant’s wok.is considered “father of American detective stories and American gothic stories”。
10.Emerson believed above all inand self-reliance.11.12.Moby Dick is a tremendous chronicle of a whaling voyage in pursuit of a seemingly supernatural white whale。
美国文学史及选读期末考试
Ⅰ. Write the author of each item. 10’1．Anne Bradstreet（The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America）①Contemplation②To My Dear and Loving Husband2. Benjamin Franklin①The Autobiography (early American Dream)3. Philip Freneau (Poet of American Revolution; The Father of American Poetry)①The Wild Honey Suckle②The Indian Burying Ground③To a Caty-Did4. Washington Irving (The Father of American Short Story; first American writer of imaginative literature to gain international fame; regarded as Father of American literature.)①The legend of Sleep Hollow②Rip Van Winkle③The Sketch Book(the beginning of American Romanticism)5. James Fennimore Cooper①The Last Mohicans②Leather Stocking Tales6. William Cullen Bryant①Thanatopsis②To a Water Fowl7. Edgar Allen Poe (Father of Modern Short Story; Father of Psychoanalysis criticism)①To Helen②The Raven③The Fall of the House of Usher④The Black Cat8. Ralph Waldo Emerson (leading New England transcendentalist)①Nature②Self-Reliance③The American Scholar9. Henry David Thoreau (an active transcendentalist)①Walden10. Nathaniel Hawthorne (a master of symbolism; first great American writer of fiction to work in moralistic tradition. combined the American romanticism with puritan moralism; created a new genre psychological romance)①The Scarlet Letter②Twice Told Tales③The Marble Faun④Blithedale Romance⑤The Minister’s Black Veil11. Herman Melville①Moby Dick12. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (the fireside poet; love of nature, love for the past)①A Psalm of Life②The Slave’s Dream③My Lost Youth④The Song of Hiawatha13. Walt Whitman①Leaves of Grass(first genuine epic poem)②Song of Myself③I Sit and Look Out④Beat！Beat！Drums！14. Emily Dickinson (the theme of her poetry concern religion, life, death, marriage, immorality, nature etc.)①I Taste a Liquor Never Brewed②I Felt a Funeral, in My Brain③A Bird Came Down the Walk④I Died for Beauty ___but Was Scarce⑤I Hear a Fly Buzz ___When I Died⑥Because I Could not Stop for DeathⅡ. True or False choice. 20’Ⅲ. Choose the best answer 10’Ⅳ. Appreciation 30’The Scarlet LetterAuthor: Nathaniel HawthorneSymbolism：The Scarlet Letter, A symbol of shame, but instead it becomes a powerful symbol of identity to Hester. The letter’s meaning shifts as time passes. Originally intended to mark Hester as an adulteress, the “A” eventually comes to stand for “Able.”The Meteor , to Dimmesdale, the meteor implies that he should wear a mark of shame just as Hester does. The meteor is interpreted differently by the rest of the community, which thinks that it stands for “Angel” and marks Governor Winthrop’s entry into heavenThe Rosebush, Next to the Prison Door .The narrator chooses to begin his story with the image of the rosebush beside the prison door. The rosebush symbolizes the ability of nature to endure and outlast man’s activities.Pearl is a sort of living version of her mother’s scarlet letter. She is the physical consequence of sexual sin and the indicator of a transgression (evildoing). Upward American spiritCharacter analysis:Hester: disloyalty, betrayal, deception, sexual desire, adultery. Face, correct, redeem, purify. Praise, content, conformability.Dimmesdale: adultery, cowardice, hypocrisy, dishonesty, selfishness, too coward to confess, tortured by his conscience. Sympathetic, disfavor his hesitation, indecisiveness and cowardice.Chillingworth: revenge. Tortured by the desire of revenge, twisted and reduced to nothing. disgusted, think he committed greater crime.Puritanism in The Scarlet LetterPuritan background: setting, events, characters, thoughts, behaviors.Puritan doctrines: original sin, total depravity, predestination, limited atonement.Ralph Waldo Emerson1.NatureThe declaration of TranscendentalismAnalysis of “Nature”A long essay which has eight parts: the opening, commodity, beauty, language, discipline, Idealism, spirit and prospects. Our selection is taken from the opening. Taken as a whole, “Nature” expresses Emerson’s philosophy in a more systematic fashion than any other work of his.Meanings of natureI BeautyNature is beautiful. : the complete, mysterious, useful and moral beauty of nature. First, nature’s beauty lies in its completeness. Second, nature’s beauty lies in its mystery. cannot be manipulated. Only when he holds a sincere r espect for nature, can man feel the mysterious beauty of nature. Third, nature’s beauty lies in its usefulness. Nature provides man without any benefitII Nature Is Divine●Nature is divine and has the eternal order which should not be violated. Influenced in a way byChinese ancient philosophy, Emerson believes that all the things in the world come from the same root---the Oversoul.●Emerson believes that man can find God in his own heart by direct contact with nature●Nature has permeated (penetrate) all aspects of human life. Spirit embodied in nature hasinfluence upon us. Nature inspires man and gives him\her power. Man should find the truth, goodness and beauty in his own soul and bring into play his potentiality as human being. Then, he will become hims elf “All that Adam had, all that Caesar could, you have and can do".●For Emerson, the individual is potentially the most divine and any organization or existing ideacan not limit the development of individual.III Nature Is ChangingEverything in nature is in a process---growing, withdrawing and falling into the ground. The flowing of nature comes from a force which impels it to develop. For instance, a river is always in constantly flowing. It originates from mountains, flows along great plains and ultimately converges into the sea. Transcendental philosophyNature symbolizes freedom, independence and change. These are Individualism elements which attend to significance of common life. Therefore Emerson's nature is the theoretical base of American Individualism---one of the characteristics of American culture. As the symbol of Spirit, nature helps to prove that man's soul is beautiful, divine and fluid. Man should pursue spiritual fulfillmentExcerpt from Nature: in Nature Emerson puts forward every phenomenon of the nature there was the spirit of the spirit of the nature.Here from this paragraph we could see that emerson found the beauty in the wildness nature rather than the village or something. “in the wildness, I find something more dear and connate than in streets or villages.” In the wildness of the nature, emerson can transcend physical body to the spirit of the God and he can become one part of the spirit.He emerges into the nature, and then he goes into the Oversoul. “I am part or particle of God.” “I am nothing; I see all”. This sentence clearly shows that emerson merges into the sporit. And in the nature we could get the eternal beauty.2.Self-Reliance①“The Confidence”. a man must show his opinion confidently and bravely in spite of different ideas.②“The Independence”. A man should keep himself firmly ; not be easily influenced by environment.③Keep personality, which is closely related to the confidence and the independence. a man must keep his personality and conform to his own principles.④“Showing no Sympathy to the Poor” shows that why the poor are poor is mainly due to their backward thinking. Showing help to this kind of people means doing harm to them.Comment: In Self-reliance, Emerson expressed the romantic idea of individualism, with an emphasis on being self-sufficient. He promoted relying on oneself rather than on established society. Emerson was known for his repeated use of phrase “trust thyself”. “Self-reliance” is his explanation---both systematic and passionate of what he meant by this, and why he was moved to make it his catchphrase. Every individual possesses a unique genius, Emerson argues, that can only be revealed when that individual has the courage to trust his or her own thoughts, attitudes, and inclinations against all public disapproval.Henry Wadsworth Longfellow1. A Psalm of Life①Love of nature, love for the past ②Trochaic tetrameter③constant theme for poets: The relationship of life and death. ④He expresses his pertinent interpretation to that by warning us that though life is hard and everybody must die, time flies and life is short, yet, human beings ought to be hold “to act,” to face the reality straightly so as to make otherwise meaningless life significant.2. My Lost YouthⅤ. Terms 10’New England PoetsThe new England poets were the representatives of imitation, authors like Irving, William Cullen Bryant, Henry wadsworth Longfellow etc. tried to imitate the forms and themes of their English brothers, such as Alexander Pope, Robert Burns, Thomas Gray, wordsworth and so on.Rip van winkleThis is one story in Washington Irving’s Sketch Book. It tells a story of a kind but hen-pecked man rip van winkle. The protagonist does not take care of his own family very well and just wants to live idly. But his wife does not want him to live the life like that and keeps talking to him. Unhappy at home, he enters in the mountain with his gun and dog. One afternoon, he meets some strangers looking people playing at nine pins. Out of curiosity, he drinks the wine and falls into sleep. When he wakes up, he finds his dog missing and his gun rusted. He has to go back to the village again. But can not recognize the village and the folks. Later his surprise, he has been slept for 20 years. And his wife has been dead and his children grow up. At the end of story, his daughter takes him home and he still lives the life as he was used to.Ⅵ.Comment 20’1. Comment on Moby Dick:a. Although the narrator sees insanity in Ahab, Melville’s emotional sympathy is with the deficient Ahab. He begins with a noble intention to crush evil, but in taking this to the extreme, he becomes evil himself. He is destroyed by his consuming desire to root out evil.b. Moby Dick is a symbol to represent cruel, brutal, malicious powers of nature. Nature is capable of destroying the human world. Nature threatens humanity & thus calls out the heroic powers of the human beings. So the power of the universe is both of blessing and curse. In this way, the author constructs a complicated statement about American view of nature.2. Compare: Emily Dickinson with Walt Whitman in their writing style.Similarities①Along with Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman stands as one of the two giants of American poetry in the nineteenth century.②Pioneers of imagism③Part of American Renaissance④Influenced by transcendentalism⑤Thematically, they both extolled in their different ways and emergent America, its expansion, its individualism and its Americanness, their poetry being part of “American Renaissance”⑥Technically, they both added to the literary independence of the new nation by breaking free of the convention of the iambic pentameter and exhibiting a freedom in form unknown before: they are pioneers in American poetry.Differences①Whitman seems to keep his eyes on society at large; Dickinson explores the inner life of the individual.②Whereas Whitman is “national” in his outlook. Dickinson is “regional”③Whitman has the “catalogue techniques”, all-inclusive catalogue. Whereas Dickinson’s concise, direct, simple diction and syntax。
美国文学史期末考试复习题
美国文学史期末考试复习题(使用书本为童明的《美国文学史修订版》)一、名词解释（交代背景、内容/特点、代表人物/作品）1. American Realism: In American literature, the Civil War brought the Romantic Period to an end. The Age of Realism came into existence. It came as a reaction against the lie of romanticism and sentimentalism. Realism turned from an emphasis on the strange toward a faithful rendering of the ordinary, a slice of life as it is really lived. It expresses the concern for commonplace and the low, and it offers an objective rather than an idealistic view of human nature and human experience. (the representative writers and its features should be also added.)2. Black Humor :1）In the 1960s, in literature, drama, and film, black humor refers to grotesque or morbid humor used to express the absurdity, insensitivity, paradox, and cruelty of the modern world.2）Black humor often uses low comedy farce and low comedy to make clear that individuals are helpless victims of fate and character.3）Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 is an example of this school3. Henry James’s international theme: 书p1594. Beat Generation：1) American poets, 1950s-1960s, a rebellion ,counterculture, romantic, drugs and uninhibited sex.2)Best and most influential poem: “Howl”:denounces the life-denying effects of American culture.5.American Puritanism：it comes from the American puritans, who were the first immigrants moved to American continent in the 17th century. Original sin, predestination and salvation were the basic ideas of American Puritanism. And, hard-working, piousness，thrift and sobriety were praised.书p176. Transcendentalism: is a philosophic and literary movement that flourished in New England, particular at Concord, as a reaction against Rationalism and Calvinism. Mainly it stressed intuitive understanding of God, without the help of the church, and advocated independence of the mind. The representative writers are Emerson andThoreau.7. Themes of Henry James’s writing: 书p1588.The Lost Generation:it refers to a group of young intellectuals who came back from war，were injured both physically and mentally. They lived by indulging themselves in the Bohemian way of life. Their American dream was disillusioned. The best representative of the lost generation was Ernest Hemingway.二、回答问题1. What are the characteristics of American romanticism？（书本p68. 3点+ P69.5点）2. How is the Darwinian belief in naturalism opposed to the Christian creationist view? 书p166What is the determinist view of existence that informs naturalism? What are the implications of this view on ethics?3. What are the philosophical foundations and characteristics of American naturalism? 书p1664. What are the important point s for Hawthorne’s sty le?5. What is the predominant mood in Poe’s poetry? Discuss with two poems as examples.6. What are the parameters of American Realism?书P1457. How is Thoreau revolt manifested both in his social actions and his writing?书p99What is the nature of his revolt?书p100( and nature in Civil Disobedience should be added)8. The age of American realism is divided into two more periods. What are the periods called? What are the characteristics and who are the representatives of each period?。
美国文学期末复习题
美国文学期末复习题2013-2014-1 美国文学史及选读期末复习材料ⅠMultiple choices1. Which is not connected with Thomas Paine?A. Common SenseB. The American CrisisC. The Rights of ManD. The Autobiography2. “These are the times that try men’s souls”, these words were once read to Washington’s troops and did much to spur excitement to further action with hope and confidence. Who is the author of these words?A.Benjamin FranklinB. Thomas PaineC. Thomas JeffersonD. George Washington3. At the Reason and Revolution Period, Americans were influenced by the European movement called the ______.A. Chartist MovementB. Romanticist MovementC. Enlightenment MovementD. Modernist Movement4. In American literature, the Enlighteners were favorable to______.A. the colonial orderB. religious obscurantismC. the Puritan traditionD. the secular literature5. The English colonies in North America rose in arms againsttheir parent country and the Continental Congress adopted ______ in 1776.A. Declaration of IndependenceB. the Sugar ActC. the Stamp ActD. the Mayflower Compact6. ______ usually was regarded as the first American writer.A. William BradfordB. Anne BradstreetC. Emily DickinsonD. Captain John Smith7. Anne Bradstreet was a Puritan poet. Her poems made sucha stir in England that she became known as the “______” who appeared in America.A. Ninth MuseB. Tenth MuseC. Best MuseD. First Muse8. Who was considered as the “poet of American Revolution”?A. Anne BradstreetB. Edward TaylorC. Michael WigglesworthD. Philip Freneau9. In 1817, the stately poem called Thanatopsis introduced the best poet ______ to appear in America up to that time.A. Edward TaylorB. Philip FreneauC. William Cullen BryantD. Edgar Allen Poe10. The finest example of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s symbolism is the recreation of Puritan Boston in ______.A. The Scarlet LetterB. Young Goodman BrownC. The Marble FaunD. The Ambitious Guest11. “The universe is composed of Nature and the soul… Spirit is present everywhere”. This is the voice of the book Nature written by Emerson, which pushed American Romanticism into a new phase, the phase of New England ______.A. RomanticismB. TranscendentalismC. NaturalismD. Symbolism12. Which is generally regarded as the Bible of New England Transcendentalism?A. NatureB. WaldenC. On BeautyD. Self-Reliance13. Mark Twain created, in _________, a masterpiece of American realism that is also one of the great books of world literature.A. The Adventure of Huckleberry FinnB. The Adventure of Tom SawyerC. The Man That Corrupted HadleyburgD. The Gilded Age14. _________ marks the climax of Mark Twain’s literary creativity.A . The Adventure of Huckleberry Finn B. The Gilded AgeC. Life on the MississippiD. The Adventure of Tom Sawyer15. Choose the novel which is not written by Henry James.A. The AmbassadorsB. The Wings of the DoveC. The BostoniansD. The Mysterious Stranger16. Generally speaking, all those writers with a naturalistic approach to human reality tend to be _________.A. transcendentalistsB. idealistsC. pessimistsD. impressionists17. Ezra Pound’s long poem _________ contained more than one hundred poems loosely connected.A. The Waste LandB. The CantosC. Don JuanD. Queen Mab18. T. S. Eliot’s first major poem _________(1917), has been called the first masterpiece of modernism in English.A. The Love Song of J. Alfred PrufrockB. The Waste LandC. Four QuartetsD. Preludes19. Ernest Hemingway was badly wounded in Italy and sent to a hospital where he fell in love with a nurse. These two persons later became the characters of his novel _________.A. The Old Man and the SeaB. For Whom the Bell TollsC. The Sun Also RisesD. A Farewell to Arms20. In William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, he useda technique called _________, in which the whole story was told through the thoughts of one character.A. stream of consciousnessB. imagismC. symbolismD. naturalism21. Led by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo Emerson and ______, there arose a kind of teachings of transcendentalism in the early nineteenth century.A.Herman MelvilleB. Henry David ThoreauC. Mark TwainD. Theodore Dreiser22. A New ______ had appeared in England in the last years of the eighteenth century. It spread to continental Europe and then came to America early in the nineteenth century.A. realismB. critical realismC. romanticismD. naturalism23. From Henry David Thoreau’s jail experience, came his famous essay, ______ which states Thoreau’s belief that no man should violate his conscience at the command of a government.A. WaldenB. NatureC. Civil DisobedienceD. Common Sense24. Mark Twain, one of the greatest 19th century American writers, is well known for his _________.A. international themeB. waste-land imageryC. local colorD. symbolism25. Herman Melville’s ______ is an encyclopedia of everything: history, philosophy religion, etc. in addition to a detailed account of the operations of the whaling industry.A. The Old Man and the SeaB. Moby DickC. White Jacket C. Billy Budd26. The ship “______” carried about one hundred Pilgrims and took 66 days to beat its way across the Atlantic. In December of 1620, it put the Pilgrims ashore at Plymouth, Massachusetts.A. SunflowerB. ArmadaC. MayflowerD. Pequod27. From 1733 to 1758, Benjamin Franklin wrote and published his famous ______, an annual collection of proverbs.A. The AutobiographyB. Poor Richard’s AlmanacC. Common SenseD. The General Magazine28. In American literature, the eighteen-century was the age of the Enlightenment. ______ was the dominant spirit.A. HumanismB. RationalismC. RevolutionD. Evolution29. ______ was the most leading spirit of the Transcendental Club.A. Henry David ThoreauB. Ralph Waldo EmersonC. Nathaniel HawthorneD. Walt Whitman30. Edgar Allen Poe’s first collection of short stories is ______.A. Tales of a TravelerB. Leatherstocking TalesC. Canterbury TalesD. Tales of the Grotesque of Arabesque31. ______ was a romanticized account of Herman Melville’s stay among the Polynesians. The success of the book soon made Melville well known as the “man who lived among cannibals”.A. Moby DickB. TypeeC. OmooD. Billy Budd32. Which is regarded as the “Declaration of Intellectual Independence”?A.The American ScholarB. English TraitsC. The Conduct of LifeD. Representative Men33. The three dominant figures of the realistic period in American literature are _________.A. Theodore Dreiser, Emily Dickinson and William Dean HowellsB. Mark Twain, Henry James and William Dean HowellsC. Mark Twain, Theodore Dreiser and William Dean HowellsD. Mark Twain, Emily Dickinson and William Dean Howells34. American literature produced only one female poet during the nineteenth century. This was _________.A. Anne BradstreetB. Jane AustenC. Emily DickinsonD. Harriet Beecher35. In 1900, London published his first collection of short stories, named_________.A. The Son of the WolfB. The Sea WolfC. The Law of LifeD. White Fang36. In Henry James’Daisy Miler, the author tries t o portray the young woman as an embodiment of _________.A. the force of conventionB. the free spirit of the New WorldC. the decline of aristocracyD. the corruption of the newly rich37. “The apparition of these faces in the crowd; Petals on a wet, black bough.” This is the shortest poem written by _________.A. T.S. EliotB. Robert FrostC. Ezra PoundD.E.E.Cumings38. The Fitzgerald lived so extravagantly that they frequently spent more money than F. Scot Fitzgerald earned for parties,liquor, entertaining their friends and traveling. It was this living style that nicknamed the decade of the 1920s as _________.A. The Roaring TwentiesB. The Jazz AgeC. The Dollar DecadeD. all of the above39. In 1954, _________ was awarded the Nobel Prize for Lit erature for his “mastery of the art of modern narration”.A. T.S EliotB. Ernest HemingwayC. John SteinbeckD. William Faukner40. William Faukner’s novel _________ describes the decay and downfall of an old southern aristocratic family, symbolizing the old social order, told from four different points of view.A. The Sound and the FuryB. StartorisC. The UnvanquishedD. The Town41. “The Lure of the Spirit: The Flesh in Pursuit” i s the title of one chapter in Dreiser’s novel _________.A. An American DreamB. Sister CarrieC. Dreiser Looks at RussiaD. Jannie Gerhardt42. The main theme of _________ The Art of Fiction reveals his literary credo that representation of life should be the main object of the novel.A. Henry James’B. William Dean Howells’C. Mark Twain’sD. O. Henry’s43. With William Dean Howells, James, and Mark Twain active on the scene, _________became the major trend in the seventies and eighties of the nineteenth century.A. sentimentalismB. romanticismC. realismD. naturalism44. While embracing the socialism of Marx, London also believed in the triumph of the strongest individuals. This contradiction is most vividly projected in the patently autobiographical novel _________.A. The Call of the WildB. The Sea WolfC. Martin EdenD. The Iron Heel45_________ is a novella about a young American girl who gets “killed” by the winter in Rome, and it brought Henry James international fame for the first time.A. The AmericanB. The EuropeansC. Daisy MillerD. The Portait of a LadyAnswers: 1-5 DBCDA 6-10 DBDCA 11-15 BAAAD 16-20 CBADA21-25 BCCCB 26-30 CBBBD 31-35 BABCA 36-40 BCDBA 41-45 BACCCⅡFilling the following blanks with proper answers1.Captain John Smith became the first American writer.2.The puritans looked upon themselves as a chosen people.3.The first major intellectual spokesman of the Massachusetts Bay colony was John Cotton, sometimes called “the Patriarch of New England.”4.Anne Bradstreet published The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America, and she was nicknamed the tenth Muse.5.Poor Richard’s Almanac is an annual collection of proverbs written by Benjamin Franklin.6.Thomas Paine’s famous pamphlet Common Sense boldly advocated a “Declaration for Independence”.7.Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence with John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert Livingston.8.Philip Freneau developed a natural, simple, and concrete diction, best illustrated in such nature lyrics as “The Wild Honey Suckle” and “The Indian Burying Ground”.9.Philip Freneau h as been called the “Father of American Poetry”.10.In Washington Irving’s Sketch Book appeared the first modern short stories and the first great American juvenile literature.11.Cooper’s enduring fame rests on his frontier stories, especially the five novels that comprise the Leatherstocking tales.12.“To a Waterfowl” is perhaps the peak of William Cullen Bryant’s wok.13.“Thanatopsis”, William Cullen Bryant’s best-known poem, consists of four stanzas in iambic tetrameter abab. The title means “view of death”.14.Edgar Allan Poe is considered “father of American detective stories and American gothic stories”.15.Emerson believed above all in individualism, independence of mind, and self-reliance.16.In Walden, Thoreau thought it better for a man to work one day a week and rest six, and the rest of the time could be devoted to thought.17.Hawthorne’s stories touch the deepest roots of man’s moral nature.18.Moby Dick is a tremendous chronicle of a whaling voyage in pursuit of a seemingly supernatural white whale.19.After his death, Longfellow became the only American to be honored with a bust in the Poet’s Corner of Westminster Abbey.20.Harriet Beecher Stowe, the author of Uncle T om’s Cabin, had become an American institution and the most famous literary woman in the world.21.William Dean Howells found his subject matter in the experiences of the American middle class.22.William Dean Howells called for the treatment of the “smiling aspects of life” as being the more “American.”23.The naturalists emphasized that the world was amoral, that men and women had no free will, that their lives were controlled by heredity and the environment.24.The poetic style Walt Whitman devised is now called free verse.25.O·Henry’s stories are usually short and interesting; Famous for their surprising end.26.Henry James is famous for his international theme of the traditionless American confronting the complexity of European life.27.Jack London believed in the inevitable triumph of thestrongest individuals.28.Dreiser’s grea test and most successful novel, An American Tragedy, is about a young man who acts as if the only way he can be truly fulfilled is by acquiring wealth—through marriage if necessary.29.Writers of the first postwar era self-consciously acknowledged that the y were a “Lost Generation,” devoid of faith and alienated from a civilization.30.Wallace Stevens’ work is primarily motivated by the belief that “ideas of order”.31.With the publication of The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway became the spokesman for what Gertrude Stein had called “a lost generation.”Ⅲ Decide whether the statements are true or false (T/F).1. John Winthrop’s reports of exploration, published in the early 1600s, have been regarded as the first distinct American literature written in English.2. In 1612, William Bradford published in England a book called A Map of Virginia; With a description of the country.3. Philip Freneau was neoclassical by training and taste yet romantic in essential spirit.4. Ralph Waldo Emerson was recognized as the leader of transcendentalist movement, but he always applied the term “Transcendentalist” to himself or to his beliefs and ideas.5. To Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville, the telling of a tale was a way of inquiring into the meaning of life.6. Walt Whitman was attacked in his lifetime for his offensive subject matter of sexuality and for his conventional style.7. Tom Sawyer walked out of Twain’s pages directly from his fresh memory of his boyhood in the west.8. Hurstwood is a character in Theodore D reiser’s Sister Carrie.9. In the decade of the 1910s, American literature achieved a new diversity and reached its greatest heights.10. Edwin Arlington Robinson began his career as a novalist in bleakness and poverty.11.The greatest of America’s realist s, such as Henry James and Mark Twain, moved well beyond a superficial portrayal of nineteenth-century America.12.Henry James was a realist in the same way as one views the realism of Mark Twain or William Dean Howells.13.Sister Carrie is generally regar ded as Theodore Dreiser’s masterpiece.14.Generally speaking, Jack London was much more interested in ideas than Stephen Crane and less sentimental than Frank Norris.15.Ralph Waldo Emerson’s prose style was sometimes as highly individual as his poetry.16. American literature is the oldest of all national literature.17. Georgia, Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, New York, New England, all were named after French monarchs and lands.18. Benjamin Franklin was a prose stylist whose writing reflected the neoclassic ideals of clarity, restraint, simplicity and balance.19. The Fall of the House of Usher is one of Edgar Allan Poe’s poems.20. The Scarlet Letter is set in the seventeenth century. It is an elaboration of a fact which the author took out of the life of the Puritan past.21. Walt Whitman was so great that he won respect and loveduring his lifetime for his Leaves of Grass.22. Many of O. Henry’s stories contain a lot of slang and colloquial expressions, just like his own speech.23. Henry James was a realist in the same way as one views the realism of Mark Twain or William Dean Howells.24. Robert Frost rejected the revolutionary poetic principles of his contemporaries, and chose “the old-fashioned way to be new” instead.25. John Steinbeck’s theme was us ually that simple human virtues such as kindness and fair treatment were far superior to official hard-heartedness, or the dehumanizing cruelty of exploiters for their own commercial advantage.26. Transcendentalists spoke for cultural rejuvenation and against the materialism of American society.27. Washington Irving was the first great belletrist, writing always for pleasure, and to produce pleasure.28. James Fennimore Cooper launched two kinds of immensely popular stories: the sea adventure tale and the frontier saga.29. Puritan influence over American Romanticism was conspicuously noticeable.30. “Young Goodman Brown” seems to prove everyone possesses some evil secrets1-5 FFTFT 6-10FTTFF 11-15 TFFTT 16-20 FFTFT 21-25FFFTT 26-30 TTTTTⅣAnswer the fo llowing questions briefly.1. These are the times that try men’s souls: The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will in this crisis shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is noteasily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly—This dearness only that gives everything its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods.Questions:(1)Which book is this passage taken from?(2)Who is the author of this book?(3)Whom is the author praising? Whom is the author criticizing?(4)What do you think of the language?Answers:(1) The American Crisis.(2) Thomas Paine(3) Paine is praising those who stand “it”, it referring to “the service of their country”. In the meantime, Paine is criticizing those who shrink from the service of their country in this crisis.(4) The language is plain, impressive and forceful. Paine himself once said that his purpose as a writer was to use plain language to make those who can scarcely read understand and to fit the powers of thinking and the turn of language to the subject, so as to bring out a clear conclusion that shall hit the point in question and nothing else.2.It was not very long after speaking the Goney that another homeward-bound whaleman, the Town-Ho, was encountered. She was manned almost wholly by Polynesians. In the short gam that ensued she gave us strong news of Moby Dick. To some the general interest in the White Whale was now widly heightened by circumstance of the Town-Ho’s story, which seemedobscurely to involve with the whale a certain wondrous, inverted visitation of one of those so called judgments of God which at times are said to overtake some men. This latter circumstance, with its own particular accompaniments, forming what may be called the secret part of the tragedy about to be narrated, never reached the ears of Captain Ahab or his ma tes…Nevertheless, so potent and influence did this thing have on those seamen in the Pequod who came to the full knowledge of it, and by such a strange delicacy, to call it so, were they governed in this matter, that they kept the secret among themselves so that it never transpiredabaft the Pequod’s main-mast. Interweaving in its proper place this darker thread with the story as publicly narrated on the ship, the whole of this strange affair I now proceed to put on lasting record.Questions:(1)From which novel is this paragraph taken?(2) What is the name of the novelist?(3) Who is Ahab?(4) What is Pequod?(5) What is the theme of the novel?Answers:(1) Moby Dick(2) Herman Melville(3) The captain of the whaling ship(4) The name of the whaling ship(5) The rebellious struggle of Captain Ahab against the overwhelming, mysterious vastness of the universe and its awesome sometimes merciless forces.3. When a girl leaves her home at eighteen, she does one oftwo things. Either she falls into saving hands and becomes better, or she rapidly assumes the cosmopolitan standard of virtue and becomes worse. Of an intermediate balance, under the circumstances, there is no possibility. The city has its cunning wiles, no less than the infinitely smaller and more human temper. There are large forces which allure with all the soulfulness of expression possible in the most cultured human. The gleam of a thousand lights is often as effective as the persuasive light in a wooing and fascinating eye. Half the undoing of the unsophisticated and natural mind is accomplished by forces wholly superhuman. A blare of sound, a roar of life, a vast array of human hives, appeal to the astonished senses in equivocal terms. Without a counselor at hand to whisper cautious interpretations, what falsehoods may not these things breathe into the unguarded ear! Unrecognized for what they are, their beauty, like music, too often relaxes, then weakens then perverts the simpler human perceptions.Questions:(1) From which novel is this paragraph taken?(2) Who is the author of this novel?(3) How do you understand “the cosmopolitan standard of virtue”?(4) Is there any naturalist tendency in this passage?Answers:(1)Sister Carrie(2) Theodore Dreiser(3) “The cosmopolitan standard of virtue” is something that makes a person become low in virtue and become worse.(4) Yes.4. Briefly discuss the novel The Great GatsbyThe Great Gatsby, a novel written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, is one of the greatest novels in American literature. It fully explores the disillusionment and despair of the lost generation through the personal tragedy of a young man whose “incorruptib le Dream”is easily smashed into pieces by the crude reality. The protagonist, Gatsby, is a mythical figure whose intensity of dream partakes of a state of mind that embodies American itself. His failure magnifies the end of the American Dream. The style of the story is explicit and chilly. Fitzgerald’s accurate dialogues, his careful observation of mannerism and the colorful images provide the reader with a vivid and profound scene of the reality.5. What are the three main principles that Ezra Pound endorsed?(1)Directly treat poetic subjects.(2)Eliminate merely ornamental or superfluous words.(3)Rhythmical composition in the sequence of the musical phrase rather than in the sequence of metronome.6.Tell the differences between Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman(1)Emily Dickinson expresses the inner life of individuals, while Walt Whitman keeps his eyes on the society at large.(2)Emily Dicki nson is “regional”, while Walt Whitman is “national” in his outlook.(3)Formally, Emily Dickinson uses concise, simple dictions and syntax, while Walt Whitman uses endless, all-inclusive catalogs.ⅤEssay Writing (这个部分给大家的答案只是罗列了回答的要点，要将其连缀成文，如果简单按复习题给的答案罗列，只得一半分数)1. Write a short essay about the novel The Grapes of WrathWriter: John Steinbeck----won Nobel Prize for Literature in1962; spoke for the oppressed and suffered Background information: (1) Oklahoma used to be a major agricultural state. In the 1930s, a draught ruined this place. People had to leave here to seek a way out. Many of them went to California in hope of finding jobs there to support their family. (2)The Great Depression.Meaning of title: (1) Hope to despair; (2) Wrath of people; (3) Indications of revolution.Theme: (1) Embodying the mass misery of farmers; (2) Praising the spirit of love and unity; (3) Advocating fight and struggle for better life.Structure: (1) Its structure is dictated by the bible; (2) There are two blocks of material: a. the westward trek of the Joads; b. the depressed Oklahomans, and the general picture of the Great Depression.Symbols: (1) dust---evil forces; (2) grapes---hope→rage2. Write a short essay about the novel A Farewell to ArmsWriter: Hemingway---- (1) in 1954, he was awarded the Nobel Prize; (2) Main works: The Sun also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls, The old Man and the Sea. (3) His major contribution: a. Code hero---grace under pressure; b. Iceberg Theory---economy of expression; (4) the lost generation Background information: World War ⅡTheme: shows the filth, meaningless, calamity of war; the death, the nothingness of life; the disillusionment with future, hope and love, happiness. The universe is indifferent. There is no God to watch over man.Characters: Henry--- initially detached from life----though well-disciplined and friendly, he feels as if he has nothing to do with the war. After falling in love with Catherine he became acode hero in some way. Catherine---code hero: unfaltering devotion to Henry, brave, considerate, optimisticSymbols: rain---sadness, desperation, depression. It is raining outside almost every time something bad occurs. mud---nature's hostility to man.3. Write a short essay about the novel The Adventures of Tom SawyerAuthor: Mark Twain—the first truly American writer, a local colorist; he used short, concrete and colloquial language; his sentences are simple, and even ungrammatical; good at writing children’s adventures; masterpieces including: The A dventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer About the novel: The first famous novel about growing up and show ing the contradictions between adults’ world and teenagers’ world, a story of his seeking for freedom, fame, fortune, love, manhood; reveals the American values such as hero complex and American dream; records the rising Age of American Bourgeois system; bearsthe irony and satire toward the religion and rigid, didactic children education, which curbed the imagination of children and their innate nature for freedom and adventures and molded them into a stereotype of lifeless man.4. Comment briefly on Theodore Dreiser’s theme and writing style?Theme: Dreiser’s works are mainly concerned with the tragic nature of the human condition by depicting the coarse, vulgar, cruel, and terrible aspects of life like sex and crime.Style: In terms of style, Dreiser has sometimes been censured for his clumsy syntax, deficient characterization, and inept and dull prose. Yet his accumulated detail, carefully selected andfaithfully recorded, is a technique of power. Like the other naturalists, he refused to judge—to consider people as good or evil. He clothes his concepts symbolically in the details of reality. It is his journalistic method that ha s made him one of America’s foremost novelists.。
美国文学史及选读期末复习题
1.Captain John Smith became the first American writer.5.The puritans looked upon themselves as a chosen people.6.The first major intellectual spokesman of the Massachusetts Bay colony was John Cotton,sometimes called “the Patriarch of New England.”7.Anne Bradstreet published The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America, and she wasnicknamed the tenth Muse.8.Poor Richard’s Almanac is an annual collection of proverbs written by Benjamin Franklin.9.Thomas Paine’s famous pamphlet Common Sense boldly advocated a “Declaration forIndependence”.10.Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence with John Adams, BenjaminFranklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert Livingston.11.Philip Freneau developed a natural, simple, and concrete diction, best illustrated in suchnature lyrics as “The Wild Honey Suckle” and “The Indian Burying Ground”.12.Philip Freneau has been called the “Father of American Poetry”.13.In Washington Irving’s Sketch Book appeared the first modern short stories and the first greatAmerican juvenile literature.14.Cooper’s enduring fame rests on his frontier stories, especially the five novels that comprisethe Leatherstocking tales.15.“To a Waterfowl” is perhaps the peak of William Cullen Bryant’s wok.16.“Thanatopsis”, William Cullen Bryant’s best-known poem, consists of four stanzas in iambictetrameter abab. The title means “view of death”.17.Edgar Allan Poe is considered “father of American detective stories and American gothicstories”.18.Emerson believed above all in individualism, independence of mind, and self-reliance.19.In Walden, Thoreau thought it better for a man to work one day a week and rest six, and therest of the time could be devoted to thought.20.Hawthorne’s stories touch the deepest roots of man’s moral nature.21.Moby Dick is a tremendous chronicle of a whaling voyage in pursuit of a seeminglysupernatural white whale.22.After his death, Longfellow became the only American to be honored with a bust in the Poet’sCorner of Westminster Abbey.23.Harriet Beecher Stowe, the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, had become an American institutionand the most famous literary woman in the world.24.William Dean Howells found his subject matter in the experiences of the American middleclass.25.William Dean Howells called for the treatment of the “smiling aspects of life” as being themore “American.”26.The naturalists emphasized that the world was amoral, that men and women had no free will,that their lives were controlled by heredity and the environment.27.The poetic style Walt Whitman devised is now called free verse.28.O·Henry’s stories are usually short and interesting; Famous for theirsurprising end.29.Henry James is famous for his international theme of the traditionless American confrontingthe complexity of European life.30.Jack London believed in the inevitable triumph of the strongest individuals.31.Dreiser’s greatest and most successful novel, An American Tragedy, is about a young manwho acts as if the only way he can be truly fulfilled is by acquiring wealth—through marriage if necessary.32.Writers of the first postwar era self-consciously acknowledged that they were a “LostGeneration,” devoid of faith and alienated from a civilization.33.Wallace Stevens’ work is primarily motivated by the belief that “ideas of order”.34.With the publication of The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway became the spokesman for whatGertrude Stein had called “a lost generation.”Terms1.TranscendentalismTranscendentalism refers to the religious and philosophical doctrines of Ralph Waldo Emerson and others in New England in the middle 1800’s, which emphasized the importance of individual inspiration and intuition, the Oversoul, and Nature. Other concepts that accompanied Transcendentalism include the idea that nature is ennobling and the idea that the individual is divine and, therefore, self-reliant. New England Transcendentalism is the product of a combination of native American Puritanism and European Romanticism.2.NaturalismNaturalism, a more deliberate kind of realism, usually involves a view of human beings as passive victims of natural forces and social environment. As a literary movement, naturalism was initiated in France and it came to be led by Zola, who claimed at “scientific” status for his studies of impoverished characters miserably subjected to hunger, sexual obsession, and hereditary defects. Natural fiction aspired to a sociological objectivity, offering detailed and fully researched investigations into unexplored corners of modern society. The most significant work of naturalism in English being Dreiser’s Sister Carrie.3.American DreamThe American Dream is the faith held by many people in the United States of America that through hard work, courage and determination one can achieve a better life for oneself, usually through financial prosperity. These were values held by many early European settlers, and have been passed on to subsequent generations.4.The Lost GenerationThe term Lost Generation was coined by Gertrude Stein to refer to a group of American Literary notables who lived in Paris from the time period which saw the end of World War I to the beginning of the Great Depression. Significant members included Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound, Sherwood Anderson, T. S. Eliot, and Gertrude Stein herself. Hemingway likely popularized the term, quoting Stein (“You are all a lost generation”) as epigraph to his novel The Sun Also Rises. More generally, the term is being used for the young adults of Europe and America during World War I. They were “lost”because after the war many of them were disillusioned with the world in general and unwilling to more into a settled life5. ModernismModern writing is marked by a strong and conscious break with traditional forms and techniques of expression; it believes that we create the world in the act of perceiving it. Modernism implies historical discontinuity, a sense of alienation, of loss, and of despair. Itelevates the individual and his inner being over social man and prefers the unconscious to the self-conscious.6. RomanticismRomanticism as a literary movement came into being in England in the later half of the 18th century. It first made its appearance in England as a renewed interest in medieval literature. William Blake and Robert Burns represented the spirit of what is usually called Pre-Romanticism. With the publication of W illiam Wordsworth’s Lyrical Ballads in collaboration with S. T. Coleridge, romanticism began to bloom and found a firm place in history of English literature. In fact, the first half the 19th century recorded the triumph of Romanticism.7. PuritanismThe principles and practices of puritans were popularly known as Puritanism. Puritanism accepted the doctrines of Calvinism: the sovereignty of God; the supreme authority of the Bible; the irresistibility of God’s will for man in every act of life from cradl e to grave. These doctrines led the Puritans to examine their souls to find whether they were of the elect and to search the Bible to determine God’s will.8.Hemingway Heroes / Code Hero“Hemingway Heroes” refer to some protagonists in Hemingway’s works. Such a hero usually is an average man of decidedly masculine tastes, sensitive and intelligent. And usually he is a man of action and of a few words. He is such an individualist, alone even when with other people, somewhat an outsider, keeping emotions under control, stoic and self-disciplined in a dreadful place where one can not get happiness. The Hemingway heroes stand for a whole generation. In a world which is essentially chaotic and meaningless, a Hemingway hero fights a solitary struggle against a force he does not even understand. The awareness that it must end in defeat, no matter how hard he strives, engenders a sense of despair. But Hemingway heroes possess a kind of “despairing courage” as Bertrand Russell terms. It is this courage that enables a man to behave like a man, to assert his dignity in face of adversity. Surely Hemingway heroes differ, one from another, in their view of the world. The difference which comes gradually in view is an index to the subtle change which Hemingway’s outlook had undergone.Identify the fragments.1. These are the times that try men’s souls: The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly—This dearness only that gives everything its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods.(1)Which book is this passage take from?(2)Who is the author of this book?(3)Whom is the author praising? Whom is the author criticizing?(4)What do you think of the language?Answer:(1) The American Crisis.(2) Thomas Paine(3) Paine is praising those who stand “it”, it referring to “the service of their country”. In themeantime, Paine is criticizing those who shrink from the service of their country in this crisis. (4) The language is plain, impressive and forceful. Paine himself once said that his purpose as a writer was to use plain language to make those who can scarcely read understand and to fit the powers of thinking and the turn of language to the subject, so as to bring out a clear conclusion that shall hit the point in question and nothing else.2. From morning suns and evening dewsAt first thy little being came;If nothing once, you nothing lose,For when you die you are the same;The space between, is but an hour,The frail duration of a flower.(1) Who is the writer of these verses?(2) What is the title of this poem?(3) Give a brief comment on this poems.Answer:(1) Philip Freneau(2) The Wild Honeysuckle(3) Here Freneau offers a version of an abundant America with potential for providing a good life for all. The poem is also an indication of his dedication to American subject matter as he examined peculiarly American characteristics of the countryside.3.From the listless repose of the place, and the peculiar character of its inhabitants, who are descendants from the original Dutch settlers, this sequestered glen has long been known by the name of SLEEPY HOLLOW, and its rustic lads are called the Sleepy Hollow Boys throughout all the neighboring country. Drowsy and dreamy influence seems to hang over the land, and to pervade the very atmosphere. Some say that the place was bewitched by a high German doctor, during the early days of the settlement; others, that an old Indian chief, the prophet or wizard of his tribe, held his powwows there before the country was discovered by Master Hendrick Hudson. Question:(1) Who is the writer of this short story from which the passage is taken?(2) What is the title of this short story?(3) Give a definition of “short story”?Answer:(1) Washington Irving(2) The Legend of Sleepy Hollow(3) A short story is a brief prose fiction, usually one that can be read in a single sitting. It generally contains the six major elements of fiction—characterization, setting, theme, plot, point of view and style.4. It was not very long after speaking the Goney that another homeward-bound whaleman, the Town-Ho, was encountered. She was manned almost wholly by Polynesians. In the short gam that ensued she gave us strong news of Moby Dick. To some the general interest in the White Whale was now widly heightened by circumstance of the Town-Ho’s story, which seemed obscurely to involve with the whale a certain wondrous, inverted visitation of one of those so called judgments of God which at times are said to overtake some men. This latter circumstance, with its ownparticular accompaniments, forming what may be called the secret part of the tragedy about to be narrated, never reached the ears of Captain Ahab or his mates…Nevertheless, so potent and influence did this thing have on those seamen in the Pequod who came to the full knowledge of it, and by such a strange delicacy, to call it so, were they governed in this matter, that they kept the secret among themselves so that it never transpired abaft the Pequod’s main-mast. Interweaving in its proper place this darker thread with the story as publicly narrated on the ship, the whole of this strange affair I now proceed to put on lasting record.Question:(1)From which novel is this paragraph taken?(2) What is the name of the novelist?(3) Who is Ahab?(4) What is Pequod?(5) What is the theme of the novel?Answer:(1) Moby Dick(2) Herman Melville(3) The captain of the whaling ship(4) The name of the whaling ship(5) The rebellious struggle of Captain Ahab against the overwhelming, mysterious vastness of the universe and its awesome sometimes merciless forces.5. To go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society. I am not solitary whilst I read and write, though nobody is with me. But if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars. The rays that come from those heavenly worlds, will separate between him and vulgar things. One might think the atmosphere was made transparent with this design, to give man, in the heavenly bodies, the perpetual presence of the sublime. Seen in the streets of cities, how great they are! If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generation the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these preachers of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile.Question:(1)This paragraph is taken from a famous essay. What is the of the essay?(2)Who is the author?(3)What does the author say would happen if the stars appeared one night in a thousand years?(4)Give a peculiar term to cover the author’s belief.Answer:(1) Nature(2) Ralph Waldo Emerson(3)Then, the men cannot believe and adore the God, cannot preserve the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown.(4)Transcendentalism6. Isabel always felt an impulse to pull out the pins; not that she imagined they inflicted any damage on the tough old parchment, but because it seemed to her her aunt might make better use of her sharpness. She was very critical herself-it was incidental to her sex, and her nationality butshe was very sentimental as well, and there was something in Mrs. Touchett’s dryness that set her own moral fountains flowing.Questions:(1) This passage is taken from a well-known novel. What is the name of the novel?(2) Who is the author of this novel?(3) Make a brief comment on the heroine of this novel?(4) What is theme of the author? Tell something about it.Answer:(1) The Portrait of a Lady(2) Henry James(3) She is one of the Jamesian American girls. She arrives in Europe, full of hope, and with a will to live a free and noble life, but in fact, she only falls prey to the sinister designs of two vulgar and unscrupulous expatriates, Madam Merle and Gilbert Osmond.(4) Jamesian theme refers to Henry James’s handling of his major fictional theme, “the international theme”: the meeting of America and Europe, American innocence in contact and contrast with European decadence and the moral and Psychological complications arising there from.7.When a girl leaves her home at eighteen, she does one of two things. Either she falls into saving hands and becomes better, or she rapidly assumes the cosmopolitan standard of virtue and becomes worse. Of an intermediate balance, under the circumstances, there is no possibility. The city has its cunning wiles, no less than the infinitely smaller and more human temper. There are large forces which allure with all the soulfulness of expression possible in the most cultured human. The gleam of a thousand lights is often as effective as the persuasive light in a wooing and fascinating eye. Half the undoing of the unsophisticated and natural mind is accomplished by forces wholly superhuman. A blare of sound, a roar of life, a vast array of human hives, appeal to the astonished senses in equivocal terms. Without a counselor at hand to whisper cautious interpretations, what falsehoods may not these things breathe into the unguarded ear! Unrecognized for what they are, their beauty, like music, too often relaxes, then weakens then perverts the simpler human perceptions.Questions:(1) From which novel is this paragraph taken?(2) Who is the author of this novel?(3) How do you understand “the cosmopolitan standard of virtue”?(4) Is there any naturalist tendency in this passage?Answer:(1)Sister Carrie(2) Theodore Dreiser(3) “The cosmopolitan standard of virtue” is something that makes a person become low in virtue and become worse.(4) Yes.Give brief answers to the following questions.1.What are the characteristics of the Colonial Literature?In a real sense, there were no literal works in the early colonial period. They were just personalliterature in the form of diaries, travel books, letters, journals, sermons, histories and prose.(1) In content, they wrote about the voyage to the new land, about adopting themselves to unfamiliar climates and crops, about dealing with Indian, and especially about religion.(2) In form, English traditions were imitated.ment briefly on Emily Dickinson’s themes?(1)By far the largest portion of Dickinson’s poetry concerns death and immortality, theme which lie at the centre of Dickinson’s world.(2)Dickinson’s nature poems are also great in number and rich in matter. Natural phenomena, changes of seasons, heavenly bodies, animals, birds and insects, flowers of various kinds, and many other subjects related to nature find her way into her poetry.(3)Dickinson also wrote some poems about love. Like her death and nature poems, her love poems were original.(4)Besides deaths and immortality, nature and love, Dickinson’s poems are concerned about ethics, with respect to which, she emphasizes free will and human responsibility.3. Comment briefly on Theodore Dreiser’s themes and writing style?Theme: Dreiser’s works are mainly concerned with the tragic nature of the human condition by depicting the coarse, vulgar, cruel, and terrible aspects of life like sex and crime.Style: In terms of style, Dreiser has sometimes been censured for his clumsy syntax, deficient characterization, and inept and dull prose. Yet his accumulated detail, carefully selected and faithfully recorded, is a technique of power. Like the other naturalists, he refused to judge—to consider people as good or evil. He clothes his concepts symbolically in the details of reality. It is his journalistic method that has made him one of America’s foremost novelists.4 Henry James is a great realistic writer. Name two of his major works. Do you know anything about his narrative “point of view”? What is it for? How does James employ it in his works? Briefly discuss this question.(1) Henry James’s major works include Daisy Miller and The Portrait of A Lady, etc.(2) One of Henry James literary techniques is his narrative “point of view.” As the author, James avoids the authorial omniscience as much as possible and makes his characters reveal themselves with his minimal intervention. So it is often the case that in his novels we usually learn the main story by reading through one or several minds and share their perspectives. This narrative method proves to be successful in bringing out his themes.5. What are the three main principles that Ezra Pound endorsed?(1)Directly treat poetic subjects.(2)Eliminate merely ornamental or superfluous words.(3)Rhythmical composition in the sequence of the musical phrase rather than in the sequence of metronome.6.Tell the differences between Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman(1)Emily Dickinson expresses the inner life of individuals, while Walt Whitman keeps his eyes on the society at large.(2)Emily Dickinson is “regional”, while Walt Whitman is “national” in his outlook.(3)Formally, Emily Dickinson uses concise, simple dictions and syntax, while Walt Whitman uses endless, all-inclusive catalogs.7. Briefly discuss Hemingway’s Iceberg PrincipleIceberg principle is that the full meaning of the text is not limited to moving the plot forward:there is always a web of association and inference, a submerged reason behind the inclusion (or even the omission) of every detail.In Death in the Afternoon, Hemingway outlined his “theory of omission” or “iceberg principle.”He states: “is a writer of 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. The dignity of movement of the iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water. The writer who omits things because he does not know only makes hollow places in his writing.”8. Briefly discuss the Jazz Age“The Jazz Age” describes the period the period of the 1920s and 1930s, the years between World War I and World War II, particularly in North America; with the rise of the Great Depression, the values of this age saw much decline. Perhaps the most representative literary work of the age is American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, highlighting what some describe as the decadence and hedonism, as well as the growth of individualism. Fitzgerald is largely credited with coining the term “The Jazz Age”. It can also be known as “The Roaring Twenties” and “The Dollar Decade.”9. Jack Landon’s themes(1) London was logically inconsistent in his viewpoint.On the one hand, he took faith in Darwin’s surviv al of the fittest, evolutionary concept of progress, and on the other hand, he embraced the socialists’ doctrines of Marx.(2) London wrote on many subjects and themes which centered around primitive violence, Anglo-Saxon supremacy(至上), biological evolution, class warfare, and mechanistic determinism. His heroes are physically robust and rugged but often psychologically harried(苦恼). His heroines are athletic, daring, yet intensely feminine. They are man’s intellectual equal and his emotional superior.10. Briefly discuss ImagismImagism was one of the modern literary movements which expressed the modern spirit, the sense of fragmentation（破裂）and dislocation（错位，混乱）. It came as a reaction to the traditional English poetics. The first Imagist theorist is the English writer T.E. Hume. He suggests that modern art deal with expression and communication of momentary（瞬间的）phases in the poet’s mind.Poetic techniques should become subtle enough to record exactly the momentary impressions. The most effective means to express these momentary impressions is through one dominant image. Each word must be an image seen. Each sentence should be a lump(团,块), a piece of clay, a vision seen. Hulme advises the poet to seek the hard, personal word for expression. The Imagist movement lasted from 1908 to 1917.。
重点参考 美国文学史期末复习
H i s t o r y A n d A n t h o l o g y o f A m e r i c a n L i t e r a t u r e(V o l u m eⅠⅡ)美国文学史及选读1、2PartⅠThe Literature of Colonial America殖民主义时期的文学1.17世纪早期English and European explorers开始登陆美洲。
在他们之前100多年Caribbean Islands,Mexico and other Parts of South America已被the Spanish占领。
2.17th早期English settlements in Virginia and Massachusetts(弗吉尼亚和马萨诸塞)开始了美国历史3.美国最早殖民者(earliest settlers)included Dutch ,Swedes ,Germans ,French ,Spaniards ,Italians andPortuguese (荷兰人，瑞典人，德国人，法国人，西班牙人，意大利人及葡萄牙人等)。
4.美国早期文学主要为the narratives and journals of these settlements采用in diaries and in journals(日记和日志)，他们写关于the land with dense forests and deep-blue lakes and rich soil.5.第一批美国永久居民：the first permanent English settlement in North America was established atJamestown,Virginia in 1607(北美弗吉尼亚詹姆斯顿)。
6.船长约翰·史密斯Captain John Smith他的作品(reports of exploration)17th早期出版，被认为是美国第一部真正意义上的文学作品in the early 1600s,have been described as the first distinctly American literature written in English.他讲述了filled with themes, myths, images, scenes, character and events,吸引了朝圣者和清教徒前往lure the Pilgrims and the Puritans.7.美国第一位作家：1608年Captain John Smith写了封信《自殖民地第一次在弗吉尼亚垦荒以来发生的各种事件的真实介绍》“A True Relation of Such Occurrences and Accidents of Note as HathHappened in Virginia Since the First Planting of That Colony”.8.他的第二本书1612年《弗吉尼亚地图，附：一个乡村的描述》“A Map of Virginia: with a Descriptionof the Country”.9.他一共出版了八本书，其中有关于新英格兰的历史及描述。
美国文学史概述及选读复习资料
美国文学史American Literature in the colonical and Revolutionary:1.Benjamin Franklin(本杰明.富兰克林)2.hilip Freneau 菲利普·费瑞诺Benjamin Franklin(本杰明.富兰克林)1)"Poor Richard's Almanac" 穷人查理德的年鉴(以笔名Richard Sunders)2)“annual collection of proverbs “流行谚语集(It soon became the most popular bookof its kind, largely because of Franklin's shrewd humor, and first spread his reputation) 3)The Way to Wealth (Father Abraham’s Sermon)致富之道(as the “perface to Poor RichardImproved)4)The Autobiography自传(18世纪美国唯一流传至今的自传)5)Founded the Junto, a club for informal discussion of scientific, economic and politicalideas. 建立了一个秘密俱乐部，讨论的主题是政治、经济和科学等时事方面的问题.6)established America's first circulating library, founded the college--University ofPennsylvania. 建立了美国第一个可租借的图书馆，还创办了一所大学——就是现在的宾夕法尼亚大学.7)first applied the terms "positive" and "negative" to electrical charges.8)Writer,printer,publisher,scientist,philanthropist,and diplomat,he was the most famousand respected private figure of his time.The Rising Glory of America蒸蒸日上的美洲；The British Prison Ship英国囚船；To the Memory of the Brave Americans纪念美国勇士-----同类诗中最佳；The Wild Honeysuckle野生的金银花；The Indian Burying Ground印第安人殡葬地(1)poet and political journalist 诗人和政治方面的新闻记者(2)perhaps the most outstanding writer of the post-revolutionary period.(3)has been called the "Father of American Poetry" 美国诗歌之父(4)Imaginative and melancholy treatment of nature and human life,and sharp satire against the British tyranny19th Century American LiteratureWashington Irving(华盛顿.欧文)1．James Fenimore Cooper(詹姆斯.芬尼莫.库珀)2．Nathaniel Hawthorne(纳萨尼尔.霍桑)3．Edgar Allan Poe （埃德加.阿伦.坡）4．Henry Daived Thoreau(亨利.戴维.梭罗)5．Herman Melville(赫尔曼.麦尔维尔)6．Walt Whiteman(沃尔特.惠特曼)The Rise of American Romanticism• One of the most important periods in the history of American literature, stretches from the end of the 18th century to the outbreak of the Civil War(1861-65).• It started with the publication of Washington Irving's e T he h Sketch Book(1820) and ended with Whitman's s Leaves f of Grass(1855)..Romanticism的特点：frequently shared certain general characteristics, moral enthusiam,faith in the value of individualism and intuitive perception, and apresumption that he natural world was a source of corruption.浪漫主义之间大多是相通的，都注重道德，强调个人主义价值观和直觉感受，并且认为自然是美的源头，人类社会是腐败之源。
英语-《美国文学史及作品选读》复习资料
一卷I. Choose the best answer to each of the following questions.1.The first American writer is ___________.a. John Cottonb. John Winthropc. John Smithd. Anne Bradstreet2.In the direct line of Metaphysical Poets, _________ is considered the best ofPuritan poets and his works were hailed as the finest 17th century American verse.a. Henry Wadsworth Longfellowb. Edgar Allen Poec. William Cullen Bryantd. Edward Taylor3.“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are cr eated equal, …” is aquotation from __________ drafted by ______________.a. The American Crisis, Thomas Jeffersonb. The American Crisis, Thomas Painec. The Declaration of Independence, Thomas Pained. The Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson4.______________ was called the “Father of American Poetry”.a. Edward Taylorb. William Cullen Bryantc. Edgar Allen Poed. Philip Freneau5.____________ was the first great prose stylist of American romanticism.a. Nathaniel Hawthorneb. Edgar Allen Poec. Washington Irvingd. James Fennimore Cooper6.In the five novels that comprise the Leatherstocking Tales, the central figure,________, goes the various names of Leatherstocking, Deerslayer, Pathfinder, and Hawkeye.a. Chingakgookb. David Gamutc. Natty Bumppod. Uncas7.The publication of ___________ written by _________introduced the mosteloquent spokesman of New England Transcendentalism to American literature.a. Nature, Henry David Thoreaub. Nature, Ralph Waldo Emersonc. Walden, Henry David Thoreaud. Walden, Ralph Waldo Emerson8._____________ was written to show that the consequences of a sin cannot beescaped and that many different lives are influenced by one wrong deed.a. Nathaniel Hawthorneb. Herman Mellvillec. James Fennimore Cooperd. Washington Irving9.__________ was the first American writer to have a bust to be placed in the Poets’Corner at Westminster Abbey.a. William Wordsworthb. Edgar Allen Poec. William Cullen Bryantd. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow10.In a sense, we can say that Romanticism designates a literary and philosophicaltheory, which tends to see the ___________ as the very center of all life and all experience.a. societyb. individualc. familyd. country life11.“He was tall, but exceedingly lank, with narrow shoulders, long arms and legs,hands that dangled a mile out of his sleeves, feet that might have served for shovels, and his whole frame most loosely hung together.” The description is about __________.a. Brom Van Bruntb. Rip Van Winklec. Ichabod Craned. Katrina Van Tassel12.Herman Melville was very much influenced by _________, who he called “thelargest brain with the largest heart” in America Litera ture.a. Nathaniel Hawthorneb. Edgar Allen Poec. Washington Irvingd. James Fennimore Cooper13.In The Last of the Mohicans, the last of the Mohicans refers to _____________.a. David Gamutb. Chigachgookc. Maguad. Uncas14. ___________ consists of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one.a. Iambb. Trocheec. Dactyld. Spondee15.Among the following short stories, which one is NOT written by NathanielHawthorne?a. Ethan Brandb. The Great Stone Facec. Rapaccini's Daughterd. Bartleby the ScrivenerII. Explain the following terms briefly in English.1.Refrain2.American Puritanism3.New England Transcendentalism4.Familiar essay5.AllegoryIII. Arrange in pairs.Directions: Column A consists of ten writers, please find their corresponding works in Column B and write the answer on the Anwer Sheet.IV. Try to decide whether the following statements are true or false. Please write “T” for “true” and “F” for “false ”.1.The Legend of Sleepy Hollow is a story about a man who falls into a sleep of 20years while out hunting during which the Revolutionary War takes place.2.Bartleby the Scrivener is one of Herman Melville’s short stories.3.The Song of Hiawatha is the first American epic about the American Indians.4.The Birthmark uses the background of witchcraft to explore uncertainties of beliefthat trouble a man’s heart and mind.5.Edgar Allen Poe has often been regarded as the father of modern short story.V. Read the following passages and complete the tasks according to the specific requirements1.Standing on the bareground, - my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted intoinfinite space, - all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball. I am nothing. I see all. The currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God.a.Identify the author and the work from which the quotation is selected.b.What does “the Universal Being” refer to? What is the relation between theindividual and the Universal Being? Explain with regard to the author’s philosophical ideas.2.Another peculiar torture was felt in the gaze of a new eye. When strangers lookedcuriously at the scarlet letter, - and none ever failed to do so, - they branded it afresh into Hester’s soul; so that, oftentimes, she could scarcely refrain, yet always did refrain, from covering the symbol with her hand.a.Identify the author and the work from which the quotation is selected.b.What is the character’s full name? What does “the symbol” refer to? Does itchange its meaning for him/ her through out the whole story?3.Let us then be up and doing,With a heart for any fate;Still achieving, still pursuing,Learn to labor and to wait.a.Identify the author and the work from which the quotation is selected.b.Analyze the poem from at least three of the following aspects: structure,rhyme scheme, tone, theme and figures of speech used with regard to thestanza selected.VI. Answer the following questions1.Discuss the symbolism in Moby Dick.2.What are Edgar Allen Poe’s criteria for writing short stories?一卷答案I.Choose the best answer to each of the following questions.1-5：cdddc 6-10：cbadb 11-15：cadadII.Explain the following terms briefly in English.1.Refrain: one or more words repeated at intervals in a poem, usually at theend of a stanza. The most regular is the use of the same line at the close of each stanza.2.American Puritanism stressed predestination, original sin, total depravity,and limited atonement from God’s grace. It was influenced heavily by Calvinism. With such doctrines in their mind Puritans left Europe for America in order to prove that they were God’s chosen people who would enjoy God’s blessings on earth and in Heaven. Over the years in the new homeland, they built a way of life that stressed hard work, thrift, piety, and sobriety.3.New England Transcendentalism was the first American intellectualmovement. Transcendental club became the movement’s center with its magazine The Dial. It was a system of thought that originated from manysources, mainly Idealistic philosophy. It stressed the power of intuition, spirit and the individual. It envisioned religion as an emotional communication between an individual soul and the universal “oversoul”. It was represented by two major writers of the country, Emerson and Thoreau whose writings had great impact in the country.4.Familiar essay is the more personal, intimate type of informal essay. It dealslightly, often humorously, with personal experiences, opinions, and prejudices, stressing especially the unusual or novel, and having to do with the varied aspects of everyday life.5. Allegory is a story or image with a second distinct meaning partially hidden behind its literal or visible meaning.III.Arrange in pairs.1-5：C J H G I 6-10：F D A E BIV.Try to decide whether the following statements are true or false. Please write “T” for “true” and “F” for “false ”1-5: F T T F TV.Read the following passages and complete the tasks according to the specific requirements1. a. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Relianceb. One of Emerson’s philosophy is the importance of the individual. In the passage, he is affirmative about man’s intuitive knowledge, with which a man can trust himself to decide what is right and to act accordingly. There is an emotional communication between an individual and the all-pervading power from which all things come from and of which all are a part. He means to convince people that the possibilities for man to develop and improve himself are infinite.2. a. Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letterb. Hester Prynne; The symbol refers to the scarlet letter A which refers to hersin of adultery; at the very beginning of the romance, the letter “A” symbolizes the act of adultery to Dimmesdale , but towards the end of the story, it symbolizes Angel to the other people in the community.3. a. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, A Psalm of Lifeb. The poem is written in quatrains, with a rhyme scheme of abab and each line in iambic tetrameter. The tone is optimistic. Figures of speech used are alliteration, parallel structure and repetition. It stresses the importance of a full and sincere activity in making the most of life’s brief span, rather than succumbing to moods of vain regret or dejection.VI.Answer the following questions1.①Herman Melville is a master of symbols, that is, objects or persons whorepresent something else.②Different people on board the ship are representations of different ideas anddifferent social and ethnic groups; facts become symbols and incidents acquire universal meanings.③Ishmael , the narrator of the story, is symbolic of a wanderer or displacedperson who is wandering in the world and fails to find out the real meaning of the world.④Ahab, symbolic of the Jewish king who started worship of Pagan gods,suffers both psychological and physical damage inflicted by life in a harsh world that eventually destroys him.⑤The Pequod is the microcosm of human society and the voyage becomes asearch for truth.⑥Queequeg’s Coffin alternately symbolizes life and death. Queequeg has itbuilt when he is seriously ill, but when he recovers, it becomes a chest to hold his belongings and an emblem of his will to live. The coffin furthercomes to symbolize life, in a morbid way, when it replaces the Pequod’s li fe buoy. When the Pequod sinks, the coffin becomes Ishmael’s buoy, saving not only his life but the life of the narrative that he will pass on.⑦The white whale, Moby Dick, symbolizes nature for Melville, for it iscomplex, unfathomable, malignant, and beautiful as well. For the character Ahab, however, the whale represents only evil. Moby Dick is like a wall, hiding some unknown, mysterious things behind. Ahab wills the whole crew on the Pequod to join him in the pursuit of the big whale so as to pierce the wall, to root out the evil, but only to be destroyed by evil, in this case, by his consuming desire, his madness. For the author, as well as for the reader and Ishmael, Moby Dick is still a mystery, an ultimate mystery of the universe, inscrutable and ambivalent, and the voyage of the mind will forever remaina search not a discovery of the truth.2.① A skillful literary artist has constructed a tale. If wise, he has not fashionedhis thoughts to accommodate his incidents; but having conceived, with deliberate care, a certain unique or single effect to be wrought out, he then invents such incidents,--he then combines such events as may best aid him in establishing this preconceived effect. If his very initial sentence tend not to the outbringing of this effect, then he has failed in his first step. In the whole composition there should be no word written, of which the tendency, direct or indirect, is not to the one pre-established design."②Although beauty is the aim of poems, truth is the aim of tales.③Tales can deal with terror, passion, horror, humor, sarcasm, wit, andratiocination.④The merit of a work of art should be judged by its psychological effect uponthe reader.二卷I. Choose the best answer to each of the following questions.1.Written by William Cullen Bryant, __________, is called by the eminent Englishcritic and poet, Mathew Arnold, the “most perfect brief poem in the language”.a. To a Waterfowlb. To Helenc. Thanatopsisd. The Wild Honey Suckle2.The first American writer is ___________.a. John Cottonb. John Winthropc. John Smithd. Anne Bradstreet3.According to ______________, the most poetical topic is the death of a beautifulwoman.a. Henry Wadsworth Longfellowb. Edgar Allen Poec. William Cullen Bryantd. Edward Taylor4.“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, …” is aquotation from __________ drafted by ___________.a. The American Crisis, Thomas Jeffersonb. The American Crisis, Thomas Painec. The Declaration of Independence, Thomas Pained. The Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson5.The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle are the two most famous shortstories from Washington Irving’s ____________.a. Bracebridge Hallb. The Sketch Bookc. A History of New Yorkd. Twice-Told Tales6.______________ was called the “Father of American Poetry”.a. Edward Taylorb. William Cullen Bryantc. Edgar Allen Poed. Philip Freneau7._____________ is called by Oliver Wendell Holmes “our intellectual Declarationof Independence”.a. The American Scholarb. Self-Reliancec. The Divinity School Addressd. Nature8._______, New England’s Utopia, is the record of ____________’s experiment inendeavoring to live an ideal life in the forest.a. Nature, Henry David Thoreaub. Nature, Ralph Waldo Emersonc. Walden, Henry David Thoreaud. Walden, Ralph Waldo Emerson9.____________ is a movement supported by all progressive forces of the countrywhich opposed themselves to the old colonial order and religious obscurantism.a. American Romanticismb. New England Transcendentalismc. American Puritanismd. American Enlightenment10.Among the writers in the Literature of Reason and Revolution, ________ shapedhis writing after the Spectator Papers of the English essayists Joseph Addison and Richard Steele.a. Thomas Jeffersonb. Benjamin Franklinc. Joel Barlowd. William Bartram11.“He was tall, but exceedingly lank, with narrow shoulders, long arms and legs,hands that dangled a mile out of his sleeves, feet that might have served for shovels, and his whole frame most loosely hung together.” The description is about __________.a. Brom Van Bruntb. Rip Van Winklec. Ichabod Craned. Katrina Van Tassel12.Herman Melville was very much influenced by _________, who he called "thelargest brain with the largest heart" in America Literature.a. Nathaniel Hawthorneb. Edgar Allen Poec. Washington Irvingd. James Fennimore Cooper13.In The Last of the Mohicans, the last of the Mohicans refers to _____________.a. David Gamutb. Chigachgookc. Maguad. Uncas14.___________ consists of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one.a. Iambb. Trocheec. Dactyld. Spondee15.Among the following short stories, which one is NOT written by NathanielHawthorne?a. Ethan Brandb. The Great Stone Facec. Rapaccini's Daughterd. Bartleby the ScrivenerII. Explain the following terms briefly in English.1.Refrain2.American Puritanism3.New England Transcendentalism4.Iambic pentameter5.Familiar essayIII. Arrange in pairs.Directions: Column A consists of ten writers, please find their corresponding works inIV. Try to decide whether the following statements are true or false. Please write “T” for “true” and “F” for “false ”1.The Legend of Sleepy Hollow is a story about a man who falls into a sleep of 20years while out hunting during which the Revolutionary War takes place.2.Bartleby the Scrivener is one of Herman M elville’s short stories.3.The Song of Hiawatha is the first American epic about the American Indians.4.The Birthmark uses the background of witchcraft to explore uncertainties ofbelief that trouble a man’s heart and mind.5.Edgar Allen Poe has often been regarded as the father of modern short story.V. Read the following passages and complete the tasks according to the specific requirements1.I do not propose to write an ode to dejection, but to brag as lustily as chanticleerin the morning, standing on his roost, if only to wake my neighbors up.a.Identify the author and the work from which the quotation is selected.b.Explain the purpose(s ) of the author with regard to the passage.2.Another peculiar torture was felt in the gaze of a new eye. When strangers lookedcuriously at the scarlet letter, - and none ever failed to do so, - they branded it afresh into Hester’s soul; so that, oftentimes, she could scarcely refrain, yet always did refrain, from covering the symbol with her hand.a.Identify the author and the work from which the quotation is selected.b.What is the character’s full name? What does “the symbol” refer to? Does itchange its meaning for him/ her through out the whole story?3.Let us then be up and doing,With a heart for any fate;Still achieving, still pursuing,Learn to labor and to wait.a.Identify the author and the work from which the quotation is selected.b.Analyze the poem from at least three of the following aspects: structure,rhyme scheme, tone, theme and figures of speech used with regard to thestanza selected.VI. Answer the following questions1. Analyze the symbolism appeared in The Scarlet Letter.2. Analyze the character Ahab in Moby Dick.二卷答案I. Choose the best answer to each of the following questions.1-5 acbdb 6-10 dacdb 11-15 cadadII. Explain the following terms briefly in English.1. Refrain: one or more words repeated at intervals in a poem, usually at the end of a stanza. The most regular is the use of the same line at the close of each stanza. A variety is the use of language that, by its mere repetition at the close of each stanza presenting different ideas and moods, seems to take on a different significance on each appearance.2. American Puritanism stressed predestination, original sin, total depravity, and li mited atonement from God’s grace. It was influenced heavily by Calvinism. With such doctrines in their mind they left Europe for America in order to prove that they were God’s chosen people who would enjoy God’s blessings on earth and in Heaven. They felt that they were exiles under the special grace of God to establish a theocracy in the New England. Over the years in the new homeland, they built a way of life that stressed hard work, thrift, piety, and sobriety.3. New England Transcendentalism was the first American intellectual movement which exerted a tremendous influence on the consciousness of American people. Transcendental club became the movement’s center with its magazine The Dial. It was a system of thought that originated from four sources: Unitarianism, Neoplatonism, Idealistic philosophy and Oriental mysticism. It stressed the power of intuition, spirit and the individual. It envisioned religion as an emotional communication between an individual soul and the universal “oversoul”. It was represented by two major writers of the country, Emerson and Thoreau whose writings had great impact in the country and a new group of writers of the period under the influence began to apply transcendental ideas in their works, e.g.Hawthorne, Melville, Dickinson, and Whitman.4. Iambic pentameter a metrical verse line having five feet, with each one having one unstressed syllable followed by one stressed syllable.5. Familiar essay the more personal, intimate type of informal essay. It deals lightly, often humorously, with personal experiences, opinions, and prejudices, stressing especially the unusual or novel, and having to do with the varied aspects of everyday life.III.Arrange in pairs.1-5：C J H G I 6-10：F D A E BIV.Try to decide whether the following statements are true or false. Please write “T” for “true” and “F” for “false ”.FTTFTV. Read the following passages and complete the tasks according to the specific requirements1. a. Henry David Thoreau, Waldenb. He had three purposes in writing the book: To make the readers evaluate the way he lived and thought, to reveal the hidden spiritual possibilities in everyone’s life, and to condemn the weaknesses and errors of society, such as the pursuit of materialism.2. a. Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letterb. Hester Prynne; The Scarlet Letter A which refers to her sin of adultery; at the very beginning of the romance, the letter “A” symbolizes the act of adultery to Dimmesdale , but towards the end of the story, it symbolizes Angel to the other people in the community.3. a. Henry Walworth Longfellow, A Psalm of Lifeb. The poem is written in quatrains, with a rhyme scheme of abab and each line in iambic tetrameter. The tone is optimistic. Figures of speech used are alliteration,parallel structure and repetition. It stresses the importance of a full and sincere activity in making the most of life’s brief span, rather than succumbing to moods of vain regret or dejection.VI. Answer the following questions1. ①Hawthorn is a master of symbolism.②For example, in The Scarlet Letter, the prison door at the beginning may well symbolize the restrictive laws and forces that are typical of the puritan society, as well as a remainder of the presence of evil or sin.③The wild rosebush, on the other hand, will surely associate themselves with the freedom of natural spirit or sympathy of nature for the human beings.④Forest is usually used to refer to moral wilderness where witches wander about and human beings tend to get morally lost.⑤The letter “A” symbolizes the act of adultery to Dimmesdale , but Angel to the other people in the community.2. ①Ahab is basically a noble and intelligent man whose balance has been disturbed by the blind and purposeless fury of the whale that eventually destroys him. As Ishmael wants to understand the meaning of life, he wants to remake the world to his own way. Ishmael avoids the “woe that is madness”, but Ahab is entrapped in that woe.②Ahab represents both an ancient and a modern type of hero. Like the heroes of Greek or Shakespearean tragedy, Ahab suffers from a single fatal flaw, one he shares with such legendary characters as Oedipus and Faust. His tremendous overconfidence leads him to defy common sense and believe that, like a god, he can enact his will and remain immune to the forces of nature.③He considers Moby Dick the embodiment of evil in the world, and he pursues the White Whale monomaniacally because he believes it his inescapable fate to destroy this evil.④According to the critic M. H. Abrams, such a tragic hero “moves us to pit y because, since he is not an evil man, his misfortune is greater than he deserves; but he moves us also to fear, because we recognize similar possibilities of error in our own lesser and fallible selves.”⑤Unlike the heroes of older tragic works, however, Ahab suffers from a fatal flaw that is not necessarily inborn but instead stems from damage, in his case both psychological and physical, inflicted by life in a harsh world. He is as much a victim as he is an aggressor, and the symbolic opposition that he constructs between himself and Moby Dick propels him toward what he considers a destined end.三卷I. Choose the best answer to each of the following questions.1. In Shakespeare＇s Merchant of Venice, Antonio could not pay back the money he borrowed from Shylock, because ________________.A. his money was all invested in the newly-emerging textile industryB. his enterprise went bankruptC. Bassanio was able to pay his own debtD. his ships had all been lost2. Which of the following is not written by Robert Frost?A. To AutumnB. Stopping by Woods on a Snowy EveningC. Mending WallD. A Boy＇s Will3. "The shepherd in Virgil grew at last acquainted with Love, and found him a native of the rocks."(Samuel Johnson, "To the Right Honorable the Earl of Chesterfield")The speaker here is ( ).A. cheerfulB. ironicC. mysteriousD. nonchalant4. Charles Dicken＇s early years were________A. happyB. difficultC. richD. sunny5. Robert Frost described ________________as “a book of people,”which shows a brilliant insight into New England character and the background that formed it.A. North of BostonB. A Boy’s WillC. A Witness TreeD. A Further Range6. The lines, "Two roads diverged in a wood. and l/l took the one less traveled by,/And that has made all the difference. " are found in _________________________.A. Robert Frost’s The Road Not taken"B. William Wordsworth’s "Lines Written in Early Spring"C. John Keats’s "Ode to Autumn"D. Percy Bysshe Shelly’s "ode to the West Wind"7. Robert Frost combined traditional verse forms - the sonnet, rhyming couplets, blank verse - with a clear American local speech rhythm, the speech of _________________ farmers with its idiosyncratic diction and syntax.A. SouthernB. WesternC. New HampshireD. New England8. Mark Twain created ，in ________________________________ ，a masterpiece of American realism that is also one of the great books of world literature.A. Huckleberry FinnB. Tom SowyerC. The Gilded AgeD. The Mysterious Stranger9. "So much the worse for me, that I an strong. Do I want to live? What kind of living will it be when you-oh, God! /Would you like to live with your soul in the grave?"/In the above passage quoted from Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, the word "soul" apparently refers to _________________ .A. HeathcliffB. CatherineC. ghostD. one's spiritual lift10. American writers of the first postwar era who were devoid of faith and alienated from the civilization were commonly called "________________."A. sons of libertyB. fatherless childrenC. a beat generationD. a lost generation11. All the following poets belong to lake poets EXCEPTA. WordsworthB. ColeridgeC. Robert SoutheyD. Shelley12. Here are some lines from a literary work:I shall be telling this with asigh,/Somewhere ages and ages hence:/Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—/I took the one less traveled by,/And that has made all the difference.The work is ________.A. Robert Frost'sThe Road Not TakenB. John Milton's Paradise LostC. Alexander Pope's Essay on CriticismD. Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream13. What＇s the name of Hester and Dimmesdale ＇s daughter?A. AmyB. PearlC. NinaD. Berry14. Which of the following is NOT written by Jane Austen?A. Sense and SensibilityB. Pride and PrejudiceC. Jane EyreD. Emma15. The literary characters of the American type in early 19th century are generally characterized by all the following features EXCEPT that theyA. speak local dialectsB. are polite and elegant gentlemenC. are simple and crude farmersD. are noble savages(red and white) untainted by societyI. Choose the best answer to each of the following questions. II. Choose the best answers(at least 2 answers) to each of the following questions.1. What are the things that Robinson Crusoe brings with him when he decidesto travel on the other side of the island?Robinson Crusoe brings withhimA. gunB. hatchetC. dogD. raisins2. All of the following works are written by Jane Austen?A. Northanger AbbeyB. Mansfield ParkC. PersuasionD. Emma3. The works Shakespeare wrote in 1594 are________________.A. Timon of AthensB. The Two Gentlemen of VeronaC. Love’s Labour’s LostD. Romeo and Juliet4. The features of style of Robinson Crusoe includeA. the first person singularB. short and plain sentencesC. nothing artificial in his languageD. smooth,easy,colloquial5. What are the insults of this world mentioned by HamletA. the tyrant's crueltiesB. the proud man's attempts to humiliate thosebeneath himC. the heartbreak of being in loveD. the slowness of the law's working6. The works Shakespeare wrote in his second period (1601-1608)are________________.A. HamletB. King LearC. OthelloD. Cymbline。
美国文学期末复习资料题
2013-2014-1 美国文学史及选读期末复习材料.- Ⅰ Multiple choices1. Which is not connected with Thomas Paine?A. Common SenseB. The American CrisisC. The Rights of ManD. The Autobiography2. “These are the times that try men’s souls”, these words were once read to Washington’s troops and did much to spur excitement to further action with hope and confidence. Who is the author of these words?A.Benjamin FranklinB. Thomas PaineC. Thomas JeffersonD. George Washington3. At the Reason and Revolution Period, Americans were influenced by the European movement called the ______.A. Chartist MovementB. Romanticist MovementC. Enlightenment MovementD. Modernist Movement4. In American literature, the Enlighteners were favorable to______.A. the colonial orderB. religious obscurantismC. the Puritan traditionD. the secular literature5. The English colonies in North America rose in arms against their parent country and the Continental Congress adopted ______ in 1776.A. Declaration of IndependenceB. the Sugar ActC. the Stamp ActD. the Mayflower Compact6. ______ usually was regarded as the first American writer.A. William BradfordB. Anne BradstreetC. Emily DickinsonD. Captain John Smith7. Anne Bradstreet was a Puritan poet. Her poems made such a stir in England that she became known as the “______” who appeared in America.A. Ninth MuseB. Tenth MuseC. Best MuseD. First Muse8. Who was considered as the “poet of American Revolution”?A. Anne BradstreetB. Edward TaylorC. Michael WigglesworthD. Philip Freneau9. In 1817, the stately poem called Thanatopsis introduced the best poet ______ to appear in America up to that time.A. Edward TaylorB. Philip FreneauC. William Cullen BryantD. Edgar Allen Poe10. The finest example of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s symbolism is the recreation of Puritan Boston in ______.A. The Scarlet LetterB. Young Goodman BrownC. The Marble FaunD. The Ambitious Guest11. “The universe is composed of Nature and the soul… Spirit is present everywhere”. This is the voice of the book Nature written by Emerson, which pushed American Romanticism into a new phase, the phase of New England ______.A. RomanticismB. TranscendentalismC. NaturalismD. Symbolism12. Which is generally regarded as the Bible of New England Transcendentalism?A. NatureB. WaldenC. On BeautyD. Self-Reliance.- 13. Mark Twain created, in _________, a masterpiece of American realism that is also one of the great books of world literature.A. The Adventure of Huckleberry FinnB. The Adventure of Tom SawyerC. The Man That Corrupted HadleyburgD. The Gilded Age14. _________ marks the climax of Mark Twain ’s literary creativity.A . The Adventure of Huckleberry Finn B. The Gilded AgeC. Life on the MississippiD. The Adventure of Tom Sawyer15. Choose the novel which is not written by Henry James.A. The AmbassadorsB. The Wings of the DoveC. The BostoniansD. The Mysterious Stranger16. Generally speaking, all those writers with a naturalistic approach to human reality tend to be _________.A. transcendentalistsB. idealistsC. pessimistsD. impressionists17. Ezra Pound ’s long poem _________ contained more than one hundred poems loosely connected.A. The Waste LandB. The CantosC. Don JuanD. Queen Mab18. T. S. Eliot ’s first major poem _________(1917), has been called the first masterpiece of modernism in English.A. The Love Song of J. Alfred PrufrockB. The Waste LandC. Four QuartetsD. Preludes19. Ernest Hemingway was badly wounded in Italy and sent to a hospital where he fell in love with a nurse. These two persons later became the characters of his novel _________.A. The Old Man and the SeaB. For Whom the Bell TollsC. The Sun Also RisesD. A Farewell to Arms20. In William Faulkner ’s The Sound and the Fury , he used a technique called _________, in which the whole story was told through the thoughts of one character.A. stream of consciousnessB. imagismC. symbolismD. naturalism21. Led by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo Emerson and ______, there arose a kind of teachings of transcendentalism in the early nineteenth century.A. Herman MelvilleB. Henry David ThoreauC. Mark TwainD. Theodore Dreiser22. A New ______ had appeared in England in the last years of the eighteenth century. It spread to continental Europe and then came to America early in the nineteenth century.A. realismB. critical realismC. romanticismD. naturalism23. From Henry David Thoreau ’s jail experience, came his famous essay, ______ which states Thoreau ’s belief that no man should violate his conscience at the command of a government.A. WaldenB. NatureC. Civil DisobedienceD. Common Sense24. Mark Twain, one of the greatest 19th century American writers, is well known for his _________.A. international themeB. waste-land imageryC. local colorD. symbolism25. Herman Melville ’s ______ is an encyclopedia of everything: history, philosophy religion, etc. in addition to a detailed account of the operations of the whaling industry.A. The Old Man and the SeaB. Moby DickC. White Jacket C . Billy Budd26. The ship “______” carried about one hundred Pilgrims and took 66 days to beat its way across the Atlantic. In December of 1620, it put the Pilgrims ashore at Plymouth, Massachusetts.A. SunflowerB. ArmadaC. MayflowerD. Pequod.- 27. From 1733 to 1758, Benjamin Franklin wrote and published his famous ______, an annual collection of proverbs.A. The AutobiographyB. Poor Richard ’s AlmanacC. Common SenseD. The General Magazine28. In American literature, the eighteen-century was the age of the Enlightenment. ______ was the dominant spirit.A. HumanismB. RationalismC. RevolutionD. Evolution29. ______ was the most leading spirit of the Transcendental Club.A. Henry David ThoreauB. Ralph Waldo EmersonC. Nathaniel HawthorneD. Walt Whitman30. Edgar Allen Poe ’s first collection of short stories is ______.A. Tales of a TravelerB. Leatherstocking TalesC. Canterbury TalesD. Tales of the Grotesque of Arabesque31. ______ was a romanticized account of Herman Melville ’s stay among the Polynesians. The success of the book soon made Melville well known as the “man who lived among cannibals ”.A. Moby DickB. TypeeC. OmooD. Billy Budd32. Which is regarded as the “Declaration of Intellectual Independence ”?A. The American ScholarB. English TraitsC. The Conduct of LifeD. Representative Men33. The three dominant figures of the realistic period in American literature are _________.A. Theodore Dreiser, Emily Dickinson and William Dean HowellsB. Mark Twain, Henry James and William Dean HowellsC. Mark Twain, Theodore Dreiser and William Dean HowellsD. Mark Twain, Emily Dickinson and William Dean Howells34. American literature produced only one female poet during the nineteenth century. This was _________.A. Anne BradstreetB. Jane AustenC. Emily DickinsonD. Harriet Beecher35. In 1900, London published his first collection of short stories, named _________.A. The Son of the WolfB. The Sea WolfC. The Law of LifeD. White Fang36. In Henry James ’ Daisy Miler , the author tries to portray the young woman as an embodiment of _________.A. the force of conventionB. the free spirit of the New WorldC. the decline of aristocracyD. the corruption of the newly rich37. “The apparition of these faces in the crowd; Petals on a wet, black bough.” This is the shortest poem written by _________.A. T.S. EliotB. Robert FrostC. Ezra PoundD.E.E.Cumings38. The Fitzgerald lived so extravagantly that they frequently spent more money than F. Scot Fitzgerald earned for parties, liquor, entertaining their friends and traveling. It was this living style that nicknamed the decade of the 1920s as _________.A. The Roaring TwentiesB. The Jazz AgeC. The Dollar DecadeD. all of the above39. In 1954, _________ was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for his “mastery of the art of modern narration ”.A. T.S EliotB. Ernest HemingwayC. John SteinbeckD. William Faukner40. William Faukner ’s novel _________ describes the decay and downfall of an old southern aristocratic family, symbolizing the old social order, told from four different points of view.A. The Sound and the FuryB. Startoris.- C. The Unvanquished D. The Town41. “The Lure of the Spirit: The Flesh in Pursuit ” is the title of one chapter in Dreiser ’s novel _________.A. An American DreamB. Sister CarrieC. Dreiser Looks at RussiaD. Jannie Gerhardt42. The main theme of _________ The Art of Fiction reveals his literary credo that representation of life should be the main object of the novel.A. Henry James ’B. William Dean Howells ’C. Mark Twain ’sD. O. Henry ’s43. With William Dean Howells, James, and Mark Twain active on the scene, _________became the major trend in the seventies and eighties of the nineteenth century.A. sentimentalismB. romanticismC. realismD. naturalism44. While embracing the socialism of Marx, London also believed in the triumph of the strongest individuals. This contradiction is most vividly projected in the patently autobiographical novel _________.A. The Call of the WildB. The Sea WolfC. Martin EdenD. The Iron Heel45_________ is a novella about a young American girl who gets “killed ” by the winter in Rome, and it brought Henry James international fame for the first time.A. The AmericanB. The EuropeansC. Daisy MillerD. The Portait of a LadyAnswers: 1-5 DBCDA 6-10 DBDCA 11-15 BAAAD 16-20 CBADA21-25 BCCCB 26-30 CBBBD 31-35 BABCA 36-40 BCDBA 41-45 BACCCⅡ Filling the following blanks with proper answers1. Captain John Smith became the first American writer.2. The puritans looked upon themselves as a chosen people.3. The first major intellectual spokesman of the Massachusetts Bay colony was John Cotton, sometimes called “the Patriarch of New England.”4. Anne Bradstreet published The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America , and she was nicknamed the tenth Muse.5. Poor Richard ’s Almanac is an annual collection of proverbs written by Benjamin Franklin.6. Thomas Paine ’s famous pamphlet Common Sense boldly advocated a “Declaration for Independence ”.7. Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence with John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert Livingston.8. Philip Freneau developed a natural, simple, and concrete diction, best illustrated in such nature lyrics as “The Wild Honey Suckle ” and “The Indian Burying Ground ”.9. Philip Freneau has been called the “Father of American Poetry ”.10. In Washington Irving ’s Sketch Book appeared the first modern short stories and the first great American juvenile literature.11. Cooper ’s enduring fame rests on his frontier stories, especially the five novels that comprise the Leatherstocking tales .12. “To a Waterfowl ” is perhaps the peak of William Cullen Bryant ’s wok.13. “Thanatopsis ”, William Cullen Bryant ’s best-known poem, consists of four stanzas in iambic tetrameter abab. The title means “view of death ”.14. Edgar Allan Poe is considered “father of American detective stories and American gothic stories ”..- 15. Emerson believed above all in individualism, independence of mind, and self-reliance.16. In Walden , Thoreau thought it better for a man to work one day a week and rest six, and therest of the time could be devoted to thought.17. Hawthorne ’s stories touch the deepest roots of man ’s moral nature.18. Moby Dick is a tremendous chronicle of a whaling voyage in pursuit of a seemingly supernatural white whale.19. After his death, Longfellow became the only American to be honored with a bust in the Poet ’s Corner of Westminster Abbey.20. Harriet Beecher Stowe, the author of Uncle Tom ’s Cabin , had become an American institution and the most famous literary woman in the world.21. William Dean Howells found his subject matter in the experiences of the American middle class.22. William Dean Howells called for the treatment of the “smiling aspects of life ” as being the more “American.”23. The naturalists emphasized that the world was amoral, that men and women had no free will, that their lives were controlled by heredity and the environment.24. The poetic style Walt Whitman devised is now called free verse.25. O ·Henry ’s stories are usually short and interesting; Famous for their surprising end.26. Henry James is famous for his international theme of the traditionless American confronting the complexity of European life.27. Jack London believed in the inevitable triumph of the strongest individuals.28. Dreiser ’s greatest and most successful novel, An American Tragedy, is about a young man who acts as if the only way he can be truly fulfilled is by acquiring wealth —through marriage if necessary.29. Writers of the first postwar era self-consciously acknowledged that they were a “Lost Generation,” devoid of faith and alienated from a civilization.30. Wallace Stevens ’ work is primarily motivated by the belief that “ideas of order ”.31. With the publication of The Sun Also Rises , Hemingway became the spokesman for what Gertrude Stein had called “a lost generation.”Ⅲ Decide whether the statements are true or false (T/F).1. John Winthrop ’s reports of exploration, published in the early 1600s, have been regarded as the first distinct American literature written in English.2. In 1612, William Bradford published in England a book called A Map of Virginia ; With a description of the country.3. Philip Freneau was neoclassical by training and taste yet romantic in essential spirit.4. Ralph Waldo Emerson was recognized as the leader of transcendentalist movement, but he always applied the term “Transcendentalist ” to himself or to his beliefs and ideas.5. To Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville, the telling of a tale was a way of inquiring into the meaning of life.6. Walt Whitman was attacked in his lifetime for his offensive subject matter of sexuality and for his conventional style.7. Tom Sawyer walked out of Twain ’s pages directly from his fresh memory of his boyhood in the west.8. Hurstwood is a character in Theodore Dreiser ’s Sister Carrie .9. In the decade of the 1910s, American literature achieved a new diversity and reached its greatest heights.10. Edwin Arlington Robinson began his career as a novalist in bleakness and poverty..- 11.The greatest of America ’s realists, such as Henry James and Mark Twain, moved well beyond a superficial portrayal of nineteenth-century America.12.Henry James was a realist in the same way as one views the realism of Mark Twain or WilliamDean Howells.13.Sister Carrie is generally regarded as Theodore Dreiser ’s masterpiece.14.Generally speaking, Jack London was much more interested in ideas than Stephen Crane and less sentimental than Frank Norris.15.Ralph Waldo Emerson ’s prose style was sometimes as highly individual as his poetry.16. American literature is the oldest of all national literature.17. Georgia, Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, New York, New England, all were named after French monarchs and lands.18. Benjamin Franklin was a prose stylist whose writing reflected the neoclassic ideals of clarity, restraint, simplicity and balance.19. The Fall of the House of Usher is one of Edgar Allan Poe ’s poems.20. The Scarlet Letter is set in the seventeenth century. It is an elaboration of a fact which the author took out of the life of the Puritan past.21. Walt Whitman was so great that he won respect and love during his lifetime for his Leaves of Grass .22. Many of O. Henry ’s stories contain a lot of slang and colloquial expressions, just like his own speech.23. Henry James was a realist in the same way as one views the realism of Mark Twain or William Dean Howells.24. Robert Frost rejected the revolutionary poetic principles of his contemporaries, and chose “the old-fashioned way to be new ” instead.25. John Steinbeck ’s theme was usually that simple human virtues such as kindness and fair treatment were far superior to official hard-heartedness, or the dehumanizing cruelty of exploiters for their own commercial advantage.26. Transcendentalists spoke for cultural rejuvenation and against the materialism of American society.27. Washington Irving was the first great belletrist, writing always for pleasure, and to produce pleasure.28. James Fennimore Cooper launched two kinds of immensely popular stories: the sea adventure tale and the frontier saga.29. Puritan influence over American Romanticism was conspicuously noticeable.30. “Young Goodman Brown ” seems to prove everyone possesses some evil secrets1-5 FFTFT 6-10FTTFF 11-15 TFFTT 16-20 FFTFT 21-25FFFTT 26-30 TTTTTⅣ Answer the following questions briefly.1. These are the times that try men ’s souls: The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will in this crisis shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly —This dearness only that gives everything its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods.Questions:(1)Which book is this passage taken from?.- (2)Who is the author of this book?(3)Whom is the author praising? Whom is the author criticizing?(4)What do you think of the language?Answers:(1) The American Crisis.(2) Thomas Paine(3) Paine is praising those who stand “it ”, it referring to “the service of their country ”. In the meantime, Paine is criticizing those who shrink from the service of their country in this crisis.(4) The language is plain, impressive and forceful. Paine himself once said that his purpose as a writer was to use plain language to make those who can scarcely read understand and to fit the powers of thinking and the turn of language to the subject, so as to bring out a clear conclusion that shall hit the point in question and nothing else.2. It was not very long after speaking the Goney that another homeward-bound whaleman, the Town-Ho, was encountered. She was manned almost wholly by Polynesians. In the short gam that ensued she gave us strong news of Moby Dick. To some the general interest in the White Whale was now widly heightened by circumstance of the Town-Ho ’s story, which seemed obscurely to involve with the whale a certain wondrous, inverted visitation of one of those so called judgments of God which at times are said to overtake some men. This latter circumstance, with its own particular accompaniments, forming what may be called the secret part of the tragedy about to be narrated, never reached the ears of Captain Ahab or his mates …Nevertheless, so potent and influence did this thing have on those seamen in the Pequod who came to the full knowledge of it, and by such a strange delicacy, to call it so, were they governed in this matter, that they kept the secret among themselves so that it never transpired abaft the Pequod ’s main-mast. Interweaving in its proper place this darker thread with the story as publicly narrated on the ship, the whole of this strange affair I now proceed to put on lasting record.Questions:(1)From which novel is this paragraph taken?(2) What is the name of the novelist?(3) Who is Ahab?(4) What is Pequod?(5) What is the theme of the novel?Answers:(1) Moby Dick(2) Herman Melville(3) The captain of the whaling ship(4) The name of the whaling ship(5) The rebellious struggle of Captain Ahab against the overwhelming, mysterious vastness of the universe and its awesome sometimes merciless forces.3. When a girl leaves her home at eighteen, she does one of two things. Either she falls into saving hands and becomes better, or she rapidly assumes the cosmopolitan standard of virtue and becomes worse. Of an intermediate balance, under the circumstances, there is no possibility. The city has its cunning wiles, no less than the infinitely smaller and more human temper. There are large forces which allure with all the soulfulness of expression possible in the most cultured human. The gleam of a thousand lights is often as effective as the persuasive light in a wooing and fascinating eye. Half the undoing of the unsophisticated and natural mind is accomplished.- by forces wholly superhuman. A blare of sound, a roar of life, a vast array of human hives, appeal to the astonished senses in equivocal terms. Without a counselor at hand to whisper cautiousinterpretations, what falsehoods may not these things breathe into the unguarded ear! Unrecognizedfor what they are, their beauty, like music, too often relaxes, then weakens then perverts the simpler human perceptions.Questions:(1) From which novel is this paragraph taken?(2) Who is the author of this novel?(3) How do you understand “the cosmopolitan standard of virtue ”?(4) Is there any naturalist tendency in this passage?Answers:(1)Sister Carrie(2) Theodore Dreiser(3) “The cosmopolitan standard of virtue ” is something that makes a person become low in virtue and become worse.(4) Yes.4. Briefly discuss the novel The Great GatsbyThe Great Gatsby, a novel written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, is one of the greatest novels in American literature. It fully explores the disillusionment and despair of the lost generation through the personal tragedy of a young man whose “incorruptible Dream ” is easily smashed into pieces by the crude reality. The protagonist, Gatsby, is a mythical figure whose intensity of dream partakes of a state of mind that embodies American itself. His failure magnifies the end of the American Dream. The style of the story is explicit and chilly. Fitzgerald ’s accurate dialogues, his careful observation of mannerism and the colorful images provide the reader with a vivid and profound scene of the reality.5. What are the three main principles that Ezra Pound endorsed?(1) Directly treat poetic subjects.(2) Eliminate merely ornamental or superfluous words.(3) Rhythmical composition in the sequence of the musical phrase rather than in the sequence of metronome.6. Tell the differences between Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman(1) Emily Dickinson expresses the inner life of individuals, while Walt Whitman keeps his eyes on the society at large.(2) Emily Dickinson is “regional ”, while Walt Whitman is “national ” in his outlook.(3) Formally, Emily Dickinson uses concise, simple dictions and syntax, while Walt Whitman uses endless, all-inclusive catalogs.Ⅴ Essay Writing (这个部分给大家的答案只是罗列了回答的要点，要将其连缀成文，如果简单按复习题给的答案罗列，只得一半分数)1. Write a short essay about the novel The Grapes of WrathWriter: John Steinbeck----won Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962; spoke for the oppressed and suffered.- Background information: (1) Oklahoma used to be a major agricultural state. In the 1930s, a draught ruined this place. People had to leave here to seek a way out. Many of them went to Californiain hope of finding jobs there to support their family. (2)The Great Depression.Meaning of title: (1) Hope to despair; (2) Wrath of people; (3) Indications of revolution. Theme: (1) Embodying the mass misery of farmers; (2) Praising the spirit of love and unity; (3) Advocating fight and struggle for better life.Structure: (1) Its structure is dictated by the bible; (2) There are two blocks of material: a. the westward trek of the Joads; b. the depressed Oklahomans, and the general picture of the Great Depression.Symbols: (1) dust---evil forces; (2) grapes---hope →rage2. Write a short essay about the novel A Farewell to ArmsWriter: Hemingway---- (1) in 1954, he was awarded the Nobel Prize; (2) Main works: The Sun also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls, The old Man and the Sea. (3) His major contribution: a. Code hero---grace under pressure; b. Iceberg Theory--- economy of expression;(4) the lost generationBackground information: World War ⅡTheme: shows the filth, meaningless, calamity of war; the death, the nothingness of life; the disillusionment with future, hope and love, happiness. The universe is indifferent. There is no God to watch over man.Characters: Henry--- initially detached from life----though well-disciplined and friendly, he feels as if he has nothing to do with the war. After falling in love with Catherine he became a code hero in some way. Catherine---code hero: unfaltering devotion to Henry, brave, considerate, optimisticSymbols: rain---sadness, desperation, depression. It is raining outside almost every time something bad occurs. mud---nature's hostility to man.3. Write a short essay about the novel The Adventures of Tom SawyerAuthor: Mark Twain —the first truly American writer, a local colorist; he used short, concrete and colloquial language; his sentences are simple, and even ungrammatical; good at writing children ’s adventures; masterpieces including: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom SawyerAbout the novel: The first famous novel about growing up and showing the contradictions between adults ’ world and teenagers ’ world, a story of his seeking for freedom, fame, fortune, love, manhood; reveals the American values such as hero complex and American dream; records the rising Age of American Bourgeois system; bears the irony and satire toward the religion and rigid, didactic children education, which curbed the imagination of children and their innate nature for freedom and adventures and molded them into a stereotype of lifeless man.4. Comment briefly on Theodore Dreiser ’s theme and writing style?Theme: Dreiser ’s works are mainly concerned with the tragic nature of the human condition by depicting the coarse, vulgar, cruel, and terrible aspects of life like sex and crime.Style: In terms of style, Dreiser has sometimes been censured for his clumsy syntax, deficient characterization, and inept and dull prose. Yet his accumulated detail, carefully selected and faithfully recorded, is a technique of power. Like the other naturalists, he refused to judge —to consider people as good or evil. He clothes his concepts symbolically in the details of reality. It is his journalistic method that has made him one of America ’s foremost novelists..-。
美国文学期末考试复习
Ⅲ. 重要作家及作品Nathanial Hawthorne (纳撒尼尔·霍桑)1.life2.works(1)Two collections of short stories: Twice-told Tales, Mosses from an Old Manse(2)The Scarlet Letter(3)The House of the Seven Gables(4)The Marble Faun(5)The Blithedale Romance(6)―Rappaccini’s Daughter‖(7)―The Birth-ma rk‖(8)―Young Goodman Brown‖3.point of view(1)Evil is at the core of human life, ―that blackness in Hawthorne‖(2)Whenever there is sin, there is punishment. Sin or evil can be passed from generation to generation (causality).(3)He is of the opinion that evil educates.(4)He has disgust in science.4.aesthetic美学的ideas(1)He took a great interest in history and antiquity.To him these furnish the soil on which his mind grows tofruition.(2)He was convinced that romance was thepredestined form of American narrative. To tell the truth and satirize and yet not to offend: That was whatHawthorne had in mind to achieve.5.style – typical romantic writer(1)the use of symbols(2)revelation of characters’ psychology(3)the use of supernatural mixed with the actual(4)his stories are parable (parable inform) – to teacha lesson(5)use of ambiguity to keep the reader in the worldof uncertainty – multiple point of view6.Hawthorne’s Literary View:(1)He repeatedly complains about ―the poverty of materials‖ in America.(2)He believes that romance is the predestined form of American narrative. He makes a distinction between novel and r omance in his Preface to ―The House of the Seven Gables‖.(3)He is haunted by his sense of sin and evil in life, therefore we see ―black vision‖ in his works.7.―The Minister’s Black Veil‖:Parable: allegoryMr. Hooper: a Christ figure; moral ambiguitythe veil: a symbol of sin, separationthemes: isolation of the individual from society; guilt of sinThe Scarlet Letter, （adultery）1.About the story:(1)The story of Hester Prynne Set: the 17th century(2)What is situated immediately outside the door ofthe prison in which Hester is kept: A rosebush(3)How does Hester support herself financially: as aseamstress(4)She always wears: black(5)―A‖ represents: adultery2.Major characters in the story:(1)Hester Prynne: wears ―A‖; ―A‖ defines her identity(2)Arthur Dimmesdale: wears ―A‖ in his heart; hissoul never in peace (invisible wearer)(3)Roger Chillingworth: the maker of scarlet letter(4)Pearl: the p roduct/result of ―A‖3.Symbolism: (special movement in literature; the use of symbols)In ―The Scarlet Letter‖:(1)The rosebush: passion(2)The forest: an ungovernable place(3)The scarlet letter: adultery; sin(4)Pearl: wildness; passion(5)The meteor: community4.Refuse to take off ―A‖:(1)For Hester, to remove scarlet letter would be toacknowledge the power it has in determining who she is(2)She is determined to transform its meaning andher identity(3)She wants to be the one who controls its meaning(4)She stands as a self-appointed reminder of theevils society can commitYoung Goodman Brown1. Psychological interpretation——Sigmund Freud (the founder of psychology):(1)superego——consciousness——the principle ofmorality 超我(2)ego——subconsciousness——the principle ofreality 自我(3)id——unconsciousness——the principle of pleasure本我Brown’s journey is psychological as well as physical:Village, a place of light and order——Forest, a place of darkness and wildnessconsciousness——unconsciousnessvillage——superego——FaithBrown——egoforest——id——SatanHawthorne saw the dangers of an overactive suppression of libido and the consequent development of tyrannous superego.2. Men, Women, and the loss of Faith:Despite the literary sexism of his day, Hawthorne portrays women as powerful moral agents.Although Faith is not a three-dimensional character, the story centers on her husband’s rejection of her. Women are victimized.Women——angle in the house——do not have desires, rights and needsFallen women——prostitutes, witches, and mad womenFaith to Brown is female sexuality; Satan to Brown is patriarchal authority3. Female images:Innocents vs. Temptresses:(1)Governor’s wife, Goody Cloyse, prostitutes,maidens, witches, Quaker women, Faith(2)Sex is seen as alluring and dangerous(3)Brown is an empty and failed husband and fatherHerman Melville (赫尔曼·麦尔维尔)1.life2.works(1)Typee 《泰皮》(2)Omio 《殴穆》(3)Mardi 《玛地》(4)Redburn 《雷德本》(5)White Jacket 《白外衣》(6)Moby Dick 《白鲸》(7)Pierre 《皮埃尔》(8)Billy Budd 《比利·巴德》3.point of view(1)He never seems able to say an affirmative yes to life: His is the attitude of ―Everlasting Nay‖ (negative attitude towards life).(2)One of the major themes of his is alienation (far away from each other).Other themes: loneliness, suicidal individualism (individualism causing disaster and death), rejection and quest, confrontation of innocence and evil, doubts over the comforting 19c idea of progress4.style(1)Like Hawthorne, Melville manages to achieve the effect of ambiguity through employing the technique ofmultiple view of his narratives.(2)He tends to write periodic chapters.(3)His rich rhythmical prose and his poetic powerhave been profusely commented upon and praised.(4)His works are symbolic and metaphorical.(5)He includes many non-narrative chapters offactual background or description of what goes on board the ship or on the route (Moby Dick)Moby Dick《白鲸》：Moby-Dick, often considered the greatest American novel, is a masterpiece with many layers. It is a sea adventure, an exciting chase after a destructive and mysterious creature. The enormous white whale Moby-Dick torments Captain Ahab, who is obsessed with finding and killing Moby-Dick, having lost a leg in a previous encounter with the whale, and Ahab’s burning desire for revenge really is the center of the story. At the novel’s end, Ahab finds and attacks Moby-Dick, but the terrible whale takes Ahab, his ship Pequod, and nearly all its crew down to a watery grave with him.1. An encyclopedia of everythingA Shakespearean tragedy of man fighting against fates (extreme individualism)2. Image of ship: ship on the sea is the human soul search the meaning in the universe.3. Purpose——noble: he think Moby Dick as an evilHero: he is a hero but not a traditional hero (he does not stand for goodness); a villain hero4. Byronic hero (create by Byron): mad, bad, dangerous to know, obsessive——rebellions: challenge the authority; unconventional; right the wrongSatanic: revengeful; rebellious; the fight between God & Satan5. The Pequod——a symbol of doom(named after a native American tribe in Massachusetts; did not long survived of white men(extincted); is painted gloomy black and covered in whale teeth and bones)The sailors are of different ethics——all people in American (individual)Queequeg’s Coffin——life boat; life6. Theme of Moby Dick:(1)Melville’s bleak view (negative attitude) the senseof futility and meaninglessness of the world. His attitude to life is ―Everlasting Nay‖. Man in this universe lives ameaningless and futility.The adventure of killing Moby Dick is meaningless. Ahab tries to control it, which leads to his doom.Modern life——the loss of faith, the sense of futility——well expressed in Moby Dick(2)Alienation (far away from each other): exists between man & man, man & society, and man & nature.(3)Loneliness and suicidal individualism——the basic pattern of 19th century American life(individualism causing disaster and death)——Moby Dick isa negative reflection upon Transcendentalism.(4)Rejection and quest:Voyaging for Ishmael has become a journey in quest of knowledge and valuesHenry David Thoreau （亨利·戴维·梭罗）1.life2.works(1) A Week on the Concord and Merrimack River康《科德河和梅里麦克河上的一个星期》(2)Walden《瓦尔登湖》(3)Civil Disobedience 《论公民的不服从权利，又译作消极反抗》(4)Life Without Principle3.point of view(1)He did not like the way a materialistic America was developing and was vehemently outspoken on the point.(2)He hated the human injustice as represented by the slavery system.(3)Like Emerson, but more than him, Thoreau saw nature as a genuine restorative, healthy influence on man’s spiritual well-being.(4)He has faith in the inner virtue and inward, spiritual grace of man.(5)He was very critical of modern civilization.(6)―Simplicity…simplify!‖(7)He was sorely disgusted with ―the inundations of the dirty institutions of men’s odd-fellow society‖.(8)He has calm trust in the future and his ardent belief in a new generation of men.WaldenEdgar Allen Poe (埃德加·爱伦·坡)I.Life诗人、小说家和文学评论家II.Works(1)Ms Found in a BottleThe Purloined LetterThe Fall of the House of UsherThe Masque of the Red DeathAnnabel LeeTo HelenSonnet—To ScienceThe Raven(2)Literary theorya.The Philosophy of Compositionb.The Poetic Principlec.Review of Hawthorne’s Twice-told TalesIII.Themes1.death –predominant theme in Poe’s writing―Poe is not interested in anything alive. Everything in Poe’s writings is dead.‖2.disintegration (separation) of life3.horror4.negative thoughts of scienceIV.Aesthetic ideas1.The short stories should be of brevity, totality, single effect, compression and finality.2.The poems should be short, and the aim should be beauty, the tone melancholy. Poems should not be of moralizing. He calls for pure poetry and stresses rhythm.V.Style – traditional, but not easy to readVI.Reputation: ―the jingle man‖ (Emerson)VII.His influencesWalt Whitman(沃尔特·惠特曼)1.life诗人、人文主义者2.work: Leaves of Grass 草叶集(9 editions)(1)Song of Myself(2)There Was a Child Went Forth(3)Crossing Brooklyn Ferry(4)Democratic Vistas(5)Passage to India(6)Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking3.themes –―Catalogue of American and European thought‖He had been influenced by many American and European thoughts: enlightenment, idealism, transcendentalism, science, evolution ideas, western frontier spirits, Jefferson’s individualism, Civil War Unionism, Orientalism.Major themes in his poems (almost everything):●equality of things and beings●divinity of everything●immanence of God●democracy●evolution of cosmos●multiplicity of nature●self-reliant spirit●death, beauty of death●expansion of America●brotherhood and social solidarity (unity of nations inthe world)pursuit of love and happiness4.style: ―free verse‖(1)no fixed rhyme or scheme(2)parallelism, a rhythm of thought(3)phonetic recurrence(4)the habit of using snapshots(5)the use of a certain pronoun ―I‖(6) a looser and more open-ended syntactic structure(7)use of conventional image(8)strong tendency to use oral English(9)vocabulary – powerful, colourful, rarely used words of foreign origins, some even wrong(10)sentences – catalogue technique: long list of names, long poem lines5.influence(1)His best work has become part of the common property of Western culture.(2)He took over Whitman’s vision of the poet-prophet and poet-teacher and recast it in a more sophisticated and Europeanized mood.(3)He has been compared to a mountain in American literary history.(4)Contemporary American poetry, whatever schoolor form, bears witness to his great influence.Ralph Waldo Emerson (拉尔夫·华尔多·爱默生)1.life (American philosopher, poet and essayist; the most eloquent spokesman of New England Transcendentalism)2.works(1)Nature——his first book expressing the main principle of Transcendentalism. It is regarded as―American’s Declaration of Intellectual Independence‖(2)Two essays: The American Scholar, The Poet(3)Self-Reliance(4)Each and All(5)Rhodora3.point of view(1)One major element of his philosophy is his firm belief in the transcendence of the ―oversoul‖.(2)He regards nature as the purest, and the most sanctifying moral influence on man, and advocated a direct intuition of a spiritual and immanent God in nature.(3)If man depends upon himself, cultivates himself and brings out the divine in himself, he can hope to become better and even perfect. This is what Emerson means by ―the infinitude of man‖.(4)Everyone should understand that he makes himselfby making his world, and that he makes the world by making himself.老尹：(1)the transcendence of the Oversoul. His Nature records his ―moment of ecstasy‖, the moment of losing one’s individuality.(2)the infinitude of man and human perfectibility. Emerson believes that the possibilities for man to develop and improve himself are infinite.(3)nature as symbolic of God. In the eyes of Emerson,―nature is the vehicle of thought,‖ and ―particular natural facts are symbols of particular spiritual facts‖.4.aesthetic ideas(1)He is a complete man, an eternal man.(2)True poetry and true art should ennoble.(3)The poet should express his thought in symbols.(4)As to theme, Emerson called upon Americanauthors to celebrate America which was to him a lone poem in itself.5.How important is Emerson in history?He embodied a new nation’s desire and struggle to assert its own identity in its formative period.His aesthetics marked the birth of true American poetry.He called for an independent culture, which representedthe desire of the whole nation to develop a culture of its own.His reputation declined somewhat in recent years because of his cheerful optimism.Washington Irving（华盛顿·欧文）1.several names attached to Irving(1)first American writer(2)the messenger sent from the new world to the oldworld(3)father of American literature2.life作家3.works(1) A History of New York 《纽约外史》(2)The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. 《见闻札记》）(He won a measure of international recognition with the publication of this.)(3)The History of the Life and Voyages ofChristopher Columbus《哥伦布传》(4) A Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada《攻克格拉纳达》(5)The Alhambra《阿尔罕伯拉》4.Literary career: two parts(1)1809~1832a.Subjects are either English or Europeanb.Conservative love for the antique(2)1832~1859: back to US5.style – beautiful(1)gentility, urbanity, pleasantness(2)avoiding moralizing – amusing and entertaining(3)enveloping stories in an atmosphere(4)vivid and true characters(5)humour – smiling while reading(6)musical languageJames Fenimore Cooper（詹姆斯·费尼莫尔·库柏）1.life (―father of American novelists‖; the creation of the west frontier and its heroes)2.works(1)The Precaution (《戒备》（1820, his first novel,imitating Austen’s Pride and Prejudice)(2)The Spy 《间谍》(his second novel and greatsuccess)(3)Leather stocking Tales 皮袜子故事集(hismasterpiece, a series of five novels)The Deerslayer, The Last of the Mohicans, The Pathfinder, The Pioneer, The Prairie3.point of viewThe theme of wilderness vs. civilization, freedom vs. law,order vs. change, aristocrat vs. democrat, natural rights vs. legal rights4.style(1)highly imaginative(2)good at inventing tales(3)good at landscape description(4)conservative(5)characterization wooden and lacking in probability(6)language and use of dialect not authentic5.literary achievementsHe created a myth about the formative period of the American nation. If the history of the United States is, in a sense, the process of the American settlers exploring and pushing the American frontier forever westward, then Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales effectively approximates the American national experience of adventure into the West. He turned the west and frontier as a useable past and he helped to introduce western tradition to American literature.Benjamin Franklin1.life (printer, enlightener, inventor, scientist, statesman, diplomat)2.works(1)Poor Richard’s Almanac(2)Autobiography——form: the first autobiography of Americanmeaning: American dream & individualismself-improvement; business (contents); prototype of American success (significance); Puritanism and enlightenment spirits3.contribution(3)He helped found the Pennsylvania Hospital and the American Philosophical Society.(4)He was called ―the new Prometheus who had stolen fire (electricity in this case) from heaven‖.(5)Everything seems to meet in this one man –―Jack of all trades‖. Herman Melville thus described him ―master of each and mastered by none‖.(6)Aid Jefferson in writing The Declaration of IndependenceThomas Paine托马斯·潘恩1.father of the American Revolution2.propagandist, pamphleteer, a master of persuasion who understands the power of language to move a man to action3.main works:(1)The American Crisis(2)Common Sense(3)The Right of Man(4)The Age of ReasonPoetry:1.Genre:Narrative Poetry 叙事诗Epic Poetry 史诗Dramatic Poetry 戏剧诗Satirical Poetry 讽刺诗Lyric Poetry 抒情诗2.Basic Elements of Poetry:(1)R hythm: the beat created by the sounds of the poem(2)Meter: a pattern of stressed and unstressed syllablesa)Foot: unit of meter 有几个重音就有几个footb)Types of Feet: Iambic——unstressed, stressed抑扬格（最常见）Trochaic——扬抑格Anapestic——抑抑扬格Dactylic——扬抑抑格Kinds of Metrical lines: monometer (1 foot on a line), dimeter, trimeter, tetrameter, pentameter, hexameter, heptameter, octameter(3)Rhyme3.Free Verse Poetry:(1)D oes not have repeating patterns of stressed & unstressed syllables(2)Very conversational: sounds like someone talking with you(3) A modern type of poetry: does not have rhyme4.Blank Verse Poetry:Written in lines of unrhymed iambic pentameter but does not use end rhymeUnrhymed iambic pentameter5.End Rhyme尾韵: a word at the end of one line rhymes with a word at the end of another line6.Alliteration头韵: consonant sounds repeated at the beginnings of words7.Consonance一致: similar to alliteration except the repeated consonant sounds can be anywhere in the words8.Internal Rhyme: in the same line9.Figures of speech修辞: simile明喻, metaphor暗喻，隐喻, personification拟人, onomatopoeia拟声, parallelism排比, allusion引喻。
美国文学期末复习资料
美国文学期末复习资料美国文学作为一个重要的学科，涉及的内容很广，题材也很多。
为了帮助大家更好地进行期末复习，本文将为大家提供一些有用的资料和复习方法。
一、美国文学的历史概述美国文学的历史可以分为几个时期：殖民时期、启蒙时期、浪漫主义时期、现实主义时期、自然主义时期、现代主义时期等。
每个时期都有不同的题材和文学流派，需要我们进行详细的了解和掌握。
二、重要的美国文学作品在美国文学中，有很多重要的作品，如《飘》、《百年孤独》、《了不起的盖茨比》、《老人与海》、《麦田里的守望者》等。
这些作品的作者都是文学史上的巨匠，他们的作品对之后的文学创作产生了很大的影响，也是重要的考题。
三、主要的美国文学流派美国文学中有很多流派，如现代主义、后现代主义、现实主义、自然主义、浪漫主义等。
每个流派都有不同的特点和代表作品，需要我们对其进行深入的了解，从而更好地掌握美国文学的发展历程。
四、美国文学中的重要人物美国文学历史上有很多重要的人物，如沃尔特·惠特曼、马克·吐温、欧内斯特·海明威、海伦·凯勒等。
这些人物都是文学史上的重要人物，他们的作品对于美国文学的发展产生了深远的影响。
五、复习方法在复习美国文学的时候，我们可以采取以下几种方法：1. 将美国文学的历史概述、重要作品、主要流派、重要人物等内容进行系统的总结，形成属于自己的笔记。
2. 阅读相关作品，在了解作品的同时，结合自己的理解，形成自己的见解和思考。
3. 参加相关讲座和研讨会，向专业人士请教，深入了解美国文学的相关知识和技能。
4. 做好考试的准备，根据历年考题，进行模拟练习，找到自己的薄弱环节，进行针对性的复习。
总之，在进行美国文学的复习时，我们需要深入了解相关内容，同时养成良好的阅读习惯和思考习惯，不断加强对美国文学的理解和掌握，从而有效提高自己的成绩。
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美国文学史复习1（colonialism)第一部分殖民主义时期的文学一、时期综述1、清教徒采用的文学体裁：a、narratives 日记 b、journals 游记2、清教徒在美国的写作内容：1）their voyage to the new land2) Adapting themselves to unfamiliar climates and crops3) About dealing with Indians4) Guide to the new land, endless bounty, invitation to bold spirit3、清教徒的思想：1）puritan want to make up pure their religious beliefs and practices 净化信仰和行为方式2) Wish to restore simplicity to church and the authority of the Bible to the theology. 重建教堂，提供简单服务，建立神圣地位3）look upon themselves as chosen people, and it follow logically that anyone who challenged their way of life is opposing God's will and is not to be accepted. 认为自己是上帝选民，对他们的生活有异议就是反对上帝4）puritan opposition to pleasure and the arts sometimes has been exaggerated. 反对对快乐和艺术的追求到了十分荒唐的地步 5）religious teaching tended to emphasize the image of a wrathful God.强调上帝严厉的一面，忽视上帝仁慈的一面。
4、典型的清教徒： John Cotton & Roger William他们的不同：John Cotton was much more concerned with authority than with democracy; William begins the history of religious toleration in America.5、William的宗教观点：Toleration did not stem from a lack of religious convictions. Instead, it sprang from the idea that simply to be virtuous in conduct and devout in belief did not give anyone the right to force belief on others. He also felt that no political order or church system could identify itself directly with God. 行为上的德，信仰上的诚，并没有给任何人强迫别人该如何行事的权利。
没有任何政治秩序和教会体制能够直接体现神本身的意旨。
6、英国最早移民到美国的诗人：Anne Bradstreet7、在殖民时期最好的清教徒诗人：the best of Puritan poets is Edward Tayor.学习指南：1、Could you give a description of American Puritans? 关于美国清教徒的描绘Like their brothers back in England, were idealists, believing that the church should be restored to the "purity" of the first-century church as established by Jesus Christ himself. To them religion was a matter of primary importance. They made it their chief business to see that man lived and thought and acted in a way which tended to the glory of God. They accepted the doctrine of predestination, original sin and total depravity, and limited atonement through a special infusion of grace from God, all that John Calvin, the great French theologian who lived in Geneva had preached. It was this kind of religious belief that they brought with them into the wildness. There they meaant to prove that were God's chosen people enjoying his blessings on this earth as in Heaven.2、Hard work, thrift, piety and sobriety were the Puritan values that dominated much of the earliest American writing.3、The work of two writers, Anne Bradstreet & Edward Taylor, rose to the level of real poetry.4、The earliest settlers included Dutch, Swedes, Germans, French, Spaniards Italian, and Portuguese.美国文学史复习2（reason and revolution)(2009-01-17 15:54:25)一、美国的性质：The war for Independence ended in the formation of a Federative bourgeois democratic republic - the United States of America. 联邦的资产阶级民主共和国--美利坚合众国。
二、代表作家：1、Benjamin Franklin 本杰明·富兰克林 1706-17901）"Poor Richard's Almanac" 穷人查理德的年鉴 annual collection of proverbs 流行谚语集It soon became the most popular book of its kind, largely because of Franklin's shrewd humor, and first spread his reputation2) Founded the Junto, a club for informal discussion of scientific, economic and political ideas. 建立了一个秘密俱乐部，讨论的主题是政治、经济和科学等时事方面的问题3）established America's first circulating library, founded the college--University of Pennsylvania. 建立了美国第一个可租借的图书馆，还创办了一所大学——就是现在的宾夕法尼亚大学。
4）first applied the terms "positive" and "negative" to electrical charges.5)As a representative of the Colonies, he tried in vain to counsel the British toward policies that would let America grow and flourish in association with England. He conducted the difficulty negotiations with France that brought financial and military support for America in the war. 作为殖民地的代表，他不断建议英国改变政策，使美国可以和英国一起发展、繁荣。
他说服法国支持美国的独立战争。
6）As an author he had power of expression, simplicity, a subtle humor, sarcastic.作为作家具有非凡的才能，表达简洁明了，幽默，讽刺天才、7）The Way to Wealth致富之道The Autobiography自传 18世纪美国唯一流传至今的自传2、Thomas Paine 托马斯·佩因 1737-1809 "Great Common of Mankind" 最平凡的人1）famous pamphlet "Common Sense" 著名的政治小册子《常识》 it boldly advocated a "Declaration for Independence", and brought the separatist agitation to a crisis. 拥护独立宣言，是分裂活动发展成最后危机。
2）"American Crisis" 《美国危机》，signed "Common Sense" (p31,第一段）The Case of the Officers of Excise税务员问题；Common Sense常识；American Cri sis美国危机；Rights of Man人的权利：Downfall of Despotism专制体制的崩溃；The Age of Reason理性时代3、Thomas Jefferson 托马斯·杰弗逊1）drafted the Declaration of Independence. 起草了独立宣言2）与清教徒不同，主张追求幸福。