川师英语研究生历年真题总结（欧洲文化入门部分）

1.What are the major elements in European culture?
There are two main elements ——the Greco-Roman element and the Judeo-Christian element. 2. Aeschylus
He was regarded as one of the three tragic dramatists of ancient Greece. He wrote such plays as Prometheus Bound, Persians and Agamemnon. Aeschylus is noted for his vivid character portrayal and majestic poetry.
3. Plato
He was the greatest philosopher of ancient Greece, pupil of Socrates. His Dialogues are important not only as philosophical writing but also as imaginative literature. Of the Dialogues he wrote, 27 have survived, including: The Apology, Symposium and the Republic. Plato built up a comprehensive system of philosophy.
Plato argued that men have knowledge because of the existence of certain general “ideals”, like beauty, truth and goodness. Only these “ideas”are completely real, while the physical world is only relatively real. For this reason, Plato’s philosophy is called Idealism, and Plato was called idealist.
4. Who were the outstanding dramatists of ancient Greece? What important
plays did each of them write?
①Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides were three outstanding tragic drama tists
of ancient Greece. ②Aristophanes was the greatest comedic dramatist of ancient Greece. ③Aeschylus wrote such plays as Prometheus Bound, Persians and Agamemnon. ④Sophocles wrote such plays as Oedipus the King, Electra, and Antigone. ⑤Euripides wrote mainly about women in such plays as Andromache, Medea, and Trojan Women. ⑥Aristophanes has left eleven plays, including: Frogs, Clouds, Wasps and Birds.
5. The Bible
The Bible is a collection of religious writings comprising two parts: the Old Testament and the New Testament. The former is about God and the laws of God; the latter, the doctrine of Jesus Christ.
6.Loenardo da Vinci was a painter, a sculptor, an architect, a musician, an engineer, and a scientist. He was a man of many talents, a Renaissance man in the true sense of the world. Loenardo da Vinci’s major works: Last Supper is the most famous of religious pictures; Mona Lisa probably is the world’s most famous portrait.
7.Rabelais was best known for his great satirical work Gargantua and Pantagruel, in which he praises the greatness of man, expresses his love of life and his reverence and sympathy for humanist learning.
8.Cervantes is recognized as the father of the modern European novel and has had
great impact on world literature. His masterpiece Don Quixote was a parody satirizing a very popular type of literature at the time, the romance of chivalry, in
which the whole Don Quixote’s adventure was put against the reality of 17th century Spain.
9.Copernicus was a Polish astronomer who believed that the earth and the other planets orbit about the sun and that earth is not at the center of the universe. He was considered as father of modern astronomy.
Copernicus（哥白尼）
1) He was a Polish astronomer who put forward revolutionary ideas in astronomy in 17th century. 2) He believed that the earth and other planets orbit around the sun and that earth is not at the centre of the universe. 3) He set forth his beliefs in the book The Revolution of the Heavenly Orbs and came to be known as father of modern astronomy. 4) He was also the forerunner of modern science.
10.Machiavelli was called “Father of political science”in the West. Prince and Discourses are two representative works of him.
11. Montesquieu’s doctrines of the separation of powers(?) became one of the most important principles of the U. S. constitution. Montesquieu’s representative works are Persian Letters and The Spirit of the Laws. Montesquieu is the first of the great French men of letters associated with the Enlightenment.
12. Rousseau’s major works include The Origin of Human Inequality, The New Heloise, On Education (Emile), The Social Contract, and The Confessions.
Rousseau glorified human nature and attacked social inequality. His most famous words are: “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.”
Rousseau’s The Social Contract
It was his most important work. It proposed a society able to cultivate the individual’s moral stature without injuring his freedom. Rousseau believed that a social contract is established when each individual gave his rights to a general will—as an equal participant in the political life. Then he was as free after this contract as he had been in the state of nature. He sacrificed his natural freedom for a civil freedom. The book ended with a claim for social democracy.
13. Diderot, the 18th century French philosopher and man of letters, is best known as the editor of the Encyclopedia. His major works are letters on the Blind, Encyclopedia, Elements of Physiology, Rameau’s Nephe
14. Victor Hugo was an ardent Romantic. To readers in general in France and the
world over, he is important as the author of Notre Dame de Paris and Les Miserable s.
15. Emile Zola was the founder of the naturalist school and “A slice of life” was his motto. Zola defined the theory of naturalism and illustrated it in his great work
entitled Les Rougen-Macquarts.
16. Virgil（维吉尔）
1) He was the greatest of Latin poets. 2) He wrote the great epic, the Aeneid. 3) The poem opened out to the future, for Aeneas stood at the head of a race of people who were to found the first the Roman republic and then the Roman Empire.
17. Noah’s Ark（挪亚方舟）
1) For many hundred years after Adam and Eve were driven out of Eden, the family of man multiplied and spread over the earth, but they became more and more corrupt. 2) Thus God decided to destroy all life on earth in a great flood. 3) Because Noah always kept his faith in God, God spoke to him about His intention and told him to build an ark to protect him and his kin from the waters. 4) Noah followed God’s instructions. 5) For 40 days it rained, the whole earth was covered with water, those sheltered in the ark being the only survivals.
18. Martin Luther（马丁•路德）
1)He was the German leader of the Protestant Reformation. 2) His doctrine marked
the first break in the unity of the Catholic Church. 3) His doctrines were: men are redeemed by faith and not by the purchase of indulgence; Bible was the supreme authority and man was only bound to the law of the word of God, not the word of the clergy; all believers were priests, and all occupations were holy.
19. Thomas Hobbes’s po litical thought（霍布斯的政治思想）
1) Thomas Hobbes held that men are enemies and at war with each other. 2) In
order to get men out of the miserable condition of war, there should be a common power or government backed by force and able to punish. 3) He preferred monarchy.
20. Lock’s Social Contract（洛克的社会契约论）
1) He believed that political society and government rest on a rational foundation.
2) He emphasized that the social contract must be understood as involving the
individual’s consen t to submit to the will of the majority and that the will of the majority must prevail. 3) Absolute monarchy is contrary to the original social contract and dangerous to liberty. 4) The ruler of government is one partner of the social contract. 5) The people shall be judge when circumstances render rebellion legitimate.
21.Hegelian dialectics（黑格尔辩证法）
1) Hegel was a German philosopher. 2) He maintained that the universe is subject to a constant progress of change and that activity is basic; progress is rational and logic is the basic of world progress. 3) Such thoughts were in his book Phenomenology.
22. Petrarch was a prominent figure of his time, a great figure in Italian literature and one of the great humanists during the Renaissance. He has written numerous lyrics, sonnets and canzonets. Petrarch rejected medieval country conventions and sang for true love and earthly happiness in his sonnets. Later sonnets became a very important literary form of poetry in Europe and a lot of poets, such as Shakespeare, Spencer, and Mrs. Browning, were indebted to him. Thus we look upon him as the father of modern poetry
23. How did Locke justify rebellion against government?
Locke believed that the ruler of government is one partner of the social contract. If the ruler substitutes his arbitrary will for the laws and shows no regard for people’s wills, in a word, if he violates the social contract, the government is effectively dissolved. When the government is dissolved. Rebellion is justified. As to who is to judge when circumstance render rebellion legitimate, Locke replied, “The people shall be the judge.”
24. Boccaccio
Italian writer in Renaissance period, a close friend of Petrarch. His greatest work was the Decameron . It is a collection of 100 tales which are witty, licentious, full of praise of true love and wisdom and also satire on the hypocrisy of the priest and the aristocrat. It is the greatest achievement of prose fiction in the Middle Ages.
25. Dante
Dante was the greatest poet of Italy and also a prose writer, literary theorist, moral philosopher as well as political thinker. His masterpiece, The Divine Comedy which composed in Italian , is one of the landmarks of world literature. It expresses humanistic ideas which foreshadowed the spirit of Renaissance.
26. Leo T olstoy
Russian realistic novelist and ethical philosopher and religious reformer, champion of the non-violence protest. His works include War and Peace, Anna Karenina and resurrection.
27. Voltaire
French poet, dramatist, historian, and philosopher, was an outspoken and aggressive enemy of every injustice. Two of his works, Letters Anglaise and Candide. Letters Anglaise was called the first bomb dropped on the Old Regime. Candide is V oltaire’s most famous novel. It is a satire on the previous adventure novels of the age, an attack upon the claims of unlimited optimism.
28.William Shakespeare
1) Shakespeare is the greatest poet and dramatist in English literature. 2) He was
a man of the late Renaissance who gave the fullest expression to humanist ideals. 3) He produced a lot of works, including Hamlet, Othello, King Lear and Macbeth, which exerted great impact on the world literature and was regarded as one of the two reservoirs of modern English language.
29.John Locke’s two treaties of civil gover nment
When referring to political philosophy, the Two Treatise of Civil Government is obviously the most famous and significant masterpiece of John Locke, the influential English philosopher in the 17th century. Locke meant to use this book to argue in favor of the revolution in England (1640-1688), as well as to explain his own political thoughts, by developing a series of notable themes. In the first Treaties of Civil Government, Locke flatly rejected the theory of divine right of kings. Having refuted the divine right of kings, Locke began in the second treaties of Civil Government to set forth what he conceived to be the true origin of government. In his political philosophy, the chief reason for the institution of civil government is preserving private property.f 30. Moliere
Moliere was the best representative dramatist of French classical comedies. Through his comedies, he spoke for the new middle class, opposed to the feudal ideas and exposed the hypocrisies and follies of the society. Moliere wrote many plays, among the best known are Tartuffe, Le Misanthrope and L’A vare.
31. Immanuel Kant
Kant was the key figure of the German classical philosophy. He is sometimes called the “water head of modern philosophy”. He proposed the well-known “nebular hypothesis”His works include General History of Nature and Theory of the Heavens, Critique of Pure Reason, Critique of Practical Reason, Critique of Judgment.
32. Rene Descartes
Modern philosophy begins with Rene Descartes in France. He was a philosopher, physicist and mathematician. His major works include Rules for the Direction of the Mind, Discourse on Method and Meditations.
Cartesian Doubt: the method of doubt explained in the discourse on Method and Meditation. Descartes’ theory of knowledge: I Doubt therefore I think ,I think therefore I am.
Descartes believed some ideas are innate.
His Dualism: he argued that thought was the foundation of all knowledge while the senses might deceive us. This is idealist. However, he also believed that the external world existed, which was independent of the human mind. This is materialist. Descartes thus brought to completion the dualism of mind and matter which began with Plato.
33.Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon was an English philosopher, essayist and statesman in the 17th century. His major works include the Advancement of Learning, the New Atlantis, New Method and Essays.
34. Thomas Hobbes’s political though
1) Thomas Hobbes held that men are enemies and at war with each other. 2) In odrder to get men out of the miserable condition of war, there should be a common power or government backed by force and able to punish. 3) He preferred monarchy.
His major work was Leviathan. He hold materialist view that our knowledge comes from knowledge.
35. Humanism
1) Humanism is the essence of Renaissance. 2) Humanists in Renaissance believed that human beings had rights to pursue wealth and pleasure and they admired the beauty of human body. 3) This belief ran counter to the medieval ascetical idea of poverty and stoics, and shifted man’s interest from Christianity to humanity, from religion to philosophy, from heaven to earth, from the beauty of God to the beauty of human in all its joys, senses and feelings. 4) Theologically, the humanists were religious. But they began to look at the problems of God and Providence with a view to understanding man’s work and man’s earthly happiness. 5) The philosophy of humanism is reflected in the art and literature in Italy and the rest of Europe, to pass down as the beginning of the history of modern man, who, instead of brooding about death and the other world, lives and works for the present and future progress of mankind.
The Human Comedy
1) Balzac is particularly celebrated for his monumental The Human Comedy
i nspired by that of Dante’s Divine Comedy. 2) It is the title given by Balzac to the whole collection of his 90 novels. 3) His project was to present in a series of books, a comprehensive picture of contemporary French society. 4) Among the best-known individual novels of the seris are Eugenie Garndet, Le Pere Goriot and La Cousinee Bette. 5) Their detailed settings, minute descriptions, and analyses of such dominating passions as social climbing and money-making mark the beginnings of French realism.
6) In these 90 novels and short stories, The Human Comedy realistically studies every social class and touches on most fields of knowledge.
3. Naturalistic Novel
1) The naturalistic novel is not only a record of men and manners. To the naturalists, the novel is a demonstration of social law. The novelist is not an historian who observes merely; he is a scientist, a biologist, who observes, and on the basis of his observation, draws a general theory of human conduct. The novel is thus the experiment which demonstrates the truth of his general theory. 2) Naturalism changed the technique of the novelist. The naturalist was not permitted to invent. 3) The language he used must be the actual language used by the people he was describing. 4) He must not only collect all the possible facts, but must present these facts as exactly as they had occurred.
Id名词解释
Freud divided human personality into three functional parts —Id, Ego and Superego. The Id is the container (容器) of the instinctual urges (本能的主张). It is the unconscious (无意识的) part of mind, which seeks (查找) immediate (即刻的) satisfaction of desires (欲望). Id is concerned with what a person wants to do.
5、Ego名词解释
Freud divided human personality into three functional parts —Id, Ego and Superego. Ego is the rational (理性的), thoughtful (深思的), realistic personality process. It is characterized by a desire for independence (独立的), autonomy (自发的) and self-direction. Ego is concerned with ability.
6、Ego名词解释
Freud divided human personality into three functional parts —Id, Ego and Superego. Superego is the idealized (理想化的) image that a person builds of himself in response (反映，响应) to authority (权威) and social pressures (压力).
7、Oedipus Complex名词解释
Oedipus Complex is a Freudian term originating from a Greek tragedy, in which King Oedipus s established by Freud. <Sons and lovers>
Goethe (歌德) —→德国文学第一人
—→The Sorrows of Y oung Werther (少年维特的烦恼) 郭沫若翻译
—→Faust (浮士德)
—→Poetry and Truth (诗和真理) Autobiography (自传体) Faust（《浮士德》）
1) It is not only Goethe’s own masterpiece but the greatest work of German literature.
2) It is a tragedy chiefly in verse. 3) It utilizes a broad variety of styles to underscore its theme of total human experience. 4) In Faust, Goethe draws on a immense variety of cultural material---theological, mythological philosophical, political, economic, scientific, aesthetic, musical, and literary.。