英美文学问答题

1. What are the main features of the romance in the Middle Age?The romance was the prevailing form of literature in the Middle Ages. It was a long composition, sometimes in verse, sometimes in prose, describing the life and adventures of a noble hero, Its essential features are:1. It lacks general resemblance to truth or reality.2. It exaggerates the vices of human nature and idealizes the virtues.3. It contains perilous adventures more or less remote from ordinary life.4. It lays emphasis on supreme devotion to a fair lady.5. The central character of the romance is the knight, a man of noble birth skilled in the use of weapons. He is commonly described as riding forth to seek adventures, taking part in tournaments, or fighting for his lord in battle. He is devoted to the church and the king.2. What characterizes James Joyce’s Ulysses?a. James Joyce’s Ulysses is famous for its using of stream of consciousness.b. The whole book is about one day, and the events of the day are trivial, insign ificant, or even banal. However, this reveals the true movement of human beings’ real mental activity like a stream.c. It seems to be desultory, fragmental, but beneath the surface of the events, the natural flow of mental reflections, the shifting moods and impulses in the character’s inner world are richly presented in an unprecedentedly frank and penetrating way.3. Significance of The Canterbury Talesa. Chaucer’s masterpiece The Canterbury Tales is the first to present a comprehensive and realistic picture of the English society of his time and created a whole gallery of vivid characters from all walks of life in his masterpiece. It ranks as one of the greatest poetic works in English literature.b. Chaucer made a great contribution to English poetry by introducing from France the rhymed stanzas of various types to English poetry to replace the old English alliterative verse. It was he who used for the first time in English the rhymed couplet of iambic pentameter which was later called the “heroic couplet”.c. Chaucer was the first to write in current English language. Though drawing influence from French, Italian and Latin models he did much in making the dialect of London the foundation for modern English language.d. In his works Chaucer artistic lever developed his characterization to a higher artistic lever bu presenting characters with both typical qualities and individual dispositions. That is why John Dryden called him the Father of English Poetry.4. What is Renaissances?The Renaissance refers to the transitional period from the medieval to the modern world. It first started in Italy in the14th century. The Renaissance means rebirth or revival. It was stimulated by a series of historical events, such as the rediscovery of ancient Roman and Greek classics, the new discoveries in geography and astrology, the religious reformation, and the economic expansion. Humanism is the essence of Renaissance. The English Renaissance did not begin until the reign of Henry VIII. It was regarded as England’s Go lden Age, especially in literature. The real mainstream of the English Renaissance is the Elizabethan drama. This period produced such literary giants as Shakespeare, Spenser, Marlowe, Bacon, etc.5. What is the theme of Elegy written in a country churchyard by Thomas Gray?a. Elegy written in a country churchyard is recognized as Thomas Gray’s best and most representativework.b. In this poem, Gray reflects on death, the sorrows of life, and the mysteries of human life with a touch of his personal melancholy, the poet compares the ordinary people with the great ones, wondering what the commons could have achieved if they had had the chance.c. Here he reveals his sympathy for the poor and the unknown, but scorns the great ones who despise the poor and bring havoc on them.6. What is the theme of Ode to a Grecian Urn by Keats?a. The ode was written in May 1819, almost at the same time as “Ode to a Nightingale”, out of collection of memory of several visits to exhibition.b. Here the poet gives his comment on a Greek vase which, as a relic of ancient culture, has caught his imagination. On the surface of the vase there is an ornamental band of sculpture with figures of trees, pipes, and lovers on it. Though there are quiet forms, they possess and convey the beauty, the significance and the eternity of art, which appealed to Keats. So at the end of the poem, the poet emphasizes the relationship between beauty and truth: “Beauty is truth, and truth beauty”, thus declaring his worship of beauty, esp. in the field of art.c.Theme: It shows the contrast between the permanence of art and the transience of human passion.7. What’s the symbolic meaning of Shelley’s Ode to the West Wind?a. this is one of Shelley’s best known lyrics. The poet describes vividly the act ivities of the west wind on the earth, in the sky and on the sea and expresses his envy for the boundless freedom of the west wind and his wishes to be free like it and to scatter his words among the mankind. The celebrated final line of the poem, “If wint er comes, can spring be far behind?” has often been cited to illustrate Shelley’s optimistic belief in the future of mankind. In the 1st stanza, Shelley uses the seasonal cycle in nature as a continuing process of universal death and regeneration.b. it expresses Shelley’s optimistic belief that the old world must go, a new world must come with the spring, laden with fresh sweet promises for suffering humanity. It anticipates the political triumphc. the poet asks the wind to work in him, restoring him to spiritual health and creative vigorThe first stanza( 1-14) describes the power of the west wind and its double role as both destroyer and preserver. Line 14 sums up the wind’s two basic characteristics, which also constitute the thematic focus of the poem.The second stanza(15-28) focuses on the adumbration of the wind’s power driving clouds before it and bringing storms with it with lightning, rain, fire and hall. It also describes its destructive aspect of “closing night” enveloping all under its dome of a vast tomb.The third stanza talks about the wind’s impact upon the sea, its first touching on the calm of the Mediterranean, and then on the turbulence of the Atlantic. The Mediterranean sleeps in serenity in the summer but it waken up by the wind to see the quivering of the shadows of ancient palaces and towers and the Atlantic cleaving asunder into gigantic chasms.The fourth expresses the poet’s emotional response to the west wind. The poet says to the wind that he wishes to be spirited away like the leaves, to dance like the clouds, to breathe like the waves, and enjoy a share of the wind’s strength like the storm though with a lesser degree of freedom of movement.The last expresses both the poet’s request for the wind to help spread the words of his poem “among the mankind” and wake it up from its deep stupor and his prophecy that spring will come in the wake of winter. The poem ends upon a note of confidence and hope.。