美国文学练习题

Ⅰ. Multiple Choices

( a) 1. American Puritan values include all the following except ________.

A. extravagance B thrift C. optimism D. simple tastes

(c) 2. The period before the American Civil War is generally referred to as ______.

A. the Naturalistic Period

B. the Modern Period

C. the Romantic Period

D. the Realistic Period

( a ) 3. In the following works, which signs the beginning of the American literature?

A. The Sketch Book

B. Leaves of Grass

C. Leather Stocking Tales

D. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

( a ) 4.________ is the author of the work The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.

A. Washington Irving

B. James Joyce

C. Walt Whitman

D. William Butler Yeats

( d ) 5. Washington Irving’s Rip Van Winkle is famous for __________.

A.Rip’s escape into a mystery.

B.The story’s German legendary source material.

C.Rip’s seeking for happiness.

D.Rip’s 20-year sleep

( c ) 6. Which of the following statements is not true about Washington Irving?

A.Washington Irving is regarded as Father of the American short stories.

B.Irving’s relationship with the Old World in terms of his literary

imagination can hardly be ignored considering his success both abroad and at home.

C.Irving’s taste was essentially progressive or radical.

D.Washington Irving has always been regarded as a writer who perfected

the best classic style that American literature ever produced”.

( a) 7. The publication of ________ established Emerson as the most eloquent spokesman of New England Transcendentalism.

A. Nature

B. Self-Reliance

C.The American Scholar

D. The Over-Soul

( a ) 8. The phrase “a transparent eye-ball”compares philosophical mentation of Emerson’s. It appears in Nature.

A. Nature

B. Self-Reliance

C. The American Scholar

D. The Over-Soul

( c ) 9. In 1837, Ralph Waldo Emerson made a speech entitled _______ at Harvard, which was hailed by Oliver Wendell Holmes as “Our Intellectual Declaration of Independence”.

A. “Self-Reliance”

B. “Divinity School Series”

C. “The American Scholar” C. “Nature”(b ) 10. Which of the following accounts is not true for Ralph Waldo Emerson?

A. He is the chief spokesman of New England Transcendentalism.

B. Emerson is generally known as an dramatist.

C. His works were usually derived from his journals or lectures he had already given.

D. In Nature, he employed “a transparent eye-ball”to illustrate his philosophical discussion.

( a ) 11. __________ is the most ambivalent writer in the American literary history.

A. Nathaniel Hawthorne

B. Walt Whitman

C. Ralph Waldo Emerson

D. Mark Twain

( c ) 12. “There is evil in every human heart, which may remain latent, perhaps, through the whole life; but circumstances may rouse it to activity”, which of the following authors does the mention belong to? A. Ralph Waldo Emerson B. Walt Whitman C. Nathaniel Hawthorne D. Mark Twain

( b ) 13. In Hawthorne’s novels and short stories, intellectuals usually appear as ____.