外国文学-文学题库.doc

文学P14 1. Please identify the rhyme scheme of the poem.The poem is four six-line iambic tetrameter stanzas rhymed on ababcc pattern.2.Please identify the figures of speech in the poem.Personification: The poet use "you" to describe the Wild Honey Suckle Parallelism: Untouched they honied blossom blow, Unseen thy little branches greet. No roving foot shall crush thee here, No busy hand provoke a tear.Repetition: If nothing once, you nothing lose.Hyperbole: The space between, is but an hour.Metaphor: fair flower compares to the life of human being.5. How do you understand the theme of the poem?He expresses a keen awareness of the loveliness and transience of nature and celebrated the beauty of the Wild Honey Suckle. He shows that time is constant but time of a life is short, any factor is relative but change is absolute, with or without awareness.P50 1. Please point out the phonetic recurrence in the poem.O Captain! My Captain!But O heart! heart! heart!2. Explain the meaning of the four metaphors:Captain: Lincolnship: referring to Americatrip: the hard course of the American Civil Warprize: the triumph of the war and the abolition of slaveryP61 2. What is the esthetic view expressed in the poem?In this poem, the poet directly expresses her feelings and thought about death and thinks beauty and truth are closely related. Just like Keats goes "Beauty is truth, truth is beautyThrough creation of poems, Dickson have been thought deeply about souls and meaning of living. She expresses her views in her poems- In her heart, poems are symbols of beauty. Her long life career on searching for beauty in the kingdom of poetry. The spirit of being able to die for beauty is also immortal and entering eternity. Death is a real existence in the world on which we live. The deep study of beauty from many angles shows the poet f s pursuit of truth. The idea that truth and beauty areclosely related is also a part of Dickson's esthetic idea. Her excellent poems on death and eternity are the fruit of her constant exploration and make her become eternal in the history.P66—2 What is the tone of the poem when the author is discussing about death? Why?The poem is discussing death in a rather light tone.The tone is light just because the author does not take death as a catastrophe; instead, she treats the angel of death as a very polite gentleman, as a long-missing guest who cannot just come and take her, but a third party, Immortality, must come along and chaperon their ride, to make sure that Death does not do anything improper Giving up her work and leisure, putting on her fine silky dresses, she accompanies Death in the same carriage to eternity. All the beauty of this work lies in the poetess' open-minded attitude towards death.P158—2 Why does the critic say Rip Van Winkle reveals, to some extent, the conservative of its author?Irving's taste was essentially conservative and always exalted a disappearing past. This social conservatism and literary preference for the past is revealed, to some extent, in his famous story “Rip Van Winkle." The story is a tale remembered mostly for Rip's 20-year sleep, set against the background of the inevitably changing America. Rip went to sleep before the War of Independence and woke up after it. The change that had occurred in the 20 years he slept was to him not always for the better. The revolution upset the natural order of things. In the story Irving skillfully presents to us paralleled juxtapositions of two totally different worlds before and after Rip's 20 years' sleep. By moving Rip back and forth from a noisy world with his wife on the farm to a wild but peaceful natural world in the mountains, and from a pre-Revolution village to a George Washington era, Irving describes Rip's response and reaction in a dramatic way, so that we see clearly both the narrator and Irving prefer the past to the present, and a dream-like world to the real one. Irving never seemed to accept a modern democratic America.P204 2eWhat are the symbolic meanings of the scarlet letter on Hester's breast? Letter A is the central symbol. It symbolizes adultery, a token of shame; agony; alone; alienation; able; angel ("A” appears in the sky).4<Explain the major changes that occur in Hester f s life in the novel and the meaning change of "A” on her chestHester is being punished for adultery that she has committed. Hester is led to the town scaffold and questioned by the town fathers. She refuses to identify her child's father, with the scarlet letter “A” on her breast. Here, “A" symbolizes adultery.After she is released from the town prison with her infant daughter, several years pass- Hester supports herself by working as a seamstress and is said to be the scarlet letter come to life as both Hestefs life and her punishment. Hester lives in a small cottage on the out skirts of Boston. Here, “A" means able.After Chillingworth dies, Hester and her daughter leave Boston. Many years later, she returned alone still wearing the scarlet letter, to live in her cold cottage and resume her charitable work. There is a sense of liberation in her mind and the town's people, especially the women, who had finally begun to forgive Hester of her tragic indiscretion. Finally, Letter "A” symbolizes able and angel.P211-2 Plot summaryIshmael, the narrator, having little money and finding life shore grim, decides to go to the sea. He boards the ship named Pequod. Its captain, Ahab, is a strong-willed, clever, arrogant man. He is at sea for forty years and has a very rich experience of navigation and whaling. He is very familiar with various oceans and the white whale distribution of sea. During a whaling process, Alab's left leg is bitten by a whale, Moby Dick. Since then, he determines to kill it. Captain Ahab's mind being full of revenge, he promises to the sailors that anyone who finds the white whale first will be awarded one gold. They meet the whale three times, and after three bloody battles, the captain Alab and his crew haipoon the whale, but it cames the Pequod along with it to its doom. All on board get drowned except Ishmael, who is rescued by another whaler and survived to tell the story.SymbolismThe Land: a symbol of safetyThe Sea: a symbol of adventure and dangerThe Pequod: a symbol of the human worldThe voyage: tends to imply the voyage of mind searching for truth and knowledge of the forces working in the universe that control men and their destiny.Starbuck: a symbol of good and noble.The Doubloon: a symbol of the lure of evil and the enticements to greedAhab: a symbol of solipsism,revenge and then evilAhab's Pipe: The pipe that Captain Ahab smokes throughout the voyage represents happiness in Ahab's life. Once he tosses it over the edge of the ship in his pursuit to find Moby Dick,all- his happiness is lost.Moby Dick: Moby Dick possesses various symbolic meanings for various individuals.(1)Symbol of nature for human beings, because it is mysterious, powerful, unknown.(2)Symbol of evil for the Captain Ahab.(3)Symbol of good and purity because of its whiteness.Theme1)the sense of futility ( uselessness ) and meaninglessness2)alienation (far away from each other)3)loneliness and suicidal individualism(individualism causing disaster and death)4)rejection and requestP228-4In Chapter 31 Huck is confronted with the problem whether he should tell on Jim or not. Through intense inner struggle he decides to give it up at last, Comment on the change of Huck's attitude towards Jim.This chapter is the climax of the book. Huck is forced to finally decide between right and wrong concerning slavery, and as such must solidify his own morality. The most powerful scene by far is when Huck is deciding whether to help Jim or tell Miss Waston where her slave has ended up. He finishes by deciding to follow his conscience and free Jim, even if that means that he will go to helLJim say to Huck how worried he is when Huck is lost, and how angry he is when Huck comes back. After hearing what Jim has said, Huck feels so ashamed. So Huck works himself up to go and apologize to Jim about he will never play a trick on him again, This is the first time that he conquers himself on the notion towards the slaves. What is more, Huck makes an important step on breaking with the conventional forces and prejudice. It indicates that Huck's attitude towards Jim has greatly changed.From then on, he begins to take Jim as a “person" who has the same position and dignity with him.Writing style:1.Mark Twain is famous for his humor and satire.2.Mark Twain's humor is based on the humor of the Western in America.3.A great deal of his humor is characterized by puns, straight-faced exaggeration, repetition, and anti-climax.4.He used a lot of colloquial idioms and colloquial syntax.5.His words are colloquial, concrete and direct in effect, and his sentence structure is simple, even ungrammatical.P243・・2. How does James use his psychological portrayal of Isabel to justify her decision to surrender her treasured independence in order to marry Osmond?Henry James described, very specifically, Isabel's tempestuous consciousness in thorough tranquility. By presenting Isabel's intelligence and her noble aspiration, Henry James succeeds in depicting a particular character of woman. However, when Isabel's figure is concerned with women of the world, the character of a single woman becomes universal. Henry Jame has associated his beloved “international theme” with Isabel. He illustrates for the world the vivid portrait of a lady, not that of an American lady. It is for ladies of the world.The famous theme of Henry Jame's fiction.The famous theme is “the international theme". His novels or sho rt stories are always set against a larger international background, usually between Europe and America. It focus on the two cultures, representing two different value systems, the conflicts between Old and New world.。