【优质】英国文学史及作品选读习题集5

5 English Literature in the Romantic Period

Ⅰ. Essay questions.

1. In Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen explored three kinds of motivations of marriage the middle-class people had in the second half of the 18th century. Try to make a brief discussion about them with specific examples from the novel. Make comments on Austen’s attitude towards these motivations.

2. What are the general features of English Romanticism?

3. Tell the story of Pride and Prejudice and make a comment on it.

4. Make a comment on Wordsworth concerning his contribution to poetry.

5. Irony abounds in Jane Austen’s novel Pride and Prejudice. Please illustrate it with reference to some examples.

6. Make a general comment on Walter Scott.’

Ⅱ. Define the following terms.

1. Romanticism

2. Ode

3. Byronic hero

4. Ottava rima

5. Terza rima

6. Irony

7. Lyric

8. Motif

9. Theme

10. Symbol

11. Imagery

12. Foil

13. Synaesthesia

14. Character

15. Flat character

16. Round character

17. Negative capacity

Ⅲ Fill in the blanks.

1. As an age of romantic enthusiasm, the Romantic Age began in 1798 when ______and ______published _______ and ended in 1832 when ______died.

2. In the Preface of the 2nd and 3rd editions of __________, Wordsworth laid down the principles of poetry composition.

3. The English Romantic Age produced two major novelists, _________ and ______.

4. _____, ________, and_________ are referred to as the “Lake Poets” because they lived in the Lake District in the northwestern part of England.

5. In 1805, Wordsworth completed his long autobiographical poem entitled__________.

6. Scott’s historical novels depicted Scotland, England, and the Continent covering a period ranging from _______ up to, and including, _______.

7. _______ mourned for _______’s premature death in an elegy “Adonais”, writing “He is made one with Nature.”

8. “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage” is a long poem created by ________.It contains four cantos in the_______ stanza, namely a 9-line stanza rhymed ababbcbcc, in which the first eight lines are in iambic pentameter while the ninth in iambic hexameter, 9. _______ is Byron’s masterpiece, written in the prime of his creative power. He called it an “epic satire”, “a satire on abuses of the present state of society.”

10. The great novelist in the Romantic period_______ marked the transition from Romanticism to the period of Realism which followed it.

11. The plot of Shelley’s lyrical drama Prometheus Unbound is borrowed from _______, a play of the Greek tragedian Aeschylus.

12. In “To Autumn”, Keats writes,” Season of mists and me llow fruitfulness, / Clise bosom-friend of the maturing sun; / Conspiring with him how to load and bless / With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run; / …” The figure of speech used in the lines is _______.

13. “Ode to a Nightingale” expresses the contrast between _______ and _______.

14. The unifying principle in Don Juan is the basic ironic theme of _______, i.e., what things seem to be and what they actually are.

15. Byron employed _______ from Italian mock-heroic poetry. His first experiment was made in Beppo. It was perfected in Don Juan in which the convention flows with ease and naturalness.

16._______ was memorized and honored as “the heart of all hearts” after his death.

17. Many critics regard Shelley as one of the greatest of all English poets. They point especially to his_______.

18. Romanticism was in effect a revolt of the English _______against the neoclassical _______, which prevailed from the days of pope to those of Johnson.

19. _______ are generally regarded as Keats’s most importa nt and mature works.

20. “Ode on a Grecian Urn” shows the contrast between _______and _______.

21. Among the Romantic figures, _______has a fundamental conviction of the health of the social system, of its ability to reform itself, and of the assurance of social well-being and the likelihood of a reasonable personal happiness.

22. Scott is considered “the father of _______” which open(s) up to fiction the rich and lively realm of history.

23. Two prevailing themes of Pride and Prejudice are _______ and _______.

24. _______ was composed in a dream after the poet Coleridge took the opium.

25. All such works of Coleridge as “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”, “Christable” and “Kubla Khan” revealed his keen interest in_______,

26. _______ is regarded as a “worshipper of nature”.

27. “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud”, “An Evening Walk”, “My Heart Leaps up” and “Tintern Abbey” are all masterpieces on _______.

28. The main idea running through the dramatic poem Prometheus Unbound is that of

_______.

29. _______, with a triumphant praise of the imagination, highly exalts the role of poetry, thinking that poetry alone could free man and offer the mind a wider view