美国文学本科试题

美国文学（本科）试题2

I. Fill in the following blanks and put your answers on the An

swer Sheet. (15%, 1 point for each)

1._____ was a founding figure of American poetry, whose innovation first of all lies

in his use of the free verse, poetry without a fixed beat or regular rhyme schem e.

2.The publication of Nature established ______ as the most eloquent spokesman of

New England Transcendentalism.

3.Hard work, thrift, ______ and sobriety were the Puritan values that dominated muc

h of the earliest American writing.

4._________ is considered to be the founder of psychological realism, who believed

that reality lies in the impressions made by life on the spectator.

5.Martin Eden is the novel into which ______ put most of himself.

6.The publication of _______ written by T. S. Eliot helped to establish a modern tr

adition of literature rich with learning and allusive thought.

7.“The apparition of these faces in the crowd; Petals on a wet, black bough.” This i

s the shortest poem written by _____.

8.With the publication of The Sun Also Rises, ________ became the spokesman for

what Gertrude Stein had called “a Lost Generation”.

9.“The Custom House” is an introductory note to the novel _______.

10.Among the works attacking the “American Dream”, __________by Fitz gerald is a

powerful piece.

11.Emily Dickinson wrote 1775 poems, but only ____ of which had appeared during

her life time.

12.______, the tragic hero of Moby Dick, burning with a baleful fire, becomes evil

himself in his thirst to destroy evil.

13.As a poet, ________ heralded American literary independence: his close observati

on of nature distinguished his treatment of indigenous wild life and other native American subjects, e. g: The Wild Honey Suckle.

14.The publication of Washington Irving’s _________,a collection of essays, sketche

s and tales, marks the beginning of American romanticism.

the Anthem” is a short story written by ______.

II. Each of the following statements is followed by four alternat ive answers. Choose the one that would best complete

the statement. Put your answers on the Answer Sheet. (30%, 1

point for each)

1.In Leaves of Grass, _______ is all that concerned Whitman.

A. individualism

B. freedom

C. democracy

D. all the above

2.______ is the narrator of Moby Dick.

A. Ahab

B. Ishmael

C. Flask

D. Queequeg

3.In 1837, Ralph Emerson made a speech entitled _____ at Harvard, which was hail

ed by Oliver Wendell Holmes as “Our Intellectual Declaration of Independence.”

A. Declaration of Independence

B. Self-Reliance

C. Divinity School Address

D. The American Scholar

4.The Transcendentalists believe that, first, nature is ennobling; and second, the indiv

idual is ______.

A. vicious by nature

B. insignificant

C. forward-looking

D. divine

5.In Hawthorne’s novels and short stories, intellectuals usually appear as _____.

A. saviors

B. villains

C. commentators

D. observers

6.In American literature, escaping from the society and returning to nature is a com

mon subject. The following titles are all related, in one way or another, to the s ubject except _____.

A.Dreiser’s Sister Carrier

B.Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

C.Cooper’s Leather-Stocking Tales

D.Thor eau’s Walden

7.“I celebrate myself, and sing myself,

And what I assume you shall assume,

For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.”

Who could have written these lines _____.

A. Edgar Allan Poe

B. Ralph Emerson

C. Walt Whitman

D. Henry Thoreau

8.Which of the following is Not optimistic about human nature

A. Ralph Emerson

B. Walt Whitman

C. Nathaniel Hawthorne

D. Henry Thoreau

9.Which of the following statements about The Scarlet Letter is Not true _____.

A.It explores man’s never-ending search for the satisfaction of materialistic desir

es.