美国文学练习题答案8

I. Multiple Choices . (40%)
1-5 ABABB 6-10 BBBDA 11-15 CDCDA
16-20 DDDBC 21-25 ABCDD 26-30 ACACD 31-35CAACD 36-40 DDCAB
II. Choose the relevant match from column B for each item in column A. (10%)
1-5 cbaed 6-10 cebad
III. Interpreting the following texts. （15%）
Passage 1
1. The attraction of big city (2’)
2. One is to fall into the saving hands and becomes better; secondly, she may admit the
moral value of big city and becomes worse. (2’)
3. Simile, metaphor and synecd oche (2’)
4. Naturalist attempted to achieve extreme objectivity and frankness, presenting characters of low social and economic classes who were dominated by their environment and heredity. In this novel, the major female character Carrie Meeber is deeply influenced by the present environment and heredity, which leads to the result of her dynamic character.(2’)
Passage 2
1. Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken(2’)
2. Similarities: both of the roads are beautiful (fair)
Differences: one is quiet and grassy, less-traveled; the other is trodden by many people and flat. He took the less-travelled road (2’)
7. Choice is inevitable but you never know what your choice will mean until you have lived it. This is also the theme of the poem. (3’)
IV. Explain the following terms（15%）
1. The term naturalism describes a type of literature that attempts to apply scientific principles of objectivity and detachment to its study of human beings. (1分)Unlike realism, which focuses on literary technique, naturalism implies a philosophical position, for naturalistic writers, since human beings are, in Emile Zola's phrase, "human beasts," characters can be studied through their relationships to their surroundings. (2分)Through this objective study of human beings, naturalistic writers believed that the laws behind the forces that govern human lives might be studied and understood. (2分)
2. American realism: As a literary movement realism came in the latter half of the nineteenth century as a reaction against “the lie”of romanticism and sentimentalism. (1 分)It expressed the concern for the world of experience, of the commonplace, and for the familiar and the low. (1分)The American realists advocated “verisimilitude of detail derived from observation,”the effort to approach the norm of experience---a reliance on the representative in plot, setting, and character, and to offer an objective rather than an idealized view of human nature and experience. (2分)William Dean Howells and Mark Twain are the representatives of American realism.
3. A collection of Whitman’s poems, his lifelong achievement. (1分)The most famous pieces are “Song of Myself”, “There Was a Child Went Forth”, “Pioneers! Pioneers!”etc. Whitman experimented in his works with new poetic form of free verse . (1分) Thus, Leaves of Grass has become landmark in American literary history, which represents the poet, the people, and the nation in the 19th America and celebrates the future of the nation and the ideals of equality and
democracy. (3分)
V. Topic for Discussion. (20%)
1. Please give a brief account of the major features of American Romanticism.
(1) American Romanticism was both imitative and independent. A profound love for nature—nature as a source of knowledge, nature as a refuge from the present, nature as a revelation of the holy spirit The quest for beauty—pure beauty. The use of antique and fanciful subject matters—sense of terror, Gothic, grotesque, odd and queer.
(2) Uniqueness: The Westward Movement; The newness as a nation; American moral values were basically Puritan; The immigration in large numbers brought in mingling of races, which made American literature take on a variety in subject matter.
这是一道开放式试题，以上答案仅为参考。