陶洁《美国文学选读》(第3版)考研真题精选-名词解释及作品分析题【圣才出品】

三、名词解释1.Edgar Allan Poe（北航2007研）Key:Edgar Allan Poe(1809—1849)was an American writer,poet,editor and literary critic,considered part of the American Romantic Movement.Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre,Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective-fiction genre.He is further credited with contributing to the emerging genre of science fiction.He was the first well-known American writer to try to earn a living through writing alone,resulting in a financially difficult life and career.2.Santiago（北航2009研）Key:Santiago is the protagonist of The Old Man and the Sea,written by American novelist Ernest Hemingway.He is an old man who hasn’t caught any fishes for eighty-four days.On the final journey he has a fight with sharks.This character depicted by Hemingway is a typical“tough guy”.Santiago embodies Hemingway’s definition of courage as“grace under pressure”.He never loses dignity in the face of death.The glory and honor Santiago comes not from the battle itself but from his pride and determination to fight.His famous words are “A man is not made for defeat...a man can be destroyed but not defeated.”3.Walt Whitman and Leaves of Grass（南开大学2010研）Key:Walt Whitman(1819—1892)was a great American poet in the19th century. He added to the literary independence of the new nation and devoted all his life to the creation of the“single”poem,Leaves of Grass.In this giant work, openness,freedom,and above all,individualism are all that concern him. Whitman broke from the traditional iambic pentameter and wrote“free verse”. His long“catalogs”of lines gave free rein to his imagination in his life-long attempt to celebrate life in the new life.4.The Southern Renaissance in American Literature（四川大学2011研；北航2008研）Key:The Southern Renaissance(also known as Southern Renascence)was the reinvigoration of American Southern literature that began in the1920s and1930s with the appearance of writers such as William Faulkner,Tennessee Williams,and Robert Penn Warren and so on.Before the Southern Renaissance,the Southern literature was dominated by writers who supported the“Lost Cause”—the heroism of the Confederate army and civilian population during the Civil War and the supposedly“idyllic culture”that existed in the South before the war.The Southern Renaissance changed this by addressing three major themes in their works.they are1)The burden of history in a place where many people still remembered slavery,Reconstruction,and a devastating military defeat,2)theSouth’s conservative culture,specifically on how an individual could exist without losing a sense of identity in a region where family,religion,and community were more highly valued than one’s personal and social life,3)the South’s troubled history in regards to racial issues.They also brought new modernistic techniques such as stream of consciousness and complex narrative techniques to their works(as Faulkner did in his novel As I Lay Dying).5.Transcendentalism（南开大学2008研，北二外2010研；北航2010研）Key:Transcendentalism is a New England movement,which flourished from about1835to1860.It had its roots in romanticism and in post-Kantian idealism by which Coleridge was influenced.It had a considerable influence on American art and literature.Basically religious,it emphasized the role and importance of the individual conscience,and the value of intuition in matters of moral guidance and inspiration.The actual term was coined by opponents of the movement,but accepted by its members.The group of people was also social reformers.Some of the members,besides Emerson,were famous,including Bronson Alcott,Henry David Thoreau and Nathaniel Hawthorne.6.Henry James（四川大学2009研）Key:Henry James(1843-1916)is a famous American writer and one of the key figures of19th century literary realism.In his novels,he usually describes the upper class of the American society.He is also famous for psychological realism.His major works include:The Portrait of a Lady,The Ambassadors,Daisy Miller etc.7.Imagism（北外2009研；南开大学2009研；北京邮电大学2010研）Key:Imagism is a literary movement which came into being in Britain and U.S. around1910as a reaction to the traditional English poetry to express the sense of fragmentation and dislocation.The imagists,with Ezra Pound leading the way, hold that the most effective means to express these momentary impressions is through the use of one dominant image.Imagism is characterized by the following three poetic principles:i)direct treatment of subject matter;ii) economy of expression;iii)as regards rhythm,to compose in the sequence of the musical phrase,not in the sequence of metronome.Ezra Pound’s“In a Station of the Metro”is a well-known imagist poem.8.Black humor（厦门大学2010研）Key:It is a kind of writing that places grotesque elements side by side with humorous ones in an attempt to shock the readers,forcing him or her to laugh at the horrifying reality of a disordered world.It is a humor out of despair and laughter out of tears.Black humor conveys anguish and fury at conditions in which institutionalized absurdity gets the upper hand.It intends to satirize hypocrisy,racial prejudice,and above all the dehumanization of the individual by a modern society.Black humor prevails in modern American Literature.JosephHeller’s Novel Cater-22is considered a superb example of the use of Black humor.Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five is also a case in point.9.Avant-Garde（上海交大2007研）Key:Avant-garde,the French military and political term for the vanguard of an army or political movement,extended since the late19th century to avant-garde that body of artists and writers who are dedicated to the idea of art as experiment and revolt against tradition.Ezra Pound’s view that‘Artists are the antennae of the race,is a distinctly modern one,implying a duty to stay ahead of one’s time through constant innovation in forms and subjects.10.Ezra Pound and The Cantos（南开大学2009研）Key:Ezra Weston Loomis Pound(1885–1972)was an American expatriate poet, critic and intellectual who was a major figure of the Modernist movement in the first half of the20th century.His significant contributions to poetry begin with his promotion of Imagism.The Cantos by Ezra Pound is a long,incomplete poem in120sections,each of which is a canto.Most of it was written between1915and1962,although much of the early work was abandoned and the early cantos,as finally published, date from1922onwards.Strong claims have been made for it as the most significant work of modernist poetry of the twentieth century.The most striking feature of the text,to a casual browser,is the inclusion of Chinese characters aswell as quotations in European languages other than English.11.“Self-reliance”（北二外2009研）Key:“Self-Reliance”is an essay written by American Transcendentalist philosopher and essayist,Ralph Waldo Emerson.It contains the most solid statement of one of Emerson’s repeating themes,the need for each individual to avoid conformity and false consistency,and follow his or her own instincts and ideas.Emerson’s ideas are considered a reaction to a commercial identity;he calls for a return to individual identity.12.First-person narrative（上海交大2003研）Key:First-person narrative is also called first person point of view,which is used in the analysis and criticism of fiction to describe the way in which the writer presents the reader with the materials of the story.The first person point of view relates events as they are perceived by a single character,“I”.The narrator“I”may be part of the action or an observer,a major or minor participant in the action.As readers,we cannot know or witness anything the narrator does not tell us.We therefore share all the limitations of the narrator.This technique has the advantage of a sharp and precise focus.Moreover,you feel part of the story because the narrator’s“I”echoes the“I”already in your own mind”.Mark Twain’s novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is presented from the first person viewpoint.四、作品分析题Passage1（人大2007研）“Prophet!”said I,“thing of evil!—prophet still,if bird or devil!—Whether tempter sent,or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,Desolate yet all undaunted,on this desert land enchanted—On this home by horror haunted—tell me truly,I implore—Is there—is there balm in Gilead?—tell me—tell me,I implore!”Questions:1.Give the title of the work and the full name of the author.2.Explain the implications of the underlined parts.Key:1.“The Raven”by Edgar Allan Poe2.Prophet:The speaker here calls the raven as a prophet,who can give him someclues to his puzzle of his beloved one.Implore:This word means that the speaker appeals the raven to tell him whether there are ways to cure his pain.Balm in Gilead:This sentence is quoted from the Bible,which means that whether there are some medicines to reduce the speaker’s pain.Passage2（北二外2009研）The following poem is written for the mourning of the Assassination of President Abraham Lincoln.Read it and answer the questions.O Captain!My CaptainO Captain!My Captain!Our fearful trip is done,The ship has weather’d every rack,the prize we sought is won,The port is near,the bells I hear,the people all exulting,While follow eyes the steady keel,the vessel grim and daring;But O heart!heart!heart!O the bleeding drops of red!Where on the deck my Captain lies,Fallen cold and dead.O Captain!My Captain!Rise up and hear the bells;Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills,For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the shores crowding,For you they call,the swaying mass,their eager faces turning;Here,Captain!Dear father!This arm beneath your head;It is some dream that on the deckYou’ve fallen cold and dead.My Captain does not answer,his lips are pale and still,My father does not feel my arm,he has no pulse nor will;The ship is anchor’d safe and sound,its voyage closed and done;From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;Exult,O shores!And ring,O bells!But I,with mournful tread,Walk the deck my captain lies,Fallen cold and dead.1.The writer of this famous poem is one of the most influential poets at the age of romanticism.Can you give out his name and present his contribution in literature briefly?2.Can you enlist at least two major figures of speech used in this poem and illustrate their functions respectively?Key:1.The author of this poem is Walt Whitman.Whitman’s influence over modern poetry is great in America as well as in the world.His best works have been part of the common property of Western culture.Many poets in England,France,Italy and Latin America are in his debt.Modern American poets like T.S.Eliot and Ezra Pound would not have been what they were without Whitman.Contemporary American poetry,whatever school or form,bears witness to his great influence. For his innovations in diction and versification,his frankness about sex,his inclusion of the commonplace and the ugly and his censure of the weaknesses of the American democratic practice—these have paved his way for a share of。