《当代美国文学选读》单元练习

《当代美国文学选读》单元练习Chapter One: ExercisesI.Fill the blanks in the following sentences with correct words.1, The first edition of Walt Whitman‟s Leaves of Grass was published in the year______.2, In Whitman‟s life time, altogether _______ editions of Leaves of Grass were published.3, “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed”was a poem written by Walt Whitman in memory of __________.4, “O Captain! My Captain!”was a poem written by ________ in memory of the American President Abraham Lincoln.5, “A Noiseless Patient Spider” was a short poem written by __________.6, …Out of the Cradle, Endlessly Rocking” is a poem written by __________.II.Define the term “Free Verse”参考答案I.1, 1855; 2, 9; 3, Abraham Lincoln; 4, Walt Whitman; 5, Walt Whitman; 6, Walt WhitmanII.Free Verse: a kind of poetry that does not conform to any regular metre: the length of its lines is irregular, as is its use of rhyme—if any. Instead of regular metrical pattern it uses more flexible cadences or rhythmic groupings, sometimes supported by anaphora and other devices of repetition. Now the most widely practiced verse form in English, it has precedents in translations of the biblical Psalms and in some poems of Blake and Goethe, but established itself only in the late 19th and early 20th centuries with Walt Whitman.Chapter Two: ExercisesI.Fill in the following blanks with the correct words.1, “If I can stop one Heart from breaking” is a line in a poem written by the American poet_____________. The line following is ____________.2, In Dickinson‟s poem “Because I could not stop for Death”, the image of the “School” in the third stanza stands for _____________.3, “This is my letter to the World”is the opening line in a poem written by ______________.II.Judge whether the following statements are true or false.1, The 19th century female poet Emily Dickinson was a forerunner of the modern Imagist poetry.2, Life and death is a major theme in Emily Dickinson‟s poems.3, Though Emily Dickinson married twice in her life, love had never been a major theme in her poetry.III.State briefly the uniquely features of Emily Dickinson‟s poetry.参考答案：I.1, Emily Dickinson; I shall not live in vain; 2, youth; 3, Emily DickinsonII.1, True; 2, True; 3, FalseIII.•Extensive uses of dashes•Optional employments of capital letters•Derailment of the proper grammar （full of grammatically wrong structures）•Fresh ImagesChapter Three: ExercisesI.Choose from the 4 answers one that completes the sentences correctly.1, The author who said that all American literature came from Twain‟s Huckleberry Finn was ______________.A, Tom Sawyer; B, Mark Twain; C, Ernest Hemingway; D, Henry James2, The nigger who accompanied Huck Finn on his adventure down the Mississippi River was named __________.A, Jim; B, Tom; C, Deud; D, Clemens3, The first important short story published by Mark Twain that won him recognition across the country was entitled __________.A, “The Spectre Bridegroom”B, “Rip Van Winkle”C, “Four Million”D, “The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County”4, Twain was the first American author to use a telephone in his novel. The novel‟s title is ______________.A, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer;B, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn;C, Life on the Mississippi RiverD, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court5, The real name of Mark Twain should be _____________.A, Huckleberry Finn; B, Injin Joe; C, Samuel Clemens; D, Two Fathoms6, The author who claimed that only “the smiling aspects” of American life should be depicted in literary writings was ___________.A, William Dean Howells; B, Henry James; C, Bret Harte; D, Mark Twain7, Among the following novels, only one was written by Mark Twain. It is _____________.A, The Rise of Silas Lapham; B, The Portrait of A Lady; C, A Modern Instance; D, The Mysterious Stranger8, The American author who defined Realism as “nothing more and nothing less than the truthful treatment of material” is __________.A, Mark Twain; B, F. Scott Fitzgerald; C, William Dean Howells; D, Henry James 9, Indian Summer is a novel written by the American realist _________.A, Mark Twain; B, Henry James; C, William Dean Howells; D, Willa Cather10, Among the following authors, only one chiefly wrote for the upper reaches of American society. He is ___________.A, Mark Twain; B, O Henry; C, Henry James; D, Stephan CraneII.State briefly the major artistic features of Mark Twain‟s writings.III.Explain the meaning of the term “Local Color”参考答案I.1, C; 2, A; 3, D; 4, D; 5, C; 6, A; 7, D; 8, C; 9, C; 10, CII.•First, he possessed utter clarity of style. He evolved a style so clear and economical that other contemporary styles seemed slightly archaic, rusty, and redundant. •Second, he had a supreme command of vernacular American English. Before him there had been only American dialect; after him there was an American language. American dialect had been used very well by some other writers, but in their hands it was surrounded and conditioned by a “literary” language that wittingly or unwittingly patronized it. Mark Twain removed the surrounding frame.•Third, there was Mark Twain‟s humor, which resists explanation. In Twain‟s time, humor, though it was seen as greatly valuable, remained clearly subordinate in the value system of the 19th century. The function of humor was to entertain, but it was not expected to participate in the high seriousness that Matthew Arnold and his age asked of literature. But Twain liberated humor, raising it to high art—a liberation that parallels his creation of vernacular American English. Instead of subduing his humor to seriousness, twain invaded the citadels of seriousness and freed the humor held captive there.III.•Style of writing marked by the presentation of the features and peculiarities of a particular locality and its inhabitants. The name is given especially to a type of American literature that in its most characteristic form made its appearance just after the civil war. Set during the California gol d rush, Bret Harte‟s “The Luck of Roaring Camp”(1868), with its use of miners‟ dialect and western background, is among the early local-color stories. Many authors first achieved success with vivid descriptionsof their own localities: Mark Twain described Mississippi River life, Sarah Orne Jewett wrote of New England, Kate Chopin described the deep south.Chapter Four: ExercisesI.Fill in the blanks with correct answers.1, The three great masterpieces written around the end of Henry James‟ career were ____________, _______________, and ___________.2, The ghost story written by Henry James about one governess and her two pupils is entitled ________________.3, The central character‟s name in Henry James novel The Portrait of A Lady is__________.4, “The only obligation to which in advance we may hold a novel is that it be interesting” is a famous statement made by Henry James in his long essay_____________.5, …The Cop and the Anthem” is a short story written by __________.I.Define the term “International Theme” briefly.II.Retell the story of The Portrait of A Lady in your own words.参考答案I.1, The Golden Bowl; The Ambassadors; The Wing of the Dove; 2, The Turn of the Screw; 3, Isabel Archer; 4, “The Art of Fiction”; 5, O. HenryII.•During his lifetime Henry James‟ fame rested largely upon his handling of his major fictional theme, “the international theme”: the meeting of America and Europe, American innocence in contact and contrast with European decadence, and its moral and psychological complications. For the American it was a process of progression from inexperience to experience, from innocence to knowledge and maturity.1. Naturalism came from France.2. Reasons: civil war, social upheavals, Darwinism, hypothesized that over the millennia, man had evolved from lower forms of life. Human were special, not because God had created them in His image, as the Bible taught, but because they had successfully adapted to changing environmental conditions and had passed on their survival making characteristic genetically. Men were dominated by the irresistible forces of evolution. Men were conceived as more or less complex combination of inherited attributes and habits conditioned by social and economic forces, by heredity and environment.3. Features of naturalist writing: A. naturalist writers turned literary creation into a mechanical record of society, in a way of attempting to achieve extreme objectivity and frankness. They never made comments on the characters and their behaviors. B. The characters were often figures of low social and economic classes, with animal desire, some physically strong but weak-willed figures. There were also some healthy and lofty persons, but their ending were miserable. C. the viewpoint from which the writers understood problems was amoral, or non-moral. They stressed men had nofree will, their lives were controlled by heredity and environment. D. their material was infinite.4. American Naturalist writers: Stephen Crane, Frank Norris, Jack London, Henry Adams, Theodore Dreiser.Dactylic foot/dactyle: a stressed syllable + 2 unstressed syllables, as in the word possible.Imagism: The doctrine and poetic practice of a small but influential group of American and british poets calling themselves Imagists between 1912 and 1917. Pound, the first leader of the movement, was soon succeeded by Amy Lowell; after that Pound sometimes referred to the movement, slightingly, as “Amygism.” Other leading participants, for a time, were Hilda Doolittle, D. H. Lawrence, William Carlos Williams and Richard Aldington. The typical Imagist poem is written in free verse and undertakes to render as precisely and tersely as possible, and without comment or generalization, the writer‟s impression of a visual object or scene; often the impression is rendered by means of metaphor, or by juxtaposing, without indicating a relation, the description of one object with that of a second and diverse object. Chapter Eight: ExercisesI.Choose from the answers the one that completes the sentence correctly.1, The American poet who won Pulitzer Prize for four times in the 20 century is _________________.A, Robert Frost; B, William Carlos Williams; C, Wallace Stevens; D, Sylvia Plath 2, In 1960, Robert Frost was invited to read his poem “The Gift Outright”at the inauguration of President __________.A, Franklin Roosevelt; B, Lindon Johnson; C, George Washington; D, J. F. Kennedy 3, The American poet who claimed that a poem should begin in delight and ends with wisdom was ______________.A, Ezra Pound; B, T. S. Eliot; C, Robert Frost; D, Edwin Arlington Robinson4, The poet who won Nobel Prize for literature in 1948 is __________.A, T. S. Eliot; B, Thomas Jefferson; C, Elizabeth Bishop; D, Robert Frost5, …Two roads diverged in a yellow wood” is the first line in a poem written by Robert Frost entitled ___________.A, The Road Not Taken; B, Mending Wall; C, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening; D, After Apple Picking6, The Hollow Men is a poem written by _____________.A, T. S. Eliot; B, Walt Whitman; C, Emily Dickinson; D, Robert FrostII.Judge whether the following statements are true or false1, Murder in the Cathedral is the longest poem T. S. Eliot ever wrote.2, T. S. Eliot later became a British citizen.3, Robert Frost altogether won 3 Pulitzer prizes in his life.参考答案I.1, A; 2, D; 3, C; 4, A; 5, A; 6, AII.1, False; 2, True; 3, FalseChapter Nine: ExercisesI.Fill in the blanks in the following sentences with correct words.1, Ernest Hemingway won Nobel Prize for literature in the year _________.2, The last novel written by Ernest Hemingway is ___________.3, The term “Lost Generation”was first coined by the American expatriate writer _________.4, Among Hemingway‟s longer novels, the one about the Spanish civil war is entitled_______________.5, The title of Hemingway‟s novel For Whom the Bell Tolls comes from the writing of the 17th century British poet ___________.6, The central character‟s name in Hemingway‟s novel The Old Man and the Sea is ______________.II.Define the term “Hemingway Code hero” briefly.III.Retell the story of A Farewell to Arms in your own words.参考答案：I.1, 1954; 2, The Old Man and the Sea; 3, Gertrude Stein; 4, For Whom the Bell Tolls; 5, John Donne; 6, SantiagoII.Hemingway Code hero: He is sensitive, intelligent. He is a man of action and of few words. He is alone even when with other people. He is somewhat an outsider, keeping emotion under control, stoic and self-disciplined in a dreadful place when one can not get happiness. In a world which is essentially chaotic and meaningless, a Hemingway hero fights a solitary struggle against a force he does not even understand. The awareness that it must end in defeat, no matter how hard he strives, engenders a sense of despair, but Hemingway hero possesses a kind of despairing courage. It is this courage that enables a man to behave like a man, to assert his dignity in face of adversity. This is the essence of a code of honor in which all of Hemingway‟s heroes believe.。