[自学考试答案解析]英美文学选读试题

绝密★考试结束前
全国2014年4月高等教育自学考试
英美文学选读试题
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I. Multiple Choice(40 points in all, 1 for each)
Select from the four choices of each item the one that best answers the question or completes the statement. Mark your choice by blackening the corresponding letter A, B, C or D on the answer sheet.
1. Shakespeare has established his giant position in world literature with his ______ plays, 154 sonnets and 2 long poems.B
A. 27
B. 38
C.47
D. 52
2. john Milton’s literary achievement can be divided into three groups: the early poetic works, the middle prose pamphlets and the last ______.C
A. romances
B. dramas
C. great poems
D. ballads
3. The novels of ______ are the first literary works devoted to the study of problems of the lower— class people.C
A. John Milton
B. Daniel Defoe
C. Henry Fielding
D. Jonathan Swift
4. The w ork ranked by many critics as William Wordswoth’s greatest work was ______.B
A. Lyrical Ballads
B. The Prelude
C. Poems in Two Volumes
D. The Excursion
5. The author of The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling is ______.C
A. Daniel Defoe
B. Johathan Swift
C. Henry Fielding
D. William Blake
6. The works of ______ are famous for the depiction of the life of the middle —class women, particularly governess.*B
A. Charlotte Bronte
B. D.H. Lawrence
C. Thomas Hardy
D. Jane Austen
7. All of the following writings are created by William Wordsworth EXCEPT ______.D
A. “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud. ”
B. “Composed upon Westminster Bridge, Septemer 3, 1802. ”
C. “The Solitary Reaper. ”
D. “The Chimney Sweeper. ”
8. The most important representative work by Jonathan Swift is ______.D
A. A Tale of a Tub
B. The Battle of the Books
C. A Modest Proposal
D. Gulliver's Travels
9 “If winter comes, can Spring be far behind?”comes from Shelly’s ______.D
A. “To a Skylark”
B. “Adonais”
C. “Ode to Liberty”
D. “Ode to the West Wind”
10. In Jane Austen' s first novel ______, she tells a story about two sisters and their love affairs.B
A. Pride and Prejudice
B. Sense and Sensibility
C. Emma
D. Persuasion
11. Charles Dickens is one of the greatest ______ writers of the Victorian Age.D
A. romantic
B. modernist
C. socialist
D. critical realist
12. Charlotte Bronte' s most autobiographical work, ______ is largely based on her experience in Brussels.A
A. Jane Eyre
B. Shirley
C. Villette
D. The Professor
13. William Wordsworth' s theory of poetry is calling for simple themes drawn from humble life expressed in the language of ordinary people. The preface to the second edition of ______ acts as a manifesto for the new school and sets forth his own critical creed.A
A. Lyrical Ballads
B. The Prelude
C. Poems in Two Volums
D. The Excursion
14. George Bernard Shaw' s play ______ established his position as the leading playwright of his time.*C
A. Widowers’Houses
B. Too True to Be Good
C. Mrs. Warren' s Profession
D. Candida
15. Eliot' s most important single poem ______, has been hailed as a landmark and
a model of the 20th-century English poetry.B
A. The Hollow Men
B. The Waste Land
C. Prurrock and Other Observations
D. Poems 1909-25
16. D. wrence’s autobiographical novel, ______ shows the conflict between the earthy, coarse, energetic but often drunken father and the refined, strong —willed and up — climbing mother.A
A. Sons and Lovers
B. The White Peacock
C. The Trespasser
D. The Rainbow
17. “To be, or not to be —that is the question; /Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer./The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,/ Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,/And by opposing end them?” These words are from ______.D
A. King Lear
B. Romeo
C. Antonio
D. Hamlet
18. John Milton’s last important work, ______ is the most powerful dramatic poem on the Greek model.A
A. Paradise Lost
B. Paradise Regained
C. Samson Agonistes
D. Lydidas
19. The author of Moll Flanders and Captain Singleton is ______.B
A. John Milton
B. Daniel Defoe
C. Henry Fielding
D. Jonathan Swift
20. Drapier is the pseudonym of ______.A
A. Jonathan Swift
B. Daniel Defoe
C. Henry Fielding
D. William Blake
21. One of Dickens' later works, ______ in which he presents a criticism of the governmental branches which run an indefinite procedure of management of affairs and keep the innocent in prison for life.B
A. Bleak House
B. Little Dorrit
C. Hard Times
D. A Tale of Two Cities
22. In the second part of Gulliver's Travels, Gulliver told his experience in ______.A
A. Brobdingnag
B. Lilliput
C. Flying Island
D. Houyhnhnm
23. Faulkner used the narrative techniques to construct his stories, which include ______ and mythological and biblical allusions.A
A. symbolism
B. free indirect speech
C. contrast
D. dialogue
24. Ernest Hemingway, had been trying to demonstrate in his works an unvarying code, known as “______,” which is actually an attitude towards life.B
A. facing the reality
B. grace under pressure
C. honesty with benevolence
D. security coming first
25. The Blithedale Romance is a novel written by Hawthorne to reveal his own experience on the Brook Farm and his own methods as a ______ novelist.C
A. naturalist
B. imagist
C. psychological
D. feminist
26. Theodore Dreiser' s focus shifted from the pathos of the helpless protagonists at the bottom of the society to the power of the American financial tycoons in the late 19th century in his work ______.D
A. The Genius
B. An American Tragedy
C. Dreiser Looks at Russia
D. “Trilogy of Desire”
27. Emily Dickinson frequently uses personae to render the tone more familiar to the reader, and ______ to vivify some abstract ideas.D
A. images
B. metaphor
C. symbols
D. personification
28. In his later works, Melville becomes more reconciled with the ______, in which he admits, one must live by rules.B
A. women
B. world of man
C. family
D. politicians
29. Walt Whitman' s ______ has always been considered a monumental work which commands great attention in America.B
A. The Pilgrim’s Progress
B. Leaves of Grass
C. A Passage to India
D. Rip Van Winkle
30. Mark Twain’s full literary career began to blossom in 1869 with a travel book ______, an account of American tourists in Europe.A
A. Innocents Abroad
B. The Portrait of A Lady
C. The Grapes of Wrath
D. The Great Gatsby
31. With the development of the modern novel and the common acceptance of the ______ approach, Henry James' s importance, as well as his wide influence as a novelist and critic, has been all the more conspicuous.A
A. deconstruction
B. romantic
C. Freudian
D. analytic
32. Emily Dickinson addresses the issues that concern the whole human beings in her poems, which include religion, death, ______, love, and nature.A
A. immortality
B. wealth
C. power
D. politics
33. In Sister Carrie Theodore Dreiser expressed his ______ pursuit by expounding the purposelessness of life and attacking the conventional moral standards.B
A. romantic
B. realistic
C. naturalistic
D. modernistic
34. Profound ideas in Robert Frost's poems are delivered under the disguise of ______.A
A. the plain language and the simple form
B. the vivid descriptions
C. metaphors
D. the complicated narration
35. In ______ Hemingway presents his philosophy about life and death through the depiction of the bullfight as a kind of microcosmic tragedy.B
A. The Green Hills of Africa
B. Death in the Afternoon
C. The Snows of Kilimanjaro
D. To Have and Have Not
36 Of Faulkner’s literary works, four novels are masterpieces by any standards: The Sound and the Fury, Light in August, Absalom, Absalom ! and ______.A
A. Go Down, Moses
B. The Fable
C. The Snows of Kilimanjaro
D. To Have and Have Not
37. As Whitman saw it, ______ could play a vital part in the process of creating
a new nation.C
A. music
B. fiction
C. poetry
D. painting
38. In many of Hawthorne' s stories and novels, the Puritan concept of life is condemned, especially in his The house of the Seven Gables and ______.B
A. Go Down, Moses
B. The Scarlet Letter
C. As I Lay Dying
D. Song of Myself
39. Henry James is generally regarded as the forerunner of the ______ and the founder of psychological realism.B
A. “stream-of-consciousness” novels
B. m etaphysical poems
C. short stories
D. literary criticism
40. Generally considered to be Henry James’s masterpiece, ______ incarnates the clash between the Old World and the New in the life journey of an American girl in a Europe an cultural environment.B
A. The Ambassadors
B. Daisy Miller
C. The American
D. The Portrait of A Lady
非选择题部分
注意事项：
用黑色字迹的签字笔或钢笔将答案写在答题纸上，不能答在试题卷上。

II. Reading Comprehension (16 points in all, 4 for each)
Read the quoted parts carefully and answer the questions in English. Write your answers in the corresponding space on the answer sheet.
41. Wherefore, Bees of England, forge
Many a weapon, chain, and scourge,
That these stingless drones may spoil
The forced produce of your toil?
Questions.
A. Identify the poet and the poem from which the stanza is taken.
Song to the Men of England -- Percy Shelley
B. What do you know about the poem' s writing background?
This poem was written at a time of turbulent unrest. On August 16, 1819, when about 60000 people were holding a rally in St.Peter’s field near Manchester, demanding universal suffrage, parliamentary reform and the repeal of the Corn Law, a troop of cavalry opened fire on them, killed more than a dozen and wounded several hundreds. The killing was ironically referred to as “Peterloo Massacre”. Shelley, being exiled in Italy, wrote several political lyrics in protest against the government’s barbarous action and calling the working people to rise up and overthrow the rule of the idle class.
C. What do you think the poet intends to say in the poem?
The poem was intended to depict the clash of two classes of society and the fact that workers
toil all for the benefit of the rich.
42. Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half -deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
(The lines above are taken from “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T. S Eliot. )
Questions..
A. What does the poem present?
As for England, the aftershocks of World War I directly contributed to the dissolution of the British Empire. Eliot saw society as paralyzed and wounded, and he imagined that culture was crumbling and dissolving. “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufro ck” demonstrates this sense of indecisive paralysis as the
titular speaker wonders whether he should eat a piece of fruit, make a radical change, or if he has the fortitude to keep living.
B. What form is the poem composed in?
“Prufrock” is a variation on the dramatic monologue, a type of poem popular with Eliot’s predecessors. Dramatic monologues are similar to soliloquies in plays. The rhyme scheme of this poem is irregular but not random.
C. What does the poem suggest?
It is an examination of the tortured psyche of the prototypical modern man—overeducated, eloquent, neurotic, and emotionally stilted. Prufrock, the poem’s speaker, seems to be addressing a potential lover, with whom he would like to “force the moment to its crisis” by somehow consummatin g their relationship.
43. My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still,
And there's a barrel that I didn't fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn't pick upon some bough.
Questions.
A. Identify the poet and the title of the poem from which the above lines are taken.
After Apple-Picking -- Robert Frost
B. What experience does the poem describe?
After a long day’s work, the speaker is tired of apple picking. He has felt drowsy and dreamy
since the morning when he looked through a sheet of ice lifted from the surface of a water trough. Now he feels tired, feels sleep coming on, but wonders whether it is a normal, end-of-the-day
sleep or something deeper.
C. What are the feelings of the speaker?
How we ultimately interpret the tone of the poem has much to do with how we interpret the harvest. Has it been a failure? Certainly there is a sense of incompleteness—”a barrel that I didn’t fill.” The speaker’s inner resources give out before the outer reso urces are entirely collected. On the other hand, the poet speaks only of “two or three apples” remaining, and these only “may” be left over. Do we detect satisfaction, then? The speaker has done all that was within his power; what’s left is the result of m inor, inevitable human imperfection. Is this, then, a poem about
the rare skill of knowing when to quit honorably? This interpretation seems reasonable. 44. This is my letter to the World
That never wrote to Me —
The simple News that Nature told —
With tender Majesty
Questions.
A. Identify the poet.
Emily Dickinson
B. What idea does the poem express?
The author’s contemporaries could not understand her, so she rested her hope on later
generations, and asked them to judge her tenderly.
C. Why does the poet use dashes and capital letters in the poem?
The dashes are the substitute of the punctuation and provide feeling of music and better rhythm. III. Questions and Answers (24 points in all, 6 for each)
Give a brief answer to each of the following questions in English. Write your answers in the corresponding space on the answer sheet.
45. What are the features of George Bernard Shaw’s characterization in his plays? He makes the trick of showingup one character vividly at the expense of another.
46. Briefly introduce Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience. "Songs of Innocence and of Experience" is a rare and wonderful book, its seeming simplicity belying its visionary wisdom. Internationally recognised as a masterpiece of English literature, it also occupies a key position in the history of western art. "Innocence" and "Experience" are definitions of consciousness that rethink Milton's existential-mythic states of "Paradise" and the "Fall." Blake's categories are modes of perception that tend to coordinate with a chronology that would become standard in Romanticism: childhood is a state of
protected innocence rather than original sin, but not immune to the fallen world and its institutions. This world sometimes impinges on childhood itself, and in any event becomes known through "experience," a state of being marked by the loss of childhood vitality, by fear and inhibition, by social and political corruption, and by the manifold oppression of Church, State, and the ruling classes. The volume's "Contrary States" are sometimes signalled by patently repeated or contrasted titles: in Innocence, Infant Joy, in Experience, Infant Sorrow; inInnocence, The Lamb, in Experience, The Fly and The Tyger. The stark simplicity of poems such as The Chimney Sweeper and The Little Black Boy display Blake's acute sensibility to the realities of poverty and exploitation that accompanied the "dark satanic mills" of the Industrial Revolution.
47. Why does Sister Carrie best embody Dreiser' s naturalistic belief?
Sister Carrie best embodies Dreiser's naturalistic belief that while men are controlled and conditioned by heredity, instinct and chance,a few extraodinary and unsophisticated human beings refuse to accept their fate wordlessly and instead strive,unsuccessfully,to find meaning and purpose for their existence.Carrie,as one of such,senses that she is merely a cipher in an uncaring world yet seeks to grasp the mysteries of life and thereby satisfies her desires for social status and material comfort.
48. Briefly state Mark Twain' s magic power with language in his novels.
1) Use of Colloquial Language.The book is written in a colloquial style, in the general standard speech of uneducated Americans.
2) Vernacular Language
3) Local Color
IV. Topic Discussion(20 points in all, 10 for each)
Write no less than 150 words on each of the following topics in English in the corresponding space on the answer sheet.
49. Why is Jane Eyre a successful novel? Give a brief analysis of the theme and charaterization of the novel.
The work is one of the most popular and important novels of the Victorian age. It is noted for its sharp criticism of the existing society.
Morality :Jane refuses to become Mr. Rochester's paramour because of her "impassioned self-respect and moral conviction." She rejects St. John Rivers' religious fervour as much as the libertine aspects of Mr. Rochester's character. Instead, she works out a morality expressed in love, independence, and forgiveness. God and religion: Throughout the novel, Jane endeavours to attain
an equilibrium between moral duty and earthly happiness. She despises the hypocrisy of Mr. Brocklehurst, and sees the deficiencies in St. John Rivers' indulgent yet detached devotion to his Christian duty. As a child, Jane admires Helen Burns' life's philosophy of 'turning the other cheek', which in turn helps her in adult life to forgive Aunt Reed and the Reed cousins for their cruelty. Although she does not seem to subscribe to any of the standard forms of popular Christianity, she honours traditional morality –particularly seen when she refuses to marry Mr. Rochester until he is widowed. The last sentence of the novel is a prayer of St. John Rivers on his own behalf: "Religion serves to moderate Jane's behavior, but she never represses her true self."
50. A Rose for Emily is one of Faulkner' s short stories. Discuss the character of Emily Grierson and how this character is depicted.
Emily is an embodiment of the south, the old and tradition. At the very beginning of this story, the writer recounts the decoration of her house which is still 1870s style, isn’t change any more. Besides, she is also obstinate. When the new government compel the taxes on her，she refuses to pay the tax and even ridiculously mentions a colonel who has been dead almost ten years. Another example is that she
prevents people from installing mail-box on the wall. She keeps the traditional views all the long，but resists to change anything. However, poor Emily is a determined woman. Regardless of people’s criticism, she insists on marrying a northerner whose social position is apparently lower than her. It is known that in that period of time, hierarchy is prevailing and deep-rooted through out the society. It particularly has a profound influence on marriage. When someone chooses a partner, he or she must consider the social position of the other party to the marriage. However, Emily chooses to disobey the convention and challenges tradition. Given this situation, her failure is quite expectable. However, she cannot get rid of the shackles of the Southern conventions. After all, she captures her lover in her own way and the love is treated with honor.。