美国文学试卷

福建师范大学外国语学院英语专业

2005-2006学年度下学期03级

《美国文学选读》试题（B）

1.According to Hawthorne, the scarlet letter “A” which originally stood for “_______” finally

obtained the meaning of “able” or “angel” through Hester’s efforts.

A.adultery

B.arrogance

C.accomplishment

D.agony

2. The American Puritanism as a cultural heritage benefited the Americans in _______.

E.strengthening their moral values.

F.weakening their religious faith.

G.knowing truth intuitively.

H.developing their science and technology

3. The Transcendentalists believe that, first, nature is ennobling, and second, the individual

is____, therefore, self-reliant.

A. insignificant.

A.vicious by nature.

B.divine.

C.forward-looking

4. The period ranging from 1865 to 1914 has been referred to as _____________.

A.the Age of Realism

B.the Age of Modernism

C.the Age of Romanticism

D.the Age of Colonialism

5. Henry James’s fame generally rests upon his novels and stories with________.

A.international theme

B.national theme

C.Eastern theme

D.regional theme

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

The following titles are all related, in one way or another, to the subject except _______.

A.Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

B.Dreiser’s Sister Carrie

C.Copper’s Leather-Stocking Tales

D.Thoreau’s Walden

7. Which scene in the excerpt of Invisible Man refers symbolically to the situation of furious life conflict?

A.corn-grabbing game

B.graduation speech

C.dance competition

D.battle royal

8. In the lines “Hast thou not dragged Diana from her car? / And dri ven the Hamadryad from the wood / To seek a shelter in some happier star?” here “Diana” is.

A. a beauty

B.the moon

C.the goddess of beauty

D.the goddess of wisdom

9. “Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind” is a famous quote from _______’s writings.

A.Walt Whitman

B.Henry David Thoreau

C.Herman Melville

D.Ralph Waldo Emerson

10. Which of Hemingway’s novels describes the drifting life of American exiles in Europe?

A. The Sun Also Rises.

B. In Our Time.

C. For Whom the Bell Tolls.

D. The Old Man and the Sea.

11. “Helen, thy beauty is to me/Like those Nicean barks of yore,/The weary, way-worn wanderer

bore/ To his own native shore.”

Rhetorically, in Allen Poe’s lines, we find case(s) of ______.

A.simile

B.metaphor

C.alliteration

D. both A and C

12. With Howells, James, and Mark Twain active on the literary scene, _____became the major trend in American literature in the seventies and eighties of the 19th century.

A. Sentimentalism

B. Romanticism

A.Realism

D. Naturalism

13. For Melville, as well as for the reader and _______ , the narrator, Moby Dick is still a mystery, an ultimate mystery of the universe.

A. Ahab

B. Ishmael

C. Stubb

D. Starbuck

14. Walt Whitman is radically innovative in the form of his poetry. What he prefers for his new subject is__________.

A. free verse

B. blank verse

C. lyric poem

D. heroic couplet