美国文学试卷

Mid-term Examination of American
Literature
满分：100分考试时间：2小时
ⅠFind out the match from column B for each item in column A. (1*10=10%)
1. Edgar Allan Poe a. A Forest Hymn
2. Walt Whitman b. Walden
3. Nathaniel Hawthorne c. Journey from Philadelphia to New Y ork
4. Ralph Waldo Emerson d. Nature.
5. Henry David Thoreau e. Leaves of Grass
6. Henry Wadsworth Longfellows f. The Great Christian Doctrine of Original Sin Defended
7. William Cullen Bryant g. Poor Richard‟s Almanac
8. Jonathan Edwards h. V oice of the Night
9. Benjamin Franklin i. Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque
10. Philip Freneau j. The Scarlet Letter
ⅡDecide whether the following statements are true (T) or false (F). (1*10=10=10%)
( ) 1.The Calvinist doctrine of "original sin" exerted great influence up Hawthorne.
( ) 2.To Hawthorne sin will get punished, one way or another.
( ) 3.Emily Dickinson didn't like using capital letters where small ones are needed.
( ) 4.Walt Whitman was regarded as the Zenith in American romantic poetry.
( ) 5.Dickinson was original. She never imitated others.
( ) 6.Allan Poe defined poetry as the rhythmical creation of beauty.
( ) 7.According to Dickinson, death means immortality.
( ) 8.Emily Dickinson was regarded as the forerunner of symbolism.
( ) 9.Allan Poe advocated "pure" poetry.
( ) 10. Nathaniel.Hawthorne was a symbolic writer in some sense.
ⅢChoose the best answer. (1*20=20%)
1. It is on his____________ that Washington Irving‟s fame mainly rested.
A. childhood recollections
B. sketches about his European tours
C. early poetry
D.tales about America
2. At the middle of 19th century, America witnessed a cultural flowering which is called “____________________”.
A. the English Renaissance
B. the Second Renaissance
C. the American Renaissance
D. the Salem Renaissance
3. As a philosophical and literary movement, the main issues involved in the debate of Transcendentalism are generally concerning ____________________.
A. nature, man and the universe
B. the relationship between man and woman
C. the development of Romanticism in American literature
D. the cold, rigid rationalism of Unitarianism
4. About the novel The Scarlet Letter, which of the following statements is NOT right?
A. It‟s very hard to say that it is a love story or a story of sin.
B. It‟s a highly symbolic story and the author is a master of symbolism.
C. It‟s mainly about the moral, emotional and psychological effects of the sin upon the main
characters and the people in general.
D. In it the letter A takes the same symbolic meaning throughout the novel.
5. The great sea adventure story Moby-Dick is usually considered____________.
A. a symbolic voyage of the mind in quest of the truth and knowledge of the universe.
B. an adventurous exploration into man‟s relationship with nature
C. a simple whaling tale or sea adventure
D. a symbolic voyage of the mind in quest of the artistic truth and beauty
6. In his poems, Walt Whitman is innovative in the terms of the form of his poetry, which is called “____________________.”
A. free verse
B. blank verse
C. alliteration
D. end rhyming
7. Which of the following is right about Emily Dickinson‟s poems about nature?
A. In them, she expressed her general affirmation about the relationship between man and
nature.
B. Some of them showed her disbelief that there existed a mythical bond between man and
nature.
C. Her poems reflected her feeling that nature is restorative to human beings.
D. Many of them showed her feeling of nature‟s inscrutability and indifference to the life and
interests of human beings.
8. As a great innovator in American literature, Walt Whitman wrote his poetry in an unconventional
style which is now called free verse, that is _________.
A. lyrical poetry with chanting refrains
B. poetry without a fixed beat or regular rhyme scheme
C. poetry without rhymes at the end of the lines but with a fixed beat
D. poetry in an irregular metric form and expressing noble feelings
9. Which of the following is not a work of Nathaniel Hawthorne‟s?
A. The House of the Seven Gables.
B. The Blithedale Romance.
C. The Marble Faun.
D. White Jacket.
10. Emily Dickinson wrote many short poems on various aspects of life. Which of the following is not a usual subject of her poetic expression?
A. Religion.
B. Life and death.
C. Love and marriage.
D. War and peace.
11. In 1837, Ralph Waldo Emerson made a speech entitled _______ at Harvard, which was hailed by Oliver Wendell Holmes as "Our intellectual Declaration of Independence."
A. "Nature"
B. "Self-Reliance"
C. "Divinity School Address"
D. "The American Scholar"
12. In American literature the first important writer who earned an international fame
on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean is_______________.
A. Washington Irving
B. Ralph Waldo Emerson
C. Nathaniel Hawthorne
D. Walt Whitman
13. Though Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson were romantic poets in theme and technique, they differ from each other in a variety of ways. For one thing, whereas
Whitman likes to keep his eye on human Society at large, Dickinson often addresses such issues as_______, immortality, religion, love and nature.
A. progress
B. freedom
C. beauty
D. death
14. Which of the following is NOT the virtue that Franklin enumerated in his The Autobiography?
A. Temperance
B. Humanity (Humility)
C. Frugality
D. Immoderation
15. _________ believes that the chief aim of literary creation is beauty, and “the death of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world.”
A. Walt Whitman
B. Edgar Allen Poe
C. Anne Bradstreet
D. Ralph Waldo Emerson
16. In Emily Dickinson‟s Because I Could Not Stop for Death, ______________.
A. death is personified as a devil
B. death is described as the tragic end of a person‟s life
C. death is a stage of life and it leads people to the Heaven of immortality
D. death is described as a beautiful girl who couldn‟t find her final destination
17. Which is generally regarded as the manifesto and the Bible of American Transcendentalism?
A. Thoreau‟s Walden
B. Emerson‟s Nature
C. Poe‟s Poetic Principle
D. Thoreau‟s Nature
18. Henry David Thoreau‟s work, ________, has always been regarded as a masterpiece of the New
England Transcendental Movement.
A. Walden
B. The Pioneers
C. Nature
D. "Song of Myself"
19. …Leaves of Grass‟ commands great attention because of its uniquely poetic embodiment
of________, which are written in the founding documents of both the Revolutionary War and the American Civil War.
A. the democratic ideals
B. the romantic ideals
C. the self-reliance spirits
D. the religious ideals
20. The Publication of ______established Emerson as the most eloquent spokesman of New England Transcendentalism.
A. Nature
B. Self-Reliance
C. The American Scholar
D. The Over-Soul
Ⅳ Choose the right author and work from column A and column B. (10%)
A. The Declaration of Independence To Helen The Wild Honey Suckle A Psalm of Life To a Waterfowl
B. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow William Cullen Bryant Thomas Jefferson Philip Edgar Allen Poe Freneau
1. By Nature's self in white arrayed,
She bade thee shun the vulger eye,
And planted here the guardian shade,
And sent soft waters murmuring by;
Thus quietly thy summer goes,
Thy days declining to repose. ___________________ __________________
2. There is a power whose care
Teaches thy way along that pathless coast,
The desert and illimitable air,
Lone wandering, but not lost. ___________________ __________________
3. Lo！In you brilliant window-niche
How statue-like I see thee stand
The agate lamp within thy hand,
Ah！Psyche, from the regions which
Are Holy Land ___________________ __________________
4. Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.
Life is real! Life is earnest! ___________________ __________________
5. We hold these truths to be self-evident,
that all men are created equal, that they
are endowed by their Creator with certain
unalienable Rights, that among these are Life,
Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. ___________________ __________________
ⅤDefine one of the literary terms for each column. (4*3=12%)
Writers 1. Benjamin Franklin 2. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 3. Walt Whitman
Works 1. Leaves of Grass 2. The legend of Sleepy Hollow 3. The autobiography
School of literature 1. Romanticism 2. Transcendentalism 3. Realism
ⅥRead and answer the following questions. (18%)
It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know,
By the name of Annabel Lee;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought than to love and be loved b y me.
She was a child and i was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea,
But we loved with a love that was more than love -- I and my Annabel Lee -- with a love that the winged seraphs of heaven coveted her and me.
And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud by night,
Chilling my Annabel Lee,
So that her high-born kinsman came and bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulcher.
In this kingdom by the sea.
The Angels, not half so happy in heaven,
Went envying her and me --
Y es! That was the reason (as all men know, in this kingdom by the sea).
That the wind came out of a cloud,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.
But our love it was stronger by far than the love of these who were older than we -- of many for wiser than we --
And neigher the angels in Heaven above,
Nor the demons down under the Sea,
Can ever disserver my soul from the soul of the beautiful Annabel Lee.
For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams of the beautiful Annabel Lee, And the stars never rise but i see the bright eyes of the beautiful Annabel Lee,
And so, all the night - tide, i lie down by the side of my darling,
My darling, my life and my bride,
In her sepulchre, there by the Sea --
In her tomb by the side of the Sea.
1. What‟s the title of this literary work? Who is the writer? (2%)
2. What did the writer want to express in this work? (4%)
3. Please analyze the structures and features of this work.(14%)
ⅦT alk about one of your favorite literature work(20%)。