专八人文-英美文学

题目构成：

•10道英语专业知识单选题，分值均分到三块：

1）英语国家概况，主要包括政治、历史、地理等内容；

2）英美文学常识：主要考察对代表作家及其代表作的掌握，文学阶段特征、时期划分等；

3）语言学基础：要求掌握Chomsky等语言学家及其主要理论；语言学常用概念，如semantics, syntax等。

例题1：

The capital of Australia is

A. Sydney.

B Melbourne.

C. Canberra.

D. Perth.

例题2：

John Galsworthy was most famous for

A. Heart of Darkness.

B. Ulysses.

C. The Forsyte Saga.

D. A Passage to India.

例题3：

The study of how sounds are put together and used to convey meaning in communication is

A. morphology.

B. general linguistics.

C. phonology.

D. semantics.

分块知识梳理

•英国文学

•美国文学

•语言学要点

•英语国家概况

1. 英国文学

I. Medieval Literature （5th century-1485）

1. Beowulf 《贝奥武甫》: national epic in old English；oldest surviving epic in the English language

2.Sir Gawain and the Green Knight《高文爵士和绿衣骑士》: stories about King Arthur and his knights of the round table

3.Geoffrey Chaucer:father of English poetry; the first one to use middle English;

--The Canterbury Tales《坎特伯雷故事集》(London dialect, iambic parameter, the heroic couplet)

II. The Age of Renaissance (Late 15th century - Early 17th century) Renaissance: an intellectual movement. It sprang first in Italy in the 14th century and gradually spread all over Europe. Two features: 1) a thirsting curiosity for the classical literature;

2) the keen interest in the activities of humanity.

1. Thomas More –Utopia

2. Francis Bacon –Essays, The New Atlantis

3. William Shakespeare – sonnets, long poems and plays

-- Hometown: Straford

-- Four great tragedies; Four great comedies; love tragedy

-- “A pound of flesh”; “to be or not to be”; ……

III. 17th century

1. John Milton –Paradise Lost (great epic); Paradise Regained; Samson Agonistes

2. John Donne –The Flea (metaphysical poems)

3. John Bunyan –Pilgrim’s Progress(It is regarded as the most successful religious allegory in the English language.)

IV. The Age of Enlightenment (Late 17th century- Middle 18th

century)

1. Jonathan Swift – a great satirist: Gulliver’s Travels; A Modest Proposal

2. Daniel Defoe –Robinson Crusoe (rise of the novel); Moll Flanders

4. Henry Fielding –Tom Jones

5. Samuel Richardson –Pamela

6. Lawrence Sterne –The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy

7. Oliver Goldsmith –The Deserted Village; The Citizen of the World (Chinese Letters)

8. Thomas Gray –Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (The Graveyard School)

9. Samuel Johnson –A Dictionary of the English Language; Lives of the Poets

V. The Age of Romanticism (1798-1832)

1. Robert Burns : National poet of Scotland

2. William Blake: Songs of Innocence; Songs of Experience

3. William Wordsworth: Lyrical Ballads (It marked the beginning of Romanticism in English poetry.)

4. George Gordon Byron: Don Juan

5. Percy Shelley: “Ode to the West Wind” (“If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind”)

6. John K eats: “Ode to a Nightingale”

7. Lake Poets: Samuel Coleridge, Robert Southey, William Wordsworth

VI. The Age of Realism

In the Victorian Age (1836 – 1901), romanticism gradually gave way to realism.

1. Robert Browning –My Last Duchess (dramatic monologue)

2. Matthew Arnold –Culture and Anarchy; “Dover Beach”

3. Charles Dickens: A Tale of Two Cities; David Copperfield; Oliver Twist; Hard Times; Great Expectations

4. Emily Bronte: Wuthering Heights