英美文学选读历年主观题及答案

1 Give a brief discussion of Henry James’ literary achievement.
International theme: James‟s novels are always set against a larger international background, usually between America and Europe
Psychological realism: James‟s realism is characterized by his psychological approach to his subject matter. His fictional world is concerned with the inner world of human beings. He is generally regarded as the forerunner of the 20th century “stream-of-consciousness” novels and the founder of psychological realism
His language is highly refined and insightful; he is the most expert of stylist of his time
Narrative point of view: moving away from authorial omniscience, making the characters reveal themselves Literary criticism: “The Art of Fiction”. The theme of “The Art of Fiction” clearly indicates that the aim of the novel is to present life, also advocates the freedom of the artist to write about anything that concerns him. James‟s language is elaborate and refined with lengthy psychological analyses.
2. Hemingway Code heroes
It refers to some protagonists in Hemingway‟s works. In the general situation of Hemingway‟s novels, life is full of tension and battles; the world is in chaos and man is always fighting desperately a losing battle. Those who survive in the process of seeking to master the code with the honesty, the discipline, and the restraint are Hemingway code heroes.
2. Some of Hemingway‟s heroes are regarded as the Hemingway code heroes. Whatever the differences in experience and age, they all have something in common which Hemingway values. What are the characteristics of the Hemingway code hero?
They have seen the cold world and for one cause or another, they boldly and courageously face the reality, whatever the result is, they are ready to live with grace under pressure.
Almost all his heroes are “soldiers” either in a narrow or broad sense. They are out there against the nature or the world, or even themselves. But no matter where the battle-ground is and how tragic the ending is, they will never be defeated.
Hemingway himself is one of those code heroes, some critics say his protagonists are autobiographical, for they share something that is Hemingway.
2 Greatly and permanently affected by the war experiences, Hemingway formed his own writing style，together with his theme and hero. Please discuss Hemingway‟s writing style in relation to his novels you have read.
Hemingway himself once said, “The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water”. Typical of this “iceberg” analogy is Hemingway‟s style. He deals with a limited range of characters in quite similar circumstances and measures them against unvarying code, known as “grace under pressure”.
The characters he depicted, with the honesty, the discipline, and the restraint, survive in the process of seeking to master the code
According to Hemingway, good literary writing should be able to make readers feel the emotion of the characters directly and the best way to produce the effect is to set down exactly every particular kind of feeling without any authorial comments, without conventionally emotive language, and with a bare minimum of adjectives and adverbs.
Besides, Hemingway develops the style of colloquialism initiated by Mark Twain
答案Greatly effected by war experience, Ernest Hemingway formed his own writing style, together with his theme and hero.
In Our time is the first book to present a Hemingway's hero-------Nick Adams.the great part of the book traces in separate, but thematically related, short stories the growth of a young man called Nick Adams from his childhood to his return as a war veteran.
The Sun Also Rises is Hemingway's first true novel. it casts light on a whole generation after the First War and the effects of the war by way of a vivid portrait of ' The lost generation' a group of young american who left their native land and fought in the war and later engaged themselves in writing in a new way about their own expericenc.
A Farewell to Arms tells us a story about the tragic love between a wounded American soldier with a British nurse.
For Whom the Bell Tolls and The Old Man and The Sea tell more about later Hemingway. For Whom the Bell Tolls clearly represent a new beginning in Hermingway's career as a writer, which concerns a volunteer American Robert
Jordan fighting in spanish Civial War. Although fully aware of the doomed failure of his strugle, he keeps on striving because it is a cause of freedom and democracy. in the end, the mannerof his dying convences people that life is worth living and there are causes worth dying for. the Old Man and The Sea is a triumph, a fullfillment of the affirmative attitude that makes its first successful appearance in For Whom the Bell Tolls. the thort story is about an old Cuban fishman Santiago and his losing battle with a giant marlin. In a tragic sense, it is a representation of life as a truggle against unconquerable natural forces in which only a partial victory is possible. there is a feeling of great respect for the struggle and mankind.
Man Without Woman is a collection of short stories, the best of which are " The Undefeated'',''The Killer'',and ''Fifty Grand''. In Death in the Afternoon, Hemingway presents his philosophy about life and death through the depiction of bullfight as a kind of microcosmic tragedy. The Green Hills of Africa is about how the writer can survive against the threats to his talents of genteel traditions in America. The Snow of Kilimanjaro tells a brillient short story about a mortally wounded American writher who attempts to redeem his imagination form the corrosion of weath and domestic strife. To Have and Have not is one of many to show Hemingway's characteristic pattern of a lonely individual struggling against nature and the environment.
Hemingway's world is limited. he deals limited range of characters in quite similar circumstance and measures them against an unvarying code, known as ''the grace under pressure''. in the general situation of his novels, life is full of tension and bettles. thouth life is but a losing battle, it is a struggle man can dominate in such a that loss becomes dignity;man can physically destoryed but never defeated spiritually.
typical of this "iceberg'' analogy is Hemingway's style. according to Hemingway, good literary writing should be able to make reader feel the emotion of the characters directly and the best way to produce the effect is to set down exactly every particular kind of feeling without any authorial comments,without conventionally emotive language, and with a bare minium of objectives and adverbs. seemingly simple and natural , Hingmingway's style is actually polished and tightly controlled,but highly suggestive and connotative. besides, Hemingway develops the style of colloquialism initiated by Mark Twain. the accents and mannerisms of human speech are so well presented that the characters are full of flesh and blood and the use of short,simple and conventional words and sentence have an effect of clearness ,terseness and great care
3Whitman is one of the representative poets in America. He employed brand-new means in his poetry. What are the features of his poetry?
His poetic style is marked by the use of the poetic “I”
He adopted “free verse”, that is, poetry without a fixed beat or regular rh yme scheme.
The images in his poems are unconventional
He uses oral English
His vocabulary is amazing
Parallelism and phonetic recurrence are used at the beginning of the lines
3Whitman has made radical changes in the form of poetry by choosing free verse as his medium of expression. What are the characteristics of Whitman‟s free verse?
It doesn‟t have fixed beat or regular rhyme scheme
His poetic lines are simple and prose-like, varying in length, which allows him to express his ideas freely
He also applies oral English in his free verse to make it an effective way to express freely the feelings of common people.
3 Give a brief comment on Whitman’s style and language
radically innovative in terms of poetic form by using “free verse”, poetry without a fixed beat or regular rhyme scheme
the use of poetic “I” representing all those people in his poems as well the poet
relatively simple and crude
honest and undistorted images of different aspects of America of the day
strong tendency to use oral English
4 F. Scott Fitzgerald has been regarded as the literary spokesman of the Jazz age.
his first novel This side of paradise, the second novel The beautiful and Damned, they have the same theme that they portray the emotional and spiritual collapse of a wealthy yong man during unstable marriage.
his masterpiece The Great Gatsby made him one of the greatest novelist .
Tender is the Night, which he traces the decline of a young American psychiatrist whose marriage to a beautiful and weathy patient drains his personal energies and corrodes his professional career.
The last novel is The Last Tycoon .
Fitzgerald's short-story collections: Flappers and philosophers, Tales of Jazz Age, All the Sad Yong Man, Taps at Reveille. one of the best stories is Babylon Rvisited, which depicts an American's return to Paris in the 1930s and his regretful realization that the past is beyond his reach, since he can neigher alter it nor make any amends.
Fitzgerald's fictional world is the best embodiment of the spirit of the jazz age, in which he shows a particular interest in the upper-class society, especially the upper-class young people.
Fitzgerald never spared an intimate touch in his fictions to deal with the bankruptcy of the American dream ,which is highlighted by the disillusionment of the protagonists' personal dreams due to the clashes between their romantic verson of life and the sordid reality.
Fitzgerald is a greatest stylist in american literature. his style closely related to his themes,is explicit and chilly. his accurate dialogues, his careful observation of mannerism,styles models and attitude provide the reader with vivid sense of reality. he fellows the jamesian tradition in using the scenic method in his chapters, each one of which consists of one or more dramatic scenes some time with intervening passage of narration, leaving the tedious process of transition to the readers'imagination. he also skillfully employs the device of haveing events observed by a central consciousness to his great advantage.
答案：Why was Fitzgerald regarded as spokesman of the “Jazz Age”?
Fitzgerald was a representative figure of the 1920s. He never failed to remain detached and foresee the tragedy of the “Dollar Decade”. His works mirror the exciting age in almost every way. Through the glittering world of his fiction run the themes of moral waste and decay and necessity of personal responsibility. The Great Gatsby, a book about the Jazz Age, is a case study in people‟s pursuit of an elusive American Dream. It is also a powerful criticism of American society. Thus he is often acclaimed literary spokesman of the Jazz Age.
5. William Faulkner, a Nobel Priza winner, has an important position in American literature. Name two of his Major novels. Do you know anything about"Yoknapatawpha County?" What is unique of Faulkner's fiction, historically and geographically?
The Sound and the Fury, Light in August, Go Down, Moses, Absalom, Absalom!
Yoknapatawpha County is an imaginary place based on Faulkner‟s own hometown, a place that he took for the setting of 15 of his 19 novels and many short stories. This small region in American South becomes in Faulkner‟s fiction an allegory or a parable of the Old South.
His literary representation of the Old South; and his theme of the deterioration, loss and moral decay of the Old South when it was falling apart.
5 William Faulkner is one of the greatest American novelists. What do you know about his narrative techniques?
The range of narrative techniques used by Faulkner is remarkable.
He would never step between the characters and the reader to explain, but let the characters explain themselves and hinder as little as possible the reader‟s direct experience of the work of art.
The most characteristic way of structuring his stories is to fragment the chronological time. He deliberately broke up the chronology of his narrative by juxtaposing the past with the present, in the way the montage does in a movie.
The modern stream-of-consciousness technique was frequently and skillfully exploited by Faulkner to emphasize the reactions and inner musings of the narrator
Moreover, Faulkner was good at presenting multiple points of view
The other narrative techniques Faulkner used to construct his stories include symbolism and mythological and biblical allusion.
6Mark Twain is known as locol colorist, who prefered to present social life though portraits of local characters of his reagion.
Another factors that made Twain unique is his magic power with language, his use of vernacular. His words are coloquial, concrete and direct in effert, and his sentence structure are simple , even ungrammatical, which is a typical of spoken language. what's more , his characters confined to a particular region and historial monent, speak with strong accent, which is ture of his local colorism. besides, different character from different literary or different culture backgrounds talk differently. Twain has made colloquial speech an accepted , respectable literary medium in the literary history of the country
Marke Twain's humor is remarkable.
Mark Twain 's full literary career began to blossom in 1869 with the travel book INNOCENTS ABROAD, an account of american tourists in Europewhich pokes fun at old world in a satirical tone .
ROUGHING IT, he describes a journey that work its way further and farther west through Navada to san francisso then to Hawaii.
LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI tell a story of his boyhood ambition to become a riverboat pilot, this time up and down the Missippi.
THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SOWYER and ADV ANTUES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN proved themselves to be the milestone in the american literature, the the firmly established TW AIN'S possition in the literary work.
THE GILDED AGE remarks the transition of life attitude, Twain 's dark view of society become more self-evident in the works published latter in his life . A CONNECTICUT YANKEE IN KING ARTHER'S COURT ,offering to develop the Arthurian's world and rid of superstitions, Hank Morgan destroys it, instead of modernizing it. A similar mood of despair permeates THE TRAGEDY OF PUDD'n HEAD WILSON which shows the disastrous effects of salary on vicimizer and victim.
By the turn of the century, with the publication of THE MAN THAT CORRUPTED HADLEYBURG and THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER, the change in Mark Twain from optimist to an amost despairing pessimist. ADVENTURES OF HUCKL YBERRY FINN is know as characteration of HUCK, a typical american boy whom its creator descriped a boy with sound heart and deformed conscience. and remarkable for the raft's journey dowm the mississippi river, which twain used both realistically and symbolically to shape his book into organic whole. Though the eyes of huck , the innocent and reluctant rebel , we see
the pre-civil war american society fully exposed and at the same time we are deeply impressed by Mark Twain 's thematic contrates between innocence and experience,nature and culture , wilderness and civilization.
7 Discuss the concept of wasteland in relation to the works of those writers in the 20th century American literature.
…The Waste Land‟ is a poem written by T.S. Eliot on the theme of the sterility and chaos of th3 contemporary world. This most widely known expression of the despair in the postwar era has appeared over and over again in the works of those writers in the 2oth century American literature. Faulkner exemplified T.S. Eliot‟s concept of modern society as a wasteland is a dramatic way, he condemned the mechanized, industrialized society that has dehumanized man by forcing him to cultivate false values and decrease those essential human values such as courage, fortitude, honesty and goodness. Fitzgerald sought to portray a spiritual wasteland of the jazz age. Beneath the masks of relaxation and joviality, there was only sterility, meaningless and futility amid the grandeur and extravagance, there was a hint of decadence and moral decay. Hemingway, the leading spokesman of the Lost Generation, though disillusioned in the postwar period, strove to bring about man‟s “grace under pressure”. He tried to bring out the idea than man can be physically destroyed but never defeated spiritually.
8 Transcendentalism has been defined philosophically as “the recognition in man of the capacity of knowing truth intuitively, or of attaining knowledge transcending the reach of the sense”. Emerson once proclaimed in a speech, “Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind”. Other concepts that accompanied Transcendentalism include the idea that nature is ennobling and the idea that the individual is divine and, therefore, self-reliant.
1. Growth and Development
1) the publication of Emerson‟s Nature
a new way of intellectual thinking in America;
a new and mature period of American Romanticism: the period of New England Transcendentalism
2) the first American intellectual movement
3) romantic idealism on Puritan soil
a system of thought from three sources:
A. William Ellery Channing‟s Unitarianism
a thoughtful revolt against orthodox Puritanism:
a. God as one being → the doctrine of trinity
b. the tolerance of difference in religious opinion
c. the free control of each congregation‟s own affairs and its independent authority
B. the idealistic philosophy from France and Germany
C. oriental mysticism
2. Major Concepts
1) the definition of Transcendentalism
the recognition in man of the capacity of acquiring knowledge transcending the reach of the five senses, or of knowing truth intuitively, or of reaching the divine without the need of an intercessor
2) the leader of Transcendentalism
Ralph Waldo Emerson: moral law
3) the major concepts
A. the power of intuition
B. essence behind appearance
C. unity of humanity and nature
D. the significance of the individual
E. an emotional communication between an individual soul and the universal “Oversoul”
F. less attention to the material world
3. Significance
1) a manifestation of romantic movement
2) an ethical guide to life for America
3) important to American literature
4. Weakness
1) never a systematic philosophy
2) a rationale for the pressure toward
expansionism
3) the result of rampant individualism
4) its denial of its real spiritual origin
9 What are the artistic achievements of Edgar Allan Poe?
Poe is known as a poet and critic but most famous as the first master of the short story form, especially tales of the mysterious and macabre. He originated the novel of detection. The best known tale in this genre is The Murders in the Morgue (1841). Many of Poe‟s tales are distinguished by the author‟s unique grotesque inventiveness in addition to his superb plot construction. Such stories include The Fall of the House of Usher(1983), in which the penetrating gloominess of the atmosphere is accented equally with plot and characterization. Poe‟s poems are remarkable for their flawless literary construction and for their haunting themes and meters as in the poems …The Raven‟ and … Annabel Lee‟。