英国文学史及选读

《英国文学史及选读》复习题

Part One: Brief Questions

1.What’s the symbolic meaning of the “Vanity Fair” in Bunyan’s “The Pilgrim’s

Progress”?

2.What can we see from the Soliloquy of Hamlet?

3.What’s the main idea of “Of Studies” by Bacon?

4.What’re the four stories of “Gulliver’s Travels” by Swift?

5.What’s the writing feature of Beowulf?

6.What’s the contribution made by Geoffrey Chaucer?

7.What’s the historical significance of the Glorious Revolution?

8.Explain the literary trends in the 17th century.

Part Two: Detailed Appreciation

9.Read the poem (“Sonnet 18” by Shakespeare) and answer the following

questions.

a)What is the theme of the poem?

b)Explain the rhyme and tone in the poem by drawing the first two lines.

c)Why is the speaker’s loved one more lovely than a summer’s day?

10.Read the poem (“Sonnet 29” by Shakespeare) and answer the following

questions.

a)In the first two thirds of the sonnet, the speaker is complaining about the

misfortunes in his life. What suddenly lifts him out of his bad mood?

b)In the last line, the speaker scorns to change his state with kings. What does

the word “state” mean?

11.Read the poem (“Song: Go and Catch the Falling Star” by Donne) and answer

the following questions.

a)What is the speaker’s tone? What’s his opinion about the constancy of

women?

b)How much impossibility does Donne list in the poem? What are they?

What’s the additional impossibilities does he have in mind throughout this

stanza?

12.Read the poem (“A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” by Donne) and answer

the following questions.

a)Why does Donne’s “Valediction” (a poem of farewell) forbid mourni ng?

b)Comment on the relation of the various images to each other. Is there a

development of some kind?

13.Read the poem (“The Flea” by Donne) and answer the following questions.

a)Who’re the speaker and the listener? What’s the situa tion in the poem?

b)How’s the speaker’s reasoning to persuade the listener? And point out the

conceits used in the poem.

14.Read the poem (“Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” by Gray) and answer

the following questions.

a)How does Gray begin the essay?

b)Where does Gray begin to make a shift from visual to acoustic perception?

Why?

c)From which stanza, does Gray begin to describe the country churchyard?

d)How many sounds does Gray employ in stanza 5? What’re they, and why

does he make a list of these sounds?

e)What’s the main idea of stanza 6?

f)What can we see about the occupation of the dead person from stanza 7?

Please make a list of the words which can certify your guess.

g)What do stanzas 8 and 9 tell us?

15.Read the poem (“The Tiger” by Blake) and answer the following questions.

a)Analyze the form and rhythm of the poem, and what’s the central question

in this poem?

b)What do the lamb and the tiger represent respectively?

16.Read the poem (“London” by Blake) and answer the following questions.

a)Analyze the form and rhythm of the poem.

b)What kind of picture about London do you have in your mind after reading

the poem (London)? Describe in your own words with supportive details

from the poem.

17.Read the poem (“Lines” by Wordsworth), from the beauteous forms in heart,

the poet could see into the life of things. How did it come? Analyze it by

drawing a flow chart.

18.Read the poem (“Break, Break, Break” by Tennyson) and answer the following

questions.

a)What feelings of loss arise in the speaker as he looks out at the sea breaking

endlessly against the shore?

b)The meter of lines 1 and 13 obviously differ from that of the whole poem.

How do they differ, and how do they control the tone of the poem? What is

the effect of the repetition?