美国文学二期末复习资料
Part I Fill in the blanks:(20 points, 2point for each)
1. The First World War stands as a great dividing line between the nineteenth century and the contemporary American literature.
2. American writers of the first postwar era self-consciously acknowledged that they were a "_Lost Generation" , devoid of faith and alienated from a civilization.
3. The most significant American poem of the twentieth century was The Waste Land.
4. The publication of The Waste Land, written by Thomas Ste?arns Eliot , helped to establish a modern tradition of literature rich with learning and allusive thought.
5. F. Scott Fitzgerald summarized the experiences and attitudes of the 1920s decade in his masterpiece novel The Great Gatsby .
6. The Great Depression of the 1930s greatly weakened the American nation's self-con?fidence.
7. An American woman writer named Gertrude Stein who had lived in Paris since 1903, welcomed the young expatriates to her literary salon, and gave them a name "the Lost Generation".
8. Ezra Pound was the leader of a new movement in poetry which he called the " Imagist " movement.
9. Ezra Pound's major work of poetry is the long poem called The Cantos .
10. Robert Frost' s first book A Boy's Will brought him to the attention of influential critics, such as Ezra Pound, who praised him as an authentic poet.
Part I Multiple choice :( 20points, 1 point for each)
Directions: In this part of the test, there are twenty items. Choose the best answer and write the corresponding letter on the Answer Sheet.
1. Dreiser’s naturalism and his choice of subject often echo his predecessor, __B____, but his style and method are very different.
A. Mark Twain
B. Stephen Crane
C. Henry James
D. Emerson
2. Sister Carrie written by ___B___ is considered as one of the representative naturalistic novel in the American literature.
A. Sinclair Lewis
B. Theodore Dreiser
C. F. Scott Fitagerald
D. H.L.Mencken
3. Mark Twain’s ___B___ tells a story of his boyhood ambitious to become a riverboat pilot, up and down the Mississippi.
A. Roughing It
B. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
C. Life on the Mississippi
D. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
4. ___B___ is the scene of Dreiser’s Sister Carrie.
A. New York
B. Chicago
C. California
D. Washington
5. Mark Twain created, in __A_____, a masterpiece of American realism that is also one of the great books of world literature.
A. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
B. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
C. The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg
D. The Gilded Age
6. American literature produced only one female poet during the 19th century. This was ____C___.
A. Anne Bradstreet
B. Jane Austen
C. Emily Dickinson
D. Harriet Beecher
7. With Howells, James, and Mark Twain active on the scene, ___C___ became the major trend in the seventies and eighties of the 19th century.
A. sentimentalism
B. Romanticism
C. realism
D. naturalism
8. Leaves of Grass has ___A____ editions.
A. nine
B. five
C. six
D. seven
9. ___D____ is not among the artistic features of Whitman’s writing.
A. The use of th e poetic “I”
B. Free verse
C. Musicality or rhythm
D. Allegory
10. The realistic period is referred to as “the Gilded Age” by ____A___.
A. Mark Twain
B. Henry James
C. Emily Dickinson
D. Theodore Dreiser
11. ____C___ is regarded by H. L. Menken as “the true father of American national literature.”
A. Emily Dickinson
B. Henry James
C. Mark Twain
D. Theodore Dreiser
12. ___B____, being a boy’s book specially written for the adults, is Mark Twain’s most representative book.
A. Roughing It
B. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
C. Life on the Mississippi
D. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
13. Henry James’s fame generally rests upon his novels and stories with __D______.
A. the love and marriage theme
B. the theme of humor and satire on life
C. the theme of revealing the miserable life of the poor and criticizing the capitalism
D. the international theme
14. _____A______ showed great interest in Chinese literature and translated the poetry of Li Po into English, and was influenced by Confucian ideas.
A. Ezra Pound
B. Robert Frost
C. T. S. Eliot
D.
E. E. Cummings
15. With William Dean Howells, Henry James, and Mark Twain active on the scene, ___C____ became the major trend in the seventies and eighties of the nineteenth century.
A. sentimentalism
B. romanticism
C. realism
D. naturalism
16. Ezra Pound's long poem______B______ contained more than one hundred poems loosely connected.
A. The Waste Land
B. The Cantos
C. Don Juan
D. Queen Mab
17. In Paris, Ernest Hemingway, along with _____D________, accomplished a revolu?tion in literary style and language.
A. Gertrude Stein
B. Ezra Pound
C. James Joyce
D. all of the above
18. ____B______ tells the Joad family' s life from the time they were evicted from their farm in Oklahoma until their first winter in California.
A. Of Mice and Men
B. The Grapes of Wrath
C. The Great Gatsby
D. For Whom the Bell Tolls
19. The two areas on which the modem American writers concentrated their criticism were the failures of American society and ____A_______ .
A. the failure of communication among Americans
B. the economic depression
C. the extreme prosperity of America
D. the paradise of New Land
20. Who of the following is NOT a 20th century American poet? A
A. Henry Wordsworth Longfellow
B. Amy Lowell
C. Ezra Pound
D. Robert Frost
Part II Identification (20 points, 2 point for each)
Decide whether the following statements are true or false.
1.The sound of Whitman’s words casts a magic, romantic spell over readers. His tone is
awesome, sad and melancholy. F
2.Haiku, a form of traditional Japanese poetry, greatly influenced the Imagist movement. T
3.Leaves of Grass is Whitman’s life work.T
4.Thanks in part to the efforts of Ezra Pound, Robert Frost was published in England and
quickly became recognized as a major American poet. T
5.In 1954, T. S. Eliot was awarded a Nobel Prize for his “mastery of the art of modern
narration.” F
6.Hemingway believed that a man could find meaning in life by facing his death with dignity
and courage. T
7.Realists thought highly of individual status and role in the world. The romanticists preferred
the innate or intuitive perception by the heart of man. They thought that man was essentially of goodwill, only the civilized society made him degenerate. They pointed out, the means to uproot evils and to save mankind was habits, and to return to “natural primitive state”. F 8.Literary naturalism may be regarded as the new development of literary realism, and was
sometimes called “pessimistic realism.” The naturalistic writers were philosophical pessimists.
T
9.Hemingway, Pound, Cummings, Dos Passos, and Fitzgerald, belong to the school of “Beat
Generation”. F
10.F. Scott Fitzgerald is called the leader and poet laureate of the Jazz Age who wrote the novels
of the Jazz Age. T
1 F
2 T
3 T
4 T
5 F
6 T
7 F
8 T
9 F 10 T
Part III Appreciation (20 points)
Directions: In this part of the test, there are two excerpts. Each of the excerpts is followed by several questions. Read the excerpts and answer the questions on the Answer Sheet.
Part A
The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.
Questions:
1.Who is the writer of this poem? ____ Ezra Pound _____(2%)
2.What is the title of this poem? ____ In A Station of the Metro ____(2%)
3.What images in t his poem suggest Haiku poetry and what images are “modern”? (3%)
4.What is the effect of the parallel between lines one and two of the poem? And what
feeling and meaning does the poem express to you? (3%)
Part B
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference
Questions:
1. Who is the writer of this poem? (2%)
2. What is the title of this poem? (2%)
3. What kind of feeling does this stanza show? (3%)
4. How do you appreciate this poem? (3%)
Part A
1. Ezra Pound
2. In A Station of the Metro
3. Answer should comment on the parallel between the “modern” imagery (description of
urban crowds and transportation, loneliness) of the first line and the traditional “Oriental” imagery (budding flowers on a tree, wetness) of the second line.
4. What is the effect of the parallel between lines one and two of the poem? Describe the
stylistic result of the parallel and the feelings it evokes
Part B
1. Robert Frost
2. "the road not taken"
3. This poem is written in classic five-line stanzas, with the rhyme scheme a-b-a-a-b and
conversational rhythm. The poem seems to be about the poet, walking in the woods in autumn, choosing which road he should follow on his walk. In real?ity, it concerns the important decisions which one must make in life, when one must give up one desirable thing in order to possess another. Then, whatever the outcome, one must accept the consequences of one' s choice for it is not possible to go back and have another chance to choose differently.
4. In the poem, the poet hesitates for a long time, wondering which road to take, because
they are both pretty. In the end, he follows the one which seems to have fewer travelers on it. Symbolically, he chose to follow an unusual, solitary life; perhaps he was speaking of his choice to become a poet rather than some commoner profession. But he always remembers the road which he might have taken, and which would have given him a different kind of life.
Part A
I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loafe and invite my soul,
I learn and loa, fe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.
Questions:
1. These are the first two stanzas in the first section of a long poem entitled (2)
2. The name of the poet is___________ . (2)
3. Who is the poet celebrating? Whom do lines 2 ~ 3 also include in the celebra-tion? (2)
4. What is the verse, structure? (2)
5. Take the fifth line as a hint, can you write out the name of the poet' s completed collections of
poems? (2)
Part B
They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—
They smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made. . .
Questions:
1. Which novel is this passage taken from? (2)
2. Who is the writer of this novel? (2)
3. What is the author' s attitude toward such persons as Tom and Daisy? (6)
Part A
1. Song of Myself
2. Walt Whitman
3. The poet is celebrating himself, his own life. Lines 2-3 also include
"you" , the readers and their lives in the celebration.
4. free verse
5. Leaves of Grass
Part B
1. The Great Gatsby
2. F. Scott Fitzgerald
3. The author criticized them as selfish, hypocritical persons.
Part IV Comment. (40points, 20points for each)
Directions: In this part of the test, you are given three topics. Choose TWO of them and give a comment on the Answer Sheet. Scores will be given according to the content, grammar and the completeness of the related knowledge. If you comment on all the three topics, additional points will be given to your final marks.
https://www.360docs.net/doc/ef9877341.html,ment on Earnest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms, from the perspective of
the theme, the plot, the characters, and the writing styles.
https://www.360docs.net/doc/ef9877341.html,ment on Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie.
3.Why is Mark Twain considered the central figure in American fiction?
https://www.360docs.net/doc/ef9877341.html,m ent on Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom's Cabin.
1，Which writer or work do you connect with best, why?
The American writer F?Scott Fitzgerald’s fiction, The Great Gatsby is the work I connect with best. The fiction described the disillusion of the "American dream"
which pursued by a liquor upstart, Gatsby, and revealed the tragedy of American society. Gatsby and Daisy's love and the breakup could have been a very common love story. But the author compared the girl Gatsby fell in love with to the symbol of youth, money and status, as a means to the pursuit of material wealthy life, "American dream." Gatsby exhausted his feeling and intelligence to purse Daisy, and finally lost his life. He naively thought: the money can renew old dream and redeem the lost love. Unfortunately, he was wrong. He didn’t recogn ize Daisy the vulgar shallow woman. He misjudged the surface feasting and spiritual boredom society. He lived in his dream, then abandoned by Daisy, and snubbed by the society, and finally turned into a tragedy that can not be recovered. The fiction revealed social crisises deeply hidden behind the luxury through personal tragedy, criticized the essence of "American dream" and condemned Morality Undone and corruption prevailed in American society. It sounded the alarm to the world with Gatsby and Mattel's death, woke up people from the nothingness of the "American dream". It encouraged them to learn from the tragedy and come into the real life
with clear-headed thinking to reality and a more firm belief. The fiction makes me think further. Success should be achieved by ourselves with our own hardworking, courage, creativity and determination instead of the particular social class and other aid.
2. Choose one work and describe its theme and how it was related to society of that time.
The theme The Sun Also Rise is the existentialism which hidden in the life pictures Hemingway described. The existentialists believe that life is full of suffering, violence and crime. Thus "The world is absurd, life is painful and meaningless. In 1914, the First World War burst out; many American young people came to Europe with the dream of fighting for people’s peace, freedom and happiness. But what they saw on the battlefield was brutal killings and terrible deaths. Many people buried their lives in the war, which almost destroyed the survivals in physically and mentally. For them, the prevailing moral standards, ethics, ideals, etc., had all been destroyed by war. The turbulent post-war capitalist world and the deepening crisis, but also increase their sense of emptiness and morbid rebellious. In order to escape the hellish reality, they indulged themselves in drinking, dancing, chatting and dissolute sex life, wishing the stimulating life can cheer them up. However, this didn’t make them satisfied but make them far away from their regular life, sinking deeper into despair and unable to extricate themselves. Obviously, "the author had painted a picture of the post-war wasteland. The people lived in the wilderness not only riddled their bodies, but also made their spirits lost their homes. They lived painfully with no direction. The picture of wilderness is consistent with the existentialists’ view of the world, namely, “The world is absurd, and life is painful.” Besides, the young people’s struggling to finding the meaning in an meaningless life reflected the existentialist ideology that “existence precedes essence", and "free choice".
3.Why is Twain considered the central figure in American fiction?
Mark Twain was one of the main founders of 19th century American realistic literature, have made outstanding contributions in the theory and the style of fiction to the development of American literature. He advocated the creation of literary works with local flavor and suggested writers to start from their own familiar regions and use the language of the people to describing their lives and portray their characters and souls,. In his view, supposing writers follow this principle, the American people and the whole picture of American life will be faithfully displayed before the world. And only then, "the great American fiction" will be written.In many years after the founding the United States, almost all American writers were under the influence of traditional English literature. However Mark Twain broke this situation, creating a new p ath by the masses’ humor in the western region, colloquial style of American slang and a special way to tell a story. Mark Twain is considered a master of humorous language. His writing style created a precedent of colloquial language in American fiction, which had a tremendous impact on the later writers. All of his works are full of
humorous art. Mark Twain's humor is based on rich ideas and formed with the funny writing. It has not only rich philosophy about life but also strong artistic appeal, which shows his superb control on the language skills. He blends humor in with satire. There is not only filled with unique personal wit and witticism, but also no lack of profound social insight and analysis.