6 20th Century American Literature
6.1 20th Century American Poetry
I. Fill in the blanks
1. Imagism is a poetic movement of England and The United States, which flourished from________ to 1917.
2. Generally considered the leader of the imagist movement, _________ borrowed techniques from classical Chinese and Japanese poetry and produced poems stressing clarity, precision, and economy of language, and foregoing traditional rhyme and meter.
3. ________ by T. S. Eliot is regarded as a central text of modernism. It is said to catch precisely the state of culture and society after World War Ⅰand graphically illustrate the spiritual poverty of the West of that time.
4. Published in 1917, Prufrock and Other Observations immediately established T. S. Eliot as a leading poem of the avant-garde. The most notable poem in this collection is entitled __________.
5. In 1927 T. S. Eliot became a ___________citizen and converted from the Unitarian Church to the Church of England.
6. Among the imagists, ________ is credited with giving a female voice to classical myths.
7. Winner of the National Book Award in 1950 and the Pulitzer Prize in 1963, _________ is the author of the five-volume epic Paterson which is a lucid statement of the author‘s aesthetics.
8. The prose masterpiece of _________is the monumental biography Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years (two volumes, 1926) and Abraham Lincoln: The War Years (four volumes, 1939), the latter of which earned him the 1940 Pulitzer Prize in history.
9. __________ was successful in two different fields which seemed rather incompatible with each other: he was vice-president of an insurance company and a remarkable poet at the same time.
10. Besides poems, T. S. Eliot also wrote verse plays and he excelled in dramatic monologue. __________- is widely acknowledged as his best verse play which is based on the story of Thomas à Becket, a saint of the Roman Catholic Church of the ancient time.
11. The author of Audubon: A Vision is ________.
12. The author of The Far Field, and The North American Sequence is _________
13. The author of Howl is __________.
14. The author of Ariel, Lady Lazarus, The Bell Jar is _________
15. The author of Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law, Strom Warnings, and Orion is __________.
II. Multiple Choice.
1. Imagist poems are mainly composed in the form of _________.
A. blank verse
B. free verse
C. heroic couplet
D. sonnet
2. Imagism was equivalent to ________in fiction in a sense. Imagist never stated the emotion in the poem, but just presented an image: concrete, firm, and definite in picture.
A. naturalism
B. romanticism
C. modernism
D. surrealism
3. Exultations and Personae are poetic collections of ________. His last and greatest works is __________.
A. T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land
B. Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken
C. Ezra Pound, Cantos
D. Wallace Stevens, Anecdote of the Jar
4. Pioneer of modern American poetry, _________ did not only produce great poetry himself but also helped his contemporary poets including T. S. Eliot, H. D., and Robert Frost with their literary careers.
A. Robert Lowell
B. Edgar Allan Poe
C. Ezra Pound
D. William Carlos Williams
5. Which of the following poets is a Nobel Prize winner?
A. Ezra Pound
B. Robert Frost
C. T. S. Eliot
D. Wallace Stevens
6. To many who read Fog (1916), I Am the People, the Mob (1916), Grass (1918), and the 21 sections of Good Morning, America, ________ was successor to 19th-century poet Walt Whitman as the proclaimer of the American spirit.
A.T. S. Eliot
B. Ezra Pound
C. Robert Frost
D. Carl Sandburg
7. Four of Robert Frost‘s poetic collections were Pulitzer Prize winners. They are _________, Collected Poems, A Further Range, and A Witness Tree.
A. Paterson
B. New Hampshire
C. Cathay
D. Des Imagistes
8. E. A. Robinson wrote narrative poems based on Arthurian legends in his later life. The poems include __________, Lancelot, and Tristram.
A. Merlin
B. Guinevere
C. The Holy Grail
D. Camelot
9. Which of the following was not written by Robert Frost?
A. The Road Not Taken
B. After Apple-Picking
C. Birches
D. Richard Cory
10. E. A. Robinson produced a large body of works and was honored with the ________ Prize in 1922, 1925, and 1928.
A. National Book
B. National Critic Circle
C. Nobel
D. Pulitzer
11. Like T. S. Eliot, __________ mainly appealed to the taste of the so-called elites.
A.E. A. Robinson
B. Wallace Stevens
C.E. E. Cummings
D. Carl Sandburg
12. Which of the following was not written by E. A. Robinson?
A. Richard Cory
B. Mr. Flood’s Party
C. Miniver Cheevy
D. Chicago
13. Like Robert Frost, ________ was also noted for his use of a dry, sometimes biting, New England humor.
A. Carl Sandburg
B. Wallace Stevens
C. E. A. Robinson
D.
E. E. Cummings
14. Which of the following is not Carl Sandburg‘s works?
A. Carl Poems
B. Good Morning, America
C. The People, Yes
D. Criterion
15. Carl Sandburg was associated with the imagists and wrote well-known imagist poems such as ___________.
A. The Harbor
B. Merlin
C. Smoke and Steel
D. Camlot
16. The imagist poets followed three principles; they are ________, direct treatment and economy of expression.
A. blank verse
B. clear rhythm
C. free verse
D. everyday speech
17. T. S. Eliot was a __________.
A. playwright, critic and poet
B. critic, poet and novelist
C. novelist, essayist and poet
D. poet, novelist and politician
18._________ championed the imagist movement from 1912 to 1914, setting down the imagist principles. Then Amy Lowell led the movement into the period of ―Amygism,‖ as Pound called it, from 1914 to 1917.
A. T. S. Eliot
B. H. D.
C. Ezra Pound
D. Carl Sandburg
19. Of the following poets, who is NOT remembered as a confessional poet?
A. Anne Sexton
B. Sylvia Plath
C. Robert Lowell
D. Elizabeth Bishop
20. What is the title of the following poem by William Stafford?
―No sound —a spell—on, on out / where the wind went, our kite sent back / its thrill along the string that / sagged but sang and said, ?I‘ m here! I‘ m here!‘—till broke somewhere, / gone years ago, but sailed forever clear / of earth. I hold—whatever tugs / the other end—I hold the string.‖
A. A Lost Kite
B. Father and Son
C. I’ m Here
D. The String
21. Which figure of speech is NOT adopted in the following lines from a poem written by John Ashbery? ―This poem is concerned with language on a very plain level. / Look at it talking to you. You look out a window / or pretend to fidget. You have it but you don‘t have it. / You miss it, it misses you. You miss each other. ―
A. paradox
B. personification
C. simile
D. metaphor
22. Which of the following statements concerning Theodore Roethke‘s Cuttings is not correct?
―This urge, wrestle, resurrection of dry sticks, / Cut stems struggling to put down feet, / What saint strained so much, / Rose on such lopped limbs to a new life? /
I can hear, underground, that sucking and sobbing, / In my veins, in my bones I feel it, — / The small water seeping upward, / The tight grains parting at last. / When sprouts break out, / Slippery as fish, / I quail, lean to beginnings, heath-wet.‖
A. The first stanza focuses on a close observation of nature and describes the
spontaneous and organic life
B. Stanza Two focuses on what the speaker can here in the physical world
C. The speaker feels an intense sympathy for this sprouting of ―new life.‖
D. In this poem, the speaker witnesses the outer growth and then interiorizes it.
23. Which of the following poets is NOT a member of the New York School?
A. William Burroughs
B. John Ashbery
C. Frank O‘ Hara
D. Kenneth Koch
24. Which of the following poets is NOT member of the Black Mountain poets?
A. Robert Creeley
B. Robert Duncan
C. Theodore Roethke
D. Charles Olson
Ⅲ. Matching.
Poems Authors
1. Four Quarters a. Ezra Pound
2. Anecdote of a Jar b. H. D.
3. Oread c. Carl Sandburg
4. Chicago d. Wallace Stevens
5. Richard Cory e. Robert Frost
6. Mending Wall f. E. A. Robinson
7. Red Wheelbarrow g. William Carlos Williams
8. In a Station of the Metro h. T. S. Eliot
Ⅳ. Identification.
Passage 1
The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.
Questions:
1. What is the title of the poem?
2. What is the name of the poet?
3. What do ―petals‖ and ―bough‖ respectively stand for?
Passage 2
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I‘ve tasted of fire.
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great and would suffice.
Questions:
4. What is the title of the poem?
5. What is the name of the poet?
6. What do fire and ice respectively symbolize?
7. What does the poet think the world will end in?
Passage 3
So much depends
Upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.
Questions:
8. What is the title of the poem?
9. What is the name of the poet?
10. What is the most visually compelling word in each of the last three pairs of lines?
11. Is it an imagist poem? Why or why not?
Passage 4
I placed a jar in Tennessee,
And round it was, upon a hill
It made the slovenly wilderness
Surround that hill.
The wilderness rose up to it,
And sprawled around, no longer wild.
The jar was round upon the ground
And tall and of a port in air.
It took dominion everywhere.
The jar was gray and bare.
It did not give bird or bush,
Like nothing else in Tennessee.
Questions:
12. What is the title of the poem?
13. What is the name of the poet?
14. What does the jar in the poem symbolize?
15. What effect does the jar have on surroundings when placed on the ground? Passage 5
Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in on-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question…
Oh, do not ask, ―What is it?‖
Let us go and make our visit.
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
Questions:
16. What is the title of the poem?
17. What is the name of the poet?
18. What is the name of the speaker? What does he/she represent?
19. What social class do the women belong to?
20. What poetic device is notably applied in the whole poem? Passage 6
Miniver Cheevy, child of scorn,
Grew lean while he assailed the seasons;
He wept that he was ever born,
And he had reasons.
Miniver loved the days of old
When swords were bright and steeds were prancing;
The vision of a warrior bold
Would set him dancing.
…
Miniver Cheevy, born too late,
Scratched his head and kept on thinking;
Miniver coughed, and called it fate,
And kept on drinking.
Questions:
21. What poem is the passage taken from?
22. What is the name of the poet?
23. What does Miniver Cheevy regret that he was born too late?
24. What does he indulge himself in drinking?
Passage 7
Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold and polished my good shoes as well. what did I know, what did I know
of love‘s austere and lonely offices?
Questions:
25. Identify the poem and the poet.
Passage 8
I am the lover and the loved,
home and wanderer, she who splits
firewood and she who knocks, a stranger
in the storm
Questions:
26. Who is the author of the poem?
Passage 9
From my mother‘s sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose. Questions:
27. Identify the poem and the poet.
Passage 10
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night…
Questions:
28. Identify the poem and the poet.
Passage 11
The Walking
by Theodore Roethke
I wake to sleep, and take my waling slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.
We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.
Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me, so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.
This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.
Questions:
29. Identify the type of poem and discuss how Roethke varies the refrain in The Waking?
Ⅴ. Literary Terms.
1. Imagism 4. Black Mountain poets
2. Free verse 5. The Beat Generation
3. Confessional poetry 6. The New York School
Ⅵ. Questions and Answers
1. Name at least three imagist poets.
2. What are the major characteristics of imagist poetry?
3. What is the theme of The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot?
4. Read the poem and answer the questions:
Delta
By Adrienne Rich
If you have taken this rubble for my past
Raking through it for fragments you could see
Know that I long ago moved on
Deeper into the heart of the matter
If you think you can grasp me, think again:
My story flows in more than one direction
a delta springing from the riverbed
with its five fingers spread
Questions:
(1) How does the speaker of Delta describe herself and her past? In what sense has she ―moved on‖ beyond the ―rubble‖?
(2) Explain the poem‘s title.
5. Read four stanzas of the poem and answer the questions:
Cinderella
By Anne Sexton
You always read about it:
The plumber with twelve children
Who wins the Irish Sweepstakes.
From toilets to riches.
That story.
Or the nursemaid,
Some luscious sweet from Denmark
Who captures the oldest son‘s heart.
From diapers to Dior.
That story.
Or a milkman who serves the wealthy,
Eggs, cream, butter, yogurt, milk,
The white truck like an ambulance
Who goes into real estate
And make a pile.
From homogenized to martinis at lunch.
Or the charwoman
Who is on the bus when it cracks up
And collects enough from the insurance.
From mops to Bonwit Teller.
That story.
Questions:
(1) The poem begins with the description of some episodes. What do these episodes have in common?
(2) How does Sexton‘s refrain of ―that story‖ alter the meaning of the episodes it describes? What is the tone of the poem?
6. Read the poem and answer the questions:
The Unknown Citizen
by W. H. Auden
(To JS/07 M 378 This Marble Monument Is Erected by the State)
He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be
One against whom there was no official complaint,
And all the reports on this conduct agree
That, in the modern sense of an old-fashioned word, he was a saint,
For in everything he did he served the Greater Community.
Except for the War till the day he retired
He worked in a factory and never got fired,
But satisfied his employers, Fudge Motors Inc.
Yet he wasn‘t a scab or odd in his views,
For his Union reports that he paid his dues,
(Our report on his Union shows it was sound)
And our Social Psychology workers found
That he was popular with his mates and liked a drink.
The Press is convinced that he bought a paper every day
And that his reactions to advertisements were normal in every way.
Policies taken out in his name prove that he was fully insured,
And his Health-card shows he was once in a hospital but left it cured.
Both Producers Research and High-Grade Living declare
He was fully sensible to the advantages of the Installment Plan
And had everything necessary to the Modern Man,
A phonograph, a radio, a car and a frigidaire.
Our researchers into Public Opinion are content
That he held the proper opinions for the time of year;
When there was peace, he was for peace; when there was war, he went.
He was married and added five children to the population,
Which our Eugenist says was the right interfered with their education.
And our teachers report that he never interfered with their education.
Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd:
Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.
Questions:
(1) Describe at least four ways in which the unknown citizen was found to be ―ideal. ―
(2) What is ironic about the last two lines of the poem?
(3) Basically, what is this poem criticizing?
7. Read the four stanzas taken from a poem and answer the questions:
Lady Lazarus
by Sylvia Plath
I have done it again
One year in every ten
I manage it—
A sort of walking miracle, my skin
Bright as a Nazi lampshade,
My right foot
A paperweight,
My face a featureless, fine
Jew linen.
Peel of the napkin
O My enemy.
Do I terrify? —
Questions:
(1) What does the poet want to convey in this poem?
(2) Discuss the Confessional poetry with reference to this poem.
8. Read the poem and answer the questions:
Maximus, to Himself
I have had to learn the simplest things
last. Which made for difficulties.
Even at sea I was slow, to get the hand out, or to cross
a wet deck.
The sea was not, finally, my trade.
But even my trade, at it, I stood estranged
from that which was most familiar. Was delayed,
and not content with the man‘s argument
that such postponement
is now the nature of
obedience,
that we are all late
in a slow time,
that we grow up many
And the single
is not easily
known
Question:
The lines are taken from the poem by Charles Olson. He once said, ―A poem is energy transferred from where the poet got it…by way of the poem itself to, all the wa y over to, to reader.‖ He has proposed ―open form‖ in his influential essay ―projective verse‖. Analyze the features of such form with reference to the lines above.
VII. Essay Question.
Discuss Robert Frost‘s poetic style.
6.2 Modernism and 20th Century Fiction
I. Fill in the blanks.
1. The term ―the lost generation‖ stems from a remark made by_______ to Ernest Hemingway, ―You are all a lost generation.‖
2. The author of The Grapes of Wrath is_______
3. The impact of Darwin‘s evolutionary theory on the Ame rican thought and the influence of the nineteenth century French literature on the American men of letters gave rise to another school of realism: American________.
4. ________is an element which recurs in a literary work, or across literary works.
5. ________is a literary device used when a character reveals his or her innermost thoughts and feelings, those that are hidden throughout the course of the story line, through a poem or a speech.
6. _______is a character in a story or poem who deceives, frustrates, or works again the main character.
7. _______is a reference in a literary work to a person, place, or thing in history or another work of literature.
8. _______refers to hints of what is to come in the action of a play or a story.
9. The author of Main Street is__________.
10. The famous French philosopher ________wrote serious, highly complimentary criticism on William Faulkner‘s work, saying that the latter‘s novels were experiments with time.
11. The Sound and the Fury has _______section with ________different narrators. The daughter of the Compson family named_______, who is the only one capable of loving among the Compson children, appears in all the narratives.
12. William Faulkner was awarded _______for literature in 1950 because he created a symb olic picture of the remote past ―to retell the recurrent story of human dreams, bravely and defeat, to make a statement about the past and use that statement to talk
about man‘s lot in his world.‖
13. The Hamlet, The Town and _______by William Faulkner compose The Snopes Trilogy about the rising bourgeoisies.
14. ________wrote about the society in the South by inventing families which represented different social forces: the old decaying upper class; the rising, ambitious unscrupulous class of the ―Poor Whites‖; and the Negroes who labored for both of them.
15. The title of The Sound and the Fury comes from the speech of the title character in Shakespeare‘s play_______.
16. In William Faulkner‘s novel_______, ________, one of the narrators in The Sound and the Fury tells the story of the Sutpens family under the request of his fellow students at college.
17. Like some of his peers, _________ joined the Royal Canadian Air Force World War I but never saw battle action.
18. William Faulkner‘s novel __________tel ls the story of a family‘s journey to bury
a mother.
19. Two writers played important roles in making Faulkner what he later became. ________helped him to write and publish his first novel Soldier’s Pay and ________was his idol and inspired him to write creatively.
20. _________by William Faulkner writes about how a young man, who is not sure of his racial status, contradicts with prevailing social values and how he suffers from alienation and isolation.
II. Matching.
1. Match the names of the writers with their works.
(1) Martin Eden a. Zora Neale Hurston
(2) Babbit b. Saul Bellow
(3) Ida, a Novel c. Eugene O‘ Neill
(4) Trifles d. Edward Albee
(5) The Emperor Jones e. Ernest Hemingway
(6) Their Eyes Were Watching God f. Susan Glaspell
(7) Cane g. John Steinbeck
(8) The Adventure of Augie March h. Pearl S. Buck
(9) Men without Women i. Jack London
(10) American Dream j. Dos Passo
(11) East of Eden k. Gertrude Stein
(12) The Good Earth l. Jean Toomer
(13) The 42th Parallel m. Sinclair Lewis
2. The following author mainly wrote after the end of WWⅡ. Match the names of the writers with their works.
(1) James Jones a. Catch-22
(2) Joyce Carol Oates b. Good-by Columbus
(3) Flannery O‘ Connor c. The Crying of Lot 49
(4) Joseph Heller d. Cat’s Cradle
(5) Thomas Pynchon e. The Sot-Weed Factor
(6) Carson McCullers f. A Thousand Acers
(7) Truman Capote g. Unholy Loves
(8) Philip Roth h. The Heat is a Lonely Hunter
(9) Jane Smiley i. Lolita
(10) John Barth j. A Good Man Is Hard to Find
(11) Kurt V onnegut k. From Here to Eternity
(12) Vladimir Nabokov l. Other Voices, Other Rooms
3. Match the quotations with the figures of speech.
(1) ―My love is like a red, red rose.‖ a. Onomatopoeia
(2) ―One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.‖ b. Assonance
(3) ―The yellow leaves flaunted their color gaily in the breeze.‖ c. Hyperbole
(4) ―When Ajax strives some rock‘s va st weight to throw,
The line too labors, and the words move slow.‖ d. Metonymy
(5) ―We have always remained loyal to the crown.‖ e. Personification
(6) ―Go and Catch a Falling Star.‖ f. Simile
(7) ―How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick, /
Till rising and gliding out I wander‘d off by myself.‖g. Alliteration
(8) ―Fetched fresh, as I suppose, off some sweet wood.‖ h. Understatement
4. Match the following novel by William Faulkner with the families characterized in them.
Novels Families
(1) The Sound and the Fury a. the Sutpens
(2) Go Down, Moses b. the Compsons
(3) Absalom, Absalom c. the Bundren
(4) The Town d. the McCaslins
(5) As I Lay Dying e. the Snopes
(6) Sartoris f. the Sartorises
III. Multiple Choice.
1. Which of the following works is NOT written by Willa Cather?
A. The Song of the Lark
B.O Pioneers
C. House of Mirth
D. Shadows on the rock
2. Of the following American writers, who has NOT been an expatriate in Paris?
A. Ernest Hemingway
B. Sherwood Anderson
C. F.S. Fitzgerald D .Emily Dickinson
3. Which of the following techniques is NOT typical of Gertrude Stein‘s?
A. Automatic writing
B. minimalist style
C. frequent use of repetition and reiteration
D. Circular movement in story-telling
4. Which of the following works by Willa Cather shows Thea Kronberg finding spiritual renewal in the American Southwest?
A.O Pioneer!
B. The Song of the Lark
C. Death comes for the Archbishop
D. Shadows on the rock
5. Which of the following statements concerning Willa Cather is NOT true?
A. Estrangement from conventional sexuality and sex roles is typical of Cather‘s
main characters.
B. O Pioneers represents the first stage of Cather‘s literary life centering around the
theme of manhood
C. Books from her middle period include A Lost Lady (1923) and The Professor’s
House (1925); both deal with spiritual and cultural crises in the lives of their main characters.
D. Death comes for the Archbishop, a work that initiates her third stage and is set in
nineteenth-century New Mexico, evokes the solidity of a vanished past.
6. In which of the works of Hemingway does the character Santiago occur?
A. In Our Time
B. The Old Man and the sea
C. For whom the Bell Tolls
D. The Sun Also Rises
7. Which of the fol lowing statements concerning the role of the sea in Hemingway‘s novella The Old Man and the Sea is NOT correct?
A. Through the protagonist‘s interactions with the sea, his character emerges.
B. The sea provides glimpses of the depth of the protagonist‘s knowledge.
C. His strength, resolve and pride are measured in terms of how far out into the gulf
he sails.
D. The sea symbolizes the benevolent side of nature.
8. The Hemingway code heroes are best remembered for their ____.
A. indestructible spirit
B. pessimistic view of life
C. war experiences
D. masculinity
9. Which of the following statements concerning Ernest Hemingway is NOT true?
A. War, hunting, human dignity and triumph have been recurring motifs in
Hemingway‘s works.
B. His work is preoccupied with the cultural and psychological meanings of
femininity
C. Hemingway identified the rapid change in women‘s status after WWI and the
general blurring of sex roles that accompanied the new sexual freedom
D. As Hemingway aged, his interest in exclusively masculine forms of
self-assertion and self-definition became more pronounced.
10. Which of the following is Hemingway‘s Spanish Civil War novel?
A. A Farewell to Arms
B. The Sun Also Rises
C. For whom the Bell Tolls
D. The Old Man and the sea
11. Who has made the statement that all modern American literature comes from a
single book called The Adventure of Huckleberry Finn?
A. Ernest Hemingway
B. William Faulkner
C. F Scott Fitzgerald
D. T.S. Eliot
12. Who was the first American author that won the Nobel Prize in 1930?
A. Toni Morrison
B. Ernest Hemingway
C. Sinclair Lewis
D. John Steinbeck
13. Which of the following statements concerning Sherwood Anderson is NOT true?
A. His longer fiction is well known for its complex unity.
B. He embraced simplicity and directness of style.
C. He made attractive the use of the point of view of outsider characters as a way of
criticizing conventional society.
D. He presents in his short stories a slice of life or a significant moment as opposed
to panorama and summary.
14. Which of the following statements concerning which of the following statements concerning Winesburg, Ohio is NOT true?
A. The book consists of many individual tales with a loose but coherent structure.
B. The lives of a number of people living in the town are observed by the na?ve
adolescent George Willard.
C. The book ends with the death of George‘s mother and his departure from
Winesburg.
D. Through first person point of view, the book enables the reader to see how the
lives of the characters have been profoundly distorted by the frustration and suppression of so many of their desires.
15. ―There was music from my neighbor‘s house through the summer nights. In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars…‖ This quotation is taken from ______.
A. Moby Dick by Herman Melville
B. Daisy Miller by Henry James
C. Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser
D. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
16. Strong affinity to the Chinese and oriental literature can be found in the works of ______.
A. Mark Twain
B. Ezra Pound
C. Henry James
D. Arthur Miller
17. Which of the following statements is NOT true in describing American naturalists?
A. they used more serious and sympathetic tone in writing than realists.
B. they were deeply influenced by Darwinism.
C. they were identified with French novelist and theorist Emile Zola.
D. they chose their subjects from lower ranks of society.
18. F. Scott Fitzgerald is NOT the author of _____.
A. Tender is the Night
B. This Side of Paradise
C. The Beautiful and Damned
D. In Our Time
19. Among the following writers, who is often acclaimed literary spokesman of the
Jazz Age?
A. William Faulkner
B. F. Scott Fitzgerald
C. Henry James
D. Eugene O‘Neill
20. ―Nick Adams‖ is a character who frequently appears in _______‘s stories.
A. William Faulkner
B. Theodore Dreiser
C. Mark Twain
D. Ernest Hemingway
21. Nick‘s night trip to the Indian village and his experience inside the hut can be taken as _____.
A. an initiation to pain and suffering
B. a confrontation with evil and sin
C. an essential lesson about Indian Tribes
D .a learning process of human connections
22. _______ is a school of modern painting, whose emphasis is on the formal structure of work of art and especially on the multiple perspective viewpoints.
A. expressionism
B. impressionism
C. cubism
D. imagism
23. Which of the following works by Katherine Anne Porter is a novel?
A. Pale Horse, Pale Rider
B. The Learning Tower
C. Ship of Fools
D. The Big Tree
24. The author of Flowering Judas is ______.
A. Susan Glaspell
B. Katherine Anne Porter
C. Willa Cather
D. Edith Wharton
25. Which of the following American writers has NOT been a Nobel Prize winner?
A. F. Scott Fitzgerald
B. Ernest Hemingway
C. William Faulkner
D. John Steinbeck
26. Which of the following is NOT a southern writer in the USA?
A. Saul Bellow
B. Tennessee Williams
C. Eudora Welty
D. Flannery O‘Connor
27. It was The Viking Portable Faulkner edited by ______in 1946 that first brought Faulkner to critical attention.
A. Malcolm Cowley
B. Phil Stone
C. Sherwood Anderson
D. Gertrude Stein
28. ______was the foremost American southern writer of the 20th century with nineteen novels, four collections of about seventy short stories, and two volumes of poetry under his name.
A. Katherine Ann Porter
B. Eudora Welty
C. Flannery O‘Connor
D. William Faulkner
29. Faulkner‘s prose varies from _____,regional to ______diction and cadences of American speech.
A. colloquial
B. flowery
C. formal
D. grammatical
30. The fictional place that bears marked similarities to the town where _______had been raised was called by himself his ―little postage stamp of native soil‖.
A. William Styron
B. Mark Twain
C. William Faulkner
D. John Barth
31. William Faulkner, a preeminent figure in 20th-century American literature, is known for his novels about the conflict between the old, pre-Civil War South and ______.
A. the industrial North
B. the new South
C. the post-Civil War North
D. the country as a whole
32. Of all Faulkner‘s novels, The Sound and the Fury, _______and Go Down, Moses are masterpieces by any literary standards.
A. The Wrath of the Grapes
B. The old man and the sea
C. Absalom, Absalom!
D. The Great Gatsby
33. Which of the following is NOT Faulkner‘s works?
A. The Marble Faun
B. Sanctuary
C. Mosquitoes
D. Death of a Salesman
34. Which of the following is NOT a theme of The Sound and the Fury?
A. The decline of a family
B. The South vs. the North
C. The past vs. the present
D. racial problems
35. Faulkner once said that The Sound and the Fury is the tragedy of two women. He was referring to _____
A. Caddy and her daughter
B. Caroline Compson and her daughter
C. Dilsey and her daughter
D. Caddy and Dilsey
36. The major themes of As I Lay Dying are _____and ______.
A. the uselessness of words when separated from action
B. the control the living have over the dead
C. the individual‘s isolation from others within a community
D. racial hatred
37. In As I Lay Dying, Anse wants to go to Jefferson to _____and _____.
A. fulfill his promise to Addie
B. look for a new wife
C. get some false teeth
D. send his second son to the asylum
38. In writing Absalom, Absalom!, Williams Faulkner was inspired by many things. But one of his inspirations was the story of King David and his son Absalom in the ______.
A. Greek mythology
B. Roman mythology
C. the Bible
D. American history
39. ________is about Thomas Sutpen‘s attempt to found a southern dynasty.
A. Soldier’s Pay
B. Absalom, Absalom!
C. The Sound and the Fury
D. Light in August
IV. Literary Terms.
1. Camera eye 7.Collage
2. Expressionism 8. The lost Generation
3. Free association 9. Modernism
4. Free indirect discourse 10. Interior monologue
5. Scream of consciousness 11. Multiple point of view
6. Avant-garde
V. Identification.
1. 1. Identify the genre of each of the following works and gives the full names of
the author.
(1) In Dubious Battle
(2) Arrowsmith
(3) The Golden Apples
(4) Herzog
(5) The naked and the Dead
(6) Rabbit Redux
2. Indentify the sources of the following quotations. Give the names of the books and their authors.
(1)‖ I had seen nothing sacred, and the things that were glorious had no glory and the sacrifices were like the stockyards at Chicago if nothing was done with the meat except to bury it. There were many words that you could not stand to hear and finally only the names of places had dignity. Certain numbers were the same way and certain dates and these with the names of the places were all you could say and have them mean anything. Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene beside the concrete of villages, the numbers of roads, the names of rivers, the numbers of regi ments and the dates.‖
(2) ―You did not kill the fish only to keep alive and to sell for food，he thought. You killed him for pride and because you are a fisherman. You loved him when he was alive and you him after, it is not a sin to kill him. Or is it mor e?‖
(3) ―When it came to concealing his troubles, Tommy Wilhelm was not less capable than the next fellow. So at least he thought and there is a certain amount of evidence to back him up. He had once been an actor---no, not quite, an extra----and he knew w hat acting should be.‖
(4) ―…I‘m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff----I mean if they‘re running and they don‘t look where they‘re going I have to come out from somewher e and catch them. That‘s all I‘d do all day. I‘d just be the catcher in the rye and all.‖
(5) George Willard, the Ohio village boy, was fast growing into manhood and new thoughts had been coming into his mind. All that day, amid the jam of people at the Fair, he had gone about feeling lonely. He was about to leave Winesburg to go away to some city where he hoped to get to work on a city newspaper and he felt grown-up. The mood that had taken possession of him as a thing known to men and unknown to boys. He felt old and a little tired. Memories awoke in him. To his mind his new sense of maturity set him apart, made of him a half-tragic figure. H e wanted someone to understand the feeling that had taken possession of him after his mother‘s death.
(6) ―?Do ladies always have such a hard time having babies?‘ Nick asked. ?No, that was very, very exceptional.‘ ?Why did he kill himself, Daddy?‘ ?I don‘t know, Nick.
He couldn‘t stand things, I guess‘.‖
(7) ―If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures,then there was something gorgeous about him, some extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person and which it is not likely I shall ever find again.‖
3. Identify the following passages and answer the questions.
Passage 1
Then we noticed that in the second pillow was the indentation of a head. One of us lifted something from it, and leaning forward, that faint and invisible dust dry and acrid in the nostrils, we saw a long strand of iron-gray hair.
Question:
(1) Which short story is this passage taken from?
(2) What is the identity of the narrator is?
(3) Whose is the iron-gray hair?
(4) What causes the indentation in the pillow?
(5) Is the story a tragedy or a comedy?
Passage2
We went along the fence and came to the garden fence, where our shadows were. My shadow was higher than luster‘s on the fence. We came to the broken place and went through it.
―Wait a minute.‖ Luster said. ―You snagged on that nail again. Can‘t you never crawl through here without snagging on that nail.‖
Caddy uncaught me and we crawled through. Uncle Maury said to not let anybody see us, so we better stoop over, Caddy said. Stoop over. Benjy. Like this, see. We stooped over and crossed the garden, where the flowers rasped and rattled against us…
―It‘s too cold out there.‖ Versh said. ―You don‘t want to go out doors.‖Questions:
(6) Which novel is this passage taken from?
(7) Who is the narrator?
(8) What is the relationship between Benjy and Caddy?
(9) What technique is used in this passage?
VI. Questions and answer.
1. What is the type of heroes in Hemingway‘s novels?
2. ―He pulled back the blanket from the Indian‘s head. His hand came away wet. He mounted on the edge of the lower bunk with the lamp in one hand and looked in. the Indian lay with his face toward the wall. His throat had been cut from ear to ear. The blood had flowed down into a pool where his body sagged the bunk. His head rested on his left arm. The open razor lay, edge up, in the blankets.‖
The passage is taken from _______written by _____-. And what does‖ where his body sagged the bunk‖ mean? Who is ―he‖ mentioned in the quoted passage? 3. ―The caterwauling horns had reached a crescendo and I turned away and cut across the lawn toward home. I glanced back once. A wafer of a moon was shining over Gatsby‘s house, making the night fine as before, and surviving the laughter and the
sound of his still glowing garden. A sudden emptiness seemed to flow the windows and the great doors, endowing with complete isolation the figure of the host, who stood on the porch, his hand up in a formal gesture of farewell.‖
The author is ____-, and the title of the novel is ____.
What is the setting of the novel? What implied meaning can you get from this passage?
4. Why was Fi tzgerald regarded as spokesman of the ―Jazz Age‖?
5. ―I hope she‘ll be a fool-that‘s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.‖
Who is the speaker in the quotation? What does the quote reveal about his/her character?
6. ―He had o ne of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced, or seemed to face, the whole external world for an instant and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself.‖
The author is ____and the title of the novel is _____.
Who is ―he‖? What does his smile reveal about ―his‖ character?
7. What is Wilhelm‘s basic struggle in Saul Bellow‘s Seize the day?
8. Where did William Faulkner usually locate his stories? What does the place stand for?
9. List at least three William Faulkner‘s themes.
10. List at least three writing technique that William Faulkner applied to full advantage.
11. Name at least three American Southern writers.
VII. Essay Questions.
1. Discuss Hemingway‘s ―iceberg principle‖ of writing.
2. Compared with earlier writings, especially those of the 19th century, what are the characteristics of modern American writings?
3. Discuss Gatsby‘s character as Nick perceives him throughout the novel. What makes Gatsby ―great‖?
4. In what way is William Faulkner called a southern writer?
5. Why William Faulkner is considered by critics a great avant-garde experimenter?
6. Discuss how Benjy, Jason, and Quentin differ as narrators in The Sound and the Fury?
6.3 20th Century American Drama
I. Fill in the blanks.
1. Of all the plays that O‘Neill wrote, most of them are _____, dealing with the basic issues of human existence and predicament as life and death.
2. _____is the American playwright who won the Nobel Prize in 1936.
3. A type of comedy which depends upon ridiculous situations, exaggerated character types, coarse humour, and horseplay for its comic effects is called_____.
4. The final outcome of the main complication in a play or story is called_______.