《美国文学》期末考试试卷（B 卷）
适用班级 考试时间 120 分钟
1. Poor Richard’s Almanac ( )
2. The House of the Seven Gables ( )
3. “Raven ” ( )
4. My Antonia ( )
5. Babbitt ( )
6. A Streetcar Named Desire ( )
7. Maggie: A Girl of the Streets ( )
8. A Farewell to Arms ( )
9. The Call of the Wild ( )
10. Long Day's Journey into Night ( ) 11. Common Sense ( )
12. “Rip Van Winkle ”( ) 13. Walden ( )
14. The Song of Hiawatha ( ) 15. Uncle Tom ’s Cabin ( )
16. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn ( ) 17. Sister Carrie ( ) 18. The Waste Land ( ) 19. A Farewell to Arms ( ) ( ) Ⅱ. Choose FIVE of the following and fill in the blanks.
(10%)
1. defined poetry as the rhythmical creation of beauty.
2. While working for the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, Samuel Langhorne
Clemens adopted the pseudonym , the way of a boatman taking soundings, and meaning two fathoms.
3. Ezra Pound initiated a campaign for , which emphasized the direct
treatment of an object or situation. He also advocated the language of common speech, but always the exact word.
4. Fitzgerald summarized the experiences and attitudes of the 1920s decade in his
masterpiece novel _________.
5.is the first American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature for his
vigorous and graphic art of description and his ability to create, with wit and humor, new types of characters.
6.The first of American literature was not written by an American, but by
___________________, a British captain, who thus became the first American writer.
7._________________ has been considered the “Father of modern American Poetry.\
8._______________________was a great democratic poet. He is also the great poet to
use the form of free verse.
9._____________________is the first American lyric poet.
10._______________________is also called novel of the road, it strings the incidents
’s travel.
Ⅲ. Choose only one answer form the four choices as the most
appropriate answer. (30%)
1. In American literature, the eighteenth century was the age of the Enlightenment,
_______________ was the dominant spirit.
A. Humanism
B. Rationalism
C. Revolution
D. Evolution
2. Who was considered as the “Poet of American Revolution”?
A. Michael Wigglesworth
B. Edward Taylor
C. Anne Bradstreet
D. Philip Freneau
3. The finest example of Hawthorne’s symbolism is the recreation of Puritan Boston in
_______.
A. The Scarlet Letter
B. Young Goodman Brown
C. The Marble Faun
D. The Ambitious Guest
4. ____________ was the most leading spirit of the Transcendental Club.
A. Thoreau
B. Emerson
C. Hawthorne
D. Whitman
5. Choose the work NOT written by Mark Twain.
A. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
B. Innocents Abroad
C. Life on the Mississippi
D. The Rise of Silas Lapham
6. Which is regarded as the “Declaration of Intellectual Independence”?
A. The American Scholar
B. English Traits
C. The Conduct of Life
D. Representative Men
7. Melville’s ____________________ is an encyclopedia of everything, history,
philosophy, religion, etc, in addition to a detailed account of the operations of the whaling industry.
A. The Old Man and the Sea
B. Moby Dick
C. White Jacket
D. Billy Budd
8. American literature produced only one female poet during the nineteenth century. This
was ___________.
A. Anne Bradstreet
B. Jane Austen
C. Emily Dickinson
D. Harriet Beecher
9. The main theme of _______________ The Art of Fiction reveals his literary credo that
representation of life should be the main object of the novel.
A. Henry James’
B. William Dean Howells’
C. Mark Twain’s
D. O. Henry’s
10. ___________ 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
11. With William Dean Howells, Henry James, and Mark Twain active on the scene,
_______ became the major trend in the seventies and eighties of the nineteenth century.
A. sentimentalism
B. romanticism
C. realism
D. naturalism
12. Ezra Pound's long poem____________ contained more than one hundred poems
loosely connected.
A. The Waste Land
B. The Cantos
C. Don Juan
D. Queen Mab
13. In Paris, Ernest Hemingway, along with _____________, accomplished a revolution
in literary style and language.
A. Gertrude Stein
B. Ezra Pound
C. James Joyce
D. all of the above
14. __________ 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
15. The two areas on which the modem American writers concentrated their criticism
were the failures of American society and ___________ .
A. the failure of communication among Americans
B. the economic depression
C. the extreme prosperity of America
the paradise of New Land
IV. Choose TEN of the following and decide whether the
statements are true or false. (10%)
1 All his literary life, Hawthorne seemed to be haunted by his sense of sin and evil in
life.
2. Most of the poems in Leaves of Grass are about love and religion.
3.The First World War led the American intellectuals to a bitter disillusionment.
4. Hemingway’s works have someti mes been read as an essentially negative
commentary on a modern world filled with sterility, failure, and death.
5.Mark Twain’s region was the Deep South, with its bitter h istory of slavery, civil war
and destruction.
6. Ernest Hemingway developed a spare, tight, reportorial prose based on simple sentence structure and using a restricted vocabulary, precise imagery, and an impersonal, dramatic tone.
7.John Steinbeck' s theme was usually that simple human virtues such as kindness and
fair treatment were far superior to official hard-heartedness, or the dehumanizing cruelty of exploiters for their own commercial advantage.
8. Short-lived, the Imagist movement failed to exert a tremendous influence on modern
poetry.
9. Robert Frost won four Nobel Prizes in his life.
10.In his novels, F. Scott Fitzgerald had revealed the stridency of an age of glittering
innocence, he had portrayed the hollowness of the American worship of riches and the unending American dream of love, splendor and fulfilled desires.
11.Of Plymouth Plantation was written by William Bradford.
12.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”.
13.Deists believed in a Creator God, but rejected providence(Godly direction) and
revelation (divine will or Godly "truth")in favor of reason.
14..President Lincoln praised Anne Bradstreet as “the little woman who wrote the book
that made this great war.”
15.Edgar Allan Poe wrote two poems both entitled “ To Helen”.
16.The thinking of Locke, Hobbes, and Rousseau also greatly influenced the active
thinking of Americans who became increasingly concerned with the possibility of
building a government. Locke and Rousseau represented the impulse for a Jeffersonian democracy, and Hobbes represented the point of view, often expressed by Hamilton, of a strong central government.
17.Hemingway, Pound, Cummings, Dos Passos, and Fitzgerald, belong to the school of
“Beat Generation”.
18.F. Scott Fitzgerald is called the leader and poet laureate of the Jazz Age who wrote the
novels of the Jazz Age.
19.Yoknapatawpha saga is a name for John Steinbeck’s novels.
” is a word Bryant borrowed from Greek meaning “meditation on death”.
V. Choose THREE of the following fragments and answer the
questions. (20%)
Passage One
Lo! in you brilliant window-niche
How statue-like I see thee stand,
The agate lamp within thy hand!
Ah, Psyche, from the regions which
Are Holy-Land!
Questions:
1. This is the last stanza of a poem “To Helen”. Its writer is
____________________.(1%)
2. With whom is Helen associated in this stanza? (1%)
3. How to appreciate the beauty of this poem? (3%)
Passage 2
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? (1%)
2. What is the title of this poem? (1%)
3. What kind of feeling does this stanza show? (3%)
4. How do you appreciate this poem? (3%)
Passage 3
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and
suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion. For most men, it appears to me, are in a strange uncertainty about it, whether it is of the devil or of God. Questions:
1. This passage is taken from a famous work entitled _________ . (1%)
2. The author of the work is____________ . (1%)
3.List by yourself at least five reasons that the author gives for going to live in the
woods. (5%)
Passage 4
But, on one side of the portal（入口），and rooted almost at the threshold, was a wild rose-bush, covered, in this month of June, with its delicate gems, which might be imagined to offer their fragrance and fragile beauty to the prisoner as he went in, and to the condemned criminal as he came forth to his doom, in token that the deep heart of Nature could pity and be kind to him.
Questions:
1.This part is from the novel , written by . (2%)
2.What does “the wild rose bush” symbolize according to your opinion? (5%)
Passage 5
Often I think of the beautiful town
That is seated by the sea;
Often in thought go up and down
The pleasant streets of that dear old town,
And my youth comes back to me.
And a verse of a Lapland song
Is haunting my memory still:
"A boy's will is the wind's will,
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts." Questions:
1.The stanza is taken from the poem________________?(1%)
2.The author of the poem is____________ . (1%)
3.The seventh line in each Stanza of this poem contains a key word, usually a
verb, which sums up the feeling established in the stanza. What is the verb and
what kind feeling that it conveys?(4%)
Passage 6
Thou hast an house on high erect,
Framed by that mighty Architect,
With glory richly furnished,
Stands permanent though this be fled.
It’s purchased and paid for too
By Him who hath enough to do.
Questions:
1.This stanza is taken from the poem
__________________________by____________.(2%)
2.What is one’s real house according to the poet? (5%)
VI. Choose TWO of the following and Comment on them. (20%)
1. Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter. （10%）
2. Emily Dickinson's “Because I Could not stop for Death”.（10%）
3. Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Self-Reliance.（10%）
《美国文学》期末考试试卷B卷答案暨评分标准
适用班级060511-3 考试时间120 分钟
Ⅰ. Choose TEN of the following works and write the names of the authors. (1*10=10%)
1.Benjamin Franklin
2.Nathaniel Hawthorne
3.Edgar Allan Poe
4.Willa Cather
5.Sinclair Lewis
6.Tennessee Williams
7.Stephen Crane
8.Ernest Hemingway
9.Jack London
10.Eugene O’Neill
11.Thomas Paine
12.Washington Irving
13.Henry David Thoreau
14.Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
15.Harriet Beecher Stowe
16.Mark Twin
17.Theodore Dreiser
18.T.S. Eliot
19.Ernest Hemingway
20.F. Scott Fitzgerald
Ⅱ. Choose FIVE of the following and fill in the blanks. (2*5=10%)
1.Edgar Allan Poe
2.Mark Twain
3.Imagism
4.The Great Gatsby
5.Sinclair Lewis
6.John Smith
7.Ezra Pound
8.Walt Whitman
9.William Cullen Bryant
10.Picaresque novel
Ⅲ. Choose only one answer form the four choices as the most appropriate
questions. (20%)
Passage 1
1.Edgar Allan Poe (1)
2.Psyche (1)
3.The beauty of form. （diction，rhyme and rhythm，rhetorical devices.）
The beauty of content. (3)
Passage 2
1.Robert Frost(1)
2."Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening"(1)
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 reality, 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.
Passage 3
1.Walden (1)
2.Henry David Thoreau (1)
3.Find the answer from the passage. (5)
Passage 4
1.The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne.(2)
2.life and liberty.(2)
Passage 5
1.My Lost Youth.(1)
2.Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1)
3.“haunting" sums up the feeling that was begun earlier with "Often in thought
"and "comes back to me" .(3)
Passage 6
1.Upon the Burning of Our House, Anne Bradstreet.(2)
2.One's real house is in heaven, built by the great architect, God. (2)
VI. Choose TWO of the three passages and comment on them. (20%)
1. Analyze Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter. （10%）
2. Analyze Emily Dickinson's “Because I Could not stop for Death”.（10%）
3. Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Self-Reliance.（10%）
The score is given to the theme, (7) content (6) and writing style(7) of the work chosen.
美国文学史及选读试卷 Ⅰ.Each of the following statements below is followed by four alternatives. Choose the one that would best complete the statement. (60points in all, 2 for each) 1. Which of following can be said of the common features which are shared by the English and American Romanticists ? A. An increasing emphasis on the free expression of emotions. B. An increasing attention to the psychic states of their characters. C. An increasing emphasis on the desire to return to nature. D. both A and B. 2. Which of the following statements about the Romantic period in the history of American literature is NOT true? （） A. In most of the American writings of this period there was a new emphasis upon the imaginative and emotional qualities of literature. B. The writers of this period placed an increasing emphasis on the free expression of emotions and displayed an increasing attention to the psychic states of their characters. C. There was a strong tendency to exalt the individual and the common man. D. Most heroes and heroines in the writings of this period exhibited extremes of reason and nationality. 3.______ is unanimously agreed to be the summit of the American Romanticism in the history of American literature. A. New England Transcendentalism B. England Transcendentalism C. the Harlem Renaissance D. New Transcendentalism 4.Hawthorn e’s unique gift was for the creation of ______ which touch the deepest roots of man’s moral nature. A. symbolic stories B. romantic stories
1.Why did Franklin write his Autobiography? Franklin says that because his son may wish to know about his life, he is taking his one week vacation in the English countryside to record his past. He also says that he has enjoyed his life and would like to repeat it 2.What made Franklin decide to leave the brother to whom he had been apprenticed? His brother was passionate, and had often beaten him. The aversion to arbitrary power that has stuck to him through his whole life .After a brush with the law, Franklin left his brother. 3.How did he arrive in Philadephia? First he set out in a boat for Amboy, the boat dropped him off about 50 miles from Burlington, the next day he reached Burlington on foot, in Burlington he found a boat which was going towards Philadelphia, he arrived there about eight or nine o’clock, on the Sunday morning and landed at the Market Street wharf. 4.What features do you find in the style of the above selection? It is the pattern of Puritan simplicity, directness, and concision(言简意赅). The narrative is lucid(易懂的), the structure is simple, the imagery is homely(朴素的). 二、Questions 1.How many characters does Poe include in The Cask of Amontillado? What are these names? Montresor, Fortunato and Luchesi 2. What drink are the French most famous for? Wine 3.Does Montresor have something of great value to him which we might consider to be his treasure? His pride and the pride of his French family heritage. Perhaps his devious plot of revenge. 4.Does Montresor seem to have much respect for Italians? Montresor does not have much respect for Italians. He feels the French are superior, especially with respect to wine. 5.What was Fortunato's insult? Poe does not tell us directly, but only implies it in the third paragraph 6.Which wine does Montresor use to lure Fortunato into the catacombs? "Amontillado" (the Spanish wine; Montresor's ruse to lead Fortunato down into the catacombs. 7.Why does Montresor entertain Fortunato with wines from his collection? Montresor wants to get Fortunato drunk enough to be able to trap him in his plan of vengeance. 8.In what two ways does Montresor imprison Fortunato? He fetters (chains and locks) Fortunato to the wall of the catacombs. He builds a wall to close Fortunato off in a small corner of the catacombs, where Montresor will leave him to die. 9.In what ways is The Cask of Amontillado grotesque? First, which of Montresor's actions are abnormal? The whole obsessive plot of vengeance. The fettering and entombment of Fortunato. Montresor's sick sense of humor. 10.Is there anything grotesque about Fortunato? His obsession with alcohol. His drunkenness. His tendency to berate Luchesi (he may have been drunk and may have insulted Montresor in a similar
1.Captain John Smith became the first American writer. 2.The puritans looked upon themselves as a chosen people. is an annual collection of proverbs written by Benjamin Franklin. 4.Thomas Paine’s famous pamphlet Common Sense boldly advocated a “Declaration for Independence”. 5.Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence with John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert Livingston.
has been called the “Father of American Poetry”. 7.In Washington I rving’s appeared the first modern short stories and the first great American juvenile literature. 8.Cooper’s enduring fame rests on his William Cullen Bryant’s wok. is considered “father of American detective stories and American gothic stories”. 10.Emerson believed above all in
美国文学部分(American Literature) 一．独立革命前后的文学（The Literature Around the Revolution of Independence） 1．本章考核知识点和考核要求： 1)．殖民地时期的文学的特点 2)．主要的作家、其概况及其代表作品 2．独立革命前后时期的主要作家 本杰明·富兰克林Benjamin Franklin本杰明·富兰克林，散文家、科学家、社会活动家，曾参与起草―独立宣言。 《穷查理历书》Poor Richard’s Almanack 《致富之道》The Way to Wealth 《自传》The Autobiography 托马斯·潘恩Thomas Paine托马斯·潘恩，散文家、政治家、报刊撰稿人。 《税务员问题》The Case of the Officers of Excise 《常识》Common Sense 《美国危机》American Crisis 《人的权利》Rights of Man 《专制体制的崩溃》Downfall of Despotism 《理性时代》The Age of Reason 菲利普·弗伦诺Philip Freneau菲利普·弗伦诺，著名的―革命诗人‖。 《蒸蒸日上的美洲》―The Rising Glory of America‖
《英国囚船》―The British Prison Ship‖ 《纪念美国勇士》同类诗中最佳―To the Memory of the Brave Americans‖ 《野生的金银花》―The Wild Honeysuckle‖ 《印第安人殡葬地》―The Indian Burying Ground‖ 1二．美国浪漫主义文学（American Romanticism） 1．本章考核知识点和考核要求： 1)．美国浪漫主义文学产生的社会历史及文化背景 2)．主要作家的创作思想、艺术特色及其代表作品的主题结构、人物刻画和语言风格 3)．清教主义、超验主义、象征主义、自由诗等名词的解释 2.美国浪漫主义时期的主要作家 华盛顿·欧文Washington Irving华盛顿·欧文，美国著名小说家，被称为―美国文学之父‖.《瑞普·凡·温可尔》Rip Van Winkle 《纽约外史》A History of New York 《见闻札记》The Sketch Book 《睡谷的传说》The Legend of Sleepy Hollow 詹姆斯·费尼莫尔·库珀James Fenimore Cooper 詹姆斯·费尼莫尔·库珀开创了以《皮裹腿故事集》为代表的边疆传奇小说，其中最为重要的一部是《最后的莫西干人》。 《皮裹腿故事集》Leatherstocking Tales 《间谍》The Spy 《领航者》The Pilot
III Multiple choice (20%) 1. Anne Bradstreet was a Puritan poet. When her poems were published in England, she became known as the “______” who appeared in America. A Ninth Muse B Tenth Muse C Best Muse D First Muse 2. ______ is the sometimes exaggerated use of local language, characters and customs in regional literature. A purple prose B waste-land imagery C local color D symbolism 3. The Fitzgeralds lived so extravagantly that they frequently spent more money than F. Scoot Fitzgerald earned for parties, liquor, entertaining their friends and traveling. It was this living style that nicknamed the decade of the 1920s as _______. A The Jazz Age B The Gilded Age C The Glorious Age D The Beat Age 4. ___________ was a reaction to the ideas of the Age of Reason and the Enlightenment. A Romanticism B Realism C Naturalism D Modernism 5. Although only few of her poems were published in her lifetime and a complete collection of them didn’t appear until the 1950’s, _____ had a major impact on 20th century poetry. A Anne Bradstreet B Gertrude Stein C Emily Dickinson D Amy Lowell 6. Who of the following is NOT a 20th century American poet? A Henry Wordsworth Longsfellow B Amy Lowell C Ezra Pound D Robert Frost 7. Mark Twain, one of the greatest 19th century American writers, is well known for his ______. A International theme B Waste-land imagery C Local color
美国文学史及选读试题 I. Multiple Choice 10’ 1. Who is different from others according to the division of writing period? A. Washington Irving B.William Cullen Bryant C. Captain John Smith D. James Fenimore Cooper 2. The American Romantic Period lasted roughly from ____ to ____. A. 1798-1832 B. 1810-1860 C. 1860-1864 D. 1776-1783 3. How many syllables are there in this first line of Raven? (“Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,”) A. 11 B. 12 C. 13 D. 16 4. What dominated the Puritan phase of American writing? A. theology B. literature C. esthetics D. revolution 5. At the initial period of the spread of ideas of the Enlightenment was largely due to ____. A. typography B. journalism C. revolution D. the development of paper-making industry 6. Who has been called the “Father of American Literature”? A. Walt Scott B. Geoffrey Chaucer
美国文学史作品作家汇总 美国文学 Part 1. Colonial America Thomas Paine托马斯?潘恩1737-1809 The Case of the Officers of Excise税务员问题；Common Sense常识；American Crisis美国危机；Rights of Man人的权利：Downfall of Despotism专制体制的崩溃；The Age of Reason理性时代 Philip Freneau菲利普?弗伦诺1752-1832 The Rising Glory of America蒸蒸日上的美洲；The British Prison Ship英国囚船；To the Memory of the Brave Americans纪念美国勇士-----同类诗中最佳；The Wild Honeysuckle 野生的金银花；The Indian Burying Ground印第安人殡葬地 .Jonathan Edwards The Freedom of the Will 论意志自由The Great Doctrine of Original Sin defended论原罪The Nature of True Virtue论真是德行的本原 Benjamin Franklin本杰明?富兰克林1706-1790 A Modest Inquiry into the Nature and Necessity of a Paper Money; Poor Richard’s Almanac穷查理历书；The Way to Wealth致富之道；The Autobiography自传 Part 2. American Romanticism Washington Irving华盛顿?欧文1783-1859 A History of New York纽约的历史-----美国人写的第一部诙谐文学杰作；The Sketch Book见闻札记The Legend of Sleepy Hollow睡谷的传说-----使之成为美国第一个获得国际声誉的作家；Brace bridge Hall布雷斯布里奇田庄；Talks of Travelers旅客谈；The Alhambra阿尔罕伯拉 Jamie Fennimore Cooper詹姆斯?费尼莫尔?库珀1789-1851 The Spy间谍;The Pilot领航者;The Little page Manuscripts利特佩奇的手稿;Leather stocking Tales皮裹腿故事集:The Pioneer拓荒者；The Last of Mohicans最后的莫希干人;The Prairie大草原;The Pathfinder探路者;The Deer slayer杀鹿者 Part 3.New England Transcendentalism Ralf Waldo Emerson拉尔夫?沃尔多?爱默生1803-1882 Essays散文集:Nature论自然-----新英格兰超验主义者的宣言书;The American Scholar 论美国学者;Divinity; The Over soul论超灵;Self-reliance论自立;The Transcendentalist超验主义者;Representative Men代表人物;English Traits 英国人的特征;School Address神学院演说 Concord Hymn康考德颂;The Rhoda杜鹃花;The Humble Bee野蜂;Days日
1.C aptain John Smith became the first American writer. 2.T he puritans looked upon themselves as a chosen people. collection of proverbs written by Benjamin Franklin. 4.T homas Paine’s famous pamphlet Common Sense boldly advocated a “Declaration for Independence”.
5.T homas Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence with John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert Livingston. has been called the “Father of American Poetry”. 7.I n Washington Irving’s appeared the first modern short stories and the first great American juvenile literature.
8.C ooper’s enduring fame rests on his frontier stories, especially the five novels that comprise the is perhaps the peak of William Cullen Bryant’s wok. “father of American detective stories and American gothic stories”.
Literary terms这部分的答案均来自星火《英美文学》一书，质量高 1.Transcendentalism: is literature，philosophical and literary movement that flourished in New England from about 1836 to1860. It originated among a small group of intellectuals who were reaching against the orthodoxy of Calvinism and the rationalism of the Unitarian Church, their own faith centering on the divinity of humanity and the natural world instead. Transcendentalism derived some of its basic idealistic concepts from romantic German philosophy, and from such English authors as Carlyle，Coleridge, and Wordsworth. The ideas of transcendentalism were most eloquently expressed by Ralph Waldo Emerson in such essays as Nature and Self-Reliance and by Henry David Thoreau in his book Walden. 2.American naturalism：this term was created by Emile Zola. Charles Darwin’s evolutionary theory played an important role in naturalism. In the works off naturalism，characters were conceived as complex combinations of inherited attributes and habits conditioned by social and economic forces. At the end of the 19th century，this pessimistic form of realism appeared in America. Naturalism attempted to achieve extreme objectivity and frankness. Characters in the works of naturalism were dominated by their environment and heredity. Naturalism emphasized：the world was around；men had no free will；religious “truth” were illusory；the destiny of human beings was misery in life and oblivion in death. The dominant figures in naturalism were Stephen crane，Frank Norris, Jack London and Theodore Dreiser. 3.The lost generation: included the young English and American expatriates as well as men and women caught in the war and cut from the old value and yet unable to come to terms with the new era when civilization had gone mad. These writers adopted unconventional style of writing and reacted against the tendencies of the older writers in the 1920s. The term came from Gertrude Stein who said in Hemingway's presence that “you are all a lost generation.” 4.Jazz age: the novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald coined the term "Jazz Age" retroactively to refer to the decade after World War I and before the stock market crash in 1929, during which Americans embarked upon what he called "the gaudiest spree in history". Jazz Age is inextricably associated with the wealthy white "flappers" and socialites immortalized in Fitzgerald's fiction. 5.Free verse: is a poetry that has an irregular rhythm and line length and that attempts to avoid any predetermined verse structure, instead, it uses the cadences of natural speech. While it alternates stressed and unstressed syllables as stricter verse forms do, free verse does so in a looser way. Whitman's poetry is an example of free verse at its most impressive. It has since been used by Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot and other major American can poets of the 20th century. 6. The iceberg analogy: The Iceberg Theory is a writing theory by American writer Ernest Hemingway, as follows：if a writer of a prose knows enough about what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader，if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. 这部分来自星火的为：3,7,8, 来自课本为：1,4,9 来自网络为：2,5,6大家自取之 1.Poe's Poetic Ideas A.His conviction that the function of poetry is not to summarize and interpret earthly experience, but to create a mood in which the soul soars toward supernal beauty. B.He insists that poetry must be disembarrassed of that moral sense. C.Poe believes that the elevation of excitement of the soul should be “the poetic principle” thus poetry must concern itself only with “supernal beauty”. D.Poe defines poetry as “the rhythmical creation of beauty” a definition gi ving unexampled emphasis upon the importance of the rhythmical or musical element in poetry.
Washington Irving Bracebridge Hall 布雷斯布里奇田庄 (1822) The Legend of Sleepy Hollow Tales of a Traveller 旅客谈 (1824) Christopher Columbus (1828) c. writing characteristics (1) humorous: the function of his writing is to amuse, to entertain instead of teaching or instruction (2) vivid and true character portrayal (3) finished (refined) and musical language, thus regarded as “the Amn. Goldsmith ” d. analysis on The Legend of Sleepy Hollow(选自the sketch book 见闻札记 ) 1. the story:setting,character, plot 2. theme:conflicts and praise conflict betw. Ichabod and Brom conflict betw. the village and the outside world James Fenimore Cooper The Spy (1821): a historical novel The Pilot (1824): a sea novel Leatherstocking Tales 皮裹腿故事集(1823-1841): frontier novels The Last Mohicans (1826) (Colonial War betw. Britain and France) e. writing features: strong points: we can see a variety of incidents and tensions, complicated plot and structure and a beautiful description of nature. Weak points: characterization is weak. There is unsatisfactory description of characters (esp. female). He is not free from syntactical awkwardness, heavy-handed attempt at humor. “Where Irving excels Cooper is weak.” Dialect is not authentic. Edgar Allan Poe The Fall of the House Usher Feature: i. brevity (15 pages) ii. Single effect iii. originality in theme To Helen It was inspired by the beauty of the mother of a schoolmate of Poe in Richmond, Virginia. The poem is famous for a number of things: 1. its rhyme scheme: ababb 2. its varied line lengths 3. its metaphor of a travel on the sea 4. its oft-quoted lines: "To the glory that was Greece,/And the grandeur that was Rome." theme: praise the ideal love and beauty and ancient Greek and Roman civilizations The Raven 乌鸦 theme: the lament over the death of a beautiful woman tone: melancholy Transcendentalism (essayists, poets, novelists) Their journal is “The Dial ” . Definition: Transcendentalism is idealism. (Emerson) b. features (1) stress on Oversoul, that is spirit. (2) stress the importance of individual. (3) fresh conception of nature. c. significance (1) inspired a whole generation of writers such as Whitman, Melville and Dickinson. (2) dresses man ’s subjective initiative as opposed to materialism. (3) liberated people from Calvin ’s original sin d. limitation (1) shallow: cut off from real life or reality; initiated by the rich, they were limited in a certain circle. So, in some degree, they have been cut off from social life and can ’t understand the sufferings of the common people. (2) inward contradiction: gain knowledge by intuition, shows its idealistic aspect. R.W. Emerson (Ralph Waldo) Nature (1836): the Bible of New England transcendentalism The American Scholar (1837): "America's Declaration of Intellectual The Divinity School Address 神学院致辞 (1838) Essays (1841/1847) Representative Men (1850) English Traits (1856)
美国文学史及选读试卷 Ⅰ. Multiple choices. (60 points in total, 2 for each) 1. The Romantic Period in American literature started from the publication of Washington Irving's ______ and ended with Whitman's Leaves of Grass. A. The Sketch Book B. Tales of a Traveller C. A History of New York D. The Scarlet Letter 2. At the middle of 19th century, America witnessed a cultural flowering which is called “_____”. A. the English Renaissance B. the Second Renaissance C. the American Renaissance D. the Salem Renaissance 3. As a philosophical and literary movement, the main issues involved in the debate of Transcendentalism are generally concerning ______. A. nature , man and the universe B. the relationship between man and woman C. the development of Romanticism in American literature D. the cold, rigid rationalism of Unitarianism 14. In the following statements, _________ is NOT true about Washington Irving’s famous story “Rip Van Winkle.” A. The story is not only well-kno wn for Rip’s 20-year sleep but also considered a model of perfect English in American literature. B. The story is set against the background of the inevitably changing America. C. The social conservatism and literary preference for the past is revealed, to some extent, in the story. D. Irving describes Rip’s response and reaction in a dramatic way, so that we see clearly both the narrator and Irving agree on the preferability of the present to the past. 15. Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay Experience is a serous discussion about the conflict between _________ and ordinary life.