英语专业 美国文学史复习题

美国文学思考习题与练习

Week 2:

Jonathan Edwards, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”:

1. What is the purpose of Edwards in delivering the sermon?

2. Who are the sinners?

3. What is the significance of the essay against the cultural background of Puritanism?

Benjamin Franklin, The Autobiography:

1. What kind of life style does Franklin advocate? Do you share his principles?

2. Do you agree with the idea that Franklin’s principles are universal?

3. Why does Franklin NOT list “piety” as one of the virtues?

4. What do you think of Franklin’s emphasis on material success?

5. What role does Franklin’s autobiography play in the pioneering experience?

6. How can you translate Franklin’s principles into Chinese?

Week 3:

Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self-Reliance”:

1. What does Emerson think of man in his time? How should a man behave, according to Emerson?

2. Why does Emerson ask us to accept the place the divine providence has found for us? How does Emerson perceive the relationship between man and God?

3. How does Emerson perceive the relationship between an individual and society/others?

4. How does Emerson perceive the relationship between man and nature?

5. What role does Emerson’s essay play in the spirit of American Romanticism?

6. Can you share Emerson’s optimism about man?

7. What Chinese philosopher does Emerson find affinity with?

Week 4:

Edgar Allan Poe, “The Raven”:

1. How does the speaker’s mood change throughout the poem?

2. Why is the word “nevermore” repeated again and again?

3. What musical devices does the poet use in the poem?

4. What do you think of Poe’s philosophy of composition?

Week 5:

Nathaniel Hawthorne, “The Minister’s Black V eil”:

1. What does the veil symbolize?

2. Why does the minister wear the veil?

3. Do you think the minister is an evil or good character?

4. How is the theme of the individual’s isolation from society represented in the story?

5. How do you understand the following sentence—“I look around me, and lo! On every visage

a black veil!”?

6. What attitude toward religion can you find in the story?

7. How does Hawthorne view the relationship between human beings?

Week 6:

Walt Whitman,

“Calvary Crossing the Ford”:

1. What is the significance of the use of colors?

2. What mood can you find in the poem?

“When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer”:

1. How does the speaker respond to the astronomer’s lecture and the silence of the night?

2. What relationship between nature and science can you find in the poem? What is the attitude of the poet toward nature and science?

“Come Up from the Fields, Father”:

1. How does the description of the harvest season set off the theme of the poem?

2. In what way is this poem similar or different from other literary pieces about the Civil War?

Week 7:

Emily Dickinson,

“Because I could no t stop for Death—”

1. What is the significance of the journey experience (lines 9-12)?

2.

“I heard a Fly buzz—when I died—”

1. What does the image of the fly signify?

2. How do you understand the two “sees” in the line “I could not see to see”?

“Es sential Oils—are Wrung—”

1. Why does Dickinson say that the attar is “the gift of Screws” (line 4)?

2. How is the poem related to the artistic creation of the poet?

Week 8:

Mark Twain, “The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County”:

1. What realistic elements can you find in this story?

2. What role does language play in the story?

3. How is the story narrated?

Week 9:

Jack London, “The Law of Life”:

1. What is the law of life? How does Old Koskoosh view it?

2. How is death represented in the story?

3. How is Darwin’s theory of evolution influence the story?

Week 10:

Ezra Pound, “In a Station of the Metro”:

1. How is the central image in the poem related to the subject the poet intends to present?

2. In what way do you think the Imagists learned from the ancient Chinese poetry?

3. What disadvantages can you find with the Imagist theory?

Week 11:

May Day holiday

Week 12:

Robert Frost,

“Mending Wall”:

1. What does the wall possibly symbolize?

2. Why does the poet say that the wall stays always where we do not need it (line 23)?

3. How do you understand “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall” (line 1)?

4. How do you understand “Good fences make good neighbors” (lines 27, 45)?

5. How do you understand “He moves in darkness” (line 41)?

6. What do we wall in and what do we wall out?

7. Can we do away with all walls?

8. What is the speaker’s attitude toward mending wall?

9. What does the wall symbolize?

10. What are the outstanding musical devices?

“The Road Not Taken”:

1. What is the significance of the title of the poem?

2. What decision does the speaker make at the entrance of the forest?

3. How does the speaker view the choice that he has made?

“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”:

1. Why is the last line repeated?

2. In what way does the rhyming scheme add to the lyric quality of the poem?

Week 13:

Ernest Hemingway, “A Clean, Well-lighted Place”:

1. In what ways do the two waiters differ?

2. What does the title of the story mean?

3. What is the significance of the garbled Lord’s prayer?

4. What is the meaning of “nada”? What is the writer’s intention of replacing many words in the prayers with “nada”?

5. Why does the writer not give the names of the characters?

6. How can you distinguish the two waiters?

7. Why does this place have to be clean and well-lighted? What do cleanliness and brightness represent?

8. What is the historical background of the story?

Week 14:

William Faulkner, “A Rose for Emily”:

1. Why is Emily’s House the most appropr iate setting for the story? Discuss the ways in which Faulkner uses Miss Emily’s house as an appropriate setting.

2. Why does Faulkner use this particular narrator? Is this narrator reliable? Does the sex of the narrator affect the telling of the story?

3. What is the disadvantage of taking Emily as a symbol of the post-Civil-War South?

4. How do you explain Emily’s behavior? What is the writer’s attitude toward Emily?

5. How does this story handle the linked themes of female oppression and empowerment? What does it say about the various kinds of male-female relationships in American society of this period?

Week 15:

Eugene O’Neill, Desire Under the Elms

1. What is the central conflict in the play?

2. What do the big elm trees symbolize?

3. How is the su bject of “desire” represented in the play? “Desire” over what? Does each character have a different desire?

4. What is the relationship between the characters in application of Freudian psychoanalysis?

5. Why does Abbie marry Ephraim? Why does she kill the baby?

6. What is the relationship between Abbie and Eben in the first half of the play? How does this relationship change in the second half?

7. Does this play remind you of any Chinese play? In what ways are they similar?

Weeks 16-17:

J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye:

1. symbol. What is the meaning of the title of the novel? Where does it come from? How do you understand it?

2. growth of a child. How do you understand the pain in the growth of a child? What kind of experience does he/she have to go through?

3. attitudes. What is Holden’s attitude towards museums and the exhibits? What is his attitude towards death?

4. childhood vs. adulthood. How is adulthood portrayed in the eyes of a child? What are some of

the words that Holden uses frequently to describe the people around him? What are their meanings?

5. journey as a motif. How do you comment on the journey that Holden takes? Comment on the function of the journey motif. (Y ou may find it useful to compare this novel with Mark Twai n’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus, or other novels with the journey motif.

6. How do you interpret Mr. Antolini’s behavior?

7. What is Holden’s attitude toward sex?

8. What is the function of Phoebe in the novel?

9. What is the function of D. B. in the novel?

10. What is most likely to occur to Holden after the end of the novel?

八级模拟美国文学常识

1．The first colony was set up in_________ at, ______off the coast of North Carolina; The second colony was more permanent:______, established in________.

A. 1585 ...Roanoke,...Jamestown (1607)

B. Jamestown...1607,...concord, (1609)

C. 1492,…New England…1585 …Roanoke

D. 1492...New England ...Jamestown (1607)

2. ________ wrote the story recounts how Pocahontas, favorite daughter of Chief Powhatan, saved Captain Smiths life when he was a prisoner of the chief. Later, when the English persuaded Powhatan to give Pocahontas to them as a hostage, her gentleness, intelligence, and beauty impressed the English, and, in 1614, she married John Rolfe, an English gentleman. The marriage initiated an eight-year peace between the colonists and the Indians, ensuring the survival of the struggling new colony.

A. Cristopher Columbus

B. Harioit

C. Winthrope

D. Captain John Smith

3. The_____ definition of good writing was that which brought home a full awareness of the importance of worshipping God and of the spiritual dangers that the soul faced on Earth

A. Prostestant

B. Puritan

C. Catholic

D. Indian

4. The link between_________ is Both rest on ambition, hard work, and an intense striving for success.

A. Puritanism and consumerism

B. Capitalism and commercialism

C. Puritanism and capitalism

D. Commercialism and capitalism

5 The first Puritan colonists who settled _________exemplified the seriousness of Reformation Christianity. Known as the "_________," they were a small group of believers who had migrated from England to Holland -- even then known for its religious tolerance -- in 1608, during a time of persecutions.

A. Roanoke…development

B. Roanoke…progress

C. New England… adventure

D. New England… pilgrims

6. Of Plymouth Plantation was written by ______

A.William Bradford

B.Captain John Smith

C.Hariot

D.Cristopher Clumbus 7. “If ever two were one, then surely we./If ever man were loved by wife, then thee;/If ever wife was happy in a man,/Compare with me, ye women, if you can./I prize thy love more than whole mines of gold/Or all the riches that the East doth hold./My love is such that rivers cannot quench(平熄),/Nor ought but love from thee, give recompense./Thy love is such I can no way repay,/The heavens reward thee manifold（多种）, I pray./Then while we live, in love let s so persevere/That when we live no more, we may live ever” is form the first published book of poems by an American was also the first American book to be published by a woman -- __________(c. 1612-1672). It is not surprising that the book was published in England, given the lack of printing presses in the early years of the first American colonies

A. Miss Bradford

B. Anne Bradstreet

C. Miss John Smith

D. Anne Bradford

8. 500-page Metrical History of Christianity was written by______ A. Anne Bradstreet

B. Winthrope

C. Edward Taylor

D. Captain John Smith

9. The 18th-century American ________was a movement marked by an emphasis on rationality rather than tradition, scientific inquiry instead of unquestioning religious dogma, and representative government in place of monarchy. Enlightenment thinkers and writers were devoted to the ideals of justice, liberty, and equality as the natural rights of man.

A. Renaissance

B. Revolution

C. Puritanism

D. Enlightenment

10. ________, whom the Scottish philosopher David Hume called Americas "first great man of

letters," embodied the Enlightenment ideal of humane rationality. Practical yet idealistic, hard-working and enormously successful.

A. Captain John Smith

B. Edward Taylor

C. Benjamin Franklin

D. Anne Bradstreet

11. ______ lists 13 virtues: temperance, silence, order, resolution, frugality, industry, sincerity, justice, moderation, cleanliness, tranquility, chastity, and humility

A. Jefferson

B. Franklin

C. Bradstreet

D. St. John de Crèvecoeur 12. Common Sense sold over 100,000 copies in the first three months of its publication. It is still rousing today. "The cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind,"_____wrote, voicing the idea of American exceptionalism still strong in the United States -- that in some fundamental sense, since America is a democratic experiment and a country theoretically open to all immigrants, the fate of America foreshadows the fate of humanity at large.

A. Anne

B. Paine

C. Franklin

D. Jefferson

13. "literary" writing was not as simple and direct as political writing. When trying to write poetry, most educated authors stumbled into the pitfall of elegant_________. The epic, in particular, exercised a fatal attraction. American literary patriots felt sure that the great American Revolution naturally would find expression in the epic -- a long, dramatic narrative poem in elevated language, celebrating the feats of a legendary hero.

A. Renaissance

B. Rationalism

C. Neoclassicism

D. Classicism

14. ______, whose poem "The British Prison Ship" is a bitter condemnation of the cruelties of the British, who wished "to stain the world with gore." This piece and other revolutionary works, including "Eutaw Springs," "American Liberty," "A Political Litany," "A Midnight Consultation," and "George the Thirds Soliloquy," brought him fame as the "Poet of the American Revolution."

A. Philip Freneau

B. Long Fellow

C. Thomas Paine

D. Ben Franklin

15. the first professional American writer is _______

A. Thomas Paine

B. Charles Brockden Brown

C. Philip Freneau

D. Anne Bradstreet

16.No writer was as successful as ___________ at humanizing the land, endowing it with a name

and a face and a set of legends. The story of "Rip V an Winkle," who slept for 20 years, waking to find the colonies had become independent, eventually became folklore. It was adapted for the stage, went into the oral tradition, and was gradually accepted as authentic American legend by generations of Americans.

A. Jupiter Hammon

B. Olaudah Equiano

C. Washington Irving

D. Robert Beverley

17. _________ was the first to sound the recurring tragic note in American fiction, whose representative work is ________.

A. Washington Irving…the Leather-Stocking Tales

B. James Fenimore Cooper…Sketch Book

C. Washington Irving…Sketch Book

D. James Fenimore Cooper…the Leather-Stocking Tales

18. The first African-American author of importance in the United States, __________, whose work is a sincere expression; it confronts white racism and asserts spiritual equality. Indeed, she was the first to address such issues confidently in verse, as in "On Being Brought from Africa to America":

A. Phyllis Wheatley

B. Susanna Rowson

C Hannah Foster

D. Judith Sargent Murray

19 .________ ideas centered around art as inspiration, the spiritual and aesthetic dimension of nature, and metaphors of organic growth. Art, rather than science, Romantics argued, could best express universal truth…. The development of the self became a major theme; self- awareness a primary method. If, according to Romantic theory, self and nature were one, self-awareness was not a selfish dead end but a mode of knowledge opening up the universe. If ones self were one with all humanity, then the individual had a moral duty to reform social inequalities and relieve human suffering. The idea of "self" -- which suggested selfishness to earlier generations -- was redefined. New compound words with positive meanings emerged: "self-realization," "self-expression," "self- reliance."

A. Neoclassic

B. Transcendentalist

C. Romantic

D. Rational

20. The _________movement was a reaction against 18th century rationalism and a manifestation of the general humanitarian trend of 19th century thought. The movement was based on a fundamental belief in the unity of the world and God. The soul of each individual was thought to be identical with the world -- a microcosm of the world itself. The doctrine of self- reliance and individualism developed through the belief in the identification of the individual soul with God.A. Neoclassic

B. Transcendentalist

C. Romantic

D. Rational

21. ________was the first rural artists colony, and the first place to offer a spiritual and cultural alternative to American materialism. It was a place of high-minded conversation and simple living.

A. Jameston

B. Washington

C. Concord

D. San Fransisco

22. The British critic Matthew Arnold said the most important writings in English in the 19th century had been Wordsworths poems and _________ s essays, who edited The Dial . A great prose-poet, he influenced a long line of American poets, including Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Edwin Arlington Robinson, Wallace Stevens, Hart Crane, and Robert Frost. He is also credited with influencing the philosophies of John Dewey, George Santayana, Friedrich Nietzsche, and William James. A. William Ellery Channing

B. Margaret Fuller

C. Henry David Thoreau

D. Ralph Waldo Emerson

23. ________ is the most attractive of the Transcendentalists today because of his ecological consciousness, do-it-yourself independence, ethical commitment to abolitionism, and political theory of civil disobedience and peaceful resistance. His ideas are still fresh, and his incisive poetic style and habit of close observation are still modern.

A. William Ellery Channing

B. Margaret Fuller

C. Henry David Thoreau

D. Ralph Waldo Emerson

24. D.H. Lawrence, the British novelist and poet, accurately called _______the poet of the "open road." The poems innovative, unrhymed, free-verse form, open celebration of sexuality, vibrant democratic sensibility, and extreme Romantic assertion that the poets self was one with the poem, the universe, and the reader permanently altered the course of American poetry.

A. Emily Dickenson

B. Walt Whitman

C. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

D. James Russell Lowell

25. ________, professor of modern languages at Harvard, was the best-known American poet of his day. He was responsible for the misty, ahistorical, legendary sense of the past that merged American and European traditions. He wrote three long narrative poems popularizing native legends in European meters "Evangeline" (1847), "The Song of Hiawatha" (1855), and "The Courtship of Miles Standish" (1858).

A . Emily Dickenson

B. Walt Whitman

C. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

D. James Russell Lowell

26. __________is the Matthew Arnold of American literature. He began as a poet but gradually lost his poetic ability, ending as a respected critic and educator. As editor of the Atlantic and co-editor of the North American Review, he exercised enormous influence. A. James Russell

Lowell

B. Oliver Wendell Holmes

C. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

D. Walt Whitman27．The first professional woman journalist of note in America, ____________wrote influential book reviews and reports on social issues such as the treatment of women prisoners and the insane. Some of these essays were published in her book Papers on Literature and Art (1846). A year earlier, she had her most significant book, Woman in the Nineteenth Century. It originally had appeared in the Transcendentalist magazine, The Dial, which she edited from 1840 to 1842.

A. Margaret Fuller

B. John Greenleaf Whittier

C. Oliver Wendell Holmes

D. Emily Dickinson

28. __________s 1,775 poems continue to intrigue critics, who often disagree about them. Some stress her mystical side, some her sensitivity to nature; many note her odd, exotic appeal. One modern critic, R.P. Blackmur, comments that Dickinsons poetry sometimes feels as if "a cat came at us speaking English." Her clean, clear, chiseled poems are some of the most fascinating and challenging in American literature.

A. Margaret Fuller

B. John Greenleaf Whittier

C. Oliver Wendell Holmes

D. Emily Dickinson

29. The Romantic vision tended to express itself in the form Hawthorne called the "________," a heightened, emotional, and symbolic form of the novel. They were not love stories, but serious novels that used special techniques to communicate complex and subtle meanings.

A. Fable

B. Romance

C. Allegory

D. Novella

30. For its time, _________was a daring and even subversive book. Hawthornes gentle style, remote historical setting, and ambiguity softened his grim themes and contented the general public, but sophisticated writers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Herman Melville recognized the books "hellish" power. It treated issues that were usually suppressed in 19th-century America, such as the impact of the new, liberating democratic experience on individual behavior, especially on sexual and religious freedom.

A. The House of the Seven Gables

B. The Blithedale Romance

C. The Scarlet Letter

D. The Marble Faun

31.__________ has been called a "natural epic" -- a magnificent dramatization of the human spirit set in primitive nature -- because of its hunter myth, its initiation theme, its Edenic island symbolism, its positive treatment of pre-technological peoples, and its quest for rebirth. In setting humanity alone in nature, it is eminently American. The French writer and politician Alexis de Tocqueville had predicted, in the 1835 work Democracy in America, that this theme would arise in

America as a result of its democracy:

A. Moby-Dick

B. Typee

C. The Marble Faun

D. The Scarlet Letter

32. _______a southerner, shares a darkly metaphysical vision mixed with elements of realism, parody, and burlesque. He refined the short story genre and invented detective fiction. Many of his stories prefigure the genres of science fiction, horror, and fantasy so popular today.

A. Lydia Child

B. Herman Melville

C. Nathaniel Hawthorne

D. Edgar Allan Poe

33. An activist, ______founded a private girls school, founded and edited the first journal for children in the United States, and published the first anti- slavery tract, An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans, in 1833

A. Lydia Child

B. Angelina Grimké

C. Elizabeth Cady Stanton

D. Sojourner Truth

34. __________novel; or, Life Among the Lowly was the most popular American book of the 19th century. First published serially in the National Era magazine (1851- 1852), it was an immediate success. Forty different publishers printed it in England alone, and it was quickly translated into 20 languages, receiving the praise of such authors as Georges Sand in France, Heinrich Heine in Germany, and Ivan Turgenev in Russia. Its passionate appeal for an end to slavery in the United States inflamed the debate that, within a decade, led to the U.S. Civil War (1861-1865).

A Lydia Child’s…An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called African.

B. Harriet Wilso n’s…The Womans Bible

C. Harriet Beecher Stowes… Uncle Toms Cabin

D. Harriet Jacobs’s…the Narrative of Sojourner Truth

35. ________the most famous black American anti-lavery leader and orator of the era._____ is the best and most popular of many "slave narratives." The slave narrative was the first black literary prose genre in the United States. It helped blacks in the difficult task of establishing an African-American identity in white America, and it has continued to exert an important influence on black fictional techniques and themes throughout the 20th century. The search for identity, anger against discrimination, and sense of living an invisible, hunted, underground life unacknowledged by the white majority have recurred in the works of such 20th- century black American authors as Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison, and Toni Morrison.

A Lydia Child…An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called African..

B. Frederick Douglass…Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

C. Sojourner Truth…the Narrative of Sojourner Truth

D. Elizabeth Cady Stanton…The Womans Bible

36. Ernest Hemingways famous statement that all of American literature comes from one great book, _________, indicates this authors towering place in the tradition. Early 19th-century American writers tended to be too flowery, sentimental, or ostentatious -- partially because they

were still trying to prove that they could write as elegantly as the English. His style, based on vigorous, realistic, colloquial American speech, gave American writers a new appreciation of their national voice. He was the first major author to come from the interior of the country, and he captured its distinctive, humorous slang and iconoclasm. For him and other American writers of the late 19th century, realism was not merely a literary technique: It was a way of speaking truth and exploding worn-out conventions. Thus it was profoundly liberating and potentially at odds with society. The most well-known example is a poor boy who decides to follow the voice of his conscience and help a Negro slave escape to freedom, even though the boy thinks this means that he will be damned to hell for breaking the law.

A. Frederick Douglass’ Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

B. Twains Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

C. Harriet Beecher Stowes Uncle Toms Cabin

D. Bret Harte’s The Luck of Roaring Camp

37. _______once wrote that art, especially literary art, "makes life, makes interest, makes importance." His fiction and criticism is the most highly conscious, sophisticated, and difficult of its era. With Twain, He is generally ranked as the greatest American novelist of the second half of the 19th century.

A. Edith Wharton

B. Stephen Crane

C. Henry James

D. Jack London

38. is essentially a literary expression of determinism. Associated with bleak, realistic depictions of lower-class life, determinism denies religion as a motivating force in the world and instead perceives the universe as a machine. Eighteenth-century Enlightenment thinkers had also imagined the world as a machine, but as a perfect one, invented by God and tending toward progress and human betterment. _________ imagined society, instead, as a blind machine, godless and out of control.The 19th-century American historian Henry Adams constructed an elaborate theory of history involving the idea of the dynamo, or machine force, and entropy, or decay of force. Instead of progress, Adams sees inevitable decline in human society.

A. Romanticism…Romanticists

B. Neoclassicism…N eoclassicists

C. Transcendentalism…Transcendentalist

D. Naturalism…. Naturalists

39. _______is one of the best, if not the earliest, naturalistic American novels. It is the harrowing story of a poor, sensitive young girl whose uneducated, alcoholic parents utterly fail her. In love and eager to escape her violent home life, she allows herself to be seduced into living with a young man, who soon deserts her. When her self-righteous mother rejects her, She becomes a prostitute to survive, but soon commits sui cide out of despair. The author’s earthy subject matter and his objective, scientific style, devoid of moralizing, earmark the story as a naturalist work.A. Cranes Maggie: A Girl of the Streets

B. Twains Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

C. Harriet Beecher Stowes Uncle Toms Cabin

D. Bret Harte’s The Luck of Roaring Camp

40. The autobiographical novel _______ depicts the inner stresses of the American dream as the

author experienced them during the meteoric rise from obscure poverty to wealth and fame. The main character, an impoverished but intelligent and hardworking sailor and laborer, is determined to become a writer. Eventually, the writing makes the character rich and well-known, but the realizes that the woman he loves cares only for his money and fame. His despair over her inability to love causes him to lose faith in human nature. He also suffers from class alienation, for he no longer belongs to the working class, while he rejects the materialistic values of the wealthy whom he worked so hard to join. He sails for the South Pacific and commits suicide by jumping into the sea. Like many of the best novels of its time, this story is an unsuccessful story. It looks ahead to F. Scott Fitzgeralds The Great Gatsby in its revelation of despair amid great wealth.

A. Jack London

B. Martin Eden

C. Maggie: A Girl of the Streets

D. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

41.________ displays crushing authority. Its precise details build up an overwhelming sense of tragic inevitability. The novel is a scathing portrait of the American success myth gone sour, but it is also a universal story about the stresses of urbanization, modernization, and alienation. Within it roam the romantic and dangerous fantasies of the dispossessed. The work is a reflection of the dissatisfaction, envy, and despair that afflicted many poor and working people in Americas competitive, success-driven society. As American industrial power soared, the glittering lives of the wealthy in newspapers and photographs sharply contrasted with the drab lives of ordinary farmers and city workers. The media fanned rising expectations and unreasonable desires. Such problems, common to modernizing nations, gave rise to muckraking journalism -- penetrating investigative reporting that documented social problems and provided an important impetus to social reform.

A. Martin Eden

B. Maggie: A Girl of the Streets

C. An American Tragedy

D. A Portrait of a Lady

42. Three Midwestern poets who grew up in Illinois and shared the midwestern concern with ordinary people are Carl Sandburg, V achel Lindsay, and Edgar Lee Masters. Their poetry often concerns obscure individuals; they developed techniques -- realism, dramatic renderings -- that reached out to a larger readership. They are part of the Midwestern, or ____________that arose before World War I to challenge the East Coast literary establishment. The "Chicago Renaissance" was a watershed in American culture: It demonstrated that Americas interior had matured. Chicago, School

A Chicago School.

B. Midland School

C. Natural School

D. New Criticism School

43. Two women regional novelists at the turn of the century are _______.

A Edwin Arlington Robinson and V achel Lindsay

B. Ellen Glasgow and Willa Cather

C. Edwin Arlington Robinson and Ellen Glasgow

D. Willa Cather and V achel Lindsay

44 ________, educator and the most prominent black leader of the post-Civil War era, grew up as a slave in Franklin County, Virginia, born to a white slave-holding father and a slave mother. His fine, simple autobiography, Up From Slavery (1901), recounts his successful struggle to better himself. He became renowned for his efforts to improve the lives of African-Americans; his policy of accommodation with whites -- an attempt to involve the recently freed black American in the mainstream of American society -- was outlined in his famous Atlanta Exposition Address (1895)..

A. Charles Waddell Chesnutt

B. James Weldon Johnson

C. W.E.B. Du Bois

D. Booker T. Washington

45. The large cultural wave of, ______which gradually emerged in Europe and the United States in the early years of the 20th century, expressed a sense of a life through art as a sharp break from the past, as well as from Western civilizations classical traditions. Modern life seemed radically different from traditional life -- more scientific, faster, more technological, and more mechanized.

A. Naturalism

B. Futurism

C. Modernism

D.Imagism

46.__________ developed an analogue to modern art. A resident of Paris and an art collector (she and her brother Leo purchased works of the artists Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, Pierre Auguste Renoir, Pablo Picasso, and many others), She once explained that she and Picasso were doing the same thing, he in art and she in writing. Using simple, concrete words as counters, she developed an abstract, experimental prose poetry. The childlike quality of her simple vocabulary recalls the bright, primary colors of modern art, while her repetitions echo the repeated shapes of abstract visual compositions. By dislocating grammar and punctuation, she achieved new "abstract" meanings as in her influential collection Tender Buttons (1914), which views objects from different angles, as in a cubist painting.

A. W.E.

B. Du Bois

B. Willa Cather

C. Ellen Glasgow

D. Gertrude Stein

47. To analyze such modernist novels and poetry, a school of "________" arose in the United States, with a new critical vocabulary. New critics hunted the "epiphany" (moment in which a character suddenly sees the transcendent truth of a situation, a term derived from a holy saints appearance to mortals); they "examined" and "clarified" a work, hoping to "shed light" upon it through their "insights."

A Chicago

B. Renaissance

C. Naturalism

D. New Criticism

48. _______was one of the most influential American poets of this century. From 1908 to 1920, he resided in London, where he associated with many writers, including William Butler Yeats, for whom he worked as a secretary. He drastic ally edited and improved his friend’s famous poem. He

was a link between the United States and Britain, acting as contributing editor to Harriet Monroes important Chicago magazine Poetry and spearheading the new school of poetry known as Imagism, which advocated a clear, highly visual presentation. After Imagism, he championed various poetic approaches. He eventually moved to Italy, where he became caught up in Italian Fascism.

A. Ezra Pound

B. Thomas Stearns Eliot

C. Ellen Glasgow

D. Henry James

49. As a critic,________is best remembered for his formulation of the "objective correlative," which he described, in The Sacred Wood, as a means of expressing emotion through "a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events" that would be the "formula" of that particular emotion. Poems such as "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (1915) embody this approach, when the ineffectual, elderly Prufrock thinks to himself that he has "measured out his life in coffee spoons," using coffee spoons to reflect a humdrum existence and a wasted lifetime.

A. Ezra Pound

B. Thomas Stearns Eliot

C. Robert Frost

D. Henry James

50. A charismatic public reader,________ was renowned for his tours. He read an original work at the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy in 1961 that helped spark a national interest in poetry. His popularity is easy to explain: He wrote of traditional farm life, appealing to a nostalgia for the old ways. His subjects are universal -- apple picking, stone walls, fences, country roads. Frosts approach was lucid and accessible: He rarely employed pedantic allusions or ellipses. His frequent use of rhyme also appealed to the general audience.

A. William Carlos Williams

B. Robinson Jeffers

C. Robert Frost

D. Wallace Stevens

51. A painter,_______ was the first American poet to recognize that poetry had become primarily a visual, not an oral, art; his poems used much unusual spacing and indentation, as well as dropping all use of capital letters.

A. Edward Estlin Cummings

B. Hart Crane

C. Marianne Moore

D. Langston Hughes

52. _______embraced African- American jazz rhythms and was one of the first black writers to attempt to make a profitable career out of his writing. He incorporated blues, spirituals, colloquial speech, and folkways in his poetry. An influential cultural organizer, He published numerous black anthologies and began black theater groups in Los Angeles and Chicago, as well as New Y ork City. He also wrote effective journalism, creating the character Jesse B. Semple ("simple") to express social commentary. One of his most beloved poems, "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" (1921, 1925), embraces his African -- and universal -- heritage in a grand epic catalogue A. Weldon Johnson

B. Claude McKay

C. Countee Cullen

D. Langston Hughes

53. _________s secure place in American literature rests primarily on his novel _______, a brilliantly written, economically structured story about the American dream of the self-made man. The protagonist, the mysterious Jay, discovers the devastating cost of success in terms of personal fulfillment and love.

A. Fitzgerald…Tender Is the Night

B. Fitzgerald …The Great Gatsby

C. Theodore Dreiser…An American Tragedy

D. Theodore Dreiser… Sister Currie

54. _________is arguably the most popular American novelist of this century. His sympathies are basically apolitical and humanistic, and in this sense he is universal. His simple style makes his novels easy to comprehend, and they are often set in exotic surroundings. A believer in the "cult of experience,"He often involved his characters in dangerous situations in order to reveal their inner natures; in his later works, the danger sometimes becomes an occasion for masculine assertion.

A. Ernest Hemingway

B. Henry James

C. F. Scott Fitzgerald

D. Theodore Dreiser

55 ______once compared his writing to icebergs: "There is seven-eighths of it under water for every part that shows.".

A. Ernest Hemingway

B. Henry James

C. F. Scott Fitzgerald

D. Theodore Dreiser

56. ________, a short poetic novel about a poor, old fisherman who heroically catches a huge fish devoured by sharks, won him the Pulitzer Prize in 1953; the next year he received the Nobel Prize

A. The Sun Also Rises

B. A Farewell to Arms

C. For Whom the Bell Tolls

D. The Old Man and the Sea

57. An innovative writer, _______experimented brilliantly with narrative chronology, different points of view and voices (including those of outcasts, children, and illiterates), and a rich and demanding baroque style built of extremely long sentences full of complicated subordinate parts.

A. Hemingway

B. Fitzgerald

C. Faulkner

D. Dreiser

58. In 1930, ________became the first American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. The novel added a new word to the American language -- "babbittry," meaning narrow-minded, complacent, bourgeois ways.

A. Dos Passos

B. F. Scott Fitzgerald

C. William Faulkner

D. Sinclair Lewis

59. ________s new techniques included "newsreel" sections taken from contemporary headlines, popular songs, and advertisements, as well as "biographies" briefly setting forth the lives of important Americans of the period, such as inventor Thomas Edison, labor organizer Eugene Debs, film star Rudolph V alentino, financier J.P. Morgan, and sociologist Thorstein V eblen. Both the newsreels and biographies lend Dos Passoss novels a documentary value; a third technique, the "camera eye," consists of stream of consciousness prose poems that offer a subjective response to the events described in the books.

A. Dos Passos

B. John Steinbeck

C. William Faulkner

D. Sinclair Lewis

60.________, is held in higher critical esteem outside the United States than in it today, largely because he received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1963 and the international fame it confers. In both cases, the Nobel Committee selected liberal American writers noted for their social criticism.. He combines realism with a primitivist romanticism that finds virtue in poor farmers who live close to the land. His fiction demonstrates the vulnerability of such people, who can be uprooted by droughts and are the first to suffer in periods of political unrest and economic depression.

A. Dos Passos

B. John Steinbeck

C. William Faulkner

D. Jean Toomer

61. African-American fiction writer and poet _________envisioned an American identity that would transcend race. Perhaps for this reason, he brilliantly employed poetic traditions of rhyme and meter and did not seek out new "black" forms for his poetry. His major work, Cane (1923), is ambitious and innovative, however. Like Williamss Paterson, Cane incorporates poems, prose vignettes, stories, and autobiographical notes. In it, an African-American struggles to discover his selfhood within and beyond the black communities in rural Georgia, Washington, D.C., and Chicago, Illinois, and as a black teacher in the South..

A. Zora Neale Hurston

B. Richard Wright

C. Jean Toomer

D. Countee Cullen

62. The most significant 20th-century regional literary movement was that of the movement led by poet-critic- theoretician John Crowe Ransom, poet Allen Tate, and novelist- poet-essayist Robert Penn Warren. This southern literary school rejected "northern" urban, commercial values, which they felt had taken over America. The school called for a return to the land and to American traditions that could be found in the South. The movement took its name from a literary magazine,________ , published from 1922 to 1925 at V anderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, and with which Ransom, Tate, and Warren were all associated.

A. The Imagism

B. The Times

C. The Fugitive

D. The Speculatar

63._________ is an approach to understanding literature through close readings and attentiveness to formal patterns (of imagery, metaphors, metrics, sounds, and symbols) and their suggested meanings. Ransom, leading theorist of the southern renaissance between the wars, published a book, on this method, which offered an alternative to previous extra- literary methods of criticism based on history and biography. It became the dominant American critical approach in the 1940s and 1950s because it proved to be well-suited to modernist writers such as Eliot and could absorb Freudian theory (especially its structural categories such as id, ego, and superego) and approaches drawing on mythic patterns.

A. New Criticism

B. Formal Criticism

C. Media Criticism

D Mass Criticism

64. In 1936________ received the Nobel Prize for Literature -- the first American playwright to be so honored. He redefined the theater by abandoning traditional divisions into acts and scenes (Strange Interlude has nine acts, and Mourning Becomes Electra takes nine hours to perform); using masks such as those found in Asian and ancient Greek theater; introducing Shakespearean monologues and Greek choruses; and producing special effects through lighting and sound. He is generally acknowledged to have been Americas foremost dramatist

A. Thornton Wilder

B. Eugene ONeill

C. Clifford Odets

D. Allen Tate

65. Events since World War II have produced a sense of history as discontinuous: Each act, emotion, and moment is seen as unique. Style and form now seem provisional, makeshift, reflexive of the process of composition and the writers self-awareness. Familiar categories of expression are suspect; originality is becoming a new tradition. This is probably called_____.

.A. Traditional

B. The Anti-Tradition

C. Idiosyncratic

D. Fugitive

66. The most influential recent poet,________ , began traditionally but was influenced by experimental currents. Because his life and work spans the period between the older modernist masters like Ezra Pound and the contemporary writers, his career places the later experimentalists in a larger context.

A. Robert Penn Warren

B. Hollander

C. James Merrill

D. Robert Lowell

67. Ill, isolated, and in despair, _____worked against the clock to produce a series of stunning poems before she committed suicide by gassing herself in her kitchen

A. Anne Sexton

B. Richard Hugo

C. Sylvia Plath

D. Theodore Roethke

68. In one poem, ________ likens himself to a fox who survives in a dangerous world of hunters through his courage and cunning. In terms of his rhythmic pattern, he has traveled a path from traditional meters in his early works to a freer, more open line in his later poetry as he expresses his lonely protest against the evils of the contemporary world.

A. Philip Levine

B. James Dickey

C. Elizabeth Bishop

D. Adrienne Rich

69.________ is linked with Charles Olsons theory of "projective verse," which insisted on an open form based on the spontaneity of the breath pause in speech and the typewriter line in writing.

A. The San Francisco School

B. The Black Mountain School

C. The New Y ork School

D. Beat Poets

70._______ expresses the unconscious through vivid dreamlike imagery, and much poetry by women and ethnic minorities that has flourished in recent years. Though superficially distinct, surrealists, feminists, and minorities appear to share a sense of alienation from white, male, mainstream literature.

A.imagism

B. surrealism

C. modernism

D.futurism

71. Death of a Salesman, by _______, is a study of mans search for merit and worth in his life and the realization that failure invariably looms. Set within the Loman family, it hinges on the uneven relationships of father and sons, husband and wife. It is a mirror of the literary attitudes of the 1940s -- with its rich combination of realism tinged with naturalism; carefully drawn, rounded characters; and insistence on the value of the individual, despite failure and error. Death of a Salesman is a moving paean to the common man -- to whom, as Willy Lomans widow eulogizes, "attention must be paid." Poignant and somber, it is also a story of dreams. As one character notes ironically, "a salesman has got to dream, boy. It comes with the territory."

A. Robert Penn Warren

B. Tennessee Williams

C. Arthur Miller

D. Katherine Anne Porter

72. Not a prolific writer, ________ nonetheless has influenced generations of authors In the early 1960s, she produced a long, allegorical novel with a timeless theme -- the responsibility of humans for each other. Titled Ship of Fools (1962), it was set in the late 1930s aboard a passenger liner carrying members of the German upper class and German refugees alike from the Nazi nation..

A Katherine Anne Porter.

B. Eudora Welty

C. Flannery OConnor

D. Katherine Mansfield

73. _________had one of the strangest careers in American letters -- consisting of one highly acclaimed book, and nothing more. The novel is Invisible Man (1952), the story of a black man who lives a subterranean existence in a hole brightly illuminated by electricity stolen from a utility company. The book recounts his grotesque, disenchanting experiences. When he wins a scholarship to a black college, he is humiliated by whites; when he gets to the college, he witnesses the black president spurning black American concerns. Life is corrupt outside college, too. For example, even religion is no consolation: A preacher turns out to be a criminal. The novel indicts society for failing to provide its citizens -- black and white -- with viable ideals and institutions for realizing them. It embodies a powerful racial theme because the "invisible man" is invisible not in himself but because others, blinded by prejudice, cannot see him for who he is.

A. John OHara

B. James Baldwin

C. Ralph Waldo Ellison

D. Flannery OConnor

74. Born in Canada and raised in Chicago,________ is of Russian-Jewish background. In college, he studied anthropology and sociology, which greatly influence his writing even today. He has expressed a profound debt to Theodore Dreiser for his openness to a wide range of experience and his emotional engagement with it. Highly respected, he received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1976.

A. Bernard Malamud

B. Saul Bellow

C. Ralph Waldo Ellison

D. James Baldwin

75. Nobel Prize-winning novelist and short story master ___________ wrote A Love Story (1972), whose protagonists were survivors of the Holocaust seeking to create new lives for themselves.

A. Bernard Malamud

B. Saul Bellow

C. Isaac Bashevis Singer

D. Vladimir Nabokov

76. ________ is best known for his novels, which include the autobiographical Pnin (1957), about an ineffectual Russian emigre professor, and Lolita (U.S. edition 1958), about an educated, middle-aged European who becomes infatuated with an ignorant 12-year-old American girl.

A. John Cheever

B. Saul Bellow

C. Isaac Bashevis Singer

D. Vladimir Nabokov

77. The Catcher in the Rye (1951), written by ____________, centered on a sensitive 16-year-old, Holden Caulfield, who flees his elite boarding school for the outside world of adulthood, only to become disillusioned by its materialism and phon iness. When asked what he would like to be, Caulfield answers "the catcher in the rye," misquoting a poem by Robert Burns. In his vision, he is a modern version of a white knight, the sole preserver of innocence. He

美国文学史及选读试卷 (1)

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

美国文学史期末参考复习资料

仅作参考，最主要还是要自己消化，整理 Chapter 1 Colonial Period 1. Puritanism: American puritans accepted the doctrine of predestination, original sin and total depravity, and limited atonement through a special infusion of grace from God. 2. Influence (1) A group of good qualities – hard work, thrift, piety, sobriety (serious and thoughtful) influenced American literature. (2) It led to the everlasting myth. All literature is based on a myth – garden of Eden. (3) Symbolism: the American puritan’s metaphorical mode of perception was chi efly instrumental in calling into being a literary symbolism which is distinctly American. (4) With regard to their writing, the style is fresh, simple and direct; the rhetoric is plain and honest, not without a touch of nobility often traceable to the direct influence of the Bible. II. Overview of the literature 1. types of writing diaries, histories, journals, letters, travel books, autobiographies/biographies, sermons 2. writers of colonial period (1) Anne Bradstreet (2) Edward Taylor III. Benjamin Franklin 1. life 2. works (1) Poor Richard’s Almanac (2) Autobiography 3. contribution (1) He helped found the Pennsylvania Hospital and the American Philosophical Society. (2) He was called “the new Prometheus who had stolen fire (electricity in this case) from heaven”. (3) Everything seems to meet in this one man –“Jack of all trades”. Herman Melville thus described him “master of each and mastered by none”. Chapter 2 American Romanticism Section 1 Early Romantic Period I. American Romanticism 1. Background (1) Political background and economic development (2) Romantic movement in European countries Derivative – foreign influence 2. features (1) American romanticism was in essence the expression of “a real new experience and contained “an alien quality” for the simple reason that “the spirit of the place” was radically new and alien. (2) There is American Puritanism as a cultural heritage to consider. American romantic authors tended more to moralize. Many American romantic writings intended to edify more than they entertained. (3) The “newness” of Americans as a nation is in connection with Am erican Romanticism. (4) As a logical result of the foreign and native factors at work, American romanticism was both imitative and independent. II. Washington Irving: Father of American Literature 1. several names attached to Irving (1) first American writer (2) the messenger sent from the new world to the old world (3) father of American literature 2. life 3. works (1) A History of New York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty (2) The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. (He won a measure of international recognition with the publication of this.) (3) The History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (4) A Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada (5) The Alhambra 4. Literary career: two parts (1) 1809~1832

美国文学史及选读期末复习题

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

美国文学史及选读期末复习

美国文学史复习1（colonialism) 第一部分殖民主义时期的文学 一、时期综述 1、清教徒采用的文学体裁：a、narratives 日记 b、journals 游记 2、清教徒在美国的写作内容： 1）their voyage to the new land 2) Adapting themselves to unfamiliar climates and crops 3) About dealing with Indians 4) Guide to the new land, endless bounty, invitation to bold spirit 3、清教徒的思想： 1）puritan want to make up pure their religious beliefs and practices 净化信仰和行为方式 2) Wish to restore simplicity to church and the authority of the Bible to the theology. 重建教堂，提供简单服务，建立神圣地位 3）look upon themselves as chosen people, and it follow logically that anyone who challenged their way of life is opposing God's will and is not to be accepted. 认为自己是上帝选民，对他们的生活有异议就是反对上帝 4）puritan opposition to pleasure and the arts sometimes has been exaggerated. 反对对快乐和艺术的追求到了十分荒唐的地步 5）religious teaching tended to emphasize the image of a wrathful God.强调上帝严厉的一面，忽视上帝仁慈的一面。 4、典型的清教徒： John Cotton & Roger William 他们的不同：John Cotton was much more concerned with authority than with democracy; William begins the history of religious toleration in America. 5、William的宗教观点：Toleration did not stem from a lack of religious convictions. Instead, it sprang from the idea that simply to be virtuous in conduct and devout in belief did not give anyone the right to force belief on others. He also felt that no political order or church system could identify itself directly with God. 行为上的德，信仰上的诚，并没有给任何人强迫别人该如何行事的权利。没有任何政治秩序和教会体制能够直接体现神本身的意旨。 6、英国最早移民到美国的诗人：Anne Bradstreet 7、在殖民时期最好的清教徒诗人：the best of Puritan poets is Edward Tayor. 学习指南： 1、Could you give a description of American Puritans? 关于美国清教徒的描绘 Like their brothers back in England, were idealists, believing that the church should be restored to the "purity" of the first-century church as established by Jesus Christ himself. To them religion was a matter of primary importance. They made it their chief business to see that man lived and thought and acted in a way which tended to the glory of God. They accepted the doctrine of predestination, original sin and total depravity, and limited atonement through a special infusion of grace from God, all that John Calvin, the great French theologian who lived in Geneva had preached. It was this kind of religious belief that they brought with them into the wildness. There they meaant to prove that were God's chosen people enjoying his blessings on this earth as in Heaven. 2、Hard work, thrift, piety and sobriety were the Puritan values that dominated much of the earliest American writing. 3、The work of two writers, Anne Bradstreet & Edward Taylor, rose to the level of real poetry. 4、The earliest settlers included Dutch, Swedes, Germans, French, Spaniards Italian, and Portuguese. 美国文学史复习2（reason and revolution) (2009-01-17 15:54:25) 一、美国的性质： The war for Independence ended in the formation of a Federative bourgeois democratic republic - the United States of America. 联邦的资产阶级民主共和国--美利坚合众国。 二、代表作家： 1、Benjamin Franklin 本杰明·富兰克林 1706-1790 1）"Poor Richard's Almanac" 穷人查理德的年鉴 annual collection of proverbs 流行谚语集

美国文学史及选读复习重点

Captain John Smith (first American writer). Anne Bradstreet；The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America （colonists living） Edward Taylor(the best puritan poet) John Cotton ”the Patriarch of New England” teacher spiritual leader Benjamin Franklin The Autobiography Poor Richard’s Almanack Thomas Jefferson： Political Career Thoughts The Declaration of Independence we hold truth to be self-evidence Philip Freneau“Father of American Poetry” The Wild Honey Suckle American Romanticism optimism and hope Nationalism Washington Irving“Father of American Literature short story”The first “Pure Writer” A History of New York The Sketch Book marked the beginning of American Romanticism! “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”Rip Van Winkle James Fenimore Cooper Father of American sea and frontier novels Leather stocking Tales The Last of the Mohicans The Pioneers The Prairie The Pathfinder The Deerslayer Edgar Allan Poe father of detective story and horror fiction Tales of the Grotesque and the Arabesque “MS. Found in a Bottle” “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” “The Fall of the House of Usher”“The Masque of the Red Death”“The

华师自考美国文学史及选读试题

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

美国文学史及选读期末复习题

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”.

美国文学史及选读考研复习笔记6.

History And Anthology of American Literature （6） 附：作者及作品 一、殖民主义时期The Literature of Colonial America 1．船长约翰·史密斯Captain John Smith 《自殖民地第一次在弗吉尼亚垦荒以来发生的各种事件的真实介绍》 “A True Relation of Such Occurrences and Accidents of Note as Hath Happened in Virginia Since the First Planting of That Colony” 《弗吉尼亚地图，附：一个乡村的描述》 “A Map of Virginia: with a Description of the Country” 《弗吉尼亚通史》“General History of Virginia” 2．威廉·布拉德福德William Bradford 《普利茅斯开发历史》“The History of Plymouth Plantation”3．约翰·温思罗普John Winthrop 《新英格兰历史》“The History of New England” 4．罗杰·威廉姆斯Roger Williams 《开启美国语言的钥匙》”A Key into the Language of America” 或叫《美洲新英格兰部分土著居民语言指南》 Or “A Help to the Language of the Natives in That Part of America Called New England ” 5．安妮·布莱德斯特Anne Bradstreet 《在美洲诞生的第十个谬斯》 ”The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America” 二、理性和革命时期文学The Literature of Reason and Revolution 1。本杰明·富兰克林Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) ※《自传》“ The Autobiography ” 《穷人理查德的年鉴》“Poor Richard’s Almanac” 2。托马斯·佩因Thomas Paine (1737-1809) ※《美国危机》“The American Crisis” 《收税官的案子》“The Case of the Officers of the Excise”《常识》“Common Sense” 《人权》“Rights of Man” 《理性的时代》“The Age of Reason” 《土地公平》“Agrarian Justice” 3。托马斯·杰弗逊Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) ※《独立宣言》“The Declaration of I ndependence” 4。菲利浦·弗瑞诺Philip Freneau (1752-1832) ※《野忍冬花》“The Wild Honey Suckle” ※《印第安人的坟地》“The Indian Burying Ground” ※《致凯提·迪德》“To a Caty-Did” 《想象的力量》“The Power of Fancy” 《夜屋》“The House of Night” 《英国囚船》“The British Prison Ship” 《战争后期弗瑞诺主要诗歌集》 “The Poems of Philip Freneau Written Chiefly During the Late War” 《札记》“Miscellaneous Works” 三、浪漫主义文学The Literature of Romanticism 1。华盛顿·欧文Washington Irving (1783-1859) ※《作者自叙》“The Author’s Account of Himself” ※《睡谷传奇》“The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” 《见闻札记》“Sketch Book” 《乔纳森·欧尔德斯泰尔》“Jonathan Oldstyle” 《纽约外史》“A History of New York” 《布雷斯布里奇庄园》“Bracebridge Hall” 《旅行者故事》“Tales of Traveller” 《查理二世》或《快乐君主》“Charles the Second” Or “The Merry Monarch” 《克里斯托弗·哥伦布生平及航海历史》 “A History of the Life and V oyages of Christopher Columbus” 《格拉纳达征服编年史》”A Chronicle of the Conquest of Grandada” 《哥伦布同伴航海及发现》 ”V oyages and Discoveries of the Companions of Columbus” 《阿尔罕布拉》“Alhambra” 《西班牙征服传说》“Legends of the Conquest of Spain” 《草原游记》“A Tour on the Prairies” 《阿斯托里亚》“Astoria” 《博纳维尔船长历险记》“The Adventures of Captain Bonneville” 《奥立弗·戈尔德史密斯》”Life of Oliver Goldsmith” 《乔治·华盛顿传》“Life of George Washington” 2．詹姆斯·芬尼莫·库珀James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851) ※《最后的莫希干人》“The Last of the Mohicans” 《间谍》“The Spy” 《领航者》“The Pilot” 《美国海军》“U.S. Navy” 《皮袜子故事集》“Leather Stocking Tales” 包括《杀鹿者》、《探路人》”The Deerslayer”, ”The Pathfinder” 《最后的莫希干人》“The Last of the Mohicans” 《拓荒者》、《大草原》“The Pioneers”, “The Praire” 3。威廉·卡伦·布莱恩特William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878) ※《死之思考》“Thanatopsis” ※《致水鸟》“To a Waterfowl” 4。埃德加·阿伦·坡Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) ※《给海伦》“To Helen” ※《乌鸦》“The Raven” ※《安娜贝尔·李》“Annabel Lee” ※《鄂榭府崩溃记》“The Fall of the House of Usher” 《金瓶子城的方德先生》“Ms. Found in a Bottle” 《述异集》“Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque” 5。拉尔夫·沃尔多·爱默生Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) ※《论自然》“Nature” ※《论自助》“Self-Reliance” 《美国学者》“The American Scholar” 《神学院致辞》“The Divinity School Address” 《随笔集》“Essays” 《代表》“Representative Men” 《英国人》“English Traits” 《诗集》“Poems” 6。亨利·戴维·梭罗Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) ※《沃尔登我生活的地方我为何生活》 1

美国文学史及选读考试整理

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 (4)

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.