欧美文学鉴赏考试重点.doc

名词解释
1. Local Color
The detailed representation in prose fiction of the setting, dialect, customs, dress, and ways of thinking and feeling which are distinctive of a particular region. The term “local color writing” is often applied to works rely for their interest mainly on a sentimental or comic representation of the surface particularities of a region (like the Mississippi region), instead of on more deep-seated, complex, and general human characteristics and problems.
2. The Hemingway Code Hero
The “Hemingway Code” of manhood does not involve mere physical strength, sexual potency, or ability to accumulate (or spend) wealth. According to this code, a man is defined by will, pride, and endurance: the endurance to accept pain, even loss – when the loss cannot be avoided; the pride of knowing that one has done one's best, with the courage to act truly according to one's own nature; and the will to face defeat or victory without whining on one hand or boasting on the other.
3. Imagism
It is a movement of English and American poets in revolt from Romanticism, which flourished 1910-1917, and derived in part from the aesthetic philosophy of T.E. Hulme. Its first anthology Des Imagistes (1914), edited by Ezra Pound, had eleven contributors: R. Aldington, H. Doolittle, F. S. Flint, Skipwith Cannell, A Loweill, W. C. Williams, Joyce, Pound, F. M. Hueffer, Allen Upward, and John Cournos. Imagists in the early 20th century in the US and England rebelled against the artificiality and sentimentality of much 19th century poetry. The characteristic products of the movement are more easily recognized than its theories defined: rather than metrical regularity, to avoid abstraction, and to treat the image world with a hard, clear precision rather than with overt symbolic intent.
4. Renaissance
This word, meaning “rebirth” is commonly applied movement or period which marks the transition from the medieval to the modern world in Western Europe. In the usual of the word, Renaissance suggests especially the 14th, 15th, 16th, and early 17th centuries, the dates differing for different countries. It is best to regard the Renaissance as the result of a new emphasis upon and a new combination of tendencies and attitudes already existing, stimulated by a series of historical events. The new humanistic learning which resulted from the rediscovery of classical literature is frequently taken as the beginning of the Renaissance on its conscious, intellectual side, since it was to the treasures of classical culture and to the authority of classical writers that the people of the Renaissance turned for inspiration.
5. The Lost Generation
It refers to, in general, the post-World War’s First’ generation, but specifically a group of expatriate disillusioned intellectuals and artists, who experimented on new modes of thought and expression by rebelling against former ideals and values and replacing them only by despair or a cynical hedonism. The generation was "lost" in the sense that its inherited values were no longer relevant in the postwar world and because of its spiritual alienation from U. S. that seemed to its members to be hopelessly provincial, materialistic, and emotional barren. The term embraces Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound, E. E. Cummings, and many other writers who made Paris the center of their literary activities in the 1920s.

6. English Romanticism
English Romanticism is a revolt of the English imagination against the neoclassical reason. The French Revolution of 1789-1794 and the English Industrial Revolution exert great influence on English Romanticism. The romanticists express a negative attitude towards the existing social or political conditions. They place the individual at the center of art, as can be seen from Lord Byron’s Byronic Hero. The key words of English Romanticism are nature and imagination. English Romanism tends to be nationalistic, defending the greatest English writers. They argue that poetry should be free from all rules.
回答问题
1. How do you understand Hamlet’s soliloquy “To be or not to be” ?
Answer: This is an internal philosophical debate on the advantages and disadvantages of existence, and whether it is one's right to end his or her own life. It presents a most logical and powerful examination of the theme of the moral legitimacy of suicide in an unbearably painful world.
“To be or not to be” is the key sentence in this soliloquy. “To be” is to continue to live, or to take action. “not to be” is to die, or to do nothing but suffering, to end one’s life by self- destruction. It is a dilemma of trying to determine the meaning of life and death. Is it nobler to suffer the life passively or to die (seek to end one’s sufferings) actively?
2. The west wind in Shelley’s The Ode to the West Wind is generally considered as a symbol. What does it symbolize?
Answer: In Hebrew, Latin, Greek, and many other languages the words for winds, breath, soul and inspiration are all identical or related. Thus Shelley’s west wind is a symbol of “spirit”, “the breath of Autumn’s being,” which on earth, in sky and sea destroys in the autumn in order to revive in the spring. Around this central symbol, the poem weaves various cycles of death and regeneration—vegetation, human, and divine.
3. Why is the prison the setting of Chapter II in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter?
Answer: The prison is used as the setting of the story because the execution of Hester Prynne as an infamous culprit is expected to take place here and the sentence of a legal tribunal on her has but confirmed the verdict of public sentiment. In addition, the setting also suggests the tragic fate of the protagonist.
4. What is the difference between Walt Whitman and Emily Dickson?
Answer: Dickinson differs from Whitman in a variety of ways. For one thing, Whitman seems to keep his eye on society at large; Dickinson explores the inner life of the individual. Whereas Whitman is “national” in his outlook, Dickinson is “regional” (“because I see New-Englandly”). In formal terms the two poets are vastly different: Whitman is endless, all-inclusive catalogs contrast with the concise, direct and simple diction and syntax which characterize Dickinson’s poetry. Dickinson denied having read Whitman.
5. How does the author successfully describe Jane Eyre’s image as the first governess heroine?
Answer: The success of Jane Eyre is due to its introduction to the English novel the first governess heroine. Jane Eyre, an orphan child with a fiery spirit and a longing to love and be loved, a poor, plain, little governess who dares to love her master, a man superior to her in many ways, and even is brave enough to declare to the man her love for him, cuts a completely new woman image. She represents those middle-class working women who are struggling for recognition of their basic rights and equality as a human being. The vivid description of her intense feelings and her thought and inner conflicts brings her to the audience.
6. What is the central theme of Paradise Lost?
Answer: The central theme of Paradise Lost is taken from the Bible and deals with the Christian story of “the fall of man”, that is, how the first man and woman in the world,　Adam and Eve, were tempted by Satan to disobey God by eating the forbidden fruit from the Tree of Knowledge, and how they were consequently punished by God and driven out of paradise, with the prospect nevertheless of the eventual redemption of mankind by Jesus Christ the Son of God. The purpose of the epic is, as the poet himself makes clear in the first book, to “assert eternal providence and justify the ways of God to man”. The essentially religious nature of the poem comes naturally from Milton’s fervent belief in Christianity as a Puritan, but this belief is itself a revolt against the established doctrines of the Catholics and of the Anglican Church as he insisted on the freedom of each individual to interpret the Bible for himself.
7. Ezra Pound is one of the pioneers in modern poetry. What is the poetic school of which he is a chief member?
What is Pound's representative work of many years of poetic creation? What is the title of his frequently quoted one-image poem? Pound has translated some literary works from two great ancient civilizations. One is Greece. What is the other? How do you understand his famous comment "The image itself is the speech"?
Answer: A. Imagism.
B. The Cantos.
C. "In a Station of the Metro"
D. China.
E. Pound means that image should not be ornaments only, but should be the focus of poetic expression. By emphasizing the exterior object, Pound hopes to avoid moralizing and achieve clarity and exactness.
8. Mark Twain presented the 19th century America in his own unique way. Discuss Twain’s art of fiction: the setting, the language, and the characters, etc., based on his novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Answer:
A. Mark Twain uses the Mississippi alley as his fictional kingdom, writing about the landscape and people, the customs and the dialects of one particular region, and is therefore known as a local colorist.
B. He creates life-like characters, especially the unconventional Huckleberry Finn, who runs away from civilization and stands opposite to conventional village morality.
C. He uses a simple, direct vernacular language, totally different from any precious literary language. It is the kind of colloquial belonging to the lower class, the living local American English.
D. He has created a special humor to satirize and the decayed convention.
9. In Chapter 15 of Wuthering Heights, Heathcliff said to Catherine: “Why did you betray your own, Cathy?... You loved me－then what right have you to leave me?... I have not broken your heart－you have broken it－and in breaking it, you have broken mine.”
Taking the whole novel into consideration, do you think Heathcliff’s above accusation of Catherine’s betrayal can be justified? If you think so, what reasons does Catherine have to betray Heathcliff and their love?
Answer: A. Heathcliff' s accusation can be justified.
B. The reasons of her betrayal may be :1 ) The fancy she felt for Linton, that is, she was attracted by Linton' s pleasant personality, his rich knowledge, and his elegant manners. 2) Her vainglory made her desire a kind of upper-class life and social status. 3) She was afraid that she might suffer poverty and be degraded if she had got married to Heathcliff. 4) She fancied if she got married to Linton, she might have the means to help Heathcliff in getting a good education and becoming a gentleman so that they could be united without being degraded.
10. In Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen explored three kinds of motivations of marriage the middle-class people had in the second half of the 18th century. Try to make a brief discussion about them with specific examples from the novel. Make comments on Austen’s attitude towards these motivations.
Answer: A. Motivation one: to pursue material interest through marriage; Wickham, Miss Binley and Charlotte Lucas are examples of this kind.
B. Motivation two: to seek sensual pleasure and beauty; Lydia and Mr. Bennet are examples of this kind.
C. Motivation three: to search for true love and also take personal merits and financial positions into consideration; Elizabeth Bennet is a typical example of this kind.
D. Austen celebrated the third kind of motivation of marriage while criticizing the first two wrong motivations.
11. William Shakespeare is one of the most remarkable playwrights the world has ever known.
(1) Name his four greatest tragedies.
(2) What are the characteristics of the four tragedies in common?
(3) Briefly summarize each hero's weakness of nature.

Answer: A. Shakespeare's four greatest tragedies are: Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth.
B. Each portrays some noble hero, who faces the injustice of human life and is caught in a difficult situation and whose fate is closely connected with the fate of the whole nation.
C. Each hero has his weakness of nature: Hamlet, the melancholic scholar; Othello' s inner weakness is made use of by the outside evil force; the old king Lear who is unwilling to totally give up his power; and Macbeth' s lust for power stirs up his ambition and leads him to incessant crimes.

12. Briefly discuss William Shakespeare's artistic achievements in characterization, plot construction and language.
Answer: As one of the most remarkable playwrights and poets the worlds has ever known, Shakespeare has affected his influence far beyond the time he lived—the Renaissance period. In this greatest tragedy “Hamlet”, his skillful handling of plot construction, powerful condemnation of the royal corruption as well as his genius application of soliloquy are all displayed perfectly, which not only makes this play the most popular one on the stage, but also creates Shakespeare an everlasting fame in the literary world, going beyond the national boundaries for centuries.