英美文学历年真题.docx

Chapter 1 The Renaissance Period
(07)The sentence "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" is the beginning line of Shakespeare's Sonnet 18.
(10)The Renaissance marks a transition from the medieval to the modern world.
(09)In Renaissance, the European humanists thinkers and scholars made attempts to do the following including getting rid of those feudalist ideas, introducing new ideas that expressed the interests of the rising bourgeoisie and recovering the purity of the early church from the corruption of the Roman Catholic Church, except getting control of the parliament and government.
(10,09)As the best of Shakespeare's final romances, The Tempest is a typical example of his pessimistic view towards human life and society in his late years.
(11)In King Lear, Shakespeare has not only made a profound analysis of the social crisis in which the evils can be seen everywhere, but also criticized the bourgeois egoism.
(12)Antonio, Bassanio and Portia are the characters in The Merchant of Venice.
(10)"To be, or not to be-that is the question;/Whether' tis nobler in the mind to suffer/The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,/Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,/And by opposing end them?"These lines are taken from Hamlet.
(12)John Milton wrote Paradise Lost to expose the ways of Satan and to "justify the ways of God to men."
(11,09)John Milton's greatest poetical work Paradise Lost is the only generally acknowledged epic in English literature since Beowulf.
(11,10)Among the three major poetical works by John Milton, Samson Agonistes is the most perfect example of verse drama after the Greek style in English.
(12)The work Paradise Regain shows how mankind, in the person of Christ, withstands the tempter and is established once more in the divine favor.
(07)Paradise Lost is actually a story taken from the Old Testament.旧约
(11,08)"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake and darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:"
Question:
A:Who's the poet of the quoted stanza, and what's the title of the poem?
B:What figure of speech is employed in the poem?
C:What is the theme of the poem?
A:Shakespeare, Sonnet 18;
B:Personification;拟人法
C:A nice summer's day is usually transient, but the beauty in poetry can last for ever.
(07)William Shakespeare is one of the most remarkable playwrights the world has ever known.
A:Name his four greatest tragedies.
B:What are the characteristics of the four tragedies in common?
C:Briefly summarize each hero's weakness of nature.
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(blue) scholar-prince, faces the dilemma between action and mind; Othello's inner weakness is made use of by the outside evil force; the old King Lear is unwilling to totally give up his power; and Macbeth's lust for power stirs up his ambition and leads him to incessant crimes.
(10)Working though the tradition of a Christian humanism, Milton wrote Paradise Lost, intending to expose the way of Satan and to "justify the ways of God to men."What is Milton's fundamental concern in Paradise Lost?
At the center of the conflict between human love and spiritual duty lies Milton's fundamental concern with freedom and choice. The theme is the "Fall of Man," i.e. man's disobedience and the loss of Paradise. In the fall of man Adam discovered his full humanity. The freedom of the will is the keystone of Milton's creed.
(09)Briefly discuss William Shakespeare 's artistic achievements in characterization, plot construction and language.
A:Shakespeare's major characters are neither merely individual ones nor type ones; they represent certain types; they are individuals representing certain types. By employing a psycho-analytical approach, Shakespeare succeeds in exploring the characters' inner world. Shakespeare also portrays his characters in pairs. Contrasts are frequently used to bring vividness to his characters.
B:Shakespeare seldom invents his own plot; instead, he borrows them from old plays or storybooks, from ancient Greek or Roman sources. In order to make the play more lively and compact, he would shorten the time and intensity the story. There are usually several clues running through the play, thus providing the story with suspense and apprehension.
C:Shakespeare can write skillfully in different poetic forms, such as the sonnet, the blank verse and the rhymed couplet. He has an amazing wealth of vocabulary and idiom. His coinage of new words and distortion of the meaning of the old words also creates striking effects on the reader.
Chapter 2 The Neoclassical Period
(10)Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe is usually considered as his masterpiece.
At the age of 60,Daniel Defoe started his first novel Robinson Crusoe, which was an immediate success. In the following years, he wrote four other novels: Captain Singleton(辛利顿船长1720）， Moll Flanders(莫尔.弗兰德斯1722), Colonel Jack(杰克上校1722) and Roxana(罗克萨娜1724). Robinson Crusoe, an adventure story very much in the spirit of the time, is universally considered his masterpiece, and the rest novels devoted to the study of problems of the lower-class people.
(11)Henry Fielding's The History of Tom Jones, a foundling brings him the name of "Prose Homer".(散文荷马）
Fielding, Father of the English Novel.
(07)Literature of Neoclassical is different from that of Romanticism in that the former celebrates reason, rationality, order and instruction while the latter sees literature as an expression of an individual's feelings and experiences.
(10)The great political and social events in the English society of neoclassical period were the following including the Restoration of King Charles II(查理二世复辟) in 1660, the Great Plague (大瘟疫)in 1665 and the Great London Fire in 1666, except the Wars of Roses in 1689.(1689Glorious Revolution)光荣革命
(10)The belief of the eighteenth-century neoclassicists in England led them to seek the following, proportion, unity and harmony, except spirit.
(09)"Graveyard School" writers are the following sentimentalists, James Thomson, William Collins and William Cowper, except Thomas Jackson.
(12)The work The Shortest Way with the Dissenters(成为异教徒的捷径) written by Daniel Defoe brought him into jail and made him go through public pillory.
(07)Daniel Defoe describes Robinson Crusoe as a typical English middle-class man of the eighteenth century-the very prototype of the empire builder or the pioneer colonist.
(12,08)As one of the greatest masters of English prose, Jonathan Swift defined a good style as "proper words in proper places".
(12)In the first part of Gulliver's Travel, Gulliver told his experience in Lilliput.
(10)Of all the eighteenth-century novelists Henry Fielding was the first to set out, both in theory and practice, to write specifically a "comic epic in prose"散文体喜剧史诗, the first to give the modern novel its structure and style.
(12,08)Fielding has been regarded by some as "Father of the English Novel", for his contribution to the establishment of the form of the modern novel.
(12)Into this fence or fortress, with infinite labour, I carry 'd all my riches, all my provisions, ammunition, and stores, of which you have the account above; and I made me a large tent, which, to preserve me from the rains that in one part of the year are very violent there, I made double, viz. one smaller tent within, and one larger tent above it, and covered the uppermost with a large tarpaulin which I had saved among the sails.
Question:
A. Identify the author and the title of the novel from which this passage is taken?
B: Who is the narrator?
C: What are the narrator's characteristics and whom does he represent?
A: From Daniel Defoe 's Robinson Crusoe.
B: Robinson Crusoe.
C: Robinson is a typical 18th century English middle-class man, with a great capacity for work, inexhaustible energy, courage, patience and persistence in overcoming obstacles, in struggling against the hostile natural environment. He is the very prototype of the empire builder, the pioneer colonist.
(09)List at least two leading neoclassicists in England. What did Neoclassicists celebrate in literary creation?
A. Alexander Pope, John Dryden, Samuel Johnson(任选两个)
B. They believed that the artistic ideals should be order, logic, restrained emotion and accuracy and that literature should be judged in terms of its service to humanity. They seek proportion, unity, harmony and grace in literary expressions, in an effort to delight, instruct and correct human beings, primarily as social animals. Thus a polite, urbane, witty and intellectual art developed.
(08)Daniel Defoe's novel Robinson Crusoe was a great success partly because the protagonist was a real middle-class hero. Discuss Crusoe, the protagonist of the novel, as an embodiment of the rising middle-class virtues in the mid-eighteenth century England.
A: Social background: The Eighteenth Century England witnessed the growing importance of the bourgeois or middle class.
a. The industrial Revolution
b. The expansion of international markets;
c. Values/virtues/moral standards/... different from those of the feudal aristocratic class-courageous, full of energy, hard working, practical, resourceful, self-reliant, etc.
d. Literature should give/provide a realistic presentation of the life of the common people; it should meet the demand/interest of the middle class people.
B. Robinson Crusoe embodies are virtues of the middle class people.
a. Crusoe as an adventurous/courageous man full of energy and courage.(He saves Friday from the hands of savages.)
b. Crusoe as a practical man(He grows crops, domesticates animals and builds comfortable homes for himself on the island.)
c. Crusoe as a resourceful/self-reliant man(同上）
d. Crusoe as a patient/persistent man.(He never gives up in the face of trouble.)
Chapter 3 The Romantic Period
(08)The assertion that poetry originates from "emotion recollected in tranquillity(静谧中找回的情感）" belongs to William Wordsworth.
William Wordsworth thinks that common life is the only subject of literary interest.
Wordsworth had a long poetic career. His first volumes(Descriptive Sketches, an Evening Walk, 1793)描绘速写，黄昏漫步 were written in the tradition of the 18th-century.
(10)Jane Austen's practical idealism is that love should be justified by reason and disciplined by self-control.
As a novelist, Jane Austen writes within a very narrow sphere.
Because of her sensitivity to universal patterns of human behavior, Jane Austen has brought the English novel, as an art of form, to its maturity.
(08)English Romanticism, as a historical phase of literature, is generally said to have ended in 1832 with the passage of the first Reform Bill in the parliament.
(11)William Blake's Marriage of Heaven and Hell marks his entry into maturity.
(11)The work Songs of Innocence by William Blake is a lovely volume of poems, presenting a happy world, though not without its evils and sufferings.
(12)William Blake's Marriage of Heaven and Hell was composed during the climax of the French Revolution and it plays the double role both as a satire and a revolutionary prophecy.
(11)All of the following poems by William Wordsworth are masterpieces on nature including I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud, An Evening Walking and Tinter Abbey, except The Solitary Reaper.
(12)William Wordsworth maintained that the scenes and events of everyday life and the speech of ordinary people were the raw material of which poetry could and should be made.
(11)One of Shelley's greatest political lyrics is Men of England, which was later to become a rallying song of the British Communist Party.
(12)Prometheus, the hero in Shelly's poetic drama Prometheus Unbound, is a figure in Greek Mythology.
(11)"If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?" the quoted line comes from Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind".
(12,11)Jane Austen's first novel Sense and Sensibility tells a story about two sisters and their love affairs.
(10,08)Because of her sensitivity to universal patterns of human behavior, Jane Austen has brought the English novel, as an art of form, to its maturity.
(11)"When the stars threw down their spears,/And water'd heaven with their tears,/Did he smile his work to see?/Did he who made the Lamb make thee?"
Questions:
A: Who's the poet of the quoted stanza, and what's the title of the poem?
B: Whom does the "he" refer to?
C: What does the "Lamb" symbolize?
A: The Tyger, William Blake.
B: The God.
C: Lamb symbolizes peace and purity.
(12) What does the poem "The Chimney Sweeper (from Songs of Experience)" reveal?
The two "Chimney Sweeper" poems are good examples to reveal the relation between an economic circumstance, i.e. the exploitation of child labor, and an ideological circumstance i.e. the role played by religion in making people compliant to exploitation. The poem from The Songs of Experience reveals the true nature of religion which helps bring misery to the poor children.
(10)Briefly introduce Blake's Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience.
The songs of Innocence is a lovely volume of poems, presenting a happy and innocent world, though not without its evils and sufferings. His Songs of Experience paints a different world, a world of misery, poverty, disease, war and repression with a melancholy tone. Childhood is central to Blake's concern in the Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience.
(12)What is the theme of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice?
Pride and Prejudice, originally drafted as "First Impressions" in 1796, is the most delightful of Jane Austen's works. The title tells of a major concern of the novel: pride and prejudice.

Chapter 4 The Victorian Period
(10)All of the following statements about the Victorian Period is true except ( )
A. England was the "workshop of the world".
B. The early years was a time of rapid economic development as well as serious social problems.
C. Towards the mid-century, England had reached its highest point of development as a world power.
D. Capitalism came into its monopoly, the gap between the rich and the poor was further deepened.
In the Victorian Period, the novel became the most widely read and the most vital and challenging expression of progressive thought.
Among those experimental poets was Robert Browning who created the verse novel by adopting the novelistic presentation of characters.
(11)The tragic sense turns into despair in Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure, where cornered by tradition social morality, the hero morality, the hero and the heroine have to kill their own will and passion and return to their former destructive way of life.
Thomas Hardy's b