美国文学作业答案.doc

Part I Each of the following statements below is followed by four alternative answers. Choose the one that would best complete the statement.
1. In American literature, the eighteen century was the age of the Enlightenment. __C_______ was the dominant spirit.
A. Humanism B. Rationalism C. Revolution D. Evolution
2. Which statement about Franklin is not true? A
A. He instructed his countrymen as a printer.
B. He was a scientist.
C. He was a master of diplomacy.
D. He was a Puritan.
3. What is regarded as the first American prose epic? A
A. Nature B. The Scarlet Letter C. Walden D. Moby-Dick
4. The Romanic Period of American literature started with the publication of Washington Irving's __A______ and ended with Whiteman's Leaves of Grass.
A. The Sketch Book B. Tales of a Traveler
C. The Alhambra D. A history of New York
5. In Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, "A" may stand for__D______.
A. Adultery B. Angel C. Amiable D. All the above
6. In the middle of 19th century, America witnessed a cultural flowering which is called “_B____”。
A. the English Renaissance B. the Second Renaissance
C. the American Renaissance D. the Salem Renaissance
7. As a philosophical and literary movement, the main issues involved in the debate of Transcendentalism are generally concerning _A_____.
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
8. In the history of American literature， ___C___ is usually agreed to be the summit of the American Romanticism.
A. the Harlem Renaissance B. England Transcendentalism
C. New England Transcendentalism D. New Transcendentalism
9. The period before the American Civil War is generally referred to as__C_________ .
A. the Naturalist Period B. the Modern Period
C. the Romantic Period D. the Realistic Period
10. The Age of Realism is the literary history of the United States refers to the period from to_____A____.
A. 1861 – 1914 B. 1863 – 1918
C. 1865 – 1914 D. 1865 – 1918
11. Mark Twain, one of the greatest 19th century American writers, is well known for his__C______.
A. international theme B. waste-land imagery
C. local color D. symbolism
12. The impact of Darwin's evolutionary theory on the American thought and the influence of the nineteenth-century French literature on the American men of letters gave rise to yet another school of realism: American____B_______ .
A. modernism B. naturalism
C. vernacularism D. local colorism
13. The great sea adventure story Moby-Dick is usually considered__B____.
A. a symbolic voyage of the mind in quest of the truth and knowledge of the universe
B. an adventurous exploration into man’s relationship with nature
C. a simple whaling tale or sea adventure
D. a symbolic voyage of the mind in quest of the artistic truth and beauty
14. In his poems, Walt Whitman is innovative in the terms of the form of his poetry, which is called “_____A___.”
A. free verse B. blank verse
C. alliteration D. end rhyming
15. Which of the following is right about Emily Dickinson’s poems about nature？C
A. In them, she expressed her general affirmation about the relationship between man and nature.
B. Some of them showed her disbelief that there existed a mythical bond between man and nature.
C. Her poems reflected her feeling that nature is restorative to human beings.
D. Many of them showed her feeling of nature’s inscrutability and indifference to the life and interests of human beings.
Part II Read the quoted parts carefully and answer the questions in English.
16. Standing on the bare ground, --my head bathed by the blither air and uplifted into the infinite space, --all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eyeball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulated though me; I am part or particle of God.
A. Which work is this fragment taken from?
Nature
B. How do you understand the philosophical ideas in these words?
1) He regards nature as the purest, and the most sanctifying moral influence on man, and advocates a direct intuition of a spiritual and immanent God in nature. In this connection, Emerson’s emotional experiences are exemplary in more ways than one. 2) Now this a moment of “conversion” when one feels completely merged with the outside world, when the soul has gone beyond the physical limits of the body to share the omniscience of the Over-soul. Emerson sees spirit pervading everywhere, not only in the soul of man, but behind nature, throughout nature.
17. The dominant spirit, however, that haunts this enchanted region, and seems to be commander-in-chief of all the powers of the air, is the apparition of a figure on horseback, without head. It is said by some to be the ghost of a Hessian trooper, whose head had been carried away by a cannon-ball, in some nameless battle Revolutionary War.
A. Identify the work and the author.
B. The author also wrote another famous story that is about a henpecked man. Please identify it and elaborates on the political standpoint of the author.
(注：该题选自浪漫主义时期一散文家的著名短篇小说。答案不便给出。)
18. I celebrate myself, and sing myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belonging to you.
I loafe and invite my soul,
I learn and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.
A. Identify the work and the author.
Song of Myself
B. Who is the poet celebrating?
Walt Whitman
C. What is the verse structure?
The poet is celebrating himself, his own life. Line 2-3 also include “you”, the readers and their lives in the celebration.
19. The apparition of these faces in the crowd
Petals on a wet, black bough.
A. Identify the poem and the poet.
In a Station of the Metro, Ezra Pound. The poem is an observation of the poet of the human faces seen in a Paris subway station.
B. What kind of mood does the image in the second line convey?
“Petals on a wet, black bough” vividly brings out the sudden feelings of freshness and happiness. The mood is joyous and exhilarating.(Here “petals” stands for “human faces”. The two lines compare human faces to petals on a wet, black bough. This way of making poetry comes from Chinese poetics.)
C. Why is “apparition” a better word choice than, say, “appearance” or “sight”?
“Apparition” very precisely covers the meaning of sudden, unexpected appearance. Thus it is a better choice to describe the poet’s momentary feelings at the sight of the scene.
20. The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
A. identify the poem and the author
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, Robert Forest
B. What does the second “sleep” refer to?
It refers to “die”.
C. Comment briefly on the poem.
On the surface, the passage is deceptively simple. However, with the commonest words, it is deeply meditative. The simple poem uses its superb craftsmanshipto come to a clamix of responsibility: the promises to be kept, the obligation to be filled.(The poet seems to show that he would like to stay forever in the beautiful snowy woods, but as a poet, he still has many tasks to fulfill in his life and he has to go ahead. )“Before I sleep”may be understood as “Before I die”.
21. I make a pact with you, Walt Whitman ---
I have setested you long enough,
I come to you as a grown child
Who has had a pig-headed father;
I am old enough now to make friends.
A. Indentify the poem and the poet.
A Pact, Ezra Pond
B. What does the word “pact” mean?
The word “pact” means “agreement”.
C. Comment briefly on this stanza.
In this lines Pound comes to agree the importance of Walt Whitman although he has in the previous time rejected and attracted the achievements made by Whitman. Pound calls himself a grown child, which means he has matured so that he would like to take up what Whitman has left. The poem shows the undeniable position of Walt Whitman in American literature. (As time went by, Pound had realized that some agreement existed between “Whitmanesque” free verse, which he used to attack for its carelessness in composition. He’d like to learn from the free verse and show respect to Whitman.)
22. Every Friday five crates of oranges and lemons arrived from a fritterer in New York – every Monday these same oranges and lemons left his back door in a pyramid of purples halves. There was a machine in the kitchen which could extract the juice of two hundred oranges in half an hour in a little button was pressed two hundred times y a butler’s thumb.
A. Indentify the work and the author.
The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
B. What does the word “pyramid” mean here?
It means a pile of objects that have been put into the shape of a pyramid.
C. What picture does the quoted passage present?
It represents a picture of wastefulness and extravagancy.
Part III Give brief answers to each of the following questions in English
23. Analyzes the effects of Puritanism on Nathaniel Hawthorne.
1)Hawthorne’s view of man and human history derives, to a great extent, from Puritanism. He was not a Puritan himself, but his puritan ancestors had done the misdeeds. He believes that “the wrong doing of one generation lives into the successive ones,” and he was said to be often haunted by the sins of his ancestors. This intense awareness leads to his understanding of evil being at the very core of human life, which is typical of the Calvinistic doctrine that human beings are basically depraved and corrupted, hence, they should obey God to atone for their sins. 2)In many of Hawthorne’s stories and novels, the Puritan past is shown in an almost totally negative light, especially in his Young Goodman Brown and The Scarlet Letter. Hawthorne is attracted in every way to the Puritan world, even though he condemns its less human manifestations. On the one hand, it provided him with subject, and on the other hand, with the Puritan world of society as a historical background, he discusses some of the most important issues that concern the moral life of man and human history.
24. The white whale, Moby Dick, is the most important symbol in Melville’s novel. What symbolic meaning can you draw from it?
It symbolic meaning is a voyage of the mind in quest of the truth and knowledge of the universe, a spiritual exploration into man’s deep reality and psychology.
25. Emerson is generally known as an essayist. What is the style of his prose”.
1)Emerson’s essays often have a casual style, for most of them were derived from his journals or lectures. 2)They are usually characterized by a series of short, declarative sentences, which are quite logically connected but will flower out into illustrative statements of truth and thoughts. Emerson’s philosophical discussion is sometimes difficult to understand but he uses comparisons and metaphors to make the general idea of his work clearly expressed. 3)Well-read in the classics of Western European literature, Emerson often employed these literary sources to make and enrich his own points but never let them take the full reins of his discussion.
26. What is local colorism in American literature?
1)Mark Twain, Sara Orne Jewett and Joseph Kirkland are the representatives of local colorists whose writings are concerned with the life of a small, well-defined region or province. The characteristic setting is the isolated small town. 2)These local colorists, especially Mark Twain, preferred to present social life through portraits of the local character of his regions, including people living in that area, the landscape, and other peculiarities like the customs, dialects, costumes and so on. 3)This particular concern about the local character of a region came about as “local colorism”, a unique variation of American literary realism.
27. What are the characteristics of American naturalism? Please discuss the above question in relation to the basic principles of literary naturalism.
1)The most familiar themes in American naturalism is the theme of human, especially as explanation of sexual desire. 2)Artistically naturalistic writings are usually unpolished in language, lacking in academic skills and awkward in structure. 3)Philosophically, the naturalists believe that the real and true is always partially hidden from the eyes of the individual, or beyond his control. 4)The author’s tone in writing becomes less sympathetic but more ironic and more pessimistic.
28. What are the qualities of Emily Dickinson’s poems?
1)Dickinson’s poems are usually based on her own experiences, her sorrows and joys. 2)Love is another subject Dickinson dwelt on. 3)Many poems Dickinson wrote are about nature, in which her general skeptical about the relationship between man and nature is well-expressed. 4)Dickinson’s poetry is unique and unconventional in its own way. Her poems have no titles, hence are always quoted by their first lines.
29. Imagism:1)Imagism came into being in Britain and U.S. around 1910 as a reaction to the traditional English poetry to express the sense of fragmentation and dislocation. 2)The imagists, with Ezra Pound leading the way, hole that the most effective means to express these momentary impressions is through the use of one dominant image. The image is a representation of a physical object, and the reader is made to react to it. 3)Imagism is characterized by the following three poetic principles: a)direct treatment of “the thing”, whether subjective or objective; b)to use absolutely no word that does not contribute to the presentation; c)as regards rhythm, to compose in the sequence of the musical phrase, not in the sequence of metronome. 4)Ezra Pound’s In a Station of the Metro is a well-known imagist poem.
30. Transcendentalism: 1)Transcendentalism has been defined philosophically as “the recognition in man of the capacity of knowing truth intuitively, or of attaining knowledge transcending the reach of the senses”. 2)Transcendentalists stress the importance of the Over-soul, the Individual and nature. Other concepts that accompanied Transcendentalism include the idea that nature is ennobling and the idea that the individual is divine and, therefore, self-reliant. New England Transcendentalism is the product of a combination of native American Puritanism and European Romanticism.
31. What is “The Lost Generation”?
1)It is a term first used by Gertrude Stein to describe the post –World War I generation od American writers: men and women haunted by a sense of betrayal and emptiness brought about by the destructiveness of the war. 2)Full of youthful idealism, these individuals sought the meaning of