美国文学期末复习题.doc

期末考试题型复习
I. Multiple Choice（30‘）
II. Find the relevant match in column B for each in column A(10’):
Writers:
( ) 1. Toni Morrison
( ) 2. Joseph Heller
( ) 3. Eugene Glastone O’Neill
( ) 4. Archibald MacLeish
( ) 5. Emily Dickinson
( ) 6. Benjamin Franklin
( ) 7. Ralph Waldo Emerson
( ) 8. F·Scott Fitzgerald
( ) 9. William Faulkner
( ) 10. Wallace Stevens
Works:
a. The Hairy Ape
b. I’m Nobody!
c. We Bombed in New Haven
d. English Traits
e. The Sound and the Fury
f. The Autobiography
g. Tender is the Night
h. Anecdote of the Jar
i. Song of Solomon
j. J.B.
Writers:
( ) 1. Edgar Allan Poe
( ) 2. Walt Whiteman
( ) 3. F·Scott Fitzgerald
( ) 4. William Carlos Williams
( ) 5. Toni Morrison
( ) 6. Ralph Waldo Ellison
( ) 7. Langston Hughes
( ) 8. Ezra Pound
( ) 9. Stephen Crane
( ) 10. Nathaniel Hawthorne
Works:
a. O Captain! My Captain!
b. The Bluest Eye
c. In a Station of the Metro
d. The House of the Seven Gables
e. The Fall of the House of Usher
f. The Red Wheelbarrow
g. The Open Boat
h. Dreams
i. The Great Gatsby
j. Shadow and Act

Writers:
( ) 1. Ralph Waldo Emerson
( ) 2. Robert Frost
( ) 3. Saul Bellow
( ) 4. Joseph Heller
( ) 5. Ralph Waldo Ellison
( ) 6. Ezra Pound
( ) 7. Ernest Hemingway
( ) 8. Emily Dickinson
( ) 9. Katherine Anne Porter
( ) 10. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Works:
a. Self-Reliance
b. Invisible Man
c. Pale Horse, Pale Rider
d. The Sun Also Rises
e. Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
f. Success is Counted Sweetest
g. Song of Myself
h. Catch-22
i. Looking for Mr. Green
j. Cantos
Writers:
( ) 1. Benjamin Franklin
( ) 2. Toni Morrison
( ) 3. William Faulkner
( ) 4. Archibald MacLeish
( ) 5. Nathaniel Hawthorne
( ) 6. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
( ) 7. Stephen Crane
( ) 8. Katherine Anne Porter
( ) 9. William Carlos Williams
( ) 10. Saul Bellow
Works:
a. Ars Poetica
b. Maggie: A Girl of the Streets
c. Twice-told Tales
d. Beloved
e. A Psalm of Life
f. Barn Burning
g. Poor Richard’s Almanac
h. Paterson
i. Anderson the Rain King
j. The Flowering Judas

III. Define the listed literary terms(15’)
American Puritanism:Simply speaking, American Puritanism just refers to the spirit and ideal of puritans who settled in the North American continent in the early part of the seventeenth century because of religious persecutions. In content it means scrupulous moral rigor, especially hostility to social pleasures and indulgences, that is strictness,sternness and austerity in conduct and religion
With time passing it became a dominant factor in American life, one of the most enduring shaping influences in American thought and American Literature. To some extent it is a state of mind, a part of the national cultural atmosphere that the American breathes, rather than a set of tenets.
Actually it is a code of values, a philosophy of life and a point of view in American minds, also a two-faceted tradition of religious idealism and level-headed mon sense.
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Aerican Romanticism;is one of the most important periodds in the history of American literature. I was a rebellion againstr the objectivity of rationalism. For romantics, the feelings, intuitions and emotions were more important than reason and men sense. They emphazed individualism, placing the individual against the group. The afirmed the inner life of the selsand cherished strong interest in the past, the wild ,the remote, thw mysterious and the stange. They stressed the element “Americaness” in their works. It started with the pulication of Washington Irving’The stretch Book and ened with Walt Whiteman’s Leaves of Grass. It is also called “American Renaissance”American Romantists include such literary figures as Washinton Irving,Emerson,Thoreau,Hawthrone,Mellville Whiteman and some others.

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Local Colorism:Is concerned with the life of a small, well-defined region or province. The characteristic setting is the isolated small town The style of writing derived from the presentation of the features and peculiarities of a particular locality and its inhabitants. Simply it means The use of regional detail in a literary or artistic work. The name is given especially to a kind of American literature that in its most characteristic form made its appearance just after the Civil War and for nearly three decades was the single most popular form of American literature.
Following in the footsteps of the pre-war "sectional humorists," local colorists were interested in realistically depicting life in different sections of the United States in order to promote understanding and unification. Fiction writers like Sarah Orne Jewett, Bret Harte, O. Henry, and Mark Twain have been identified within this tradition.

;Naturalism;accepted the more negative interpretation of Darwin’s evolutionary theory and used it to account for the behavior of those charaters in the literary works wh were regarded as more or less plex bination of inheritted attibutes, their habits condition by social and economic forces. American Naturalism is evoled from realism hen the author’s tone in writing bees less serious and less sympathetic but more ironic and more pessimistic. It is no more than a gloomy philosophical approach to reality, or to human existence. Dreiser is a leading figure of this school

The Lost Generation:is a term used by Gertude Stern to describe the post –WWI generarton of American writers::man and women haunted by a sense of betrayal and emptiness brought about by the destructivness of the war. Ful of youthful idealism, these individuals sought the meaning of the life, drank excessivly, had love affairs and created some of the finest American literture to date. The three best-known representatives of Lost Generation are F.Sccot Fitzgerald,Ernest hemingway and John Dos Passos.

Amrican Dream refers to the ream of materral success, in which one, regardless of social status, acquires wealth and gains succes by working hard and good luck. In literature, the theme of American dream recurs. In The Great Gatsby,Gatsby came from the west to the east with the dream of material success.By bootlegging and other illegal means he filfilled his dream but ended up being killed.The novel telles the shattering of Ameracan Dream rather than its success.

Impreessionism:is a style of painting that gives the impression made by the sublect on the artist without much attentin to details. Writers accfepted the same conviction that personal attitude and moods of the writer were legitimate element in dipicting charaters or setting or action.Briefly ,it ia a style of literature characterixed by the creartion of general impresion and moods rather than realitic moods.

IV. Question and Answers(20’)
You will be given two poems, and asked to tell from which poem does the stanza e,who is the author,what does some specific word in the pome mean,and how will you appreciate the poem.
Pay attention to the following poems:
1.Ezra Pound’s In a Station of the Metro
2.Walt Whiteman’s O Captain, My Captain
3.Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
4.Emily Dickson”s I’m Nobody
I hear a Fly Buzz When I Died
5.Adgar Allen Poe To Helen

V. Give brief answers to the following questions.(25’)
1. Make a short summary about Washington Irving”s masterpiece “Rip Van Winkle” and ment on the theme of it.
2. Why are natuaralits inevitably pessimistic in their views?What are the natrualists’ writing style? Please explain by examples.
3. Mark Twain presented the 19th century America in his own unique way. Discuss Twain’s are of fiction:the settin, the language, and the characters, based on his novel The Advenrures of Huckleberry Finn.
4. What are the similarities and differences between the three literary giants, Howells,Mark Twain, Henry James ,n terms of their literary orientations?