美国文学（本科）试题5
I. Complete each of the following statements with proper words or phrases and put your answers on the Answer Sheet. (20%, 1 point for each)
1. The first permanent English settlement in North America was established at Jamestown, Virginia in . 2. became the first American writer. 3. Hard work, thrift, piety and sobriety were the values that dominated much of the early American writing.
4. In American literature, the 18th century was an age of and Revolution. 5. Franklin’s best writing is found in his masterpiece . 6. On January 10, 1776, Thomas Paine’s famous pamphlet appeared. 7. The signing of symbolized the birth of an independent American nation. 8. The most outstanding poet in America of the 18th century was . 9. Washington Irving’s became the first work by an American writer to win international fame.
10. is the summit of American Romanticism. 11. With the publication of Emerson’s in 1836, American Romanticism reached its summit. 12. Hester Prynne is the heroine in Hawthorne’s novel . 13. Henry James’ major fictional theme is . 14. brought the Romantic period to an end. So the age of Realism came into existence. 15. The Poetic style invented by Whitman is now called . 16. “Because I could not stop for Death---” is written by . 17. The term The Gilded Age is given by to describe the post-civil war years. 18. Theodore Dreiser’s first novel is . 19. The leader of the literary movement Imagism is . 20. is the spokesman for Lost Generation. II. Each of the following statements below is followed by four alternative answers
or completions. Choose the one that is the best in each case and put your answers on the Answer Sheet. (30%, 1 point for each)
1. The first American writer of local color to achieve wide popularity was . A. Bret Harte B. Mark Twain
C. Henry James D. William Dean Howells 2. Which of the following is the masterpiece of Mark Twain? A. The Gilded Age B. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
C. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn D. Jumping Frog
3. Which writer has no naturalist tendency? A. Mark Twain B. Jack London C. Theodore Dreiser D. Frank Norris
4. Transcendentalist doctrines found their greatest literary advocates in and Thoreau.
A. Jefferson B. Emerson C. Freneau D. Oversoul
5. Which of the following doesn’t belong to Dreiser’s “Trilogy of Desire”? A. The Financier B. The Titan
C. The Stoic D. An American Tragedy 6. Which is the character who appears in the novel Moby Dick? A. Hester Prynne B. Mr. Hooper C. Ahab D. Pearl
7. written by Henry James brought him first international fame. A. The Golden Bowl B. The American C. The Tragic Muse D. Daisy Miller 8. “ ”was a term created by the French novelist, Emile Zola. A. realism B. naturalism C. transcendentalism D. veritism
9. Jack London was at his height of his powers when he wrote , which is deeply influenced by Darwinism.
A. The Sea Wolf B. To Build a Fire C. The Call of the Wild D. Martin Eden 10. The Cop and the Anthem is written by . A. O. Henry B. Henry James C. Jack London D. Mark Twain
11. “Two small people, without dislike or suspicion.” is a line in the poem The River-Merchant’s
Wife: A Letter written by . A. T. S. Eliot B. Robert Frost C. Ezra Pound D. Carl Sandburg
12. The imagist poets followed three principles, they are , direct treatment and economy of expression.
A. blank verse B. rhythm C. free verse D. common speech 13. Of the following American writers, who has NOT been an expatriate in Paris? A. Ernest Hemingway B. Ezra Pound C. F. S. Fitzgerald D. Emily Dickinson
14. Who was the foremost novelist of the American Depression of the 1930s? A. Ernest Hemingway B. Ezra Pound C. John Steinbeck D. F. S. Fitzgerald
15. The first writings that we call American were the narratives and of the early settlements. A. journals B. poetry C. drama D. folklores
16. An American Dictionary of the English Language was published in 1828 by . A. Samuel Johnson B. Noah Webster C. Daniel Webster D. Daniel Defoe 17. Walden is written by . A. Emerson B. Thoreau C. Poe D. Hawthorne 18. is famous for psychological realism. A. Mark Twain B. William Dean Howells C. Henry James D. Walt Whitman
19. Which is generally regarded as the Bible of New England Transcendentalism? A. Nature B. Walden C. On Beauty D. Self-Reliance
20. Which is regarded as the “Declaration of Intellectual Independence”? A. The American Scholar B. English Traits
C. The Conduct of Life D. Nature
21. Santiago is the character in Hemingway’s novel . A. In Our Time B. The Old Man and the Sea C. For Whom the Bell Tolls D. The Sun Also Rises 22. Which of the following is a much harsher realism?
A. local colorism B. naturalism C. romanticism D. imagism
23. Who is the arbiter of 19th century literary realism in America? A. Mark Twain B. Bret Harte C. William Dean Howells D. Henry James 24. F. S. Fitzgerald is NOT the author of . A. The Great Gatsby B. Tender is the Night C. A Farewell to the Arms D. This Side of Paradise
25. The pessimism and deterministic ideas of naturalism pervaded the works of such American
writers as . A. Mark Twain B. F. S. Fitzgerald C. Walt Whitman D. Stephen Crane 26. Charles Drouet is a character in the novel of ______.
A. The American B. The Portrait of a Lady C. Sister Carrie D. The Gift of the Magi
27. American literature produced only one female poet during the 19th century. She was . A. Anne Bradstreet B. Jane Austen C. Emily Dickinson D. Harriet Beecher
28. read his poetry at the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy. A. Robert Frost B. T. S. Eliot C. Carl Sandburg D. Ezra Pound
29. With Howells, James and Mark Twain active on the scene, became the major trend in the 70s and 80s of the 19th century.
A. sentimentalism B. romanticism C. realism D. naturalism
30. “The apparition of these faces in the crowd; Petals on a wet, black bough”. This is the shortest poem written by . A. T. S. Eliot B. Robert Frost C. Ezra Pound D. Wallace Stevens
III. Comment on the following poems. Put your answers on the Answer Sheet. (20%, 10 points
for each)
1. Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
by: Robert Frost
Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village though; He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow. My little horse must think it queer To stop without a farmhouse near Between the woods and frozen lake The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake To ask if there is some mistake. The only other sound’s the sweep Of easy wind and downy flake.
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.
1. I Heard a Fly Buzz—When I Died—
by: Emily Dickinson
I heard a Fly buzz — when I died — The Stillness in the Room
Was like the Stillness in the Air — Between the Heaves of Storm —
The Eyes around — had wrung them dry — And Breaths were gathering firm For that last Onset — when the King Be witnessed — in the Room —
I willed my Keepsakes — Signed away What portion of me be Assignable — and then it was There interposed a Fly —
With Blue — uncertain stumbling Buzz — Between the light — and me — And then the Windows failed — and then I could not see to see —
IV. Give brief answers to the following and write your answers on the Answer Sheet. (30%, 15 points for each)
1. Being a period of the great flowering of American literature, the Romantic Period is called “the American Renaissance”. Briefly discuss what the features of American literature in this period are. 2. How does Sister Carrie embody Dreiser’
I. Complete each of the following statements with proper words or phrases and put your answers on the Answer Sheet. (20%, 1 point for each) 1. 1607 2. John Smith 3. Puritan 4. Reason
5. The Autobiography 6. Common Sense 7. The Declaration of Independence 8. Philip Freneau 9. Sketch Book 10. Transcendentalism
11. Nature 12. The Scarlet Letter 13. international theme 14. The civil war 15. free verse 16. Emily Dickinson 17. Mark Twain
18. Sister Carrie 19. Ezra Pound 20. Ernest Hemingway
II. Each of the following statements below is followed by four alternative answers or completions. Choose the one that is the best in each case and put your answers on the Answer Sheet. (30%, 1 point for each)
1 --- 5: A C A B D 6 --- 10: C D B C A 11 ---15:C B D C A 16 --- 20: B B C A A 21 ---25: B B C C D 26 --- 30: C C A C C
III. Comment on the following poems. Put your answers on the Answer Sheet. (20%, 10 points
for each)
1. \"Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening\" was Frost's favorite of his own poems and Frost in a letter to Louis Untermeyer called it \"my best bid for remembrance.\"
This poem illustrates many of the qualities most characteristic of Frost, including the attention to natural detail, the relationship between humans and nature, and the strong theme suggested by individual lines. The speaker in the poem, a traveler by horse on the darkest night of the year, stops to watch a woods filling up with snow. He thinks the owner of the woods is someone who lives in the village and will not see him stopping there. While he is attracted by the beauty of the woods and nature, he is reminded by his little horse and realizes that he has obligations which pull him away from the lure of nature. The speaker describes the beauty and temptation of the woods as “lovely, dark and deep,” but reminds himself that he must not remain there, because he has “promises to keep,” and a long journey ahead of him. He has to complete his obligations and then make his aspirations to be realized. Through the symbolic woods and horse, we also get to know that the speaker has strong self-awareness and self-discipline.
In another way, the poem can be analyzed from the perspective of aspiration and realization. Aspiration is something to be worked at. We enjoy the fruit of our realization only when we reach our destination. But from the spiritual point of view, we notice something else that is the transformation of aspiration and realization. Today's aspiration transforms itself into tomorrow's realization. Again, tomorrow's realization is the pathfinder of a higher and deeper goal. There is no end to our realization, and there is no end of our aspiration as long as you are alive. Our journey is eternal, and the road that we are taking on is also eternal. All aspirations become realization till the end of one’s life.
The poem is written in iambic tetrameter in the Rubaiyat stanza created by Edward Fitzgerald. Each verse (save the last) follows an a-a-b-a rhyming scheme, with the following verse's a's rhyming with that verse's b, which is a chain rhyme. Overall, the rhyme scheme is AABA-BBCB-CCDC-DDDD. 2. The poetess is watching her own death and recording the process. Instead of seeing God and hearing the songs of angels yearned for by Puritans upon death she heard a fly buzz, which is really ironic.
Fly: sets off the stillness in the room; blocks off the light (from heaven); suggests a coming decadence
→ the speaker loses the opportunity of gaining immortality after death
The fly plays an important role in the speaker’s experience of death. The poem is, in part, about “the conflict between preconception and perception.” The person on his or her deathbed shifts perspective from “the ritual of dying” to “the fact of death.” The fly, by interrupting the dying speaker with its “Blue — uncertain stumbling Buzz — ” obliterates his or her false notions of death. The sound of the fly represents “the last conscious link with reality.” The poem lacks any hint of a life after death.
IV. Give brief answers to the following and write your answers on the Answer Sheet. (30%, 15 points for each) 1.
(1) The whole nation had a strong sense of optimism and the mood of “feeling good”, giving birth
to the spectacular outburst of romantic feeling.
(2) The English counterpart exerted a stimulating impact on the writers of the young nation.
(3) Taking foreign influence in consideration, the great works of American writers still carried typically American romantic color.
(4) The young nation had brought forth its own philosophy. Transcendentalism stresses man’s capacity of knowing truth intuitively, and of attaining knowledge transcending the reach of the senses. 2.
(1) In this novel, Dreiser expressed his naturalistic pursuit by expounding the purposelessness of life and attacking the conventional moral standards.
(2) The novel best embodies his naturalistic belief that while men are controlled by heredity, instinct and chance, a few extraordinary and unsophisticated human beings refuse to accept their fate wordlessly and instead strive, unsuccessfully, to find meaning and purpose for their existence.
(3) To Sister Carrie, the world is cold and harsh. Alone, helpless, she moves along like a mechanism driven by desire and catches blindly at any opportunities for a better existence, opportunities first offered by Drouet, and then by Hurstwood. A feather in the wind, she was totally at the mercy of forces she cannot comprehend, still less to say control. The famous picture of Carrie sitting in a rocking chair in her room in the evening, rocking back and forth, is a picture of Carrie’s drifting with the tide. She has no control, no freedom of will.
2007—2008学年度第二期 《美国文学史及作品选读》考试A卷
参 考 答 案
命题人： 王琪、丁华良
I: Complete each of the following statements with proper words or phrases. (20%, 1 point for each) 1. Bryant 2. frontier saga 3. transcendentalist 4. Moby Dick 5. Sketch Book
6. Walden 7. Longfellow 8. Civil War 9. Howells 10. free verse
11. Henry James 12. Martin Eden 13. The Gift of Magi 14. Pound 15. The Great Gatsby 16. A Farewell to Arms 17. Steinbeck 18. Mark Twain 19. Environment 20. American Crisis
II: Each of the following statements below is followed by four alternative answers or completions. Choose the one that is the best in each case. (30%, 1 point for each) 1 --- 5: B B D A B 6 --- 10: D D A C D 11 ---15: A D B C D 16 --- 20: B D B D C 21 --- 25: C B B A C 26 --- 30: C B B D A
III. Read the poems and answer the questions that follow. (20%) Poem 1
1.1 Who wrote this poem? (1%) Emily Dickinson.
1.2 What is the poet or the speaker in the poem watching and recording? (1%)
Apparently the woman tells the story of how she is busily going about her day when a polite gentleman by the name of Death arrives in his carriage to take her out for a ride, but, in reality, the speaker is watching and recording her own funeral.
1.3 What is death compared to in the poem? (1%) Death is compared to a polite gentleman or polite wooer.
1.4 What is depicted in the 3rd stanza? How is it related to the whole poem? (2%)
Death takes the woman on a leisurely ride to the grave and beyond, passing playing children, wheat fields, and the setting sun, which indicate the three periods of a day, morning, noon and evening and symbolize the three stages of human life — childhood, middle age and old age. 1.5 What is depicted in the 4th stanza? (1%)
In this stanza, the speaker describes her dead body and what is wearing. She feels cold because it is evening now and dew drops are forming and she is not wearing much, but more probably it is because she is dead and blood circulation in her body has stopped.
1.6 What does the poet or the speaker in the poem think of eternity? (2%)
The speaker is not quite sure whether there will be eternity after death since she just surmises that “the Horses’ Heads / were toward Eternity —”.
1.7 What is the attitude of the poet or the speaker in the poem towards death? (2%)
The woman describes their journey with the casual ease one might use to recount a typical Sunday drive. She treats death light-heartedly for she believes that death is a necessary step towards eternity or immortality. Poem 2
2.1 Who wrote this poem? (1%) Edgar Allan Poe. 2.2 What is the theme of the poem? (2%)
In the poem, Poe examines a theme which he examines in many of his works: the death of a beautiful woman. It is a poem written in memory of his deceased young wife Virginia Clemm. 2.3 What is the mood of the poem? (1%) The poem is permeated with melancholy.
2.4 How does the poem coincide with Poe’s poetics or theory of poetry writing? (3%)
The poem coincides with Poe’s poetics. It is readable at one sitting. In the poem, Poe examines a theme which he examines in many of his works: the death of a beautiful woman, which, according to him, is “unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world.” The poem is permeated with melancholy as he believes “melancholy is the most legitimate of all the poetic tones.” And it is rhythmic. 2.5 What makes you think the poem reads like a fairy tale? (3%) The poem has got the elements of a fairy tale. 1) It has the beginning of a fairy tale (1st stanza). 2) The couple's love originated from their childhood.
3) Annabel Lee died because \"the angels\" envied the couple's great love and, with a cold wind, they killed
Annabel Lee, who was then carried away and buried in a sepulchre in the kingdom by the sea.
4) However, unlike The Raven, in which the narrator believes he will \"nevermore\" be reunited with his love,
Annabel Lee says the two will be together again. And neither the angels in heaven above， Nor the demons down under the sea， Can ever dissever my soul from the soul Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.
5) On moonlit nights, the speaker will go and lie down by the side of his deceased young wife
In the sepulchre there by the sea， In her tomb by the side of the sea. The poem reads like a fairy tale.
IV. Answer the following questions, and put your answers on the Answer Sheet. (30%, 15 points for each)
1. What is local color fiction? List at least 5 of the best known writers of local color.
Realism first appeared in the United States in the literature of local color, an amalgam of romantic plots and realistic descriptions of things was immediately observable; the dialects, customs, sights, and sounds of regional America. Bret Harte was the first American writer of local color to achieve wide popularity, presenting stories of western mining towns with colorful gamblers, outlaws, and scandalous women. Harte, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Kate Chopin, Joel Chandler Harris, and Mark Twain provided regional stories and tales of the life of America’s Westerners, Southerners, and Easterners. Local color fiction reached its peak of popularity in the 1880s, but by the turn of the century it had begun to decline. 2. Instead of having her punished for her life of sin, Dreiser let Caroline Meeber in Sister Carrier become successful. Can you tell why? This is due to a number of reasons:
1) Theodore Dreiser based the novel on the life of his sister Emma. In 1883 she ran away to Toronto, Canada with a married man who had stolen money from his employer. Another sister of his was a prostitute.
2) Like Sister Carrie who went to Chicago at the age of 18, Dreiser himself left home at age 15 for Chicago and started to support himself, doing menial jobs. He understood perfectly well how hard life was for a girl like Sister Carrie in a big city.
3) His sympathy for Sister Carrie is related to his naturalistic beliefs. The naturalists emphasized that the world was amoral, that men and women had no free will, that their lives were controlled by heredity and the environment, that religious “truth” were illusory, that the destiny of humanity was misery in life and oblivion in death. As a pioneer of naturalism in American literature, Dreiser wrote novels reflecting his mechanistic view of life, a concept that held humanity as the victim of such ungovernable forces as economics, biology, society, and even chance. In his works, conventional morality is unimportant,
consciously virtuous behavior having little to do with material success and happiness. So Sister Carrie is not to be blamed for her sin of life.
4) His sympathy for Sister Carrie also shows the influence of the teachings of Charles Darwin----natural selection and the survival of the fittest and that of the teachings of Herbert Spencer----social Darwinism. In this novel, Sister Carrie is portrayed as an example of the survival of the fittest in an indifferent world.
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