英美文学选读2008年4月真题试题及答案解析（00604）

“ ‘My faith is gone!’ cried he(Goodman Brown),after one stupefied moment. ‘There is no good on earth; and sin is but a name. Come, devil! For to thee is this world given.’ ”(from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown”)

Make a comment on this passage.

Why are naturalists inevitably pessimistic in their view?

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.

“ ‘My boy!’ said the old gentleman, leaning over the desk. Oliver stated at the sound. He might be excused for doing so, for the words were kindly said, and strange sounds frighten one. He trembled violently, and burst into tears.”(from Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist)Explain why Oliver Twist started first, then trembled violently and burst into tears when the words were “kindly” said.

“In your rocking-chair, by your window dreaming, shall you long, alone. In your rocking-chair, by your window, shall you dream such happiness as you may never feel.”(from Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie)What idea can you draw from the “rocking-chair”?

It is said that B. Shaw’s play, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, has a strong realistic theme, which fully reflects the dramatist’s Fabianist idea. Try to summarize this theme briefly.

“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.”

Questions:

A.Identify the poet and the poem from which the quoted lines are taken.

B.What does the word “sleep” mean?

C.What idea do the four lines express?

“I celebrate myself, and sing myself,And what I assume you shall assume,For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.I loafe and invite my soul,I learn and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.”(from Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself”)

Questions:

A.Whom does “myself” refer to?

B.How do you understand the line “I loafe and invite my soul”?

C.What does “a spear of summer grass” indicate?

“Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? —You think wrong!… And if God had gifted me with some beauty, and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you…—it is my spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed through the grave, and we stood at God’s feet, equal—as we are!”

Questions:

A.Identify the author and the novel from which the quoted part is taken.

B.To whom is the speaker speaking?

C.What does the quoted part imply about the speaker?

Mark Twain employed an unpretentious style of ______ in his novels which is best described as “vernacular”.

“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:”

Questions:

A.Identify the poet and the poem from which the quoted lines are taken.

B.Name the figure of speech employed in the poem.

C.What is the theme of the poem?

As ______ saw it, poetry could play a vital part in the process of creating a new nation. It could enable Americans to celebrate their release from the Old World and the colonial rule.

Walt Whitman is a poet with a strong sense of mission, having devoted all his life to the creation of the “single” poem, ______.

Realism was a reaction against Romanticism and paved the way to ______.

The ______ Age of the 1920s characterized by frivolity and carelessness is brought vividly to life in The Great Gatsby.

Robert Frost is generally considered a regional poet whose subject matters mainly focus on the landscape and people in ______.

After the American Civil War, the literary interest in the so-called “reality” of life started a new period in the American literary writings know an the Age of ______.

Altogether, Emily Dickinson wrote 1775 poems, of which only ______ had appeared during her lifetime.

H.L.Mencken considered ______ “the true father of our national literature”.

“The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water.” This “iceberg” analogy is put forward by ______.

In many of Hawthorne’s stories and novels, the Puritan concept of life is condemned, or the Puritan past is shown in an almost totally negative light, especially in his ______ and The Scarlet Letter.

The white whale, Moby Dick, symbolizes ________ for Melville, for it is complex, unfathomable, malignant, and beautiful as well.

Hawthorne intended to ______ in The Scarlet Letter.

The Portrait of A Lady is generally considered to be ______ masterpiece, which describes the life journey of an American ________ in a European cultural environment.

Herman Melville wrote his semi-autobiographical novel ______ concerning the sufferings of a genteel youth among brutal sailors.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and, especially, its sequence ______ proved themselves to be the milestone in the American literature.

In 1950,______ was awarded the Nobel Prize for the anti-racist Intruder in the Dust.

The major concern of ______ fiction lies in the tracing of the psychological development of his characters and in his energetic criticism of the dehumanizing effect of the capitalist industrialization on human nature.

Contrary to the traditional romance of aristocrats, the modern English novel gives a realistic presentation of life of ______.

The Nobel Prize Committee highly praised ______ for “his powerful style-forming mastery of the art” of creating modern fiction.

All of the following novels by Daniel Defoe are the first literary works devoted to the study of problems of the lower-class people EXCEPT ______.

Among the three major works by John Milton ______ is indeed the only generally acknowledged epic in English literature since Beowulf.

English Romanticism, as a historical phase of literature, is generally said to have ended in 1832 with ______.

Shakespeare’s four greatest tragedies are ________.

As one of the greatest masters of English prose, ________ defined a good style as “proper words in proper places”.

All of the following poems by William Wordsworth are masterpieces on nature EXCEPT ______.

All of the following are stream –of- consciousness novels EXCEPT________.

The assertion that poetry originates from “emotion recollected in tranquility” belongs to ______.

Because of her sensitivity to universal patterns of human behavior, ______ has brought the English novel ,as an art of form, to its maturity.

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good for-tune, must be in want of a wife.” The quoted part is taken from ______.

Shelley’s greatest achievement is his four-act poetic drama ______, which is an exultant work in praise of humankind’s potential.

The most distinguishing feature of Charles Dickens’ works is his _______.

Among the following writers _______ created the verse novel by adopting the novelistic presentation of characters.

All of the following works are known as Hardy’s “novels of character and environment” EXCETP_______.

Among the works by Charles Dickens _______ presents his criticism of the Utilitarian principle that rules over the English education system and destroys young hearts and minds.

William Blake’s central concern in the Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience is_______, which gives the two books a strong social and historical reference.

George Bernard Shaw’s play _______ established his position as the leading play-wright of his time.

T.S.Eliot’s most important single poem _______has been hailed as a landmark and a model of the 20th-century English poetry.

Henry Fielding has been regarded by some as “_______”,for his contribution to the establishment of the form of the modern novel.

The Renaissance is actually a movement stimulated by a series of historical events EXCEPT_________.