美国文学提纲2.docx

1、美国文学提纲2I. Multiple Choice (20 points in all, 1 for each)1) Check the dictionary: pompous, vernacular2) At the beginning of Faulkners A Rose For Emily, there is a detailed description of Emilys old house. The purpose of such description is to imply that the person living in it C .A. is a wealth lady

2、B. has good taste C. is a prisoner of the past D. is a conservative aristocrat3) Stylistically, Henry Jamess fiction is characterized by D .A. short clear sentences B. abundance of local images C. ordinary American speech D. highly refined language1. The convention of the desire for an escape from s

3、ociety and a reture to nature in American Literature is particularly evident in A A. Coopers Leather-Stocking TakesB. Hawthornes The Scarlet LetterC. Whitmans Leaves of GrassD. Irvings Rip Van Winkle2. In 1873, Ralph Waldo Emerson made a speech entitled at Harvard, which was hailed by Oliver Wendell

4、 Homes as “our Intellectual Dedaration of I A. Nature B. Self-Reliance C. Divinity Scholar Address D. The American Scholar3. Whats the analogy that Emily Dickinson uses in her poem Because I could not stop for death? AA.Horse and carriage B. stage and performance C. Cloud and Shade D. ship and harbo

5、r4. Most of the writers in the Modern Period were able to probe into the inner would of of human reality on the base of D A. Carl Jungs “collective unconscious” and “archetypal symbol”B. Sigmound Frends “interpretation of dreams”C. William James “stream of consciousness”D. all of the above.II. Blank

6、 Filling (10 points in all, 1 for each)1) Henry James is considered the founder of Psychological realism. He believed that reality lies in the impressions made by life on the spectator. 2) Mark Twains first novel, The Gilded Age was an artistic failure, but it gave its name to the America of the pos

7、tbellum period which it attempts to satirize.Blank Filling Blank Filling 1. The best of puritan poets was Edward Taylor, whose complete edition of poems appeared in 1960, more than two hundred years after his death.8. Edwin Arlington Robinson produced a large body of works and was honored with the P

8、ulitzer Prize in 1522, 1925 and 1928.10. Fitzgeralds first novel This Side of Paradise, with its portrayal of casual dissipations of “flaming youth”, was an immediate commercial success.3. In “Song of Myself”, Whitmans own early experience may well be identified with the children of a young growing

9、American.4. The range of Dickinsons poetry suggests not her limited experience but the power of her creativity and imagination.5. Mark Twain, breaking out of the narrow limits of local color fiction, described the breadth of American experience as no one had ever done before, or since.7. Many of O.

10、Henrys stones talk about the life of poor people in New York.8. Henry James realism is characterized by his psychological approach to his subject matter.9. The Financier, The Tifan and The Stoic form Dreisers “Trilogy of Desire”12. American writers of first postwar era self consciously acknowledged

11、that they were a “Lost Generation ” devoid of faith and alienated from a civilization.13. At one time, Sandburgs reputation mainly rested on a multi volume biography of Abraham Lincoln including “The Prairie Years” and “The War Years”14. For publication of his collected Poems, Wallace Stevens receiv

12、ed the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize.15. In 1954, Hemingway was awarded a Nobel Prize for his “mastery of the art of modern narration”.16. In 1935, Steinbeck published Tortilla Flat. A collection of short story which vividly described the “life of poor MexicanAmericans with affection and hu

13、mor.17. The Yoknapatawpha Country is a legendary kingdom created by Faulkner.18. The most significant American poem of the 20th century was The Waste Land.19. Edwin Arlington Robinson produced a large body of works and was honored with the Pulitzer Prize in 1922, 1925 and 1928.21. As Thomas Sterns E

14、liots declared, he followed strictly the advice of his doze friend Ezra Pound in cutting and concentrating The Waste Land12.“Martin Eden” is the novel into which Jack London put most of himself。8. Fitzgerables first novel This side of paradise, with its portrayal of casual dissipations of “flaming y

15、outh:, was an immediate commercial success. 12. Early in the 1920s, the most prominent of the new American playwrights, whose name is Eugene ONeill established an international reputation.13.In the novel The Old Man and Sea，Hemingway portrayed an old fisherman named Santiago，who shows triumphant eve

16、n in defeat14.Ezra Pound was the leader of a new movement in poetry which he called the Imagist movement.III. Works and Authors (10 points in all, 1 for each)1. The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung in America Anne Bradstreet2. The British Prison Ship Philip Freneau3. Autobiography Benjamin Franklin4. Common

17、 Sense Thomas Paine5. Civil Disobedience Henry David Thoreau6. The Awakening Kate Chopin7. The Call of the Wild Jack London8. Daisy Miller Henry James9. A Hazard of New Fortunes William Dean Howells10. Magic: A Girl of the Streets Stephen Crane11. Babbit Sinclair Lewis12. Winesburg, Ohio Sherwood An

18、derson13. The Waste Land Thomas Stearns T. S. Eliot14. The Hairy Ape Eugene Gladstone ONeill15. Harmonium Wallace Stevens 16. The Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck17. A Farewell to Arms Ernest Miller Hemingway18. The Sound and the Fury William FaulknerIV. Explanation of Literary Terms (10 points in all

19、, 5 for each)1. American Romanticisms 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 commen sense. They emphazed individualis

20、m, placing the individual against the group. The afirmed the inner life of the sels,and 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 IrvingThe stretch B

21、ook and ened with Walt Whitemans 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.;2. American Transcendentalism3. American Naturalismnaturalismnaturalistsaccept

22、ed the more negative interpretation of Darwins evolutionary theory and used it to account for the behavior of those charaters in the literary works wh were regarded as more or less complex combination of inheritted attibutes, their habits condition by social and economic forces. American Naturalism

23、is evoled from realism hen the authors tone in writing becomes 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 school4. American Realism5. Imagist Movemen

24、t.A. The Imagist Movement flourished in the U.S. and England between 1909-1917 and involved quite a number of British and American writers and poets.B. This is a movement that advanced modernism in arts which concentrated on reforming the medium of poetry as opposed to Romanticism. As one of the lea

25、ders of the Imagists, Ezra Pound laid down three main principles: direct treatment of poetic subjects, elimination of merely ornamental or superfluous words, and the rhythmical composition in the consequence of the musical phrase rather than in the consequence of a metronome. “The point of Imagism,”

26、 Pound wrote in 1914, “is that it does not use images as ornaments. The image itself is the speech. The image is the world beyond formulated language.”C. Ezra Pounds In a Station of the Metro is a typical work of the Imagist Movement.V. Identification of Fragments1. “These are the times that try men

27、s souls: The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict

28、, the more glorious the triumph.” The American CrisisThomas Paine2. “In vain did Uncas dart around the cloud, with a wish to strike his knife into the heart of his fathers foe; the threatening rifle of Hawkeye was raised and suspended in vain, while Duncan endeavored to seize the limbs of the Huron

29、with hands that appeared to have lost their power. Covered as they were with dust and blood, the swift evolutions of the combatants seemed to incorporate their bodies into one. The death-like looking figure of the Mohican, and the dark form of the Huron, gleamed before their eyes in such quick and c

30、onfused succession, that the friends of the former knew not where to plant the succoring blow.”最后的莫西干人 The Last of the MohicansJames Fennimore Cooper3. Pearl, without responding in any manner to these honey-sweet expressions, remained on the other side of the brook. Now she fixed her bright, wild ey

31、es on her mother, now on the minister, and now included them both in the same glance; as if to detect and explain to herself the relation which they bore to one another. For some unaccountable reason, as Arthur Dimmesdale felt the childs eyes upon himself, his hand-with that gesture so habitual as t

32、o have become involuntary-stole over his heart. At length, assuming a singular air of authority, Pearl stretched out her hand, with the small forefinger extended, and pointing evidently towards her mothers breast. And beneath, in the mirror of the brook, there was the flower-girdled and sunny image of little Pearl, pointing her small forefinger too. The Scarlet LetterNathaniel Hawthorne4. To go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from s