美国文学选读试题
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美国文学史及作品选读 模拟试题一
I. Multiple Choice (1’×15=15’)
1.
C______was the first colony in American history.
A. Massachusetts B. New Jersey C.
Virginia a
2. _B_____ was the only good
American author before the Revolutionary War.
One
of his fellow Americans said, “His
shadow lies heavier than any other man’s on
this young nation.”
A. John Smith B.
Benjamin Franklin C. Thomas Jefferson Paine
3. Romantics put emphasis on the following EXCEPT
__A____.
A. common sense B. imagination
C. intuition D. individualism
4. The Raven
was written in 1844 by __B______
A. Philip
Freneau B. Edgar Allan Poe
C.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow D. Emily Dickinson
5. The ship __C____ carried about one hundred
Pilgrims and took 66 days to
beat
its
way across the Atlantic. In December of 1620, it
put the Pilgrims ashore at
Plymouth,
Massachusetts.
A. Sunflower B. Armada C.
Mayflower D. Titanic
6. Melville’s novel
__D____ is a tremendous chronicle of a whaling
voyage in
pursuit of a seemingly supernatural
white whale.
A. Typee B. Omoo C. White
Jacket D. Moby Dick
7. As a philosophical
and literary movement, __D____ flourished in New
England
from the 1830s to the Civil War.
ism alism entalism endentalism
8. The theme of original sin is fully reflected in
___A______.
A. The Scarlet Letter
B. Sister Carrie
C. The Great Gatsby
D. The Old Man and Sea
9. In all his novels
Theodore Dreiser sets himself to project the
___B___ American
values. For example, in
Sister Carrie, there is not one character whose
status is
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not determined economically.
A. Puritan B. materialistic C.
psychological D. religious
10. Realism was a
reaction against____B__ or a move away from the
bias towards
romance and self-creating
fictions, and paved the way to Modernism.
A.
Rationalism B. Romanticism C. Neoclassicism
D. Enlightenment
11. __C______ was a poet in
American modern period who was deeply influence
by eastern culture.
A. T. S Eliot B.
Robert Frost C. Ezra Pound D. Walt Whitman
12. Which of the following statements about
Emily Dickinson is NOT true?D
A. After 1862
she became a total recluse, not leaving her house
nor seeing
close friends.
B. She once
felt a deep affection for Charles Wadsworth, a
married aged
minister, but it proved to be a
frustrated love affair for Dickinson.
C.
She wrote about death, immortality, nature,
success and failure.
D. During her
lifetime, all her poems are published.
13. The
realistic period is referred to as “the Gilded
Age” by __A_____.
A. Mark Twain B. Henry
James C. Emily Dickinson D. Theodore Dreiser
14. Which of the following works is NOT by
Ernest Hemingway?C
A. The Old Man and Sea
B. A Farewell to Arms
C. Sound and Fury
D. For Whom the Bell Tolls
15. Which one is
NOT the characteristic of modernism?D
A.
Modernism in literature is characterized by
experimentation, anti-realism,
individualism
and a stress on the cerebral rather than emotive
aspects.
B. Modernism is greatly influenced
by the two world wars.
C. The work of Marx,
and Freud, had mounted an assault against orthodox
religious faith that lasted into the twentieth
century.
D. Modernists believe that human
nature is kind.
II.
Match the Column
A with Column B (1’×10=10’)
Column A Column B
( c )
1. Dimmesdale a. Robert Frost
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( e) 2. Ahab
b. Mark Twain
( i ) 3. Drouet
c. The Scarlet Letter
( a ) 4.
Pulitzer Prizer d. Thomas Jefferson
( h ) 5. Reclusive poet
e. Moby Dick
(b ) 6. humorist and
satirist f. Ernest Heminway
( d) 7. The Decalration of Indepenence g. Henry
David Thoreau
( g ) 8.
transcendentalist h. Emily Dickinson
( j) 9. The Great Gatsby
i. Sister Carrie
( f ) 10. The Lost
Generation j. F. Scott Fitzgerald
III. Define the following words within one
phrase
(2’×5=10’)
1. free verse
2. Ralph Waldo Emerson 3. Mark Twain
4.
Benjamin Franklin 5. Ezra Pound
IV. Simple questions (5’×4=20’)
1. What
are Puritan thoughts?
2. What is
Transcedentalism and list some representative
figures?
3. Explain the symbolic
meanings of “A” in The Scarlet Letter.
4. Illustrate the three principles of Imagist
Poetry.
V. Interpreting the following texts
(45’)
Text 1
When a girl
leaves her home at eighteen, she does one of two
things.
Either she falls into saving hands and
becomes better, or she rapidly assumes
the
cosmopolitan standard of virtue and becomes worse.
Of an intermediate
balance, under the
circumstances, there is no possibility. The city
has its
cunning wiles, no less than the
infinitely smaller and more human tempter.
There are large forces which allure with all
the soulfulness of expression
possible in the
most cultured human. The gleam of a thousand
lights is often as
effective as the persuasive
light in a wooing and fascinating eye. Half the
undoing of the unsophisticated and natural
mind is accomplished by forces
wholly
superhuman. A blare of sound, a roar of life, a
vast array of human hives,
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appeal to the astonished senses in
equivocal terms. Without a counsellor at hand
to whisper cautious interpretations, what
falsehoods may not these things
breathe into
the unguarded ear! Unrecognised for what they are,
their beauty,
like music, too often relaxes,
then weakens, then perverts the simpler human
perceptions.
Questions
1. Please
use one phrase to summarize the above paragraph
(2’)
2. What are the two possibilities for a
girl of eighteen leaving her home?(2’)
3.
Please find out the figures of speech (2’)
4.
What are the attractive forces mentioned in a big
city? (4’)
5. How are naturalist views are
reflected in this paragraph? Illustrate your
points with examples (5’)
Text 2
Because I could not stop for Death –
He
kindly stopped for me --
The Carriage held but
just Ourselves --
And Immortality.
We
slowly drove -- He knew no haste
And I had put
away
My labor and my leisure too,
For
His Civility –
We passed the School,
where Children strove
At Recess -- in the Ring
--
We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain --
We passed the Setting Sun –
…
Since then -- 'tis Centuries -- and yet
Feels shorter than the Day
I first
surmised the Horses' Heads
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Were toward Eternity –
Questions:
1. Identify the poet and the title
of this poem? (2’)
2. Explain the underlined
words (4’)
3. What are the implications of
“the School”, “the fields of Gazing Grain”, “the
Setting
Sun”? (3’)
4. How do you
understand “Since then -- 'tis Centuries -- and
yet Feels
shorter than the Day” ? (3’)
5. What are the speaker’s opinions about
death? (3’)
Text 3
Two roads diverged in a
yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And
looked down one as far as I could
To where it
bent in the undergrowth.
Then took the
other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the
better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted
wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same.
And both that morning equally lay
In
leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept
the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way
leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever
come back.
I shall be telling this with a
sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two
roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the
one less traveled by,
And that has made all
the difference.
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Questions:
1. Please
examine the poetic form (rhyme and meter) (2’)
2. Describe the similarities and differences
of these two roads. Which one does the
speaker
take? (3’)
3. How do you understand the word
“sigh”? (4’)
4. What might the two roads
stand for in the speaker’s mind? (4’)
5. What
is the theme of this poem? (2’)
参考答案
I. Multiple Choice (1’×15=15’)
1. _C___
2._B__ 3.__A__ 4.__B__ 5.__C___
6.__D_
7.__D__ 8._A__ 9.__B__ 10.__B___
11._C__
12.__D__ 13._A_ 14._C __ 15._D__
II.
Match the Column A with Column B (1’×10=10’)
1.( c ) 2.( e ) 3.( i ) 4.( a ) 5.( h )
6.( b ) 7.( d ) 8.( g ) 9.(j ) 10.( f )
III. Define the following words
within one phrase (2’×5=10’)
(Any related
information can be given marks)
1. poetry
without a fived beat or regular rhyme scheme,
produced by Walt Whitman
2. is the
representative of transcedentalists, who believes
in individualism and
self-reliance and brings
transcendentalism to New England
3．is a
humorist and satirist, who uses broad humor and
biting social satire
4．is one of Thoreau’s
masterpieces, which is the result of the author’s
two years of
living near Walden lake.
5.
is regarded as the classical poem of imagist
poetry by Ezra Pound, conveying the
theme of
the speaker’s sudden pleasure of finding some
beautiful faces in the
subway
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IV. Simple Questions (5’×4=20’)
(Answers should be to the points. 1 score for
time, 2 scores for features and 1 score for
representative figures when defining
the
literary terms)
a) Puritan thoughts: to
make pure their religious beliefs and practices,
to restore
simplicity, to live a hard and
disciplined life and oppose pleasure and arts.
b) Transcendentalism is the climax of
American Romanticism.
First, the
Transcendentalist placed emphasis on spirit, or
the oversoul, as the most
important thing in
the universe.
Secondly, Transcendentalists
stressed the importance of the individual.
Thirdly, the Transcendentalists offered a
fresh perception of nature as symbolic of
the
spirit.
3. a. The letter’s meaning shifts as
time passes. Originally intended to mark Hester as
an adulterer, the “A” eventually comes to
stand for “Able” or“Angel”.
b. Besides Hester,
Dimmesdale also ironed the letter A on his body,
which provoked
his self-consciousness and
showed his repent for what he did.
c. Pearl,
their baby, wore a green letter a in a piece of
seaweed while playing on the
beach. This
green letter A symbolizes vitality or new life,
and also suggests her
inheritance from her
mother.
4. a. direct treatment of the
“thing”（no fuss, frill, or ornament）,
b.
exclusion of superfluous words（precision and
economy of expression）,
c. the rhythm of the
musical phrase rather than the sequence of a
metronome
（free verse form and music）.
V.
Interpreting the following texts (45’)
Text 1
1. The attraction of big city (2’)
2. One
is to fall into the saving hands and becomes
better; secondly, she may admit the
moral
value of big city and becomes worse. (2’)
3.
Simile, metaphor and synecdoche (2’)
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4. The gleam of lights, a blare of
sound, a roar of life, and a vast array of human
hives (4’)
5. Naturalist attempted to
achieve extreme objectivity and frankness,
presenting
characters of low social and
economic classes who were dominated by their
environment and heredity. In this novel, the
major female character Carrie Meeber
is deeply
influenced by the present environment and
heredity, which leads to the
result of her
dynamic character.(5’) (the features of naturalism
3 scores, examples
2 scores)
Text 2
1.
Emily Dickinson and “Because I Could not Stop for
Death”(2’)
2. He: death; civility:
politeness; Recess: break Surmised: guessed (4’)
3. They represent three stages of life. The
school is the childhood and young age; the
fields of gazing grain refers to the mature
period and the setting sun the old age, that
is the end of one’s life. (3’)
4. Because
this day is towards death, immortal and eternal
(3’)
5. Death is immortality (3’)
Text 3
1. It is written in iambic
tetrameter and rhymed abaab.(2’)
2.
Similarities: both of the roads are beautiful
(fair)
Differences: one is quiet and grassy,
less-traveled; the other is trodden by many
people and flat
He took the less-
travelled road (3’)
3. The word “sigh” is a
tricky word. Because sigh can be interpreted into
nostalgic
relief or regret. If it is the
relief sigh, then the difference means the speaker
feels glad
with the road he took. If it is the
regret sigh, then the difference would not be
good,
and the speaker would be sighing in
regret. Hence, sigh is ambigous here for the
speaker is not showing whether his choice is
right or wrong. (4’)
4. The real road; the
life road and the road in career (4’)
5.
Choice is inevitable but you never know what your
choice will mean until you have
lived it. This
is also the theme of the poem. (2’)
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