英美文学选读2011年7月真题试题及答案解析（00604）

Summarize Ernest Hemingway’s artistic features.

Discuss Charles Dickens’ art of fiction: the setting, the character- portrayal, the language, etc. , based on his novel Oliver Twist.

In American literature, Emily Dickinson’s poetry is unique and unconventional in its own way. What are the features of Dickinson’s poems?

What’s the theme of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby?

The Waste Land is T. S. Eliot’s most important single poem. What’s the theme of the poem?

What’s the theme of the poem Paradise Lost? What’s the author’s intention to create it and the implication that the poem expresses?

“ 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 lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass. ”

( From Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself)

Questions:

A.Who 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” symbolize?

“Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;

Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade,

When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:

So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. ”

Questions:

A.Who’s the poet of the quoted stanza, and what’s the title of the poem?

B.What does the word “this” in the last line refer to?

C.What idea do the quoted lines express?

“Never did sun more beautifully steep

In his first splendor, valley, rock or hill;

Ne’er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep !

The river glideth at his own sweet will:

Dear God! The very houses seem asleep;

And all that mighty heart is lying still!”

( From Wordsworth’s sonnet Composed upon Westminster Bridge)

Questions:

A.What does this sonnet describe?

B.What does the phrase “mighty heart” refer to?

C.The sonnet follows strictly the Italian form.What is the feature of the Italian form of sonnet?

“ 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.Who’s the poet of the quoted stanza, and what’s the title of the poem?

B.What does the word “sleep” mean?

C.What idea do the four lines express?

The House of the Seven Gables was based on the tradition of a curse pronounced on ____________’s family when his great - grandfather was a judge in the Salem witchcraft trials.

William Faulkner set most of his works in the American ____________ , with his emphasis on the ________subjects and consciousness.

In 1837, Nathaniel Hawthorne published Twice - Told Tales, a collection of ____________ which attracted critical attention.

In 1920, F·Scott Fitzgerald’s first novel ____________ was published, which was, to some extent, his own story.

The Financier, The Titan and The Stoic by Theodore Dreiser are called his “Trilogy of _________. ”

North of Boston is described by Robert Frost as “a book of people,” which shows a brilliant insight into ____________ character and the background that formed it.

Henry James’ fame generally rests upon his novels and stories with the____________ theme.

Walt Whitman is radically innovative in terms of the form of his poetry. What he prefers for his new poetic feelings is “ ____________ ”.

More than five hundred poems ____________ wrote are about nature, in which his (her) general skepticism about the relationship between man and nature is well -expressed.

In 1954, the Nobel Prize for literature was granted to ____________ , one of the greatest of American writers.

“Though life is but a losing battle, it is a struggle man can dominate in such a way that loss becomes dignity. ” This is an outlook towards life that ____________ had been trying to illustrate in his works.

Herman Melville went to the South Seas on a whaling ship in 1841, where he gained the first -hand information about whaling that he used later in____________.

According to ____________ , the life - death cycle, the spring and winter of the earth, the birth and death of the animals is reality.

In his final years, Herman Melville turned again to prose fiction and wrote what is probably his second famous work, ____________ , which was published after his death.

The Sun Also Rise casts light on a whole generation after ____________ and the effects of the war by way of a vivid portrait of “the Lost Generation. ”

William Faulkner creates his own mythical kingdom that mirrors not only the decline of the ____________ society of America but also the spiritual wasteland of the whole American society.

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

The best representatives of the English humanists are Thomas More, Christopher Mar-lowe and____________.

Mark Twain’s particular concern about the local character of a region came about as “local colorism,” a unique variation of American literary____________.

John Milton’s ____________ is probably his most memorable prose work, which is a great plea for freedom of the press.

D.H. Lawrence’s novels ____________ are generally regarded as his masterpieces.

Shakespeare’s authentic non-dramatic poetry consists of two long narrative poems: Venus and Adonis and____________.

Daniel Defoe describes ____________ as a typical English middle -class man of the eigh- teenth century, the very prototype of the empire builder, the pioneer colonist.

In Thomas Hardy’s Wessex novels, there is an apparent ____________ touch in his de- scription of the simple and beautiful though primitive rural life.

Of all the eighteenth - century novelists ____________ was the first to set out, both in the-ory and practice, to write specially a “comic epic in prose”, the first to give the modern novel its structure and style.

Among the following writers ____________ is considered to be the best -known English dramatist since Shakespeare.

William Blake’s ____________ composed during the climax of the French Revolution plays the double role both as a satire and a revolutionary prophecy.

Charles Dickens’ works are characterized by a mingling of ____________ and pathos.

According to the subjects, William Wordsworth’s short poems can be classified into two groups, poems about____________.

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

The most perfect example of the verse drama after Greek style in English is John Milton’s ____________.

The major theme of Jane Austen’s novels is____________.

Among the Romantic poets ____________ is regarded as a “worshipper of nature”.

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

Charlotte Brontё’s ____________ is noted for its sharp criticism of the existing society, e. g. the religious hypocrisy of charity institutions.

T. S. Eliot’s poem ____________ is heavily indebted to James Joyce in terms of the stream- of -consciousness technique, also a prelude to The Waste Land.

It was only after the publication of ____________ that D.H. Lawrence was recognized as a prominent novelist.

George Bernard Shaw’s play ____________ shows his almost nihilistic bitterness on the subjects of the cruelty and madness of World War I and the aimlessness and disillusion of the young.

From ____________ on, the tragic sense becomes the keynote of Thomas Hardy’s novels, the conflict between the traditional and the moden is brought to the center of the stage.

All of Charles Dickens’ works, with the exception of _________, present a criticism of the more complicated and yet most fundamental social institutions and morals of the Victorian England.