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 ______.

“ ‘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”.