发布时间 : 星期一 文章美国文学史及作品选读习题集(4)更新完毕开始阅读
19. Why Leaves of Grass is considered a milestone in American Literature?
20. What are the thematic concerns and the artistic characteristics of Emily Dickenson‘s poetry?
VII. Analysis of literature works.
Rip Van Winkle
On waking, he found himself on the green knoll whence he had first seen the old man of the glen. He rubbed his eyes----it was a bright sunny morning. The birds were hopping and twittering among the bushes, and the eagle was wheeling aloft, and breathing the pure mountain breeze.‖ Surely,‘ thought Rip,‖ I have not slept here all night.‖ He recalled the occurrences before he fell asleep. The strange man with a keg of liquor----the mountain ravine---the wild retreat among the rocks---the woe-begone party at ninepins—the flagon—‖Oh! that flagon! that wicked flagon!‖ thought Rip----‖what excuse shall I make to Dame Van Winkle!‖
He looked round for his gun, but in place of the clean well-oiled following-piece, he found an old firelock lying by him, the barrel incrusted with rust, the lock falling off, and the stock worm-eaten. He now suspected that the grave roysterers of the mountain had put a trick upon him, and having dosed him with liquor, had robbed him of his gun. Wolf, too, had disappeared, but he might have strayed away after a squirrel or partridge. He whistled after him and shouted his name, but all in vain; the echoes repeated his whistle and shout, but no dog was to be seen.
He determined to revisit the scene of the last evening‘s gambol, and if he met with any of the party, to demand his dog and gun. As he rose to walk, he found himself stiff in the joints, and wanting in his usual activity. ―These mountain beds do not agree with me,‖ thought Rip;‘ and if this frolic should lay me up with a fit of the rheumatism, I shall have a blessed time with Dame Van Winkle.‖ With some difficulty he got down into the glen: he found the gully up which he and his companion had ascended the preceding evening: but to his astonishment a mountain stream was now foaming down it, leaping from rock to rock, and filling thee glen with his babbling murmurs. He, however, made shift to scramble up its sides, working his toilsome way through thickets of birch, sassafras, and witch-hazel, and sometimes tripped up or entangled by the wild grapevines that twisted their coils or tendrils from tree to tree, and spread a kind of network in his path.
At length he reached to where the ravine had opened through the cliffs to the amphitheatre; but no traces of such opening remained. The rocks presented feathery foam, and fell into a broad deep basin, black from the shadows of the surrounding forest. Here, then, poor Rip was brought to a stand. He again called and whistled after his dog; he was only answered by the cawing of a flock of idle crows, sporting high in air about a dry tree that overhung a sunny the poor‘s man perplexities. What was to be done? The morning was passing away, and Rip felt famished for want for his breakfast. He grieved to give up his dog and gun; he dreaded to meet his wife; but it would not do to starve among the mountains. He shook his head, shouldered the rusty firelock, and, with a heart full of trouble and anxiety, turned his steps homeward.
As he approached the village he met a number if people, nut none whom he knew, which somewhat surprise him, for he had thought himself acquainted with
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every one in the country round. Their dress, too, was of a different fashion from that to which he was accustomed. They all stared at him with equal marks of surprise, and whenever they cast their eyes upon him, invariably stroked their chins. The constant recurrence of this gesture induced Rip, involuntarily, to do the same, when to his astonishment, he found his beard had grown a foot long!
He had now entered the skirts of the village. A group of strange children ran at his heels, hooting after him, and pointing at his gray beard. The dogs, too, not one of which he recognized for an old acquaintance, barked at him as he passed. The very village was altered; it was larger and more populous. There were rows of houses which he had never seen before, and those which had been his familiar haunts had disappeared. Strange names were over the doors-strange faces at the windows---every thing was strange. His mind now misgave him; he began to doubt whether both he and the world around him were not bewitched. Surely this was his native village, which he had left but the day before. There stood the Katskill mountains—there ran the silver Hudson at a distance—there was every hill and dale precisely as it had always been—Rip was solely perplexed---‖ That flagon last night,‖ thought he,‖ has addled my poor head sadly!‖
It was with some difficulty that he found the way to his own house, which he approached with silent awe, expecting every moment to hear the shrill voice of Dame Van Winkle. He found the house gone to decay –the roof fallen in, the windows shattered, and the doors off the hinges. A half-starved dog that looked like Wolf was skulking about it. Rip called him by name, but the cur snarled, showed his teeth, and passed on. This was an unkind cut indeed—‖My very dog,‖ signed poor Rip,‖ has forgotten me!‖
He entered the house, which, to tell the truth, Dane Van Winkle had always kept in neat order. It was empty, forlorn, and apparently abandoned. This desolateness overcame all his connubial fears—he called loudly foe his wife and children –the lonely chambers rang for a moment with his voice, and then all again was silence. Questions;
1. When Rip Van Wrinkle woke up from his twenty-year sleep, he started to doubt whether he was himself or another man. Does it mean that identify of a man is closely related to time? If so, do we have a definite answer to the question‖ who am I?‖
2. The great error in Rip‘s temperament is his strong dislike of all kinds of profitable labor. He takes the world easy, eats white bread or brown, whichever can be got with least thought or trouble, and would rather starve on a penny than work for a pound. Illustrate his character by some examples from the story.
3. Rip Van Winkle has been seen as a symbol of several aspects of America. For example, the village itself symbolizes America-forever and rapidly changing. Then what do you think Rip and his wife symbolize respectively?
4. In this short story Rip drinks and falls asleep. The noise of his daily life becomes only ―distant thunder‘. Life goes on even in his deathlike sleep. Discuss the purpose of the author to arrange for Rip to sleep for twenty years.
5. Washington Irving creates humor by the way he says things. Rip once said to his
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dog‖ poor, Wolf, thy mistress leads thee a dog‘s life of it.‖ The humor which has been built into texture of his writings is such that is difficult not to laugh when once reads it. Try to find more humorous sentences in this story. Self-Reliance
I hope in these days we have heard the last of conformity and consistency. Let the words be gazetted and ridiculous henceforward. Instead of the gong for dinner, let us hear a whistle from the Spartan fife. Let us never bow and apologize more. A great man is coming to eat at my house. I do not wish to please him; I wish that he should wish to please me. I will stand here for humanity, and though I would make it kind, I would make it true. Let us affront and reprimand the smooth mediocrity and squalid contentment of the times, and hurl in the face of custom, and trade, and office, the fact which is the upshot of all history, that there is a great responsible Thinker and Actor working wherever a man works; that a true man belongs to no other time or place, but is the centre of things. Where he is, there is nature. He measures you, and all men, and all events. Ordinarily, every body in society reminds us of somewhat else, or of some other person. Character, reality, reminds you of nothing else; it takes place of the whole creation. The man must be so much, that he must make all circumstances indifferent. Every true man is a cause, a country, and an age; requires infinite spaces and numbers and time fully to accomplish his design; and posterity seem to follow his steps as a train of clients. A man Caesar is born, and for ages after we have a Roman Empire. Christ is born, and millions of minds so grow and cleave to his genius, that he is confounded with virtue and the possible of man. An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man; as, Monachism, of the Hermit Antony; the Reformation, of Luther; Quakerism, of Fox; Methodism, of Wesley; Abolition, of Clarkson. Scipio, Milton called ―the height of Rome‖; and all history resolves itself very easily into the biography of a few stout and earnest persons.
Let a man then know his worth, and keep things under his feet. Let him not peep or steal, or skulk up and down with the air of a charity-boy, a bastard, or an interloper, in the world which exists for him. But the man in the street, finding no worth in himself which corresponds to the force which built a tower or sculptured a marble god, feels poor when he looks on these. To him a palace, a statue, or a costly book have an alien and forbidding air, much like a gay equipage, and seem to say like that, ?Who are you, Sir?‘ Yet they all are his, suitors for his notice, petitioners to his faculties that they will come out and take possession. The picture waits for my verdict: it is not to command me, but I am to settle its claims to praise. That popular fable of the sot who was picked up dead drunk in the street, carried to the duke‘s house, washed and dressed and laid in the duke‘s bed, and, on his waking, treated with all obsequious ceremony like the duke, and assured that he had been insane, owes its popularity to the fact, that it symbolizes so well the state of man, who is in the world a sort of sot, but now and then wakes up, exercises his reason, and finds himself a true prince.
Our reading is mendicant and sycophantic. In history, our imagination plays us false. Kingdom and lordship, power and estate, are a gaudier vocabulary than private John and Edward in a small house and common day‘s work; but the things of life are
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the same to both; the sum total of both is the same. Why all this deference to Alfred, and Scanderbeg, and Gustavus? Suppose they were virtuous; did they wear out virtue? As great a stake depends on your private act to-day, as followed their public and renowned steps. When private men shall act with original views, the lustre will be transferred from the actions of kings to those of gentlemen.
The world has been instructed by its kings, who have so magnetized the eyes of nations. It has been taught by this colossal symbol the mutual reverence that is due from man to man. The joyful loyalty with which men have everywhere suffered the king, the noble, or the great proprietor to walk among them by a law of his own, make his own scale of men and things, and reverse theirs, pay for benefits not with money but with honor, and represent the law in his person, was the hieroglyphic by which they obscurely signified their consciousness of their own right and comeliness, the right of every man. Questions;
6. In self0reliance Ralph Waldo Emerson points what conformity leads to and advocates for self-reliance. What is the foundation of self-reliance? Does ―self‖ refer to individual self?
7. Ralph Waldo Emerson maintains that a true individual must be willing to face the consequences of thinking individually and critically and he must not be trapped into mediocrity by his own fear of being inconsistent or not in step with peers. Find some examples from this essay to show his individualism.
8. Today most people like traveling, but Ralph Waldo Emerson thinks that the soul is no traveler and traveling is fool‘s paradise. Try to use transcendentalism to explain his opinion.
9. According to Ralph Waldo Emerson, society never advances it recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other. For everything that is given, something is taken. For instance, the civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet. Do you agree with him? Why or why not?
10. Ralph Waldo Emerson‘ most striking stylistic quality is his ability to work his thought into a short, shocking, and quotable utterance. There are many epigrams in his essay. List some examples to show the stylistic features. The Minister’s Black Veil
From that time no attempts were made to remove Mr. Hooper‘s black veil, or, by a direct appeal, to discover the secret which was supposed to hide. By persons who claimed a superiority to popular prejudice, it was reckoned merely an eccentric whim, such as often mingles with the sober actions of men otherwise rational, and tinges them all with its own semblance of insanity. But with the multitude, good Mr. Hooper was irreparably a bugbear. He could not walk the street with any peace of mind, s o conscious was he that the gentle and timid would turn aside to avoid him, and that others would make it a point of hardihood to throw themselves in his way. The impertinence of the latter class compelled him to give up his customary walk at sunset to the burial ground; for when he learned pensively over the gate, there would always be faces behind the gravestones, peeping at his back veil. A fable went the rounds that the stare of the dead people drove him thence. It grieved him, to the very depth of his
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