发布时间 : 星期五 文章《英美文学》练习测试题库更新完毕开始阅读
58. What are the general characteristics of the style of Keats's poetry ?
In style, Keats's poetry is characterized by exact and closely knit construction, sensual description and force of imagination.
59. What is the implication of the title of the play The School for Scandal?
The whole high society and upper class is like a school for training the members in the creation and spreading of scandals; and all the ―students‖ are working hard.
60. Why is Don Juan regarded as―the epic satire‖?
Don Juan is an epic because it is 16000 lines long in sixteen cantos and it shows a very vast pictures of different countries in Europe and deals with many aspects of those societies. It is a satire because it exposes and satirizes the sham, hypocrisy, greed and moral degeneracy of the upper classes.
61. What does soliloquy show about Hamlet's mind?
This soliloquy shows Hamlet's consideration about the social reality , especially his accusation against the corruption and injustice of the ruling class and the state institutions, which shows Shakespeare‘s humanism and realism.
62. What is the meaning of \
It shows the inner strife of Hamlet: to live on in this world or to die; to suffer or to take action.
63. What revolutionary ideas did Shelly expressed in his poems ?
In his poems, Shelley expressed his love for freedom and his hatred for tyranny.（详略）
64. What is Sheridan's position as a dramatist in English Literature?
Sheridan is the only important English dramatist in the 18th century. His plays are important links between the masterpieces of Shakespeare and those of Bernard Shaw.
65. Why does Emerson say, “nature always wears the colors of spirit?
Because though nature can give people a lot of pleasures and delights, it is also changeable according to human emotions.
V. Short essay questions: （论述题）
1．What do you know about the character Hamlet? What is the significance of the image of Hamlet?
Hamlet is a soldier, scholar and statesman. He is the perfect image of humanist.
2． How does Emily Bronte describe the strong love between Heathcliff and Catherine in the scene of their final meeting ?
During the last meeting between Heathcliff and Catherine, Emily shows their strong
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love by their words, actions, facial expressions. Some of their words sound as blame and curse, some of their movements look like fighting, but all this shows intense love.
3. What have you learned from Bacon‘s Of Studies ?
From the essay, we have learned how to read and why to read; we have known what kinds of books we should read. We also know the different functions of different books.
4．What is the difference between the characters of Mrs.Warren and her daughter Vivie? What is the conflict between them?
Mrs. Warren is a prostitute, she is uneducated, vulgar, even rude. Vivi is very intelligent, elegant. Their conflict lies in their different point of view of life and different way of life.
5. Please comment on Hemingway‘s story Indian Camp .
Answer: The theme of the story is death and birth of life. It shows the experience of a boy who witnessed both birth and death. which became a good lesson in his childhood and enabled him to become a Hemingway‘s hero when he grew up. The style of the story shows the typical style of Hemingway— iceberg. Very brief narration reveals very profound implication.
6. One important American writer always sets his works in the American South with his emphasis on the Southern subjects and consciousness. Who is the writer? Discuss the writer‘s narrative techniques.
Answer: It is William Faulkner. He has always been regarded as a man with great might of invention and experimentation. He added to the theory of the novel an art form and evolved his own literary strategies.
The range of narrative techniques used by Faulkner is remarkable. He would let the characters explain themselves and hinder as little as possible the reader‘s direct experience of the work of art. The most characteristic way of structuring his stories is to fragment the chronological time. The modern stream-of-consciousness technique was also frequently and skillfully exploited by Faulkner to emphasize the reactions and inner musings of the narrator. And the interior monologue Faulkner used helps him achieve the most desirable effect of exploring the nature of human consciousness. Moreover, Faulkner was good at presenting multiple points of view. The other narrative technique Faulkner used to construct his stories includes symbolism and mythological and biblical allusions.
7. What makes Mark Twain one of the giant figures in world literature? Discuss the question from the following aspects: his major works, his language, his style, etc. Answer: Mark Twain is a great literary giant of America. With works like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Life on the Mississippi Twain shaped the world‘s view of America and made a more extensive combination of American folk humor and serious literature than previous writers had ever done. All his masterpieces are
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based on the scenes and emotions of his boyhood and youth. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is usually regarded as a classic book written for boys about their particular horrors and joys. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, a boy‘s book specially written for the adults, is Twain‘s most representative work. These two books, especially the latter, proved to be the milestone in American literature, and thus firmly established Twain‘s position in the literary world. Huckleberry Finn marks the climax of Twain‘s literary creativity. Hemingway once described the novel the one book from which ―all modern American literature comes.‖
The language of the book is simple, direct, lucid, and faithful to the colloquial speech. The profound portrait of Huckleberry Finn is another great contribution to the legacy of American literature.
Twain is also known as a local colorist who preferred to present social life through portraits of the local characters of his regions. He wrote about the lower-class people. He successfully used local color and historical settings to illustrate and shed light on the contemporary society. With his great mastery and effective use of vernacular, Twain has made colloquial speech an accepted respectable literary medium in the literary history of the country. His style of language influenced many later writers like Hemingway and so on. Twain‘s humor is remarkable, too. However, his humor is not only of witty remarks mocking at small things or of farcical elements making people laugh, but a king of artistic style used to criticize the social injustice and satirize the decayed romanticism.
8. Ernest Hemingway is one of the greatest American writers. Name two of his major novels. Try to discuss the characteristics of the heroes in Hemingway‘s novels. Answer: Hemingway‘s major novels include The Sun Also Rises (1926), A Farewell to Arms (1929), The Old Man and the Sea (1952) and so on.
His world is limited. He deals with a limited range of characters in quite similar circumstances and measures them against the same code, known as ―grace under pressure,‖ which is actually an attitude towards life that Hemingway had been trying to demonstrate in his works. Those who succeed in the process of seeking to master the code with the honesty, the discipline, and the restraint are Hemingway Code heroes.
9. Write an essay on Walt Whitman.
Answer: Born in a working-class family, Walt Whitman tried at a variety of jobs. His rich experience in life furnishes both material and spirit for is masterpiece Leaves of Grass, Of which he devoted all his life to the creation. In this giant work, openness, freedom, and above all, individualism are all that concerned him. His aim is to express some new poetical feelings and to initiate a poetic tradition in which difference should be recognized. The genuine participation of a poet in a common cultural effort is, according to Whitman, to behave as a supreme individualist; however, the poet‘s essential purpose is to identify his ego with the world, and more specifically with the democratic ―en-masse‖ of America, which is established in the opening lines of ―Song of Myself.‖ As Whitman saw it, poetry could play a vital part
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in the process of creating a new nation. It could enable Americans to celebrate their release from the Old World and the colonial rule. And it could also help them understand their new status and to define themselves in the new world of possibilities. Hence, the abundance of themes in his poetry voices freshness. Most of the poems in Leaves of Grass sing of the ―en-masse‖ and the self as well. Some of Whitman‘s poems are politically committed. In Drum Taps, Whitman expresses much mourning for the sufferings of the young lives in the battlefield and shows a determination to carry on the fighting dauntlessly until the final victory.
To strengthen the nature of these new poetical feelings, Whitman employs brand-new means in his poetry, which is first discerned in his style and language. Whitman‘s poetical style is marked, first of all, by the use of the poetic ―I.‖ Speaking in the voice of ―I,‖ Whitman becomes all those people in his poems, and yet still remains ―Walt Whitman,‖ hence a discovery of the self in the other with such identification. Usually, the relationship Whitman is dramatizing is a triangular one: ―I‖ the poet, the subject in the poem, and ―you‖ the reader. Whitman is also radically innovative in terms of the form of his poetry. What he prefers for his new subject and new poetic feelings is ―free verse,‖ that is, poetry without a fixed beat or regular rhyme scheme. Contrary to the iambic pentameter of traditional poetry, Whitman‘s is relatively simple and even rather crude. Most of the pictures he paints with words are honest, undistorted images of different aspects of American of the day. Another characteristic in Whitman‘s language is his strong tendency to use oral English. Whitman‘s vocabulary is amazing.
Walt Whitman has proved an immortal figure in American literature because he embodies a new ideal, a new world and a new life-style, and his influence over the following generations is great. Leaves of Grass has always been considered a monumental work, which demands great attention because of its uniquely poetic embodiment of American ideals of democracy and equality.
10. Analyze the symbolic significance of The Scarlet Letter.
Answer: Hawthorne is a master of symbolism. The symbol can be found everywhere in his writing, and his masterpiece The Scarlet Letter provides the most convincing proof. By using Pearl as a thematic symbol, Hawthorne emphasizes the consequence the sin of adultery has brought to the community and people living in that community. The scarlet letter A is the biggest symbol of all. As a key to the whole novel, the letter A takes on different layers of symbolic meanings as the plot develops. At first it is a token of shame ―Adultery‖, then it has been changed into ―Able‖, and finally it signifies ― Angel‖. People come up with different interpretations and they do not know which one is definite. The scarlet letter A is ambiguous and the ambiguity is one of the prominent characteristics of Hawthorne‘s art.
11. Discuss the theme in Emily Dickinson‘s poetry.
Answer: The themes of Emily Dickinson‘s poetry cover religion, death, immortality, love and nature. In some of her poems she writes about her doubt and belief about religious subjects. While she desires salvation and immortality, she denies God‘s plans
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