文学阅读与欣赏(文学英语赏析)

试卷代号：

1062

中央广 播电视大学

2006

—

2007

学年度第一学期“开放本科”期末考试

英语专业

文学阅读与欣赏

(

文学英语赏析

)

试题

Part I:

Literary Fundamentals

['30 points]

Section 1. Match the works with their writers (10 points).

Works

1. Hills like White Elephants

2. I Have a Dream

3. An Inspector Calls

4. The Importance of Being Earnest

5. The Pearl

Writers

A. John Steinbeck

B. Robert Frost

C. Oscar Wilde

D. Walt Whitman

E. Ernest Hemingway

F. JB Priestley

G. Arthur Miller

H. Martin Luther King

Section 2. Decide whether the following statements are True (T) or False (F) ( 10 points).

6. Robert Frost is a well- known Scottish poet.

7. Hamlet, Othello and King Lear are well-known tragedies by William Shakespeare,

together with Macbeth.

8. Arthur Miller's play The Crucible is aimed at exposing the hypocrisy of the property-

owning class of the United States.

9. Scrooge is a character created by Charles Dickens in his novel Great Expectations.

10. Lord of the Flies is a thought-provoking novel authored by William Golding.

Section 3. Choose the correct answers to complete the following sentences ( 10 points}.

11. __ can be established by describing the place where the action takes place, or

the situation at the start of the story.

A. Climax

B. Point of view

C. Flashback

D. Setting

12. A __ is a pair of rhymed lines that are equal in length.

A ____ is a

{ourteen-line lyric poem which rhymes in a highly controlled way.

A. Couplet, ballad

B. Sonnet, limerick

C. Couplet, sonnet

D. Ballad, haiku

13. Which figure of speech is used in the following lines?

the age of foolishness'

A. Metaphor

B. Parallelism

C. Simile

D. Personification

14.

was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2005.

A. Harold Pinter

B. John Steinbeck

C. James Joyce

D. Walt Whitman

15. In his essay

tasted, others to be

, and some few to be chewed and

'.

A. swallowed, skimmed

B. swallowed, digested

C. scanned, perfected

D. skimmed, scanned

Part U:

Reading Comprehension

[50 points]

Read the extracts and give brief answers to the questions below.

Text 1

1 tried to sleep; but my heart beat anxiously, my inward tranquillity was broken. The

clock, far down in the hall, struck two. Just then it seemed my chamber-door was touched,

as if fingers had swept the panels in groping a way along the dark gallery outside. I said,

'Who is there?' Nothing answered. I was chilled with fear.

All at once 1 remembered that it might be Pilot, who, when the kitchen door chanced to

be left open, not infrequently found his way up to the threshold of Mr Rochester's chamber:

I had seen him lying there myself in the mornings. The idea calmed me somewhat: I lay

down. Silence composes the nerves; and as an unbroken hush now reigned again through the

whole house, I began to feel the return of slumber. But it was not fated that I should sleep

that night. A dream had scarcely approached my ear, when it fled affrighted, scared by a

marrow-freezing incident enough.

This was a demoniac laugh-- low, suppressed, and deep--uttered, as it seemed, at the

very keyhole of my chamber door. The head of my bed was near the door, and I thought at

first the goblin-laugher stood at my bedside --or rather, crouched by my pillow. But 1 rose,

looked round, and could see nothing; while, as I still gazed, the unnatural sound was

reiterated, and I knew it came from behind the panels. My first impulse was to rise and

fasten the bolt; my next, again to cry out, 'Who is there?'

Questions (12 points)

16. From which novel is the extract taken from? (Write the letter representing your

choice on the answer sheet. )

A. Heart of Darkness

B. Jane Eyre

C. The Old Man and the Sea

17. What time of the day did the marrow-freezing incident happen?

18. What words did the author use to describe the laugh she heard?

19. What did the narrator

Text 2

I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self- contain'd, ! stand

and look at them long and long.

They do not sweat and whine about their condition,

They do not lie awake in the dark and ,eep for their sins,

They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,

Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things,

Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago,

Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.

So they show their relations to me and I accept them,

They bring me tokens of myself, they evince them plainly in their possession.

( Song of Myself)

Questions (9 points}

20. Which of the following is the message Whitman is conveying to average man and

woman? (Write the letter representing your choice on the answer sheet. )

A. People should love the earth and the sun and the animals.

B. People should love themselves for what they are and bc themselves.

C. People should despise riches and give their wealth away to those in need.

21. Does Whitman use traditional device like regular meter and rhyme in this poem?

What's the form of the poem (sonnet or free verse or visual poetry)?

22. Identify the literary devices you find in this poem. Name the device, and note down

one example.

Text 3

Macbeth: My dearest love,

Duncan comes here tonight.

Lady Macbeth: And when goes hence?

Macbeth: Tomorrow, as he purposes.

Lady Macbeth: O, never

Shall sun that morrow see.

Your face, my thane, is as a book where men

May read strange matters. To beguile the time,

Look like the time; bear welcome in your eye,

Your hand, your tongue; look like the innocent flower,

But be the serpent under't. He that's coming

Must be provided for; and you shall put

This night's business into my dispatch,

Which shall to all our nights and days to come

Give solely sovereign sway and masterdom.

Macbeth: We will speak further.

(Macbeth)

Questions ( 9 points)

23. Which of the [ollowing is the proper paraphrase for the line

look like the time

A. Seize the hour. Seize the day.

B. Make your appearance fit the occasion.

C. Enjoy as you may, for tomorrow you may die.

24. In her speech, Lady Macbeth. (Write the letter representing your choice on

the answer sheet. )

A. tells Macbeth to behave normally as a hospitable host and leave the mt rdering

part to her to arrange

B. persuades Macbeth to act as a serpent and carry out the murder in person

C. asks Macbeth for suggestions as how to entertain Duncan

25. What does Lady Macbeth mean by

strange matters

Text 4

Please note: This reading task will be relevant to the writing task in Part m.

The Man Who Talked to Trees

1. They were twins; boys born five minutes apart in the dark days of the Civil War fifty

days earlier. The elder was named Torbash, which means 'hero' in our language.

The

younger one*s name was Milmaq, 'bringer of peace. ' Torbash had struggled like a hero to

escape from his mother's womb, almost tearing her apart. Milmaq had slid out with merciful

swiftness.

2. They were identical twins. When they were children strangers could not tell them

apart. They both had dark black hair and piercing green eyes. They were strong, tall and

erect. Until they reached their early teens, they were always together. They slept together,

ate together, played together, went to school together, got into trouble together--they even

fell iii together. And they looked after each other. Anyone who tried to bully one of them

would face the anger of the other. And of course they used their physical likeness to play

tricks on people, especially at school.

3. By the time they were fourteen the family had returned to its lands in the Nirmat

valley. Their father had rebuilt the old farmhouse, destroyed by the retreating rebel army at

the end of the war. He farmed the bottom of the valley, growing wheat and tending the rich

almond orchards for which the valley was then famous. On the lower slopes he had vineyards

from which he produced the strong Nirmat Kashin (Lion of Nirmat) wine. The higher land

was forested. The chestnut trees gave nuts in the autumn. The oaks and beeches, as well as

the chestnut trees, were carefully tended.

Their valuable timber was sold to furniture

makers and builders in Jalseen, the town lower down the valley.

The trees were cut

according to a strict rotation. For every tree they cut down, another was planted. These

were what we, the ones who remember, still call 'The Days of Contentment'.

4. It was about this time that the two boys began to grow apart. There was nothing

sudden about this. They did not argue about a girl, or fight over an imagined insult as so

many young people do. It was simply that they gradually began to do things by themselves

which, before that, they would have done together.

So each began to develop different

interests.

5. Torbash spent his spare time hunting in the forests. He had been given a shotgun for

his fifteenth birthday. He would proudly return after a day's hunting with wild pigeons,

with rabbits, their eyes glazed in death, and sometimes with a deer. His greatest ambition

was to bring back a wild boar. His other main occupation was to visit Jalseen, where there

were girls with 'modern' ways. It was there that he got to know the 'contacts' who were to

help him later.

6. Milmaq was a solitary person. He would spend hours in the forests, not hunting,

simply sitti~ng still, watching, waiting for something to happen. A spider would swing its

thread across the canyon between two branches. A woodpecker would drum at the trunk of a

chestnut tree, its neck a blur of speed. Above all, the trees themselves would speak to him.

He would be aware of them creaking and swaying in the wind. He could sense the sap rising

in them in the springtime~ feel their sorrow at the approach of winter. If he put his ear to the

trunk of a tree, he could hear it growing, very slowly; feel it moving towards its final