英美文学选读历年主观题及答案

英美文学选读历年客观题

1.

“Let it not be supposed by the enemies of‘the system,’that during the period of his solitary incarceration, Oliver was

denied

the

benefit

of

exercise,

the pleasure of

society,

or

the

advantages

of

religious

consolation.”What

do

you

think

Charles Dickens intends to say in the above ironic statement taken from Oliver Twist?

The sentence is a typical example of irony. What Dickens intends to say is just the opposite of the sentence’s literal

meaning.

For the “benefit” of exercise, Oliver whipped every morning in a stone yard; for the “pleasure” of society, he was

carried away every other day to the dinning hall and flogged as a public warning and example to the boys; as for the

“advantages” of the religious consolation, he kicked out i

nto apartment every evening at prayer time and listened to the

boy’s prayer to be guarded against his sins and vices.

The ironic statement is, in fact, a bitter denunciation and fierce attack at the brutal, inhuman treatment of the poor

orphan by the workhouse authority.

2. How is Romanticism different from Neoclassicism? Provide brief evidence from the literary works you know best?

Neoclassicists upheld that the artistic ideals should be order, logic, restrained emotion and accuracy,

and that

literature should be judged in terms of its service to humanity, and thus, literary expressions should be of proportion,

unity,

harmony

and

der

Pope’s

“An

Essay

on

Criticism”

advocated

grace,

wit

(usually

though

satire

/

humor), and simplicity in language (and the poem itself is a demonstration of those ideals, too), Henry

Fielding’s Tom

Jones helped establish the form of novel; Gray’s Elegy Written in Country Churchyard displays elegance in style, unified

structure, serious tone and moral instructions.

Romanticists

tended to

see

the

individual

as

the very

center

of

all

experience,

including

art, and

thus,

literary

work

should

be

“spontaneous

overflow

of

strong

feelings”,

and

no

matter

how

fragmentary

those

experiences

are

(Wordsworth’s I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud or The Solitary Reaper or Coleridge’s Keble Khan), the value of the work

lied in the accuracy of presenting those unique feelings and particular attitudes.

In

a

word,

Neoclassicism

emphasized

rationality

and

form

but

Romanticism

attached

great

importance

to

the

individual’s mind.

3.

English Romanticism

is

generally said to have begun in 1798 with the publication of Wordsworth and Coleridge’s

Lyrical Ballads. Why is Lyrical Ballads considered the milestone to mark the beginning of English Romanticism?

In this book, Wordsworth and Coleridge explored new theories and innovated new techniques in poetry wring.

The preface to the Lyrical Ballads acts as a manifesto for the new school. In the preface, Wordsworth defines

poetry and poets.

Wordsworth’s

poems

in

this

book

differ

in

marked

way

from

his

early

poetry:

simplicity

of

the

language,

sympathy for the poor, and expressions of inward states of mind.

4. In Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen explored three kinds of motivations of marriage the middle-class people had in the

second half of the 18th century. Try to make a brief discussion about them with specific examples from the novel. Make

comments on Austen’s attitude towards these motivations.

Motivation

one:

to

pursue

material

wealth

and

social

position

through

marriage.

Wickham,

Miss

Bingley

and

Charlotte Lucas are examples of this kind.

Motivation two: to seek sensual pleasure and beauty. Lydia and Mr. Bennet are examples of this kind.

Motivation three: to search for true love and also take personal merits and financial positions into consideration.

Elizabeth Bennet is a typical example of this kind.

Austen celebrated the third kind of motivation of marriage while criticizing the first two motivations.

5

．

“ ‘My boy!’ said the old gentleman, leaning over the desk. Oliver started 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 Twis

t

）

1

/

10

Explain why Oliver Twist started first, then trembled violently and burst into tears when the words were “kindly” said.

The boy started at the words because kind words were not expected; it must be the first time in all his life that the boy

Oliver Twi

st had ever “kindly” greeted, strange words may predict another suffering.

6

. Discuss the way symbolism is used in Melville’s Moby

-Dick.

To Ahab, the whale is either an evil creature itself or the agent of an evil force that controls the universe, or perhaps

both. The chase of the white whale symbolizes Ahab

’

s pursuit of truth and fighting against the evil force.

To Ishmael, the whale is an astonishing force, an immense power, which defies rational explanation due to a sense

of mystery it carries. It also represents the tremendous organic vitality of the universe.

To the reader, the whale can be viewed as a symbol of the physical limits that life imposes upon man. It may also be

regarded as a symbol of nature.

7. As a rule, an allegory is a story in verse or prose with a double meaning: a surface meaning, and an implied meaning.

List two works as examples of allegory. What is the implied meaning an allegory is usually concerned with?

Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress and Spenser’s The Faerie Queene

It usually concerned with moral, religious, political, symbolic or mythical ideas.

8

. Take Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as an example to illustrate the statement that Mark Twain

was a unique writer in American literature.

Mark Twain shaped t

he world’s view of America and made the extensive combination of American folk humor and

serious literature.

The novel has become a great contribution to the legacy of American literature.

The novel is written in a language that is totally different from the rhetorical language used by his contemporary

writers such as Emerson, Poe and Melville.

It is simple, direct, lucid and faith to the colloquial speech. This style of

colloquialism is best described as vernacular.

He

successfully

used

local

color

and

historical

settings

to

illustrate

and

shed

light

on

the

contemporary

society.

That’s why he is known as a local colorist.

Mark Twain’s

humor

is

remarkable,

too.

Most

of

his

works

tend

to

be

funny,

containing

some

practical

jokes,

comic

details, witty remarks, etc. some of them are typical of tall tales. And a great deal of his humor is characterized by puns,

straight-faced exaggeration, repetition, and anti-climax. He uses his humor to criticize the social injustice and satirize the

decayed romanticism.

9. How do you philosophically define Transcendentalism?

Transcendentalism has

been defined philosophically as

“

the recognition in

man of the capacity of knowing truth

intuitively,

or

of

attaining

knowledge

transcending

the

reach

of

the

sense

”

.

Emerson

once

proclaimed

in

a

speech,

“

Nothing

is

at

last

sacred

but

the

integrity

of

your

own

mind

”

.

Other

concepts

that

accompanied

Transcendentalism

include the idea that nature is ennobling and the idea that the individual is divine and, therefore, self-reliant.

10. Thomas Hardy is often regarded as a transitional writer. Some critics believe that he is emotionally traditional and

intellectually advanced. How do you understand this idea?

Living at the turn of the century, Hardy is often regarded as the transitional writer. In him we see the influence

from both the past and the modern.

As some people put it, he is intellectually advanced and emotionally traditional.

In his Wessex novels, there is a nostalgic touch in his description of the simple and beautiful though primitive

rural life, which was gradually declining and disappearing as England marched into an industrial country. And with those

traditional characters he is always sympathetic.

On the other hand, the immense impact of scientific discoveries and modern philosophic thoughts upon the man

is quite obvious, too. He read Darwin’s The Origin Species and accepted the idea of “survival of the fittest”. He was also

influenced by Spenser’s The First Principle, which led him to the belief that man’s fate is predeterminedly tragic, driven

by a combined force of “nature”, both inside and outside.

11. Hemingway Code heroes

It refers to some protagonists in Hemingway

’

s works. In the general situation of Hemingway

’

s novels, life is full of

tension and battles; the world is in chaos and man is always fighting desperately a losing battle. Those who survive in the

2

/

10

process of seeking to master the code with the honesty, the discipline, and the restraint are Hemingway code heroes.

12

．

“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”?

The “rocking

-

chair”

is a symbol standing for fate. It is like a cradle that makes one feel peaceful. It is also like a tide

that ever goes on with life, the destiny of which is uncertain.

At the end of novel, Carrie sits in the rocking-chair, which implies that her future is still uncertain and hard to foresee.

13

. The theme of Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet Letter”

The Scarlet Letter tells a simple but very

moving story in which four people living in a Puritan Community are

involved in and affected by the sin of adultery in different way. Hawthorne does not intend to tell a love story nor a story

of sin, but focuses his attention on the moral, emotional, psychological effects or consequences of the sin on the people

in general and those main characters in particular, so as to show us the tension between society and individual.

14

．

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.

As one of the influential members of the Fabian Society, Shaw regarded the establishment of socialism by the

emancipation of land and industrial capital from individual and class ownership as the final goal.

As a realist dramatist, he took the modern issues as his subject; most of his plays are concerned with political,

economic, moral or religious problems

Mrs. Warren’s Profession is a play about the economic oppression of woman.

15. William Faulkner, a Nobel Priza winner, has an important position in American literature. Name two of his Major

novels. Do you know anything about

Faulkner's fiction, historically and

geographically?

The Sound and the Fury, Light in August, Go Down, Moses, Absalom, Absalom!

Yoknapatawpha County is an imaginary place based on Faulkner

’

s own hometown, a place that he took for the

setting of 15 of his 19 novels and many short stories. This small region in American South becomes in Faulkner

’

s fiction

an allegory or a parable of the Old South.

His literary representation of the Old South; and his theme of the deterioration, loss and moral decay of the Old

South when it was falling apart.

16. Mark Twain presented the 19th century America in his own unique way. Discuss Twa

in’s art of fiction: the setting,

the language, and the characters, etc., based on his novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Mark

Twain

uses

Mississippi

valley

as

his

fictional

kingdom,

writing

about

the

landscape

and

people,

the

customs and the dialects of one particular region, and is therefore known as a local colorist.

He

creates

life-like

characters,

especially

the

unconventional

Huckleberry

Finn,

who

runs

away

from

civilization and stands opposite to conventional village morality.

He uses a simple, direct vernacular language, totally different from any previous language.

It is the kind of

colloquial belonging to the lower class, the living local American English.

He has created a special humor to satirize the decayed convention.

17

．

What is the most famous theme in Henry James’s fiction? And what is his favourite approach in characterization

，

which makes him different from Mark Twain and W·

s as a realist? Give two titles of his first period works in

which this theme and this approach are employed.

(1)Henry James’s most famous theme

is the international theme.

(2) Psychological approach.

(3)Daisy Miller, The Portrait of A Lady, The American.

18.

Discuss the way symbolism is used in Faulkner’s story “A Rose for Emily.”

Rose, as a symbol standing for love, may refer to the love between Emily and the Northerner, yet used rather

ironically, in the way it is associated with decay and death in the story.

Rose could also stand for the pity, sympathy, or the l

ament “we” show for Emily

3

/

10

The pity and lament goes not to Emily but all those who imprisoned in the past and fail to adapt to the change.

19. Whitman is one of the representative poets in America. He employed brand-new means in his poetry. What are the

features of his poetry?

His poetic style is marked by the use of the poetic “I”

He adopted “free verse”, that is, poetry without a fixed beat or regular rhyme scheme.

The images in his poems are unconventional

He uses oral English

His vocabulary is amazing

Parallelism and phonetic recurrence are used at the beginning of the lines

n has made radical changes in the form of poetry by choosing free verse as his medium of expression. What

are the characteristics of Whitm

an’s free verse?

It doesn’t have fixed beat or regular rhyme scheme

His poetic lines are simple and prose-like, varying in length, which allows him to express his ideas freely

He also applies oral English in his free verse to make it an effective way to express freely the feelings of common

people.

21. Give a brief comment on Whitman

’

s style and language

radically innovative in terms of poetic form by using

“

free verse

”

, poetry without a fixed beat or regular rhyme

scheme

the use of poetic

“I”

representing all those people in his poems as well the poet

relatively simple and crude

honest and undistorted images of different aspects of America of the day

strong tendency to use oral English

22. A Rose for Emil

y is one of Faulkner’s short stories. Comment on the character of the protagonist, Emily Grierson,

and analyze how this character is depicted.

Emily

is an eccentric spinster who refuses to accept the passage of time, or the inevitable change and loss

that

accompanies it.

She is the symbols of the Old South but the prisoners of the past

In this story, Faulkner makes best use of the Gothic device in narrative, and deformed personality and abnormality

Emily demonstrates in her relationship with her sweetheart is dramatized in such a way that we feel shocked and thrilled

as we read along.

23

. Some of Hemingway’s heroes are regarded as the Hemingway code heroes. Whatever the differences in experience

and age, they all have something in common which Hemingway values. What are the characteristics of the Hemingway

code hero?

They

have

seen

the

cold

world

and

for

one

cause

or

another,

they

boldly

and

courageously

face

the

reality,

whatever the result is, they are ready to live with grace under pressure.

Almost all his heroes are “soldiers” either in a narrow or broad sense. They are out there against the nature or the

world, or even themselves. But no matter where the battle-ground is and how tragic the ending is, they will never be

defeated.

Hemingway himself is one of those code heroes, some critics say his protagonists are autobiographical, for they

share something that is Hemingway.

24

．

“ ‘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.

Goodman Brown utters this cry when he finds his wife Faith, together with lots of prominent people of the village

and the church, attending a witches’ Sabbath in the woods.

His cry shows his great surprise and disillusionment. Thereafter, he becomes distrustful and doubtful. He lives in

dismal and gloomy life because he is never able to believe in goodness or piety again. Here the author makes a pun of

4

/

10

the word “faith”, Goodman Brown loses not only his faith in religion and life, but also his faith in his wife, for his wife’s

name is Faith.

From this story, we also can see that Hawthorne is a great allegorist and a master of symbolism. The story itself is

an allegory and is full of symbols such as the forest, the snake, and pink ribbon.

38. The following passage is taken from The Merchant of Venice. Read it carefully and find the dramatic it contains. Use

it as an example to illustrate what dramatic irony is.

“Bassanio: Antonio, I am married to a wife

Which is as dear to me as life itself;

But life itself, my wife, and all world,

Are not with me esteem’d abov

e thy life;

I would lose all, ay, sacrifice them all

Here to this devil, to deliver you.

Portia: Your wife would give you little thanks for that,

If she were by to hear you make the offer.”

When the audience is aware of a discrepancy between a character

’

s perception of his or her own situation and the

true nature of that situation, that is dramatic irony.

In the given example, Portia, Bassanio

’

s newly-married wife, disguised herself as a lawyer to take charge of the

case, Portia herself and the audience know all this, but Bassanio is ignorant of it, so when Bassanio offers in front of his

disguised wife to sacrifice her in order to deliver Antonia, he makes himself behave in a ridiculous way in the eyes of the

audience. Thus an effect of dramatic irony is achieved.

26

．

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.

A. Social background: the 18th century England witnessed the growing importance of the bourgeois or middle

class

a. The Industrial Revolution

b. The expansion of international markets

c. Values/ virtues / moral standard different from those of the feudal aristocratic class

—

courageous, full of

energy, hard working, practical, resourceful, self-reliant, etc. thus

d. Literature should give / provide a realist presentation of the life of the common life; it should meet the

demand / interest of the middle class people

B. Robinson Crusoe embodies the virtue of the middle class people

a. Crusoe as an adventurous / courageous man full of energy and courage

b. Crusoe as a practical man

c. Crusoe as a resourceful / self-reliant man

d. Crusoe as a patient / persistent man

e. and others

27

.Retell

in

a

few

sentences

the

story

of

the

last

chapter

(Ch,

135)

“The

Chase

－

Th

ird

Day”

of

Melville’s

novel

Moby-Dick. Discuss the meaning of the ending of the story.

The story of Moby-Dick is simple, telling the battle between Ahab, captain of the whaling ship Pequod and the

monstrous white whale Moby- Dick. Ahab is obsessed by his determination to revenge himself upon the fierce, cunning

whale, because it has crippled him.

After many days of search and pursuit, the white whale finally sighted. Chapter 135 is a description of the third

day

’

s

chase.

Three

boats

have

been

lowered

in

chase

of

the

whale,

two

of

them

are

later

destroyed

by

the

whale.

Although the whale is harpooned at last, the ship is sunk and all the people in board are drowned excepted Ishmael, the

narrator of the story who happens to be rescued by another whale ship.

Moby- Dick is not merely a whaling tale or sea adventure, it is a tragic epic. The voyage the Pequod has made is a

5

/

10