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英国文学试题 which of the following is regarded as the most successful religious
allegory in the english language. it is alone who, for the first time in english literature, presented
to us a comprehensive realistic picture of the english society of
his time and created a whole gallery of vivid characters from all
walks of life. all of the following four except are the most eminent dramatists
in the renaissance england. it is generally regarded that keats's most important and mature
poems are in the form of . daniel defoe's novels mainly focus on . in beowulf, fought against the monster grendel and a five breathing
dragon. francis bacon is best known for his which greatly influenced the
development of this literary form. most of thomas hardy's novels are set in wessex . we can perhaps describe the west wind in shelley's poem 'ode to
the west wind' with all the following terms except . 'blindness', 'partiality', 'prejudice', and 'absurdity' in the
novel 'pride and prejudice' are most likely the characteristics
of . the modern english novel came into being in .
who is considered to be the best known english dramatist since
shakespeare? of the following poets, which is not regarded as 'lake poets'? in the first part of gulliver's travels, gulliver told his experience
in . which of the following cannot describe 'byronic hero'? in the history of literature, romanticism is generally regarded
as . the term 'metaphysical poetry' is commonly used to name the work
of the 17th century writers who wrote under the influence of . 'the vanity fair' is a well-known part in . in oliver twist, charles criticizes . which of the following plays by shakespeare is history play? who is regarded as a 'worshipper of nature'. which of the following writing is not the work by charles dickens? the 18th century england is known as the in the history. 英国文学选读试题 2. In his tragedy Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare eulogizes _____. 1. life. I. Find 28 1. Hawthorne is a master of symbolism. In his novel The Scarlet
Letter, the letter A is the biggest symbol, but it is ambiguous
and there are different interpretations, such as adultery, able,
angel, admirable, Arthur, America, etc. What is your interpretation
about the symbol A? (Write about 200 words to comment on it. ):
(20 points)
第一大题:单项选择题20小题:说实在的，真的一个记不清了，只是记得大部分比较简单，一些文学常识之类的，哪位同学有补充请跟帖，我会把它们编到这里来，谢谢！ 第二大题:写出下列作品的文体和作者（一共10个，只能记得几个，不是原顺序） 第三大题:给一段文字，请写出作品名字和作者（共5小题，作品我当然默写不出，我写的是参考答案哈） 2. 文字选自 Martin Luther King 的 《I Have a Dream》 3. 文字选自 John Keats 的 《To Autumn》(这题我当时死活没想起来，555) 4. 文字选自 William Blake 的 《London》 5. 文字选自 Robert Frost 的 《Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening》 第四大题:改错。 第五大题:作品分析题，给了三段作品选段，请选其中两题加以分析，250字左右(如上题，我默写不出原文，只有参考信息) 2. Emily Dickinson 的 《Because I Could Not Stop for Death》里的选段 3. William Wordsworth 的 《The Solitary Reaper》 中文写作部分（分值:70分） 第一大题（30分）:给了一段有关比较文学方面的学术论文，共一页纸，下有三小题: （当时做的很晕，题型非常出乎意料） 第二大题（40分）:材料作文 部分大学语言学试题 2 In english we can describe a story as "a successful story" or "a success story ".Do you think they mean the same ? Please explain and give your reasons(10 points) ,<同上》 3 Expain the following terms ,giving examples where necessary.(50 points) <中山2003》 design feature macrolinguistics vowel minimal pair folk etymology aspect anopho r error analysisr metaphor 4 Language can change through blending ,metanalysis ,back-formation, analogical creation and borrowing.Give two english words for each of them (5 points) 清华2000年试题 5 Answer the following question briefly.clearly,grammatically and
correctly.(10 Points ) 湖南师大2003年 7 Define the following terms.(10 points) 中国海洋大学1999 8 Define the following terms .(20 points) 苏州大学1997 6 Translate into chinese and exemplify each of the following.(10
points ) 9 大连外国语学院1992年语言学全部试题 100 POINTS 10 Words in our mental lexicon are known to be related to one another .Discuss the relationships between words ,using examples from the english language .(15 points ) 北外2003年试题 11 What do you think are the similarities and dissimilarities between
learning a first and a second language? ( 30 points) 同上 1. Romance, which uses narrative verse or prose to tell stories
of 2. Among the great Middle English poets, Geoffrey Chaucer is known
for his production of 3. Which of the following historical events does not directly help
to stimulate the rising of the Renaissance Movement? 4. Which of the following statements best illustrates the theme
of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18? 5. "And we will sit upon the rocks, /Seeing the shepherds
feed their flocks, /By shallow rivers to whose falls/ Melodious
birds sing madrigals." The above lines are probably taken from
6. "Bassanio: Antonio, I am married to a wife 7. The true subject of John Donne’s poem, "The Sun Rising,"
is to 8. Of all the 18th century novelists Henry Fielding was the first
to set out, both in theory and practice, to write specifically a
" in prose," the first to give the modern novel its structure
and style. 9. The Houyhnhnms depicted by Jonathan Swift in Gulliver’s travels
are 10. Here are four lines from a literary work: "Others for
language all their care express,/And value books, and women men,
for dress." The work is 11. The phrase "to urge people to abide by Christian doctrines
and to seek salvation through constant struggles with their own
weaknesses and all kinds of social evils" may well sum up the
implied meaning of 12. William Wordsworth, a romantic poet, advocated all the following
EXCEPT 13. Which of the following is taken from John Keats’ "Ode
on a Grecian Urn"? 14. "If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?" is an
epigrammatic line by 15. "Ode on a Grecian Urn" shows the contrast between
the of art and the of human passion. 16. In the statement "-oh, God! Would you like to live with
your soul in the grave?" the term "soul" apparently
refers to 17. The typical feature of Robert Browning’s poetry is the 18. The Victorian Age was largely and age of , eminently represented
by Dickens and Thackeray. 19. is the first important governess novel in the English literary
history. 20. The major concern of fiction lies in the tracing of the psychological
development of his characters and in his energetic criticism of
the dehumanizing effect of the capitalist industrialization on human
nature. 21. is considered to be the best-known English dramatist since
Shakespeare, and his representative works are plays inspired by
social criticism. 22. Which of the following is NOT a typical feature of Modernism? 23. The Romantic writers would focus on all the following issues
EXCEPT the in the American literary history. 24. Henry David Thoreau’s work, has always been regarded as a 25. The famous 20-year sleep in "Rip Van Winkle" helps
to construct 26. Walt Whitman was a pioneering figure of American poetry. His
innovation first of all lies in his use of , poetry without a fixed
beat or regular rhyme scheme. 27. The literary characters of the American type in early 19th
century are generally characterized by all the following features
EXCEPT that they 28. Hster Pryme, Dimmesdale, Cillingworth, and Pearl are most likely
the names of the characters in 29. "This is my letter to the World" is a poetic expression
of Emily Dickinson’s about her communication with the outside world. 30. With Howells, James, and Mark Twain active on the literary
scene, 31. After The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Twain gives a literary
independence to Tom’s buddy Huck in a book entitled 32. However, the keynote of Daisy Miller’s character, turns out
to be an admiring but a dangerous quality and her defiance of social
taboos in the Old World finally brings her to a disaster in the
clash between two different cultures. 33. Generally speaking, all those writers with a naturalistic approach
to human reality tend to be 34. Emily Dickinson wrote many short poems on various aspects of
life. Which of the following is NOT a usual subject of her poetic
expression? 35. In "After Apple- Picking," Robert Frost wrote: "For
I have had too much / Of apple -picking: I am overtired/ Of the
great harvest I myself desired." From these lines we can conclude
that the speaker is 36. Chinese poetry and philosophy have exerted great influence over A. Ezra Pound 37. The Hemingway Code heroes are best remembered for their 38. In The Emperor Jones and The Hairy Ape, O’Neill adopted the
expressionist techniques to portray the of human beings in a hostile
universe. 39. In Hemingway’s "Indian Camp", Nick’s night trip to
the Indian village and his experience inside the hut can be taken
as 40. Which of the following statements about Emily Grierson, the
protagonist in Faulkner’s story " A Rose for Emily," is
NOT true? PART TWO Answers: 42. "And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin, Answers: 43. "God knows, ... I’m not myself-I’m somebody else-- ...
and I’m changed, and I can’t tell what’s my name, or who I am." Answers: 44. "I shall be telling this with a sigh Answers: Ⅲ. Questions and Answers 46. Inspiration for the romantic approach initially came from two
great shapers of thought. Who are the two? And what ideas they expressed
inspire the romantic writers? 47. The white whale, Moby Dick, is the most important symbol in
Melville’s novel. What symbolic meaning can you draw from it? 48. Nature is a philosophic work, in which Emerson gives an explicit
discussion on his idea of the Over-soul. What is your understanding
of Emersonian "Over-soul"? Ⅳ. Topic Discussion 50. Summarize the story of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry
Finn in about 100 words, and comment on the theme of the novel. 入 学 考 试 试 题 招 生 专 业 英语语言文学 考 试 课 程 阅读及英美文学、语言学417 研 究 方 向_________________ 注意：答案必须标明题号，按序写在专用答题纸上，写在本试卷上或草稿纸上者一律不给分。 Write down your answers to all the questions in this test in separate blank answer sheets provided at your test center. Part One Reading Comprehension 70 points Directions: Each passage is followed by questions based on its content. After reading the passage, choose the best answer to each question. Answer all questions following the passage on the basis of what is stated or implied in that passage. Passage 1 The recent change to all-volunteer armed forces in the United States will eventually produce a gradual increase in the proportion of women in the armed forces and in the variety of women’s assignments, but probably not the dramatic gains for women that might have been expected. This is so even though the armed forces operate in an ethos of institutional change oriented toward occupational equality and under the federal sanction of equal pay for equal work. The difficulty is that women are unlikely to be trained for any direct combat operations. A significant portion of the larger society remains uncomfortable as yet with extending equality in this direction. Therefore, for women in the military, the search for equality will still be based on functional equivalence, not identity or even similarity of task. Opportunities seem certain to arise. The growing emphasis on deterrence is bound to offer increasing scope for women to become involved in novel types of non-combat military assignments. 1. The primary purpose of the passage is to (A) present an overview of the different types of assignments available to women in the new United States all-volunteer armed forces (B) present a reasoned prognosis of the status of women in the new United States all-volunteer armed forces (C) present the new United States all-volunteer armed forces as a model case of equal employment policies in action (D) analyze the use of functional equivalence as a substitute for occupational equality in the new United States all-volunteer armed forces 2. According to the passage, despite the United States armed forces’ commitment to occupational equality for women in the military, certain other factors preclude women’s (A) receiving equal pay for equal work (B) having access to positions of responsibility at most levels (C) drawing assignments from a wider range of assignments than before (D) benefiting from opportunities arising from new non-combat functions
3. The passage implies that which of the following is a factor conducive to a more equitable representation of women in the United States armed forces than has existed in the past? (A) The all-volunteer character of the present armed forces (B) The past service records of women who had assignments functionally equivalent to men’s assignments (C) The level of awareness on the part of the larger society of military issues (D) A decline in the proportion of deterrence oriented non-combat assignments 4. The “dramatic gains for women” (line 2) and the attitude, as described in lines 11-12, of a “significant portion of the larger society” are logically related to each other inasmuch as the author puts forward the latter as (A) a public response to achievement of the former (B) the major reason for absence of the former 第 2 页， 共 14 页 (C) a precondition for any prospect of achieving the former (D) a catalyst for a further extension of the former Passage 2 Of the thousands of specimens of meteorites found on Earth and known to science, only about 100 are igneous; that is, they have undergone melting by volcanic action at some time since the planets were first formed. These igneous meteorites are known as achondrites because they lack chondrules—small stony spherules found in the thousands of meteorites (called “chondrites”) composed primarily of unaltered minerals that condensed from dust and gas at the origin of the solar system. Achondrites are the only known samples of volcanic rocks originating outside the Earth-Moon system. Most are thought to have been dislodged by interbody impact from asteroids, with diameters of from 10 to 500 kilometers, in solar orbit between Mars and Jupiter. Shergottites, the name given to three anomalous achondrites so far discovered on Earth, present scientists with a genuine enigma. Shergottites crystallized from molten rock less than 1.1 billion years ago (some 3.5 billion years later than typical achondrites) and were presumably ejected into space when an object impacted on a body similar in chemical composition to Earth. While most meteorites appear to derive from comparatively small bodies, shergottites exhibit properties that indicate that their source was a large planet, conceivably Mars. In order to account for such an unlikely source, some unusual factor must be invoked, because the impact needed to accelerate a fragment of rock to escape the gravitational field of a body even as small as the Moon is so great that no meteorites of lunar origin have been discovered. While some scientists speculate that shergottites derive from Io (a volcanically active moon of Jupiter), recent measurements suggest that since Io’s surface is rich in sulfur and sodium, the chemical composition of its volcanic products would probably be unlike that of the shergottites. Moreover, any fragments dislodged from Io by interbody impact would be unlikely to escape the gravitational pull of Jupiter. The only other logical source of shergottites is Mars. Space-probe photographs indicate the existence of giant volcanoes on the Martian surface. From the small number of impact craters that appear on Martian lava flows, one can estimate that the planet was volcanically active as recently as a half-billion years ago—and may be active today. The great objection to the Martian origin of shergottites is the absence of lunar meteorites on Earth. An impact capable of ejecting a fragment of the Martian surface into an Earth-intersecting orbit is even less probable than such an event on the Moon, in view of the Moon’s smaller size and closer proximity to Earth. A recent study suggests, however, that permafrost ices below the surface of Mars may have altered the effects of impact on it. If the ices had been rapidly vaporized by an impacting object, the expanding gases might have helped the ejected fragments reach escape velocity. Finally, analyses performed by space probes show a remarkable chemical similarity between Martian soil and the shergottites. 5. The passage implies which of the following about shergottites? I. They are products of volcanic activity. II. They derive from a planet larger than Earth. III. They come from a planetary body with a chemical composition similar to that of Io. (A) I only (B) II only (C) I and II only (D) II and III only 6. According to the passage, a meteorite discovered on Earth is unlikely to have come from a large planet for which of the following reasons? (A) There are fewer large planets in the solar system than there are asteroids. (B) Most large planets have been volcanically inactive for more than a billion years. (C) The gravitational pull of a large planet would probably prohibit fragments from escaping its orbit. (D) There are no chondrites occurring naturally on Earth and probably none on other large planets. 7. The passage suggests that the age of shergottites is probably (A) still entirely undetermined (B) less than that of most other achondrites (C) about 3.5 billion years 第 3 页， 共 14 页 (D) the same as that of typical achondrites 8. According to the passage, the presence of chondrules in a meteorite indicates that the meteorite (A) has probably come from Mars (B) is older than the solar system itself (C) has not been melted since the solar system formed (D) is certainly less than 4 billion years old 9. The passage provides information to answer which of the following questions? (A) What is the precise age of the solar system? (B) How did shergottites get their name? (C) What are the chemical properties shared by shergottites and Martian soils? (D) What is a major feature of the Martian surface? 10. It can be inferred from the passage that each of the following is a consideration in determining whether a particular planet is a possible source of shergottites that have been discovered on Earth EXCEPT the (A) planet’s size (B) planet’s distance from Earth (C) strength of the planet’s field of gravity (D) proximity of the planet to its moons 27. It can be inferred from the passage that most mete- orites found on Earth contain which of the following? (A) Crystals (B) Chondrules (C) Metals (D) Sodium Passage 3 The transplantation of organs from one individual to another normally involves two major problems: organ rejection is likely unless the transplantation antigens of both individuals are nearly identical, and (2) the introduction of any unmatched transplantation antigens induces the development by the recipient of donor-specific lymphocytes that will produce violent rejection of further transplantations from that donor. However, we have found that among many strains of rats these “normal” rules of transplantation are not obeyed by liver transplants. Not only are liver transplants never rejected, but they even induce a state of donor-specific unresponsiveness in which subsequent transplants of other organs, such as skin, from that donor are accepted permanently. Our hypothesis is that (1) many strains of rats simply cannot mount a sufficiently vigorous destructive immune-response (using lymphocytes) to outstrip the liver’s relatively great capacity to protect itself from immune-response damage and that (2) the systemic unresponsiveness observed is due to concentration of the recipient’s donor-specific lymphocytes at the site of the liver transplant. 12. The primary purpose of the passage is to treat the accepted generalizations about organ transplantation in which of the following ways? (A) Explicate their main features (B) Suggest an alternative to them (C) Examine their virtues and limitations (D) Criticize the major evidence used to support them 13. It can be inferred from the passage that the author believes that an important difference among strains of rats is the (A) size of their livers (B) constitution of their skin (C) strength of their immune-response reactions (D) sensitivity of their antigens 14. According to the hypothesis of the author, after a successful liver transplant, the reason that rats do not reject further transplants of other organs from the same donor is that the (A) transplantation antigens of the donor and the recipient become matched (B) lymphocytes of the recipient are weakened by the activity of the transplanted liver (C) subsequently transplanted organ is able to repair the damage caused by the recipient’s immune-response reaction (D) transplanted liver continues to be the primary locus for the recipient’s immune-response reaction 15. Which of the following new findings about strains of rats that do not normally reject liver transplants if true, would support the authors’ 第 4 页， 共 14 页 hypothesis? I. Stomach transplants are accepted by the recipients in all cases. II. Increasing the strength of the recipient’s immune-response reaction can induce liver-transplant rejection. III. Organs from any other donor can be transplanted without rejection after liver transplantation. IV. Preventing lymphocytes from being concentrated at the liver transplant produces acceptance of skin transplants. (A) II only (B) I and III only (C) II and IV only (D) I, II, and III only Passage 4 Practically speaking, the artistic maturing of the cinema was the single-handed achievement of David W. Griffith (1875-1948). Before Griffith, photography in dramatic films consisted of little more than placing the actors before a stationary camera and showing them in full length as they would have appeared on stage. From the beginning of his career as a director, however, Griffith, because of his love of Victorian painting, employed composition. He conceived of the camera image as having a foreground and a rear ground, as well as the middle distance preferred by most directors. By 1910 he was using close-ups to reveal significant details of the scene or of the acting and extreme long shots to achieve a sense of spectacle and distance. His appreciation of the camera’s possibilities produced novel dramatic effects. By splitting an event into fragments and recording each from the most suitable camera position, he could significantly vary the emphasis from camera shot to camera shot. Griffith also achieved dramatic effects by means of creative editing. By juxtaposing images and varying the speed and rhythm of their presentation, he could control the dramatic intensity of the events as the story progressed. Despite the reluctance of his producers, who feared that the public would not be able to follow a plot that was made up of such juxtaposed images, Griffith persisted, and experimented as well with other elements of cinematic syntax that have become standard ever since. These included the flashback, permitting broad psychological and emotional exploration as well as narrative that was not chronological, and the crosscut between two parallel actions to heighten suspense and excitement. In thus exploiting fully the possibilities of editing, Griffith transposed devices of the Victorian novel to film and gave film mastery of time as well as space. Besides developing the cinema’s language, Griffith immensely broadened its range and treatment of subjects. His early output was remarkably eclectic: it included not only the standard comedies, melodramas, westerns, and thrillers, but also such novelties as adaptations from Browning and Tennyson, and treatments of social issues. As his successes mounted, his ambitions grew, and with them the whole of American cinema. When he remade Enoch Arden in 1911, he insisted that a subject of such importance could not be treated in the then conventional length of one reel. Griffith’s introduction of the American-made multireel picture began an immense revolution. Two years later, Judith of Bethulia, an elaborate historic philosophical spectacle, reached the unprecedented length of four reels, or one hour’s running time. From our contemporary viewpoint, the pretensions of this film may seem a trifle ludicrous, but at the time it provoked endless debate and discussion and gave a new intellectual respectability to the cinema. 16. The primary purpose of the passage is to (A) discuss the importance of Griffith to the development of the cinema (B) describe the impact on cinema of the flashback and other editing innovations (C) deplore the state of American cinema before the advent of Griffith (D) analyze the changes in the cinema wrought by the introduction of the multireel film 17. The author suggests that Griffith’s film innovations had a direct effect on all of the following EXCEPT (A) film editing (B) camera work (C) scene composing (D) sound editing 18. It can be inferred from the passage that before 1910 the normal running time of a film was (A) 15 minutes or less (B) between 15 and 30 minutes (C) between 30 and 45 minutes (D) between 45 minutes and 1 hour 19. The author asserts that Griffith introduced all of the following into American cinema EXCEPT (A) consideration of social issues (B) adaptations from Tennyson 第 5 页， 共 14 页 (C) the flashback and other editing techniques (D) dramatic plots suggested by Victorian theater 20. The author suggests that Griffith’s contributions to the cinema had which of the following results? I. Literary works, especially Victorian novels, became popular sources for film subjects. II. Audience appreciation of other film directors’ experimentations with cinematic syntax was increased. III. Many of the artistic limitations thought to be inherent in filmmaking were shown to be really nonexistent. (A) II only (B) III only (C) I and II only (D) II and III only 21. It can be inferred from the passage that Griffith would be most likely to agree with which of the following statements? (A) The good director will attempt to explore new ideas as quickly as possible. (B) The most important element contributing to a film’s success is the ability of the actors. (C) The camera must be considered an integral and active element in the creation of a film. (D) The cinema should emphasize serious and sober examinations of fundamental human problems. 22. The author’s attitude toward photography in the cinema before Griffith can best be described as (A) sympathetic (B) nostalgic (C) amused (D) condescending Passage 5 Historically, a cornerstone of classical empiricism has been the notion that every true generalization must be confirmable by specific observations. In classical empiricism, the truth of “All balls are red,” for example, is assessed by inspecting balls; any observation of a non red ball refutes unequivocally the proposed generalization. For W.V.O. Quine, however, this constitutes an overly “narrow” conception of empiricism. “All balls are red,” he maintains, forms one strand within an entire web of statements (our knowledge); individual observations can be referred only to this web as a whole. As new observations are collected, he explains, they must be integrated into the web. Problems occur only if a contradiction develops between a new observation, say, “That ball is blue,” and the preexisting statements. In that case, he argues, any statement or combination of statements (not merely the “offending” generalization, as in classical empiricism) can be altered to achieve the fundamental requirement, a system free of contradictions, even if, in some cases, the alteration consists of labeling the new observation a “hallucination.” 23. The author of the passage is primarily concerned with presenting (A) criticisms of Quine’s views on the proper conceptualization of empiricism (B) evidence to support Quine’s claims about the problems inherent in classical empiricism (C) an account of Quine’s counterproposal to one of the traditional assumptions of classical empiricism (D) an overview of classical empiricism and its contributions to Quine’s alternate under-standing of empiricism 24. According to Quine’s conception of empiricism, if a new observation were to contradict some statement already within our system of knowledge, which of the following would be true? (A) The new observation would be rejected as untrue. (B) Both the observation and the statement in our system that it contradicted would be discarded. (C) New observations would be added to our web of statements in order to expand our system of knowledge. (D) The observation or some part of our web of statements would need to be adjusted to resolve the contradiction. 25. As described in the passage, Quine’s specific argument against classical empiricism would be most strengthened if he did which of the following? (A) Provided evidence that many observations are actually hallucinations. (B) Explained why new observations often invalidate preexisting generalizations. (C) Challenged the mechanism by which specific generalizations are derived from collections of particular observations. (D) Mentioned other critics of classical empiricism and the substance of their approaches. 26. It can be inferred from the passage that Quine considers classical empiricism to be “overly ‘narrow’ ” (lines 3-4) for which of the following reasons? I. Classical empiricism requires that our system of generalizations be free of contradictions. II. Classical empiricism demands that in the case of a contradiction between an individual observation and a generalization, the generalization 第 6 页， 共 14 页 must be abandoned. III. Classical empiricism asserts that every observation will either confirm an existing generalization or initiate a new generalization. (A) II only (B) I and II only (C) I and III only (D) I, II, and III Passage 6 Until recently astronomers have been puzzled by the fate of red giant and supergiant stars. When the core of a giant star whose mass surpasses 1.4 times the present mass of our Sun (M⊙) exhausts its nuclear fuel, it is unable to support its own weight and collapses into a tiny neutron star. The gravitational energy released during this implosion of the core blows off the remainder of the star in a gigantic explosion, or a supernova. Since around 50 percent of all stars are believed to begin their lives with masses greater than 1.4M⊙, we might expect that one out of every two stars would die as a supernova. But in fact, only one star in thirty dies such a violent death. The rest expire much more peacefully as planetary nebulas. Apparently most massive stars manage to lose sufficient material that their masses drop below the critical value of 1.4 M⊙before they exhaust their nuclear fuel. Evidence supporting this view comes from observations of IRC+10216, a pulsating giant star located 700 light-years away from Earth. A huge rate of mass loss (1 M⊙ every 10,000 years) has been deduced from infrared observations of ammonia (NH3) molecules located in the circumstellar cloud around IRC+10216. Recent microwave observations of carbon monoxide (CO) molecules indicate a similar rate of mass loss and demonstrate that the escaping material extends out-ward from the star for a distance of at least one light-year. Because we know the size of the cloud around IRC+10216 and can use our observations of either NH3 or CO to measure the outflow velocity, we can calculate an age for the circumstellar cloud. IRC+10216 has apparently expelled, in the form of molecules and dust grains, a mass equal to that of our entire Sun within the past ten thousand years. This implies that some stars can shed huge amounts of matter very quickly and thus may never expire as supernovas. Theoretical models as well as statistics on supernovas and planetary nebulas suggest that stars that begin their lives with masses around 6 M⊙ shed sufficient material to drop below the critical value of 1.4M⊙. IRC+10216, for example, should do this in a mere 50,000 years from its birth, only an instant in the life of a star. But what place does IRC+10216 have in stellar evolution? Astronomers suggest that stars like IRC+10216 are actually “protoplanetary nebulas” –old giant stars whose dense cores have almost but not quite rid themselves of the fluffy envelopes of gas around them. Once the star has lost the entire envelope, its exposed core becomes the central star of the planetary nebula and heats and ionizes the last vestiges of the envelope as it flows away into space. This configuration is a full-fledged planetary nebula, long familiar to optical astronomers. 27. The primary purpose of the passage is to (A) offer a method of calculating the age of circum-stellar clouds (B) describe the conditions that result in a star’s expiring as a supernova (C) discuss new evidence concerning the composition of planetary nebulas (D) explain why fewer stars than predicted expire as supernovas 28. The passage implies that at the beginning of the life of IRC+10216, its mass was approximately (A) 7.0 M⊙ (B) 6.0 M⊙ (C) 5.0 M⊙ (D) 1.4 M⊙ 29. The view to which line 18 refers serves to (A) reconcile seemingly contradictory facts (B) undermine a previously held theory (C) take into account data previously held to be insignificant (D) resolve a controversy 30. It can be inferred from the passage that the author assumes which of the following in the discussion of the rate at which IRC+10216 loses mass? (A) The circumstellar cloud surrounding IRC+10216 consists only of CO and NH3 molecules. (B) The circumstellar cloud surrounding IRC+10216 consists of material expelled from that star. (C) The age of a star is equal to that of its circumstellar cloud. (D) The rate at which IRC+10216 loses mass varies significantly from year to year. 31. According to information provided by the passage, which of the following stars would astronomers most likely describe as a planetary nebula? 第 7 页， 共 14 页 (A) A star that began its life with a mass of 5.5 M⊙, has exhausted its nuclear fuel, andhas a core that is visible to astronomers (B) A star that began its life with a mass of 6 M⊙, lost mass at a rate of 1 M⊙ per 10,000 years, and exhausted its nuclear fuel in 40,000 years (C) A star that has exhausted its nuclear fuel, has a mass of 1.2 M⊙, and is surrounded by a circumstellar cloud that obscures its core from view (D) A star that began its life with a mass greater than 6 M⊙, has just recently exhausted its nuclear fuel, and is in the process of releasing massive amounts of gravitational energy 32. Which of the following statements would be most likely to follow the last sentence of the passage? (A) Supernovas are not necessarily the most spectacular events that astronomers have occasion to observe. (B) Apparently, stars that have a mass of greater than 6 M⊙ are somewhat rare. (C)Recent studies of CO and NH3 in the circumstellar clouds of stars similar to IRC+10216 have led astronomers to believe that the formation of planetary nebulas precedes the development of supernovas. (D) Astronomers have yet to develop a consistently accurate method for measuring the rate at which a star exhausts its nuclear fuel. 33. Which of the following titles best summarizes the content of the passage? (A) New Methods of Calculating the Age of Circumstellar Clouds (B) New Evidence Concerning the Composition of Planetary Nebulas (C) Protoplanetary Neula: A Rarely Observed Phenomenon (D) Planetary Nebulas: An Enigma to Astronomers Passage 7 Noses have it pretty hard. Boxers fatten them. Doctors rearrange them. People make jokes about their unflattering characteristics. Worst of all, when it comes to smell, no one really understands them. Despite the nose’s conspicuous presence, its workings are subtle. Smell, or olfaction is a chemosense, relying on specialized interactions between chemicals and nerve endings. When a rose, for example, is sniffed, odor molecules are carried by the rising airstream to the top of the nasal cavity, just behind the bridge of the nose, where the tips of the tens of millions of olfactory nerve cells are clustered in the mucous lining. The molecules somehow trigger the nerve endings, which carry the message to the olfactory lobes of the brain. Because smell information then travels to other regions of the brain, the scent of a rose can elicit not only a pleasurable sensation but emotions and memories as well. Though just how odors stimulate the nerves is unknown, scientists do know that our sense of smell is surprisingly keen, capable of distinguishing up to tens of thousands of chemical odors. The laboratory task of isolating the components of an odor is far from simple. Tobacco smoke, for example, is made up of several thousand different chemicals. Moreover, smell researchers must grapple with the problem of what to call the different odors that the nose detects. People generally refer to smells by their sources of associations. Descriptions such as “like a wet dog” or “like my elementary school” may convey perceptions but are vastly inadequate for labeling the chemistry involved. To further complicate research, olfaction is connected to other sensations. Besides olfactory nerves, the nasal cavity contains pain-sensitive nerves that perceive sensations such as the kick in ammonia of the burning in chili peppers. Smell also interwines with taste to create flavor. A coffee drinker holding his nose while sipping would taste only the bitter in his brew, for taste receptors generally appear limited to bitter, salty, sour and sweet. The sense of smell is ten thousand times more sensitive than taste and makes subtle distinctions among lemon, chocolate, and many more flavors. So how does the nose manage this sophisticated discrimination? Lake of evidence hasn’t kept scientists from speculating. One idea is that every odor molecule vibrates at its own frequency, creating patterns of disturbance in the air similar to the wave patterns produced by sound. According to this theory, the nerves act as receivers for the unique vibrations of every odor molecule. The scheme requires no direct contact between the molecule and the nerve cell. Another suggestion is that primary odors, equivalent to the primary color s of vision underlie all smells and are detected by receptor sites on the olfactory nerves. Different combinations of about thirty basic smells, with labels such as malty, minty, and musky, could form an infinite number of odors. Other scientists think that each smell is its own primary smell. They believe the olfactory nerve endings have specific receptor proteins that bind to each of the chemicals people can sense. This theory, however, calls for thousands of different proteins – none of which has been found. “The science of smell is so empirical, ”says Robert Gesteland, a neurobiologist at Northwestern University, “there’s no predictive base for experiments.” Unlike the senses of sight, touch, and hearing, olfaction studies have attracted only a small share of scientific interest. That may 第 8 页， 共 14 页 change. Researchers hope that unraveling the mystery of smell and taste disorders that affect two million Americans. And in the future, with enough known about smell, it might be possible to endow strange, unappealing but nutritious foods with more familiar odors, perhaps expanding the world’s food supply. For the moment, however, what the nose knows it isn’t revealing. 34. We may conclude from this passage that (A) our sense of smell is as important as any of our other senses (B) each smell is its primary smell (C) olfactory study has become a major research area (D) there is much more to be learned about the nose 35. According to the passage the only statement which is not true is (A) doctors use smell research to better understand taste disorders (B) significant progress has been made in separating the various proteins in the nerve endings (C) smell researchers have difficulty in labeling different odors (D) our sense of taste is not nearly as acute as our sense of smell 36. Which of the following sentences from the passage illustrates the need for further research? (A) Smell also interwines with taste to create flavor. (B) The molecules somehow trigger the nerve endings, which carry the message to the olfactory lobes of the brain. (C) The science of smell is so empirical, there’s no predictive base for experiments (D) Smell, or olfaction, is a chemosense, relying on specialized interactions between chemicals and nerve endings 37. In attempting to analyze the intricacies of smell discrimination, some scientists have suggested I. that odor molecules work in the same way that sound waves do II. that primary odors, which are inherent in all smells, are communicated to receptor sites on the olfactory nerves III. that recognition takes place as the molecule stimulates the nerve cell (A) II only (B) I and II only (C) I and III only (D) I, II, and III 38. The author attempts to lighten this serious biological report by means of (A) the incongruity of widespread smell research (B) similes such as “like a wet dog” (C) the opening and closing statements (D) the confession of our basic ignorance 39. The comparison of a smell to a person’s elementary school was made in order to (A) illustrate a unique perception (B) show how imagery may be employed in a lab situation (C) point out the uselessness of such a description to scientists (D) personalize a complicated topic (E) maintain the reader’s interest 40. According to the passage, we can find massive quantities of olfactory nerve cells (A) in every chemosense (B) on the brain lobes (C) behind the bridge of the nose (D) in special taste receptors 42. The broadest example of a major problem facing smell researchers is contained with (A) the reference to tabbacco smoke (B) the reference to the rose (C) the coffee drinker’s experience (D) Robert Gesteland’s statement Passage 8 In recommending to the board of trustees a tuition increase of $500 per year, the President of the university said: “There were no student demonstrations over the previous increase of $300 last year and $200 the year before.” 4p>第 9 页， 共 14 页42. If the President’s statement is accurate, which of the following can be validly inferred from the information given? I. Most students in previous years felt that the increases were justified because of increased operating costs II. Student apathy was responsible for the failure of students to protest the previous tuition increases. III. Students are not likely to demonstrate over the new tuition increases. (A) I only (B) II only (C) I or II, but not both (D) Neither I, II, and III Passage 9 A meadow in springtime is beautiful, even if no one there to appreciate it. 43. The statement above would be a logical rebuttal to which of the following claims? (A) People will see only what they want to see. (B) Beauty is only skin deep. (C) There’s no accounting for taste. (D) Beauty exists only in the eye of the beholder. Passage 10 “I have considered the structure of all Volant animals, and find the folding continuity of the bat’s wings most easily accommodated to the human form. Upon this model I shall begin my task tomorrow, and in a year expect to tower into the air beyond the malice or pursuit of man. But I will work only this condition, that the art shall not be divulged, and that you shall not require me to make wings for any but ourselves. ” “Why,” said Rasselas, “should you envy others so great an advantage? All skill ought to be exerted for universal good; every man has owed much to others, and ought to repay the kindness that he has received.” “If men were all virtuous,” returned the artist, “I should with great alacrity teach them all to fly. But what would be the security of the good, if the bad could at pleasure invade them from the sky? Against an army sailing might though the clouds neither wall, nor mountains, nor seas, could afford any security. A flight of northern savages might hover in the wind, and light at once with irresistible violence upon the capital of a fruitful region that was descent of some of the naked nations that swarm on the coast of the southern sea.” 44. The person whom Rasselas is speaking to is (A) a tailor (B) a gamber (C) a biologist (D) an artist 45. The attitude of the persion giving his point of view is one of (A) optimism (B)sarcasm (C) distrust (D)innocence 46. In this selection, the author is employing the literary device of (A) onomatopoeia (B) symbolism (C) irony (D) alliteration Passage 11 In country X, the Conservative, Democratic and Justice parties have fought three civil wars in twenty years. To restore stability, an agreement is reached to rotate the tip offices – President, Prime Minister, and Army Chief of Staff-among the parties, so that each party controls one and only one Office at all times. The three top office holders must each have two deputies, one from each of the other parties. Each deputy must choose a staff composed equally of members of his or her chief’s party and members of the third party. 47. When the Justice party holds one of the top offices, which of the following cannot be true? (A) Some of the staff members within that Office are Justice Party members (B) Some of the staff members within that Office are Democratic Party members (C) Two of the deputies within that Office are Justice Party members (D) Two of the deputies within that Office are Conservative Party members 48. When the Democratic Party holds the Presidency, the staffs of the Prime Minister’s deputies are composed of I. one-fourth of Democratic Party members II. one-half of Justice Party members, one-fourth of Conservative Party members 第 10 页， 共 14 页 III. one-half of Conservative Party members, one-fourth of Justice Party members (A) I only (B) I and II only (C) II or III, but not both (D) I and II or I and III 49. Which of the following is allowable under the rules as stated? (A) More than half of the staff within a given Office belonging to a single party. (B) Half the staff members within a given Office belonging to a single party. (C) Any person having a member of the same party as his or her immediate superior (D) Half the total number of staff members in all three Offices belonging to a single party. 50. The Office of the Army Chief of Staff passes from the Conservatives to the Justice Party. Which of the following must be fired? (A) The Democratic deputy and all staff members belonging to the Justice Party (B) Justice Party deputy and all of his or her staff members (C) Justice Party deputy and all of his or her staff members belonging to the Conservative Party. (D) Conservative Party deputy and all of his or her staff members belonging to the Conservative Party. Passage 12 By 1950, the results of attempts to relate brain processes to mental experience appeared rather discouraging. Such variations in size, shape, chemistry, conduction speed, excitation threshold, and the like as had been demonstrated in nerve cells remained negligible in significance for any possible correlation with the manifold dimensions of mental experience. Near the turn of the century, it had been suggested by Hering that different modes of sensation, such as pain, taste, and color, might be correlated with the discharge of specific kinds of nervous energy. However, subsequently developed methods of recording and analyzing nerve potentials failed to reveal any such qualitative diversity. It was possible to demonstrate by other methods refined structural differences among neuron types; however, proof was lacking that the quality of the impulse or its condition was influenced by these differences, which seemed instead to influence the developmental patterning of the neural circuits. Although qualitative variance among nerve energies was never rigidly disproved, the doctrine was generally abandoned in favor of the opposing view, namely, that nerve impulses are essentially homogeneous in quality and are transmitted as “common currency” throughout the nervous system. According to this theory, it is not the quality of the sensory nerve impulses that determines the diverse conscious sensations they produce, but rather the different areas of the brain into which they discharge, and there is some evidence for this view. In one experiment, when an electric stimulus was applied to a given sensory field of the cerebral cortex of a conscious human subject, it produced a sensation of the appropriate modality for that particular locus, that is, a visual sensation from the visual cortex, an auditory sensation from the auditory cortex, and so on. Other experiments revealed slight variations in the size, number, arrangement, and interconnection of the nerve cells, but as far as psychoneural correlations were concerned, the obvious similarities of these sensory fields to each other seemed much more remarkable than any of the minute differences. However, cortical locus, in itself, turned out to have little explanatory value. Studies showed that sensations as diverse as those of red, black, green, and white, or touch, cold, warmth, movement, pain, posture, and pressure apparently may arise through activation of the same cortical areas. What seemed to remain was some kind of differential patterning effects in the brain excitation: it is the difference in the central distribution of impulses that counts. In short, brain theory suggested a correlation between mental experience and the activity of relatively homogeneous nerve-cell units conducting essentially homogeneous impulses through homogeneous cerebral tissue. To match the multiple dimensions of mental experience psychologists could only point to a limitless variation in the spatiotemporal patterning of nerve impulses. 51. The author suggests that, by 1950, attempts to correlate mental experience with brain processes would probably have been viewed with (A) indignation (B) impatience (C) pessimism (D) indifference 52. The author mentions “common currency” in line 26 primarily in order to emphasize the (A) lack of differentiation among nerve impulses in human beings (B) similarity of the sensations that all human beings experience (C) similarities in the views of scientists who have studied the human nervous system (D) recurrent questioning by scientists of an accepted explanation about the nervous system 53. The description in lines 32-38 of an experiment in which electric stimuli were applied to different sensory fields of the cerebral cortex tends to support the theory that 第 11 页， 共 14 页 (A) the simple presence of different cortical areas cannot account for the diversity of mental experience (B) variation in spatiotemporal patterning of nerve impulses correlates with variation in subjective experience (C) nerve impulses are essentially homogeneous and are relatively unaffected as they travel through the nervous system (D) the mental experiences produced by sensory nerve impulses are determined by the cortical area activated 54. According to the passage, some evidence exists that the area of the cortex activated by a sensory stimulus determines which of the following? I. The nature of the nerve impulse II. The modality of the sensory experience III. Qualitative differences within a modality (A) II only (B) III only (C) I and II only (D) II and III only 55. The passage can most accurately be described as a discussion concerning historical views of the (A) anatomy of the brain (B) manner in which nerve impulses are conducted (C) mechanics of sense perception (D) physiological correlates of mental experience 56. Which of the following best summarizes the author’s opinion of the suggestion that different areas of the brain determine perceptions produced by sensory nerve impulses? (A) It is a plausible explanation, but it has not been completely proved. (B) It is the best explanation of brain processes currently available. (C) It is disproved by the fact that the various areas of the brain are physiologically very similar. (D) There is some evidence to support it, but it fails to explain the diversity of mental experience. (E) There is experimental evidence that confirms its correctness. 57. It can be inferred from the passage that which of the following exhibit the LEAST qualitative variation? (A) Nerve cells (B) Nerve impulses (C) Cortical areas (D) Spatial patterns of nerve impulses Passage 14 At the end of the Second World War the number of women in their childbearing years was at record lgw. Yet for almost twenty years they produced a record high number of children. In 1957, there was an average of 3.72 children per family. Now the postwar babies are producing a record low number of babies. In 1983 the average number of children per family was about 1.79—two children fewer than the 1957 rate and lower even than the 2.11 rate that a population needs to replace itself. 58. It can properly inferred from the passage that (A) for the birth rate to be high, there must be a relatively large number of women in their childbearing years. (B) the most significant factor influencing the birth rate is whether the country is engaged in a war (C) unless there are extraordinary circumstances, the birth rate will not dip below the level at which a population replaces itself (D) the birth rate is not directly proportional to the number of women in their childbearing years. Passage 15 A study of illusioinistic painting inevitably begins with the Greek painter Zeuxis. In an early work, which is the basis for his fame, he painted a bowl of grapes that was so lifelike that birds pecked at the fruit. In an attempt to expand his achievement to encompass human figures, he painted a boy carrying a bunch of grapes. When birds immediately came to peck at the fruit, Zeuxis judged that he had failed. 59. Zeuxis’s judgment that he had failed in his later work was based on an assumption. Which of the following can have served as the assumption? (A) People are more easily fooled by illusionistic techniques than are the birds (B) The use of illusionistic techniques in painting had become commonplace by the time Zeuxis completed his later work. (C) The grapes in the later painting were even more realistic than the ones in the earlier work. (D) Birds are less likely to peck at fruit when they see that a human being is present. Passage 16 The best argument for the tenure system that protects professional employment in universities is that it allows veteran faculty to hire people 第 12 页， 共 14 页 smarter than they are and yet remain secure in the knowledge that unless they themselves are caught in an act of moral turpitude—a concept that in the present climate almost defies definition—the younger faculty cannot turn around and fire them. This is not true in industry. 60. Which of the following assumptions is most likely to have been made by the author of the argument above? (A) Industry should follow the example of universities and protect the jobs of managers by instituting a tenure system (B) If no tenure system existed, veteran faculty would be reluctant to hire new faculty who might threaten the veteran faculty’s own jobs. (C) If a stronger consensus concerning what constitutes moral turpitude existed, the tenure system in universities would be expendable. (D) Veteran faculty will usually hire and promote new faculty whose scholarship is more up-to-date their own. Passage 17 A constitution is a formal statement of the aims and basic rules governing a club. It is regarded as a permanent law to be followed strictly until the group votes (usually by two thirds vote) to amend any provisions. You should think wisely and act cautiously in drawing up a constitution since it is regarded as binding. A long list of amendments indicates that the original constitution was weak. Examine the Constitution of the United States and then notice how few amendments have been added over the course of the years. Although this is a classic example of long-range planning and statesmanship, wisdom and foresight are necessary in drawing up any satisfactory constrictions. 61. A long list of amendments indicates that the original constitution (A) was a classic example of long-range planning and statesmanship (B) lacked wisdom and foresight (C) was not regarded as binding (D)was a satisfactory one 62. An amendment to a constitution usually requires (A) a unanimous vote (B) a majority vote (C) a minority vote (D) long-range planning and statesmanship 63. The Constitution of the United States with its few amendments\ (A) is not satisfactory (B) is weak (C) is a typical instance of long-range planning and statesmanship (D)was a satisfactory one 64. A constitution is regarded as (A) temporary (B) informal (C) binding (D) classic Passage 18 The need for solar electricity is clear. It is safe, ecologically sound, efficient, continuously available, and it has no moving parts. The basic problem with the use of solar photovoltaic devices is economics, but until recently very little progress had been made toward the development of low-cost photovoltaic devices. The larger part of research funds has been devoted to the study of single-crystal silicon solar cells, despite the evidence that this technique holds little promise. The reason for this pattern is understandable and historical. Crystalline silicon, however, is particularly unsuitable to terrestrial solar cells. Crystalline silicon solar cells work well and are successfully used in the space program, where cost is not an issue. While single crystal silicon has been proven in extraterrestrial use with efficiencies as high as 18 percent, and other more expensive and scarce materials can have ever higher efficiencies, costs must be reduced by a factor of more that 100 to make them practical for commercial uses. Beside the fact that the starting crystalline silicon is expensive, 95 percent of it is wasted and does not appear in the final device. Recently, there have been some imaginative attempts to make polycrystalline and ribbon silicon which are lower in cost than high-quality single crystals; but to date the efficiencies of these apparently lower-cost materials have been unacceptably small. Moreover, these materials are cheaper only because of the introduction of disordering in crystalline semiconductors, and disorder degrades the efficiency of crystalline solar cells. This difficulty can be avoided by preparing completely disordered or amorphous materials. Amorphous materials have disordered atomic structure as compared to crystalline materials: that is, they have only short-range order rather that the long-range periodicity of crystals. The advantages of amorphous solar cells are impressive. Whereas crystalline silicon must be made 200 microns thick to absorb a sufficient amount of sunlight for efficient energy conversion, only 1 micron of the proper amorphous materials is necessary. Crystalline silicon solar cells cost in excess of 100 per square foot, but amorphous films can be created at a cost of about 50 cents per square foot. Although many scientists were aware of the very low cost of amorphous solar cells, they felt that they could never be manufactured with the efficiencies necessary to contribute significantly to the demand for electric power. This was based on a misconception about the feature which determines efficiency. For example, it is not the conductivity of the material in the dark which is relevant, but only the photoconductivity, that is, the 第 13 页， 共 14 页 conductivity in the presence of sunlight. Already, solar cells with efficiencies well above 6 percent have been developed using amorphous materials, and further research will doubtless find even less costly amorphous materials with higher efficiencies. 65. The author is primarily concerned with _______. [A] discussing the importance of solar energy [B] explaining the functioning of solar cells [C] presenting a history of research on energy sources [D] describing a possible solution to the problem of the cost of photovoltaic cells 66. According to the passage, which of the following encouraged use of silicon solar cells in the space program? I. the higher cost of materials such as gallium arsenide II. the fairly high extraterrestrial efficiency of the cells III. the relative lack of cost limitations in the space program (A) I only (B) II only (C) I and II only (D) II and III only 67.In the second paragraph, he author mentions recent attempts to make polycrystalline and ribbon silicon primarily in order to ______. [A] minimize the importance of recent improvements in silicon solar cells [B] demonstrate the superiority of amorphous materials over crystalline silicon [C] explain why silicon solar cells have been the center of research [D] contrast crystalline silicon with polycrystalline and ribbon silicon 68. Which of the following pairs of terms does the author regard as most nearly synonymous? (A)solar and extraterrestrial (B) photovoltaic devices and solar cells (C)crystalline silicon and amorphous materials (D)amorphous materials and higher efficiencies 69. The material in the passage could best be used in an argument for _______. [A] discontinuing the space program [B] increased funding for research on amorphous materials [C] further study of the history of silicon crystals [D] increased reliance on solar energy 70.The tone of the passage can best be described as _______. [A] analytical and optimistic [B] biased and unprofessional [C] critical and discouraged [D] hesitating and inconclusive Part Two Linguistics 30 points (Write down your answers to the questions in this part of the test in separate blank answer sheets provided at your test center.) 1. Which is more useful in language studies, descriptive linguistics or prescriptive linguistics? Why? 10 points 2. Please show the difference between tone and intonation. 5 points 3. How is meaning often analyzed in semantics? 5 points 4. What is the difference between dialect and language? What is the criterion that is generally used to define a national language? 10 points 第 14 页， 共 14 页 Part Three Literature 50 points (Write down your answers to the questions in this part of the test in separate blank answer sheets provided at your test center.) 1. Write down the names of the authors of the following literary works: (9 points) A. As I Lay Dying B. Pale Fire C. Catch-22 D. The Hairy Ape E. The Waste Land F. Julius Caesar G. The Golden Notebook H. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner I. Canterbury tales 2. Explain THREE of the following literary terms: (in about 50 words for each) (9 points) A. postmodernism B. feminism C. narration D. stream of consciousness E. monologue F. realism 3. Describe and make a comment on THREE of the following characters (in about 50 words for each) (12 points) A. Falstaff (in Henry IV) B. Heathcliff (in Wuthering Height) C. Lolita (in Lolita) D. Bloom (in Ulysses) E. Scarlett (in Gone with the Wind) 4. Answer ONE of the following questions on British Literature (in no less than 100 words) (10 points): A. Some critics regard Joseph Conrad and Virginia Woolf as impressionist novelists. Do you agree or disagree? Why? B. Why does Thomas Hardy gives his novel Tess of d’Urbervilles a subtitle, A Pure Women? 5. Answer ONE of the following questions on American Literature (in no less than 100 words) (10 points): A. What do you know about “The Lost Generation” in the history of American literature? B. Give some examples of pluralism in modern American literature.
Literature is language artistically used to achieve identifiable literary qualities and to convey meaningful messages. Chapter 1 Colonial Period 1. features of Puritanism (1) Predestination: God decided everything before things occurred. (2) Original sin: Human beings were born to be evil, and this original sin can be passed down from generation to generation. (3) Total depravity (4) Limited atonement: Only the “elect” can be saved. 2. Influence (1) A group of good qualities – hard work, thrift, piety, sobriety (serious and thoughtful) influenced American literature. (2) It led to the everlasting myth. All literature is based on a myth – garden of Eden. (3) Symbolism: the American puritan’s metaphorical mode of perception was chiefly instrumental in calling into being a literary symbolism which is distinctly American. (4) With regard to their writing, the style is fresh, simple and direct; the rhetoric is plain and honest, not without a touch of nobility often traceable to the direct influence of the Bible. II. Overview of the literature 1. types of writing diaries, histories, journals, letters, travel books, autobiographies/biographies, sermons 2. writers of colonial period (1) Anne Bradstreet (2) Edward Taylor (3) Roger Williams (4) John Woolman (5) Thomas Paine (6) Philip Freneau III. Jonathan Edwards 1. life 2. works (1) The Freedom of the Will (2) The Great Doctrine of Original Sin Defended (3) The Nature of True Virtue 3. ideas – pioneer of transcendentalism (1) The spirit of revivalism (2) Regeneration of man (3) God’s presence (4) Puritan idealism IV. Benjamin Franklin 1. life 2. works (1) Poor Richard’s Almanac (2) Autobiography 3. contribution (1) He helped found the Pennsylvania Hospital and the American Philosophical Society. (2) He was called “the new Prometheus who had stolen fire (electricity in this case) from heaven”. (3) Everything seems to meet in this one man – “Jack of all trades”. Herman Melville thus described him “master of each and mastered by none”. Chapter 2 American Romanticism l An approach from ancient Greek: Plato l A literary trend: 18c in Britain (1798~1832) l Schlegel Bros. I. Preview: Characteristics of romanticism 1. subjectivity (1) feeling and emotions, finding truth (2) emphasis on imagination (3) emphasis on individualism – personal freedom, no hero worship, natural goodness of human beings 2. back to medieval, esp medieval folk literature (1) unrestrained by classical rules (2) full of imagination (3) colloquial language (4) freedom of imagination (5) genuine in feelings: answer their call for classics 3. back to nature nature is “breathing living thing” (Rousseau) II. American Romanticism 1. Background (1) Political background and economic development (2) Romantic movement in European countries Derivative – foreign influence 2. features (1) American romanticism was in essence the expression of “a real new experience and contained “an alien quality” for the simple reason that “the spirit of the place” was radically new and alien. (2) There is American Puritanism as a cultural heritage to consider. American romantic authors tended more to moralize. Many American romantic writings intended to edify more than they entertained. (3) The “newness” of Americans as a nation is in connection with American Romanticism. (4) As a logical result of the foreign and native factors at work, American romanticism was both imitative and independent. III. Washington Irving 1. several names attached to Irving (1) first American writer (2) the messenger sent from the new world to the old world (3) father of American literature 2. life 3. works (1) A History of New York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty (2) The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. (He won a measure of international recognition with the publication of this.) (3) The History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (4) A Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada (5) The Alhambra 4. Literary career: two parts (1) 1809~1832 a. Subjects are either English or European b. Conservative love for the antique (2) 1832~1859: back to US 5. style – beautiful (1) gentility, urbanity, pleasantness (2) avoiding moralizing – amusing and entertaining (3) enveloping stories in an atmosphere (4) vivid and true characters (5) humour – smiling while reading (6) musical language IV. James Fenimore Cooper 1. life 2. works (1) Precaution (1820, his first novel, imitating Austen’s Pride and Prejudice) (2) The Spy (his second novel and great success) (3) Leatherstocking Tales (his masterpiece, a series of five novels) The Deerslayer, The Last of the Mohicans, The Pathfinder, The Pioneer, The Prairie 3. point of view the theme of wilderness vs. civilization, freedom vs. law, order vs. change, aristocrat vs. democrat, natural rights vs. legal rights 4. style (1) highly imaginative (2) good at inventing tales (3) good at landscape description (4) conservative (5) characterization wooden and lacking in probability (6) language and use of dialect not authentic 5. literary achievements He created a myth about the formative period of the American nation. If the history of the United States is, in a sense, the process of the American settlers exploring and pushing the American frontier forever westward, then Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales effectively approximates the American national experience of adventure into the West. He turned the west and frontier as a useable past and he helped to introduce western tradition to American literature. Section 2 Summit of Romanticism – American Transcendentalism 1. Unitarianism (1) Fatherhood of God (2) Brotherhood of men (3) Leadership of Jesus (4) Salvation by character (perfection of one’s character) (5) Continued progress of mankind (6) Divinity of mankind (7) Depravity of mankind 2. Romantic Idealism Center of the world is spirit, absolute spirit (Kant) 3. Oriental mysticism Center of the world is “oversoul” 4. Puritanism Eloquent expression in transcendentalism II. Appearance 1836, “Nature” by Emerson III. Features 1. spirit/oversoul 2. importance of individualism 3. nature – symbol of spirit/God garment of the oversoul 4. focus in intuition (irrationalism and subconsciousness) IV. Influence 1. It served as an ethical guide to life for a young nation and brought about the idea that human can be perfected by nature. It stressed religious tolerance, called to throw off shackles of customs and traditions and go forward to the development of a new and distinctly American culture. 2. It advocated idealism that was great needed in a rapidly expanded economy where opportunity often became opportunism, and the desire to “get on” obscured the moral necessity for rising to spiritual height. 3. It helped to create the first American renaissance – one of the most prolific period in American literature. V. Ralph Waldo Emerson 1. life 2. works (1) Nature (2) Two essays: The American Scholar, The Poet 3. point of view (1) One major element of his philosophy is his firm belief in the transcendence of the “oversoul”. (2) He regards nature as the purest, and the most sanctifying moral influence on man, and advocated a direct intuition of a spiritual and immanent God in nature. (3) If man depends upon himself, cultivates himself and brings out the divine in himself, he can hope to become better and even perfect. This is what Emerson means by “the infinitude of man”. (4) Everyone should understand that he makes himself by making his world, and that he makes the world by making himself. 4. aesthetic ideas (1) He is a complete man, an eternal man. (2) True poetry and true art should ennoble. (3) The poet should express his thought in symbols. (4) As to theme, Emerson called upon American authors to celebrate America which was to him a lone poem in itself. 5. his influence VI. Henry David Thoreau 1. life 2. works (1) A Week on the Concord and Merrimack River (2) Walden (3) A Plea for John Brown (an essay) 3. point of view (1) He did not like the way a materialistic America was developing and was vehemently outspoken on the point. (2) He hated the human injustice as represented by the slavery system. (3) Like Emerson, but more than him, Thoreau saw nature as a genuine restorative, healthy influence on man’s spiritual well-being. (4) He has faith in the inner virtue and inward, spiritual grace of man. (5) He was very critical of modern civilization. (6) “Simplicity…simplify!” (7) He was sorely disgusted with “the inundations of the dirty institutions of men’s odd-fellow society”. (8) He has calm trust in the future and his ardent belief in a new generation of men. Section 3 Late Romanticism 1. life 2. works (1) Two collections of short stories: Twice-told Tales, Mosses from and Old Manse (2) The Scarlet Letter (3) The House of the Seven Gables (4) The Marble Faun 3. point of view (1) Evil is at the core of human life, “that blackness in Hawthorne” (2) Whenever there is sin, there is punishment. Sin or evil can be passed from generation to generation (causality). (3) He is of the opinion that evil educates. (4) He has disgust in science. 4. aesthetic ideas (1) He took a great interest in history and antiquity. To him these furnish the soil on which his mind grows to fruition. (2) He was convinced that romance was the predestined form of American narrative. To tell the truth and satirize and yet not to offend: That was what Hawthorne had in mind to achieve. 5. style – typical romantic writer (1) the use of symbols (2) revelation of characters’ psychology (3) the use of supernatural mixed with the actual (4) his stories are parable (parable inform) – to teach a lesson (5) use of ambiguity to keep the reader in the world of uncertainty – multiple point of view II. Herman Melville 1. life 2. works (1) Typee (2) Omio (3) Mardi (4) Redburn (5) White Jacket (6) Moby Dick (7) Pierre (8) Billy Budd 3. point of view (1) He never seems able to say an affirmative yes to life: His is the attitude of “Everlasting Nay” (negative attitude towards life). (2) One of the major themes of his is alienation (far away from each other). Other themes: loneliness, suicidal individualism (individualism causing disaster and death), rejection and quest, confrontation of innocence and evil, doubts over the comforting 19c idea of progress 4. style (1) Like Hawthorne, Melville manages to achieve the effect of ambiguity through employing the technique of multiple view of his narratives. (2) He tends to write periodic chapters. (3) His rich rhythmical prose and his poetic power have been profusely commented upon and praised. (4) His works are symbolic and metaphorical. (5) He includes many non-narrative chapters of factual background or description of what goes on board the ship or on the route (Moby Dick) Romantic Poets 1. life 2. work: Leaves of Grass (9 editions) (1) Song of Myself (2) There Was a Child Went Forth (3) Crossing Brooklyn Ferry (4) Democratic Vistas (5) Passage to India (6) Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking 3. themes – “Catalogue of American and European thought” He had been influenced by many American and European thoughts: enlightenment, idealism, transcendentalism, science, evolution ideas, western frontier spirits, Jefferson’s individualism, Civil War Unionism, Orientalism. Major themes in his poems (almost everything): l equality of things and beings l divinity of everything l immanence of God l democracy l evolution of cosmos l multiplicity of nature l self-reliant spirit l death, beauty of death l expansion of America l brotherhood and social solidarity (unity of nations in the world) l pursuit of love and happiness 4. style: “free verse” (1) no fixed rhyme or scheme (2) parallelism, a rhythm of thought (3) phonetic recurrence (4) the habit of using snapshots (5) the use of a certain pronoun “I” (6) a looser and more open-ended syntactic structure (7) use of conventional image (8) strong tendency to use oral English (9) vocabulary – powerful, colourful, rarely used words of foreign origins, some even wrong (10) sentences – catalogue technique: long list of names, long poem lines 5. influence (1) His best work has become part of the common property of Western culture. (2) He took over Whitman’s vision of the poet-prophet and poet-teacher and recast it in a more sophisticated and Europeanized mood. (3) He has been compared to a mountain in American literary history. (4) Contemporary American poetry, whatever school or form, bears witness to his great influence. II. Emily Dickenson 1. life 2. works (1) My Life Closed Twice before Its Close (2) Because I Can’t Stop for Death (3) I Heard a Fly Buzz – When I died (4) Mine – by the Right of the White Election (5) Wild Nights – Wild Nights 3. themes: based on her own experiences/joys/sorrows (1) religion – doubt and belief about religious subjects (2) death and immortality (3) love – suffering and frustration caused by love (4) physical aspect of desire (5) nature – kind and cruel (6) free will and human responsibility 4. style (1) poems without titles (2) severe economy of expression (3) directness, brevity (4) musical device to create cadence (rhythm) (5) capital letters – emphasis (6) short poems, mainly two stanzas (7) rhetoric techniques: personification – make some of abstract ideas vivid III. Comparison: Whitman vs. Dickinson 1. Similarities: (1) Thematically, they both extolled, in their different ways, an emergent America, its expansion, its individualism and its Americanness, their poetry being part of “American Renaissance”. (2) Technically, they both added to the literary independence of the new nation by breaking free of the convention of the iambic pentameter and exhibiting a freedom in form unknown before: they were pioneers in American poetry. 2. differences: (1) Whitman seems to keep his eye on society at large; Dickinson explores the inner life of the individual. (2) Whereas Whitman is “national” in his outlook, Dickinson is “regional”. (3) Dickinson has the “catalogue technique” (direct, simple style) which Whitman doesn’t have. Edgar Allen Poe II. Works 1. short stories (1) ratiocinative stories a. Ms Found in a Bottle b. The Murders in the Rue Morgue c. The Purloined Letter (2) Revenge, death and rebirth a. The Fall of the House of Usher b. Ligeia c. The Easque of the Red Death (3) Literary theory a. The Philosophy of Composition b. The Poetic Principle c. Review of Hawthorne’s Twice-told Tales III. Themes 1. death – predominant theme in Poe’s writing “Poe is not interested in anything alive. Everything in Poe’s writings is dead.” 2. disintegration (separation) of life 3. horror 4. negative thoughts of science IV. Aesthetic ideas 1. The short stories should be of brevity, totality, single effect, compression and finality. 2. The poems should be short, and the aim should be beauty, the tone melancholy. Poems should not be of moralizing. He calls for pure poetry and stresses rhythm. V. Style – traditional, but not easy to read VI. Reputation: “the jingle man” (Emerson) VII. His influences Chapter 3 The Age of Realism 1. the three conflicts that reached breaking point in this period (1) industrialism vs. agrarian (2) culturely-measured east vs. newly-developed west (3) plantation gentility vs. commercial gentility 2. 1880’s urbanization: from free competition to monopoly capitalism 3. the closing of American frontier II. Characteristics 1. truthful description of life 2. typical character under typical circumstance 3. objective rather than idealized, close observation and investigation of life “Realistic writers are like scientists.” 4. open-ending: Life is complex and cannot be fully understood. It leaves much room for readers to think by themselves. 5. concerned with social and psychological problems, revealing the frustrations of characters in an environment of sordidness and depravity III. Three Giants in Realistic Period 1. William Dean Howells – “Dean of American Realism” (1) Realistic principles a. Realism is “fidelity to experience and probability of motive”. b. The aim is “talk of some ordinary traits of American life”. c. Man in his natural and unaffected dullness was the object of Howells’s fictional representation. d. Realism is by no means mere photographic pictures of externals but includes a central concern with “motives” and psychological conflicts. e. He condemns novels of sentimentality and morbid self-sacrifice, and avoids such themes as illicit love. f. Authors should minimize plot and the artificial ordering of the sense of something “desultory, unfinished, imperfect”. g. Characters should have solidity of specification and be real. h. Interpreting sympathetically the “common feelings of commonplace people” was best suited as a technique to express the spirit of America. i. He urged writers to winnow tradition and write in keeping with current humanitarian ideals. j. Truth is the highest beauty, but it includes the view that morality penetrates all things. k. With regard to literary criticism, Howells felt that the literary critic should not try to impose arbitrary or subjective evaluations on books but should follow the detached scientist in accurate description, interpretation, and classification. (2) Works a. The Rise of Silas Lapham b. A Chance Acquaintance c. A Modern Instance (3) Features of His Works a. Optimistic tone b. Moral development/ethics c. Lacking of psychological depth 2. Henry James (1) Life (2) Literary career: three stages a. 1865~1882: international theme l The American l Daisy Miller l The Portrait of a Lady b. 1882~1895: inter-personal relationships and some plays l Daisy Miller (play) c. 1895~1900: novellas and tales dealing with childhood and adolescence, then back to international theme l The Turn of the Screw l When Maisie Knew l The Ambassadors l The Wings of the Dove l The Golden Bowl (3) Aesthetic ideas a. The aim of novel: represent life b. Common, even ugly side of life c. Social function of art d. Avoiding omniscient point of view (4) Point of view a. Psychological analysis, forefather of stream of consciousness b. Psychological realism c. Highly-refined language (5) Style – “stylist” a. Language: highly-refined, polished, insightful, accurate b. Vocabulary: large c. Construction: complicated, intricate 3. Mark Twain (see next section) Local Colorism I. Appearance 1. uneven development in economy in America 2. culture: flourishing of frontier literature, humourists 3. magazines appeared to let writer publish their works II. What is “Local Colour”? Tasks of local colourists: to write or present local characters of their regions in truthful depiction distinguished from others, usually a very small part of the world. Regional literature (similar, but larger in world) l Garland, Harte – the west l Eggleston – Indiana l Mrs Stowe l Jewett – Maine l Chopin – Louisiana III. Mark Twain – Mississippi 1. life 2. works (1) The Gilded Age (2) “the two advantages” (3) Life on the Mississippi (4) A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (5) The Man That Corrupted Hardleybug 3. style (1) colloquial language, vernacular language, dialects (2) local colour (3) syntactic feature: sentences are simple, brief, sometimes ungrammatical (4) humour (5) tall tales (highly exaggerated) (6) social criticism (satire on the different ugly things in society) IV. Comparison of the three “giants” of American Realism 1. Theme Howells – middle class James – upper class Twain – lower class 2. Technique Howells – smiling/genteel realism James – psychological realism Twain – local colourism and colloquialism Chapter 4 American Naturalism 1. Darwin’s theory: “natural selection” 2. Spenser’s idea: “social Darwinism” 3. French Naturalism: Zora II. Features 1. environment and heredity 2. scientific accuracy and a lot of details 3. general tone: hopelessness, despair, gloom, ugly side of the society III. significance It prepares the way for the writing of 1920s’ “lost generation” and T. S. Eliot. IV. Theodore Dreiser 1. life 2. works (1) Sister Carrie (2) The trilogy: Financier, The Titan, The Stoic (3) Jennie Gerhardt (4) American Tragedy (5) The Genius 3. point of view (1) He embraced social Darwinism – survival of the fittest. He learned to regard man as merely an animal driven by greed and lust in a struggle for existence in which only the “fittest”, the most ruthless, survive. (2) Life is predatory, a “game” of the lecherous and heartless, a jungle struggle in which man, being “a waif and an interloper in Nature”, a “wisp in the wind of social forces”, is a mere pawn in the general scheme of things, with no power whatever to assert his will. (3) No one is ethically free; everything is determined by a complex of internal chemisms and by the forces of social pressure. 4. Sister Carrie (1) Plot (2) Analysis 5. Style (1) Without good structure (2) Deficient characterization (3) Lack in imagination (4) Journalistic method (5) Techniques in painting Chapter 5 The Modern Period The nicknames for this period: (1) Roaring 20s – comfort (2) Dollar Decade – rich (3) Jazz Age – Jazz music II. Background (2) Spiritually: dislocation, fragmentation. 2. wide-spread contempt for law (looking down upon law) III. Features of the literature (2) Expatriates (3) Bohemian (unconventional way of life) – on-lookers Two areas: (2) Failure of the American society Imagism II. Development: three stages 2. 1912~1914: England -> America, Pound 3. 1914~1917: Amy Lowell III. What is an “image”? An image is defined by Pound as that which presents an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time, “a vortex or cluster of fused ideas” “endowed with energy”. The exact word must bring the effect of the object before the reader as it had presented itself to the poet’s mind at the time of writing. IV. Principles 2. To use absolutely no word that does not contribute to the presentation; 3. As regarding rhythm, to compose in the sequence of the musical phrase, not in the sequence of a metronome. V. Significance 2. It offered a new way of writing which was valid not only for the Imagist poets but for modern poetry as a whole. 3. The movement was a training school in which many great poets learned their first lessons in the poetic art. 4. It is this movement that helped to open the first pages of modern English and American poetry. VI. Ezra Pound 2. literary career 3. works (1) Cathay (2) Cantos (3) Hugh Selwyn Mauberley 4. point of view (1) Confident in Pound’s belief that the artist was morally and culturally the arbiter and the “saviour” of the race, he took it upon himself to purify the arts and became the prime mover of a few experimental movements, the aim of which was to dump the old into the dustbin and bring forth something new. (2) To him life was sordid personal crushing oppression, and culture produced nothing but “intangible bondage”. (3) Pound sees in Chinese history and the doctrine of Confucius a source of strength and wisdom with which to counterpoint Western gloom and confusion. (4) He saw a chaotic world that wanted setting to rights, and a humanity, suffering from spiritual death and cosmic injustice, that needed saving. He was for the most part of his life trying to offer Confucian philosophy as the one faith which could help to save the West. 5. style: very difficult to read Pound’s early poems are fresh and lyrical. The Cantos can be notoriously difficult in some sections, but delightfully beautiful in others. Few have made serious study of the long poem; fewer, if anyone at all, have had the courage to declare that they have conquered Pound; and many seem to agree that the Cantos is a monumental failure. 6. Contribution He has helped, through theory and practice, to chart out the course of modern poetry. 7. The Cantos – “the intellectual diary since 1915” Features: (1) Language: intricate and obscure (2) Theme: complex subject matters (3) Form: no fixed framework, no central theme, no attention to poetic rules VII. T. S. Eliot 1. life 2. works (1) poems l The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock l The Waste Land (epic) l Hollow Man l Ash Wednesday l Four Quarters (2) Plays l Murder in the Cathedral l Sweeney Agonistes l The Cocktail Party l The Confidential Clerk (3) Critical essays l The Sacred Wood l Essays on Style and Order l Elizabethan Essays l The Use of Poetry and The Use of Criticisms l After Strange Gods 3. point of view (1) The modern society is futile and chaotic. (2) Only poets can create some order out of chaos. (3) The method to use is to compare the past and the present. 4. Style (1) Fresh visual imagery, flexible tone and highly expressive rhythm (2) Difficult and disconnected images and symbols, quotations and allusions (3) Elliptical structures, strange juxtapositions, an absence of bridges 5. The Waste Land: five parts (1) The Burial of the Dead (2) A Game of Chess (3) The Fire Sermon (4) Death by Water (5) What the Thunder Said VIII. Robert Frost 1. life 2. point of view (1) All his life, Frost was concerned with constructions through poetry. “a momentary stay against confusion”. (2) He understands the terror and tragedy in nature, but also its beauty. (3) Unlike the English romantic poets of 19th century, he didn’t believe that man could find harmony with nature. He believed that serenity came from working, usually amid natural forces, which couldn’t be understood. He regarded work as “significant toil”. 3. works – poems the first: A Boy’s Will collections: North of Boston, Mountain Interval (mature), New Hampshire 4. style/features of his poems (1) Most of his poems took New England as setting, and the subjects were chosen from daily life of ordinary people, such as “mending wall”, “picking apples”. (2) He writes most often about landscape and people – the loneliness and poverty of isolated farmers, beauty, terror and tragedy in nature. He also describes some abnormal people, e.g. “deceptively simple”, “philosophical poet”. (3) Although he was popular during 1920s, he didn’t experiment like other modern poets. He used conventional forms, plain language, traditional metre, and wrote in a pastured tradition. IX. e. e. cummings “a juggler with syntax, grammar and diction” – individualism, “painter poet” Novels in the 1920s 1. life – participant in 1920s 2. works (1) This Side of Paradise (2) Flappers and Philosophers (3) The Beautiful and the Damned (4) The Great Gatsby (5) Tender is the Night (6) All the Sad Young Man (7) The Last Tycoon 3. point of view (1) He expressed what the young people believed in the 1920s, the so-called “American Dream” is false in nature. (2) He had always been critical of the rich and tried to show the integrating effects of money on the emotional make-up of his character. He found that wealth altered people’s characters, making them mean and distrusted. He thinks money brought only tragedy and remorse. (3) His novels follow a pattern: dream – lack of attraction – failure and despair. 4. His ideas of “American Dream” It is false to most young people. Only those who were dishonest could become rich. 5. Style Fitzgerald was one of the great stylists in American literature. His prose is smooth, sensitive, and completely original in its diction and metaphors. Its simplicity and gracefulness, its skill in manipulating the relation between the general and the specific reveal his consummate artistry. 6. The Great Gatsby Narrative point of view – Nick He is related to everyone in the novel and is calm and detected observer who is never quick to make judgements. Selected omniscient point of view II. Ernest Hemingway 1. life 2. point of view (influenced by experience in war) (1) He felt that WWI had broken America’s culture and traditions, and separated from its roots. He wrote about men and women who were isolated from tradition, frightened, sometimes ridiculous, trying to find their own way. (2) He condemned war as purposeless slaughter, but the attitude changed when he took part in Spanish Civil War when he found that fascism was a cause worth fighting for. (3) He wrote about courage and cowardice in battlefield. He defined courage as “an instinctive movement towards or away from the centre of violence with self-preservation and self-respect, the mixed motive”. He also talked about the courage with which to face tragedies of life that can never be remedied. (4) Hemingway is essentially a negative writer. It is very difficult for him to say “yes”. He holds a black, naturalistic view of the world and sees it as “all a nothing” and “all nada”. 3. works (1) In Our Time (2) Men Without Women (3) Winner Take Nothing (4) The Torrents of Spring (5) The Sun Also Rises (6) A Farewell to Arms (7) Death in the Afternoon (8) To Have and Have Not (9) Green Hills of Africa (10) The Fifth Column (11) For Whom the Bell Tolls (12) Across the River and into the Trees (13) The Old Man and the Sea 4. themes – “grace under pressure” (1) war and influence of war on people, with scenes connected with hunting, bull fighting which demand stamina and courage, and with the question “how to live with pain”, “how human being live gracefully under pressure”. (2) “code hero” The Hemingway hero is an average man of decidedly masculine tastes, sensitive and intelligent, a man of action, and one of few words. That is an individualist keeping emotions under control, stoic and self-disciplined in a dreadful place. These people are usually spiritual strong, people of certain skills, and most of them encounter death many times. 5. style (1) simple and natural (2) direct, clear and fresh (3) lean and economical (4) simple, conversational, common found, fundamental words (5) simple sentences (6) Iceberg principle: understatement, implied things (7) Symbolism III. Sinclair Lewis – “the worst important writer in American literature” 1. life 2. works (1) Main Street (2) Babbitt (3) Arrowsmith (4) Dodsworth (5) Elmer Gantry 3. point of view – satirical critic of American middle class (1) Lewis showed the villagers to be narrow-minded, greedy, pretentious and corrupt. (2) He attacked middle class for its indifference to art and culture, and its assumption that economic success made it superior. 4. style (1) photographic, verisimilitude (2) colloquialism (3) characterization: he often created a type of character rather than an individual (4) old fashioned in theme (5) lack in psychological exploration IV. Willa Cather 1. life 2. works (1) Alexander’s Bridge (2) O Pioneers (3) The Song of the Lark (4) My Antonia 3. features of her works (1) She was one of the few “uneasy survivors of the nineteenth century”. Hanging onto the traditional values, she was never able to come to terms with modernity. (2) Old west becomes in most of her novels the centre of moral reference against which modern existence is measured. (3) She withdraws in her later fiction into the historical past. (4) She often uses women protagonists in her novels. Southern Literature American southern literature can date back to Edgar Allen Poe, and reach its summit with the appearance of the two “giants” – Faulkner and Wolfe. There are southern women writers – Katherine Anne Porter, Eudora Welty, and Flannery O’Connor.
II. Southern Myths – guilt, failure, poverty 1. Chevalier heritage 2. Agrarian virtue 3. Plantation aristocracy 4. Lost cause 5. White supremacy 6. Purity of womanhood Southern literature: twisted, pessimistic, violent, distorted Gothic novel: Poe III. William Faulkner 1. life 2. literary career: three stages (1) 1924~1929: training as a writer l The Marble Faun l Soldier’s Pay l Mosquitoes (2) 1929~1936: most productive and prolific period l Sartoris l The Sound and the Fury l As I Lay Dying l Light in August l Absalom, Absalom (3) 1940~end: won recognition in America l Go Down, Moses 3. point of view He generally shows a grim picture of human society where violence and cruelty are frequently included, but his later works showed more optimism. His intention was to show the evil, harsh events in contrast to such eternal virtues as love, honour, pity, compassion, self-sacrifice, and thereby expose the faults of society. He felt that it was a writer’s duty to remind his readers constantly of true values and virtues. 4. themes (1) history and race He explains the present by examining the past, by telling the stories of several generations of family to show how history changes life. He was interested in the relationship between blacks and whites, especially concerned about the problems of the people who were of the mixed race of black and white, unacceptable to both races. (2) Deterioration (3) Conflicts between generations, classes, races, man and environment (4) Horror, violence and the abnormal 5. style/features of his works (1) complex plot (2) stream of consciousness (3) multiple point of view, circular form (4) violation of chronology (5) courtroom rhetoric: formal language (6) characterization: he was able to probe into the psychology of characters (7) “anti-hero”: weak, fable, vulnerable (true people in modern society) He has a group of women writers following him, including O’Connor and Eudora Welty Section 2 The 1930s I. Background Great Depression (1929 “Black Thursday”) II. Literature 1. Writers of the 1920s were still writing, but they didn’t produce good works. 2. The main stream is left-oriented. III. Writers of 1930s 1. social concern and social involvement 2. revival of naturalistic tradition of Dreiser and Norris IV. John Steinbeck 1. life 2. works (1) Cup of Gold (2) Tortilla Flat (3) In Dubious Battle (4) Of Mice and Men (5) The Grapes of Wrath (6) Travels with Charley (7) Short stories: The Red Pony, The Pearl 3. point of view (1) His best writing was produced out of outrage at the injustices of the societies, and by the admirations for the strong spirit of the poor. (2) His theme was usually simple human virtues, such as kindness and fair treatment, which were far superior to the dehumanizing cruelty of exploiters. 4. style (1) poetic prose (2) regional dialect (3) characterization: many types of characters rather than individuals (4) dramatic factors (5) social protect: spokesman for the poverty-stricken people 5. The Grapes of Wrath Chapter 6 The Post-War Period: 50s & 60s 1. Cold War 2. McCarthyism (persecution of communists) 3. Korean War 4. Civil Rights Movement 5. Counter-culture Movement – political, economical and military achievement II. Literature in the 1950s 1. Regional literature emerged from the south, etc. Many women writers appeared. 2. Dramatists wrote about everyday people, e.g. Arthur Miller. 3. Minority literature developed quickly. III. Literature in the 1960s This period is the rising period of post-modern literature. Many forms of post-modern fiction appeared, such as metafiction, surfiction, parafiction, self-reflexive fiction, self-begetting fiction, anti-novel, etc. The literature in this period is considered as “multi-cultural” literature. The same mood in this period is despair, but continuing to search absurdity of modern life; lonely, but searching for the meaning of existence; identity. Section 1 Poetry 1. Some poets found inspiration in the past. 2. Poetry became more attuned to political and social issues of the period. 3. Poets became more visible in American public life. 4. There was no prescribed form for poetry. 5. Poets became more political. Themes such as homosexuality, racism, etc. are included in the poems. In 1960s, poetry became more and more political. II. Schools of Poetry (time, representatives, major features) 1. Confessional Poets: Robert Lowell The greatness of Lowell lies in the fact that, in talking candidly about himself, he is examining the culture of his nation. The identification of personal experience with that of an age has always ensured greatness and even immortality as it did. 2. Black Mountain Poets: Charles Olson There is an emphasis on the importance of the moments of awareness. It portrays a world of “awakened, contemplative awareness”, one in which civilization appears alien, cold, and almost unreal. 3. Beat Generation: Alien Ginsberg In the fifties, there was a widespread discontentment among the post-war generation, whose voice was one of protest against all the mainstream culture America had come to represent. Section 2 Fiction 1. matter of fact 2. frank, amazingly detailed about war experiences 3. lacking social consciousness II. Overview 1. Post-war Realism: Cheever, Oates 2. Black Novel: Richard Wlight, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, Malcolm, Leroi Jones 3. Jewish Novel: Saul Bellow III. Post-War Realism 1. Features (1) Naturalistic depiction has become explicit: old-fashioned realism is combined with modernism. (2) While following the realistic and naturalistic tradition, these writers borrowed various experimental forms and techniques in probing the inner world in detail. (3) It has been a search for a way to connect an oppressed response to society and history and an awareness of individual loneliness. 2. J. D. Salinger (1) Life (2) Point of view One of his frequent themes is young people longing for simplicity and truth instead of complexity and hypocrisy of the life they observed around them. In his novels, he questions the moral foundations of society and often places innocent idealist characters in setting where a vicious, corrupt society could destroy them. Although his stories are often pessimistic, the characters represent hope rather than despair. They want to affirm truth. They deplore the lies with which the society conceals its own corruption. They withdraw the society, become drop-outs rather than participants in the society. (3) Catcher in the Rye IV. Black Humour 1. definition: to deal with tragic things in comic ways to make it more powerful and more tragic. It refers to the use of morbid and absurd for darkly comic purpose. It carries the tone of anger, bitterness in the grotesque situation of suffering, anxiety, and death. It makes the reader laugh at the blackness of modern life. The writers usually do not laugh at the characters. 2. Features (1) Comic way to express tragic situations (2) Creation of anti-hero (3) Illogical narrative structure 3. Joseph Heller (1) Life (2) Catch-22 It is not only a war novel, but also a novel about people’s life in peaceful time. This novel attacked the dehumanization of all contemporary institutions and corruptions of individuals who gain power in institutions. Armed-forces are the most outrageous example of the two evils. Language: circular conversation, wrenched cliché Jewish Literature Jewish literature refers to published creative writings by American Jews about their American experiences. This kind of writings is shown in Jewish perspective. II. Historical Background III. Emergence: after WWII IV. Jewish Point of View 1. Jews believe that God has sent perpetual sufferings to his chosen people to strengthen and purify them, and they are the “chosen people”. 2. Humour is a prominent aspect of Jewish point of view. It is often a twisted kind of comedy to keep them from despair. Jews are able to laugh at themselves, so some of their best humour is self-mocking. 3. Jews lay emphasis upon the power of intellects. The power to understand their own experience to judge their own life rationally to think well is considered a high virtue. 4. Self-teaching is at the heart of almost all Jewish novels. The Jewish heroes often try to seek a rational interpretation of the world through their own experience in it. V. Saul Bellow 1. life 2. works (1) Dangling Man (2) The Adventures of Augie March (3) Henderson the Rain King (4) Herzog (5) Mr. Sammler’s Planet (6) Humboldt’s Gift (7) The Dean’s December 3. point of view (1) Saul Bellow’s strength lies in his faith in man and man’s ability to offer a “spirited resistance to the forces of our time”. As he sees it, modern man has lived through frustration and defeat, managed to grapple with destructive historical pressures, and striven for “certain durable human goods” – truth, freedom, and wisdom. (2) He is highly critical of modern life in which the old value system is no longer functioning. His major characters are all concerned to find a way that would keep American civilization from going under. They body forth Bellow’s credo that art has “something to do with the achievement of stillness in the midst of chaos”, and that “a novelist begins with disorder and disharmony and goes toward order by an unknown process of the imagination”. 4. characteristics of his heroes Most of Saul Bellow’s heroes are marginal men, alienated or absurd characters caught between their nwn inadequacies and those imposed upon them by their friends and society. Most of them are Jewish intellectuals or writers who try to discover the queerness of existence and overcome it. Struggling with the impersonality of the physical world, agonized by their own awareness of morality, his protagonists laugh at their own deficiency with irony because it relieves despair. The hunger for community, yet they hold back because that world have to betray the sanctity of their private self in order to achieve it. 5. style: realism + modernism Chapter 7 American Drama 1. 17th century l Ye Bare and Ye Cubb (1665) by William Darby 2. 18th century l American subjects began to be treated seriously. The first tragedy is The Contrast (1787) by Royal Tyler. It is considered “typical American play” about American soldiers. 3. 19th century l poetical plays, esp in the first half of a group of playwrights l after civil war: realism, melodrama, emotional incidents (domestic melodrama), with simple plots 4. 20th century separation from the old tradition l 1920s: “Little Theatre Movement” began after 1912, Washington Square Players, Provincetown Players (New York City, Greenage Village). They are freed from the conventional theatre and can be as experimental as they like. l 1930s: Eugene O’Neil, Clifford Odets l Post-war: second climax of American drama, Arthur Miller: Death of a Salesman l 60s: Theatre of the Absurd, Edward Albee II. Eugene O’Neil 1. life 2. works (1) Bound East for Cardiff (2) Beyond the Horizon (3) The Emperor Jones (4) The Hairy Ape (5) Desire under the Elms (6) The Iceman Cometh (7) Long Day’s Journey into Night 3. point of view His purpose is to get the root of human desires and frustrations. He showed most characters in his plays as seeking meaning and purpose in their lives, some through love, some through religion, some through revenge, all met disappointment. The characters seem to share O’Neil’s perplexities of human nature. As a result of his tragic and nihilistic view of life, his works, in general, indicated chaos and hopelessness. 4. The Hairy Ape Yank 5. style (1) O’Neil was a tireless experimentalist in dramatic art. He paid little attention tn the division of scenes. He introduced the realistic or even the naturalistic into the American theatre. (2) He borrowed freely from the best traditions of European drama, especially the stream of consciousness. (3) He made use of setting and stage property to help in his dramatic representation. (4) He wrote long introduction and directions for all the scenes, explaining the mood and atmosphere. (5) He sometimes wrote the actors’ lines in dialect. 6. His position He was the first playwright to explore serious themes in theatre. With him, American drama developed into a form of literature. And in him, American drama came of age (mature). He came only after Shakespeare and Bernard Shaw in the world of drama. III. Tennessee Williams 1. life 2. point of view and themes He writes about violence, sex, homosexuality (taboos in drama). Some of his plays rooted in southern social scene. The characters are often unhappy wanderers; lonely, vulnerable women indulged in memory of the past or illusion of the future. He was attracted to bizarre characters and their predicament. He looked deeply into the psychology of the outcasts of society. He saw life a game which cannot be won. Almost all his characters are defeated. 3. his plays (1) The Glass Menagerie (2) A Streetcar Named Desire (3) Summer and Smoke (4) Cat on a Hot Tin Roof 4. style (1) combination of coarseness and poetry (2) vivid southern speech (3) He helped to break taboos, long imposed on the American literature. IV. Arthur Miller 1. life 2. theme: dilemma of modern man in relation to family and work 3. his plays (1) The Man Who Had All the Luck (2) All My Sons (3) Death of a Salesman (4) The Crucible (5) A View for the Bridge V. Theatre of the Absurd 1. introduction: existentialist philosophy, mainly in Europe 2. four founders: Samuel Beckett, Eugene Ionesco, Jean Genet, Arthur Adamov 3. What is “absurd”? Humorous and meaningless 4. features (1) The basic assumption: human life lacks coherence and is chaotic. Life operates without any rules. (2) The world is meaningless, so the play appears meaningless. (3) It examines the problems of life and death, of isolation and communication. (4) It satirizes people who are unaware of the ultimate reality (death). (5) In absurd drama, situation is more important than characters and events. The dramatist wants to show people what their situation in their life is. Therefore, he constructs a play which presents a picture of the universal situation. One result of these is that the characters are often comic and humorous. 5. Edward Albee (1) Life (2) Works a. Zoo Story b. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Chapter 8 Black American Literature Negro – coloured (legally free) – black (after civil rights movement) 1. oral tradition (1) songs and ballads (2) spirituals: sorrow of the singers’ earlier condition and longing for freedom (3) blues: after civil war, derived from work songs – loneliness, separation, losses, wonderings, love, desperation, sense of doom (4) jazz: after WWI, developed from blues, died out in the Great Depression 2. written literature (from 1760s) (1) poetry: religious, enduring, patient to the white (2) slave narrative: autobiographical experience of the person (3) 1920s: Harlem Renaissance – New York, black – black dialect and black folklore – “the new negro” – representatives: Langston Hughes (“black poet laureate”), Huston, Claude McKay (4) 1940s: Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison (5) 50s~60s: a lot of black writers emerged in the civil rights movement: James Baldwin, Brooks, Jones (6) 70s~80s: publishing of “Root” (Alex Haley), Walker – “The Colour Purple”, Morrison (the second woman writer and the only black who won Nobel Prize) II. Richard Wright 1. life 2. works (1) Uncle Tom’s Children: Four Novellas (2) Native Son (3) Black Boy (4) The Outsider (the first novel of existentialism in America, published in France) 3. themes and subjects His common theme is to condemn racism, urge reform, criticize evils of society. His books focus on racial conflict and physical violence. They review the devastating effect of institutionalized hatred (hatred brought by social system) and humiliation on black males’ psyche. They affirmed dignity and humility of society’s outcasts. 4. writing techniques – realism, naturalism He tries to show that people cannot escape from society. Therefore, society must be changed. He is a father figure, especially to the writers of violence. III. Ralph Ellison 1. life 2. works: Invisible Man significance: It has a universality of theme (problems of all modern people), not only regional dilemma of existence. 3. attitude: complexity of art – the best art makes good politics, not vice versa. IV. James Baldwin 1. life 2. works (1) Go Tell It on the Mountain (2) Notes of a Native Son (3) Nobody Knows My Name (4) The Fire Next Time 3. point of view Baldwin calls for the blacks to resort to means including force so as to bring about the nation’s self-realization. He saw love and understanding as difficult but necessary way to overcome racial conflict. 4. themes: race, homosexuality V. Alice Walker 1. life 2. works (1) Once (a collection of poems) (2) In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens (“womanism” instead of feminism) (3) The Colour Purple (epistolary) VI. Toni Morrison 1. life 2. works (1) The Bluest Eye (2) Sula (3) Song of Solomon (the best black novel after Native Son and Invisible Man) (4) Tar Baby (5) Beloved (6) Jazz (7) Love (trilogy) 3. themes: love, guilt, history, individual, gender, race, religion 4. purpose: to empower the black people to act for themselves, to recognize for their own world, own history, own reality style – many kinds of factors: naturalism, realism, fantasy, reality,
magical realism 1. The historical background (1) Before the Germanic invasion (2) During the Germanic invasion a. immigration; b. Christianity; c. heptarchy. d. social classes structure: hide-hundred; eoldermen (lord) – thane - middle class (freemen) - lower class (slave or bondmen: theow); e. social organization: clan or tribes. f. military Organization; g. Church function: spirit, civil service, education; h. economy: coins, trade, slavery; i. feasts and festival: Halloween, Easter; j. legal system. 2. The Overview of the culture (1) The mixture of pagan and Christian spirit. (2) Literature: a. poetry: two types; b. prose: two figures.
II. Beowulf. 1. A general introduction. 2. The content. 3. The literary features. (1) the use of alliteration (2) the use of metaphors and understatements (3) the mixture of pagan and Christian elements
III. The Old English Prose 1. What is prose? 2. figures (1) The Venerable Bede (2) Alfred the Great Chapter 2 English Literature of the Late Medieval Ages 1. The Historical Background. (1) The year 1066: Norman Conquest. (2) The social situations soon after the conquest. A. Norman nobles and serfs; B. restoration of the church. (3) The 11th century. A. the crusade and knights. B. dominance of French and Latin; (4) The 12th century. A. the centralized government; B. kings and the church (Henry II and Thomas); (5) The 13th century. A. The legend of Robin Hood; B. Magna Carta (1215); C. the beginning of the Parliament D. English and Latin: official languages (the end) (6) The 14th century. a. the House of Lords and the House of Commons—conflict between the Parliament and Kings; b. the rise of towns. c. the change of Church. d. the role of women. e. the Hundred Years’ War—starting. f. the development of the trade: London. g. the Black Death. h. the Peasants’ Revolt—1381. i. The translation of Bible by Wycliff. (7) The 15th century. a. The Peasants Revolt (1453) b. The War of Roses between Lancasters and Yorks. c. the printing-press—William Caxton. d. the starting of Tudor Monarchy(1485) 2. The Overview of Literature. (1) the stories from the Celtic lands of Wales and Brittany—great myths of the Middle Ages. (2) Geoffrye of Monmouth—Historia Regum Britanniae—King Authur. (3) Wace—Le Roman de Brut. (4) The romance. (5) the second half of the 14th century: Langland, Gawin poet, Chaucer.
II. Sir Gawin and Green Knight. 1. a general introduction. 2. the plot.
III. William Langland. 1. Life 2. Piers the Plowman
IV. Chaucer 1. Life 2. Literary Career: three periods (1) French period (2) Italian period (3) master period 3. The Canterbury Tales A. The Framework; B. The General Prologue; C. The Tale Proper. 4. His Contribution. (1) He introduced from France the rhymed stanza of various types. (2) He is the first great poet who wrote in the current English language. (3) The spoken English of the time consisted of several dialects, and Chaucer did much in making the dialect of London the standard for the modern English speech.
V. Popular Ballads.
VI. Thomas Malory and English Prose
VII. The beginning of English Drama. 1. Miracle Plays. Miracle play or mystery play is a form of medieval drama that came from dramatization of the liturgy of the Roman Catholic Church. It developed from the 10th to the 16th century, reaching its height in the 15th century. The simple lyric character of the early texts was enlarged by the addition of dialogue and dramatic action. Eventually the performance was moved to the churchyard and the marketplace. 2. Morality Plays. A morality play is a play enforcing a moral truth or lesson by means of the speech and action of characters which are personified abstractions – figures representing vices and virtues, qualities of the human mind, or abstract conceptions in general. 3. Interlude. The interlude, which grew out of the morality, was intended, as its name implies, to be used more as a filler than as the main part of an entertainment. As its best it was short, witty, simple in plot, suited for the diversion of guests at a banquet, or for the relaxation of the audience between the divisions of a serious play. It was essentially an indoors performance, and generally of an aristocratic nature.
Chapter 3 English Literature in the Renaissance
II. The Overview of the Literature (1485-1660) Printing press—readership—growth of middle class—trade-education for laypeople-centralization of power-intellectual life-exploration-new impetus and direction of literature. Humanism-study of the literature of classical antiquity and reformed education. Literary style-modeled on the ancients. The effect of humanism-the dissemination of the cultivated, clear, and sensible attitude of its classically educated adherents. 1. poetry The first tendency by Sidney and Spenser: ornate, florid, highly figured style. The second tendency by Donne: metaphysical style—complexity and ingenuity. The third tendency by Johnson: reaction--Classically pure and restrained style. The fourth tendency by Milton: central Christian and Biblical tradition. 2. Drama a. the native tradition and classical examples. b. the drama stands highest in popular estimation: Marlowe – Shakespeare – Jonson. 3. Prose a. translation of Bible; b. More; c. Bacon.
II. English poetry. 1. Sir Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard (courtly makers) (1) Wyatt: introducing sonnets. (2) Howard: introducing sonnets and writing the first blank verse. 2. Sir Philip Sidney—poet, critic, prose writer (1) Life: a. English gentleman; b. brilliant and fascinating personality; c. courtier. (2) works a. Arcadia: pastoral romance; b. Astrophel and Stella (108): sonnet sequence to Penelope Dvereux—platonic devotion. Petrarchan conceits and original feelings-moving to creativeness—building of a narrative story; theme-love originality-act of writing. c. Defense of Poesy: an apology for imaginative literature—beginning of literary criticism. 3. Edmund Spenser (1) life: Cambridge - Sidney’s friend - “Areopagus” – Ireland - Westminster Abbey. (2) works a. The Shepherds Calendar: the budding of English poetry in Renaissance. b. Amoretti and Epithalamion: sonnet sequence c. Faerie Queene: l The general end--A romantic and allegorical epic—steps to virtue. l 12 books and 12 virtues: Holiness, temperance, justice and courtesy. l Two-level function: part of the story and part of allegory (symbolic meaning) l Many allusions to classical writers. l Themes: puritanism, nationalism, humanism and Renaissance Neoclassicism—a Christian humanist. (3) Spenserian Stanza.
III. English Prose 1. Thomas More (1) Life: “Renaissance man”, scholar, statesman, theorist, prose writer, diplomat, patron of arts a. learned Greek at Canterbury College, Oxford; b. studies law at Lincoln Inn; c. Lord Chancellor; d. beheaded. (2) Utopia: the first English science fiction. Written in Latin, two parts, the second—place of nowhere. A philosophical mariner (Raphael Hythloday) tells his voyages in which he discovers a land-Utopia. a. The part one is organized as dialogue with mariner depicting his philosophy. b. The part two is a description of the island kingdom where gold and silver are worn by criminal, religious freedom is total and no one owns anything. c. the nature of the book: attacking the chief political and social evils of his time. d. the book and the Republic: an attempt to describe the Republic in a new way, but it possesses an modern character and the resemblance is in externals. e. it played a key role in the Humanist awakening of the 16th century which moved away from the Medieval otherworldliness towards Renaissance secularism. f. the Utopia (3) the significance. a. it was the first champion of national ideas and national languages; it created a national prose, equally adapted to handling scientific and artistic material. b. a elegant Latin scholar and the father of English prose: he composed works in English, translated from Latin into English biography, wrote History of Richard III. 2. Francis Bacon: writer, philosopher and statesman (1) life: Cambridge - humanism in Paris – knighted - Lord Chancellor – bribery - focusing on philosophy and literature. (2) philosophical ideas: advancement of science—people:servants and interpreters of nature—method: a child before nature—facts and observations: experimental. (3) “Essays”: 57. a. he was a master of numerous and varied styles. b. his method is to weigh and balance maters, indicating the ideal course of action and the practical one, pointing out the advantages and disadvantages of each, but leaving the reader to make the final decisions. (arguments)
IV. English Drama 1. A general survey. (1) Everyman marks the beginning of modern drama. (2) two influences. a. the classics: classical in form and English in content; b. native or popular drama. (3) the University Wits. 2. Christopher Marlowe: greatest playwright before Shakespeare and most gifted of the Wits. (1) Life: first interested in classical poetry—then in drama. (2) Major works a. Tamburlaine; b. The Jew of Malta; c. The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus. (3) The significance of his plays.
V. William Shakespeare 1. Life (1) 1564, Stratford-on-Avon; (2) Grammar School; (3) Queen visit to Castle; (4) marriage to Anne Hathaway; (5) London, the Globe Theatre: small part and proprietor; (6) the 1st Folio, Quarto; (7) Retired, son—Hamnet; H. 1616. 2. Dramatic career 3. Major plays-men-centered. (1) Romeo and Juliet--tragic love and fate (2) The Merchant of Venice. Good over evil. Anti-Semitism. (3) Henry IV. National unity. Falstaff. (4) Julius Caesar Republicanism vs. dictatorship. (5) Hamlet Revenge Good/evil. (6) Othello Diabolic character jealousy gap between appearance and reality. (7) King Lear Filial ingratitude (8) Macbeth Ambition vs. fate. (9) Antony and Cleopatra. Passion vs. reason (10) The Tempest Reconciliation; reality and illusion. 3. Non-dramatic poetry (1) Venus and Adonis; The Rape of Lucrece. (2) Sonnets: a. theme: fair, true, kind. b. two major parts: a handsome young man of noble birth; a lady in dark complexion. c. the form: three quatrains and a couplet. d. the rhyme scheme: abab, cdcd, efef, gg.
VI. Ben Jonson 1. life: poet, dramatist, a Latin and Greek scholar, the “literary king” (Sons of Ben) 2.contribution: (1) the idea of “humour”. (2) an advocate of classical drama and a forerunner of classicism in English literature. 3. Major plays (1) Everyone in His Humour—”humour”; three unities. (2) Volpone the Fox
Chapter 4 English Literature of the 17th Century
II. The Overview of the Literature (1640-1688) 1. The revolution period (1) The metaphysical poets; (2) The Cavalier poets. (3) Milton: the literary and philosophical heritage of the Renaissance merged with Protestant political and moral conviction 2. The restoration period. (1) The restoration of Charles II ushered in a literature characterized by reason, moderation, good taste, deft management, and simplicity. (school of Ben Jonson) (2) The ideals of impartial investigation and scientific experimentation promoted by the newly founded Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge (1662) were influential in the development of clear and simple prose as an instrument of rational communication. (3) The great philosophical and political treatises of the time emphasize rationalism. (4) The restoration drama. (5) The Age of Dryden.
III. John Milton 1. Life: educated at Cambridge—visiting the continent—involved into the revolution—persecuted—writing epics. 2. Literary career. (1) The 1st period was up to 1641, during which time he is to be seen chiefly as a son of the humanists and Elizabethans, although his Puritanism is not absent. L'Allegre and IL Pens eroso (1632) are his early masterpieces, in which we find Milton a true offspring of the Renaissance, a scholar of exquisite taste and rare culture. Next came Comus, a masque. The greatest of early creations was Lycidas, a pastoral elegy on the death of a college mate, Edward King. (2) The second period is from 1641 to 1654, when the Puritan was in such complete ascendancy that he wrote almost no poetry. In 1641, he began a long period of pamphleteering for the puritan cause. For some 15 years, the Puritan in him alone ruled his writing. He sacrificed his poetic ambition to the call of the liberty for which Puritans were fighting. (3) The third period is from 1655 to 1671, when humanist and Puritan have been fused into an exalted entity. This period is the greatest in his literary life, epics and some famous sonnets. The three long poems are the fruit of the long contest within Milton of Renaissance tradition and his Puritan faith. They form the greatest accomplishments of any English poet except Shakespeare. In Milton alone, it would seem, Puritanism could not extinguish the lover of beauty. In these works we find humanism and Puritanism merged in magnificence. 3. Major Works (1) Paradise Lost a. the plot. b. characters. c. theme: justify the ways of God to man. (2) Paradise Regained. (3) Samson Agonistes. 4. Features of Milton’s works. (1) Milton is one of the very few truly great English writers who is also a prominent figure in politics, and who is both a great poet and an important prose writer. The two most essential things to be remembered about him are his Puritanism and his republicanism. (2) Milton wrote many different types of poetry. He is especially a great master of blank verse. He learned much from Shakespeare and first used blank verse in non-dramatic works. (3) Milton is a great stylist. He is famous for his grand style noted for its dignity and polish, which is the result of his life-long classical and biblical study. (4) Milton has always been admired for his sublimity of thought and majesty of expression.
IV. John Bunyan 1. life: (1) puritan age; (2) poor family; (3) parliamentary army; (4) Baptist society, preacher; (5) prison, writing the book. 2. The Pilgrim Progress (1) The allegory in dream form. (2) the plot. (3) the theme.
V. Metaphysical Poets and Cavalier Poets. 1. Metaphysical Poets The term “metaphysical poetry” is commonly used to designate the works of the 17th century writers who wrote under the influence of John Donne. Pressured by the harsh, uncomfortable and curious age, the metaphysical poets sought to shatter myths and replace them with new philosophies, new sciences, new words and new poetry. They tried to break away from the conventional fashion of Elizabethan love poetry, and favoured in poetry for a more colloquial language and tone, a tightness of expression and the single-minded working out of a theme or argument. 2. Cavalier Poets The other group prevailing in this period was that of Cavalier poets. They were often courtiers who stood on the side of the king, and called themselves “sons” of Ben Jonson. The Cavalier poets wrote light poetry, polished and elegant, amorous and gay, but often superficial. Most of their verses were short songs, pretty madrigals, love fancies characterized by lightness of heart and of morals. Cavalier poems have the limpidity of the Elizabethan lyric without its imaginative flights. They are lighter and neater but less fresh than the Elizabethan’s.
VI. John Dryden. 1. Life: (1) the representative of classicism in the Restoration. (2) poet, dramatist, critic, prose writer, satirist. (3) changeable in attitude. (4) Literary career—four decades. (5) Poet Laureate 2. His influences. (1) He established the heroic couplet as the fashion for satiric, didactic, and descriptive poetry. (2) He developed a direct and concise prose style. (3) He developed the art of literary criticism in his essays and in the numerous prefaces to his poems.
Chapter 5 English Literature of the 18th Century 1. The Historical Background. 2. The literary overview. (1) The Enlightenment. (2) The rise of English novels. When the literary historian seeks to assign to each age its favourite form of literature, he finds no difficulty in dealing with our own time. As the Middle Ages delighted in long romantic narrative poems, the Elizabethans in drama, the Englishman of the reigns of Anne and the early Georges in didactic and satirical verse, so the public of our day is enamored of the novel. Almost all types of literary production continue to appear, but whether we judge from the lists of publishers, the statistics of public libraries, or general conversation, we find abundant evidence of the enormous preponderance of this kind of literary entertainment in popular favour. (3) Neo-classicism: a revival in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries of classical standards of order, balance, and harmony in literature. John Dryden and Alexander Pope were major exponents of the neo-classical school. (4) Satiric literature. (5) Sentimentalism
II. Neo-classicism. (a general description) 1. Alexander Pope (1) Life: a. Catholic family; b. ill health; c. taught himself by reading and translating; d. friend of Addison, Steele and Swift. (2) three groups of poems: e. An Essay on Criticism (manifesto of neo-classicism); f. The Rape of Lock; g. Translation of two epics. (3) His contribution: h. the heroic couplet—finish, elegance, wit, pointedness; i.satire. (4) weakness: lack of imagination. 2. Addison and Steele (1) Richard Steele: poet, playwright, essayist, publisher of newspaper. (2) Joseph Addison: studies at Oxford, secretary of state, created a literary periodical “Spectator” (with Steele, 1711) (3) Spectator Club. (4) The significance of their essays. a. Their writings in “The Tatler”, and “The Spectator” provide a new code of social morality for the rising bourgeoisie. b. They give a true picture of the social life of England in the 18th century. c. In their hands, the English essay completely established itself as a literary genre. Using it as a form of character sketching and story telling, they ushered in the dawn of the modern novel. 3. Samuel Johnson—poet, critic, essayist, lexicographer, editor. (1) Life: a.studies at Oxford; b. made a living by writing and translating; c.the great cham of literature. (2) works: poem (The Vanity of Human Wishes, London); criticism (The Lives of great Poets); preface. (3) The champion of neoclassical ideas.
III. Literature of Satire: Jonathan Swift. 1. Life: (1) born in Ireland; (2) studies at Trinity College; (3) worked as a secretary; (4) the chief editor of The Examiner; (5) the Dean of St. Patrick’s in Dublin. 2. Works: The Battle of Books, A Tale of a Tub, A Modest Proposal, Gulliver’s Travels. 3. Gulliver’s Travels. Part I. Satire—the Whig and the Tories, Anglican Church and Catholic Church. Part II. Satire—the legal system; condemnation of war. Part III. Satire—ridiculous scientific experiment. Part IV. Satire—mankind.
IV. English Novels of Realistic tradition. 1. The Rise of novels. (1) Early forms: folk tale – fables – myths – epic – poetry – romances – fabliaux – novelle - imaginative nature of their material. (imaginative narrative) (2) The rise of the novel a.picaresque novel in Spain and England (16th century): Of or relating to a genre of prose fiction that originated in Spain and depicts in realistic detail the adventures of a roguish hero, often with satiric or humorous effects. b. Sidney: Arcadia. c. Addison and Steele: The Spectator. (plot and characterization and realism) (3) novel and drama (17the century) 2. Daniel Defoe—novelist, poet, pamphleteer, publisher, merchant, journalist.) (1) Life: a.business career; b. writing career; c.interested in politics. (2) Robinson Cusoe. a. the story. b. the significance of the character. c. the features of his novels. d. the style of language. 3. Henry Fielding—novelist. (1) Life: a.unsuccessful dramatic career; b. legal career; writing career. (2) works. (3) Tom Jones. a.the plot; b. characters: Tom, Blifil, Sophia; c.significance. (4) the theory of realism. (5) the style of language.
V. Writers of Sentimentalism. 1. Introduction 2. Samuel Richardson—novelist, moralist (One who is unduly concerned with the morals of others.) (1) Life: a.printer book seller; b. letter writer. (2) Pamela, Virtue Rewarded. a.the story b. the significance Pamela was a new thing in these ways: a) It discarded the “improbable and marvelous” accomplishments of the former heroic romances, and pictured the life and love of ordinary people. b) Its intension was to afford not merely entertainment but also moral instruction. c) It described not only the sayings and doings of characters but their also their secret thoughts and feelings. It was, in fact, the first English psycho-analytical novel.
3. Oliver Goldsmith—poet and novelist. A. Life: a.born in Ireland; b. a singer and tale-teller, a life of vagabondage; c.bookseller; d. the Literary Club; e.a miserable life; f. the most lovable character in English literature. B. The Vicar of Wakefield. a.story; b. the signicance.
VI. English Drama of the 18th century 1. The decline of the drama 2. Richard Brinsley Sheriden A. life. B. works: Rivals, The School for Scandals. C. significance of his plays. a. The Rivals and The School for Scandal are generally regarded as important links between the masterpieces of Shakespeare and those of Bernard Shaw, and as true classics in English comedy. b. In his plays, morality is the constant theme. He is much concerned with the current moral issues and lashes harshly at the social vices of the day. c. Sheridan’s greatness also lies in his theatrical art. He seems to have inherited from his parents a natural ability and inborn knowledge about the theatre. His plays are the product of a dramatic genius as well as of a well-versed theatrical man. d. His plots are well-organized, his characters, either major or minor, are all sharply drawn, and his manipulation of such devices as disguise, mistaken identity and dramatic irony is masterly. Witty dialogues and neat and decent language also make a characteristic of his plays.
Chapter 6 English Literature of the Romantic Age 1. Historical Background 2. Literary Overview: Romanticism Characteristics of Romanticism: (1) The spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings (2) The creation of a world of imagination (3) The return to nature for material (4) Sympathy with the humble and glorification of the commonplace (5) Emphasis upon the expression of individual genius (6) The return to Milton and the Elizabethans for literary models (7) The interest in old stories and medieval romances (8) A sense of melancholy and loneliness (9) The rebellious spirit
II. Pre-Romantics 1. Robert Burns (1) Life: French Revolution (2) Features of poetry a. Burns is chiefly remembered for his songs written in the Scottish dialect. b. His poems are usually devoid of artificial ornament and have a great charm of simplicity. c. His poems are especially appreciated for their musical effect. d. His political and satirical poems are noted for his passionate love for freedom and fiery sentiments of hatred against tyranny. (3) Significance of his poetry His poetry marks an epoch in the history of English literature. They suggested that the spirit of the Romantic revival was embodied in this obscure ploughman. Love, humour, pathos, the response to nature – all the poetic qualities that touch the human heart are in his poems, which marked the sunrise of another day – the day of Romanticism. 2. William Blake (1) life: French Revolution (2) works. l Songs of Innocence l Songs of Experience (3) features a. sympathy with the French Revolution b. hatred for 18th century conformity and social institution c. attitude of revolt against authority d. strong protest against restrictive codes (4) his influence Blake is often regarded as a symbolist and mystic, and he has exerted a great influence on twentieth century writers. His peculiarities of thought and imaginative vision have in many ways proved far more congenial to the 20th century than they were to the 19th.
III. Romantic Poets of the first generation 1. Introduction 2. William Wordsworth: representative poet, chief spokesman of Romantic poetry (1) Life: a.love nature; b. Cambridge; c.tour to France; d. French revolution; e.Dorathy; f. The Lake District; g.friend of Coleridge; h.conservative after revolution. (2) works: a. the Lyrical Ballads (preface): significance b. The Prelude: a biographical poem. c. the other poems (3) Features of his poems. a.Theme A constant theme of his poetry was the growth of the human spirit through the natural description with expressions of inward states of mind. b. characteristics of style. His poems are characterized by a sympathy with the poor, simple peasants, and a passionate love of nature. 3. Samuel Taylor Coleridge: poet and critic (1) Life: a.Cambridge; b. friend with Southey and Wordsworth; c.taking opium. (2) works. l The fall of Robespierre l The Rime of the Ancient Mariner l Kubla Khan l Biographia Literaria (3) Biographia Literaria. (4) His criticism He was one of the first critics to give close critical attention to language. In both poetry and criticism, his work is outstanding, but it is typical of him that his critical work is very scattered and disorganized.
IV. Romantic Poets of the Second Generation. 1. Introduction 2. George Gordon Byron (1) Life: a.Cambridge, published poems and reviews; b. a tour of Europe and the East; c.left England; d. friend with Shelley; e.worked in Greece: national hero; f. radical and sympathetic with French Revolution. (2) Works. l Don Juan l When We Two Parted l She Walks in Beauty (3) Byronic Hero. Byron introduced into English poetry a new style of character, which as often been referred to as “Byronic Hero” of “satanic spirit”. People imagined that they saw something of Byron himself in these strange figures of rebels, pirates, and desperate adventurers. (4) Poetic style: loose, fluent and vivid 3. Percy Bysshe Shelley: poet and critic (1) Life: a.aristocratic family; b. rebellious heart; c.Oxford; d. Irish national liberation Movement; e.disciple of William Godwin; f. marriage with Harriet, and Marry; g.left England and wandered in EUrope, died in Italy; h.radical and sympathetic with the French revolution; i. Friend with Byron (2) works: two types – violent reformer and wanderer (3) Characteristics of poems. a.pursuit of a better society; b. radian beauty; c. superb artistry: imagination. (4) Defense of Poetry. 4. John Keats. (1) Life: a.from a poor family; b. Cockney School; c.friend with Byron and Shelley; d. attacked by the conservatives and died in Italy. (2) works. (3) Characteristics of poems a.loved beauty; b. seeking refuge in an idealistic world of illusions and dreams.
V. Novelists of the Romantic Age. 1. Water Scott. Novelist and poet (1) Life: a.Scotland; b. university of Edindurgh; c.poem to novel; d. unsuccessful publishing firm; e.great contribution: historical novel. (2) three groups of novels (3) Features of his novels. (4) his influence. 2. Jane Austen (1) Life: a.country clergyman; b. uneventful life, domestic duties; (2) works. (3) features of her writings. Austen’s novels are britened by their witty conversation and omnipresent humour. Her stories are skillfully woven together; her plots never leave the path of realism, and have always been sensible. Her language shines with an exquisite touch of lively gracefulness, elegant and refined, but never showy. She herself compared her work to a fine engraving made up on a little piece of ivory only two inches square. The comparison is true. The ivory surface is small enough, but the lady who made the drawings of human life on it was a real artist. (4) rationalism, neoclassicism, romanticism and realism.
VI. Familiar Essays. 1. Introduction 2. Charles Lamb: essayist and critic (1) life: a.poor family; b. friend of Coleridge; c.sister Mary; d. worked in the East India House; e.a miserable life; f. a man of mild character. g.a Romanticist of the city. (2) works: Essays of Elia. Three groups. (3) Features. a. The most striking feature of his essays is his humour. b. Lamb was especially fond of old writers. c. His essays are intensely personal. d. He was a romanticist.
Chapter 7 English Literature of the Victorian Age 1. Historical Background (1) An age of expansion (2) The conditions of the workers and the chartist movement (3) Reforms (4) Darwin’s theory of evolution and its influence (5) The women question 2. Literary Overview: critical realism. In Victorian period appeared a new literary trend called critical realism. English critical realism of the 19th century flourished in the 40s and in the early 50s. It found its expression in the form of novel. The critical realists, most of whom were novelists, described with much vividness and artistic skill the chief traits of the English society and criticized the capitalist system from a democratic viewpoint. II. Novels of Critical Realists. 1. Charles Dickens. (1) Life: a. clerk family; b. a miserable childhood; c. a clerk, a reporter, a writer; d. a man of hard work. (2) works of three periods. a. optimize b. frustration c. pessimism (3) Features of his works. a.character sketches and exaggeration b. broad humour and penetrating satire c.complicated and fascinating plot d. the power of exposure
2. William Makepeace Thackeray (1) Life: a. born in India; b. studied in Cambridge; c. worked as artist and illustrator and writer. (2) work: The Vanity Fair (3) Thackeray and Dickens – features a. Just like Dickens, Thackeray is one of the greatest critical realists of the 19th century Europe. He paints life as he has seen it. With his precise and thorough observation, rich knowledge of social life and of the human heart, the pictures in his novels are accurate and true to life. b. Thackeray is a satirist. His satire is caustic and his humour subtle. c. Besides being a realist and satirist, Thackeray is a moralist. His aim is to produce a moral impression in all his novels. 3. The Bronte Sisters (1) Charlotte Bronte and Jane Eyre (2) Emily Bronte and The Wuthering Heights. 4. George Eliot& (1) Life: a. Mary Ann Evans; b. the rural midland; c. abandoned religion; d. interested in social philosophical problems; e. editor of the Westminster Review; f. George Henry Lewis. (2) works l Adam Bede l Silas Marner l Middlemarch (3) Features of works. As a moralist, she shows in each of her characters the action and reaction of universal forces and believes that every evil act must bring inevitable punishment to the man who does it. Moral law was to her as inevitable and automatic as gravitation. 5. Thomas Hardy: novelist and poet (1) Life: a. Dorchester—”Wexssex; b. close to peasantry; c. belief in evolution. (2) Works: a. Romances and fantasies b. novels of ingenuity c. novels of characters and environment (3) Ideas of Fate. Unlike Dickens, most of Hardy’s novels are tragic. The cause of tragedy is man’s own behaviour or his own fault but the supernatural forces that rule his fate. According to Hardy, man is not the master of his destiny; he is at the mercy of indifferent forces which manipulate his behaviour and his relations with others.
III. English Poets of the Age 1. Alfred Tennyson (1) life: a. Cambridge; b. friend with Hallem; c. poet laureate. (2) Works: In Memoriam; Idylls of the King. 2. Robert Browning. (1) Life: married Elizabeth Barret, a poetess. (2) Works (3) the Dramatic Monologue The dramatic monologue is a soliloquy in drama in which the voice speaking is not the poet himself, but a character invented by the poet, so that it reflects life objectively. It was imitated by many poets after Browning and brought to its most sophisticated form by T. S. Eliot in his The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1915)
IV. English Prose of the age 1. Thomas Carlyle (1) life (2) works 2. John Ruskin (1) life (2) works (3) social and aesthetic ideas
V. Aestheticism 1. Aestheticism the basic theory of the aesthetic – “art for art’s sake” – was set forth by a French poet, Theophile Gautier. The first Englishman who wrote about the theory of aestheticism was Walter Peter, the most important critical writer of the late Victorian period, whose most important works were studies in the History of Renaissance and Appreciations. The chief representative of the movement in England was Oscar Wilde, with his The Picture of Dorian Gray. Aestheticism places art above life, and holds that life should imitate art, not art imitate life. According to aesthetes, all artistic creation is absolutely subjective as opposed to objective. Art should be free from any influence of egoism. Only when art is for art’s sake can it be immortal. It should be restricted to contributing beauty in a highly polished style. 2. Oscar Wilde (1) Life: dramatist, poet, novelist and essayist, spokesman for the school of “Art for art’s sake”, the leader of the Aesthetic movement (2) works l The Happy Prince and Other Tales l The Picture of Dorian Gray l The Importance of Being Earnest
Chapter 8 English Literature of the first half of the 20th Century 1. rational changes on old traditions, in social standards and in people’s thoughts 2. the high tide of anti-Victorianism 3. the First World War 4. the success of women’s struggle for social and civil rights
II. Overview of the Literature – the Modernism 1. What is modernism? The reaction against the value of Victorian society and the theme of its literature that began in the 1890s, particularly with the so-called dissident writers, was manifested in the early decades of the 20th century by drastic changes in form, vocabulary, and image. These changes were not limited to England. The movement, which has come to be called modernism, was international in scope and drew heavily on the French Symbolist poets as well as on the new psychological teachings of Sigmund Freud, Carl Gustav Jung, and their followers in Vienna and Switzerland. 2. Features of modernism (1) Complexity (2) Radical and deliberate break with traditional aesthetic principles (3) Back to Aristotle 3. Development of modernism after WWII
Section 1 Poetry 1. The century has produced a large number of both major and minor poets, many of whom have received general acclaim. 2. Many writers of significant works of fiction also write distinguished poetry. 3. The poets of the 20th century have tended to group themselves into schools whose poetry has particular distinguishing characteristics.
II. Thomas Hardy 1. life 2. works (1) his poetry a.Wessex Poems and Other Verses b. Poems of the Past and the Present c.Time’s Laughing Stocks d. Moments of Vision e.Late Lyrics and Earlier f. The famous Tragedy of the Queen of Cornwell g.Winter Words (2) his fictions a.Tess of the D’Urbervilles b. Jude the Obscure c.The Return of the Native d. Far from the Madding Crowd e.The Mayor of Casterbridge 3. point of view According to his pessimistic philosophy, mankind is subjected to the rule of some hostile mysterious fate, which brings misfortune into human life.
III. William Butler Yeats 1. Life – poet and dramatist 2. Works (1) his poetry a.The Responsibilities b. The Wild Swans at Coole c.The Tower d. The Winding Stair (2) his dramas a.The Hour Glass b. The Land of Heart’s Desire c.On Baile’s Strand (3) his book of philosophy – Visions 3. style He is a celebrated and accomplished symbolist poet, using an elaborate system of symbols in his poems. Some of his symbols are simple, whereas others are difficult to comprehend. But read as a whole, his poetry is elucidated by itself and gives the reader many memorable stanzas and lines of great poetry. He is referred to by T. S. Eliot as “the greatest poet of our age – certainly the greatest in this (i.e. English) language”.
IV. Thomas Stearns Eliot 1. life- poet, playwright, literary critic 2. works (1) poems l The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock l The Waste Land (epic) l Hollow Man l Ash Wednesday l Four Quarters (2) Plays l Murder in the Cathedral l Sweeney Agonistes l The Cocktail Party l The Confidential Clerk (3) Critical essays l The Sacred Wood l Essays on Style and Order l Elizabethan Essays l The Use of Poetry and The Use of Criticisms l After Strange Gods 3. point of view (1) The modern society is futile and chaotic. (2) Only poets can create some order out of chaos. (3) The method to use is to compare the past and the present. 4. Style (1) Fresh visual imagery, flexible tone and highly expressive rhythm (2) Difficult and disconnected images and symbols, quotations and allusions (3) Elliptical structures, strange juxtapositions, an absence of bridges 5. The Waste Land: five parts (1) The Burial of the Dead (2) A Game of Chess (3) The Fire Sermon (4) Death by Water (5) What the Thunder Said
Section 2 Fiction 1. The two characteristics of 20th century fiction (1) Modernism (2) Continuation of the tradition of realism 2. The beginning 3. General features
II. John Galsworthy 1. life 2. works (1) The Island Pharisees (2) Turgenev (3) The Man of Property (4) In Chancery (5) Forsyte Saga (6) The End of the Chapter (7) The Silver Box (8) Strife 3. point of view The novels and plays of Galsworthy give a complete picture of English bourgeois society. A bourgeois himself, Galsworthy nevertheless clearly saw the decline of his class and truthfully portrayed this in his works. Yet his criticism of the bourgeoisie was limited to the spheres of ethics and aesthetics only. He aimed to improve his class, wishing it might retain its ruling position in society. His bourgeois conservatism is particularly evident in the works written after WWI and the October Revolution. Facing the crisis of British imperialism and the growing forces of socialism, Galsworthy began to idealize the decadent bourgeoisie. This is particularly evident in his last trilogy The End of the Chapter. 4. style (1) strength and elasticity (2) powerful sweep (3) brilliant illustrations (4) deep psychological analysis
III. Stream of Consciousness 1. James Joyce (1) life (2) major works a.A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man b. Dubliners c.Ulysses d. Finnegans Wake (3) significance of his works a.He changed the old style of fictions and created a strange mode of art to show the chaos and crisis of consciousness of that period. b. From him, stream of consciousness came to the highest point as a genre of modern literature. c.In Finnegans Wake, this pursue of newness overrode the normalness and showed a tendency of vanity. 2. Virginia Woolf (1) life (2) works a.Mrs. Dalloway b. To the Lighthouse c.The Waves d. Orlando e.Flush f. The Years g.Between the Acts h.A Room of One’s Own i. Three Guineas j. Modern Fiction k. The Common Reader (2 series) (3) point of view a.She challenged the traditional way of writing and created her novels in a new way. b. She thought the depiction of details darkened the characters. c.She called the writers for writing about events of daily life that gave one deep impression. 3. influence (1) The stream of consciousness presented by Joyce and Woolf marks a total break from the tradition of fiction and has promoted the development of modernism. (2) However, at the same time, because of the newness in form but hard to understand, this kind of fiction cannot attract readers. (3) The writers showed interest in the psychological depiction of the bourgeoisie but neglected the conflict that most people cared about at that time.
IV. David Herbert Lawrence 1. life 2. works (1) Sons and Lovers (2) The Rainbow (3) Women in Love (4) Lady Chatterlay’s Lover 3. his influence
Section 3 Drama 1. the development of science (light) and the revival of drama 2. social dramas 3. the renaissance of Irish dramas 4. the poetic drama 5. different schools of drama
II. George Bernard Shaw 1. life 2. works (1) Widower’s Houses (2) Man and Superman (3) Major Barbara (4) Pygmalion (5) Heartbreak House (6) Mrs. Warren’s Profession (7) The Apple Cart (8) Saint Joan 3. point of view (1) Shaw was very much impressed by the Norwegian dramatist Ibsen. (2) He opposed the idea of “art for art’s sake”, maintaining that “the theatre must turn from the drama of romance and sensuality to the drama of edification”. (3) He sought from the beginning to expose the hypocrisy, stupidity, and conventionality of the English way of life as he saw it with a rich wit and lively sense of comedy. (4) His heroes and heroines are always unheroic, unromantic, common sense people, and he used them to convey ideas. 4. style (1) Shaw is a critical realist writer. His plays bitterly criticize and attack English bourgeois society. (2) His plays deal with contemporary social problems. He portrays his situations frankly and honestly, intending to shock his audiences with a new view of society. (3) He is a humorist and manages to produce amusing and laughable situations. 《英语语言学概论》重、难点问与答 1.1. What is language? 1.2. What are design features of language? 1.3. What is arbitrariness? 1.4.What is duality? 1.5.What is productivity?
1.7.What is cultural transmission? 1.8.What is interchangeability? Some male birds, however, utter some calls which females do not (or cannot?) , and certain kinds of fish have similar haps mentionable. When a dog barks, all the neighbouring dogs bark. Then people around can hardly tell which dog (dogs) is (are0 “speaking” and which listening. 1.9.Why do linguists say language is human specific? Secondly, linguists have done a lot trying to teach animals such as chimpanzees to speak a human language but have achieved nothing inspiring. Washoe, a female chimpanzee, was brought up like a human child by Beatnice and Alan Gardner. She was taught “American sign Language”, and learned a little that made the teachers happy but did mot make the linguistics circle happy, for few believed in teaching chimpanzees. Thirdly, a human child reared among animals cannot speak a human language, not even when he is taken back and taught to lo to so (see the “Wolf Child”in I.7) 1.10.What functions does language have? 1.12. What is the directive function? 1.13.What is the informative function? 1.14.What is the interrogative function?
1.16.What is the evocative function? 1.17.What is the performative function? 1.18.What is linguistics? 1.19.What makes linguistics a science?
1.21.What are synchronic and diachronic studies? 1.22.What is speech and what is writing? In contrast to speech, spoken form of language, writing as written
codes, gives language new scope and use that speech does not have.
Firstly, messages can be carried through space so that people can
write to each other. Secondly, messages can be carried through time
thereby, so that people of our time can be carried through time
thereby, so that people of our time can read Beowulf, Samuel Johnson,
and Edgar A. Poe. Thirdly, oral messages are readily subject to
distortion, either intentional or unintentional (causing misunderstanding
or malentendu), while written messages allow and encourage repeated
unalterable reading. 1.23.What are the differences between the descriptive and the prescriptive
approaches? 1.24.What is the difference between langue and parole? 1.25.What is the difference between competence and performance?
Chomsky believes that linguists ought to study competence, rather
than performance. In other words, they should discover what an ideal
speaker knows of his native language. 1.26.What is linguistic potential? What is actual linguistic behaviour?
1.28.What is phonetics? Most phoneticians, however, are interested in articulatory phonetics. 1.29.How are the vocal organs formed? 1.30.What is place of articulation? Some sounds involve the simultaneous use of two places of articulation. For example, the English [w]has both an approximation of the two lips and that two lips and that of the tongue and the soft palate, and may be termed “labial-velar”. 1.31.What is the manner of articulation? 1.32.How do phoneticians classify vowels? 1.33.What is IPA? When did it come into being ? 1.34.What is narrow transcription and what is broad transcription?
1.35.What is phonology? What is difference between phonetics and
phonology? (2) Phonetics, as discussed in I.28, is the branch of linguistics studying the characteristics of speech sounds and provides methods for their description, classification and transcription. A phonetist is mainly interested in the physical properties of the speech sounds, whereas a phonologist studies what he believes are meaningful sounds related with their semantic features, morphological features, and the way they are conceived and printed in the depth of the mind phonological knowledge permits a speaker to produce sounds which from meaningful utterances, to recognize a foreign “accent”, to make up new words, to add the appropriate phonetic segments to from plurals and past tenses, to know what is and what is not a sound in one’s language. 1.36.What is a phone? What is a phoneme? What is an allophone?
1.37.What are minimal pairs? 1.38.What is free variation? 1.39.What is complementary distribution? 1.40.What is the assimilation rule? What is the deletion rule?
inconceivable-[ ](velar) The “deletion rule” tells us when a sound is to be deleted although
is orthographically represented. While the letter “g” is mute in
“sign”, “design” and “paradigm”, it is pronounced in their corresponding
derivatives: “signature”, “designation” and “paradigmatic”. The
rule then can be stated as: delete a [g] when it occurs before a
final nasal consonant. This accounts for some of the seeming irregularities
of the English spelling (see Dai Weidong ,pp22-23). 1.41.What is
suprasegmental phonology? What are suprasegmental features? 1.42.What is morphology? 1.43.What is inflection/inflexion? “Inflection” is the manifestation of grammatical relationships through the addition of inflectional affixes, such as number, person, finiteness, aspect, and case, which does not change the grammatical class of the items to which they are attached. 1.44.What is a morpheme? What is an allomorph? Allomorphs, like allophones vs. phones, are the alternate shapes (and thus phonetic forms) of the same morphemes. Some morphemes, though, have no more than one invariable form in all contexts, such as “dog”, “cat”, etc. The variants of the plurality “-s” make the allomorphs thereof in the following examples: map-maps, mouse-mice, sheep-sheep etc. 1.45.What is a free morpheme? What is a bound morpheme? 1.46.What is a root ? What is a stem? What is an affix? A “stem” is any morpheme or combination of morphemes to which an affix can be added. It may be the same as , and in other cases, different from, a root. For example, in the word “friends” , “friend” is both the root and the stem, but in the word “friendships”, “friendships” is its stem, “friend” is its root. Some words (i. e., compounds ) have more than one root ,e. g., “mailman” , “girlfriend” ,ect. An “affix” is the collective term for the type of formative that can be used, only when added to another morpheme(the root or stem). Affixes are limited in number in a language, and are generally classified into three subtypes: prefix, suffix and infix, e. g. , “mini-”, “un-”, ect.(prefix); “-ise”, “-tion”, ect.(suffix). 1.47.What are open classes? What are closed classes? 1.48.What is lexicon? What is word? What is lexeme? What is vocabulary?
Lexicon? Word? Lexeme? Vocabulary? According to Leonard Bloomfield, a word is a minimum free form (compare: a sentence is a maximum free form, according to Bloomfield ). There are other factors that may help us identify words: (1) stability (no great change of orthographic features); (2)relative uninterruptibility (we can hardly insert anything between two parts of a word or between the letters). To make the category clearer we can subclassify words into a few types: (1) variable and invariable words(e. g.,-mats, seldom-?); (2) grammatical and lexical words(e. g. to, in ,etc., and table, chair, ect. By “lexical words” we mean the words that carry a semantic content, e.g., nouns, verbs, adjectives and many adverbs; (3) closed-class and open-class words(see I.47). In order to reduce the ambiguity of the term “word” ,the term “lexeme” is postulated as the abtract unit which refers to the smallest unit in the meaning system of a language that can be distinguished from other smaller units. A lexeme can occur in many different forms in actual spoken or written texts. For example, “write” is the lexeme of the following words: “write”, “write”, “wrote”, “writing”, and “written.” “Vocabulary” usually refers to all words or lexical items a person has acquired about technical or/and untechnical things. So we encourage our students to enlarge their vocabulary. “vocabulary” is also used to mean word list or glossary. 1.49.What is collocation?
1.51.What is a sentence? 1.52.What are syntactic relations? “Positional relation”, or “word order”, refers to the sequential arrangement to words in a language. It is a manifestation of a certain aspect of what F. de Saussure called “syntagmatic relations”, or of what other linguists call “horizontal relations” or “chain relations”. “Relations of substitutability” refer to classes or sets of words substitutable for each other grammatically in same sentence structures. Saussure called them “associative relations”. Other people call them “paradigmatic/vertical/choice relations”. By “relations of co-occurrence”, one means that words of different sets of clauses may permit or require the occurrence of a word of another set or class to form a sentence or a particular part of a sentence. Thus relations of co-occurrence partly belong to syntagmatic relations and partly to paradigmatic relations. 1.53.What is IC analysis? What are immediate constituents(and ultimate
constituents)? 1.54.What are endocentric and exocentric constructons? 1.55.What is a subject? A predicate? An object? A “predicate” refers to a major constituent of sentence structure in a binary analysis in which all obligatory constituents other than the subject are considered together. e.g., in the sentence “The monkey is jumping ”, “is jumping ” is the predicate. Traditionally “object” refers to the receiver or goal of an action, and it is further classified into two kinds: direct object and indirect object. In some inflecting languages, an object is marked by case labels: the “accusative case” for direct object, and the “dative case ” for direct object, and the “dative case” for indirect to word order(after the verb and preposition) and by inflections(of pronouns). E .g., in the sentence “John kissed me”, “me” is the object. Modern linguists suggest that an object refers to such an item that it can become a subject in passive transformation. 1.56.What is category? 1.57.What is number? What is gender? What is case? “Gender” displays such contrasts as “masculine”, “feminine”, “neuter”, or “animate” and “inanimate”, etc., for the analysis of word classes. When word items refer to the sex of the real-world entities, we natural gender(the opposite is grammatical gender). “Case” identifies the syntactic relationship between words in a sentence. In Latin grammar, cases are based on variations in the morphological forms of the word, and are given the terms “accusative”, “nominative”, “dative”,etc. In English, the case category is realized in three ways: by following a preposition and by word order. 1.58.What is concord? What is government? 1.59.What is a phrase? What is a clause? A “clause” is group of words with its own subject and predicate included in a larger subject-verb construction, namely, in a sentence. Clauses can also be classified into two kinds: finite and non-finite clauses, the latter referring to what are traditionally called infinitive phrase, participle phrase and gerundial phrase. (For “sentence”, see I.51.) 1.60.What is conjoining? What is embedding? What is recursiveness?
1.62.What is semantics? 1.63.What is meaning? 1.64.What is the difference­­­­­­­
between meaning, concept, connotation, sense, implication, denotation,
notation, reference, implicature and signification? 1.65.What is the Semantic/Semiotic Triangle? 1.66.What is contextualism? The “linguistic context” is another aspect of contextualism. It considers the probability of one word’s co-occurrence or collocation with another, which forms part of the meaning, and an important factor in communication. 1.67.How many kinds of meaning did linguists find and study? Different from the traditional and the functional approach, F.R.Palmer(1981) and J.Lyons(1977) suggest we draw a distinction between sentence meaning and utterance meaning, the former being directly predictable from the grammatical and lexical features of the sentence, while the latter includes all the various types of meaning not necessarily associated thereto. 1.68.What is synonymy? (1) In shades of meaning (e.g., finish, complete, close, conclude, terminate, finalize, end, etc.); (2) In stylistic meaning(see 1.67); (3) In emotive meaning(or affective meaning, see 1.67); (4) In range of use (or collocative meaning, see 1.67); (5) In British and American English usages [e.g., autumn (BrE), fall (AmE)]. Simeon Potter said,“ Language is like dress. We vary our dress to suit the occasion. We do not appear at a friend’s silver-wedding anniversary in gardening clothes, nor do we go punting on the river in a dinner-jacket.” This means the learning lf synonyms is important to anyone that wishes to use his language freely and well. 1.69.What is Antonymy? How many kinds of antonyms are there? 1.70.What is hyponymy? What is a hyponym? What is superordinate?
1.71.What is polysemy? What is homonymy? 1.72.What is entailment? 1.73.What is presupposition? 1.74.What is componential analysis? Man: +Human+Adult+Male 1.75.What is predication analysis? What is a one-place predicate?
What is a two-place predicate? What is a no-place predicate? What
are down-graded predications? 1.76.What is a logical operator? (2)Example of logical operators are “not”, “and”, “or”, “some”, “if”, “false”, etc. The term “logical operation” reflects the fact that these meaning elements are often thought of as performing operations, controlling elements of the semantic system, so to speak. 1.77.Why is writing important? Why is speech considered prior to
writing? (2)It is widely considered that speech is the primary medium, and writing the secondary medium. But this comparative diminution does not mean that writing is unimportant. With the shot-lived memory and the finite capacity of information storing, writing is used, partly for compensation and partly for better communication. We cannot trust the negotiation counterpart so we turn to the writing and signing of an agreement. Writing leads people to the acme of science, study and research, and to the ultimate joy of literature 1.78.What is a pictogram? What is an ideogram? (2)The advantage of pictograms is that they can be easily understood
by anyone. That explains why international road signs and public-toilet
signs make a wide use of them. 1.79.What is word writing? What is sound writing? What is syllabic
writing? (2)“Syllabic writing” is a word-syllabus writing, developed by the Egyptians. Japanese is a typical syllabic-writing language, though derived from Chinese, a Sino-Tibetan language. The Japanese modified the Chinese characters they had borrowed from ancient China so that the Japanese syllables(to the number of fifty) were each represented, either by what is called “hiragana” or by what is name “katakana”. 1.80.What is an alphabet? What is a syllabary? 1.81.What is a grapheme? What is orthography? (2)Orthography means correct spelling, spelling rules or attempts to improve spelling. 1.82.What is reference? 1.83.What is affixation, conversion and compounding? (2)“Conversion” (called sometimes “full conversion”) is a word-formation process by which a word is altered from one part of speech into another without the addition (or deletion) of any morpheme. “Partial conversion” is also alteration when a word of one word-class appears in a function which is characteristic of another word-class, e.g., “ the wealthy” (=wealthy people).
1.84.What is blending, abbreviation and back formation? (1)”Blending” is a relatively complex form of compounding in which two roots are blended by joining the initial part of the first root and the final part of the second root, or by joining the initial parts of the two roots, e.g., smog→smoke+fog, boatel→boat+hotel, etc. (2)”Abbreviation”, also called in some cases “clipping”, means that a word that seems unnecessarily long is shortened, usually by clipping either the front or the back part of it, e.g., telephone→phone, professor→prof., etc. Broadly speaking, abbreviation includes acronyms that are made up from the first letters of the long name of an organization, e.g., World Bank→WB, European Economic Community→EEC, etc. Other examples of acronyms can be found with terminologies, to be read like one word, e.g., radio detecting and ranging→radar []. Test of English as a Foreign Language→TOEFL [], etc. (3)“Back-formation” refers to an abnormal type of word-formation where a shorter word is derived by detecting an imagined affix from a longer form already present in the language. It is a special kind of metanalyais, combined with analogical creation (see 1.85), e.g., editor→edit, enthusiasm→enthuse, etc. 1.85.What is analogical creation? What is borrowing? The process of “analogical creation”, as one of the English tendencies in English word-formation, refers to the phenomenon that a new word or a new phrase is coined by analogy between a newly created one and an existing one. For example, “marathon” appeared at the First Olympic Games and by analogy modern English created such words as “telethon”, “talkthon”, etc. Analogy may create single words(e.g., sunrise-moonrise, earthrise, etc.; earthquake-starquake, youthquake, etc.) and phrases( e.g., environmental pollution-sound pollution, air pollution, cultural pollution,etc.). “Borrowing” means the English language borrowed words from foreign languages, which fall in four categories: aliens, denizens, translation-loans and semantic borrowings. “Aliens” are foreign loans that still keep their alien shapes, i. e., morphological and phonological features, e.g., “elite”, “coup détat”, “coupé”, etc.(from French). “Deniens” , also foreign words, have transformed their foreign appearance, i.e., they have been Angolcized (or Americanized), e. g., “get” (a Scandinavian borrowing), “theater” (a French loan), etc. “Hybrids” are also denizens, because they are words made up of two parts both from foreign soil, such as “sociology” (“socio-” from French and -logy from Greek). “Translation-loans” are words imported by way of translation, e. g., “black humor” from French(“humor noir”), “found object” form French ,too (“object trouve”), etc. Finally, semantic borrowings have acquired new meaning under the influence of language or languages other than the source tongue. For example, “gift” mean “the price of a wife ” in Old English (450-1150AD), and after the semantic borrowing of the meaning of “gift or present” of the Scandinavian term “gipt”, it meant and still means “gift” in the modern sense of it. 1.86.What is assimilation, dissimilation and metathesis? “Dissimilation”, opposite of assimilation, is the influence exercised by one sound segment upon the articulation of another sound, so that the sounds become less alike than expected. As there are two[r] sounds in the Latin word “peregrines”, for instance, the first segment had to dissimilate into[l], hence the English word “pilgrim”. “Metathesis” is a process involving an alteration in the sequence
of sounds. Metathesis had originally been a performance error, which
was overlooked and accepted by the speech community. For instance,
the word “bird” was “bird” in Old English. The word “ask” used to
be pronounced [ask] in Old English, as still occurs in some English
dialects.
胡壮麟《语言学教程》课后答案 Define the following terms: 20． Articulatory phonetics: the study of production of speechsounds.
35. morpheme:the smallest unit of language in terms of relationship between expression and content,a unit that cannot be divided into further small units without destroying or drastically altering the meaning,whether it is lexical or grammatical. 36. compoundoly morphemic words which consist wholly of free morphemes,such
as classroom,blackboard,snowwhite,etc. 79. reference: the use of anguage to express a proposition,i.e.
to talk about things in context. 137. direct speech: a kind of speech presentation in which the character said in its fullest form. 138. indirect speech: a kind of speech presentation in which the character said in its fullest form. 139. indirect speech: a kind of speech presentation which is an amalgam of direct speech. 140. narrator’s repreaentation of speech acts: a minimalist kind of presentation in which a part of passage can be seen as a summery of a longer piece of discourse,and therefore even more backgruonded than indirect speech representation would be. 141. narrator”srepresentation of thought acts: a kind of categories used by novelists to represent the thoughts of their of characters are exactly as that used to present speech acts.For example,,she considered his unpunctuality. 142. indirect thought: a kind of categories used by novelist to represent the thoughts of their characters are exactly as that used to present indirect speech.For example,she thought that he woule be late. 143. fee indirect speech: a further category which can occur,which is an amalgam of direct speech and indirect speech features. 144. narrator’s representation of thought acts:a kind of the categories used by novelists to present the thoughts of therir characters are exactly the same as those used to represent a speech e.g.He spent the day thinking. 145. indirect thought: a kind of categories used by novelist to represent the thoughts of their characters are exactly as that used to present indirect speech.For example,she thought that he would be late. 146. fee indirect speech: a further category which can occur,which is an amalgam of direct speech and indirect speech features. 147. narrator”s representation of thought: the categories used by novelists to present the thoughts of their characters are exactly the same as those used to represent a speech e.g.He spent the day thinking. 148. free indirect thought: the categories used by novelists to represent the thoughts of their characters are exactly the same as those used to represent a speech,e.g.He was bound to be late. 149. direct thought: categories used by novelists to represent
the thoughts of their characters are exactly the same as those used
to represent a speech.. Wish you all Success! Good Luck! Part I Introduction about Examination: II. Reading Comprehension (16 points, 4 points for each) 例如： “Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;/Destroy and Preserver’ hear, O hear!” Questions: Answer: B. The West wind: "breath of Autumn’s being’’ C. It destroys things /thoughts / idea that are dead, it preserves
new life. (or seeds that represent new life or new birth.) 第二部分是非选择题 (共44分) 例如："My boy!" said the old gentleman, learning 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." (Charles
Dickens, Oliver Twist) 参考答案： 评分标准： IV. Topic discussion (20 points in all, 10 points for each) 例如： 参考答案： B.He creates life-like characters, especially the unconventional Huckleberry Finn, who runs away from civilization and stands opposite to conventinnal village morality. C.He uses a simple, direct vernacular language, totally different from any precious literary language. It is the kind of colloquial language belonging to the lower class, the living local American English. D.He has created a special humor to satirize social injustice and the decayed convention. 评分标准： 注意: 在做这一类题时，不必死记硬背，一些不认识的生词可以换成你较熟悉的词来代替，只要意思表达清楚，把关键词答上，就可以得到基本的分数．切忌在做题的过程中死记硬背，这样很容易在考试中遗忘所及的内容，要在理解的基础上，融会贯通，充分发挥！万一考试时忘了也不能放弃，宁可多写，也不能少些或不写． 附: 非选择题的评分标准： 2. 考生答非所问不给分． 3. 阅卷时，内容和语言要综合考虑．语言表达不好的要适当扣分． 评判语言好坏及扣分原则如下： 注: 英美文学这本书共八章，英国文学是五章，美国文学是三章，而在考试中, 英国文学占55%--60%, 美国文学占40%--45%，所以大家要分清主次，以便能在有效地时间内达到最好的效果！切忌：在看串讲资料的过程中，不能只记选择题的答案，一定要记住考点，融会贯通，灵活运用！ Justice and the law There is no single legal system in the United Kingdom. A feature
common to all systems of law in the United Kingdom is that there
is no complete code. The sources of law include (1) statutes; (2)
a large amount of “unwritten” or common law; (3) equity law; (4)
European Community. Another common feature is the distinction made
between criminal law and civil law. I．Criminal Proceedings 1. In England and Wales, once the police have charged a person
with a criminal offence, the crown Prosecution Service assumes control
of the case reviews the evidence to decide whether to prosecute. 2. In Britain all criminal trial are held in open count because
the criminal law presumes the innocence of the accused until he
has been proved guilty beyond reasonable doubt. The prosecution
and the defense get equal treatment. No accused person has to answer
the question of the police before trial. He is not compelled to
give evidence in count. Every accused person has the right to employ
a legal adviser to conduct his defense. If he can not afford to
pay, he may be granted aid at public expense. In criminal trial
by jury, the judge passes sentence, but the jury decided the issue
of guilt or innocence. The jury composed of 12 or ordinary people.
If the verdict of the jury can not be unanimous, it must be a majority. 3.A verdict of “ not guilt” means acquittal for the accused, who
can never again be charged with that specific crime.
I. Choose the right answer: 1. ____brings Henry Fielding the name of the "Prose Homer". 2. Alexander Pope worked painstakingly on his poems 3. Of all the 18th century novelists ___was the first to set out, 4. ____is the most successful religious allegory in the English
language. 5. In which of the following works can you find the proper names
6. "As shades more sweetly recommend the light, 7. The Rape of the Lock by Alexander Pope is written in the form
8. Which of the following is NOT a typical feature of 9. "The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power, 10. ____has been regarded by some as "Father of the English
novel" 11. ____was very much concerned with the theme of the vanity 12. ____was the only important dramatist of the 18th century, 13. As the representative of the Enlightenment, Pope was one 14. The Rivals and ____are generally regarded as important links
15. ____is a sharp satire on the moral degeneracy(道德沦丧) of the
16. The poem "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard"
by Thomas Gray 17. _______, written in heroic couplet by Pope, is considered 18. ______is a typical feature of Swift’s writings. 19. In the following writings by Henry Fielding, 20. "Hold! See whether it is or not before you go to the 21. In terms of Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, which is
wrong? 22. The Houyhnhnms depicted by Jonathan Swift in Gulliver’s Travels
are________. II. Read the quoted part and answer the questions: 1. "Words are like leaves; Questions: 参考答案： 2) In the passage the author used "Simile" the device,
3) The sentence means: Where/When too many words are used, 4) The passage implies authors shouldn’t stress too much 2. "Let not Ambition mock their useful toil, The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power, Questions: 参考答案： 2) "The inevitable hour" means time of death. (P156) 3) The first stanza means: The men with ambition and high position
4) In the passage, the poet reflects on the death----no matter
how poor or wealthy, III. Questions and answers: 参考答案： 2)Its background was: 3)In essence, the Neoclassical Period was a progressive intellectual movement. 4)The Enlighteners believed in self-restraint, self-reliance and
hard work;They celebrated reason/rationality, equality and science.
5)In literature, The Enlightenment Movement brought about a 2.Please cite examples from "Gulliver’s Travels" to explain
briefly 参考答案: 2)In the part 4 of the book, Swift made horses with reason and
good qualities. 3. People always say that: "As a member of the middle class,
参考答案： 2) Robison goes out to sea, gets shipwrecked and marooned/landed on a lonely island, struggles to live for 24 years there and finally is saved by a ship and returns to England. During the period Robinson leads a harsh and lonely life and survives by growing corps, taming animals, etc. growing from a naive young man into a hardened man. 3) With a great capacity for work, inexhaustible energy (精力充沛),
4) In the novel, Defoe glorified human labor and the puritan fortitude I. Choose the right answer: 2. It is _____who established the cult of the individual 3. The two major novelists of the English Romantic Period 4. _____defines the poet as "man speaking to men," 5. For the Romantics, ____is not only the major source of poetic imagery, but also provides the dominant subject matter. 6. In the Romantic period, ____is the most prosperous literary form. 7. The tone of literature in "Song of Experience" by William Blake is _______. A.doleful 8. _____is regarded as a "worship of nature". 9. Which of the following writings is not created by William Wordsworth? A.I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud. 10. Wordsworth’s short poems can be classified into two groups: 11. "Don Juan" is Byron’s masterpiece, a great ______of the early 19th century. 12. In his lyrics such as "Ode to Liberty", "Ode
to Naples", 13. "Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere; / Destroy and Preserver; hear, O hear!" The two lines are found in_____. 14. In Shelly’s "To a Skylark", the bird, suspended between
15. The author of "Ode on a Grecian Urn" is __________. 16. Jane Austen’s first novel is __________. 17. In terms of Pride and Prejudice, which is not true? novels. Impressions". great love and realistic benefits. 18. After reading the first chapter of Pride and Prejudice, 19. Romanticism is a period of British literature roughly dated from _________. 20. Which of the following is the Gothic novel? 21.The lines "It was a miracle of rare device, in__________. 22. Which of the following is taken from John Keats’ "Ode on a Grecial Urn"? II. Read the quoted part and answer the questions: (1)Identify the poem and poet. church to prey." Answer: experience) by Blake.(P172) (2)"notes of woe" means the songs/notes of sadness. (3)It implies: religion is the instrument of their repression/ oppression, its nature is to help bring misery to the poor children.(P169) 2. "The isles of Greece, the isles of Greece! (1)Identify the poem and its author; Answer: Greece (from Don Juan)" (P199) (2)The sentence means: The sun is still on the rise, but the rest things all set. (3)The passage implied: The author lamented over the fallen Greece: heroes,who enjoyed freedom and civilization, but now Greece had been enslaved,the past honorable history couldn’t be found again. (P199) 3. "With plough and spade and hoe and loom (1)Explain "sepulcher" Answer: (2)The poem ironically addressed to the workers who submit to capitalist exploitation. It warned them: If they gave up the struggle, they would be digging graves for themselves wish their own hands. (P211) 4. "Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness, (1)Who is the poet? The name? Answer: poet---John Keats. (P219) (2)The sentence means: though time has passed, the urn , pastoral/lyrical tale to us, and the description of the urn is much more beautiful than the words of any human. (P218) (3)The theme is: Human life is transient, but the art is immortal. (P218) 5. "Place me on Sunium’s marbles steep, Interpret the passage and spot its implication. Answer: Greece (from Don Juan)" (P203) (2)Swan is famous for its faith to its lover, one of them die,
fight with the invaders till death, and appeal to the suppressed Greek people to struggle for their freedom and liberation. 6. "For oft, when on my couch I lie (1) What is the "bliss of the solitude"? express? Answer: (2)It is a bliss/happiness to recollect the beauty of nature in his mind when he is solitude/lonely. (3)The poem depicts/deals with the flowers that he came across along waterside, by which he expresses the quiet, sympathy, loving feeling to nature just like his words "poetry is from "emotion recollected in tranquility". 7. "Then naked & white, all their bags left behind, (1)Identify the poem and its poet; Answer: Innocence)", which was written by William Blake.(p171) (2) This is a lovely poem presenting a happy and innocent world, though the wretched child are exploited and orphaned, religion make people obedient to exploitation, and from religion, they can get consolation and an "illusory happiness".(p168) 8. "As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need. A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed (1)Explain "I fall upon the thorns of life, I bleed"
(P208) What’s that? Answer: being fettered to/limited by the humdrum/too ordinary reality of everyday! (P208) (2)In the poem, the west wind has become the poet himself, wind,to destruct and construct with the strong power like the west wind. (P207~208) (3)"If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?" (P208) 9. "O Attic shape! Fair attitude! With brede (1)How do you understand "cold pastoral" Answer: lacks life and warmth. (P222) (2)Contrast. (P218) (3)The poet wanted to show the permanence of the art and the transience of human passion presenting his ambivalence/opposing feelings about time and nature of beauty. 10. "Where fore feed and Clothe and save (1)Who wrote the poem? What’s its name? Answer: (2)Drones the male of the honey-bees that don’t work , (3)The poet called all working people to rise up against their political oppressors, but point out the intolerable injustice of economic exploitation. It expressed the love for freedom and the hatred to tyranny of the author. (P207) 11. "Wild spirit, which art moving everywhere; (1)What does the "wild spirit "refer to? Answer: (2)Because west wind buried the dead year and year and prepared for a new spring, the poet call it "Destroyer and preserver". (3)It is "Ode to the west wind" of Shelley. (terza rima) III. Questions and answers: Romanticism. Answer: (2) The faculties they cherished are: imagination, spontaneity, inspiration. (P162) 2.William Wordsworth was the first representative author of Rom,How do you know his idea and style? Answer: (2)Beyond the pleasure of the picturesque with the eye and the external aspects of nature, however, lies in deeper moral awareness, a sense of completeness in multiplicity. express moral) (3)Common life and the joy and sorrow of the common people and inner self are his subjects; (4)He is a poet in memory of the past and was called "prophets of nature"; (5)He deliberately writes in simple and ordinary speech , profound feeling; (6)He thought poet is "a man speaking to men," poetry is "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings, which originates in emotion recollected in tranquility." (7)He always writes an elusive beauty of simplicity or a rural figure. (P176-179) 3.What thoughts and event influenced the period of Romanticism? Answer: nature, society and education, which provided guiding priding principles for the French Revolution and Romanticism; (2) The French Revolution and "the Declaration of Rights of Man"(written by Thomas Paine)aroused the great sympathy and enthusiasm in the English liberals and radicals,which became a great source for Romanticism. (3) England itself had experienced profound economic and social changes as industrialism,which were reflected in the works of literature. (P157-159) 4.Byron’s greatest contrhbution is his creation of the "Byronic hero" What kind of the hero he is? Give comment on him. Answer: generosity, and frankness… figure. inexhaustible energies, social systems and conventions. (2) Comment: The poet’s true intention is to present a panoramic view of different types of society,the main theme of the works the basic ironic theme of appearance and reality,during which the poet also presented various materials and the clash of emotions. (P194-196) 5. What is the difference between Romanticism and Neoclassicism? Answer: existing social and political condition, the Romantics saw the corruption and injustice of the (2)The Neo saw man as a social; while Rom saw him as an individual in the solitary state; (3)Neo stressed the common features of men; but the Rom stressed the special qualities of each individual’s mind; (4)Neo celebrated rationality, equality and science of the outside world; while Rom changed to the inner world of the human spirit, whose theory saw the individual as the center of all experience; (5)Literature was heavily didactic and moralizing. There were fixed laws for each type of literature; Rom expressed his feeling, valued accuracy in portraying, they thought literature should be free from all rules. (6)The most important form in Neo was prose; while Rom was an age of poetry. (P160-161) 6.Analyze the characters of John Keats’s poetry. Answer: (2)Words are beautiful and musical. (3)The ancient Greek and English poetry provides the most important imaginative resource. (4)The construction of poems are knit, and the description go beyond the physical beauty of the world. (P218-219) 7. Jane Austen was the only important female author in the 18-19th century, how do you know about her? Answer: (1)Her novels always dealt with the romantic entanglement of the heroines; (2)She believed in it that reason over passion, sense of responsibility, good manners, virtues of moderation, (3)She contempt snobbery, stupidity, worldliness etc; (4)Her main concern was the relationship between men and women in love; (5)Her writing range was limited, all restricted to the provincial life of the 18th century England; (6)She presented the quiet, day-to-day country life of the middle -upper -class English. (7)Her characteristic theme was: maturity is got by the loss of illusions. (P223--226) I. Choose the right answer: ____works are characterized by a mingling of humor and pathos. 3. _____is famous for its vivid descriptions of the workhouse and
life of the underworld in the 19th century London. ____is an elaborate and powerful expression of Alfred Tennyson’s
philosophical and religious thoughts. 4. The most distinguishing feature of Charles Dickens’s works lies
in his ______. _____is based on the Celtic legends of King Arthur and his knights
of the Round Table. 5. _____is Robert Browning’s best-known dramatic monologue. 6. _____initiates a new type of realism and sets into motion a
variety of developments, leading in the direction of both the naturalistic
and psychological novel. 7. _____works are known as “novels of characters and environment.” 8. ____belives that man’s fate is predeterminedly tragic, driven
by a combined force of ‘nature”, both inside and outside. 9. The author of the work “Dombey and Son” is _________. 10. The most important characteristic in Ulysses by Alfred Tennyson
is _______. 11. “Self-conceited”, “cruel” and “tyrannical” are most likely
the names of the character in______. 12. Robert Browning’s style is_______. 13. According to D.H. Lawrence, _____was the first novelist that
“started putting all the actions inside”. 14. Middlemarch is considered to be George Eliot’s greatest novel,
owing to all the following reasons EXCEPT_______. 15. ‘Every day, every hour, brought to him one more little stroke
of her nature, and to her one more of his”, the sentence is found
in_____. 16. Which of the following best describes the protagonist (Henchard)
of Thomas Hardy’s “The Mayor of the Casterbridge”? 17. Which of the following description of Thomas Hardy is wrong? 18. Charlotte’s works are famous for the depiction of the life
of the middle-class working women, particularly________. II. Read the quoted part and answer the questions: Who is the speaker? Answer: It refers to Cathy married her husband (Linton) and deserted him and her own love. From the social point of view, it is a story about a poor man –Heathcliff abused, betrayed and distorted by his social betters/by the people with higher social position, because he is a poor nobody. (P266) Flashback. (P267) “In pursuance of this determination, little Oliver, to his excessive astonishment, was released from bondage, and ordered to put himself into a clean shirt. He had hardly achieved this very unusual gymnastic performance when Mr. Bumble brought him, with his own hands, a basin of gruel and the holiday allowance of two ounces and a quarter of bread. A very tremendous sight, Oliver begins to cry very piteously. Thinking, not unnaturally, that the board must have decided to kill him for some useful purpose, or they never would have begun to fatten him up in this way.” Identify the title and the writer. Answer: Because he would be sold to a notorious chimney-sweeper (at 3 pound ten) and became his apprentice. (P243) Oliver was punished for that “impious and profane offence of asking for more gruel.” (P242)] From the passage we can see the food is so little and poor in fact, but in the little Oliver’s eyes, it became “A very tremendous sight”. Because in the usual days Oliver and other children were maltreated and abused cruelly, they couldn’t eat well and were punished severely by the cruelty and hypocrisy of the dehumanizing workhouse board. (P243) “Sunset and evening star, Explain the implications of the “sunset, evening star, sea”. Answer: The title is “Crossing the Bar”. It means leaving this world and entering the next world –the world of the spirit The poem expresses the fearlessness to death of the poet and his
faith in God and an afterlife. “My favour at her breast, Name the author and the title of the works. Answer: It means the title of the Duchess (of Ferrara) the Duck gave her through marriage has a family history of over 900 years. (P288) Interpret: My favor –the title of the Duchess is better and more
proud than any gifts of the world, but my last duchess was ready
to be grateful to others’ flatter and The literary form is “dramatic monologue”. (the Duck’s own defensive words betrays and condemns himself) (P287) “I will drink That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when Identify the name of the poem. Answer: The sentence means: I will keep travelling and exploring till the end of my life. (P281) The theme is Ulysses can’t endure the peaceful commonplace everyday life. Old as he is, he persuaded his old followers to go with him and to set sail again to pursue a new world and new knowledge. (the poem also expresses Tennyson’s own determination and courage to brave the struggle of life but also reflects the restlessness and aspiration/anxiety of the age.) (P281) The literary form is “dramatic monologue”. (P281) “Come, Tess, Tell me in confidence.” … 1) Interpret the passage. Answer: 7. “Break, break, break, Name the poet and the poem. Answer: The main tone is Sadness. The device is contract. The rhyme scheme is “a b c d”. (P277) The poem expressed the poet’s feeling of sadness in memory of his best friend. (P276) III. Questions and answers: Darwin’s theory “the survival of the fittest” shook the theoretical basis of the traditional faith, many authors expressed their doubts and uncertainty in their works; Utilitarianism was widely accepted and practiced, many conscious authors severely criticized the Utilitarianism, especially its devalue of culture and its cold indifference to human feeling and imagination; Realism novels criticized the society and defended for the mass, and they concerned about the fate of the common people such as their poverty misery, angry with the inhuman social institution, the social immorality, injustice and money-worship. Victorian literature represents the reality of the age. The high-spirit vitality, the down-to-earth earnestness, the good-natured humour and unbound imagination are unprecedented. (P235—237) Jane Eyre is the greatest governess image in the literature history; can you analyze the character of her? Jane Eyre was a little plain governess with quick wit, honesty, frankness, loving heart and the spirit of independence and self-dignity. In literature, she is an individual conscious to self-realization. She was lonely and neglected young woman with a fierce longing for love, understanding and a full, happy life. In author’s mind, man’s life is composed of perpetual struggle between sin and virtue, good and evil. The heroines’ joy, comes from the sacrifice of self and the overcome of some weakness. By Jane’s experience, we can see the cruelty, hypocrisy, and other evils of the upper classes and the misery and the suffering of the poor, and the false social convention on love and marriage. (P256—259) Analyze the background of the Victorian Period. Economic developed rapidly and social problems prevailed in England and it became the “workshop of the world”. England settled down to a time of prosperity and stability, the people valued earnestness, respectability, modesty, and democracy. In the last decades, British empire declined, and Victorian values decayed. Analyze the character created by George Eliot with an example and his style. George Eliot set a new type of realism –both naturalistic and psychological novel; She sought to present the inner struggle of a soul and to reveal the motives, impulse and hereditary influences, the slow growth or decline of the character; Her masterpiece “Middlemarch” is a study of provincial life, showing a panoramic view of life in a small English town; She concerned for the destiny of women, the heroin in “Middlemarch”
–Dorothea, was a typical character of Eliot. She was a lady with
great intelligence, potential and social aspiration. She had the
ideals to devote to the society, later, she married an elder man
to realize her ideals by helping him in the holy Christianity Career.
At the end of the story, she became content with giving her second
husband “wifely help”. Analyze the style of Charles Dickens. Adeptness/skilfulness with the vernacular and large vocabulary; The most distinguishing/remarkable character-portrayal; The best writing from the child’s point of view; (His best depicted characters are those innocent, virtuous, persecuted, helpless children) The depiction of those horrible and grotesque characters; The mingling/mixing features of humor and pathos/sorrow. (P241) How do you know the naturalistic idea of Hardy? The tragic sense is the keynote of Hardy’s novels, and he is a nostalgic author. Hardy’s novels always set in Wessex, the fictional primitive and crude region, which is threatened by the invading capitalism, expressing the conflict between the traditional and the modern, the old and the modern. Man’s fate is tragic with born, driven by the force of the nature of outside and inside, and man is bound by his inherent nature and hereditary traits which prompt him to go and search for happiness or success, and set him in conflict with the environment; we can see he is influenced greatly by Darwin’s theory “survival of the fittest”. Man proves to be incompetent/impotent before Fate, and he seldom escapes his destiny. The pessimistic view of life predominates most works of Hardy, which earns him the name of a naturalistic writer. Hardy is noted for he rustic dialect and a poetic flavor, so he
is also called local-colorist. (P300--302) I. Choose the right answer:
3. In his famous poem_____, Yeats explores the problems of death,
love, old age and art. 4. ____is a poem concerned with the spiritual breakup of a modern
civilization in which human life has lost its meaning, significance
and purpose. 5. The Rainbow and_____are generally regarded as D.H. Lawrence’s
masterpieces. 6. In ____, James Joyce intends to present a microcosm of the whole
human life by providing an instance of how a single event contains
all the events of its kind, and how history is recapitulated in
the happenings of one day. 7. Structurally and thematically, George Bernard Shaw follows the
great tradition _______. 8. Galsworthy was a _____writer, having inherited the fine traditions
of the great Victorian novelists of the critical realism such as
Dickens and Thackeray. 9. In "The Forsyte Saga" by John Galsworthy, a typical
Forsyte has a remarkable characteristic-----a strong sense of______. 10. In "The Lake Isle of Innisfree", William Bulter Yeats
expresses his ____________. 11. In which of the following poems by Yeats did you find the allusion
to Helen and Trojan War? 12. Of the following poems by T.S. Eliot, which is hailed as a
landmark and a model of the 20th Century English Poetry? 13. "The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the windowpanes,/
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the windowpanes/ Linked
its tongue into the corners of the evening,/ Lingered upon the pools
that stand in drains." The stanza is taken from_________. 14. Which of the following best describes the speaker of ’The Love
Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"? 15. Of the following works by D.H. Lawrence, _______established
his position as novelist. 16. Which of the following is considered to be a better-structured
novel? 17. ’The Lawrence trilogy" refers to the following three plays
except ______.
19. Of the following writings by James Joyce, which is a prime
example of modernism in literature? 20. Which of the following is not true according to James Joyce? II. Read the quoted part and answer the questions: <1> Why does the sentence repeat in the poem for several times? Answer: 2) "And indeed there will be time <1> What deep implication can you get from the passage? Answer: 3) "I have measured out my life with coffee spoons; <1> What did the speaker presume? Answer: <2> The Excerpt shows the futile and boring life of the upper class. (Every day, they drink coffee, listen to music, but they can’t really enjoy the pleasure of life, leading a boring life.) 4) "I should have been a pair of ragged claws <1> Interpret it. Answer: 5) "But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns
on a screen: <1> Interpret it. Answer: 2. "I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, 1) Identify the poem and poet; Answer: 2) In the poem, the poet imagined a place where he could live like a hermit, implying that he was tired of the life of his day, he sought to escape into and ideal "fairyland" where he could live calmly as a hermit and enjoyed the beauty of the nature. 3. "North Richmond Street, being blind, was a quiet street except at the hour when the Christian Brothers’ school set the boys free ..., gazed at one another with brown imperturbable faces." 1) Comment the main tone of the story with the concrete images
of the passage. Answer: 2) The story introduced a little boy’s love experience, expressing his awareness of reality and expectation, and pointing out the drabness and harshness of the adult world. (P385) 3) In this article the author used many images to show the symbols
meaning, expressing the frustrated quest for beauty. (P390) 4. "You are not, my son. Battle-battle -and suffer. It’s about
all you do, as far as I can see." 1) Name the works and its writer. Answer: 2) The two speakers are Mrs. Morel and her son (Paul). III. Questions and answers: Answer: 2) The French symbolism heralded modernism; 3) Modernism takes the irrational philosophy and the theory of psycho-analysis as its theoretical base; 4) The major theme of Modernism are the distorted, alienated and ill relationship between man and society, man and nature, man and man, man and himself; 5) The Modernists concern about the private, subjective, inner individual and the tone is disillusioned. (P312—313) 2. D. H. Lawrence is regarded as revolutionary, how do you know his works? Answer: 2) He criticized the dehumanizing effect of the capitalism industrialization on human which turned man into inhuman machines and unhealthy animal; 3) He believes the life impulse -the sexual impulse was man’s most important instinct, any conscious repression would cause distortion of the man’s personality; 4) He explored the relationship of man and woman in psychology; 5) He believed the alienation and the perversion were caused by the desire for power and money. (P317) 3. What philosophical ideas influenced Modernism? Answer: 2) Darwin’s theory evolution -the social Darwinism "survival of the fittest"; 3) Einstein’s theory of relativity; 4) Freud’s analytical psychology; 5) The irrational philosophy. (P311—P312) 4. Common sense about "The Waste Land" Answer: 1) The poem presents a panorama of physical disorder and spiritual desolation; 2) It reflects the mood of disillusionment, frustration, and despair of the whole post-war generation; 3) It concerns with the spirit breakup that man has lost his meaning, significance, and purpose of life; 4) The poem derogated/criticized the civilized world for its horror, menace, anguish and futility. (P359—362) 5. Analyze the background of the Modernism. Answer: 2) The First World War and The Second World War happened, which influenced people greatly; 3) All kinds of philosophical ideas were produced. (P311—312) 6. Say something about Freudian and Jungian’ psycho-analysis. Answer: 2) Man’s present are the sum of his past, present and future; 3) Truth exists in the unique, isolated, and private world of each individual. 4) The theory creates "steam-of-consciousness". (P316) 7. Why Modernism is different from Realism? Answer: 1) Modernism rejects rationalism, while Realism stresses it; 2) Modernism includes internal, subjective, psychological world, while Realism stresses external, objective, and material world; 3) Modernism advocates new forms and new techniques, and it casts away all the traditional elements such as: story, character, etc. while Realism stresses it. 4) Modernism works are called anti-novel, anti-poetry, anti-drama etc. (P313) 8. List the representative authors of the "Stream of Consciousness" and explain the theory. Answer: 2) The representative authors are: James Joyce "Ulysses" I. Choose the right answer: 2. Henry David Thoreau’s work, ________, has always been regarded
as a masterpiece of the New England Transcendental Movement. 3. "Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own
mind" is a famous quote from______’s writings. 4. ’Leaves of Grass’ commands great attention because of its uniquely
poetic embodiment of________, which are written in the founding
documents of both the Revolutionary War and the American Civil War. 5. According to Whitman, the genuine participation of a poet in
a common cultural effort was to behave as a supreme_________. 6. The period before the American Civil War is generally referred
to as ___________. 7. In the following works, which sign the beginning of the American
literature? 9. Washington Irving’s ’Rip Van Winkle’ is famous for_________. 10. Which of the following statement is not true about Washington
Irving? 11. The Publication of ______established Emerson as the most eloquent
spokesman of New England Transcendentalism. 12. The phrase "a transparent eye-ball’ compares philosophical
mentation of Emerson’s. It appears in_________. 13. In 1837, Ralph Waldo Emerson made a speech entitled _______at
Harvard, which was hailed by Oliver Wendell Holmeasas :Our Intellectual
Declaration of Independence". 14. _____is the most ambivalent (有争议的) writers in the American
literary history. 15. "There is evil in every human heart, which may remain
latent, perhaps, through the whole life; but circumstances may rouse
it to activity", which author of the following authors does
the mention belong to________. 16. In Hawthorne’s novels and short stories, intellectuals usually
appear as________. 17. All of the following are works by Nathaniel Hawthorne except_______. 18. Walt Whitman is radically innovative in the form of his poetry.
What he prefers for his new subject is__________. 19. Which of the following features cannot characterize poems by
Walt Whitman? 20. " The horizon’s edge, the flying sea-crow, the fragrance
of salt marsh and shore mud. These became part of that child who
went forth every day, and who now goes, and will always go forth
every day." The two lines are taken from____________. 21. "Moby Dick" is regarded as the first American_________. 22. The giant Moby Dick may symbolize all EXCEPT________. 23. Which of the following comments on the writings by Herman Melville
is not true? 24. The Transcendentalists believe that, first, nature is ennobling,
and second, the individual is____, therefore, self-reliant. II. Read the quoted part and answer the questions: Questions: 参考答案: 2) With his wife’s dominance at home, the situation became harder and harder for Rip Van Winkle. His wife’s temper became worse and she scolded him for more often. He had to stay in the club with idle people. (P407) 附: Answer: 1) Rip Van Winkle was the hero in Irving’s works. He was
a good-natured man, a henpecked (惧内的，妻管严的) husband. 2. " I celebrated myself, and sing myself, Questions: 参考答案: 2) In this poem Whitman sets forth two principle beliefs: 3. "Standing on the bare ground, ----my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, -----all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball. I am nothing. I see all." Questions: 参考答案: 2) In the essay Emerson clearly expresses the main principles of his Transcendentalist pursuit and his love for nature. Emerson develops his concept of "Over-Soul" Or "Universal Mind". Last but not the leas, it affirms the divinity of the human beings. (P423) 3) It used the device of metaphor. (P423) 4) He wanted to tell us: Nature can purify (净化) our quality and let us get comfort. (P243) III. Questions and answers: Answer: 2) They all pay attention to psychic states of the characters and exalt the individual and common man; 3) American Romanticism revealed unique characteristics: (difference) <1> American authors describe their native land,, especially
the spirit of the pioneering into the west, the desire for an escape
from society and a return to nature;
Answer: His themes in writing are: 2) Hawthorne was influenced greatly by Puritanism, while he criticized it bitterly; 3) He believed Calvinistic ideas, thinking man was depraved and corrupted; they should obey God for saving the spirits; 4) He concerned the moral life of man and human history; 5) He was keen on the description of man’s development of psychology. (P432—433) 3. Explain the theory of Transcendentalism, then list its important author and works. Answer: 1) Man has the capacity of knowing truth intuitively, or the ability of getting knowledge transcending the senses; 2) Nature is ennobling and individual is divine, therefore, man should be self-reliant. 3) Man is divine/holy and perfectible and man can trust himself to decide what is right and act accordingly; (but to Hawthorne and Melville man is a sinner); 4) Universe is over-soul -a symbol of the spirit, God or the universe, there is an emotional communication between an individual soul and the universal "over-soul" -unity of Nature. 5) The important authors are: Emerson (The American Scholar) and Thoreau. 6) "Nature", Emerson’s works, is called the unofficial manifesto for the club. (P421—P422) 4. Hawthorne was a master in using symbol and allegory; cite some example to analyze it. Answer: 2) In the angle of Symbol: "Brown look up to the Heaven and resist the wicked one" symbols Brown has the force to resist the evilness of the Nature and he still has the faith to God; but "he is alone in the forest" symbols the society is the place full of sins and evilness, Brown’s strength is not enough at all; then after returning, he lives a dismal and gloomy life symbols he has been crushed down by the social evilness and lost his belief in goodness and piety. (P434—435) 5. Washington Irving was called "Father of the American short stories" and "the American Goldsmith". What characteristics did he have? Answer: 2) He remained a conservative and always exalted a disappearing past, and he prefer the past to present, prefer a dream-like world to a real one; 3) His stories were always from legend, especially German legends, showing best classic style. (P405—406) 6. Sea adventures are Melville’s favorite subject; "Moby-Dick" is a great novel in the theme, which is also noted for its symbolism, please analyze it in detail. Answer: 2) About the boat; it symbols the society, and the crew symbol all kinds of people with different social and ethnic ideas; 3) About the white whale: To the author, it symbols nature, it is a complex, unfathomable and beautiful; To the captain Ahab, it is evilness, is a wall. So he will lead all his crew to cut through the wall to dig out all the unknown, mysterious things behind it. To the narrator, Ishmael, it is a mystery. (P460—461) 7. Walt Whitman is a unique poet. Can you explain what make him unique? Answer: 2) His styles are special: "free verse"; "catalogue"; simple and even crude language. (P448-551) AMERICAN LITERATURE Chapter 2 The Realistic Period I. Choose the right answer: 1. Emily Dickinson was sometimes curious about the feeling of speech
of death and in one of her poems she wrote about the______of death,
the title of the poem is "I heard a Fly buzz when I died".
2. Theodore Dreiser belonged to the school of literary ______which
emphasized heredity and environment as important deterministic forces
shaping individualized characters who were presented in special
and detailed circumstances. 3. More than five hundred poems that Dickinson wrote are about
nature, in which her general _____about the relationship between
man and nature is well expressed. 4. "This is my letter to the World" is a poem expressing
Emily Dickinson’s _____about her communication with the outside
world. 5. Though secluded herself in her own house, Emily Dickinson was
never really indifferent of the outside world, as could be seen
in her poems such as "I like to see it lap the Miles",
which describes a(n) ______, an embodiment of modern civilization. 6. After "The Adventure of Tom Sawyer", Twain gives a
literary independence to Tom’s buddy Huck in a book called_____,
and the book from which "all modern American literature comes". 7. Winterbourne is used as a ______in Henry James’s "Daisy
Miller". 8. Emily Dickinson’s verse is most aptly characterized as ___________. 9. The author of "The Portrait of a Lady" is best at_______. 10. The period ranging from 1865 to 1914 has been referred to as
_____________. 11. Who exerts the simple most important influence on literary
naturalism? 12. One of the most familiar themes in American naturalism is the
theme of human "______". 13. ______is considered by H.L. Mencken as "the true father
of our national literature." 14. Mark Twain wrote most of his literary works with a _______language. 15. Henry James’s fame generally rests upon his novels and stories
with________. 16. In the following writers, who is generally regarded as the
forerunner of the 20th century "Stream-of-consciousness"
novels and the founder of psychological realism______________. 17. In Henry James’ "Daisy Miller", the author tries
to portray the young woman as an embodiment of ___________. 18. Which of the following is NOT a usual subject of poetic expression
of Emily Dickinson’s? 19. The following titles are all related to the subject that escapes
from the society and returns to nature except__________. 20. The greatest work written by Theodore Dreiser is__________. 21. Closely related to Emily Dickinson’s religious poetry are her
poems concerning ___________. 22. With Howells, James, and Mark Twain active on the literary
scene, _________became the major trend in American literature in
the seventies and eighties of the 19th century. II. Read the quoted part and answer the questions: 1. "It was a close place. I took it up, and held it in my
hand. I was a trembling, because I’d got to decide, forever, betwixt
tow things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding
my breath, and then says to my self: 1) Who was the "I", which book was the passage taken
from? And by whom? Answer: 2) It is the climax of the Huck’s inner struggle on the Mississippi, when Huck is conflicting whether or not he should write a letter to tell Miss Watson where Jim is, and he is polarizing/contradicting by the two opposing forces between his heart and his head, between his affection for Jim and the laws of the society against those who help slaves escape. Huck’s final decision -to follow his own good hearted moral impulse rather than conventional village morality. During his thinking Huck thinks of the consequence of helping Jim (the runaway slave), he might go to hell, "it was awful thought", with the eventual victory of his moral conscience over his social awareness, Huck grows. (P480) 3) Huck is an innocent and reluctant rebel, a typical American Boy with a "sound heart and deformed conscience". Through the eyes of Huck, the Pre-Civil War American society is fully exposed and we are deeply impressed by Mark Twain’s thematic contrasts between innocence and experience, nature and culture, wildness and civilization. (P483) 2. "I should think it might be arranged," Winterbourne
was thus emboldened to reply. "Couldn’t you get some one to
stay----for the afternoon---with Randolph?" Questions: 参考答案: 2) She is the American Girl in Europe, a celebrated type who embodies the spirit of the New World. However, innocence, the keynote of her character, turns out to be an admiring but a dangerous quality and her defiance of social taboos in the Old World finally brings her to a disaster in the clash between two different cultures. (P499-500) 3. "We passed the School, where Children strove Questions: Answers: 2) It stands for three stages of life: the School----youth; 4. "The Eyes around---had wrung them dry--- Questions: Answers: 2) "The King" refers to the God of death. (P521) 3) The poem expresses that the author even imagined her own death, the loss of her own body, and the journey of her soul to the unknown. (P518) III. Questions and answers: Answer: 1) They were interested in the realities of life. It aimed at the interpretation of the actuality of any aspect of life; 2) People’s attention was now directed the interesting features/things of everyday existence/things -something brutal, sordid/mean, class struggle etc. 3) The authors introduced common people such as: industrial workers and farmers, ambitious businessmen, vagrants, prostitutes/street girls, and unheroic soldiers in fiction; 4) American writers displayed native trends in portrayal of the landscape ad social surface realistically; 5) They formed perfect vernacular style in language; 6) Some authors explored and exploited/used the literary possibilities of the interior life/psychology, such as Henry James; 7) The representatives were: Mark Twain, Henry James, William Dean Howells; In short, they set the example and pictured the future course for
the modernism. (in the subject, themes, techniques, and styles of
fiction) 2. Take examples to analyze the style and theme of Mark Twain. Answer: 1) Twain’s works like "Adventure of Huckleberry Finn" and "Life on the Mississippi" shaped the views of America and combined American folk humor and serious literature together; 2) "The adventures of Tom Sawyer" and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" proved to be the milestone in American literature, and they were the record of a vanishing way of life in the pre-Civil War Mississippi. 3) The books were noted for their unpretentious, colloquial, poetic, humorous, innocent and free style; 4) The language of Twain was simple, direct, lucid and faithful to truth -"vernacular"; 5) Twain was famous for a local colorist, who presented social life through portraits of the local characters of his region -people living in the area, the landscape, the customs, dialects, costumes. Especially the theme of the Mississippi valley and the West; 6) The work of Twain were always confined to a particular region, historical moment, strong accent, intensified humor to criticize the social injustice and satirize the decayed romanticism. (P477-481) 3. Give a comment on the experience of Carrie. 参考答案： 2) Sister Carrie best embodies Dreiser’s naturalistic belief that while men are controlled and conditioned by heredity, instinct and chance, a few extraordinary and unsophisticated human beings refuse to accept their fate wordlessly and instead strive, unsuccessfully, to find meaning and purpose for their existence. (P527-528) 4. The characteristic and theme analyses of Henry James. Answer: 2) James took great interest in international themes -the clashed between two different cultures and the emotional and moral problems of Americans in Europe, or Europeans in America in his first period. 3) "The Portrait of A Lay" is generally considered to be his masterpiece. 4) James experimented with different themes and forms in his middle period. 5) In his last an major period, James returned to his "international-theme." 6) The typical pattern of the conflict between the two cultures would be that of a young American man or an American girl (Daisy Miller) who goes to Europe and affronts/met with his or her destiny. The unsophisticated boy or girl would be beguiled, betrayed, cruelly wronged at the hands of those who pretend to stand for the highest possible civilization. 7) He focuses on psychological approach. His fictional world is concerned more with the inner life of human beings -this emphasis on psychology and on the human consciousness proves to be a big breakthrough in novel writing. 8) He is regarded as the forerunner of the 20th century "stream-of-consciousness" novels and the founder of psychological realism. 9) James avoids the authorial omniscience as much as possible and makes his characters reveal themselves with his minimal intervention. (P495-498) 5. The period from 1865 to 1914 has been referred to the Age of Realism (The Gilded Age) in the literary history of the United States, why did it happen and what characters did it have? Answer: 2) The war stimulated the technological development; 3) The booming economy and industry stepped up urbanization; 4) The phenomenon of polarization is serious; 5) People became doubtful about the human nature and the benevolence/grace of God; 6) Gone was the frontier, the spirit of the frontiersman/pioneer, the spirit of freedom and the American dream. (P471---472) 6. Please analyze the characteristics of Emily Dickinson’s poems. Answer: 7. In the representatives of "Local colorism", the writers shared some things in common and also had some differences, please analyze them. Answer: 2) Howells focused on the rising middle class, while Twine dealt with the region and the people at the forefront; 3) The other local colorists concerned with the life of the small, well-defined region or province, the setting is always the isolated small town; 4) They were nostalgic historians, recording the vanishing way of life, and the fading present. (P474---475) 8. Analyze the theory of Theodore Dreiser’naturalism with example. Answer: 2) The characters in his books are often subject to the control of the natural forces -especially those of environment and heredity. For example, the hero Hurstwood’s tragic death showed the theory. 3) The effect of Darwinist idea of "survival of the fittest" was shattering. It is not surprising to find in Dreiser’s fiction a world of jungle, where "kill or to be killed" was the law. 4) He criticizes materialistic to the core, living in such a society with such a value system, the human individual is obsessed with a never-ending, yet meaningless search for satisfaction of his/her desires. One of the desires is for money which was a motivating purpose of life in the United States in the late 19th century. For example in his masterpiece "Sister Carrie" he traces the material rise of Carrie Meeber, which indicates the critical attitude of the author. 5) Sexual beauty symbolizes the acquisition of some social status of great magnitude. (P525---527) 9. Darwin’s evolutionary theory gave rise to American naturalism, what are their characteristics? Answer: 1) They regarded man as the complex combinations of inherited attributes/elements, their habits conditioned/controlled by social and economic forces; 2) They chose their subjects from the lower ranks of the society and portrayed misery and poverty/poorness; 3) They dealt with the nature of the man of "underdogs" -"bestiality", as an explanation of sexual desire; 4) Their languages were unpolished; 5) The naturalists believed that the real and true nature is hidden from the eyes o the individual, or beyond his control; 6) Naturalism evolved/came from realism, but the tone of the authors
were more ironic and pessimistic. (P475-476)
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