发布时间 : 星期六 文章美国文学史及作品选读习题集(4)更新完毕开始阅读a245363a31126edb6f1a1050
thyself well worthy of a Christian‘s praise.‖… Questions:
4. This novel was written by the first American novelist. What is his name? 5. What is the name of the novel?
6. The central figure in this novel appeared in this passage. It is ______. Passage 3
To him who in the love of Nature holds
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks A various language; for his grayer hours She has a voice of gladness, and a smile And eloquence of beauty, and she glides Into his darker musings, with a mild And gentle sympathy, that steals away
Their sharpness, ere he is aware. When thoughts Questions:
7. What is the title of the poem from which the selection is taken? 8. What does the title mean?
9. What is the meter of the poem?
10. According to this selection, to whom does nature speak? To what two different human moods does nature respond? Passage 4
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgot---ten lore, While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
― ‘Tis some visitor, ―I muttered, ―tapping at mychamber door----only this, and nothing more.‖
Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December,
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor. Eagerly I wished the morrow; — vainly I had tried to borrow From my books surcease of sorrow — sorrow for the lost. Questions:
11. Who is the writer of these poetic lines?
12. What is the title of this poem from which the selection is selected? 13. Recognize the sound devices in the following lines. L1. __________________________. L4. __________________________. L7. __________________________. L10. _________________________. Passage 5
Lo! in you brilliant window-niche How statue-like I see the stand, The agate lamp within thy hand! Ah, Psyche, from the regions which
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Are Holy-Land! Questions:
14. This is the last stanza of a poem ―To Helen‖. Its writer is ________. 15. Whom is Helen associated with? 16. Who is psyche? Passage 6
To go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society. I am not solitary whilst I read and write, though nobody is with me. But if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars. The rays that come from those heavenly worlds will separate between him and vulgar things. One might think the atmosphere was made transparent with this design, to give man, in the heavenly bodies, the perceptual presence of the sublime. Seen in the streets of cities, how great they are! If stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore: and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these preachers of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile. Questions:
17. This paragraph is taken from a famous essay entitled_________. 18. Who is the author?
19. What does the author say would happen if the stars appeared one night in a thousand years?
20. Give a peculiar term to cover the author‘s belief. Passsage7
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 eyeball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God. Questions:
21. Which work is the fragment taken from?
22. How do you understand the philosophical ideas in the words? Passage8
I went to the words because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion. For most men, it appears to me, are in a strange uncertainty about it, whether it is of the devil or of God. Questions:
23. This passage is taken from a famous work entitled_______. 24. The author of the work is_______.
25. List by yourself at least five reasons that the author gives for going to live in the
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woods. Passage 9
There‘s a time in every man‘s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion...trust thyself; every heart vibrates to that iron string. Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. Questions:
26. This selection is selected from an essay. What is the title of that? 27. Who is the author of the essay?
28. According to the selection, what do you think the author believes in? Passage 10
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Tell me not, in mournful numbers, Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers, And things are not what they seem.
II
Life is real-life is earnest-
And the grave is not its goal; Dust thou art, to dust returnest, Was not spoken of the soul. Questions:
29. Who is the writer of the lines?
30. What is the title of the whole poem from which the two stanzas are taken? 31. Summarize the poet‘s advice for living. Passage11
Hester Prynne‘s term of confinement was now at an end. Her prison-door was thrown open, and she came forth into sunshine which, falling on all alike, seemed, to her sick and morbid heart, as if meant for no other purpose than to reveal the scarlet letter on her breast. Perhaps there was a more real torture in her first unattended footsteps from the threshold of the prison, than even in the procession and spectacle that have been described, where she was made the common infamy, at which all mankind was summoned to point its finger. Then, she was supported by an unnatural tension of the nerves, and by all the combative energy of her character, which enabled her to convert the scene into a kind of lurid triumph. Questions;
32. Which novel is this selection taken from? 33. What is the name of the novelist?
34. What do you think is the symbolic meaning of the scarlet letter on Hester‘s breast? Passage12
It was not very long after speaking the Coney that another homeward-bound whaleman, the Town-Ho, was encountered. She was manned almost wholly by Polynesian. In the short gam that ensued she gave us strong news of Moby Dick. To some the general interest in the White Whale was now wildly heightened by a
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circumstance of the Town-Ho‘s story, which seemed obscurely to involve with the whale a certain wondrous, inverted visitation of one of those so called judgment of God which at times are said to overtake some men. This latter circumstance, with its own particular accompaniments, forming what may be called the secret part of the tragedy about to be narrated, never reached the ears of Captain Ahab or his mates. For that secret part of the story was unknown to the Town-Ho himself. It was the private property of thee confederate white seamen of that ship, one of whom, it seems communicated it to Tashtego with Romish injunctions of secrecy, but the following night Tashtego rambled in his sleep, and revealed so much of it in that way, that when he was wakened he could not well withhold the rest. Nevertheless, so potent an influence did this thing have on those seamen in the Pequod who came to the full knowledge of it, and by such a strange delicacy, to call it so ,were they governed in this matter, that the kept secret among themselves so that it never transpired abaft the Pequod‘s main-mast. Interviewing in its proper place this darker thread with the story as publicly narrated on the ship, the whole of this strange affair I now proceed to put one lasting record.
35. From which novel is this paragraph taken? 36. What is the name o the novelist? 37. Who is Ahab? 38. What is Pequod?
39. What is the theme of the novel? V Questions and answers
1. What is Age of Enlightenment?
2. Who are the major writers in the American Age of Enlightenment?
3. What are the artistic achievements of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow‘s poetry? 4. How to define the Romantic period in American history?
5. What is the historical and socio-cultural background of the Romantic Period in American?
6. What are the literary characteristics in the works of American romantic period? 7. What is the relationship between American Romanticism and European Romanticism?
8. What is the theme of Rip Van Wrinkle? List the major works of Washington Irving and discuss the artistic characteristics of his works.
9. What is the Ralph Waldo Emerson transcendentalist idea and his view of nature? 10 What is the main idea of Henry David Thoreau‘s Walden?
11. What are the artistic achievements of James Fenimore Cooper? And what are his major works?
12. What are the artistic achievements of Edgar Allan Poe?
13. Discuss the allegory and symbolism in young Goodman Brown. 14. What are Nathaniel Hawthorne‘s major works?
15. What are the artistic characteristics of The Scarlet Letter?
16. Discuss the symbolism in Herman Melville‘s novel Moby-Dick. 17. What are Herman Melville‘s major works?
18. What is the social significance of the novel Uncle Tom‘s Cabin?
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