美国文学 选择题 诗歌分析题 有答案(14)

很有用的 美国文学选读 自考本科资料 试题

complete isolation the figure of the lost, who stood on the porch, his stand up in a formal gesture of farewell."

Questions:

1) Name the author and the title of the novel from which this passage is taken.

2) What is the setting of the novel?

3) What implied meaning can you get from reading this passage?

Answers:

1) The passage comes from "The Great Gatsby" written by Fitzgerald. (P597)

2) The Great Gatsby is a novel that is set against the ending of the war. (P581)

3) The passage hints at the meaninglessnes, spiritual emptiness and vanity of such a lift of pleasure-seeking. There is a tragic sense that the "party" will be over. Gatsby’s failure magnifies to a great extent the end of the American Dream. (However, the affirmation of hope and expectation is self-asserted in Fitzgerald’s artistic manipulation of the central symbol in the novel, the green light).

(P582)

III Questions and answers:

1. Analyze the background of the Modern Period.

Answer:

(1) The U.S. participated in The First World War marked a crucial stage in the nation’s evolution/development to a world power.

(2) The technology has brought about great changes in the life of the American people. (P544)

2. The ideology analyses about the people and especially the authors.

(The ideology analysis of "The Lost Generation)

Answer:

(1) People became less certain about what might arise in this changing world and more cynical about accepted standards of honesty and morality. The idea of "seize the day" or "enjoy the present" was pervasive.

(2) There was a decline in moral standard and the first few decades of the twentieth century was described as a spiritual wasteland. The censor/standard of a great civilization being destroyed or destroying itself, social breakdown, and individual powerlessness and hopelessness became part of the American experience as a result of the First World War, with resulting feelings of fear, loss, disorientation and disillusionment.

(3) Disillusioned and disgusted by the frivolous, greedy, and heedless way of life in America, they began to write and they wrote from their own experience in the war.

(4) The sense of loss and despair prevails among the post-war generation who are physically and psychologically scarred; Faulkner creates his own mythical kingdom that mirrors not only the decline of the Southern society but also the spiritual wasteland of the whole American society.

(5) The world is even more disintegrating and fragmentary and people are even more estranged and despondent.

(6) These writers shared almost the same belief that human beings are trapped in a meaningless world and that neither God nor man can make sense of the human condition.

(7) In general terms, much serious literature written from 1912 onwards attempted to convey a vision of social breakdown and moral decay and the writer’s task was to develop techniques that could represent a break with the past. (P545-552) 美国文学 单选题 诗歌分析题 14

3. List some characteristic writers you know in the Modernism.