美国文学 选择题 诗歌分析题 有答案(4)

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with the Indians; ③ the frontiersmen’s life; ④ the wild west; ⑤ imagination. (P399—402)

2. Analyze the themes and characteristic of Hawthorne.

Answer:

Hawthorne was a man with inquiring imagination, meditative mind and dark vision to life.

His themes in writing are:

1) Man was born with evil and sin, one source of them is over-reaching intellect, whose image was always villain; (Chllingworth e.g.)

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:

Transcendentalism is a very important theory in American Romanticism, its main ideas are:

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:

1) Allegorically, Young Goodman Brown becomes an Everyman called Brown, who will be aged in one night by an evil adventure, and the evilness makes everyone a fallen idol in the world.

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:

1) He was nostalgic author, and he always juxtaposing the Old and the New world;

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) 4 美国文学 单选题 诗歌分析题

6. Sea adventures are Melville’s favorite subject; "Moby-Dick" is a great novel in the theme, which is also