美国文学 选择题 诗歌分析题 有答案(7)

很有用的 美国文学选读 自考本科资料 试题

20. The greatest work written by Theodore Dreiser is__________.

A. Sister Carrie B. An American Tragedy C. The Financier D. The Titan

Answer: B (P525)

21. Closely related to Emily Dickinson’s religious poetry are her poems concerning ___________.

A. Childhood B. Youth and happiness C. Loneliness D. Death and immortality

Answer: D (518)

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.

A. sentimentalism B. romanticism C. realism D. naturalism

Answer: C (P474)

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:

"All right, then, I’ll go to hell"----and tore it up.

It was awful thoughts, and awful words, but they was said. And I let them stay said; and never though no more about reforming."

1) Who was the "I", which book was the passage taken from? And by whom? 2) Why did he think "it was awful thought"? Analyze it.

3) Analyze the characteristic of the hero.

Answer:

1) The character is Huckleberry Finn, the passage is taken from "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" by Mark Twain. (P489)

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?"

Miss Miller looked at him a moment; and then with all serenity, "I wish you’d stay with him!" she said. Questions:

1) Please identify the work and the author.2) Please analyze the character of Daisy Miller in literature. 参考答案:

1) It is taken from Henry James’s "Daisy Miller". (P513)

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 7 美国文学 单选题 诗歌分析题

her defiance of social taboos in the Old World finally brings her to a disaster in the clash between two different cultures. (P499-500)