美国文学 选择题 诗歌分析题 有答案(9)

很有用的 美国文学选读 自考本科资料 试题

Mark Twain is a great literary of America, H. L. Mencken considered him "the true father of our national literature".

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：

1) Penniless and "full of the illusions of ignorance and youth", Sister Carrie leaves her rural home to seek work in Chicago, she grows from an innocent, pure country girl to be a girl mature in intellect and emotion, and she becomes a star of musical comedies. But in spite of her success in material, she is not happy but lonely and dissatisfied.

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:

1) The Freudian approach is famous in his novels and his literary essays.

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) 诗歌分析题 9 美国文学 单选题

5. The period from 1865 to 1914 has been referred to the Age of Realism (The Gilded Age) in the literary