常耀信《美国文学简史》(第3版)章节题库-第二十章至第二十三章【圣才出品】

第20章二战后诗歌·20世纪40年代的诗人

Ⅰ.Fill in the blanks.

The publication of Robert Lowell’s Life Studies marked the coming of the age of _____,which represents a new mode of perception and a way of writing.

【答案】Postmodernism

【解析】罗伯特·洛威尔（Robert Lowell）《人生探索》（Life Studies）是一部里程碑式的诗集，它的发表标志着后现代主义（Postmodernism）时代的到来。

Ⅱ.Multiple Choice

Of the following poets,who is NOT remembered as a confessional poet?

A.Anne Sexton

B.Sylvia Plath

C.Robert Lowell

D.Elizabeth Bishop

【答案】D

【解析】伊丽莎白·毕肖普属于20世纪40年代的诗人，她不是自白派诗人。

Ⅲ.Essay questions

1.Write a short essay(in no more than200words)about the basic features of Postmodernism.[上海交大2007研]

Key:Postmodernism is a disputed term that has occupied much recent debate about contemporary culture since the early1980s.As applied to literature and other arts,the term is notoriously ambiguous,implying either that modernism has been superseded or that it has continued into a new phase.Postmodernism may be seen as a continuation of modernism’s alienated mood and disorienting techniques and at the same time as an abandonment of its determined quest for artistic coherence in a fragmented world:in very crude terms,where a modernist artist or writer would try to wrest a meaning from the world through myth, symbol,or formal complexity,the postmodernist greets the absurd or meaningless confusion of contemporary existence with a certain numbed or flippant indifference,favoring self-consciously“depthless”works of fabulation, pastiche,bricolage,or aleatory disconnection.The term cannot usefully serve as an inclusive description of all literature since the1950s or1960s,but is applied selectively to those works that display most evidently the moods and formal disconnections described above.Opinion is still divided,however,on the value of the term and of the phenomenon it purports to describe.

2.What characterizes Elizabeth Bishop’s observation of the external world and how does she apply such observations to the internal and external experiences? With her style in mind,explicate“The Fish.”Does the grotesqueness of the poem mean the same as it does in Anderson or Flannery O’Connor?

Key:Bishop observes the external world and relates her observations to her

internal and external experiences.But she does so with such detachment that the external world seems to exist as a separate entity.“The Fish”is Bishop’s best-known poem.The speaker captures a fish,and when she examines it closely, she notices the external ugliness and decay and reflects on the beautiful entrails with their“dramatic reds and blacks.”

The interaction of nature with the things humans do is the constant subject of Bishop’s poetry.Such interaction,however,is seen in its grotesqueness.So,we can say that this grotesqueness is different from that in Anderson’s or Flannery O’Connor’s works.

第21章自白派·垮掉的一代

Ⅰ.Fill in the blanks.

1.In the1950s,there was a widespread discontentment among the postwar generation,whose voice was one of protest against all the mainstream culture that America had come to represent.This generation was known as the_____ generation.[天津外国语学院2009研]

【答案】beat

【解析】垮掉的一代：第二次世界大战后风行于美国的文学流派。该流派的作家都是性格粗犷豪放、落拓不羁的男女青年，他们生活简单、不修边幅，喜穿奇装异服，厌弃工作和学业，拒绝承担任何社会义务，以浪迹天涯为乐，反对一切世俗陈规和垄断资本统治，抵制对外侵略和种族隔离，讨厌机器文明，他们永远寻求新的刺激，寻求绝对自由，纵欲、

吸毒、沉沦，以此向体面的传统价值标准进行挑战，因此被称作垮掉的一代。代表作家有金斯堡及其作品《嚎叫》。

2.Author_____Title_____.[南京大学2009研]

What thoughts I have of you tonight,Walt Whitman,for I walked down the sidestreets under the trees with a headache self-conscious looking at the full moon.

【答案】Allen Ginsberg;A Supermarket in California

【解析】题目选自金斯堡的A Supermarket in California。

3.The publication of Robert Lowell’s Life Studies marked the coming of the age of _____,which represents a new mode of perception and a way of writing.

【答案】Postmodernism

【解析】罗伯特·洛威尔（Robert Lowell）《人生探索》（Life Studies）是一部里程碑式的诗集，它的发表标志着后现代主义（Postmodernism）时代的到来。

4._____is the spokesman of postwar Beat Generation in American literary history.【答案】Allen Ginsberg

【解析】美国当代诗人艾伦·金斯堡是20世纪50年代末美国“垮掉派”文学运动的中心人物。他的代表作是《嚎叫》（Howl）。

5.Gary Snyder has been placed next to Allen Ginsberg among the Beat Generation.

He seems to think that the job of the poet is to catch sight of_____,which resides nowhere but in_____.

【答案】the poetic,the natural world

【解析】加里·斯奈德（Gary Snyder），二十世纪美国著名诗人、“垮掉派”代表人物之一。所以喜欢沉浸于自然，在大自然中，他既是劳动者也是思考者，因此他的诗“更加接近于事物的本色以对抗我们时代的失衡、紊乱及愚昧无知”。

Ⅱ.Multiple Choice

Of the following poets,who is NOT remembered as a confessional poet?

A.Anne Sexton

B.Sylvia Plath

C.Robert Lowell

D.Elizabeth Bishop

【答案】D

【解析】伊丽莎白·毕肖普属于20世纪40年代的诗人，她不是自白派诗人。

Ⅲ.Explain the following terms.

1.confessional poetry[厦门大学2009研]

Key:Confessional poetry traffics in intimate,and sometimes unflattering, information about details of the poet’s personal life,such as in poems about illness,sexuality,and despondence.The confessionalist label was applied to a number of poets of the1950s and1960s.John Berryman,Allen Ginsberg,Robert

Lowell and Anne Sexton have all been called“Confessional Poets”.

2.The Beat Generation[北航2007研，北二外2010研]

Key:The Beat Generation is a group of American writers in the late1950s,led by the poet Allen Ginsberg and the novelist lack Kerouac.Writers of the“beat generation”dropped out of middle-class society in search of“beatific”ecstasy through drugs,sex,and Zen Buddhism.Their loose styles favor spontaneous self-expression and recitation to jazz accompaniment.The principal works of the group are Ginsberg’s Howl(1956)and Kerouac’s On the Road(1957).

Ⅳ.Short answer questions

1.How does Robert Lowell“confess?”Why is“Walking in the Blue”a good example?

Key:Lowell“confessed”with free verse and prose poetry,together with a variety of stanzaic and rhymed forms,including sonnet sequences and couplets in iambic pentameter.

“Waking in the Blue”is a depiction of Lowell’s stay at McLean Hospital.The poem shows the process in which Lowell,poet and speaker as one,comes to terms with harsh realities.

2.What is a“confessional”poet?Name some of them.

Key:“Confessional”poets refer to poets in the1950s and1960s who adapted

certain techniques of the novel for their poems.Since modernist poetics generally favor the distance between the poet(or author)and the speaker(or narrator)for the effect of impersonality and irony,most poets designated as “confessional”dislike the name,fearing its connotations of being artless and sensational.But there are also advantages for the“confessionals.”Confessional poets,closing the gap between the poet and the speaker(in contrast to modernist poetics that favor such a gap),were able to explore more intensely their dark selves and in so doing,associate themselves with the Puritan authors. Robert Lowell and Sylvia Plath were representative“confessional”poets.

第22章纽约派诗人·沉思型诗歌·黑山派诗人

Ⅰ.Fill in the blanks.

The Black Mountain Poets are so called because these poets are associated with _____,or with_____.

【答案】Black Mountain College;Black Mountain Review

【解析】黑山派诗歌是美国当代的一个诗歌流派。20世纪50年代初，在马萨诸塞州黑山学院任教的查·奥尔逊、罗·邓肯、罗·克瑞利等人创办《黑山评论》杂志，提倡与40年代流行的传统格律体相反的“放射体”诗歌，逐步形成一个流派。

Ⅱ.Multiple Choice

1.Which of the following poets is NOT a member of the New York School?

A.William Burroughs

B.John Ashbery

C.Frank O’Hara

D.Kenneth Koch

【答案】A

【解析】威廉·勃洛斯是垮掉派作家之一。

2.Which of the following poets is NOT member of the Black Mountain poets?

A.Robert Creeley

B.Robert Duncan

C.Theodore Roethke

D.Charles Olson

【答案】C

【解析】西奥多·罗特克是自白派诗人之一。

Ⅲ.Explain the following terms.

1.Black Mountain poets

Key:A loosely associated group of poets that formed an important part of the avant-garde of American poetry in the1950s,publishing innovative yet disciplined verse in the Black Mountain Review(1954-57),which became a leading forum of experimental verse.Their experimental yet disciplined style took its impetus from the essay“Projective Verse”(1950)by Charles Olson.The Black

Mountain School is linked with Charles Olson’s theory of“projective verse,”which insisted on an open form based on the spontaneity of the breath pause in speech and the typewriter line in writing.The group grew up around the poets Robert Creeley,Robert Duncan,and Charles Olson while they were teaching at Black Mountain.

2.The New York School

Key:Unlike the Beat and San Franciso poets,the poets of the New York School are not interested in overtly moral questions,and,in general,they steer clear of political issues.They have the best formal educations of any group.The major figures of the New York School are John Ashbery,Frank O’Hara,and Kenneth Koch.They are quintessentially urban,cool,nonreligious,witty with a poignant, pastel sophistication.Their poems are fast moving,full of urban detail, incongruity,and an almost palpable sense of suspended belief.New York City is the fine arts center of America and the birthplace of Abstract Expressionism,a major inspiration of this poetry.Most of the poets worked as art reviewers or museum curators,or collaborated with painters.Perhaps because of their feeling for abstract art,which distrusts figurative shapes and obvious meanings,their work is often difficult to comprehend,as in the later work of John Ashbery (1927-),perhaps the most influential poet writing today.

第23章二战后美国小说（1）