美国文学秋季学期练习题5
美国文学史及作品选读练习5
I. Match the works with the authors given below. (每小题1分，共10分)
a.Michael Wigglesworth
b. .Franklin
c. John Smith
d. William Cullen Bryant
e. James Fennimore Cooper
f. Philip Freneau
g. Washington Irving
1. A Description of New England John Smith
2. Rip V an Winkle Washington Irving
3. The Day of Doom Michael Wigglesworth
4. Autobiography Franklin
5. The Wild Honey suckle Philip Freneau
6. To a Waterfowl Williliam Cullen Bryant
7. The Deerslayer James Fennimore Cooper
8 The Thanatopsis William Cullen Bryant
9. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow Washington Irving
10. The Spy James Fennimore Cooper
II. Blank Filling. （每小题2分，共20分）
1.The first permanent English settlement in North American was established at________,
Virginia.
2.Hard work, thrift, piety and sobriety, these were the ________values that dominated
much of the early American writing.
3.The first American Literature was neither American nor really literature. It was not
American because it was the work mainly immigrants from __________.
4.__________ was regarded as the “Poet of the American Revolution.”
5.In American Literature, the eighteenth century was an Age of ________ and Revolution.
6.Annabel Lee ,a poem from_____________ ,mourns the death of a beautiful girl .
7.The first important American novelist is ____________.
8._________was the first American to achieve an international literary reputation after the
Revolutionary War.
9.The central figure in the Leatherstocking Tales is __________, who goes by the various
names of Leatherstocking,Deerslayer,Pathinder and Hawkeye.
10. Thanatopsis is Bryant?s best –known poem. The title of the poem means________.
III. Multiple Choice（每小题2分，共30分）1. The establisher of Jamestown was the famous explorer and colonist_____B__.
A. John Winthrop
B. John Smith
C. William Bradford
D. John Goodwin
2. The Puritan dominating values were: A
A. hard work
B. thrift
C. piety
D. sobriety
3. Which writer is not a poet? D
A. Michael Wigglesworth
B. Anne Bradstreet
C. Edward Taylor
D. Thomas Hooker
4. Anne Bradstreet was a Puritan poet. Her poems made such a stir in England that she became known as the “_______B____” who appeared in America.
A. Ninth Muse
B. Tenth Muse
C. Best Muse
D. First Muse
5. The ship “__C_____”carried about one hundred Pilgrims and took 66 days to beat its way across the Atlantic. In December of 1620, it put the Pilgrims ashore at Plymouth, Massachusetts.
A. Sunflower
B. Armada
C. Mayflower
D. Pequod
6._____B______ another important colonial poet, achieved wide popularity among his contemporaries with his gloomy entitled “ The Day of Doom”.
A. Edward Taylor
B. Michael Wigglesworth
C. Anne Bradstreet
D. Cotton Mather
7.Franklin was the epitome of the ___A____.
A.American Enlightenment
B. Sugar Act
C. Chartist movement
D. Romanticist
8.The following proverbs
------ There are no gains without pains.
------ One today is worth two tomorrows.
come from___B_____.
A. Autobiography
B. Poor Richard’s Almanac
C. T he Sketch Book
D. A Description of New England
9. Much of the beauty of the poem__C_______ lies in the sounds of the words and the effect created through changes in rhythm.
A. To a Waterfowl
B. Thanatopsis
C. The Wild Honey suckle
D. The Indian Burying Ground
10. ___A___usually starts with standard characters----- the lazy husbands or the termagant
wife.
A. Washington Irving
B. James Fennimore Cooper
C. William Cullen Bryant
D. Philip Freneau
11. Which poem is not written by Freneau? D
A .The British Prison Ship
B. The Wild Honey Suckle
C. The Indian Burying Ground
D. The Day of Doom
12. __A__is the author of the work The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.
A. Washington Irving
B. James Joyce
C. Walt Whitman
D. William Butler Yeats
13. Which of the following statement is not true about Washington Irving? C
A. Washington Irving is regarded as Father of the American short stories.
B. Irving?s relationshi p with the Old World in terms of his literary imagination
can hardly be ignored considering his success both abroad and at home.
C. Irving?s taste was essentially progressive or radical.
D. Washington Irving has always been regarded as a writer who "perfected the
best classic style that American literature ever produced."
14. In the early nineteenth century, American moral values were essentially Puritan. Nothing has left a deeper imprint on the character of the people as a whole than did _____A____.
A. Puritanism
B. Romanticism
C Rationalism
D. Sentimentalism
15.Poe?s first collection of short stories is ______D___.
A. Tales of a Traveller
B. Leatherstoking Tales
C. Canterbury Tales
D. Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque
I. Make the best choice. （每小题1.5分，共30分)
1.Puritanism is the attitude of a party which stresses the following except__c_____
a. restoration of the church
b. predestination and original sin
c .hardworking an
d thrift d. loos
e morality 2.The first American literature was the work ___a_____
a. mainly of immigrants from England.
b. of great literary merits
c. in the form of poetry, essays or fiction
d. about the native subjects of America.
3.Which of the following is NOT true of colonial American literature? B
a.full of religious sermons
b.. showing a distrust of the mystical
b.mainly in the form of diary, autobiography and travel account
c.characterized with logical structure and simplic ity of diction.
4.. With an unshakable belief in the power of reason, the 18th century Enlighteners regarded _______A___ as the principal means of the development of society
a. education and reason
b. hard working
c. self-inspection
d. free thinking
5.Ben Franklin was a universal genius whose masterpiece____B___ became a classic of its kind.
a. Poor Richard’s Almanac
b. Autobiography
c. Rip Van Winkle
d. The Sketch Book
6.The following words best describe Rip V an Winkle except___C____
a. kind
b. gentle
c. hardworking
d. lazy
7.The first American writer of imaginative literature and short stories was _____D___
a.Nathaniel Hawthorne
b.Benjamin Franklin
c.James Fenimore Cooper
d.Washington Irving
8. Natty Bumppo?s friendship with Chingachgook is symbolic of ___A_____.
the understandings between two different peoples.
the relationship between the civilized and the savages
the conflict between the whites and the American Indians
the development of the frontiers
9. Romanticism can best be described by which of the following words? C
a.realism
b. logic
c. imagination
d. reason
10. James Fenimore Cooper was a Romanticist because he ____A____
a.glorified nature
b. loved people
c. loved society
d. wrote poetry
11. James Fenimore Cooper was the first American writer to write about____B_____
a. the American South
b. the American frontiers life
c. the American legends
d. the American culture
12.__C________ was known as “the poet of American Revolution”.
a. Franklin
b. Irving
c. Freneau
d. Poe
13. Phillip Freneau?s poem The Wild Honey Suckle is about___C_____
a. the death of a flower
b. the beauty of nature
c. the transience of life
d. the bless of God
14. “And planted here the g uardian shade
and sent soft waters murmuring by”
The forms of rhyming in these two lines are ________C______
a.assonance and consonance
b.alliteration and consonance
c.assonance and alliteration
d.slant rhyme and alliteration
15. There?s a certain slant of light,
On winter afternoons,
That appears like the weight
Of cathedral tunes”
The images used in these few lines are mainly_____ C ___
a.visual and olfactory
b.visual and tactile
c.visual and auditory
d.kinesthetic
16.. Poetry is a literary genre that uses metrical form to chiefly ______D_______
a. communicate information
b. create imagery
c. reveal character
d. express emotional experienc
e.
17. Poe believed the greatest theme for poetry is ___________
a.death of a relative.D
b.death of a honorable man.
c.death of a lover
d.death of a beautiful woman..
18. According to Poe, all elements of a story or a poem should have one purpose. That is _______B___
a . to tell the story b. to create an effect.
a.to keep the reader in suspense. d.. to be humorous
19. In the development of the plot, __A___ ,which pushes the story forward, is of the primary importance
a. conflict
b. point of view
c. theme
d. climax
20.Edgar Allan Poe?s poems are o f the following features except___D_______
a. being melancholic
b. being musical
c. being brief
d. being moralistic
1-5 c a b a b 6-10 c d a c a 11-15 b c c c c 16-20 d d b a d
IV. Decide Whether the Statements Are T rue or False.(每小题2分，共20分)
1. American literature is the oldest of all national literature. F
2. The colonies that became the first United States were for the most part English. T
3. In 1620 a number of Puritans came to settle in Massachusetts . T
4. The seventeenth century American poets adapted the style of established European poets to the subject matter confronted in a strangely –new environment.T
5. In Franklin?s Poor Richard’s Almana c, he talked first of all about how he studied language..F
6. Philip was the first American Lyric poet of distinction, he could make his poems sing melodies that might be stately. F
7. The Wild Honey Suckle was suggested by the fact that some Indian tribes buried their dead in a sitting. .F
8. The Last of The Mohicans were the best work by Adgar Allan Poe. F
9. Freneau wrote impassioned verse in support of the American Revolution. T
10. In the poem I srafel , Poe expresses a keen awareness of the loveliness and transience of nature. F
F T T T F F F F T F
1．The colonial American literature was in the form of poetry, novels and short stories 2．American poetry of the eighteenth century has an imitative character, imitating the reigning English models of the 18th century.
3. The early American romanticism stressed emotion, feeling, intuition instead of reason.
4. Philip Freneau was a most important poet in the 18th century American literature.
5. Cooper launched two kinds of immensely popular stories: the sea adventure tale, and the frontier stories.
6. American Puritanism derived its theological princ iples from Calvinism and aimed at a thorough reform of the church.
7. The first American settlers came to America to escape religious persecution.. .
8.Ben Franklin was versatile in every possible field and he was chiefly noted as .a man of civic mind.
9. Autobiography by Franklin was a fascinating record of the age of American Revolution, in which great political turmoil was faithfully depicted.
10. American Romantic literary movement was characterized with an interest in nature,
imagination as well as the a tendency to depict the grotesque .
11. Washington Irving was the first American writer who wrote poetry in its true sense.
12. .James F, Cooper was notable for his first exploration of the native theme of American
frontier life.
13. The Leather Stocking Tales consists .of three novels-----The Pioneers, The Prairie and The
Last of the Mohicans.
14. Philip Freneau was remembered mostly for his patriotic poems such as The Wild Honey
Suckle and the Indian Burial Ground.
15.The Wild Honey Suckle is a poem on the theme of glorifying the Indian Culture.
16. The only standard by which we designate a short story is its length.
17. .Poe is a poet of the first rank, a literary critic of great insight and a short story writer of large popularity.
18. .Poe defined poetry as the rhythmic creation of beauty.
19.Israfel expresses the poet?s deep regret for the earthly existence and strong longing for superior beauty. .
20.. “The death of a beautiful woman” is the most legitimate poetic the me to Poe.
V. .Identification of Fragments. (每小题2分，共4分)
1. I had begun in 1733 to study languages; I soon made my self
so much a master of the French as to be able to read the books with ease. I then undertook the Italian. An acquaintance, who was also learning it, used often to tempt me to play chess with him. Finding this took up too much of the time I had to spare for study, I at length refused to play any more…
author:________________ work:_________________
2.If nothing once, you nothing lose,
For when you die you are the same
The space between , is but an hour,
The frail duration of a flower.
Author:_______________ work: ________________
VI. Read the quoted part and answer the questions: (共16分)
Time grew worse and worse with Rip V an Winkle as years of matrimony rolled on: a tart temper mellows with age, and a sharp tongue is the only edge tool that grows keener by constant use. For a long while he used to perpetual club of the sages, philosophers, and other idle personages of the village.
Questions:
1) Please identify the author and the title of the work. (2%)2）Please give a summary of the story. 8%
3) Give a brief analysis of the symbolic meaning of this work. (6%)
参考答案
I(10%): 1.-5 C. G A.B F 6-10 D E D G E
II.(20%)
1. Jamestown
2. Puritan
3. England
4. Philip Freneau
5. reason
6. Adgar Allan Poe
7.James Fenimore Cooper 8. Washington Irving 9. Natty Bumppo 10. view of death III. (30%)1-5 B A D B C 6-10 B A B C A11-15 D A C A D
IV.(20%) F T T T F F F F T F
V (4%) 1.Franklin Autobiography 2. Freneau The Wild Honey suckle
VI. (16%)
1) This is an excerpt from "Rip V an Winkle" by Washington Irving. (2%)
2) Rip V an Winkle was the hero in Irving?s works. 1? He was a good-natured man, a henpecked husband. 1? Because his wife?s shrewish (泼妇一样的) treatment, Rip had to escape from his home to the little inn in the village. 1 … When it failed to give him some restful air, he had to go hunting in the h igh mountain, 1? where Rip met a stranger, and the man asked Rip to carry keg for him. Then Rip reached the place in the valley, where many strangers were playing nine-pins. 1? Later Rip got drunk after drinking the liquor, which made him sleep for 20 y ears. 1? Rip woke up as an old man, entering the village learned that his wife had died, he got the freedom of his own, 1? and the American had been dependent from the control of Britain, he had changed from a subject of the King (George III) into a cit izen of the independent new U.S. 1? ( 8%)
3).Rip V an Winkle has been seen as a symbol of several aspects of America. 1? Rip, like America, is immature, self-centered, careless, anti-intellectual, imaginative, and jolly as the overgrown child. 1? The Da me is another symbol –of puritanical discipline and the work ethic of Franklin. 1? The town itself is emproblematic of America-forever and rapidly changing. 1? Washington Irving has Rip sleep through his own country?s history, and return to the “busy, bustling, disputatious” self-consciously adult United States of America. His conflicts and dreams are those of the nation-the conflict of innocence and experience, work and leisure, the old and the new, the head and the heart. 2 (6%)
美国文学史及选读期末复习
美国文学史复习1（colonialism) 第一部分殖民主义时期的文学 一、时期综述 1、清教徒采用的文学体裁：a、narratives 日记 b、journals 游记 2、清教徒在美国的写作内容： 1）their voyage to the new land 2) Adapting themselves to unfamiliar climates and crops 3) About dealing with Indians 4) Guide to the new land, endless bounty, invitation to bold spirit 3、清教徒的思想： 1）puritan want to make up pure their religious beliefs and practices 净化信仰和行为方式 2) Wish to restore simplicity to church and the authority of the Bible to the theology. 重建教堂，提供简单服务，建立神圣地位 3）look upon themselves as chosen people, and it follow logically that anyone who challenged their way of life is opposing God's will and is not to be accepted. 认为自己是上帝选民，对他们的生活有异议就是反对上帝 4）puritan opposition to pleasure and the arts sometimes has been exaggerated. 反对对快乐和艺术的追求到了十分荒唐的地步 5）religious teaching tended to emphasize the image of a wrathful God.强调上帝严厉的一面，忽视上帝仁慈的一面。 4、典型的清教徒： John Cotton & Roger William 他们的不同：John Cotton was much more concerned with authority than with democracy; William begins the history of religious toleration in America. 5、William的宗教观点：Toleration did not stem from a lack of religious convictions. Instead, it sprang from the idea that simply to be virtuous in conduct and devout in belief did not give anyone the right to force belief on others. He also felt that no political order or church system could identify itself directly with God. 行为上的德，信仰上的诚，并没有给任何人强迫别人该如何行事的权利。没有任何政治秩序和教会体制能够直接体现神本身的意旨。 6、英国最早移民到美国的诗人：Anne Bradstreet 7、在殖民时期最好的清教徒诗人：the best of Puritan poets is Edward Tayor. 学习指南： 1、Could you give a description of American Puritans? 关于美国清教徒的描绘 Like their brothers back in England, were idealists, believing that the church should be restored to the "purity" of the first-century church as established by Jesus Christ himself. To them religion was a matter of primary importance. They made it their chief business to see that man lived and thought and acted in a way which tended to the glory of God. They accepted the doctrine of predestination, original sin and total depravity, and limited atonement through a special infusion of grace from God, all that John Calvin, the great French theologian who lived in Geneva had preached. It was this kind of religious belief that they brought with them into the wildness. There they meaant to prove that were God's chosen people enjoying his blessings on this earth as in Heaven. 2、Hard work, thrift, piety and sobriety were the Puritan values that dominated much of the earliest American writing. 3、The work of two writers, Anne Bradstreet & Edward Taylor, rose to the level of real poetry. 4、The earliest settlers included Dutch, Swedes, Germans, French, Spaniards Italian, and Portuguese. 美国文学史复习2（reason and revolution) (2009-01-17 15:54:25) 一、美国的性质： The war for Independence ended in the formation of a Federative bourgeois democratic republic - the United States of America. 联邦的资产阶级民主共和国--美利坚合众国。 二、代表作家： 1、Benjamin Franklin 本杰明·富兰克林 1706-1790 1）"Poor Richard's Almanac" 穷人查理德的年鉴 annual collection of proverbs 流行谚语集
美国文学史期末参考复习资料
仅作参考，最主要还是要自己消化，整理 Chapter 1 Colonial Period 1. Puritanism: American puritans accepted the doctrine of predestination, original sin and total depravity, and limited atonement through a special infusion of grace from God. 2. Influence (1) A group of good qualities – hard work, thrift, piety, sobriety (serious and thoughtful) influenced American literature. (2) It led to the everlasting myth. All literature is based on a myth – garden of Eden. (3) Symbolism: the American puritan’s metaphorical mode of perception was chi efly instrumental in calling into being a literary symbolism which is distinctly American. (4) With regard to their writing, the style is fresh, simple and direct; the rhetoric is plain and honest, not without a touch of nobility often traceable to the direct influence of the Bible. II. Overview of the literature 1. types of writing diaries, histories, journals, letters, travel books, autobiographies/biographies, sermons 2. writers of colonial period (1) Anne Bradstreet (2) Edward Taylor III. Benjamin Franklin 1. life 2. works (1) Poor Richard’s Almanac (2) Autobiography 3. contribution (1) He helped found the Pennsylvania Hospital and the American Philosophical Society. (2) He was called “the new Prometheus who had stolen fire (electricity in this case) from heaven”. (3) Everything seems to meet in this one man –“Jack of all trades”. Herman Melville thus described him “master of each and mastered by none”. Chapter 2 American Romanticism Section 1 Early Romantic Period I. American Romanticism 1. Background (1) Political background and economic development (2) Romantic movement in European countries Derivative – foreign influence 2. features (1) American romanticism was in essence the expression of “a real new experience and contained “an alien quality” for the simple reason that “the spirit of the place” was radically new and alien. (2) There is American Puritanism as a cultural heritage to consider. American romantic authors tended more to moralize. Many American romantic writings intended to edify more than they entertained. (3) The “newness” of Americans as a nation is in connection with Am erican Romanticism. (4) As a logical result of the foreign and native factors at work, American romanticism was both imitative and independent. II. Washington Irving: Father of American Literature 1. several names attached to Irving (1) first American writer (2) the messenger sent from the new world to the old world (3) father of American literature 2. life 3. works (1) A History of New York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty (2) The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. (He won a measure of international recognition with the publication of this.) (3) The History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (4) A Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada (5) The Alhambra 4. Literary career: two parts (1) 1809~1832
美国文学史-知识点梳理
Part I The Literature of Colonial America I．Historical Introduction The colonial period stretched roughly from the settlement of America in the early 17th century through the end of the 18th. The first permanent settlement in America was established by English in 1607. ( A group of people was sent by the English King James I to hunt for gold. They arrived at Virginia in 1607. They named the James River and build the James town.) II．The pre-revolutionary writing in the colonies was essentially of two kinds: 1) Practical matter-of-fact accounts of farming, hunting, travel, etc. designed to inform people "at home" what life was like in the new world, and, often, to induce their immigration 2) Highly theoretical, generally polemical, discussions of religious questions. III．The First American Writer The first writings that we call American were the narratives and journals of these settlements. They wrote about their voyage to the new land, their lives in the new land, their dealings with Indians. Captain John Smith is the first American writer. A True Relation of such Occurrences and Accidents of Note as Hath Happened in Virginia Since the First Planting of That Colony (1608) A Map of Virginia: A Description of the Country (1612) General History of Virgini a (1624): the Indian princess Pocahontas Captain John Smith was one of the first early 17th-century British settlers in North America. He was one of the founders of the colony of Jamestown, Virginia. His writings about North America became the source of information about the New World for later settlers. One of the things he wrote about that has become an American legend was his capture by the Indians and his rescue by the famous Indian Princess, Pocahontas. IV．Early New England Literature William Bradford and John Winthrop John Cotton and Roger Williams Anne Bradstreet and Edward Taylor V．Puritan Thoughts 1. The origin of puritan In the mediaeval Europe, there was widespread religious revolution. In the 16th Century, the English King Henry VIII (At that time, the Catholics were not allowed to divorce unless they have the Pope's permission. Henry VIII wanted to divorce his wife because she couldn't bear him a son. But the Pope didn't allow him to divorce, so he) broke away from the Roman Catholic Church & established the Church of
美国文学练习题答案10
I. Multiple Choices (40%) 1-5 DCADA 6-10 ADDAD 11-15DBCBA 16-20 DBCCC 21-25 DCDAC 26-30 ACDBC 31-35CAACD 36-40 DDCAB II. Choose the relevant match from column B for each item in column A. (10%) 1-5 CABDE 6-10CDEAB III. Interpreting the following texts. （15%） Passage 1 1.Ezra Pound(2’) 2.This short poem is one of the most famous representative works of Imagist school. In the poem, “the object” to be treated is the faces in that dim and dam context. The impression is brought out most vividly by the single, dominant image of flower petals on a wet, black bough, which serves as the most. (5’) Passage 2 1. Theodore Dreiser. Sister Carrie(2’) 2. (1)The world is cold and harsh to Sister Carrie. Alone and helpless, she moves along like a mechanism driven by desire and catches blindly at any opportunity for a better existence. A feather in the wind, she is totally at the mercy of forces she cannot comprehend, still less to say control. She does not seem to possess what may be called a mora l fiber in her. (4’) (2) Spencer’s influence is seen at its most powerful as to Hustwood’s tragedy. Dreiser’s portrait is an authentic one of the impotent modern man unfit to survive. He cannot help himself in his relationship with Sister Carrie. No respectable job, no handsome income, no genteel family, nothing could overcome his biological need and stop him from returning to savage, atavistic unreason. He thus hovers between being a man and beast in his behavior. He must die. (6’) IV. Explain the following terms（15%） 1. Local Colorism or Regionalism as a trend first came to prominence in the late 19th century in America. The local colorists were devoted to capturing the unique customs, manners, speech, folklore, and other qualities of a particular regional community, usually in humorous short stories. (3分) The most famous of the local colorists was Mark Twain, with his masterpiece The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. (2分) 2. Transcendentalism is the summit of the Romantic Movement in the history of American literature in the 19th century. （1分）Transcendentalism has been defined philosophically as “the recognition in man of the capacity of knowing truth intuitively”. （1分）Transcendentalists place emphasis on the importance of the Over-soul, the individual and Nature. （2分）The most important representatives are Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. （1分） 3. It defines a sense of moral loss or aimlessness. The WWI destroyed the in ocent ideas, many good young men went to the war and died, or returned damaged, both physically and mentally; their moral faith were no longer valid--- they were “Lost.”（2分）. So in a broad Sense: it refers to the entire post -WWI American young generation. In a narrow sense: The Lost Generation is a term used to describe a group of American writers who were rebelling against what America had become by the 1900’s, including Heming way, F.S.Fitzgerald, etc. Who left
美国文学史及选读考试整理
Washington Irving Bracebridge Hall 布雷斯布里奇田庄 (1822) The Legend of Sleepy Hollow Tales of a Traveller 旅客谈 (1824) Christopher Columbus (1828) c. writing characteristics (1) humorous: the function of his writing is to amuse, to entertain instead of teaching or instruction (2) vivid and true character portrayal (3) finished (refined) and musical language, thus regarded as “the Amn. Goldsmith ” d. analysis on The Legend of Sleepy Hollow(选自the sketch book 见闻札记 ) 1. the story:setting,character, plot 2. theme:conflicts and praise conflict betw. Ichabod and Brom conflict betw. the village and the outside world James Fenimore Cooper The Spy (1821): a historical novel The Pilot (1824): a sea novel Leatherstocking Tales 皮裹腿故事集(1823-1841): frontier novels The Last Mohicans (1826) (Colonial War betw. Britain and France) e. writing features: strong points: we can see a variety of incidents and tensions, complicated plot and structure and a beautiful description of nature. Weak points: characterization is weak. There is unsatisfactory description of characters (esp. female). He is not free from syntactical awkwardness, heavy-handed attempt at humor. “Where Irving excels Cooper is weak.” Dialect is not authentic. Edgar Allan Poe The Fall of the House Usher Feature: i. brevity (15 pages) ii. Single effect iii. originality in theme To Helen It was inspired by the beauty of the mother of a schoolmate of Poe in Richmond, Virginia. The poem is famous for a number of things: 1. its rhyme scheme: ababb 2. its varied line lengths 3. its metaphor of a travel on the sea 4. its oft-quoted lines: "To the glory that was Greece,/And the grandeur that was Rome." theme: praise the ideal love and beauty and ancient Greek and Roman civilizations The Raven 乌鸦 theme: the lament over the death of a beautiful woman tone: melancholy Transcendentalism (essayists, poets, novelists) Their journal is “The Dial ” . Definition: Transcendentalism is idealism. (Emerson) b. features (1) stress on Oversoul, that is spirit. (2) stress the importance of individual. (3) fresh conception of nature. c. significance (1) inspired a whole generation of writers such as Whitman, Melville and Dickinson. (2) dresses man ’s subjective initiative as opposed to materialism. (3) liberated people from Calvin ’s original sin d. limitation (1) shallow: cut off from real life or reality; initiated by the rich, they were limited in a certain circle. So, in some degree, they have been cut off from social life and can ’t understand the sufferings of the common people. (2) inward contradiction: gain knowledge by intuition, shows its idealistic aspect. R.W. Emerson (Ralph Waldo) Nature (1836): the Bible of New England transcendentalism The American Scholar (1837): "America's Declaration of Intellectual The Divinity School Address 神学院致辞 (1838) Essays (1841/1847) Representative Men (1850) English Traits (1856)
常耀信美国文学知识点
Introduction 1. The Youngest National Literature 1781 (Independence War) --- 2012= about 200 years 2. Great achievement: 1930-1980, nine American writers won the Nobel Prize The Periods of American Literature 1.The colonial period (约1607 - 1765) 2. The period of enlightenment and Independence War (1765-1800) 3. The romantic period (1800 - 1865) 4. The realistic period (1865 - 1914) 5. The period of modernism (1914 - 1945) 6. The Contemporary Literature (1945 -) Chapter I Colonial America American Puritanism 1. The beliefs and practices characteristic of Puritans(most of whom were Calvinists who wished to purify the Church of England of its Catholic aspects) 2. Strictness and austerity in conduct and religion Puritans‘ religio us belief: Calvinism ◆John Calvin, the great French theologian. The principal concepts: 1) Original sin and total depravity. 2) Predestination 3) Salvation of selected few ◆ The Puritans carried with them to America a code of values, a philosophy of life, and a point of view, which, in time, took root in the New world and became what is known as American Puritanism. (p11) The Influence of Puritanism on American Literature 1) Idealism（optimism） 2) Symbolism 3) Simplicity in writing Significance of Puritanism With time passing it became a dominant factor in American life, one of the most enduring shaping influences in American thought and American Literature. To some extent it is a state of mind, a part of the national cultural atmosphere that the American breathes, rather than a set of tenets. Time: From the arrival of the first settlers in the early 17th century to the end of the 18th century Literary Features 1. Forms Personal literature in various forms --- diaries, histories, common books (札记)，journals, letters, travel books, sermons etc. 2. Content 1) practical matter-of-fact accounts of farming, hunting, travel, etc. designed to inform people ―at home‖ what life was like in the new world 2) highly theoretical discussions of religious questions. 3. Style In Style, English literary traditions were imitated and transplanted. Early writers in the colonial period John Smith, a captain, one of the founders of the colony of Jamestown, Virginia; the writer of A Description of New England. William Bradford, the first governor of the Plymouth Plantation, his writing: Of Plymouth Plantation (P16) John Winthrop, the first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, In his famous speech A Model of Christian Charity ,he states that there was a agreement between God and his people of building a new Garden of Eden in the new world. (P17) Therefore let us choose life, 所以，让我们选择生活， that we and our seed 这样，我们和我们的后代， may live by obeying His 可以听从上帝的声音， voice and cleaving to Him, 须臾不离上帝， for He is our life and 因为，上帝是我们的生命， our prosperity. 我们的兴旺 1
美国文学史习题 (1)
I. Multiple choice. Please choose the best answer among the four items. (10 x 1’= 10’) 1. In American literature, the 18th century was the age of Enlightenment. ____ was the dominant. 2. The short story “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” is taken from Irving’s work named ____. 3. Which of the following is not the characteristic of American Romanticism? 4. The short story “Rip Van Winkle” reveals the __ attitude of its author.
5.Stylistically, Henry James’ fiction is characterized by ___. 6.Transcendentalist doctrines found their greatest literary advocates in ___ and Thoreau. 7.Which is regarded as the “Declaration of Intellectual Independence”? 8.____ is considered Mark Twain’s greatest achievement.
美国文学练习题
5. Hawthorne’s unique gift was for the creation of ________ which touch the deepest roots of man’s moral nature. A. romantic stories B. symbolic stories C. gothic stories D. humorous stories 7. Romanticism appeared as a literary trend against _____. A. rationality B. imagination C. intuition D. individualism 12. _____ held a “black”vision of life and human beings. A. Ralph Waldo Emerson B. Nathaniel Hawthorne C. Edgar Allan Poe D. James Fenimore Cooper 16. Born of one common cultural heritage, the American Romanticists shared some common features..._______, with the English Romanticists. A. an increasing emphasis on the free expression of emotions B. an increasing attention to the psychic states of their characters C. an increasing emphasis on the desire to return to nature D. both A and B 17. _______ was the first great American writer to earn international fame. A. Irving B. Cooper C. Emerson D. Whitman 21. Pearl is the heroine in Hawthorne’s novel _________ . A. Moses from an Old Manse B. Twice-Told Tales C. The Scarlet Letter D. The Blithedale Romance 7. Hester Prynne, Dimmesdale, Chillingworth, ang Pearl are most likely the names of the characters in __________. A.The Scarlet Letter B. The House of the Seven Gables C. The Portrait of a Lady D. The Pioneers 24. Being a period of the flowering of American literature, the Romantic period is also called “_____”. A. the American Renaissance B. the English Renaissance C. the Harlem Renaissance D. the Second Renaissance 5. According to Hawthorne, the scarlet letter “A”which originally stood for “_______” f inally obtained the meaning of “able”or “angel”through Hester’s efforts. A. adultery B. arrogance C. accomplishment D. agony 13. F. Scott Fitzgerald is often acclaimed literary spokesman of the ____________.