美国文学题库整理版

. 美国文学史及选读期末复习重点

考试题型：

1.名词解释（20分）5个*4=20分

2.选择题（20分）

3.连线题（10分）

4.判断题（10分）

5.片段赏析（20分）一个10分2个一个小说一个诗歌

6.论述题（20分）一个10分2个一个小说一个诗歌

The Outline of American Literature

The Realistic Period 1865-1914

Realists:Henry James and his psychological realism

William Dean Howells and his moral realism

Local Colorism/Regionalism: Mark Twain

Naturalists:Stephen Crane /Dreiser

The Modern Period 1914-1945

Modern Poetry:

Imagism:Ezra Pound

W.C.Williams

Lyrical Poet：Robert Frost

Carl Sandburg

Wallace Stevens

Modern Novelists:

Representatives of the Lost Generation:

(Jazz Age)F.Scott Fitzgerald/Ernest Hemingway/T.S.Eliot

Epitome of the Southern Renaissance:

William Faulkner

The Leftist Novelists:

John Dos Passos/John Steinbeck

The Jewish American Novelists in this period:

Eugene O·Neill

Part I Term Definition

1.American Naturalism:美国自然主义

1.Naturalism is a more deliberate kind of realism and this term describes a type of literature that attempts to apply scientific principles of objectivity（客观）and detachment（冷静）to its study of human beings.

2.Naturalism is a literary movement that used detailed realism to suggest that social conditions, heredity, and environment had inescapable force in shaping human character.

3.Although naturalist literature

.

described the world with sometimes brutal realism, it sometimes also aimed at bettering the world through social reform.4.It accepted the interpretation

Dreiser is a leading Key words ：Darwin ’s Evolutionary Theory;environment and heredity; objectivity and detachment Theodore Dreiser; Sister Carrie, Stephen Crane, etc.

2. American Realism:美国现实主义

1.时间：In American literature, the Civil War brought the Romantic Period to an end. The Age of Realism came into existence. 内战将浪漫主义结束，开启现实主义。

2.It came as a reaction against the lie of romanticism and sentimentalism. 反对浪漫主义和感伤主义

3.Realism turned from an emphasis on the strange toward a faithful of the ordinary, a slice of life as it is really lived. It expresses the concern for commonplace and the low, and it offers an objective rather than an idealistic view of the human nature and human experience.现实主义从对奇异的强调转向对平凡的忠实的渲染，一种生活的片段。它表达了对平庸和平庸的关注，它提供了一个客观的而不是理想化的人性观和人类经验。

4.A realistic writer is more objective than subjective ，more descriptive than symbolism.

5.The representative figures are Mark Twain, Henry James and Howells.

Key words ：Mark Twain, Henry James and Howells ；reality; the depressed;

3. Modernism:现代主义

1.It was a complex and diverse (复杂多样的) international movement in all the creative arts (创造性艺术), originating about the end of the 19th century.

2.It provided （出现）the greatest creative renaissance of the 20th century.

3.It was made up of many facets (方面), such as symbolism ，surrealism (超现实主义), cubism (立体主义), expressionism, futurism (未来主义), etc.

4.Modernism implies historical discontinuity ，a sense of alienation ，of loss and of despair.

4.Southern Renaissance(南方文艺复兴，必考)：

1.时间：The Southern Renaissance is the revival of American Southern literature that began in the 1920s and 1930s until the 1950s.

2.特色：Much of the writings featured the struggle between those who embraced social changes and those who were more skeptical.

3.观点：The writers attempt to come to terms not only with the inherited values of the Southern tradition ，but also with a certain way of perceiving and dealing with the past.

4.代表人物：The representative figures are William Faulkner Williams and so on.

5.Imagism:意象主义

1.时间，地点，影响：Imagism was a literary poetic movement which flourished in London between 1909 and 1917 and had an enduring and pervasive influence on English-language poetry in the twentieth century.

2.意象主义三原则：Here are three imagist poetic principles:Direct treatment of the thing whether subjective or objective ；Eliminate merely ornamental or superfluous words ；As regarding rhythm ，to compose in the sequence of the musical phrase,not in the sequence of a metronome.

3.代表人物：The imagists were led by Ezra Pound and the representative figures are https://www.wendangku.net/doc/c016768311.html,wrence.Ezra Pound and so on.

6.Iceberg Principle:冰山原则

1.主要观点：Iceberg Principle is that the full meaning of the text is not limited to moving the plot forward ：there is always a web of association and inference ，a submerged reason behind the inclusion of every detail.

2.提出者：It is a writing style coined by American writer Ernest Hemingway.

3.举例：In Death in the Afternoon （午后之死），Hemingway outlined his “theory of omission ”or “iceberg principle ”.

4.海明威的观点：He believed the deeper meaning of a story should not be evident on the surface ，but should shine

.

through implicitly.The dignity of movement of an ice-berg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water.

7.Jazz Age:爵士时代 1.时间，地点：The Jazz Age describes the period of the 1920s and 1930s,the years between World War I and World War II,particularly in North America,continuing through the Roaring Twenties and ending with the rise of the Great Depression in America.2.代表人物，特点：The representative figure is F.Scott Fitzgerald with his novel The Great Gatsby,highlighting the decadence （颓废）and hedonism （享乐主义），as well as the growth of individualism.

8.Hemingway Heroes/Code Hero:海明威式英雄

1.Hemingway Heroes refer to some protagonists in Hemingway`s works.

2.As a concept from Hemingway` works ，Code Hero is defined by Hemingway as a man who lives correctly ，following the ideals of honour ，courage and endurance in a world.

3.It stands for a whole generation and this kind of hero is an average man of decidely masculine tastes ，a man who is sensitive and intelligent ，a man of actions and of few words.For example ，he uses his code hero ，who is named in most of his novels as Nick Adams to teach readers a creative and disciplined way of life.

9. American Dream:美国梦

The American Dream is the faith held by many people in the United States of America that through hard work,courage and determination one can achieve a better life for oneself,usually through financial prosperity.These were values held by many early European settlers,and have been passed on to subsequent generations.American dream means the belief that everyone can succeed as long as he/she works hard enough. It usually implies a successful and satisfying life.

美国梦是由在美利坚合众国的许多人通过努力保持信心，勇气和决心实现一个能给自己一个更好的生活，通常通过金融繁荣。这是许多早期的欧洲移民的价值观，并已传递给后代。美国梦的含义，相信每个人都能长他/她付出足够的努力获得成功。它通常意味着成功和满足的生活。

10. Stream of Consciousness:意识流

1.范畴：It is one of the modern literary techniques.

2.风格： It is the style of writing that attempts to imitate the natural flow of a character’s thoughts, feelings, reflections, memories, and mental images as the character experiences them. Those novels broke through the bounds of time and space, and depicted vividly and skillfully the unconscious activity of the mind fast changing and flowing incessantly.这些小说突破了时空的界限，生动而巧妙地刻画了心灵的无意识活动，瞬息万变，不断流动。

3.举例：It was first used by the Irish novelist James Joyce.The modern American writer William Faulkner successfully advanced this technique.

11.the Lost Generation ：迷茫的一代

1.人物，地点，时间：The term Lost Generation was coined by Stein to refer to a group of American Literary notables who lived in Paris from the end of World War I to the beginning of the Great Depression.

2.代表人物：The representative figures are F.Scott Fitzgerald ，Ernest Hemingway and T.S.Eliot and so on.

3.迷茫的原因：They were “lost ”because after the war many of them were disillusioned with the world in general.

4.It refers to a group of young intellectuals (知识分子) who came back from war, were injured (受伤害) both physically (身体上) and mentally (精神上).

. 12.Yoknapatawpha ：约克纳帕塔法

1.Most of Faulkner`s works are set in a small region in Northern Mississippi ，Yoknapatawpha County ，which is actually an imaginary place based on Faulkner`s childhood memory about the town of Oxford in his native County.

2.With rich imagination ，he turned the land ，the people and the history of the region into a literary creation and a mythical kingdom.

3.This kind of stories deal with the historical period from the Civil War to the 1920s3.As a result ，the County has become an allegory and Faulkner has managed successfully to show a panorama of the whole Southern society.

补充：Local Colorism （地方主义）

1.时间：Local colorism ，also called regionalism ，as a trend became dominant in American literature in the 1860s and early 1870s and

2.特点：it is characterized by vernacular(本国语) language and satirical(讽刺的) humor.

3.目的：The final goal of local colorists is to write or to present local characters of their regions distinguished from other.

4.举例：The representative figure is Mark Twain.It is a unique variation of American literary realism.

Key words: Mark Twain, local, people and landscape, realism, language, custom, etc.

Part II Multiple Choices

1. Which is not connected with Thomas Paine?

A. Common Sense

B. The American Crisis

C. The Rights of Man

D. The Autobiography

2. “These are the times that try men ’s souls ”, these words were once read to Washington ’s troops and did much to spur excitement to further action with hope and confidence. Who is the author of these words?

A. Benjamin Franklin

B. Thomas Paine

C. Thomas Jefferson

D. George Washington

3. At the Reason and Revolution Period, Americans were influenced by the European movement called the ______.

A. Chartist Movement

B. Romanticist Movement

C. Enlightenment Movement

D. Modernist Movement

4. In American literature, the Enlighteners were favorable to______.

A. the colonial order

B. religious obscurantism

C. the Puritan tradition

D. the secular literature

5. The English colonies in North America rose in arms against their parent country and the Continental Congress adopted ______ in 177

6.

A. Declaration of Independence

B. the Sugar Act

C. the Stamp Act

D. the Mayflower Compact

6. ______ usually was regarded as the first American writer.

A. William Bradford

B. Anne Bradstreet

C. Emily Dickinson

D. Captain John Smith

7. Anne Bradstreet was a Puritan poet. Her poems made such a stir in England that she became known as the “______” who appeared in America.

A. Ninth Muse

B. Tenth Muse

C. Best Muse

D. First Muse

8. Who was considered as the “poet of American Revolution ”?

A. Anne Bradstreet

B. Edward Taylor

C. Michael Wigglesworth

D. Philip Freneau

9. In 1817, the stately poem called Thanatopsis introduced the best poet ______ to appear in America up to that time.

. A. Edward Taylor B. Philip Freneau

C. William Cullen Bryant

D. Edgar Allen Poe

10. The finest example of Nathaniel Hawthorne ’s symbolism is the recreation of Puritan Boston in ______.

A. The Scarlet Letter

B. Young Goodman Brown

C. The Marble Faun

D. The Ambitious Guest

11. “The universe is composed of Nature and the soul … Spirit is present everywhere ”. This is the voice of the book Nature written by Emerson, which pushed American Romanticism into a new phase, the phase of New England ______.

A. Romanticism

B. Transcendentalism

C. Naturalism

D. Symbolism

12. Which is generally regarded as the Bible of New England Transcendentalism?

A. Nature

B. Walden

C. On Beauty

D. Self-Reliance

13. Mark Twain created, in _________, a masterpiece of American realism that is also one of the great books of world literature.

A. The Adventure of Huckleberry Finn

B. The Adventure of Tom Sawyer

C. The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg

D. The Gilded Age

14. _________ marks the climax of Mark Twain ’s literary creativity.

A . The Adventure of Huckleberry Finn B. The Gilded Age

C. Life on the Mississippi

D. The Adventure of Tom Sawyer

15. Choose the novel which is not written by Henry James.

A. The Ambassadors

B. The Wings of the Dove

C. The Bostonians

D. The Mysterious Stranger

16. Generally speaking, all those writers with a naturalistic approach to human reality tend to be _________.

A. transcendentalists

B. idealists

C. pessimists

D. impressionists

17. Ezra Pound ’s long poem _________ contained more than one hundred poems loosely connected.

A. The Waste Land

B. The Cantos

C. Don Juan

D. Queen Mab

18. T. S. Eliot ’s first major poem _________(1917), has been called the first masterpiece of modernism in English.

A. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

B. The Waste Land

C. Four Quartets

D. Preludes

19. Ernest Hemingway was badly wounded in Italy and sent to a hospital where he fell in love with a nurse. These two persons later became the characters of his novel _________.

A. The Old Man and the Sea

B. For Whom the Bell Tolls

C. The Sun Also Rises

D. A Farewell to Arms

20. In William Faulkner ’s The Sound and the Fury , he used a technique called _________, in which the whole story was told through the thoughts of one character.

A. stream of consciousness

B. imagism

C. symbolism

D. naturalism

21. Led by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo Emerson and ______, there arose a kind of teachings of transcendentalism in the early nineteenth century.

A. Herman Melville

B. Henry David Thoreau

C. Mark Twain

D. Theodore Dreiser

22. A New ______ had appeared in England in the last years of the eighteenth century. It spread to continental Europe and then came to America early in the nineteenth century.

A. realism

B. critical realism

C. romanticism

D. naturalism

23. From Henry David Thoreau ’s jail experience, came his famous essay, ______ which states Thoreau ’s belief that no man should violate his conscience at the command of a government.

A. Walden

B. Nature

C. Civil Disobedience

D. Common Sense

24. Mark Twain, one of the greatest 19th century American writers, is well known for his _________.

. A. international theme B. waste-land imagery

C. local color

D. symbolism

25. Herman Melville’s ______ is an encyclopedia of everything: history, philosophy religion, etc. in addition to a detailed account of the operations of the whaling industry.

A. The Old Man and the Sea

B. Moby Dick

C. White Jacket C . Billy Budd

26. The ship “______” 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

27. From 1733 to 1758, Benjamin Franklin wrote and published his famous ______, an annual collection of proverbs.

A. The Autobiography

B. Poor Richard ’s Almanac

C. Common Sense

D. The General Magazine

28. In American literature, the eighteen-century was the age of the Enlightenment. ______ was the dominant spirit.

A. Humanism

B. Rationalism

C. Revolution

D. Evolution

29. ______ was the most leading spirit of the Transcendental Club.

A. Henry David Thoreau

B. Ralph Waldo Emerson

C. Nathaniel Hawthorne

D. Walt Whitman

30. Edgar Allen Poe ’s first collection of short stories is ______.

A. Tales of a Traveler

B. Leatherstocking Tales

C. Canterbury Tales

D. Tales of the Grotesque of Arabesque

31. ______ was a romanticized account of Herman Melville ’s stay among the Polynesians. The success of the book soon made Melville well known as the “man who lived among cannibals ”.

A. Moby Dick

B. Typee

C. Omoo

D. Billy Budd

32. Which is regarded as the “Declaration of Intellectual Independence ”?

A. The American Scholar

B. English Traits

C. The Conduct of Life

D. Representative Men

33. The three dominant figures of the realistic period in American literature are _________.

A. Theodore Dreiser, Emily Dickinson and William Dean Howells

B. Mark Twain, Henry James and William Dean Howells

C. Mark Twain, Theodore Dreiser and William Dean Howells

D. Mark Twain, Emily Dickinson and William Dean Howells

34. American literature produced only one female poet during the nineteenth century. This was _________.

A. Anne Bradstreet

B. Jane Austen

C. Emily Dickinson

D. Harriet Beecher

35. In 1900, London published his first collection of short stories, named _________.

A. The Son of the Wolf

B. The Sea Wolf

C. The Law of Life

D. White Fang

36. In Henry James ’ Daisy Miler , the author tries to portray the young woman as an embodiment of _________.

A. the force of convention

B. the free spirit of the New World

C. the decline of aristocracy

D. the corruption of the newly rich

37. “The apparition of these faces in the crowd; Petals on a wet, black bough.” This is the shortest poem written by _________.

A. T.S. Eliot

B. Robert Frost

C. Ezra Pound

D.

E.E.Cumings

38. The Fitzgerald lived so extravagantly that they frequently spent more money than F. Scot Fitzgerald earned for parties, liquor, entertaining their friends and traveling. It was this living style that nicknamed the decade of the 1920s as _________.

. A. The Roaring Twenties B. The Jazz Age C. The Dollar Decade D. all of the above

39. In 1954, _________ was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for his “mastery of the art of modern narration ”.

A. T.S Eliot

B. Ernest Hemingway

C. John Steinbeck

D. William Faukner

40. William Faukner ’s novel _________ describes the decay and downfall of an old southern aristocratic family, symbolizing the old social order, told from four different points of view.

A. The Sound and the Fury

B. Startoris

C. The Unvanquished

D. The Town

41. “The Lure of the Spirit: The Flesh in Pursuit ” i s the title of one chapter in Dreiser ’s novel _________.

A. An American Dream

B. Sister Carrie

C. Dreiser Looks at Russia

D. Jannie Gerhardt

42. The main theme of _________ The Art of Fiction reveals his literary credo that representation of life should be the main object of the novel.

A. Henry James ’

B. William Dean Howells ’

C. Mark Twain ’s

D. O. Henry ’s

43. With William Dean Howells, James, and Mark Twain active on the scene, _________became the major trend in the seventies and eighties of the nineteenth century.

A. sentimentalism

B. romanticism

C. realism

D. naturalism

44. While embracing the socialism of Marx, London also believed in the triumph of the strongest individuals. This contradiction is most vividly projected in the patently autobiographical novel _________.

A. The Call of the Wild

B. The Sea Wolf

C. Martin Eden

D. The Iron Heel

45_________ is a novella about a young American girl who gets “killed ” by the winter in Rome, and it brought Henry James international fame for the first time.

A. The American

B. The Europeans

C. Daisy Miller

D. The Portait of a Lady

答案：1-5DBCDA 6-10DBDCA 11-15BAAAD 16-20CBADA 21-25BCCCB 26-30CBBBD 31-35 BABCA 36-40BCDBA 41-45BACCC

Part III Matching （15分）

作家作品人物连线

1. Mark Twain （马克·吐温）

2. William Dean Howells （豪威尔斯）

3. Henry James （詹姆斯）

4.Stephen Crane（克莱恩）

.

5.Theodore Dreiser（德莱塞）

6.Ezra Pound（庞德）

7.William Carlos Williams（威廉斯）

8.T.S. Eliot（艾略特）

9.Robert Frost（弗罗斯特）

10.Carl Sandburg（桑伯格）

11.Wallace Stevens（史蒂文斯，非重点）

12.F.Scott Fitzgerald（菲茨杰拉德）

.

13.Ernest Hemingway（海明威）

14.William Faulkner（福克纳）

15.John Dos Passos（非重点）

16.John Steinbeck（非重点）

17.Eugene O·Neill （奥·尼尔）

Part IV Blank Filling

1.“”is perhaps the peak of William Cullen Bryant’s wok.

2.“Thanatopsis”, William Cullen Bryant’s best-known poem, consists of four stanzas in iambic tetrameter . The title means “”.

3.After his death, Longfellow became the only American to be honored with a bust in the of Westminster Abbey.

4.Harriet Beecher Stowe, the author of, had become an American institution and the most famous literary woman in the world.

5.William Dean Howells found his subject matter in the experiences of the American .

6.William Dean Howells called for the treatment of the “” as being the more “American.”

7.The naturalists emphasized that the world was amoral, that men and women had no free will, that their lives were controlled by and the .

8.The poetic style Walt Whitman devised is now called .

9.O·Henry’s stories are usually short and interesting; Famous for their .

10.Henry James is famous for his of the traditionless American confronting the complexity of European life.

. 11. Jack London believed in the inevitable triumph of the .

12. Dreiser ’s greatest and most successful novel, An American Tragedy, is about a young man who acts as if the only way he can be truly fulfilled is by acquiring wealth —through if necessary.

13. Writers of the first postwar era self-consciously acknowledged that they were a “ ,” devoid of faith and alienated from a civilization.

14. Wallace Stevens ’ work is primarily motivated by the belief that “ ”.

15. With the publication of , Hemingway became the spokesman for what Gertrude Stein had called “a lost generation.”

参考答案：见填空题题库

Part V Decide whether the statements are true or false (T/F).

1. John Winthrop ’s reports of exploration, published in the early 1600s, have been regarded as the first distinct American literature written in English.

2. In 1612, William Bradford published in England a book called A Map of Virginia ; With a description of the country.

3. Philip Freneau was neoclassical by training and taste yet romantic in essential spirit.

4. Ralph Waldo Emerson was recognized as the leader of transcendentalist movement, but he always applied the term “Transcendentalist ” to himself or to his beliefs and ideas.

5. To Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville, the telling of a tale was a way of inquiring into the meaning of life.

6. Walt Whitman was attacked in his lifetime for his offensive subject matter of sexuality and for his conventional style.

7. Tom Sawyer walked out of Twain ’s pages directly from his fresh memory of his boyhood in the west.

8. Hurstwood is a character in Theodore Dreiser ’s Sister Carrie .

9. In the decade of the 1910s, American literature achieved a new diversity and reached its greatest heights.

10. Edwin Arlington Robinson began his career as a novalist in bleakness and poverty.

11.The greatest of America’s realists, such as Henry James and Mark Twain, moved well beyond a superficial portrayal of nineteenth-century America.

12.Henry James was a realist in the same way as one views the realism of Mark Twain or William Dean Howells.

13.Sister Carrie is generally regarded as Theodore Dreiser ’s masterpiece.

14.Generally speaking, Jack London was much more interested in ideas than Stephen Crane and less sentimental than Frank Norris.

15.Ralph Waldo Emerson ’s prose style was sometimes as highly individual as his poetry.

16. American literature is the oldest of all national literature.

17. Georgia, Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, New York, New England, all were named after French monarchs and lands.

18. Benjamin Franklin was a prose stylist whose writing reflected the neoclassic ideals of clarity, restraint, simplicity and balance.

19. The Fall of the House of Usher is one of Edgar Allan Poe ’s poems.

20. The Scarlet Letter is set in the seventeenth century. It is an elaboration of a fact which the author took out of the life of the Puritan past.

21. Walt Whitman was so great that he won respect and love during his lifetime for his Leaves of Grass .

22. Many of O. Henry ’s stories contain a lot of slang and colloquial expressions, just like his own speech.

23. Henry James was a realist in the same way as one views the realism of Mark Twain or William Dean Howells.

24. Robert Frost rejected the revolutionary poetic principles of his contemporaries, and chose “the old-fashioned way to be new ” instead.

. 25. John Steinbeck ’s theme was usually that simple human virtues such as kindness and fair treatment were far superior to official hard-heartedness, or the dehumanizing cruelty of exploiters for their own commercial advantage.

26. Transcendentalists spoke for cultural rejuvenation and against the materialism of American society.

27. Washington Irving was the first great belletrist, writing always for pleasure, and to produce pleasure.

28. James Fennimore Cooper launched two kinds of immensely popular stories: the sea adventure tale and the frontier saga.

29. Puritan influence over American Romanticism was conspicuously noticeable.

30. “Young Goodman Brown ” seems to prove everyone possesses some evil secrets

参考答案：

1-5FFTFT 6-10FTTFF 11-15TFFTT 16-20FFTFT 21-25 FFFTT 26-30 TTTTT

Part VI Answer the following questions briefly.

1. When a girl leaves her home at eighteen, she does one of two things. Either she falls into saving hands and becomes better, or she rapidly assumes the cosmopolitan standard of virtue and becomes worse. Of an intermediate balance, under the circumstances, there is no possibility. The city has its cunning wiles, no less than the infinitely smaller and more human temper. There are large forces which allure with all the soulfulness of expression possible in the most cultured human. The gleam of a thousand lights is often as effective as the persuasive light in a wooing and fascinating eye. Half the undoing of the unsophisticated and natural mind is accomplished by forces wholly superhuman. A blare of sound, a roar of life, a vast array of human hives, appeal to the astonished senses in equivocal terms. Without a counselor at hand to whisper cautious interpretations, what falsehoods may not these things breathe into the unguarded ear! Unrecognized for what they are, their beauty, like music, too often relaxes, then weakens then perverts the simpler human perceptions. 必考！ Questions:

(1) From which novel is this paragraph taken?

(2) Who is the author of this novel?

(3) How do you understand “the cosmopolitan standard of virtue ”? (4) Is there any naturalist tendency in this passage? Answers:

(1)Sister Carrie

(2) Theodore Dreiser

(3) “The cosmopolitan standard of virtue ” is something that makes a person become low in virtue and become worse.

(4) Yes.

2. Briefly discuss the novel The Great Gatsby The Great Gatsby, a novel written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, is one of the greatest novels in American literature. It fully explores the disillusionment and despair of the lost generation through the personal tragedy of a young man whose “incorruptible Dream ” is easily smashed into pieces by the crude reality. The protagonist, Gatsby , is a mythical figure whose intensity of dream partakes of a state of mind that embodies American itself. His failure magnifies the end of the American Dream . The style of the story is explicit and chilly. Fitzgerald ’s accurate dialogues, his careful observation of mannerism and the colorful images provide the reader with a vivid and profound scene of the reality.

3. What are the three main principles that Ezra Pound endorsed?

(1) Directly treat poetic subjects.

(2) Eliminate merely ornamental or superfluous words.

(3) Rhythmical composition in the sequence of the musical phrase rather than in the sequence of metronome. Part VII Essay Writing (这个部分给大家的答案只是罗列了回答的要点，要将其连缀成文，如果

. 简单按复习题给的答案罗列，只得一半分数)

1. Write a short essay about the novel The Grapes of Wrath Writer: John Steinbeck----won Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962; spoke for the oppressed and suffered

Background information: (1) Oklahoma used to be a major agricultural state. In the 1930s, a draught ruined this place. People had to leave here to seek a way out. Many of them went to California in hope of finding jobs there to support their family. (2)The Great Depression.

Meaning of title: (1) Hope to despair; (2) Wrath of people; (3) Indications of revolution.

Theme: (1) Embodying the mass misery of farmers; (2) Praising the spirit of love and unity; (3) Advocating fight and struggle for better life.

Structure: (1) Its structure is dictated by the bible; (2) There are two blocks of material: a. the westward trek of the Joads; b. the depressed Oklahomans, and the general picture of the Great Depression.

Symbols: (1) dust---evil forces; (2) grapes---hope →rage

2. Write a short essay about the novel A Farewell to Arms

Writer: Hemingway---- (1) in 1954, he was awarded the Nobel Prize; (2) Main works: The Sun also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls, The old Man and the Sea. (3) His major contribution: a. Code hero---grace under pressure; b. Iceberg Theory--- economy of expression; (4) the lost generation

Background information: World War Ⅱ

Theme: shows the filth, meaningless, calamity of war; the death, the nothingness of life; the disillusionment with future, hope and love, happiness. The universe is indifferent. There is no God to watch over man.

Characters: Henry--- initially detached from life----though well-disciplined and friendly, he feels as if he has nothing to do with the war. After falling in love with Catherine he became a code hero in some way. Catherine---code hero: unfaltering devotion to Henry, brave, considerate, optimistic

Symbols: rain---sadness, desperation, depression. It is raining outside almost every time something bad occurs. mud---nature's hostility to man.

3. Write a short essay about the novel The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Author: Mark Twain —the first truly American writer, a local colorist; he used short, concrete and colloquial language; his sentences are simple, and even ungrammatical; good at writing children ’s adventures; masterpieces including: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

About the novel: T he first famous novel about growing up and showing the contradictions between adults’ world and teenagers’ world , a story of his seeking for freedom, fame, fortune, love, manhood; reveals the American values such as hero complex and American dream; records the rising Age of American Bourgeois system; bears the irony and satire toward the religion and rigid, didactic children education, which curbed the imagination of children and their innate nature for freedom and adventures and molded them into a stereotype of lifeless man.

4. Comment briefly on Theodore Dreiser ’s theme and writing style?

Theme:Dreiser ’s works are mainly concerned with the tragic nature of the human condition by depicting the coarse, vulgar, cruel, and terrible aspects of life like sex and crime.

Style: In terms of style, Dreiser has sometimes been censured for his clumsy syntax, deficient characterization, and inept and dull prose. Yet his accumulated detail, carefully selected and faithfully recorded, is a technique of power. Like the other naturalists, he refused to judge —to consider people as good or evil. He clothes his concepts symbolically in the details of reality. It is his journalistic method that has made him one of America ’s foremost novelists.

陶洁《美国文学选读》(第3版)章节题库-第十七章至第十八章【圣才出品】

第17单元20世纪美国诗人（1） I.Fill in the blanks. 1.Author_____Title_____（南京大学2007研） The apparition of these faces in the crowd; Petals on a wet,black bough. 【答案】Author:Ezra Pound；Title:“In a Station of the Metro” 【解析】题目节选自庞德的《在一个地铁车站》，该诗是以一个意象作为叙述语言的典型范例。 2.Ezra Pound’s lifelong endeavor had been devoted to the writing of_____,which contains_____poems.（国际关系学院2007研） 【答案】The Cantos;117 【解析】庞德把毕生精力都投入到写作《诗章》当中，《诗章》共包括117首诗。 3.Pound was the leader of a new movement in poetry which he called the“_____”movement. 【答案】imagism 【解析】庞德是意象主义运动的领军人物。 4._____was successful in two fields of activity which did not seem compatible with

one another:he was a very successful businessman and a very remarkable contemporary poet at the same time.（人大2006研） 【答案】Wallace Stevens 【解析】华莱士·史蒂文斯(Wallace Stevens)是美国20世纪的著名诗人。他集企业家和诗人于一身。 5.Winner of the National Book Award in1950and the Pulitzer Prize in1963,______ is the author of the five-volume epic Paterson which is a lucid statement of the author’s aesthetics. 【答案】William Carlos Williams 【解析】威廉·卡洛斯·威廉斯的代表作是《佩特森》，它清晰地表达了诗人的美学观点。 6.At the age of44,Wallace Stevens was finally persuaded to publish a book of poems,entitled_____. 【答案】Harmonium 【解析】1923年，44岁的华莱士-史蒂文斯出版了他的第一部诗集《风琴》（Harmonium）。 7.After his death,Wallace Stevens’s previously uncollected works appeared under the title_____. 【答案】Opus Posthumous 【解析】华莱士·史蒂文斯死后，其之前未收集的诗作集合成册于1957年发表，名为《遗作》(Opus Posthumous)。

美国文学试题库

美国文学试题库 注：试题库内容仅作为学习参考使用，并不代表考试内容。任何一道题均可能变化为其它形式的试题。 1. Naturalism is evolved from realism when the author’s tone in writing becomes less serious and less sympathetic but more ironic and more_____________. A. rational B. humorous C. optimistic D. pessimistic 2.The impact of Darwin’s evolutionary theory on the American thought and the influence of the nineteenth-century French literature on the American men of letters gave rise to yet another school of realism: American___________ . A. local colorism B. vernacularism C. modernism D. naturalism 3. ____________were idealists, believing the church should be restored to complete “purity” and dreaming that they would build the new land to an Eden on earth. A. Calvinists B. Puritans C. Romanticists D. Transcendentalists 4. All of the following are the features of Puritans EXCEPT _____. A. wanting to make pure their religious beliefs and practices

美国文学期末复习资料3

Part I Identification Directions: Decide whether the following statements are true or false. 1.( T ) Hurstwood is a character in Theodore Dreiser's Sister Carrie. 2.( F )In 1954, T. S. Eliot was awarded a Nobel Prize for his “mastery of the a rt of modern narration.” 3.( T )Hemingway believed that a man could find meaning in life by facing his death with dignity and courage. 4.( T )Literary naturalism may be regarded as the new development of literary realism, and was sometimes called “pessimistic realism.” The naturalistic writers were philosophical pessimists. 5.( F )Hemingway, Pound, Cummings, Dos Passos, and Fitzgerald, belong to the school of “Beat Generation”. 6.( F )William Faulkner's woks mainly concerned the decay in economy and moral in the American North. 7.( F ) Fitzgerald's fictional world is the best embodiment of the spirit of the romantic period. 8.( T )The narrator in T he Great Gatsby is a minor character named Nick Carraway, who is also a participant in the event. 9.( T ) Hemingway's novel The Sun Also Rises pained the image of the whole generation, the lost generation. 10.( F )In Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury, he used a technique called imagism, in which the whole story was told through the thoughts of one character. Part II Multiple choice: Directions: Choose the best answer and write the corresponding letter on the Answer Sheet. 1. ___________ showed great interest in Chinese literature and translated the poetry of Li Po into English, and was influenced by Confucian ideas. A. Ezra Pound B. Robert Frost C. T. S. Eliot D. E. E. Cummings 2. Ezra Pound's long poem____________ contained more than one hundred poems loosely connected. A. The Waste Land B. The Cantos C. Don Juan D. Queen Mab 3. In Paris, Ernest Hemingway, along with _____________, accomplished a revolution in literary style and language. A. Gertrude Stein B. Ezra Pound C. James Joyce D. all of the above 4. The Fitzgeralds lived so extravagantly that they frequently spent more money than F. Scoot Fitzgerald earned for parties, liquor, entertaining their friends and

美国文学考试资料整理

一．The Literature of Colonial America(Puritanism) 1.The first English colony: Jamestown in Virginia in 1607 2.The first American writer: John Smith 3.Anne Bradstreet: first American woman poet; a Puritan poet; once called “Tenth Muse”; 二．Literature of Reason and Revolution War of Independence (1775-1783);The French and Indian War / the Seven Y ears’War(1756-1763) 1..Benjamin Franklin: Autobiography; Richard’s Almanac Maxims from Poor Richard’s Almanac (proverbs that give practical wisdom) 2..Thomas Paine (1737-1809): Common Sense: a strong push for the Revolution W ar; four parts (British enslavement of the colonies; praising democratic election; America’s economic and military potential to protect the rights of people) 3..Philip Freneau (1752-1832) The first American-born poet;“Poet of the American Revolution”, “Father of American Poetry”, the most significant poet of 18th century America W orks:The Wild Honey Suckle《野忍冬花》on mortality, The Indian Burying Ground 《印第安人殡葬地》on the imagined afterlife, The British Prison Ship《英国囚船》about his imprisoned experience. 三．Romanticism The American Romantic period is considered one of the most important periods, the first literary Renaissance, in the history of American literature. It stretches from the end of the 18th century through the outbreak of the Civil W ar. It started with the publication of W ashington Irving’s The Sketch Book and ended with Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. 1.Washington Irving (1783-1859) Literary status: the first American to earn an international reputation; Father of the American short stories The Sketch Book: winning him international popularity，the first modern short stories and the first great American juvenile literature. Major works: A History of New York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty under the name of “Diedrich Knickerbocker

陶洁版美国文学选读_第三版_课后习题答案解析

美国文学选读第三版课后习题答案洁(部分) Unit 1 Benjamin Franklin Questions 1.Why did Franklin write his Autobiography? Franklin says that because his son may wish to know about his life, he is taking his one week vacation in the English countryside to record his past. He also says that he has enjoyed his life and would like to repeat it 2.What made Franklin decide to leave the brother to whom he had been apprenticed? His brother was passionate, and had often beaten him. The aversion to arbitrary power that has stuck to him through his whole life .After a brush with the law, Franklin left his brother. 3.How did he arrive in Philadephia? First he set out in a boat for Amboy, the boat dropped him off about 50 miles from Burlington, the next day he reached Burlington on foot, in Burlington he found a boat which was going towards Philadelphia, he arrived there about eight

美国文学期末考试复习必备(精)

美国文学期末考试复习必备（精） 1. What’s Puritanism? A religious and political movement which appeals to the right of the individual to political & religious independence. It includes three parts: a code of values, a point of view & a philosophy of life 2. What are the basic Puritan beliefs? 1). Total Depravity 2). Unconditional Election 3). Limited Atonement 4). Irresistible Grace 5). Perseverance of the "saints" 3. What are American Puritan values? Sobriety thrift, Self-reliance Diligence, Struggle, simple tastes 4. What are the features of American literature in the Colonial Period? A. Humble origins: diaries, journals, histories, letters. Its various forms, occupy a major position in the literature of the early colonial period. B. in content: serving either god or colonial expansion or both C. in form: imitating English literary traditions. D. in style: tight and logic structure, precise and compact expression, avoidance of rhetorical decoration, adoption of homely imagery and simplicity of diction. E. Symbolism formed in this period ------To the pious Puritan, the physical, phenomenal world was nothing but a symbol of God. F. Simple, fresh and direct style

美国文学复习题(有答案版)

美国文学复习题(有答案版)

美国文学复习提纲 第一部分连线题（1*10=10’） 1. Thomas Jefferson The Declaration of Independence 2. Walt Whitman O’ Captain, My Captain 3. Mark Twain Jumping Frog 4. Robert Frost Mending Wall 5. Ezra Pound In a Station of the Metro 6. Carl Sandburg Chicago 7. Saul Bellow The Adventure of Augie March 8. Ernest Hemingway Men without Women 9. John Steinbeck The Grape of Wrath 10. Jack London The Call of the Wild 11. Sinclair Lewis Babbit 12. Flannery O’ Connor A Good Man Is Hard to Find 13. O. Henry The Last Leaf 14. Jerome David Salinger The Catcher in the Rye 15. William Falkner The Sound and the Fury 第二部分单项选择(1.5*20=30’) 1. Anne Bradstreet was a Puritan poet. Her poems made such a stir in England that she became known as the “________” who appeared in America. A. Tenth Muse B. Ninth Muse C. Best Muse D. First Muse 2. In American literature, the 18th century was the age of the Enlightenment. ________ was the dominant spirit. A. Humanism B. Rationalism C. Revolution D. Evolution 3. Which of the following stirred the world and helped form the American republic? A. The American Crisis B. The Federalist C. Declaration of Independence D. The Age of Reason 4. At the Reason and Revolution Period, Americans were influenced by the European movement called the ________. A. Chartist Movement B. Romanticist Movement C. Enlightenment Movement D. Modernist Movement 5. Thoreau was often alone in the woods or by the pond, lost in spiritual communication with ________. A. nature B. transcendentalist ideas C. human beings D. celestial beings 6. ________tells a simple but very moving story in which four people living in a puritan community are involved in and affected by the sin of adultery in different ways. A. Twice-Told Tales B. The Scarlet Letter C. The House of the Seven Gables D. The Marble Faun

美国文学期末试卷及答案

《美国文学》期末考试试卷（B卷） 1.Poor Richard’s Almanac ( ) 2.The House of the Seven Gables ( ) 3.“Raven”( ) 4.My Antonia ( ) 5.Babbitt ( ) 6.A Streetcar Named Desire ( ) 7.Maggie: A Girl of the Streets ( ) 8.A Farewell to Arms ( ) 9.The Call of the Wild ( ) 10.Long Day's Journey into Night ( ) https://www.wendangku.net/doc/c016768311.html,mon Sense ( ) 12. “Rip Van Winkle”( ) 13. Walden( ) 14. The Song of Hiawatha( ) 15. Uncle Tom’s Cabin( ) 16.The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn( ) 17.Sister Carrie( ) 18.The Waste Land( ) 19. A Farewell to Arms( ) 20.The Great Gatsby( ) 1.defined poetry as the rhythmical creation of beauty. 2.While working for the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, Samuel Langhorne Clemens adopted the pseudonym , the way of a boatman taking soundings, and meaning two fathoms. 3.Ezra Pound initiated a campaign for , which emphasized the direct treatment of an object or situation. He also advocated the language of common speech, but always the exact word. 4.Fitzgerald summarized the experiences and attitudes of the 1920s decade in his masterpiece novel _________. 5.is the first American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature for his vigorous and graphic art of description and his ability to create, with wit and humor, new types of characters. 6.The first of American literature was not written by an American, but by ___________________, a British captain, who thus became the first American writer. 7._________________ has been considered the “Father of modern American Poetry.\

美国文学期末复习

作家作品 Naturalism 1、Stephen Crane斯蒂芬·克莱恩1871-1900 战争小说之父 Maggie: A Girl of the Streets《街头女郎麦琪》（美国文学史上首次站在同情立场上描写受辱妇女的悲惨命运）, a pioneering work of sociological naturalism；关于南北战争的The Red Badge of Courage《红色英勇勋章》，奠定了他在美国文坛上不可动摇的地位；优秀短篇小说集The Open Boat《海上扁舟》和blue hotel 《蓝色旅馆》; wounds in the rain 《雨中的伤痕》The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky《新娘来到黄天镇》 2、Theodore Dreiser西奥多·德莱塞1871-1945美国文学史上最杰出的现实主义小说家，一位以探索充满磨难的现实生活着称的美国自然主义作家. Sister Carrie《嘉莉妹妹》，真实再现了当时美国社会;Jennie Gerhardt《珍妮姑娘》，被称为《嘉莉妹妹》的姐妹篇;Trilogy of Desire欲望三部曲（Financer金融家,The Titan巨人,The Stoic斯多噶）;An American Tragedy《美国悲剧》是德莱赛成就最高的作品，是人们清晰地看到了美国社会的真实情况，“至今依然具有巨大的现实意义” 在《美国悲剧》中，Dreiser intended to tell us that it is the social pressure that makes Clyde's downfall inevitable. Clyde's tragedy is a tragedy that depends upon the American social system which encouraged people to pursue the "dream of success" at all costs. 1、Naturalism emphasized heredity and environment as important deterministic forces shaping individualized characters who were presented in special and detailed circumstances. 2. The effect of Darwinist idea of "survival of the fittest" was shattering. It is not surprising to find in Dreiser's fiction a world of jungle, where “kill or to be killed” was the law. Dreiser's Writing Features: ?As a naturalist writer, Dreiser stressed determinism in his novels which deals with everyday life, often with its sordid side. ?As a naturalist, he developed the capacity for photographic and relentless (无情的) observation, thereby truthfully reflecting the society and people of his time. ?His narrative method is natural and free from artifice. Modern Poetry 3、Robert Frost罗伯特·弗罗斯特1874-1963 20世纪最受欢迎的美国诗人, 美国文学中的桂冠诗人田园诗；自然诗?He used symbols from everyday country life to express his deep ideas. His graceful and traditional poetic style is highly appreciated in the country. A Boy's Will少年心愿and North of Boston波士顿之北were published and highly acclaimed in England. Mending Wall修墙,After Apple-picking摘苹果之 后;Mountain Interval山间The Road Not taken没有选择的道路;

美国文学期末考试重点

名词解释： Imagism: It’s a poetic movement of England and the U.S. flourished from 1909 to 1917.The movement insists on the creation of images in poetry by “the direct treatment of the thing” and the economy of wording. The leaders of this movement were Ezra Pound and Amy Lowell. Beat generation: The term was coined by Jack Kerouac in 1948 to refer to a group of disillusioned writers following World War Two. Later, this literary and cultural movement continued into the 1960s. The Beat Generation must not be confused with the Lost Generation of writers. Spokesmen and representatives of the Beat Generation were Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and others. They revolted against an America that was materialistic, belligerent and frustrating. Social, intellectual and sexual freedom was advocated. Traditional culture and normal social behavior were attacked and violated. Many of them were drug addicts wearing long hair and dirty clothes. They were fond of slangs and jazz. Masterpieces created by writers of this g roup include Kerouac’s On the Road and Ginsberg’s Howl and Other Poems, which were regarded as pocket Bibles of that generation. Other prominent Beats include William S. Burroughs, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Gregory Corso, Michael McClure, and Neal Cassady. The Beat Generation, had greatly influenced the countercultural movements of the 1960s and the adolescents and adults in other countries. In England, the “angry young men” made an echo and imitated the American “beatnik.” 二、1. Ralph Waldo Emerson: Nature: it is generally regarded as the Bible of New England Transcendentalism. The American Scholar:it has been regarded as “America’s Declaration of Intellectual Independence”. 2. Henry David Thoreau: Walden 3. Nathaniel Hawthorne: The Scarlet Letter: 主题：Hawthorne focuses his attention on the moral, emotional, and psychological effects or consequences of the sin on the people in general and those main characters in particular, so as to show us the tension between society and individuals. To Hawthorne, everybody is potentially a sinner, and great moral courage is therefore indispensable for the improvement of human nature. 4. Herman Melville: Moby Dick A. 作品分析： （1）Moby Dick represents the sum total of Melville’s bleak view of the world in which he lived. It is at once godless and purposeless. The loss of faith and the sense of futility and meaningless which characterize modern life of the West were expresse d in Melville’s work so well that the twentieth century has found it both fascinating and great. (2) One of the major themes of this novel is alienation, which exists in the life of Melville on different levels, between man and man, man and society, and man and nature. Melville also criticizes New England Transcendentalism of its emphasis on individualism and Oversoul. Another theme of this novel is “rejection and quest.” (3) The novel is highly symbolic. The voyage itself is a metaphor for “search and discovery, the search for the ultimate truth of experience.” Moby Dick is the most conspicuous symbol in the book and it is capable of many interpretations. It is a symbol of evil to some, one of goodness to others, and both to still others. Its whiteness is a paradoxical color, signifying as it does death and corruption as well as purity, innocence, and youth. It represents the final mystery of the universe which man will do well to desist from pursuing. (4) Melville manages to achieve the effect of ambiguity through employing the technique of multiple views of his narratives. He tends to write periodic sentences. His rich rhythmical prose and his poetic power have been profusely commented upon and praised. B. what does the white whale in Moby Dick symbolize? Why do you think so? For Captain Ahab, the white whale represents evil. After the loss of his leg in his encounter with the white whale, Ahab begins to hate Moby Dick and tries his best to kill the whale. It seems that he embodies all of the evil he once consigned to the white whale. For other members on the whaling ship, the white whale symbolizes the unknown, mysterious natural force of the universe. For the readers, the white whale is capable of many interpretations, for it is “paradoxically benign an d malevolent, nourishing and destructive,” “massive, brutal, monolithic, but at the same time protean, erotically beautiful, infinitely variable.” C. Major themes: obsession, religion, and idealism versus pragmatism, revenge, racism, sanity, hierarchical relationships, and politics. D. the Pequod is the microcosm of human society and the voyage becomes a search for truth. Moby Dick is a mystery, an ultimate mystery of the universe, and the voyage of the mind will forever remain a search, not a discovery, of the truth. The whole story turns out to be a symbolic voyage of the mind quest of the truth and knowledge of the universe, a spiritual exploration into man’s deep reality and psychology. 5. Walt Whitman: Leaves of Grass.It has been praised as “Democ ratic Bible”, and as American Epic. 主题：(1)he shows concern for the whole hard-working people and the burgeoning life of cities. (2) realization of the individual value. (3) pursuit of love and happiness. (4) Before and during the Civil War, Whitman expressed much mourning for the sufferings of the young lives in the battlefield and showed a determination to carry on the fighting dauntlessly until the final victory. 写作风格：(1) Whitman wrote “free verse”, that is, poetry without a fixed beat or regular rhyme scheme. (2) There is a strong sense of the poems being rhythmical. Parallelism and phonetic recurrence at the beginning of the lines contribute to the musicality of his poems. (3) Most of the pictures he painted with words are honest, undistorted images of different aspects of America of the day. (4) Whitman’s language is relatively simple and even rather crude. Another characteristic in Whitman’s language is his strong tendency to use oral English. Whitman’s vocabulary is amazing. He would use powerful, colorful, as well as rarely-used words. Leaves of Grass的分析： (1). Grass, the most common thing with the greatest vitality, is an image of the poet himself, a symbol of the then rising American nation and an embodiment of his ideals about democracy and freedom. (2). In this giant work, openness, freedom, and above all, individualism are all that concerned him. (3). In this book he also praises nature, democracy, labor and creation, and sings of man’s dignity and equality, and of th e brightest future of mankind. Most of the poems in Leaves of Grass sing of the “en-masse” and self as well. 6. Emily Dickinson: 诗歌的主要内容：love, nature, death and immortality. 7. Edgar Allen Poe: 短篇小说家和诗人。 Poe is the father of psychoanalytic criticism and the father of detective story. 主题：death of one’s beloved lover of great intelligence and beauty. He also writes about horror (Gothic) stories, murder, and insanity. 8. Henry James: The turn of the screw The founder of psychological realism. He was the first American writer to conceive his artistic work in international themes. 9. Mark Twain:The adventures of Huckleberry Finn Hemingway described it as the book from which “all modern American literature comes”. The style of this book is quite simple. The book is written in the colloquial style. Though a local book, it touches upon the human situation in a general, indeed universal way: humanitarianism ultimately triumphs. It tells a story about the United States before the Civil War, around 1850, when the great Mississippi Valley was still being settled. Here lies an America, wit its great national faults, full of violence and even cruelty, yet still retaining the virtues of “some simplicity, some innocence, some peace.” 10. Stephen Crane, Frank Norris, Theodore Dreiser: 自然主义的代表人物。 11. F. Scott Fitzgerald:The Great Gatsby 迷惘一代的代表人物 12. Ernest Hemingway: A Farewell to Arms; For Whom the Bell Tolls; The Old Man and the Sea The title of For Whom the Bell Tolls comes from John Donne’s Meditation. 13. William Faulkner: stream of consciousness的写作手法 14. Ezra Pound: 意象派代表人物。 意象派基本主张： (1) Direct treatment of the “thing”, whether subjective or objective. (2) To use absolutely no word that does not contribute to the presentation (3) As regarding rhythm, to compose in the sequence of the musical phrase, not in the sequence of a metronome. 15. Robert Frost: natural poet. 16. Eugene Glastone O’Neill: Desire Under the Elms Long Days Journey into Night: Mark Twain H. L. Mencken considered "the true father of our national literatu re” Adventures of Huckleberry Finn(1884) and Life on the Mississippi(1883) Twain shaped the world's view of American and made a more extensive combination of American folk humor and serious literature than previous writers had ever done. Mark Twain’s sty le 1) Twain is also known as a local colorist, who preferred to present social life through portraits of the local characters of his regions 2) Another fact that made Twain unique is his magic power with language, his use of vernacular. His words are colloquial, concrete and direct in effect, and his sentence structures are simple, even ungrammatical, which is typical of the spoken language 3) Mark Twain's humor is remarkable, too. Most of his works tend to be funny, containing some practical jokes, comic details, witty remarks. 4) Paid more attention to the "life" of the Americans, Concerned with the life of a small, well-defined region and the lower-class people 5) Nostalgic in a vanishing way of life and recorders of a present that faded before their eyes Adventures of Huckleberry Fin The character analysis and social meaning of Huck Finn Huck is a typical American boy with “a sound heart and a deformed conscience”. He appears to be vulgar in language and in manner, but he is honest and decent in es sence. His remarkable raft’s journey down on the Mississippi river can be regarded as his process of education and his way to grow up. Huck is the son of nature and a symbol for freedom and earthly pragmatism. Through the eye of Huck, the innocent and reluctant rebel, we see the pre-Civil War American society fully exposed. Twain contrasts the life on the river and the life on the banks, the innocence and the experience, the nature and the culture, the wilderness and the civilization. Ernest Hemingway A Nobel Prize winner for literature His style, the particular type of hero in his novels, and his life attitudes have been widely recognized, not only in English-speaking countries but all over the world Hemingway shot himself with a hunting gun In Our Time (1925)is the first book to present a Hemingway hero--Nick Adams The Sun Also Rises(1926) is Hemingway's first true novel. A vivid portrait of "The Lost Generation," -- a group of young Americans who left their native land and fought in the war and later engaged themselves in writing in a new way about their own experiences. Hemingway's second big success is A Farewell to Arms, telling us a story about the tragic love affair of a wounded American soldier with a British nurse -- emphasizes his belief that man is trapped both physically and mentally, but goes to some lengths to refute the idea of nature, man is doomed to be entrapped For Whom the Bell Tolls clearly represents a new beginning in Hemingway's career as a writer, which concerns a volunteer American guerrilla Robert Jordan fighting in the Spanish Civil War, this work Caps his career and leads to his receipt of the Nobel Prize The Old Man and the Sea, Men Without Women(1927), Death in the Afternoon(1932), The Snows of Kilimanjaro, To Have and Have Not (1937) Hemingway develops the style of colloquialism initiated by Mark Twain Hemingway was highly praised by the Nobel Prize Committee for "his powerful style-forming mastery of the art" of creating modern fiction. Indian Camp The title indicates that the material is contemporary and to some extent, representative of the early twentieth-century experience A reference to the well-know phrase from the Book of Common Prayer:" Give us peace in our time, O Lord," the title is very ironic because there is no peace at all in the stories In a chronological order, introduces Nick Adams to readers from his childhood to adolescence and manhood Nick watches his father deliver an Indian woman of a baby by Caesarian section, with a Jack-knife and without anesthesia. This incident brings the boy into contact with something that is perplexing and unpleasant, and is actually Nick's initiation into the pain and violence of birth and death. Most of Hemingway's later works are merely variations of the Nick Adams stories in In Our Time The Hemingway code heroes and grace under pressure They have seen the cold world, and for one cause, they boldly and courageously face the reality. They have an indestructible spirit for his optimistic view of life. Whatever the result is, they are ready to live with grace under pressure. No matter how tragic the ending is, they will never be defeated. Finally, they will be prevailing because of their indestructible spirit and courage. The iceberg technique Hemingway believes that a good writer does not need to reveal every detail of a character or action. The one-eighth is presented will suggest all other meaningful dimensions of the story. Thus, Hemingway’s language is symbolic and suggestive.