2010年4月高等教育自学考试美国文学选读试题

　　课程代码：10055

　　Part I: Choose the relevant match from Column B for each item in Column A. (10 points in all, 1 point for each)

　　Group 1

　　Column A Column B

　　( ) 1. Nathaniel Hawthorne a. Nature

　　( ) 2. Washington Irving b. Rip Van Winkle

　　( ) 3. Ralph Waldo Emerson c. The House of Seven Gales

　　( ) 4. Mark Twain d. The Great Gatsby

　　( ) 5. Scott Fitzgerald e. The Gilded Age

　　Group 2

　　Column A Column B

　　( ) 1. Charles Drouet a. The Great Gatsby

　　( ) 2. Ishmael b. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

　　( ) 3. Jim c. Sister Carrie

　　( ) 4. George Wilson d. A Rose for Emily

　　( ) 5. Emily Grierson e. Moby Dick

　　Part Ⅱ: Each of the following statements below is followed by four alternatives. Choose the one that would best complete the statement. (50 points in all, 2 points for each)

　　1. The period of ______ started with the publication of Washington Irving’s The Sketch Book and ended with Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. ( )

　　A. American Romanticism B. American Realism

　　C. American Transcendentalism D. American Classicism

　　2. The desire for an escape from society and a return to nature became a permanent convention of American literature. Such a desire is particularly evident in ______ Leather-Stocking Tales.( )

　　A. Washington Irving’s B. Waldo Emerson’s

　　C. James Fennimore Cooper’s D. Walt Whitman’s

　　3. New England Transcendentalism was started by a group of people who were members of an informal club, i.e. the Transcendental Club in New England in the ______.( )

　　A. 1850s B. 1840s

　　C. 1830s D. 1860s

　　4. The American ______ as a cultural heritage exerted great influences over American moral values.( )

　　A. Puritanism B. Unitarianism

　　C. Deism D. Protestantism

　　5. In his famous poem Song of Myself, Walt Whitman sets forth two principal beliefs: the belief in the singularity and equality of all beings in value, and the theory of ______, which is illustrated by lengthy catalogues of people and things. ( )

　　A. nationality B. universality

　　C. nature D. community

　　6. Which of the following is NOT what Emerson put forward in his essays? ( )

　　A. the Over-Soul

　　B. the formal religion of the churches and the Deistic philosophy

　　C. Nature

　　D. the importance of individual

　　7. Moby-Dick is a mixture of fantasy and ______ based upon the South Pacific whaling industry.( )

　　A. romanticism B. naturalism

　　C. realism D. surrealism

　　8. Which of the following statements about Hawthorne is NOT right? ( )

　　A. The ambiguity is one of the salient characteristics of his art.

　　B. He is a master of realism.

　　C. He is a great allegorist.

　　D. He is a master of symbolism.

　　9. Which of the following is NOT regarded as the characteristics of Whitman’s poetic style?( )

　　A. The use of “free verse”

　　B. His strong tendency to use of formal language

　　C. The use of parallelism and phonetic recurrence at the beginning of the lines

　　D. The use of the poetic “I”

　　10. ______ and Emersonian Transcendentalism produced some positive effect on Melville’s writing.( )

　　A. Washington Irving’s conservative

　　B. Hawthorne’s moral courage

　　C. Thoreau’s Romanticism

　　D. Shakespearian tragic vision

11. The period ranging from 1865 to 1914 has been referred to as ______ in the literary history of the United States.( )

　　A. the Age of Romanticism B. the Age of Enlightenment

　　C. New England Transcendentalism D. the Age of Realism

　　12. The three dominant figures of the period of Realism in American literature are ______.( )

　　A. Mark Twain, Henry James, and Jack London

　　B. Mark Twain, Henry James, and Theodore Dreiser

　　C. William Dean Howells, Mark Twain, and Jack London

　　D. William Dean Howells, Mark Twain, and Henry James

　　13. ______ once described the novel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the one book from which “all modern American literature comes.”( )

　　A. Ernest Hemingway B. Henry James

　　C. Mark Twain D. Theodore Dreiser

　　14. ______ was the first American writer to conceive his career in international themes.( )

　　A. Washington Irving B. Henry James

　　C. Ralph Waldo Emerson D. Mark Twain

　　15. Within her little lyrics Dickinson addresses those issues that concern the whole human beings EXCEPT______.( )

　　A. religion and death B. immortality

　　C. man and woman D. love and nature

　　16. ______ proves to be his greatest work and by entitling this book with such a name, Dreiser intended to tell us that it is the social pressure that makes Clyde’s downfall inevitable.( )

　　A. The Titan B. Sister Carrie

　　C. The Financier D. An American Tragedy

　　17. Ezra Pound is a leading spokesman of the famous ______ Movement in the history of American literature.( )

　　A. Symbolist B. Impressionist

　　C. Existentialist D. Imagist

　　18. Allen Ginsburg’s Howl became the manifesto of ______.( )

　　A. Postmodernism B. Imagism

　　C. the Beat Generation D. the Lost Generation

　　19. ______ is a school of modern painting, whose emphasis is on the formal structure of a work of art and especially on the multiple-perspective viewpoints. ( )

　　A. Expressionism B. Imagism

　　C. Cubism D. Impressionism

　　20. ______ is often acclaimed literary spokesman of the Jazz Age. ( )

　　A. F. Scott Fitzgerald B. Ezra Pound

　　C. Robert Lee Frost D. Ernest Hemingway

21. ______, Hemingway’s first novel, casts light on a whole generation after the First World War and the effects of the war by way of a vivid portrait of “The Lost Generation.”( )

　　A. The Old Man and the Sea B. The Sun Also Rises

　　C. In Our Time D. A Farewell to Arms

　　22. Which of the following is depicted as the mythical county in William Faulkner’s novels?( )

　　A. Cambridge. B. Oxford.

　　C. Yoknapatawpha. D. Mississippi.

　　23. Robert Frost rejected ______ choosing ______ instead.( )

　　A. the conventional poetic principles... the revolutionary way

　　B. the romantic way... the revolutionary principles

　　C. the revolutionary principles... the romantic way

　　D. the revolutionary poetic principles of his contemporaries... the old-fashioned way to be new

　　24. Which of the following is right about American fiction from 1945 onwards?( )

　　A. Black fiction began to attract critical attention during the 1950s.

　　B. There appeared a significant group of Jewish-American writers whose works were set against the Jewish experience and tradition.

　　C. A group of new writers who survived the war wrote about their ideals within the artistic field.

　　D. American fiction in the 1950s and 1960s proves to be a harvest which derived from its predecessors.

　　25. Which of the following can NOT be included in the thematic concerns of Robert Frost’s Poems?( )

　　A. The contradiction and misunderstanding between man and woman.

　　B. The loneliness and poverty of the isolated human being.

　　C. His love of life and his belief in a serenity coming from working.

　　D. The terror and tragedy in nature as well as its beauty.

　Part Ⅲ: Interpretation (20 points in all, 5 points for each)

　　Read the following selections and then answer the questions briefly.

　　Passage 1

　　Because I could not stop for Death——

　　He kindly stopped for me——

　　The Carriage held but just Ourselves——

　　And Immortality.

　　....

　　Questions:

　　1. Who is the Author of this poem?

　　2. What do “He” and “Carriage” refer to?

　　Passage 2

　　There was, as usual, a crowd of folk about the door, but none that Rip recollected. The very character of the people seemed changed. There was a busy, bustling, disputatious tone about it, instead of the accustomed phlegm and drowsy tranquility. He looked in vain for the sage Nicholas Vedder, with his broad face, double chin, and fair long pipe, uttering clouds of tobacco smoke instead of idle speeches; or Van Bummel, the schoolmaster, doling forth the contents of an ancient newspaper. In place of these, a lean bilious looking fellow, with his pockets full of handbills, was haranguing vehemently about rights of citizens-election-members of congress-liberty-Bunker’s hill-heroes of seventy-six-and other words, that were a perfect Babylonish jargon to the bewildered Van Winkle.

　　Questions:

　　1. Who is the author and where is this passage taken from?

　　2. What do you know about the protagonist?

　　Passage 3

　　Once I said to myself it would be a thousand times better for Jim to be a slave at home where his family was, as long as he’d got to be a slave, and so I’d better write a letter to Tom Sawyer and tell him to tell Miss Waston where he was. But I soon give up that notion, for two things: she’d be mad and disgusted at his rascality and ungratefulness for leaving her, and so she’d sell him straight down the river again; and if she didn’t, everybody naturally despises an ungrateful nigger, and they’d make Jim feel it all the time, and so he’d feel ornery and disgraced. And then think of me! It would get all round, that Huck Finn helped a nigger to get his freedom; and if I was to ever see anybody from that town again, I’d be ready to get down and lick his boots for shame.

　　Questions:

　　1. Please identify the author and the novel.

　　2. Please give a brief comment on this part.

　　Passage 4

　　...

　　Then took the other, as just as fair,

　　And having perhaps the better claim,

　　Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

　　Though as for that the passing there

　　Had worn them really about the same.

　　....

　　Questions:

　　1. Who wrote this poem? What’s the title of it?

　　2. What can we know from the verse?

　　Part Ⅳ: Give brief answers to the following questions. (20 points in all,10 points for each)

　　1. What is “Leaves of Grass” mainly concerned about?

　　2. What is the most famous theme in Henry James’ fiction? And what is his favorite approach in characterization, which makes him different from Mark Twain as a realist?

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