美国文学选读试题库

1、浙江师范大学外国语学院美国文学选读试题库.choose the relevant match from column b for each item in column a. (10%) write your answers on the answer sheet.section a column a column b( ) 1.nathaniel hawthorne a. this side of paradise( ) 2.herman melville b. the sketch book( ) 3.f.scott fitzgerald c. the scarlet letter( )

2、4.ernest hemingway d.a farewell to arms( ) 5.washington irving e.white jacketsection b column a column b( ) 1.fedallah a. the great gatsby( ) 2.mildred douglas b. a rose for emily( ) 3.george hurstwood c. moby dick( ) 4.tom buchanan d.sister carrie( ) 5.homer barren e.the hairy ape.complete each of

3、the following statements with a proper word or a phrase according to the textbook.(10%) write your answers on the answer sheet.( ) 1.to hawthorne and melville every person is a sinner, therefore great moral _ is indispensable for the improvement of human nature.( ) 2.in his poems, walt whitman is in

4、novative in the terms of the form of his poetry. in his leaves of grass he sings of the “_” and the self as well.( ) 3.the three dominant figures of the american realistic period are william dean howells, _, and henry james.( ) 4.henry jamess emphasis on psychology and on the human consciousness pro

5、ves to be a big breakthrough in novel writing and had great influence on the coming generations. that is why he is generally regarded as the forerunner of the 20th-century “_”.( ) 5.more than five hundred poems dickinson wrote are about nature, in which her general _ about the relationship between m

6、an and nature is well-expressed.( ) 6.the expatriate writers in american modern literature were later called “_”.( ) 7.in his novels, hemingway dramatizes the sense of _ among the post-war generation who are physically and psychologically scarred.( ) 8.john steinbeck is a novelist of the 1930s. his

7、the grapes of wrath is a record of the life of the dispossessed and the wretched farmers during _.( ) 9.robert frost, unlike his contemporaries in the early 20th century, he learned from the _,especially the familiar conventions of nature poetry and of classical pastoral poetry.( ) 10.faulkners yokn

8、apatawpha county has become an allegory or a parable of the _ of america. .each of the following statements below is followed by four alternative answers. choose the one that would best complete the statement.(50%) ( ) 1.in the middle of 19th century, america witnessed a cultural flowering which is

9、called “_”.a. the english renaissance b. the american renaissancec. the second renaissance d.the salem renaissance( ) 2.the main issues involved in the debate of transcendentalism are generally philosophical, concerning _.a. the cold, rigid rationalism of unitarianism b. the relationship between man

10、 and womanc. the development of romanticism in america d. nature, man and the universe( ) 3._ is unanimously agreed to be the summit of the american romanticism in the history of american literature.a. new england transcendentalism b. england transcendentalismc. the harlem renaissance d. new transce

11、ndentalism( ) 4.about the novel the scarlet letter, which of the following statements is right?a. its a love story and a story of sin. b. its not a highly symbolic story though the author is a master of symbolism.c. its mainly about the moral, emotional and psychological effects of the sin upon the

12、main characters and the people in general.d. in it the letter a takes the same symbolic meaning throughout the novel.( ) 5.moby-dick is usually considered _.a. a symbolic voyage of the mind in quest of the truth and knowledge of the universeb. a spiritual exploration into mans deep reality and psych

13、ologyc. a simple whaling tale or sea adventure d. both a and b( ) 6.the civil war had transformed america from _ to _.a. an agrarian communitya society of freedom and equalityb. an agrarian communityan industrialized and commercialized societyc. an industrialized and commercialized societya highly d

14、eveloped societyd. a poor and backward societyan industrialized and commercialized society( ) 7.which of the following is said of the american naturalism?a. they preferred to have their own region and people at the forefront of the stories.b. their characteristic setting is an isolated town.c. their

15、 characters were conceived more or less complex combinations of inherited attributes, their habits conditioned by social and economic forces.d. humans should be united because they had to adapt themselves to changing environmental conditions.( ) 8.which of the following is not right about mark twain

16、s style of language?a. his words are colloquial, concrete and direct in effect.b. his sentence structures are simple, even ungrammatical, which is typical of the spoken language.c. his humor is remarkable and characterized by puns, straight-faced exaggeration, repetition and anti-climax.d. his style

17、 of language had exerted only a limited influence on the contemporary writers.( ) 9.which of the following is not written by henry james?a. the portrait of a lady and the europeans b. the wings of the dove and the ambassadorsc. the marble faun and the gilded aged. what maisie knows and the bostonian

18、s( ) 10.dickinsons poems are usually based on her own experiences, her sorrows and joys. but many of her little lyrics concern _.a. the whole human beings, which include religion, death, immortality, love, and natureb. the lower-class working people who live a life of poverty and sordidnessc. the mi

19、ddle-class people who live in confusion and in void of faithd. the upper-class people who live in comfort and idleness( ) 11.which of the following is not right about emily dickinsons poems about nature?a. in them, she expressed her general skepticism about the relationship between man and nature b.

20、 some of them showed her belief that there existed a mythical bond between man and nature.c. her poems reflected her feeling that nature is restorative to human beingsd. many of them showed her feeling of natures inscrutability and indifference to the life and interests of human beings( ) 12.as a gr

21、eat innovator in american literature, walt whitman wrote his poetry in an unconventional style which is now called _,that is _.a. hymnpoetry with chanting refrainsb. blank versepoetry without rhymes at the end of the lines but with a fixed beatc. free versepoetry without a fixed beat or regular rhym

22、e schemed. odepoetry in an irregular metric form and expressing noble feelings( ) 13.one of the features of emily dickinsons poetry is that _.a. they are long and whimsical in imageryb. they are short and often based on one single imagec. they are very musical and colorful d. they are very political

23、 and situational( ) 14.by the end of the 19th century, the realists had rejected the portrayal of idealized characters and events and, instead, sought to_.a. describe the wide range of american experienceb. present the subtleties of human personalityc. show animal nature of human beingsd. both a and

24、 b( ) 15.in the first part of the 20th century, apart from darwinism, which was still a big influence upon the writers of this period, there were two thinkers_whose ideas had the greatest impact on the period. a. the german karl marx and the american sigmund freudb. the german karl marx and the aust

25、rian sigmund freudc. the swiss car jung and the american william jamesd. the austrian karl marx and the german sigmund freud( ) 16.eugene oneill is remembered for his tragic view of life and most of his plays are about _.a. the root, the truth of human desires and human frustrationsb. the moral natu

26、re of the modern mankindc. the relationship between man and nature as well as man and womand. the inner contradiction of men before the real world( ) 17.which of the following is not said about a typical modern work?a. it is no longer a record of sequence and coherence of the history and the world.

27、b. it is a juxtapostition of the past and present, of the history and the memory.c. it is a book of fragments drawn from diverse areas of experience.d. its perspective is shifted from the internal to the external, from the private to the public. ( ) 18.which of the following is not said about ezra p

28、ound?a. for he was politically controversial and notorious for what he did in the wartime, his literary achievement and influence are somewhat reduced. b. his artistic talents are on full display in the history of the imagist movementc. from his analysis of the chinese ideogram pound learned to anch

29、or his poetic language in concrete, perceptual reality, and to organize images into larger patterns through juxtaposition.d. his language is usually oblique yet marvelously compressed and his poetry is dense with personal, literary, and historical allusions.( ) 19.in his poems, robert frost combined

30、 traditional verse forms with _.a. a simple spoken language -the speech of new england farmersb. the pastoral language of the southern areac. the difficult and highly ornamental languaged. both a and b( ) 20.most of oneills plays are tragedies, dealing with _.a. the basic issues of human existence a

31、nd predicament b. life and death, illusion and disillusion, dream and realityc. alienation and communication, self and society, desire and frustrationd. all of the above( ) 21.as a spokesman of the “roaring 20s”, scott fitzgerald portrayed _.a. the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself

32、b. the psychological journey of the modern man and his helplessness in the modern worldc. the primitive struggle of individuals in the context of irresistible natural forcesd. the hollowness of the american worship of riches and the unending american dream of fulfillment( ) 22.which of the following

33、 is not said of fitzgeralds writing style?a. the scenic method is explored, each of which consists of one or more dramatic scenes.b. his intervening passages of narration leaves the tedious process of transition to the readers imaginationc. the device of having events observed by a “central consciou

34、sness” is dropped off.d. his diction and metaphors are completely original and details accurate.( ) 23.as one of the best-known american authors of this century, ernest hemingway wrote all the following novels except_.a. for whom the bell tolls b. the green hills of africac. the sound and the fury d

35、. the old man and the sea( ) 24.in a farewell to arms, hemingway _.a. emphasizes his belief that man is trapped both physically and mentally and suggests that man is doomed to be entrapped. b. wrote the epitaph to a decade and to the whole generation in the 1930s.c. favored the idea of nature as an

36、expression of either gods design or his beneficence.d. tells a story about the tragic love affair of a wounded american soldier with a french nurse. ( ) 25.which of the following is not written by faulkner?a. the sound and the fury b. a rose for emilyc. light in august d. tender is the night.interpr

37、etation(16%) read the following selections and then answer the questions. write your answers on the answer sheet.passage 1 i celebrate myself, and sing myself,and what i assume you shall assume,for every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.i loafe and invite my soul,i learn and loafe at my e

38、ase observing a spear of summer grass.my tongue, every atom if my blood, formd from this soil, this air,born here of parents born here from parents the same, and there parents the same,i, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,hoping to cease not till death.creeds and schools in abeyance

39、,retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten,i harbor for good or bad, i permit to speak at every hazard,nature without check with original energy,1.who is the poet celebrating? whom do lines23 also include in the celebration?2.what beliefs of the poet are set forth in this

40、poem?passage 2 every friday five crates of oranges and lemons arrived from a fruiterer in new yorkevery monday these same oranges and lemons left his lack door in a pyramid of pulpless halves. there was a machine in the kitchen which could extract the juice of two hundred oranges in half an hour if

41、a little button was pressed two hundred times by a butlers thumb. as soon as i arrived i made an attempt to find my host, but the two or three people of whom i asked his whereabouts stared at me in such an amazed way, and denied so vehemently any knowledge of his movements, that i slunk off in the direction of the cocktail table the only place in the garden where a single man could linger without looking purposeless and alone. i was on my way to get roaring d