北京大学英语专业2013年硕考试题.doc

北京大学英语专业2014年硕考试题专业技能部分，英译汉是罗马尼亚哲学家E. M. Cioran的Some Blind Alleys: A Letter（Richard Howard为英译者）节选。Drained by his fecundity, a phantom who has worn out his shadow, the man of letters diminishes with each word he writes. Only his vanity is inexhaustible; if it were psychological, it would have limits; those of the self. But it is cosmic or demonic: it submerges him. His work obsesses him; he continually alludes to it, as if, on our planet, there were nothing outside himself which deserved attention or curiosity.Voltaire was the first literary man to erect his incompetence into a procedure, a method. Before him, the writer, content to be tangent to events, was more modest: plying his trade in a limited sector, he followed his own nose and kept it clean. Nothing of the journalist about him, at most he was interested in the anecdotic aspect of certain solitudes: his indiscretion was ineffectual.With our braggart, things change. None of the subjects which intrigued his times escaped his sarcasm, his half-knowledge, his craving for controversy, his universal vulgarity. In Voltaire, everything was impure except his style. Profoundly superficial, without any sensibility for the intrinsic, for the interest reality offers in itself, he inaugurated in letters our ideological gossip. His mania for chatter, for indoctrinating, his porters-lodge wisdom, were to make him the prototype, the model of the littrateur. Since he said everything about himself, and since he exploited to the last drop the resources of his nature, he no longer troubles us: we read him and move on. On the other hand, in the case of a Pascal we feel sure he has not told us all there is to say; even when he irritates us, he is never, for us an author.To write books is to have a certain relation with original sin. For what is a book if not a loss of innocence, an act of aggression, a repetition of our Fall? To publish ones taints in order to amuse or exasperate! A barbarism with respect to our intimacy, a profanation, a defilement. And a temptation. I know what I am talking about, and I speak advisedly. At least I have the excuse of hating my actions, of performing them without believing in them.From the depth of my disgust, everything literary looks to me like a chastisement; I shall try to forget my life for fear of discussing it; or else, unable to accede to that absolute of disillusion, I shall condemn myself to a morose frivolity. Shards of instinct, nonetheless, compel me to cling to words. Silence is unbearable: what strength it takes to settle into the concision of the Inexpressible! It is easier to renounce bread than speech. Unfortunately the verbal turns into verbiage, to literature. Even thought that way tends, ever ready to spread out, to puff up; to check it with a period, to contract it into an epigram or a witticism is to counter its expansion, its natural movement, its impulse toward dilution, toward inflation. Whence our systems, whence our philosophies.中译英是一篇建国前汉语风格的文论，大意是中国文学多是随感式，词句由作者性格贯穿，杂而不乱，西方的文学由亚里士多德的诗学起就注重逻辑演绎，结构严谨云云。阅读理解节选自Jonathan Culler的Structuralist Poetics，大意是作者反对对文学随意解读的方法，提倡读者要有literary competence，明白文学作品中convention的缘由，不能随便消解正确/错误。三道题，划好了词解释，都是些GRE常见词汇，repertoire, blatantly, acquiescence, discreet，其他忘记了；第二道是划好一段paraphrase，第三段是问选文的解读方法会出现什么问题。专业知识有三大题。第一大题，第一题是莎士比亚第138首十四行诗。When my love swears that she is made of truth,I do believe her though I know she lies,That she might think me some untutord youth,Unlearned in the worlds false subtleties.Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,Although she knows my days are past the best,Simply I credit her false-speaking tongue;On both sides thus is simple truth suppressed.But wherefore says she not she is unjust?And wherefore say not I that I am old?O! loves best habit is in seeming trust,And age in love loves not to have years told:Therefore I lie with her, and she with me,And in our faults by lies we flatterd be.第二题是挑还是一起分析DeFoe，Richardson和Fielding的小说。第二大题，第一题是问Wordsworth的两个观点（spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings和recollection in tranquility）是否矛盾，举例子说明他的总体观点。第二题是问Ulysses诗中，Ulysses明明说了要放弃管理事务去航海，却又吩咐儿子要勤勉正事，如何理解？第三题是自己挑选Austen的一部小说，好像是还要挑一个人物，说自己感兴趣的方面，还要ideologically说明。也可以再联系维多利亚时期其他小说。第三大题，第一题是挑了艾默生一段文字，就是the one Soul一类，问美国浪漫主义，问题太多记不清了。第二道是是下列选文中grotesque的含义，要联系一部或最好两部小说解释。选文出自Sherwood Anderson的The Book of the GrotesqueIt was the truths that made the people grotesques. The old man had quite an elaborate theory concerning the matter. It was his notion that the moment one of the people took one of the truths to himself, called it his truth, and tried to live his life by it, he became a grotesque and the truth he embraced became a falsehood.第三道选了Wendell Berry的The Wheel，详尽分析，并欢迎放到更大的背景考察比如与有类似意象的诗歌比较（其实就是必须吧说得那么客气！）。At the first strokes of the fiddle bowthe dancers rise from their seats.The dance begins to shape itselfin the crowd, as couples join,and couples join couples, their movementtogether lightening their feet.They move in the ancient circleof the dance. The dance and the songcall each other into being. Soonthey are one rapt in a singlerapture, so that even the nighthas its clar