英美文学选读考前总复习.doc

一.What is the theme of Beowulf?Thematically the poem presents a vivid picture of how the primitive people wage heroic struggles against the hostile forces of the natural world under a wise and mighty leader.The poem is an example of the mingling of nature myths and heroic legends.二.William Shakespeare （i）Name his four greatest tragedies.（2）What are the characteristics of the four tragedies in common? (3)Briefly summarize each heros weakness of nature.1.Shakespearesfourgreatest tragediesare:Hamlet,Othello,Kinglear,and Macbeth.2.Eachportrays some noble hero,who faces the injustice of human life and is caught in a difficult situation and whose fate is closely connected with the fate of the whole nation.3.Each hero has his weakness of nature;the old king Lear who is unwilling to totally give up his power;and Macbeths lust for power stirs up his ambition and leads him to incessant crimes三. try to discuss William Shakespeare s art of creations.1.Shakespeares major characters are neither merely individual ones nor type ones;they are individuals representing certain types.each character has his or her own personalities;meanwhile,they may share features with others.2.By applying a psycho-analytical approach,Shakespeare succeeds in exploring the charactersinner mind .3.Shakespeare seldom invents his own plots;instead,he borrows them from some old plays or storybooks,or from ancient Greek and Roman sources.4.In his writings,disguise is also an important device to create dramatic irony,usually with woman disguised as man.5.He often wrote skillfully in different poetic forms,like the sonnet,the blank verse,and the rhymed couplet.四.Briefly discuss why Hamlet is so impressive in Shakespeares Hamlet.1.The hero Hamlet in Shakespesare is play Hamlet is noted for his hesition to take his revenge,his melancholy nature of action only to deny possibilities to do anything.2.He came to know that his father was murdered by his uncle who became king.He hated him so deeply that he wanted to kill him.But he loved his widowed mother who later married his uncle.This made him deep in trouble.3.When he planned to kill his uncle,he was afraid to hurt his mother.And also,when everything was ready for him to kill his uncle,he forgave him for his uncle was praying to God for his crime.Thus he lost good chance.4.Hamlet represented humanism of his time.五.Why is John Milton the greatest writer of his time?In his life,Milton shows himself a real revolutionary,a master poet and a great prose writer.He fought for freedom in all aspects as a Christian humanist,while his achievements in literature make him tower over all the other English writers of his time and exert a great influence over later ones. 六According to the setting of the poem “Paradise Lost,”discuss the theme,the authorsintension to create it and the implication that the poem expresses.1.The theme of the poem “ParadiseLost”is the” Fall of Man,”i.e.mans disobedience and the loss of Paradise, with its prime cause-Satan.2.The athors intention to write this poem is to expose the ways of Satan to” justifythe ways of God to men.”3.In this poem,the author implicitly expresses his fundamental concern with freedom and choice and his belief that the unquestionable truth of biblical revelation means that an all-knowing God was just in allowing Adam and eve to be tempted and of their free will to choose sin and its inevitable punishment.一.Discuss Crusoe,the protagonist of the novel,as an embodiment of the rising middle-class virtues in the mid-eighteenth century England.A.Social background:The Eighteenth Century England witnessed the growing importance of the bourgeois or middle class.a.The Industrial Revolution;b.The expansion of international markets;c.Values different from those of the feudal aristocratic classcourageous,full of energy,hard working,practical,resourceful,selfreliant,etc.d.Literature should give a realistic presentation of the life of the common people;it should meet the interest of the middle class people.B.Robinson Crusoe embodies the virtues of the middle class people.a.Crusoe as an adventurous man full of energy and courage b.Crusoe as a practical man c.Crusoe as a resourceful mand.Crusoe as a patient man.一 Discuss whyRobinson Cruse became so successful when it was published?（Daniel Defoe）1.Robison Crusoe is supposedly based on the real adventure of an Alexander Selkirk who once stayed alone on the uninhabited island for five years.Actually,the story is an imagination.2.In Robison Crusoe,Defoe traces the growth of Robison from a nave and artless youth into a shrewd and hardened man,tempered bynumerous trials in his eventful life.3. In the novel,Robison is a real hero and he is an embodiment of the rising middle-class virtues in the mid-eighteenth century England.4.Robison Crusoe is an adventure story very much in the spirit of the time.Because of the above reasons,when it was published,people all liked that story,and it became an immediate success. 一.Explain why he clenched his fingers so hard that he broke the fragile cup.(John Galsworthy,The man of Property)1.he had never known,would never know what she was thinking.the sight of her inscrutable face,the thought of all the hundreds of evenings he had seen her sitting there like that soft and passive,but so unreadable,unknown,enraged him beyond measure.一.By analyzing the poems by Percy Bysshe Shelley,discuss his art of poems.1.Percy Bysshe Shelly is an intense and original lyrical poet in the English language.2.His poems are full of classical and mythological allusions.3.His style abounds in personification and metaphor and other figures of speech.4.He describes vividly what we see and feel,or express what parsionately moves us. 一. Based on her writings,discuss Jane Austen is greatest contribution to English literature.1.Jane Austen is one of the most important Romantic novelists in English literature.She creates six influential novels.2.Her main liteary concern is about human beings in their personal relationships,which make her novels have a univer-sal significance.3.Jane Austen has brought the English novel,as an art of form,to is maturity because of her sensitivity to universal pat-terns of human behavior and her accurate portrayal of human individuals.4.She describes the world from a woman is point of view,and depicts a group of authentic and common women. 一.How do you understand that DicKens is the greatest critical realist writer of the Victorian Age?1.In his works, Dickens sets out a full map and a large-scale criticism of the nineteenth century England.It is his serious intension to expose and criticize in his works all the poverty,injustice,hypocrisy and corruptness he sees around him2.With his first sentence,Dickens engages the readers attention and holds it to the end。3.The settings of his have an extraordinary vividness.4.In language,He is often compared with Shakespeare for his adeptness with the vernacular and large vocabulary.5.Character-portraval is the most distinguishing feature of his works.6.Dickensworks are also characterized by a mingling of humor and pathos.一,Discuss Dickens is art of novels:the setting,the language,and the characters,etc.based on his novel Oliver Twist.1.He uses a mixture of the contemporary and recollected past as his fictional settings.2.With his first sentence,he engages the reader is attention and holds it to the end.3.His best-depicts characters are those innocent,virtuous,persecuted,helpless child characters such asOliverTwist.4.The figures that he depicted,marked out by some peculiarity in physical,speech or manner,are both types and indi-viduals.5.Dicken is works are aiso characterized by a mingling of humor and pathos.6.Adept with the vernacualar and large vocabulary,he brings out many a wonderful verbal picture of man and scene一Explain why the boyOliver Twiststarted first,then trembled violently and burst into tears when the words were kindly said. .(Charles Dickens,Olive Twist)1.The boy started at the words because kind words were not expected;it is (was)the first time in all his life that the boy(Oliver Twist)had ever been kindly greeted;Yet,to him strange sounds may predict suffering.一.Do you think Heathciffs above accusation of Catherines betrayal can be justified?If you think so ,what reasons does Catherine have to betray heathcliff and their love?A.Heathcliffs accusation can be justified. B.The reasons of her betrayal may be:(1)The fancy she felt for lintons pleasant personality,his rich knowledge,and his elegant manners.(2)Her vainglory made her desire a kind of upperclass life and social status.(3)She was afraid that she might suffer poverty and be degraded if she had got married to Heathecliff.(4)She fancied if she got married to linton,she might have the means to help heathecliff in getting a good education and becoming a gentleman so that they could be united without being degraded.一 Why is Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte a successful novel?.1.The story opens with the titular heroine, Jane Eyre,a plain little orphan.2.This novel sharply criticize theexisting society,e.g.the religious hypocrisy of charity institutions,the social discrimi-nation Jane experiences and the false social convention as concerning love and marriage.3.The success of the novel is also due to its introduction to the English novel the first governess heroine Jane Eyre.4.It is an intense moral fable at the same time.Jans,like Mr.Rochester,has to undergo a series of physical and mor-al tests to grow up and achieve her final happiness. 一.Based on Jane Eyre byCharlotte Bronte,discuss the theme of her works,the image of woman protagonists and the comprehensive sense for contemporary society.1.Charlottes works are all about the struggle of an individual consciousness towards self-realization,about some lonely and neglected young women with a fierce longing for love,understanding and a full,happy life.2.All her heroineshighest joys arises from some sacrifice of self or some human weakness overcome.3.The image of woman protagonists in her works are mostly that of the middle-class working women,particularly governesses with strong feelings,fiery passions and some extraordinary personalities.4.Her works present a vivid realistic picture of the English society by exposing the cruelty,hypocrisy and other evils of the upper classes,and by showing the misery and suffering of the poor.Especially in Jane Eyre,she sharply criticizes the existing society, e.g.religious hypocrisy of charity institutions.一Analyze the character of Jane Eyre based on the selection taken from chapter xx 3 of Jane eyre. 1.Jane Eyre, an orphan child with a fiery spirit and a longing to love and be loved,a poor,plain ,little governess who dares to love her master.2.InChapter X X 3,Jane finds herself hopelessly in love with Mr. Rochester bat she is aware that her love is out of the question.When forced to confront Mr. Rochester, she desperateld and openly declares her equalitywith him and love for him.一.How are naturalism and criticism reflected in Hardys novels?1.In his works,man is shown inevitably bound by his own inherent nature and hereditary traits which prompt him to go and search for some specific happiness or success and set him in conflict with the environment.The outside nature the natural environment or nature herself -is shown as some mysterious supernatural force,very powerful but half-blind,impulsive and uncaring to rhe individualswill,hope,passion or suffering.2.Though naturalism seems to have played an important part in Harysworks,there is also bitter and sharp criticism and even open challenge of the irrational,hypocritical and unfair Victorian institutions,conventionsand morals which strangle the individual will and destroy natural human emotions and relationships.一. Try to discuss the fate of Tess in this work. Thomas HardyTess is a beautiful,innocent peasant girl.the poverty of the family forces her to claim kinship with the sham but rich Urbervilles.Alec,the young master of the Urbervilles,a dandy,seduces Tess and impregnates her .Tess returns home and later gives birth to a baby,who dies soon.peoples opinion forces Tess to leave home to work on a dairy farm.there she meets Angel Clare,son of a clergyman. The two fallin love with each other.On their wedding night ,Angle makes a confession about his past dissipation and readily forgiven by Tess,but when Tess reveals her own past,Angel just wouldnt forgive her and deserts her that very night.helpless and hopeless,Tess has to wander from place to place,doing the hardest work and bearing the harshest insult.when her fathers death transfers the whole burden of the family on her,she is forced to go back to Alec,now a preacher.before long,the repentant Angel returns from abroad,Tess,putting all the blames of her unhappiness on Alec,kills him.she flees with Angel but is caught by the police and hanged.Hardy created the heroine Tess in Tess of the Durbervilles just to criticize the society in his time.Tess is a tragic person simply because she is not accepted by the society in which agriculture is menaced by the forces of invading capitalism.so in a way,we say,Tesssfate is decided by her society一It is said that B.Shawsplay,Mrs.Warrens Profession,has a strong realistic theme,which fully reflects the dramatists Fabianist idea.Try to summarize this theme briefly.A.As one of the influential members of the Fabian Society,Shaw regarded the establishment of socialism by the emancipation of land and industrial capital from individual and class ownership as the final goal.B.As a realistic dramatist, he took the modern social issues as his subjects.Most of his plays are concerned with political,economic,moral,or religious problems.C.Mrs.Warrens profession is a play about the economic oppression of women.一. Brief the features of Bernard shaw s works.1.His playwrights have a variety of subjects.His early plays were mainly concerned witth social problems and direct-ed towards the critcism of the contemporary social,economic,moral and religious evils.2.Stucturally and thematically,Shaw followed the great traditions of realism.As a realistic dramatist,he took the mod-ern social issues as his subjects with the aim of directing social reforms.3.One feature of Shaw is characterization is that makes the trick of showing up one character vividly at the expense of another.Another feature is that Shaw is characters are the representatives of ideas and points of view.4.Much of Shavian drama is construced around the inversion of a conventional theatrical situation. 一.Based on Hawthorne is work The Scarlet Letter,discuss the characters of his writings.1.The structure and the form of his writings are always carefully worked out to cater for the thematic concern。2.He is good at exploring the complexity of human psychoiogy.3.There isnt much action,or physical movement going on in his works.4.He emphasizes psychological aspect of human beings.5.The symbol Can be found everywhere in his writing.6.His writing is usually ambiguous for the indrnite interpretation of symbols.一.what is the theme of”the “Young Goodman Brown” ?Give examples from the story to show hawthornes masterful use of symbolism.The theme of the story is the concern of guit and evil.Take the name of the hero,brown for example.it stands for everymam in the society.一.Try to discuss the theme of Young Goodman Brown.( Nathaniel Hawthorne)1.Young Goodman Brown is essentially an allegory.It is concerned with a young puritan who attends a witchesSabbath in the woods.2.Brownings poetry is not easy to read .His rhythms are often too fast,too rough and unmusical.The syntax is ususlly clipped and highly compressed. The similes and illustrations appear too profusely.3. The allusions and implications are sometimes odd and farfetched. All this makes up his obscurity.4.There are abundant metaphors in his poems. 一.Whit is a giant of american letters.discuss whitmans art of poem；the language,the characters,etc.1.Whitmans poetic style is marked by the use of the poeticI”2.What he prefers for his new subject and new poetic feelings is”free verse,”that is,poetry without a fixed beat or regular rhyme scheme.3.Whitmanspoetry is relatively simple and even rather crude.4. Most of the pictures he painted with words are honest,undistorted images of different aspects of america of the day.一.what are the features of whitman s poetry?1. His poetic style is marked by the use of the poetic”I”2. He adopted “free verse”,poetry,without a fixed beat or regular rhyme scheme.3. The image in his poems are unconventional.4.He uses oral English.5. His vocabulary is amazing.6.Parallelism and phonetic recurrence are used at the beginning of lines.一Try to discuss the symbolism in Moby-Dick book.（Melville）1.It is a mixture of fantasy and realism based upon the South Pacific whaling industry.It might be read as an initia-yion story about Ishmael,the outcast,finding himself in a real word of hard work and danger and unreal world of speculation and mystery.2.It is a fabulous dramatization of Ahab is obsessed determination to revenge himself in the pursuit of one particular whale who has previously destroyed his boat and humiliated him by ripping off one of his legs.The book has so often been interpreted in so many ways,allegorically and symbolically.3.Malville is a master of allegory and symbolism.Instead of putting the battle between Ahab and the big whale into sim-ple statements,used symbols,that is,objects or persons who represent something else.Different prople on board the ship are representations of different ideas and different social and ethnic groups;facts become symbols and incidents ac-quire universal meanings;the Pequod is the microcosm of human society and the voyage becomes a search for truth.The white whale,Moby Dick,symbolizes nature nfor Melville,for it