美国文学作品问答题

Part III. The Literature of RomanticismPassage 4Once upon a midnight dreary, while i pondered, weak and weary,Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.Tis some visitor, I muttered, tapping at my chamber doorOnly this, and nothing more. Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December,And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.Eagerly I wished the morrow; vainly I had tried to borrowFrom my books surcease of sorrow-sorrow for the lost.1.Who is the writer of these lines?2.What is the title of this poem from which the selection is selected?3.Recognize the sound devices in the following lines. LI _ L4 _L7_ L10_4.Describe the mood of this poem.Answers:1.Edgar Allan Poe2.The Raven3.LIAlliteration, L4Onomatopoeia, L7Internal rhyme, L10Assonance4.A sense of melancholy over the death of a beloved beautiful young woman pervades the whole poem, the portrayal of a young man grieving for his lost Leno-re, his grief turned to madness under the steady one-word repetition of the talking bird.Passage 5Lo! in you brilliant window-nicheHow statue-like I see thee stand,The agate lamp within thy hand!Ah, Psyche, from the regions whichAre Holy-Land!1.This is the last stanza of a poem To Helen. Who wrote this poem To Heleni2.With whom is Helen associated in Line 4 of the present stanza?3.Who is Psyche?Answers1.Edgar Allan Poe2.Psyche3.Psyche is the goddess of the soul in Greek mythology.Passage 6To go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society. I am not solitary whilst I read and write, though nobody is with me. But if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars. The rays that come from those heavenly worlds, will separate between him and vulgar things. One might think the atmosphere was made transparent with this design, to give man, in the heavenly bodies, the perpetual presence of the sublime. Seen in the streets of cities, how great they are! If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these preachers of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile.Questions:1.This paragraph is taken from a famous essay. What is the name of the essay?2.Who is the author?3.What does the author say would happen if the stars appeared one night in a thousand years?4.Give a peculiar term to cover the authors belief.Answers:1.Nature2.Ralph Waldo Emerson3.Then, the men cannot believe and adore the God, cannot preserve there membrance of the city of God which had been shown.4.TranscendentalismPassage 7Standing on the bare groundmy head bathed by the blithe air and uplifted into infinite spaceall mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eyeball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God.Questions:1.Which work is this selection taken from?2.How do you understand the philosophical ideas in these words?Answers:1.Nature2.Ralph Waldo Emerson regards nature as the purest, and the most sanctifying moral influence on man, and advocated a direct intuition of a spiritual and immanent God in nature. In this connection, Emerson s emotional experiences are exemplary in more ways than one.3.Now this is a moment of conversion when one feels completely merged with the outside world, when one has completely sunk into nature and become one with it, and when the soul has gone beyond the physical limits of the body to share the omniscience of the Oversoul. In a word, the soul has completely transcended the limits of individuality and become part of the Oversoul. Emerson sees spirit pervading everywhere, not only in the soul of man, but behind nature, throughout nature.Passage 8I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion. For most men, it appears to me, are in a strange uncertainty about it, whether it is of the devil or of God.1.This passage is taken from a famous work entitled _ .2.The author of the work is_ .3.List by yourself at least five reasons that the author gives for going to live in the woods.Answers:1.Walden2.Henry David Thoreau3.Find the answer from the passage.Passage 10Tell me not, in mournful numbers.Life is but an empty dream!For the soul is dead that slumbers,And things are not what they seem.Life is real-life is earnestAnd the grave is not its goal.Dust thou art, to dust retumest,Was not spoken of the soul. 1.Who is the writer of these lines?2.What is the title of the whole poem from which the two stanzas are taken?3.Summarize the poets advice on living.Answers:1.Henry Wadsworth Longfellow2.A Psalm of Ufe3.His optimism which has characterized much of his poetry, also endeared many critics to him. He seemed to have persevered despite tragedy. In his poem, The Psalm of Life, he writes: Life is real! Life is earnest! And the grave is not its goal. This is the cry of the heart, rallying from depression , ready to affirm life, to regroup from losses, to push on despite momentary defeat.Passage 11Forth into the sunshine which, falling on all alike, seemed, to her sick and morbid heart, as if meant for no other purpose than to reveal the scarlet letter on her breast. Perhaps there was a more real torture in her first unattended footsteps from the threshold of the prison, than even in the procession and spectacle that have been described, where she was made the common infamy, at which all mankind was summoned to point its finger. Then, she was supported by an unnatural tension of the nerves, and by all the combative energy of her character, which enabled her to convert the scene into a kind of lurid triumph.1.Which novel is this selection taken from?2.What is the name of the novelist?3.What are the symbolic meanings of the scarlet letter on Hesters breast?Answers:1.The Scarlet Letter Nathaniel Hawthorne2.adultery, able, angelPassage 12It was not very long after speaking the Goney that another homeward-bound whaleman, the Town-Ho, was encountered. She was manned almost wholly by Polynesians. In the short game that ensued she gave us strong news of Moby Dick. To some the general interest in the White Whale was now wildly heightened by a circumstance of the Town-Hos story, which seemed obscurely to involve with the whale a certain wondrous, inverted visitation of one of those so called judgments of God which at times are said to overtake some men. This latter circumstance, with its own particular accompaniments, forming what may be called the secret part of the tragedy about to be narrated, never reached the ears of Captain Ahab or his mates. For that secret part of the story was unknown to the captain of the Town-Ho himself. It was the private property of three confederate white seamen of that ship, one of whom, it seems, communicated it to Tashtego with Romish injunctions ofsecrecy, but the following night Tashtego rambled in his sleep, and revealed so much of it in that way, that when he was wakened he could not well withhold the rest. Nevertheless, so potent an influence did this thing have on those seamen in the Pequod who came to the full knowledge of it, and by such a strange delicacy, to call it so, were they governed in this matter, that they kept the secret among themselves so that it never transpired abaft the Pequod s main-mast . Interweaving in its proper place this darker thread with the story as publicly narrated on the ship, the whole of this strange affair I now proceed to put on lasting record.1.From which novel is this paragraph taken?2.What is the name of the novelist?3.Who is Ahab?4.What is Pequod?5.What is the theme of the novel?Answers:1.Moby Dick2.Herman Melville3.The captain of the whaling ship4.The name of the whaling ship5.The rebellious struggle of Captain Ahab against the overwhelming, mysterious vastness of the universe and its awesome sometimes merciless forces.Part IV. The Literature of RealismPassage 1I 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 ease observing a spear of summer grass.1.These are the first two stanzas in the first section of a long poem entitled2.The name of the poet is_ .3.Who is the poet celebrating? Whom do lines 2 3 also include in the celebration?4.What is the verse, structure?5.Take the fifth line as a hint, can you write out the name of the poets completed collections of poems?Answers:1.Song of Myself2.Walt Whitman3.The poet is celebrating himself, his own life. Lines 2-3 also include you”, the readers and their lives in the celebration.4.free verse5.Leaves of GrassPassage 2Because I could not stop for DeathHe kindly stopped for meThe Carriage held but just OurselvesQuestions:1.Who is the writer of these lines?2.In which category would you place this poem?A. narrative B. dramatic C. lyric3.Emily Dickinson is noted for her use of_ to achieve special effects.A. perfect rhyme B. exact rhyme C. slant rhymeAnswers:1.Emily Dickinson2.C 3.CPassage 3It is impossible to conceive of a human creature more wholly desolate and forlorn than Eliza, when she turned her footsteps from Uncle Toms cabin.Questions:1.This is taken from a famous novel. What is the name of the novel?2.What is the name of the writer?3.Who is Uncle Tom?Answers:1.Uncle Tom s Cabin2.Harriet Beecher Stowe3.He is the main character in the novel, a suffering slave, a victim of slavery.Passage 4Tom Sawyer stepped forward with conceited confidence and soared into the unquenchable and indestructible Give me liberty or give me death speech, with fine fury and frantic gesticulation, and broke down in the middle of it. A ghastly stage fright seized him, his legs quaked under him, and he was like to choke. True, he had the manifest sympathy of the house- but he had the houses silence, too, which was even worse than its sympathy. The master frowned, and this completed the disaster. Tom struggled awhile and then retired, defeated.1.Which novel is this passage taken from?2.Who is the author?Answers:1.The Adventures of Tom Sawyer2.Mark Twain Passage 5I took the sack of corn meal and took it to where the canoe was hid, and shoved t, he vines and branches apart and put it in; then I done the same with the side of bacon; then the whisky-jug. I took all the coffee and suga, r there was, and all the ammunition; I took the wadding; I took the bucket and gourd; took a dipper and a tin cup, and my old saw and two blankets, and the skillet and the coffee-pot. I took fish-lines and matches and other thingseverything that was worth a cent. I cleaned out the place. I wanted an ax, but there wasnt any, only the one out at the woodpile, and 1 knew why I was going to leave that. I fetched out the gun, and now I was done.Questions:1.Which novel is this passage taken from?2.Analyze the language style of this passage.Answers1.The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn2.The words used here are, except perhaps ammunition which is etymologically French, mostly Anglo-Saxon in origin, and are short, concrete and direct in effect. Sentence structures are most of them simple or compound, with a series of thens and ands and semi-colons serving as connectives. The repetition of the word took and the stringing together of things leave the impression that Mark Twain depended solely on the concrete object and action for the body and move ment of his prose. And what is more, there is an ungrammatical element which gives the final finish to his style. The whole book does approximate the actual speech habit of an uneducated boy from the American South of the mid-nineteenth century.Passage 6On his bench in Madison Square, Soapy moved uneasily. When wild geese honk high of nights, and when women without sealskin coats grow kind to their husbands, and when Soapy moves uneasily on his bench in the park, you may know that winter is near at hand.Questions:1.This passage is taken from a short story entitled_ .2.The authors name is William Sidney Porter. What is his pen name?Answers:1.Vie Cop and the Anthem2.O. HenryPassage 9When 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 tempter. 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 counsellor at hand to whisper cautious interpretations, what falsehoods may not these things breathe into the unguarded ear! Unrecognised for what they are, their beauty, like music, too often relaxes, then weakens then perverts the simpler human perceptions.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 Carrie2.Theodore Dreiser3.The cosmopolitan standard of virtue is something that makes a person become low in virtue and value and become worse.Part V. Twentieth Century Literature (I) Before WWIIPassage 1:In a Station of the MetroThe apparition of these faces in the crowd;Petals on a wet, black bough.Questions:1.Who is the author of this short poem?2.What two images are juxtaposed, or placed next to each other in this poem?3.How do you appreciate this poem?Answers:1.Ezra Pound2.The writer uses the image of petals on another image, that is, wet, black bough.3.In In a Station of the Metro Pound attempts to produce the emotion he felt when he walked down into a Paris subway station and suddenly saw a number of faces in the dim light. To capture the emotion, Pound uses the image of petals on a wet, black bough. The image is not decoration; It is central to the poems mean ing. In fact, it is the poems meaning.Passage 2:And he was richyes, richer than a king And admirably schooled in every grace:In fine, we thought that he was everything To make us wish that we were in his place.So on we worked, and waited for the light, And went without the meat, and cursed the bread; And Richard Cory, one calm summer night, Went home and put a bullet through his head.Questions:1.What is the title of the poem?2.Who wrote this poem?3.How are the we of the poem different from Richard Cory?4.Do you think the use of the adjective calm in the next-to-hist line is an example of verbal irony? What is verbal irony?5.There is an element of dark humor in the mistaken ideas that the townspeople have of Richard Cory, do you think so?Answers:1.Richard Cory2.Edwin Arlington Robinson3.The we in the poem refers to the poor townspeople who live a hard life and admire the rich. But Richard Cory is the rich person who is admired by the poor, and appears to be calm and smart, but with a heart of suicidal despairing.4.Yes, it is an example of verbal irony. Verbal irony occurs when words that appear to be saying one thing are really saying something quite different.Passage 3: The woods are lovely, dark and deep.But I have promises to keep,And miles to go before I sleep,And miles to go before 1 sleep.1.Who wrote this poem?2.What is the title of this poem?3.What kind of feeling does this stanza show?4 What do you think of this poem?Answers:1.Robert Frost2.Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening3.It shows a kind of sad, sentimental but also strong and responsible feeling.4.It is one of the most quietly moving of Frost s lyrics. On the surface, it seems to be simple, descriptive verses, records of close observation, graphic and homely pictures. It uses the simplest terms and commonest words. But it is deeply meditative, adding far-reaching mean