英美文学考前串讲（6）
  
Chapter 5 The Modern Period

I. Choose the right answer:
1. The three trilogies of_____Forsyte novels are masterpieces of critical realism in the early 20th century.
A. D. H. Lawrence’s
B. John Galsworthy’s
C. James Joyce’s
D. Thomas Hardy’s
Answer: B (P337)


2. ____is the most outstanding stream-consciousness novelist.
A. T.S. Eliot
B. Richard Brinsley Sheridan
C. James Joyce
D. Oscar Wilder
Answer: D (P317)

3. In his famous poem_____, Yeats explores the problems of death, love, old age and art.
A. "Leda and the Swan"
B. "No Second Troy"
C. "September 1913"
D. "Sailing to Byzantium"
Answer: D (P354)

4. ____is a poem concerned with the spiritual breakup of a modern civilization in which human life has lost its meaning, significance and purpose.
A. Ulysses
B. The Waste Land
C. The Confidential Clerk
D. Dubliners
Answer: B (P360)

5. The Rainbow and_____are generally regarded as D.H. Lawrence’s masterpieces.
A. Women in Love
B. Son s and Lovers
C. Lady Chatterley’s Lover
D. The Plumed Serpent
Answer: A (P370)

6. In ____, James Joyce intends to present a microcosm of the whole human life by providing an instance of how a single event contains all the events of its kind, and how history is recapitulated in the happenings of one day.
A. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
B. Dubliners
C. Ulysses
D. Finnegans Wake
Answer: C (P388)

7. Structurally and thematically, George Bernard Shaw follows the great tradition _______.
A. Modernism
B. Romanticism
C. Realism
D. Naturalism
Answer: C (P323)

8. Galsworthy was a _____writer, having inherited the fine traditions of the great Victorian novelists of the critical realism such as Dickens and Thackeray.
A. naturalistic
B. romantic
C. realistic
D. conventional
Answer: D (P338)

9. In "The Forsyte Saga" by John Galsworthy, a typical Forsyte has a remarkable characteristic-----a strong sense of______.
A. money
B. property
C. success
D. privilege
Answer: B (P339)

10. In "The Lake Isle of Innisfree", William Bulter Yeats expresses his ____________.
A. hope to go abroad
B. desire to escape into a "fairyland"
C. love for common life
D. hatred for war
Answer: B (P356)

11. In which of the following poems by Yeats did you find the allusion to Helen and Trojan War?
A. Sailing to Byzantium
B. Down by the Sally Garden
C. The Lake Isle of Innisfree
D. Leda and the Swan
Answer: D (P354)

12. Of the following poems by T.S. Eliot, which is hailed as a landmark and a model of the 20th Century English Poetry?
A. Poems 1909----1925
B. The Hollow Men
C. Prufrock and Other Observations
D. The Waste Land
Answer: D (P359)

13. "The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the windowpanes,/ The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the windowpanes/ Linked its tongue into the corners of the evening,/ Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains." The stanza is taken from_________.
A. T.S. Eliot’s "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"
B. Emily Dickinson’s "Because I could not stop for Death"
C. Alfred Tennyson’s "Break, Break, Break"
D. William Wordsworth’s "I wandered Lonely as a Cloud"
Answer: A (P363---364)

14. Which of the following best describes the speaker of ’The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"?
A. He is a man of an action.
B. He is a man of apathy.
C. He is a man of inactivity.
D. All the above are wrong.
Answer: C (P363)

15. Of the following works by D.H. Lawrence, _______established his position as novelist.
A. The White Peacock
B. The Trespasser
C. Women in Love
D. Sons and Lovers
Answer: D (P370)

16. Which of the following is considered to be a better-structured novel?
A. Women in Love
B. Son s and Lovers
C. The Rainbow
D. Lady Chatterley’s Lover
Answer: A (P372)

17. ’The Lawrence trilogy" refers to the following three plays except ______.
A. A Collier’s Friday Night]
B. The Daughter -in-Law
C. The Widowing of Mrs. Holroyed
D. Lady Chatterley’s Lover
Answer: D (P373)


18. Which of the following writings is not the novel of D.H. Lawrence’s?
A. Sons and Lovers
B. A Portrait of the Artist as a Yong Man
C. The White Peacock.
D. The Rainbow
Answer: B (P369---370)

19. Of the following writings by James Joyce, which is a prime example of modernism in literature?
A. Ulysses
B. A Portrait of the Artist as a Yong Man
C. Dubliners
D. Finnegans Wake
Answer: A (P386)

20. Which of the following is not true according to James Joyce?
A. Ulysses has become a prime example of modernism in literature.
B. Joyce is regarded as the most prominent stream-of-consciousness novelist.
C. Joyce is a realistic writer in English literature history.
D. His novel "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young man" is a naturalistic account of the hero’s bitter experiences and his final artistic and spiritual liberation.
Answer: C (P386---389)

II. Read the quoted part and answer the questions:
1. Analyze the poem of T. S. Eliot -"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"
1) "In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo"

<1> Why does the sentence repeat in the poem for several times?

Answer:
The sentence symbolizes the remote and faraway things, it implies the inability to face up with the reality and the life of the hero. (P363)

2) "And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street, ...
There will be time, there will be time ...."

<1> What deep implication can you get from the passage?

Answer:
The hero was unable to face up with the life and reality bravely, but he was anxious to find time passing so quickly that he was very depressed. The passage shows the tragic character of the indecision of the young man. (P363)

3) "I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from the father room.
So how should I presume?

<1> What did the speaker presume?
<2> Interpret the excerpt.

Answer:
<1> He will propose marriage to a girl, but he dare not.

<2> The Excerpt shows the futile and boring life of the upper class. (Every day, they drink coffee, listen to music, but they can’t really enjoy the pleasure of life, leading a boring life.)

4) "I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floor of silent seas."

<1> Interpret it.

Answer:
If he had been a crab on the ocean bed, maybe he would have been better. The motion of the crab suggests futility and growing old. (P368 注释5)

5) "But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worthwhile" (此节选部分在P367)

<1> Interpret it.

Answer:
The sentence implies the speaker’s incapability of facing up to love and to life. He is always fearful that others will see through his ideas and truth of falling love, which makes himself live in frightening and restlessness. (P363)

2. "I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade"

1) Identify the poem and poet;
2) Interpret the poem.

Answer:
1) The poem is "The Lake Isle of Innisfree", which was written by William Butler Yeats. (P355)

2) In the poem, the poet imagined a place where he could live like a hermit, implying that he was tired of the life of his day, he sought to escape into and ideal "fairyland" where he could live calmly as a hermit and enjoyed the beauty of the nature.

3. "North Richmond Street, being blind, was a quiet street except at the hour when the Christian Brothers’ school set the boys free ..., gazed at one another with brown imperturbable faces."

1) Comment the main tone of the story with the concrete images of the passage.
2) Analyze the theme of the story.
3) Explain the devices of symbols with the examples of the article.

Answer:
1) The tone of the story is a fine tuned melancholy.
The scene is drab, lifeless. The Christian School sounds like prison -it sets the boys free. The brown color also showed the tone of the story. (节选部分在P390)

2) The story introduced a little boy’s love experience, expressing his awareness of reality and expectation, and pointing out the drabness and harshness of the adult world. (P385)

3) In this article the author used many images to show the symbols meaning, expressing the frustrated quest for beauty. (P390)
For example: The little boy lived with his uncle and aunt -a symbol
of the isolation and the lack of proper relationship;
His uncle forgot his arrangement is a symbol of the boy’s failure;
The deserted train symbol the indifference relationship, and "all the stalls were in closed and the greatest part of the hall was in darkness" and "the upper part of the hall was now completely dark" symbol the destined failure of the boy’s quest for the beauty.

4. "You are not, my son. Battle-battle -and suffer. It’s about all you do, as far as I can see."
"But why not, my dear? I tell you it’s the best ---"
"It isn’t. And one ought to be happy, one ought."
By this time Mrs. Morel was trembling violently ...
"Eh, my dear -say rather you want me to live."

1) Name the works and its writer.
2) Who are the two speakers? How do you know her?

Answer:
1) The novel is named "Sons and Lovers". It’s the works of D. H. Lawrence. (节选部分在P383)

2) The two speakers are Mrs. Morel and her son (Paul).
Mrs. Morel is a strong-willed, intelligent and ambitious woman. Having been disappointed with her husband, a coal miner, she puts all her feeling on her son, hoping to realize her ideas of success, happiness and social esteem. The distorted relationship reflects the inhuman mechanical civilization and the indifference of the men. (P375—376)

III. Questions and answers:
1. What are the characters of Modernism?

Answer:
1) Modernism rose out of scepticism and disillusionment of capitalism;

2) The French symbolism heralded modernism;

3) Modernism takes the irrational philosophy and the theory of psycho-analysis as its theoretical base;

4) The major theme of Modernism are the distorted, alienated and ill relationship between man and society, man and nature, man and man, man and himself;

5) The Modernists concern about the private, subjective, inner individual and the tone is disillusioned. (P312—313)

2. D. H. Lawrence is regarded as revolutionary, how do you know his works?

Answer:
1) Lawrence’s interest lay in the psychological development of his character;

2) He criticized the dehumanizing effect of the capitalism industrialization on human which turned man into inhuman machines and unhealthy animal;

3) He believes the life impulse -the sexual impulse was man’s most important instinct, any conscious repression would cause distortion of the man’s personality;

4) He explored the relationship of man and woman in psychology;

5) He believed the alienation and the perversion were caused by the desire for power and money. (P317)

3. What philosophical ideas influenced Modernism?

Answer:
1) Karl Marx’s scientific socialism;

2) Darwin’s theory evolution -the social Darwinism "survival of the fittest";

3) Einstein’s theory of relativity;

4) Freud’s analytical psychology;

5) The irrational philosophy. (P311—P312)

4. Common sense about "The Waste Land"

Answer:
"The Waste Land" is T. S. Eliot’s masterpiece:

1) The poem presents a panorama of physical disorder and spiritual desolation;

2) It reflects the mood of disillusionment, frustration, and despair of the whole post-war generation;

3) It concerns with the spirit breakup that man has lost his meaning, significance, and purpose of life;

4) The poem derogated/criticized the civilized world for its horror, menace, anguish and futility. (P359—362)

5. Analyze the background of the Modernism.

Answer:
1) Natural and social sciences advanced greatly, capitalism came into its monopoly stage, the gap between the poor and the rich was deepened;

2) The First World War and The Second World War happened, which influenced people greatly;

3) All kinds of philosophical ideas were produced. (P311—312)

6. Say something about Freudian and Jungian’ psycho-analysis.

Answer:
1) Multiple/many levels of consciousness exist in the human mind at the same time;

2) Man’s present are the sum of his past, present and future;

3) Truth exists in the unique, isolated, and private world of each individual.

4) The theory creates "steam-of-consciousness". (P316)

7. Why Modernism is different from Realism?

Answer:
In many aspects, Modernism acts against Realism;

1) Modernism rejects rationalism, while Realism stresses it;

2) Modernism includes internal, subjective, psychological world, while Realism stresses external, objective, and material world;

3) Modernism advocates new forms and new techniques, and it casts away all the traditional elements such as: story, character, etc. while Realism stresses it.

4) Modernism works are called anti-novel, anti-poetry, anti-drama etc. (P313)

8. List the representative authors of the "Stream of Consciousness" and explain the theory.

Answer:
1) Stream of Consciousness is a narrative method to describing the unspoken thoughts and feelings of the characters, but not using objective description or conventional dialogue.
Authors represent the thought, emotions without logical sequence or syntax and make the characters tell the inner movement of consciousness and the thoughts.

2) The representative authors are: James Joyce "Ulysses"
Virginia Woolf "Mrs. Dalloway"
Richardson "Pilgrimage"
T. S. Eliot
Henry James
George Eliot (P389)
 

英美文学考前串讲（7）
  
American Literature
Chapter 1 The Romantic Period

I. Choose the right answer:
1. Of all the following issues, _____is definitely NOT the focus of the Romantic writers in the American literary history.
A. Puritan morality
B. Human bestiality
C. Noble savages
D. Divinity of man
Answer: B (P401)

2. Henry David Thoreau’s work, ________, has always been regarded as a masterpiece of the New England Transcendental Movement.
A. Walden
B. The Pioneers
C. Nature
D. "Song of Myself"
Answer: A (P402)

3. "Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind" is a famous quote from______’s writings.
A. Walt Whitman
B. Henry David Thoreau
C. Herman Melville
D. Ralph Waldo Emerson
Answer: D (P402)

4. ’Leaves of Grass’ commands great attention because of its uniquely poetic embodiment of________, which are written in the founding documents of both the Revolutionary War and the American Civil War.
A. the democratic ideals
B. the romantic ideals
C. the self-reliance spirits
D. the religious ideals
Answer: A (P447)

5. According to Whitman, the genuine participation of a poet in a common cultural effort was to behave as a supreme_________.
A. democrat
B. individualist
C. romanticist
D. leader
Answer: B (P448)

6. The period before the American Civil War is generally referred to as ___________.
A. The Naturalist Period
B. The Modern Period
C. The Romantic Period
D. The Realistic Period
Answer: C (P399)

7. In the following works, which sign the beginning of the American literature?
A. The Sketch Book
B. Leaves of Grass
C. Leather Stocking Tales
D. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
B (P399)
8. _____is the author of the work ’The Legend of Sleepy Hollow’.
A. Washington Irving
B. James Joyce
C. Walt Whitman
D. William Butler Yeats
Answer: A (P404)

9. Washington Irving’s ’Rip Van Winkle’ is famous for_________.
A. Rip’s escape into a mysterious
B. The story’s German legendary source material
C. Rip’s seeking for happiness
D. Rip’s 20-years sleep
Answer: D (P406)

10. Which of the following statement is not true about Washington Irving?
A. Washington Irving is regarded as Father of the American short stories.
B. Irving’s relationship with the Old World in terms of his literary imagination can hardly be ignored considering his success both abroad and at home.
C. Irving’s taste was essentially progressive or radical.
D. Washington Irving has always been regarded as a writer who "perfected the best classic style that American literature ever produced."
Answer: C (P403---406)

11. The Publication of ______established Emerson as the most eloquent spokesman of New England Transcendentalism.
A. Nature
B. Self-Reliance
C. The American Scholar
D. The Over-Soul
Answer: A (P420)

12. The phrase "a transparent eye-ball’ compares philosophical mentation of Emerson’s. It appears in_________.
A. The American Scholar
B. Nature
C. The over Soul
D. Essays: Second Series
Answer: B (P423)

13. In 1837, Ralph Waldo Emerson made a speech entitled _______at Harvard, which was hailed by Oliver Wendell Holmeasas :Our Intellectual Declaration of Independence".
A. "Self-Reliance"
B. "Divinity School Address"
C. "The American Scholar"
D. "Nature"
Answer: C (P423)

14. _____is the most ambivalent (有争议的) writers in the American literary history.
A. Nathaniel Hawthorne
B. Walt Whitman
C. Ralph Waldo Emerson
D. Mark Twain
Answer: A (P429)

15. "There is evil in every human heart, which may remain latent, perhaps, through the whole life; but circumstances may rouse it to activity", which author of the following authors does the mention belong to________.
A. Washington Irving
B. Ralph Waldo Emerson
C. Nathaniel Hawthorne
D. Walt Whitman
Answer: C (P431)

16. In Hawthorne’s novels and short stories, intellectuals usually appear as________.
A. saviors
B. villains
C. commentators
D. observers
Answer: B (P432)

17. All of the following are works by Nathaniel Hawthorne except_______.
A. The House of the Seven Gables
B. White Jacket
C. The Marble Faun
D. The Blithedale Romance
Answer: B (P431)

18. Walt Whitman is radically innovative in the form of his poetry. What he prefers for his new subject is__________.
A. free verse
B. blank verse
C. lyric poem
D. heroic couplet
Answer: A (P450)

19. Which of the following features cannot characterize poems by Walt Whitman?
A. Lyrical and well-structured
B. Free-flowing
C. Simple and rather crude
D. Conversational and casual
Answer: A (P450---451)

20. " The horizon’s edge, the flying sea-crow, the fragrance of salt marsh and shore mud. These became part of that child who went forth every day, and who now goes, and will always go forth every day." The two lines are taken from____________.
A. "There Was a Child Went Forth" by Walt Whitman
B. "In a Station of the Metro" by Ezra Pound
C. "Cavalry Crossing a Ford" by Walt Whitman
D. "Ulysses" by Joyce
Answer: A (P454)

21. "Moby Dick" is regarded as the first American_________.
A. Prose epic
B. Comic epic
C. Dramatic fiction
D. Poetic fiction
Answer: A (P460)

22. The giant Moby Dick may symbolize all EXCEPT________.
A. mystery of the universe
B. sin of the whale
C. power of the great Nature
D. evil of the world
Answer: B (P461)

23. Which of the following comments on the writings by Herman Melville is not true?
A. "Bartleby, the Scrivener" is a short story.
B. "Benito Cereno" is a novella.
C. The Confidence---Man has something to do with the sea and sailors.
D. Moby-Dick is regarded as the first American prose epic.
Answer: C (P459---460)

24. The Transcendentalists believe that, first, nature is ennobling, and second, the individual is____, therefore, self-reliant.
A. insignificant
B. vicious by nature
C. divine
D. forward-looking
Answer: C (P402)

II. Read the quoted part and answer the questions:
1. "Time grew worse and worse with Rip Van Winkle as years of matrimony rolled on: a tart temper mellows with age, and a sharp tongue is the only edge tool that grows keener by constant use. For a long while he used to perpetual club of the sages, philosophers, and other idle personages of the village.

Questions:
1) Please identify the author and the title of the work.
2) What’s the meaning of this passage?

参考答案:
1) This is an excerpt from "Rip Van Winkle" by Washington Irving. (P408)

2) With his wife’s dominance at home, the situation became harder and harder for Rip Van Winkle. His wife’s temper became worse and she scolded him for more often. He had to stay in the club with idle people. (P407)

附:
Question: Please describe the changes Rip Van Winkle experienced.

Answer: 1) Rip Van Winkle was the hero in Irving’s works. He was a good-natured man, a henpecked (惧内的，妻管严的) husband.
2) Because his wife’s shrewish (泼妇一样的) treatment, Rip had to escape from his home to the little inn in the village. When it failed to give him some restful air, he had to go hunting in the high mountain, where Rip met a stranger, and the man asked Rip to carry keg for him. Then Rip reached the place in the valley, where many strangers were playing nine-pins. Later Rip got drunk after drinking the liquor, which made him sleep for 20 years.
3) Rip woke up as an old man, entering the village learned that his wife had died, he got the freedom of his own,; and the American had been dependent from the control of Britain, he had changed from a subject of the King (George III) into a citizen of the independent new U.S.....

2. " I celebrated myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you"

Questions:
1) Please identify the author and the title of the poem that had used when published.
2) What is the theme of this poem?

参考答案:
1) In the 1856, the title was "Poem of Walt Whitman, an American",
then it became "Walt Whitman" in 1860, until 1881, it finally became "Song of Myself". The author is Walt Whitman. (P456--457)

2) In this poem Whitman sets forth two principle beliefs:
A. The theory of universality (普遍性), which is illustrated by lengthy catalogues of people and things;
B. The belief in the singularity (个别性) and equality(平等性) of all beings in value. (P457)

3. "Standing on the bare ground, ----my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, -----all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball. I am nothing. I see all."

Questions:
1) Please identify the author and the title of the work.
2) Please briefly interpret this passage.
3). What rhetorical device of "transparent eye-ball".
4) Emerson said he want to become a transparent eye-ball, what king idea did he want to express?

参考答案:
1) This selection is from "Nature" by Emerson. (P427)

2) In the essay Emerson clearly expresses the main principles of his Transcendentalist pursuit and his love for nature. Emerson develops his concept of "Over-Soul" Or "Universal Mind". Last but not the leas, it affirms the divinity of the human beings. (P423)

3) It used the device of metaphor. (P423)

4) He wanted to tell us: Nature can purify (净化) our quality and let us get comfort. (P243)

III. Questions and answers:
1. The Romantic Period was called "The American Renaissance". Discuss the background of the Romantic Period, and compare it with the Romanticism of Britain.

Answer:
1) The two Romanticism both stress the imaginative and emotional qualities of literature;

2) They all pay attention to psychic states of the characters and exalt the individual and common man;

3) American Romanticism revealed unique characteristics: (difference)

<1> American authors describe their native land,, especially the spirit of the pioneering into the west, the desire for an escape from society and a return to nature;
<2> American writers use local dialect in language;
<3> Puritanism has great influence over American Romantics;
<4> Calvinism of original sin is obvious in their works;
<5> Transcendentalism is very important theory in American Romanticism;
<6> The important setting in American Romanticism are: ① the early puritan settlement; ② the confrontation with the Indians; ③ the frontiersmen’s life; ④ the wild west; ⑤ imagination. (P399—402)


2. Analyze the themes and characteristic of Hawthorne.

Answer:
Hawthorne was a man with inquiring imagination, meditative mind and dark vision to life.

His themes in writing are:
1) Man was born with evil and sin, one source of them is over-reaching intellect, whose image was always villain; (Chllingworth e.g.)

2) Hawthorne was influenced greatly by Puritanism, while he criticized it bitterly;

3) He believed Calvinistic ideas, thinking man was depraved and corrupted; they should obey God for saving the spirits;

4) He concerned the moral life of man and human history;

5) He was keen on the description of man’s development of psychology. (P432—433)

3. Explain the theory of Transcendentalism, then list its important author and works.

Answer:
Transcendentalism is a very important theory in American Romanticism, its main ideas are:

1) Man has the capacity of knowing truth intuitively, or the ability of getting knowledge transcending the senses;

2) Nature is ennobling and individual is divine, therefore, man should be self-reliant.

3) Man is divine/holy and perfectible and man can trust himself to decide what is right and act accordingly; (but to Hawthorne and Melville man is a sinner);

4) Universe is over-soul -a symbol of the spirit, God or the universe, there is an emotional communication between an individual soul and the universal "over-soul" -unity of Nature.

5) The important authors are: Emerson (The American Scholar) and Thoreau.

6) "Nature", Emerson’s works, is called the unofficial manifesto for the club. (P421—P422)

4. Hawthorne was a master in using symbol and allegory; cite some example to analyze it.

Answer:
1) Allegorically, Young Goodman Brown becomes an Everyman called Brown, who will be aged in one night by an evil adventure, and the evilness makes everyone a fallen idol in the world.

2) In the angle of Symbol: "Brown look up to the Heaven and resist the wicked one" symbols Brown has the force to resist the evilness of the Nature and he still has the faith to God; but "he is alone in the forest" symbols the society is the place full of sins and evilness, Brown’s strength is not enough at all; then after returning, he lives a dismal and gloomy life symbols he has been crushed down by the social evilness and lost his belief in goodness and piety. (P434—435)

5. Washington Irving was called "Father of the American short stories" and "the American Goldsmith". What characteristics did he have?

Answer:
1) He was nostalgic author, and he always juxtaposing the Old and the New world;

2) He remained a conservative and always exalted a disappearing past, and he prefer the past to present, prefer a dream-like world to a real one;

3) His stories were always from legend, especially German legends, showing best classic style. (P405—406)

6. Sea adventures are Melville’s favorite subject; "Moby-Dick" is a great novel in the theme, which is also noted for its symbolism, please analyze it in detail.

Answer:
1) About the sea adventure: it symbols the voyage of the mind in quest of the truth and knowledge of the universe; a spirit exploration into man’s deep reality and psychology;

2) About the boat; it symbols the society, and the crew symbol all kinds of people with different social and ethnic ideas;

3) About the white whale: To the author, it symbols nature, it is a complex, unfathomable and beautiful; To the captain Ahab, it is evilness, is a wall. So he will lead all his crew to cut through the wall to dig out all the unknown, mysterious things behind it. To the narrator, Ishmael, it is a mystery. (P460—461)

7. Walt Whitman is a unique poet. Can you explain what make him unique?

Answer:
1) His themes are: Democracy; the Revolutionary War and the Civil War; freedom; openness; brotherhood; individualism; the growth of industry and the wealth of the cities; universality.

2) His styles are special: "free verse"; "catalogue"; simple and even crude language. (P448-551)

英美文学考前串讲（9）
  
American Literature

Chapter 3 The Modern Period
I. Choose the right answer:
1. Ezra Pound is a leading spokesman of the_________.
A. Imagist Movement
B. Chartist Movement
C. Modernist Movement
D. Romantic Movement
Answer: A (P553)

2. Strong affinity of the Chinese and Oriental literature can be found in the works of_________.
A. Mark Twain
B. Ezra Pound
C. Emily Dickinson
D. Arthur Miller
Answer: B (P556)

3. In Robert Frost’s famous poem "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening", there are four lines like these: “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 I sleep”. The second sleep refers to______.
A. die
B. calm down
C. fall into sleep
D. stop walking
Answer: A (P567)

4. Of the following American poets, whose work was first recognized in England and then in America?
A. Robert Frost
B. Walt Whitman
C. Emily Dickinson
D. Wallace Stevens
Answer: A (P561)

5. "For I have had too much/ Of apple-picking: I am overtired/ Of the great harvest I myself desired" From these lines we can conclude that the speaker __________.
A. is happy about the harvest
B. is tired of the work of apple-picking
C. is not tired when seeing the harvest
D. becomes indifferent of the job
Answer: B (P565)

6. In these lines "The apparition of these faces in the crowd; / Petals on a wet, black bough", Ezra Pound uses the figure of speech of ________.
A. metaphor
B. simile
C. hyperbole
D. contrast
Answer: A (P557)

7. O’Neill’s inventiveness seemingly knew no limits. He was constantly experimenting with new styles and forms for his plays, especially during the twenties when ______was in full swing.
A. Symbolism
B. Expressionism
C. Romanticism
D. Realism
Answer: B (P571)


8. "He got me, aw right. I’m trou. Even him didn’t tink I belonged." In these sentences taken from ’The Hairy Ape’, the words “he” and “him” both refer to__________.
A. Yank
B. God
C. The ape in the zoo
D. A person unnamed
Answer: B (P575)

9. ______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. Impressionism
C. Cubism
D. Imagism
Answer: C (P546)

10. In a class which discuss the Imagist Movement in the United States, we will definitely NOT include________.
A. William Carlos Williams
B. Ezra Pound
C. Gary Snyder
D. Wallance Stevens
Answer: C (P547-548)

11. In which of the following poems by Ezra Pound did you find the allusion to Wi-shang? ____________
A. In a Station of the Metro
B. The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter
C. A Pact
D. Hugh Selwyn Mauberley
Answer: B (P559)

12. In 1915, Ezra Pound began writing his great work_______, which spanned from 1917 to 1959.
A. Cantos
B. Collected Early Poems of Ezra Pound
C. Personae
D. Hygh Selwyn Mauberley
Answer: A (P554)

13. Robert Frost was the Pulitzer winner on ______ occasions.
A. two
B. three
C. four
D. five
Answer: C (P560)

13. The founder of the American drama is _______.
A. Arthur Miller
B. Clifford Odets
C. Tennesee Williams
D. Eugene O’Neill
Answer: D (P568)

14. The first full-length play written by Eugene O’Neill is ______.
A. The Straw
B. Beyond the Horizon
C. Bound East for Cardiff
D. The Hairy Ape
Answer: B (P568)

14. Eugene O’Neill’s ’The Hairy Ape’ explores the problem of________.
A. human disillusionment
B. the corruption of human desire
C. human responsibility
D. the loss of human identity
answer: D (P572)

15. Fitzgerald’s fictional world is the best embodiment of the spirit of_______.
A. the Jazz age
B. the Romantic Period
C. the Renaissance Period
D. the Neoclassical Period
Answer: A (P577)

16. Fitzgerald wrote the following except_________.
A. The Great Gatsby
B. In Our Time
C. Tender is the Night
D. This Side of Paradise
Answer: B (P578)

17. "There was music from my neighbor’s house through the summer nights. In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the chamoagne and the stars...", the two sentences are taken from________.
A. ’The Great Gatsby’ by Fitzgerald
B. ’Sister Carrie’ by Theodore Dreiser
C. ’Moby-Dick’ by Herman Melville
D. ’Daisy Miller’ by Henry James
Answer: A (P583)

18. Which of the following comments on the novel ’The Great Gatsby’ is not true?
A. The Great Gatsby is a novel that is a set against the ending of the war.
B. Gatsby is a mystical figure whose intensity of dream partakes of a state of mind that embodies American itself.
C. Gatsby is the last of the romantic heroes.
D. Gatsby is wealthy but unintelligent and brutal.
Answer: D (P581-582)

19. _____is Hemingway’s masterpiece.
A. Farewell to Arms
B. For Whom the bell Tolls
C. The Sun Also Rises
D. The Old Man and the Sea
Answer: D (P601)

20. Which of the following best describes the protagonist of William Faulkner’s "A Rose for Emily"?
A. She is a conservative aristocrat.
B. She is a wealth lady.
C. She is a prisoner of the past.
D. She has good taste.
Answer: C (P617)

21. Who, disregarding grammar and punctuation, always used "I" instead of "I" to refer to himself as a protest against self-importance?
A. Cummings
B. Wallance Stevens
C. Fitzgerald
D. Ernest Hemingway
Answer: A (P548)

22. Who is the author of the writing "The Grapes of Wrath"?
A. John Steinbeck
B. Eugene O’Neill
C. Fitzgerald
D. Theodore Dreiser
Answer: A (P548-549)

II. Read the quoted part and answer the questions:

1. "The apparition of these faces in the crowded; / Petals on a wet, black bough."

Questions:
1) From which poem does the stanza come? Who is the author?
2) What does the “petals”mean?
3) Briefly interpret the two lines.

Answers:
1) The lines are taken from "In a Station of the Metro" by Ezra Pound. (P557)
2) Here "petals" stands for "human faces". (P557)
3) The two lines compare human faces to petals on a wet, black bough. This way of making poetry comes from Chinese poetics. (P557)

2. "Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth"

Questions:
1) Please identify the poem and the poet;
2) Please briefly interpret this poem.

Answers:
1) It is taken from Robert Lee Frost’s "The Road Not Taken" (P566)
2) In this meditative poem, the speaker tells us how the course of his life determined when he came upon two rods that diverged in a wood. Forced to choose, he “took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.”He seems to be giving a suggestion to the reader: "Make good choice of your life." (P555-556)

3. "The caterwauling horns had reached a crescendo and I turned away and cut across the lawn toward home. I glanced back once. A wafer of a moon was shining over Gatsby’s house, making his still glowing garden. A sudden emptiness seemed to flow now from the windows and the great doors, endowing with complete isolation the figure of the lost, who stood on the porch, his stand up in a formal gesture of farewell."

Questions:
1) Name the author and the title of the novel from which this passage is taken.
2) What is the setting of the novel?
3) What implied meaning can you get from reading this passage?

Answers:
1) The passage comes from "The Great Gatsby" written by Fitzgerald. (P597)
2) The Great Gatsby is a novel that is set against the ending of the war. (P581)
3) The passage hints at the meaninglessnes, spiritual emptiness and vanity of such a lift of pleasure-seeking. There is a tragic sense that the "party" will be over. Gatsby’s failure magnifies to a great extent the end of the American Dream. (However, the affirmation of hope and expectation is self-asserted in Fitzgerald’s artistic manipulation of the central symbol in the novel, the green light).
(P582)
III Questions and answers:
1. Analyze the background of the Modern Period.

Answer:
(1) The U.S. participated in The First World War marked a crucial stage in the nation’s evolution/development to a world power.

(2) The technology has brought about great changes in the life of the American people. (P544)

2. The ideology analyses about the people and especially the authors.
(The ideology analysis of "The Lost Generation)

Answer:
(1) People became less certain about what might arise in this changing world and more cynical about accepted standards of honesty and morality. The idea of "seize the day" or "enjoy the present" was pervasive.

(2) There was a decline in moral standard and the first few decades of the twentieth century was described as a spiritual wasteland. The censor/standard of a great civilization being destroyed or destroying itself, social breakdown, and individual powerlessness and hopelessness became part of the American experience as a result of the First World War, with resulting feelings of fear, loss, disorientation and disillusionment.

(3) Disillusioned and disgusted by the frivolous, greedy, and heedless way of life in America, they began to write and they wrote from their own experience in the war.

(4) The sense of loss and despair prevails among the post-war generation who are physically and psychologically scarred; Faulkner creates his own mythical kingdom that mirrors not only the decline of the Southern society but also the spiritual wasteland of the whole American society.

(5) The world is even more disintegrating and fragmentary and people are even more estranged and despondent.

(6) These writers shared almost the same belief that human beings are trapped in a meaningless world and that neither God nor man can make sense of the human condition.

(7) In general terms, much serious literature written from 1912 onwards attempted to convey a vision of social breakdown and moral decay and the writer’s task was to develop techniques that could represent a break with the past. (P545-552)

3. List some characteristic writers you know in the Modernism.

Answer:
(1) The spirit of frivolity and carelessness is brought vividly to life in "The Great Gatsby" (1925).

(2) Faulkner’s footsteps in portraying the decadence and evil in the Southern society in a Gothic manner.

(3) Salinger is considered to be a spokesman for the alienated youth in the post-war era and his The Catcher in the Rye is regarded as a students’ classic.

(4) O’Neill is remembered for his tragic view of life and most of his plays are about the root, the truth of human desires and human frustration. (P548---549)

4. What are the styles of the modernists in writing?

Answer:
(1) The defining formal characteristics of the modernistic works discontinuity and fragmentation.

(2) The biggest shift is from the external to the internal, from the public to the private, from the chronological to the psychic, from the objective description to the subjective projection.

(3) Modern American writers in general emphasize the concrete sensory images or details as the direct conveyer of experience.

(4) Their language is direct, compressive, vivid and sparing of words.

(5) Modern fiction tended to employ the first person narration or limit the reader to the "central consciousness" or one character’s point of view. This limitation accorded with the modernistic vision that truth does not exist objectively but is the product of a personal interaction with reality. (P552---553)

5. Some theories and ideologies influenced the Modernists, what are they?

Answer:
(1) Darwinism;

(2) Karl Marx’s scientific socialism;

(3) Freud’s "unconsciousness" and psychoanalysis;

(4) William James’ "stream of consciousness";

(5) Carl June’s "collective unconscious", "archetypal symble". (P546)


6. What are the characteristics of the Eugene O’Neill’s plays?

(1) Of all the plays O’Neill wrote, most of them are tragedies, dealing with the basic issues of human existence and predicament: life and death, illusion and disillusion, alienation and communication, dream and reality, self and society, desire and frustration, etc. His characters (The Hairy Ape) in the plays are described as seeking meaning and purpose in their lives in different ways, some through love, some through religion, others through revenge, but all meet disappointment and despair.

(2) Dramatization of man’s effort in finding the secret of life results in a reconciliation with the tragic impossibility.

(3) "The Hairy Ape" is a play that concerns the problem of modern man’s identity. Yank’s sense of belonging nowhere, hence homelessness and rootlessness, is typical of the mood of isolation and alienation in the early twentieth century in the United States and the whole world as well. (P570-571)

7. Analyze "The Hemingway Code Hero"

Answer:
(1) They are always Exposed to and victimized by violence in various forms, Nick becomes the prototype of the wounded hero who, with all the dignity and courage he could muster, confronts situation.

(2) They are a group of wandering, amusing, but aimless people, who are caught in the war and removed from the path of ordinary life.

(3) They are the men trapped both physically and mentally.

(4) God’s design or his beneficence and to suggest that man is doomed to be entrapped.

(5) They believe: life is worth living and there are causes worth dying for.

(6) In a tragic sense, the struggle of Hemingway’s heroes show: it is a representation of life as a struggle against unconquerable natural forces in which only a partial victory is possible. Nevertheless, there is a feeling of great respect for the struggle and mankind.

(7) Hemingway hero of athletic prowess and masculinity and unyielding heroism.

(8) To master the code with the honest, the discipline, and the restrains are Hemingway Code heroes. In the general situation of his novels, life is full of tension and battles; the world is in chaos; man is always fighting desperately a losing battle. However, though life is but a losing battle, it is a struggle man can dominate in such a way that loss becomes dignity; man can be physically destroyed but never defeated spiritually. (P600---603)

8. About William Faulkner:
I. Analyses about his life and his theme:
Answer:
1) His works criticizes the stratified society among the aristocrats, the new rich, the poor whites and the blacks.
2) His work shows a panorama of the experience and consciousness of the whole Southern society.
3) His works focus on the collision of the intelligent, sensitive, and idealistic protagonist/hero (Emily) with the society of the twentieth century.
4) Almost all his heroes turn out to be tragic. They are tragic because they are prisoners of the past, or the society, or some social and moral taboos, or of their own introspective personalities.
5) Faulkner suggests that society, which conditions man with its hierarchical stratification and with its laws and institutions, eliminates man’s chance of responding naturally to the experience of his existence, against this imprisoned, confused, fragmented social being is the primitive man who, not conditioned by the civilization and social institutions, accepts the life-death pattern of human existence.
6) By turning away from reality, by alienating himself from truth with his attempts to explain the inexplicable, becomes weak and cowardly, confused and ineffectual.
7) Theme of imprisonment in the past. The past that Faulkner uses in this book to set off the present is not the past of an earlier society or historical period, but the immediate past---the world of childhood, innocent and idealistic. (P612---614)

II. Analyses on Faulkner’s techniques in writing:
Answer:
1) He holds/believes in the infinite possibilities inherent in human life. Therefore a writer should observe with no judgment whatsoever and reduce authorial intrusion to the lowest minimum. The range of narrative techniques used by Faulkner is remarkable. He would never step between the characters and the reader to explain, but let the characters explain themselves and hinder as little as possible the reader’s direct experience of the work of art. (detached)
2) He deliberately broke up the chronology of his narrative by juxtaposing the past with the present.
3) Faulkner was good at presenting multiple points of view. (P615-616)

III. The character analyses about Miss Emily Grierson:

Answer:
1) She is an eccentric spinster who refuses to accept the passage of time or the inevitable change and loss that accompanies it.
2) She is the symbols of the Old South but the prisoners of the past.
3) Something about plots: Miss Emily had been a tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town, and she vanquished the people in the town, horse and foot, just as she had vanquished their fathers thirty years before about the smell. And she is the victim of the idea of her family: none of the young men were quite good enough for Miss Emily and such. Then she fell in love with a Northerner, but some of the ladies began to say that it was a disgrace to the town and a bad example to the young men. (P617)