Download 全国2008年1月高等教育自学考试

浙江省 2008 年 7 月高等教育自学考试
美国文学选读试题
课程代码：10055
Part Ⅰ: Choose the relevant match from Column B for each item in Column A.(10 points in
all, 1 point for each)
Group 1
Column A
Column B
(
) 1. Nathaniel Hawthorne
a.Sound and Fury
(
) 2. Henry James
b.The Scarlet Letter
(
) 3. Walt Whitman
c.The Ambassadors
(
) 4. Mark Twain
d.The Gilded Age
(
) 5. William Faulkner
e. Leaves of Grass
Group 2
Column A
Column B
(
) 1. Mildred Douglas
a. Moby Dick
(
) 2. Ahab
b. A Rose for Emily
(
) 3. Hurstwood
c. The Hairy Ape
(
) 4. Tom Buchanan
d. Sister Carrie
(
) 5. Emily Grierson
e. The Great Gatsby
Part Ⅱ: Each of the following statements below is followed by four alternatives. Choose the
one that would best complete the statement. (50 points in all, 2 points for each)
1. Born of one common cultural heritage, the American Romanticists shared some common
features..._______, with the English Romanticists.(
)
A. an increasing emphasis on the free expression of emotions
B. an increasing attention to the psychic states of their characters
C. an increasing emphasis on the desire to return to nature
D. both A and B
2. _______ was the first great American writer to earn international fame.(
A. Irving
B. Cooper
10055# 美国文学选读试题 第 1 页 （共 6 页）
)
C. Emerson
D. Whitman
3. In 1836, a little book came out which made a tremendous impact on the intellectual life of
America. It was entitled Nature by(
)
A. Thoreau
B. Emerson
C. Hawthorne
D. Melville
4. About the basic principles of American Transcendentalism, which of the following statements is
NOT right?(
)
A. Individualism is elevated by the Transcendentalists.
B. Intuition is less important than experience.
C. Nature is only another side of God.
D. Transcendentalists have a new and delight thrill in nature.
5. _______, Melville’s masterpiece, is regarded as the first American prose epic.(
A. Typee
B. Omoo
C. White Jacket
D. Moby Dick
6. Pearl is the heroine in Hawthorne’s novel(
)
)
A. Moses from an Old Manse
B. Twice-Told Tales
C. The Scarlet Letter
D. The Blithedale Romance
7. As a philosophical and literary movement, Transcendentalism flourished in New England from
the 1830s to (
)
A. 1914
B. 1890
C. 1900
D. the Civil War
8. Irving was best known for his famous short stories such as(
)
A. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
B. Legend of the Alhambra
C. Life of Goldsmith
D. Life of Washington
9. In the history of American literature, Realism was a reaction against_______and paved the way
to Modernism.(
)
A. Rationalism
B. Romanticism
C. Neoclassicism
D. Enlightenment
10. American _______, another school of realism, resulted mainly from the impact of Darwin’s
evolutionary theory and the influence of the 19th century French literature.(
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)
A. Transcendentalism
B. Naturalism
C. Enlightenment
D. Freudianism
11. In Rip Van Winkle, which is written by _______, Rip falls into sleep for 20 years, during
which the Revolutionary War takes place.(
)
A. Mark Twain
B. Washington Irving
C. William D. Howells
D. Theodore Dreiser
12. _______ is considered the founder of Psychological realism.(
A. Henry James
B. Jack London
C. Mark Twain
D. Nathaniel Hawthorne
)
13. John Steinbeck is a novelist of the 1930s. His novel _______ is a record of the life of the
dispossessed and the wretched farmers during The Great Depression.(
)
A. The Grapes of Wrath
B. The Waste Land
C. The Sun Also Rises
D. The Sound and the Fury
14. The American novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne is known for his “black vision.” The term “black
vision” refers to(
)
A. Hawthorne’s observation that every man faces a black wall
B. Hawthorne’s belief that all men are by nature evil
C. that Hawthorne employed a dream vision to tell his story
D. that Puritans of Hawthorne’s time usually wore black clothes
15. As a great innovator in American literature, Walt Whitman wrote his poetry in an
unconventional style which is now called _______; that is _______.(
)
A. hymn...poetry with chanting refrains
B. blank verse...poetry without rhymes at the end of the lines but with a fixed beat
C. free verse...poetry without a fixed beat or regular rhyme scheme
D. ode...poetry in an irregular metric form and expressing noble feelings
16. In her life, Emily Dickinson makes enchanting poetry out of(
)
A. a happy and active life
B. adventurous experiences
C. a single household and an inactive life
D. a hard and suffering life
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17. Generally speaking, all those writers with a naturalistic approach to human reality tend to
be(
)
A. transcendentalists
B. optimists
C. pessimists
D. idealists
18. It was a sort of first attempt at writing his masterpiece _______, (1925) which made
Fitzgerald one of the greatest American novelists.(
)
A. This Side of Paradise
B. Tender is the Night
C. The Great Gatsby
D. Tales of the Jazz Age
19. With the publication of The Sun Also Rises, _______ became the spokesman for what
Gertrude Stein had called “The Lost Generation”.(
)
A. Fitzgerald
B. Faulkner
C. Hemingway
D. Steinbeck
20. The 1950s American writers often used the narrative techniques derived from(
A. William Faulkner
B. Henry James
C. Ernest Hemingway
D. James Joyce
)
21. _______was the leader of a new movement in poetry which he called “Imagist”
movement.(
)
A. Eliot
B. Pound
C. Frost
D. Dickinson
22. Capping his career and leading to his receipt of the Nobel Prize, _______ is about an old
Cuban fisherman Santiago and his losing battle with a giant marlin.(
A. The Old Man and the Sea
B. For Whom the Bell Tolls
C. The Sun Also Rises
D. A Farewell to Arms
)
23. The modern stream-of-consciousness technique was frequently and skillfully exploited by
_______ to emphasize the reactions and inner musings of the narrator. He captured the dialects of
the Mississippi characters, including Negroes and the redneck, as well as more refined and
educated narrators like Quentin.(
)
A. Faulkner
B. Fitzgerald
C. Hemingway
D. Steinbeck
24. _______ won the Pulitzer Prize four times and was the only dramatist ever to win a Nobel
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Prize. He is widely acclaimed “founder of the American drama,” and recognized even more as a
major figure in world literature.(
)
A. Miller
B. William
C. Heller
D. O’Neill
25. As one of the best-known American authors of 20th century, Ernest Hemingway wrote all the
following novels EXCEPT(
)
A. For Whom the Bell Tolls
B. The Green Hills of Africa
C. A Rose for Emily
D. The Old Man and the Sea
Part III: Interpretation (20 points in all, 5 points for each)
Read the following selections and then answer the questions.
Passage 1
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 champagne and the stars.
At high tide in the afternoon I watched his guests diving from the tower of his raft, or taking the
sun on the hot sand of his beach while his two motor-boats slit the waters of the Sound, drawing
aquaplanes over cataracts of foam. On week-ends his Rolls-Royce became an omnibus, bearing
parties to and from the city between nine in the morning and long past midnight, while his station
wagon scampered like a brisk yellow bug to meet all trains. And on Mondays eight servants,
including an extra gardener, toiled all day with mops and scrubbing-brushes and hammers and
garden-shears, repairing the ravages of the night before.
Questions:
1. Who is the author and where is this passage taken from?
2. What does the author most likely indicate in the quoted passage?
Passage 2
I shall be telling this with a sigh,
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and I —
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Questions:
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1. Who is the poet and which poem is this stanza taken from?
2. What idea does the quoted stanza express?
Passage 3
We passed the School, where Children strove
At Recess—in the Ring—
We passed the fields of Gazing Grain—
We passed the Setting Sun—
Questions:
1. Identify the poet of this stanza taken from “Because I could not stop for Death”.
2. What do the underlined parts symbolize? Where were “we” heading toward?
Passage 4
Even then he stood there, hidden wholly in that kindness which is night, while the uprising
fumes filled room. When the odor reached his nostrils, he quit his attitude and fumbled for the
bed.
“What’s the use? ” he said weakly, as he stretched himself to rest.
Questions:
1. This passage is taken from Sister Carrie, who is the author?
2. Interpret the protagonist’s final words—“What’s the use?”
Part Ⅳ: Give brief answers to the following questions. (20 points in all, 10 points for each)
1. Briefly sate the major features of narrative techniques used by William Faulkner in his literary
creation.
2. Mark Twain presented the 19th century America in his own unique way. Discuss Twain’s art of
fiction: the setting, the language and the characters, etc., based on his novel The Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn.
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