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美国文学史及选读试卷

Ⅰ.Each of the following statements below is followed by four alternatives. Choose the one that would best complete the statement. (60points in all, 2 for each)

1. Which of following can be said of the common features which are shared by the English and American 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. Which of the following statements about the Romantic period in the history of American literature is NOT true? （ ）

A. In most of the American writings of this period there was a new emphasis upon the imaginative and emotional qualities of literature.

B. The writers of this period placed an increasing emphasis on the free expression of emotions and displayed an increasing attention to the psychic states of their characters.

C. There was a strong tendency to exalt the individual and the common man. D. Most heroes and heroines in the writings of this period exhibited extremes of reason and nationality.

3.______ is unanimously agreed to be the summit of the American Romanticism in the history of American literature.

A. New England Transcendentalism B. England Transcendentalism C. the Harlem Renaissance D. New Transcendentalism 4.Hawthorne’s unique gift was for the creation of ______ which touch the deepest roots of man’s moral nature. A. symbolic stories

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B. romantic stories

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C. gothic stories

D. humorous stories

5. About the novel The Scarlet Letter, which of the following statements is not right? A. It's very hard to say that it is a love story or a story of sin. B. It's a highly symbolic story and the author is a master of symbolism.

C. It's mainly about the moral, emotional and psychological effects of the sin upon the main characters and the people in general.

D. In it the letter A takes the same symbolic meaning throughout the novel.

6. Which of the following statements is said about most of the poems in Whitman’s Leaves of Grass?

A. They identify his ego with the conservative America. B. They celebrate the self and ignore sexuality. C. They sing of the “en-masse” and the self as well.

D. They reject the pursuit of love and happiness of individuals.

7.Realism was a reaction against （ ） or a move away from the bias towards romance and self-creating fictions, and paved the way to Modernism. A. Symbolism B. Imagism C. Romanticism D. Mysticism

8. The subjects of Emily Dickinson’s poems are mainly about . A. religion

B. death and immortality

D. all of the above

C. love and nature

9. The three dominant figures in the period of Realism of American are William Dean Howells, Mark Twain and_________. （ ） A. Henry James B. Tom James C. James Joyce D. Henry Joyce

10. In his masterpiece The Portrait of A Lady Henry James _________ .

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A. incarnates the clash between the Old World and the New in the life journey of an American girl in a European cultural environment

B. tells a story about a young and innocent American confronting the complexity of the European life as well as the American society

C. describes a young American girl who gets “killed” by the winter in Rome D. tells about some Europeans who learn with difficulty to adapt themselves to the American life

11. Which of the following can be said about the titular heroine in the novel Daisy Miller?

A. She has become a celebrated cultural type who embodies the spirit of the new world.

B. The author’s sympathy for her, a tender flower crushed by the harsh winter in Rome was easily felt.

C. Her innocence turns out to be an admiring but a dangerous quality in the new world.

D. all of the above

12. As Emily Dickinson’s poems about love are concerned, which of the following is not right ?

A. Many of them give original depictions of the longing for shared moments, the pain of separation, and the futility of finding happiness.

B. Some of her love poems treat the suffering and frustration love can cause. C. Her love poems show people’s feelings of rapture and happiness coming from their love experience.

13. More than five hundred poems Emily Dickinson wrote are about nature, in which her general ________ about the relationship between man and nature is well-expressed.（ ） A. denial

B. eulogy D. happiness

C. skepticism

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14. In his “Trilogy of Desire”, Theodore Dreiser’s focus shifted from the pathos of the helpless protagonists at the bottom of the society to the power of the American financial tycoons in the late 19th century. The “Trilogy of Desire” includes The Financial, The Titan and _________.（ ） A. The Stoic

B. The Genius

D. Jennie Gerhardt

C. An American Tragedy

15.In the first part of the 20th century, apart from Darwinism, which was still a big influence upon the writers of this period, there were two thinkers____whose ideas had the greatest impact on the period.

A. the German Karl Marx and the American Sigmund Freud B. the German Karl Marx and the Austrian Sigmund Freud C. the Swiss Car Jung and the American William James D. the Austrian Karl Marx and the German Sigmund Freud

16. Eugene O'Neill is remembered for his tragic view of life and most of his plays are about ______.

A. the root, the truth of human desires and human frustrations B. the moral nature of the modern mankind

C. the relationship between man and nature as well as man and woman D. the inner contradiction of men before the real world

17. In general terms, much serious American literature written from 1912 onwards attempted to convey ______.

A. a vision of social breakdown and moral decay B. a vision of social continuity and harmony

C. the continuity and discontinuity between the past and the modern time D. all of the above

18. Which of the following is not said about the main principles of the Imagist Movement? ______

A. a direct treatment of poetic subjects

B. the elimination of merely ornamental or superfluous words

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