美国文学分章练习题题及答案

2. With whom is Helen associated in Line 4 of the present stanza? 3. Who is Psyche?

Passage 6

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To 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 thou

sand years?

4. Give a peculiar term to cover the author's belief.

Passage 7

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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 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?

Passage 8

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I 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 practise 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.

Questions:

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.

Passage 10

Tell 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 earnest— And the grave is not its goal. Dust thou art, to dust retumest, Was not spoken of the soul.

Questions:

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 poet' s advice on living.

Passage 11

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Hester Prynne' s term of confinement was now at an end. Her prison-door was thrown open, and she came forth 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.

Questions:

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 Hester's breast?

Passage 12

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It 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 gam 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-Ho's 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.

Questions:

1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

From which novel is this paragraph taken? What is the name of the novelist? Who is Ahab? What is Pequod?

What is the theme of the novel?

VI. Analyze Hie main works.

1. Ralph Waldo Emerson' s theory of Transandentalism with the analysis of Nature. 2.

Keys to Part III.

I. Fill in the blanks:

1. The Sketch Book 2. Noah Webster 3. Samuel Johnson 4. slavery

5. the Transcendental Club 6. Ralph Waldo Emerson 7. Washington Irving 8. Washington Irving 9. The Sketch Book 10. Charles the Second 11. The Sketch Book 12. Washington Irving

13. The History of New York 14. Life of Washington

15. James Fenimore Cooper 16. The Spy 17. The Pilot

18. Natty Bumppo

19. William Cullen Bryant 20. William Cullen Bryant 21. Odyssey 22. The Bells 23. The Raven 24. Waldo

25. Henry David Thoreau 26. Walden 27. Walden

28. Civil Disobedience 29. The Scarlet Letter 30. Moby Dick

31. Voices of the Night 32. Divine Comedy 33. Michael Angelo 34. Lowell

35. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 36. Civil War

37. Sir Walter Scott 38. The Pioneers 39. Natty Bumppo

40. Ralph Waldo Emerson 41. The American Scholar

42. Henry David Thoreau 43. Nathaniel Hawthorne 44. Nathaniel Hawthorne 45. Clarel 46. Moby Dick

III. Make multiple choices

1. C

2. ABCD 3. D 4. B

5. ABCD 6. ABCD 7. B 8. A 9. B 10. D 11. A 12. C 13. ABC 14. ABC 15. B

16. ABCD 17. ABCD 18. AB 19. C 20. BC 21. ABCD 22. ABCD 23. D

24. ABCD 25. D 26. A 27. C 28. A 29. A

30. ABCD 31. E 32. A

33. ABCD 34. B 35. C

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