英美文学选读试题3

英美文学选读试题三

Ⅰ. Multiple Choice (40 points in all, 1 for each)

Select from the four choices of each item the one that best answers the question or completes the statement. Write your answer in the corresponding space on the answer sheet.

1．The work that presented, for the first time in English literature, a comprehensive realistic picture of the medi English society and created a whole gallery of vivid characters from all walks of life is most likely ______________.

A．William Langland’ s Piers Plowman B．Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales

C．John Gower’s Confession Amantis D．Sir Gawain and the Green Knight 2．The tragedy of Dr. Faustus, the protagonist in Christopher Marlowe’s The Tragic History of

Dr. Faustus , is the very fact that______________. A．man is confined to time

B．he tried to join Africa to Spain

C．he became a man without soul after he sold it

D．he conjured up Helen, the lady who was partially responsible for the breaking-up of the Trojan War

3．The sentence “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” is the beginning line of one of Shakespeare’s ______________. A．comedies B．tragedies C．sonnets D．histories

4．Paradise Lost is actually a story taken from ______________. A．the Renaissance B．the Old Testament C．Greek Mythology D．the New Testament

5．Spenser’s masterpiece _____________ is a great poem of its time. A．The Faerie Queene B．The Shepheardes Calender C．The Canterbury Tales D．Metamorphoses

6．______________ is the essence of the Renaissance. A．Poetry B．Drama C．Humanism D．Reason

7．The most famous dramatists in the Renaissance England are Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare and ______________. A．John Milton B．John Marlowe C．Ben Jonson D．Edmund Spenser

8．“To be, or not to be—that is the question”is a line taken from______________. A．Hamlet B．Othello

C．King Lear D．The merchant of venice

9．Francis Bacon’s essays are famous for their brevity, compactness and ______________.

A．complicity B．complexity

C．powerfulness D．mildness

10．Literature of Neoclassicism is different from that of Romanticism in that ______________. A．the former celebrates reason, rationality, order and instruction while the latter sees literature as an expression_r_r of an individual’s feeling and experiences

B．the former is heavily religious but the latter secular C．the former is an intellectual movement, the purpose of which is to arouse the middle class for political rights while the latter is concerned with the personal cultivation

D．the former advocates the “return to nature” whereas the latter turns to the ancient Greek and Roman writers for its models.

11．Daniel Defoe describes ______________ as a typical English Middle- class man of the eighteenth century, the very prototype of the empire builder or the pioneer colonist. A．Tom Jones B．Gulliver

C．Moll Flanders D．Robinson Crusoe

12．______________ is a typical feature of Swift’s writings. A．Bitter satire B．Elegant style

C．Casual narration D．Complicated sentence structure

13．The Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan is often said to be concerned with the search for ______________.

A．material wealth B．spiritual salvation C．universal truth D．self- fulfillment

14．Alexander Pope strongly advocated ______________ , emphasizing that literary works should be judged by rules of order, reason, logic, restrained emotion, good taste and decorum. A．Sentimentalism B．Romanticism C．Idealism D．Neoclassicism

15．“Metaphysical poetry” refers to the works of the 17th- century writers who wrote under the influence of ______________. A．John Donne B．Alexander Pope

C．Christopher Marlowe D．John Milton 16．It is generally regarded that Keats’ s most important and mature poems are in the form of ______________. A．ode B．elegy C．epic D．sonnet

17．______________ is the most outstanding stream of consciousness novelist, with ___________ as his encyclopedia – like masterpiece . A．James Joyce, Ulysses B．E.M. Foster, A Passage to India

C．D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers D．Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway 18．Which of the following poems is a landmark in English poetry?

A．Lyrical Ballads by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge B．“I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” by William Wordsworth

C．“Remorse ”by Samuel Taylor Coleridge D．Leaves of Grass Walt Whitman

19．The literary form which is fully developed and the most flourishing during the Romantic Period is ______________. A．prose B．drama C．novel D．poetry

20．Which of the following poems by T.S. Eliot is hailed as a landmark and a model of the 20th century English poetry? A．Poems 1909-1925 B．The Hollow Man

C．Prufrock and Other Observations D．The Waste Land 21．“My last Duchess” is a poem that best exemplifies Robert Browning’s ______________.

A．sensitive ear for the sounds of the English language B．excellent choice of words

C．mastering of the metrical devices D．use of the dramatic monologue 22．Dickens’ works are characterized by a mingling of ______________ and pathos.

A．humor B．satire C．passion D．metaphor 23．Walt Whitman, whose ______________ established him as the most popular American poet of the 19th century. A．Leaves of Grass B．Go Down, Moses C．The Marble Faun D．As I Lay Dying

24．______________ has always been regarded as a writer who “perfected the best classic style that American Literature ever produced”. A．Edgar Ellen Poe B．Walt Whitman

C．Henry David Thoreau D．Washington Irving

25．The Romantic Period, one of the most important periods in the history of American literature, stretches from the end of ______________ to the outbreak of ____________.

A．the 17th century?the American War of Independence B．the 18th century?the American Civil War C．the 17th century?the American Civil War D．the 18th century?the U.S. – Mexican War

26．Which of the following statements is NOT true of American Transcendentalism?

A．It can be clearly defined as a part of American Romantic literary movement.

B．It can be defined philosophically as “the recognition in man of the capacity of knowing truth intuitively”. C．Ralph Waldo Emerson was the chief advocate of this spiritual movement. D．It sprang from South America in the late 19th century.

27．The theme of Washington Irving’s Rip Van Winkle is ______________.

A．the conflict of human psyche B．the fight against racial discrimination C．the familial conflict D．the nostalgia for the unrecoverable past 28．The unofficial manifesto for the Transcendental Club was

______________, Emerson’s first little book, which established him ever since as the most eloquent spokesman of New England Transcendentalism. A．The American Scholar B．Self— reliance C．Nature D．The Over—Soul

29．Nathaniel Hawthorne held an unceasing interest in the “interior of the heart ”of man’s being. So in almost every book he wrote, Hawthorne discusses______________.

A．love and hatred B．sin and evil

C．frustration and self—denial D．balance and self—discipline 30．In Young Goodman Brown by Hawthorne, the name of Goodman Brown’s wife is ______________, which also contains many symbolic meanings. A．Ruth B．Hester C．Faith D．Mary

31．Which of the following statements might be true of the theme of Song of Myself by Whitman?

A．This poem describes the growth of a child who learned about the world around him and improved himself accordingly.

B．This poem shows the author’s cynical sentiments against the American Civil War.

C．This poem reflects the author’s belief in Unitarianism or Deism. D．This poem reflects the author’s belief in the singularity and equality of all beings in value. 32．In Moby—Dick, the white whale symbolizes ______________ for Melville, for it is complex, unfathomable, malignant, and beautiful as well. A．nature B．human society C．whaling industry D．truth

33．Realism was a reaction against Romanticism or a move away from the bias towards romance and self—creating fictions, and paved the way to ______________.

A．Cynicism B．Modernism

C．Transcendentalism D．Neo—Classicalism

34．Hemingway once described Mark Twain’s novel ______________ the one book from which “all modern American literature comes”.

A．The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn B．The Adventures of Tom Sawyer C．The Gilded Age D．The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg

35．__________ is generally regarded as the forerunner of the

20th—century “stream—of—consciousness” novels and the founder of psychological realism.

A．Theodore Dreiser B．William Faulkner C．Henry James D．Mark Twain

36．Which of the following statements is NOT true of Emily Dickinson and