全国2012年7月自学考试英美文学选读真题

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 answers on the answer sheet.

1. Henry Fielding adopted '______' to relate a story in a novel, in which the author becomes the 'all- knowing God'.( )

A. the dramatic monologue  B. the epistolary form

C. the first-person narration  D. the third-person narration

2. Among the novelists of mid-eighteenth century, ______ gave his praise to the hard-working, sturdy middle class and showed his sympathy for the downtrodden, unfortunate poor in most of his works.( )

A. Henry Fielding  B. Jonathan Swift

C. Daniel Defoe  D. Oliver Goldsmith

3. William Wordsworth's masterpiece is ______ in which his philosophy of life is presented.( )

A.The Prelude B.Lyrical Ballads

C. 'I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud'  D. 'Tintern Abbey'

4. The most distinguishing feature of Charles Dickens' works is ______.( )

A. a mingling of humor and pathos  B. pictures of pathos

C. character-portrayal  D. the vernacular and large vocabulary

5. All of the following are Thomas Hardy' s local- colored works, also known as 'novels of character and environment',EXCEPT______.( )

A.The Trumpet Major B.The Return of the Native

C.Far from the Madding Crowd D.The Woodlanders

6. T. S. Eliot' s most important single poem ______ has been hailed as a landmark and a model of the 20th-century English poetry.( )

A.The Hollow Men B.Murder in the Cathedral

C.Lyrical Ballads D.The Waste Land

7. In D. H. Lawrence' s novel ______, the individual consciousness is subtly revealed and strands of themes are intricately wound up.( )

A.Sons and Lovers B.The Rainbow

C.Women in Love D.The Daughter-in-Law

8. The leading figure of the English romantic poetry and the focal poetic voice of the period is ______.( )

A. William Blake  B. William Wordsworth

C. Samuel Taylor Coleridge  D. Percy Bysshe Shelley

9. The major concern of ______ fiction lies in the tracing of the psychological develop-ment of his characters and in his energetic criticism of the dehumanizing effect of the capitalist industrialization on human nature.( )

A. John Galsworthy' s  B. Thomas Hardy' s

C. D.H. Lawrence's  D. Charles Dickens'

10. George Bernard Shaw' s play,Mrs. Warren' s Professionis a grotesquely realistic exposure of ______.( )

A. slum landlordism  B. the economic oppression of women

C. the political corruption in England  D. the religious corruption in England

11. Thomas Hardy's most cheerful and idyllic work is ______.( )

A.The Return of the Native B.Far from the Madding Crowd

C.Under the Greenwood Tree D.The Woodlanders

12.The Waste Landby T.S. Eliot is a poem concerned with the ______ breakup of a modern civilization in which humanlife has lost its meaning, significance and purpose.( )

A. spiritual  B. religious

C. political  D. physical

13. Charlotte Bronte' s works are all about the struggle of an individual consciousness towards ______, about some lonely and neglected young women with a fierce longing for love, understanding and a full, happy life.( )

A. self-reliance  B. self-realization

C. self-esteem  D. self-consciousness

14. Among the works by Charles Dickens ______ presents his criticism of the Utilitarian principle that rules over the English education system and destroys young hearts and minds.( )

A.Bleak House B.Pickwick Paper

C.Great Expectations D.Hard Times

15. In the Victorian Period ______ became the most widely read and the most vital and challenging expression of progressive thought.( )

A. poetry  B. novel

C. prose  D. drama

16. Jane Austen's main literary concern is about ______.( )

A. human beings in their personal relationships

B. the love story between the rich and the poor

C. maturity achieved through the loss of illusions

D. the day-to-day country life of the upper-middle-class English

17. Shelley's ______ is the best of all the Romantic well-known lyric pieces.( )

A. 'The Cloud'  B. 'To a Skylark'

C. 'Ode to a Nightingale'  D. 'Ode to the West Wind'

18. The most important contribution of ______ is that he not only started the modern poetry, but also changed the course of English poetry by using ordinary speech of the language and by advocating a return to nature.( )

A. William Blake  B. William Wordsworth

C. George Gordon Byron  D. John Keats

19. William Blake's central concern in theSongs of InnocenceandSongs of Experienceis ______, which gives the two books a strong social and historical reference.( )

A. youthhood  B. childhood

C. happiness  D. sorrow

20. Working through the tradition of a Christian huanism, John Milton wrote ______ intending to 'justify the ways of God to men.'

A.Paradise Lost B.Samson Agonistes

C.Lycidas D.ParadiseRegained

21. Shakespeare's ______ is generally regarded as the most popular play on the stage, for it has the qualities of a 'blood-and-thunder' thriller and a philosophical exploitation of life and death.( )

A.Hamlet B.Othello

C.King Lear D.Macbeth

22. T. S. Eliot's most striking early achievement ______ is in a form of dramatic monologue.( )

A. 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock'  B. 'Gerontion'

C.The Waste Land D.The Hollow Men

23. ForWhom the Bell Tollsclearly represents a new beginning in Ernest Hemingway' s career as a writer, which concerns a volunteer American guerrilla Robert Jordan fighting in ______.( )

A. the Spanish Civil War  B. the American Civil War

C. World War I  D. World War II

24. According to Nathaniel Hawthorne, 'There is ______ in every human heart, which may remain latent, perhaps, through the whole life; but circumstances may rouse it to activity.'

A. evil  B. homesickness

C. libido  D. competiveness

25.The Snows of Kilimanjaroby ______ tells a brilliant short story about a mortally wounded American writer who attempts to redeem his imagination from the corrosions of wealth and domestic strife. ( )

A. Ernest Hemingway  B. Henry James

C. William Faulkner  D. Herman Melville

26. The Nobel Prize Committee highly praised ______ for 'his powerful style-forming mastery of the art' of creating modern fiction.( )

A. John Steinbeck  B. Henry James

C. William Faulkner  D. Ernest Hemingway

27. Nathaniel Hawthorne was affected by R. W. Emerson's ______ theory and struck up a very intimate relationship with him.( )

A. transcendentalist  B. egoist

C. post-modernist  D. imagist

28. Robert Frost's first collection ______ is marker by an intense but restrained emotion and the characteristic flavor of New England life.( )

A.North of Boston B.A Boy's Will

C.A Witness Tree D.A Further Range

29. One of F·Scott Fitzgerald' s best short stories is '______,' which depicts an American' s return to Paris in the 1930s and his regretful realization that the past is beyond his reach.( )

A. The Birthmark  B. To Build a Fire

C. Death in the Woods  D. Babylon Revisited

30. Robert Frost combined traditional verse forms with a clear American local speech rhythm, the speech of ______ with its idiosyncratic diction and syntax. ( )

A. New England farmers  B. England farmers

C. the Western cowboys  D. the Southerners

31. One of the most often-used methods in ______'s poems is to make colors and images fleet past the mind's eye of the reader. ( )

A. Ezra Pound  B. Walt Whitman

C. H.W. Longfellow  D. Robert Frost

32. The theme of Henry James' essay ______ clearly indicates that the aim of the novel is to present life, so it is not surprising to find in his writings human experiences explored in every possible form.( )

A.The American B.The Europeans

C.The Art of Fiction D.The Golden Bowl

33. Earthly existence was 'a welter of inscrutable forces,' in which was trapped each individual human being. This is a typical notion held by ______.( )

A. Theodore Dreiser  B. Robert Frost

C. Henry James  D. Walt Whitman

34. Shortly before his death in 1945, the American naturalist ______ joined the Communist Party.( )

A. Mark Twain  B. Robert Frost

C. Henry James  D. Theodore Dreiser

35. If two persons are really in love, 'what is to us what the rest do or think?' This is a notion strongly held by ______.( )

A. Emily Dickinson  B. Washington Irving

C. Nathaniel Hawthorne  D. Walt Whitman

36. In William Faulkner's writings, the modern ______ technique was frequently and skillfully used to emphasize the reactions and inner musings of the narrator.( )

A. stream-of-consciousness  B. deconstructionist

C. archetypal  D. structuralist

37. Mark Twain's ______ shows the disastrous effects of slavery on the victimizer and the victim alike.( )

A.A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

B.Life on the Mississippi

C.Roughing it

D.The Tragedy of Puddn' head Wilson

38. In order to protest against America's failure to join England in WWI, ______ became a naturalized British citizen in 1915.( )

A. William Faulkner  B. Henry James

C. Earnest Hemingway  D. Ezra Pound

39.The Gilded Ageis a social satire written by ______ in 1873.( )

A. W. D. Howells  B. William Faulkner

C. Ernest Hemingway  D. Mark Twain

40. As the first American prose epic, ______ is not merely a whaling tale or sea adventure, it is also regarded as a spiritual exploration into man' s deep reality and psychology.( )

A.Moby-Dick B.Redburn

C.Billy Budd D.Omoo

Ⅱ. Reading Comprehension (16 points in all, 4 for each)

Read the quoted parts carefully and answer the questions in English. Write your answers in the corresponding space on the answer sheet.

41. ' For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,

And dances with the daffodils. '

Questions:

A. Who is the poet of the quoted stanza? What is the title of the poem?

B. What does 'that inward eye' stand for?

C. What idea do these quoted lines carry?

42. 'Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? ——You think wrong! …And if God had gifted me with some beauty, and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you…——it is my spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed through the grave, and we stood at God's feet, equal-as we are!'

Questions:

A. Who is the author of the quoted part? What is the title of the work?

B. To whom is the speaker speaking?

C. What does the quoted part imply about the speaker?

43. (A lot of common objects have been enumerated in the previous lines, and here are the last two lines of the poem.)

'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. '

Questions:

A. Who is the poet of the quoted lines? What is the title of the poem?

B. What does the child stand for in the poem?

C. How do you understand 'These became part of the child'?

44. 'I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight

I got from looking through a pane of glass

I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough

And held against the world of hoary grass.'

Questions:

A. Who is the poet of the quoted stanza? What is the title of the poem?

B. What does the word 'strangeness' refers to?

C. What does the quoted part imply?

Ⅲ. Questions and Answers (24 points in all, 6 for each)

Give a brief answer to each of the following questions in English. Write your answers in the corresponding space on the answer sheet.

45. What' s the theme of Shakespeare' s great tragedyHamlet?

46. What's the theme of Shelley's 'Ode to the West Wind'? What does the west wind symbolize?

47. What issuses does Emily Dickinson address in her poems? What are features of her poems?

48. What's Ernest Hemingway's 'iceberg' analogy?

Ⅳ. Topic Discussion (20 points in all, 10 for each)

Write no less than 150 words on each of the following topics in English in the corresponding space on the answer sheet.

49. Make a comment on Thomas Hardy's contribution to English literature.

50. Based on the novelThe Great Gatsby, discuss the features of F · Scott Fitzgerald's works.