主题：英美文学串讲

Answer:
<1> He will propose marriage to a girl, but he dare not.

<2> The Excerpt shows the futile and boring life of the upper class. (Every day, they drink coffee, listen to music, but they can’t really enjoy the pleasure of life, leading a boring life.)

4) "I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floor of silent seas."

<1> Interpret it.

Answer:
If he had been a crab on the ocean bed, maybe he would have been better. The motion of the crab suggests futility and growing old. (P368 注释5)

5) "But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worthwhile" (此节选部分在P367)

<1> Interpret it.

Answer:
The sentence implies the speaker’s incapability of facing up to love and to life. He is always fearful that others will see through his ideas and truth of falling love, which makes himself live in frightening and restlessness. (P363)

2. "I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade"
1) Identify the poem and poet;
2) Interpret the poem.

Answer:
1) The poem is "The Lake Isle of Innisfree", which was written by William Butler Yeats. (P355)

2) In the poem, the poet imagined a place where he could live like a hermit, implying that he was tired of the life of his day, he sought to escape into and ideal "fairyland" where he could live calmly as a hermit and enjoyed the beauty of the nature.

3. "North Richmond Street, being blind, was a quiet street except at the hour when the Christian Brothers’ school set the boys free ..., gazed at one another with brown imperturbable faces."

1) Comment the main tone of the story with the concrete images of the passage.
2) Analyze the theme of the story.
3) Explain the devices of symbols with the examples of the article.

Answer:
1) The tone of the story is a fine tuned melancholy.
The scene is drab, lifeless. The Christian School sounds like prison -it sets the boys free. The brown color also showed the tone of the story. (节选部分在P390)

2) The story introduced a little boy’s love experience, expressing his awareness of reality and expectation, and pointing out the drabness and harshness of the adult world. (P385)

3) In this article the author used many images to show the symbols meaning, expressing the frustrated quest for beauty. (P390)
For example: The little boy lived with his uncle and aunt -a symbol
of the isolation and the lack of proper relationship;
His uncle forgot his arrangement is a symbol of the boy’s failure;
The deserted train symbol the indifference relationship, and "all the stalls were in closed and the greatest part of the hall was in darkness" and "the upper part of the hall was now completely dark" symbol the destined failure of the boy’s quest for the beauty.

4. "You are not, my son. Battle-battle -and suffer. It’s about all you do, as far as I can see."
"But why not, my dear? I tell you it’s the best ---"
"It isn’t. And one ought to be happy, one ought."
By this time Mrs. Morel was trembling violently ...
"Eh, my dear -say rather you want me to live."

1) Name the works and its writer.
2) Who are the two speakers? How do you know her?

Answer:
1) The novel is named "Sons and Lovers". It’s the works of D. H. Lawrence. (节选部分在P383)

2) The two speakers are Mrs. Morel and her son (Paul).
Mrs. Morel is a strong-willed, intelligent and ambitious woman. Having been disappointed with her husband, a coal miner, she puts all her feeling on her son, hoping to realize her ideas of success, happiness and social esteem. The distorted relationship reflects the inhuman mechanical civilization and the indifference of the men. (P375—376)

III. Questions and answers:
1. What are the characters of Modernism?

Answer:
1) Modernism rose out of scepticism and disillusionment of capitalism;

2) The French symbolism heralded modernism;

3) Modernism takes the irrational philosophy and the theory of psycho-analysis as its theoretical base;

4) The major theme of Modernism are the distorted, alienated and ill relationship between man and society, man and nature, man and man, man and himself;

5) The Modernists concern about the private, subjective, inner individual and the tone is disillusioned. (P312—313)

2. D. H. Lawrence is regarded as revolutionary, how do you know his works?

Answer:
1) Lawrence’s interest lay in the psychological development of his character;

2) He criticized the dehumanizing effect of the capitalism industrialization on human which turned man into inhuman machines and unhealthy animal;

3) He believes the life impulse -the ***ual impulse was man’s most important instinct, any conscious repression would cause distortion of the man’s personality;

4) He explored the relationship of man and woman in psychology;

5) He believed the alienation and the perversion were caused by the desire for power and money. (P317)

3. What philosophical ideas influenced Modernism?

Answer:
1) Karl Marx’s scientific socialism;

2) Darwin’s theory evolution -the social Darwinism "survival of the fittest";

3) Einstein’s theory of relativity;

4) Freud’s analytical psychology;

5) The irrational philosophy. (P311—P312)

4. Common sense about "The Waste Land"

Answer:
"The Waste Land" is T. S. Eliot’s masterpiece:

1) The poem presents a panorama of physical disorder and spiritual desolation;

2) It reflects the mood of disillusionment, frustration, and despair of the whole post-war generation;

3) It concerns with the spirit breakup that man has lost his meaning, significance, and purpose of life;

4) The poem derogated/criticized the civilized world for its horror, menace, anguish and futility. (P359—362)

5. Analyze the background of the Modernism.

Answer:
1) Natural and social sciences advanced greatly, capitalism came into its monopoly stage, the gap between the poor and the rich was deepened;

2) The First World War and The Second World War happened, which influenced people greatly;

3) All kinds of philosophical ideas were produced. (P311—312)

6. Say something about Freudian and Jungian’ psycho-analysis.

Answer:
1) Multiple/many levels of consciousness exist in the human mind at the same time;

2) Man’s present are the sum of his past, present and future;

3) Truth exists in the unique, isolated, and private world of each individual.

4) The theory creates "steam-of-consciousness". (P316)

7. Why Modernism is different from Realism?

Answer:
In many aspects, Modernism acts against Realism;

1) Modernism rejects rationalism, while Realism stresses it;

2) Modernism includes internal, subjective, psychological world, while Realism stresses external, objective, and material world;

3) Modernism advocates new forms and new techniques, and it casts away all the traditional elements such as: story, character, etc. while Realism stresses it.

4) Modernism works are called anti-novel, anti-poetry, anti-drama etc. (P313)

8. List the representative authors of the "Stream of Consciousness" and explain the theory.

Answer:
1) Stream of Consciousness is a narrative method to describing the unspoken thoughts and feelings of the characters, but not using objective description or conventional dialogue.
Authors represent the thought, emotions without logical sequence or syntax and make the characters tell the inner movement of consciousness and the thoughts.

2) The representative authors are: James Joyce "Ulysses"
Virginia Woolf "Mrs. Dalloway"
Richardson "Pilgrimage"
T. S. Eliot
Henry James
George Eliot (P389)

Part Two American Literature
Chapter 1 The Romantic Period

I. Choose the right answer:
1. Of all the following issues, _____is definitely NOT the focus of the Romantic writers in the American literary history.
A. Puritan morality
B. Human bestiality
C. Noble savages
D. Divinity of man
Answer: B (P401)

2. Henry David Thoreau’s work, ________, has always been regarded as a masterpiece of the New England Transcendental Movement.
A. Walden
B. The Pioneers
C. Nature
D. "Song of Myself"
Answer: A (P402)

3. "Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind" is a famous quote from______’s writings.
A. Walt Whitman
B. Henry David Thoreau
C. Herman Melville
D. Ralph Waldo Emerson
Answer: D (P402)

4. ’Leaves of Grass’ commands great attention because of its uniquely poetic embodiment of________, which are written in the founding documents of both the Revolutionary War and the American Civil War.
A. the democratic ideals
B. the romantic ideals
C. the self-reliance spirits
D. the religious ideals
Answer: A (P447)

5. According to Whitman, the genuine participation of a poet in a common cultural effort was to behave as a supreme_________.
A. democrat
B. individualist
C. romanticist
D. leader
Answer: B (P448)

6. The period before the American Civil War is generally referred to as ___________.
A. The Naturalist Period
B. The Modern Period
C. The Romantic Period
D. The Realistic Period
Answer: C (P399)

7. In the following works, which sign the beginning of the American literature?
A. The Sketch Book
B. Leaves of Grass
C. Leather Stocking Tales
D. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
B (P399)
8. _____is the author of the work ’The Legend of Sleepy Hollow’.
A. Washington Irving
B. James Joyce
C. Walt Whitman
D. William Butler Yeats
Answer: A (P404)

9. Washington Irving’s ’Rip Van Winkle’ is famous for_________.
A. Rip’s escape into a mysterious
B. The story’s German legendary source material
C. Rip’s seeking for happiness
D. Rip’s 20-years sleep
Answer: D (P406)

10. Which of the following statement is not true about Washington Irving?
A. Washington Irving is regarded as Father of the American short stories.
B. Irving’s relationship with the Old World in terms of his literary imagination can hardly be ignored considering his success both abroad and at home.
C. Irving’s taste was essentially progressive or radical.
D. Washington Irving has always been regarded as a writer who "perfected the best classic style that American literature ever produced."
Answer: C (P403---406)

11. The Publication of ______established Emerson as the most eloquent spokesman of New England Transcendentalism.
A. Nature
B. Self-Reliance
C. The American Scholar
D. The Over-Soul
Answer: A (P420)

12. The phrase "a transparent eye-ball’ compares philosophical mentation of Emerson’s. It appears in_________.
A. The American Scholar
B. Nature
C. The over Soul
D. Essays: Second Series
Answer: B (P423)

13. In 1837, Ralph Waldo Emerson made a speech entitled _______at Harvard, which was hailed by Oliver Wendell Holmeasas :Our Intellectual Declaration of Independence".
A. "Self-Reliance"
B. "Divinity School Address"
C. "The American Scholar"
D. "Nature"
Answer: C (P423)

14. _____is the most ambivalent (有争议的) writers in the American literary history.
A. Nathaniel Hawthorne
B. Walt Whitman
C. Ralph Waldo Emerson
D. Mark Twain
Answer: A (P429)

15. "There is evil in every human heart, which may remain latent, perhaps, through the whole life; but circumstances may rouse it to activity", which author of the following authors does the mention belong to________.
A. Washington Irving
B. Ralph Waldo Emerson
C. Nathaniel Hawthorne
D. Walt Whitman
Answer: C (P431)

16. In Hawthorne’s novels and short stories, intellectuals usually appear as________.
A. saviors
B. villains
C. commentators
D. observers
Answer: B (P432)

17. All of the following are works by Nathaniel Hawthorne except_______.
A. The House of the Seven Gables
B. White Jacket
C. The Marble Faun
D. The Blithedale Romance
Answer: B (P431)

18. Walt Whitman is radically innovative in the form of his poetry. What he prefers for his new subject is__________.
A. free verse
B. blank verse
C. lyric poem
D. heroic couplet
Answer: A (P450)

19. Which of the following features cannot characterize poems by Walt Whitman?
A. Lyrical and well-structured
B. Free-flowing
C. Simple and rather crude
D. Conversational and casual
Answer: A (P450---451)

20. " 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." The two lines are taken from____________.
A. "There Was a Child Went Forth" by Walt Whitman
B. "In a Station of the Metro" by Ezra Pound
C. "Cavalry Crossing a Ford" by Walt Whitman
D. "Ulysses" by Joyce
Answer: A (P454)

21. "Moby Dick" is regarded as the first American_________.
A. Prose epic
B. Comic epic
C. Dramatic fiction
D. Poetic fiction
Answer: A (P460)

22. The giant Moby Dick may symbolize all EXCEPT________.
A. mystery of the universe
B. sin of the whale
C. power of the great Nature
D. evil of the world
Answer: B (P461)

23. Which of the following comments on the writings by Herman Melville is not true?
A. "Bartleby, the Scrivener" is a short story.
B. "Benito Cereno" is a novella.
C. The Confidence---Man has something to do with the sea and sailors.
D. Moby-Dick is regarded as the first American prose epic.
Answer: C (P459---460)

24. The Transcendentalists believe that, first, nature is ennobling, and second, the individual is____, therefore, self-reliant.
A. insignificant
B. vicious by nature
C. divine
D. forward-looking
Answer: C (P402)