主题：英美文学串讲

2. Take examples to analyze the style and theme of Mark Twain.

Answer:
Mark Twain is a great literary of America, H. L. Mencken considered him "the true father of our national literature".

1) Twain’s works like "Adventure of Huckleberry Finn" and "Life on the Mississippi" shaped the views of America and combined American folk humor and serious literature together;

2) "The adventures of Tom Sawyer" and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" proved to be the milestone in American literature, and they were the record of a vanishing way of life in the pre-Civil War Mississippi.

3) The books were noted for their unpretentious, colloquial, poetic, humorous, innocent and free style;

4) The language of Twain was simple, direct, lucid and faithful to truth -"vernacular";

5) Twain was famous for a local colorist, who presented social life through portraits of the local characters of his region -people living in the area, the landscape, the customs, dialects, costumes. Especially the theme of the Mississippi valley and the West;

6) The work of Twain were always confined to a particular region, historical moment, strong accent, intensified humor to criticize the social injustice and satirize the decayed romanticism. (P477-481)

3. Give a comment on the experience of Carrie.

参考答案：
1) Penniless and "full of the illusions of ignorance and youth", Sister Carrie leaves her rural home to seek work in Chicago, she grows from an innocent, pure country girl to be a girl mature in intellect and emotion, and she becomes a star of musical comedies. But in spite of her success in material, she is not happy but lonely and dissatisfied.

2) Sister Carrie best embodies Dreiser’s naturalistic belief that while men are controlled and conditioned by heredity, instinct and chance, a few extraordinary and unsophisticated human beings refuse to accept their fate wordlessly and instead strive, unsuccessfully, to find meaning and purpose for their existence. (P527-528)

4. The characteristic and theme analyses of Henry James.

Answer:
1) The Freudian approach is famous in his novels and his literary essays.

2) James took great interest in international themes -the clashed between two different cultures and the emotional and moral problems of Americans in Europe, or Europeans in America in his first period.

3) "The Portrait of A Lay" is generally considered to be his masterpiece.

4) James experimented with different themes and forms in his middle period.

5) In his last an major period, James returned to his "international-theme."

6) The typical pattern of the conflict between the two cultures would be that of a young American man or an American girl (Daisy Miller) who goes to Europe and affronts/met with his or her destiny. The unsophisticated boy or girl would be beguiled, betrayed, cruelly wronged at the hands of those who pretend to stand for the highest possible civilization.

7) He focuses on psychological approach. His fictional world is concerned more with the inner life of human beings -this emphasis on psychology and on the human consciousness proves to be a big breakthrough in novel writing.

8) He is regarded as the forerunner of the 20th century "stream-of-consciousness" novels and the founder of psychological realism.

9) James avoids the authorial omniscience as much as possible and makes his characters reveal themselves with his minimal intervention. (P495-498)

5. The period from 1865 to 1914 has been referred to the Age of Realism (The Gilded Age) in the literary history of the United States, why did it happen and what characters did it have?

Answer:
1) The American society after the Civil War provided rich soil for the rise and development of Realism, and Civil War affected the social and the value system of the country, America had transformed into an industrialized and commercialised society.

2) The war stimulated the technological development;

3) The booming economy and industry stepped up urbanization;

4) The phenomenon of polarization is serious;

5) People became doubtful about the human nature and the benevolence/grace of God;

6) Gone was the frontier, the spirit of the frontiersman/pioneer, the spirit of freedom and the American dream. (P471---472)

6. Please analyze the characteristics of Emily Dickinson’s poems.

Answer:
1) Dickinson’s poems are usually based on her own experiences, her sorrows and joys. But within her little lyrics Dickinson addresses those issues that concern the whole human beings, which include religion, death, immortality, love, and nature. (theme)
2) Her masterpiece -----"I heard a Fly buzz---when I died", she looked at death from the point of view of both the living and the dying. She even imagined her own death, the loss of her own body, and the journey of her soul to the unknown.
3) The style of Dickinson:
A: A particular stress pattern: dash“-------”
B: Capital letters as a means of emphasis;
C: Language: brief, direct, and plain;
D: Poem: short, always on single image or symbol (e.g. "I like to see it lap the miles"---------describe a train in the personification of the literary device)
E: Her poems tend to be personal and meditative (e.g. “Because I could not stop for Death”).
(P517---519)

7. In the representatives of "Local colorism", the writers shared some things in common and also had some differences, please analyze them.

Answer:
1) 3 prominent writers differed in the understanding of the "truth": Mark Twain and Howells paid attention to the life of the Americans; Henry James emphasized the "inner world";

2) Howells focused on the rising middle class, while Twine dealt with the region and the people at the forefront;

3) The other local colorists concerned with the life of the small, well-defined region or province, the setting is always the isolated small town;

4) They were nostalgic historians, recording the vanishing way of life, and the fading present. (P474---475)

8. Analyze the theory of Theodore Dreiser’naturalism with example.

Answer:
1) His naturalism emphasized heredity and environment as important deterministic forces shaping individualized characters who were presented in special and detailed circumstances. At bottom, life was shown to be ironic, even tragic.

2) The characters in his books are often subject to the control of the natural forces -especially those of environment and heredity. For example, the hero Hurstwood’s tragic death showed the theory.

3) The effect of Darwinist idea of "survival of the fittest" was shattering. It is not surprising to find in Dreiser’s fiction a world of jungle, where "kill or to be killed" was the law.

4) He criticizes materialistic to the core, living in such a society with such a value system, the human individual is obsessed with a never-ending, yet meaningless search for satisfaction of his/her desires. One of the desires is for money which was a motivating purpose of life in the United States in the late 19th century. For example in his masterpiece "Sister Carrie" he traces the material rise of Carrie Meeber, which indicates the critical attitude of the author.

5) Sexual beauty symbolizes the acquisition of some social status of great magnitude. (P525---527)

9. Darwin’s evolutionary theory gave rise to American naturalism, what are their characteristics?

Answer:
The American naturalists accepted the more negative implication of Darwin’s theory, and used it to explain the behaviours in literary works.

1) They regarded man as the complex combinations of inherited attributes/elements, their habits conditioned/controlled by social and economic forces;

2) They chose their subjects from the lower ranks of the society and portrayed misery and poverty/poorness;

3) They dealt with the nature of the man of "underdogs" -"bestiality", as an explanation of ***ual desire;

4) Their languages were unpolished;

5) The naturalists believed that the real and true nature is hidden from the eyes o the individual, or beyond his control;

6) Naturalism evolved/came from realism, but the tone of the authors were more ironic and pessimistic. (P475-476)

PART TWO AMERICAN LITERATURE

Chapter 3 The Modern Period
I. Choose the right answer:
1. Ezra Pound is a leading spokesman of the_________.
A. Imagist Movement
B. Chartist Movement
C. Modernist Movement
D. Romantic Movement
Answer: A (P553)

2. Strong affinity of the Chinese and Oriental literature can be found in the works of_________.
A. Mark Twain
B. Ezra Pound
C. Emily Dickinson
D. Arthur Miller
Answer: B (P556)

3. In Robert Frost’s famous poem "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening", there are four lines like these: “The woods are lovely, dark and deep, / But I have promises to keep, / And miles to go before I sleep,/ And miles to go before I sleep”. The second sleep refers to______.
A. die
B. calm down
C. fall into sleep
D. stop walking
Answer: A (P567)

4. Of the following American poets, whose work was first recognized in England and then in America?
A. Robert Frost
B. Walt Whitman
C. Emily Dickinson
D. Wallace Stevens
Answer: A (P561)

5. "For I have had too much/ Of apple-picking: I am overtired/ Of the great harvest I myself desired" From these lines we can conclude that the speaker __________.
A. is happy about the harvest
B. is tired of the work of apple-picking
C. is not tired when seeing the harvest
D. becomes indifferent of the job
Answer: B (P565)

6. In these lines "The apparition of these faces in the crowd; / Petals on a wet, black bough", Ezra Pound uses the figure of speech of ________.
A. metaphor
B. simile
C. hyperbole
D. contrast
Answer: A (P557)

7. O’Neill’s inventiveness seemingly knew no limits. He was constantly experimenting with new styles and forms for his plays, especially during the twenties when ______was in full swing.
A. Symbolism
B. Expressionism
C. Romanticism
D. Realism
Answer: B (P571)


8. "He got me, aw right. I’m trou. Even him didn’t tink I belonged." In these sentences taken from ’The Hairy Ape’, the words “he” and “him” both refer to__________.
A. Yank
B. God
C. The ape in the zoo
D. A person unnamed
Answer: B (P575)

9. ______is a school of modern painting, whose emphasis is on the formal structure of a work of art and especially on the multiple-perspective viewpoints.
A. Expressionism
B. Impressionism
C. Cubism
D. Imagism
Answer: C (P546)

10. In a class which discuss the Imagist Movement in the United States, we will definitely NOT include________.
A. William Carlos Williams
B. Ezra Pound
C. Gary Snyder
D. Wallance Stevens
Answer: C (P547-548)

11. In which of the following poems by Ezra Pound did you find the allusion to Wi-shang? ____________
A. In a Station of the Metro
B. The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter
C. A Pact
D. Hugh Selwyn Mauberley
Answer: B (P559)

12. In 1915, Ezra Pound began writing his great work_______, which spanned from 1917 to 1959.
A. Cantos
B. Collected Early Poems of Ezra Pound
C. Personae
D. Hygh Selwyn Mauberley
Answer: A (P554)

13. Robert Frost was the Pulitzer winner on ______ occasions.
A. two
B. three
C. four
D. five
Answer: C (P560)

13. The founder of the American drama is _______.
A. Arthur Miller
B. Clifford Odets
C. Tennesee Williams
D. Eugene O’Neill
Answer: D (P568)

14. The first full-length play written by Eugene O’Neill is ______.
A. The Straw
B. Beyond the Horizon
C. Bound East for Cardiff
D. The Hairy Ape
Answer: B (P568)

14. Eugene O’Neill’s ’The Hairy Ape’ explores the problem of________.
A. human disillusionment
B. the corruption of human desire
C. human responsibility
D. the loss of human identity
answer: D (P572)

15. Fitzgerald’s fictional world is the best embodiment of the spirit of_______.
A. the Jazz age
B. the Romantic Period
C. the Renaissance Period
D. the Neoclassical Period
Answer: A (P577)

16. Fitzgerald wrote the following except_________.
A. The Great Gatsby
B. In Our Time
C. Tender is the Night
D. This Side of Paradise
Answer: B (P578)

17. "There was music from my neighbor’s house through the summer nights. In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the chamoagne and the stars...", the two sentences are taken from________.
A. ’The Great Gatsby’ by Fitzgerald
B. ’Sister Carrie’ by Theodore Dreiser
C. ’Moby-Dick’ by Herman Melville
D. ’Daisy Miller’ by Henry James
Answer: A (P583)

18. Which of the following comments on the novel ’The Great Gatsby’ is not true?
A. The Great Gatsby is a novel that is a set against the ending of the war.
B. Gatsby is a mystical figure whose intensity of dream partakes of a state of mind that embodies American itself.
C. Gatsby is the last of the romantic heroes.
D. Gatsby is wealthy but unintelligent and brutal.
Answer: D (P581-582)

19. _____is Hemingway’s masterpiece.
A. Farewell to Arms
B. For Whom the bell Tolls
C. The Sun Also Rises
D. The Old Man and the Sea
Answer: D (P601)

20. Which of the following best describes the protagonist of William Faulkner’s "A Rose for Emily"?
A. She is a conservative aristocrat.
B. She is a wealth lady.
C. She is a prisoner of the past.
D. She has good taste.
Answer: C (P617)

21. Who, disregarding grammar and punctuation, always used "I" instead of "I" to refer to himself as a protest against self-importance?
A. Cummings
B. Wallance Stevens
C. Fitzgerald
D. Ernest Hemingway
Answer: A (P548)

22. Who is the author of the writing "The Grapes of Wrath"?
A. John Steinbeck
B. Eugene O’Neill
C. Fitzgerald
D. Theodore Dreiser
Answer: A (P548-549)

II. Read the quoted part and answer the questions:

1. "The apparition of these faces in the crowded; / Petals on a wet, black bough."

Questions:
1) From which poem does the stanza come? Who is the author?
2) What does the “petals”mean?
3) Briefly interpret the two lines.

Answers:
1) The lines are taken from "In a Station of the Metro" by Ezra Pound. (P557)
2) Here "petals" stands for "human faces". (P557)
3) The two lines compare human faces to petals on a wet, black bough. This way of making poetry comes from Chinese poetics. (P557)

2. "Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth"

Questions:
1) Please identify the poem and the poet;
2) Please briefly interpret this poem.

Answers:
1) It is taken from Robert Lee Frost’s "The Road Not Taken" (P566)
2) In this meditative poem, the speaker tells us how the course of his life determined when he came upon two rods that diverged in a wood. Forced to choose, he “took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.”He seems to be giving a suggestion to the reader: "Make good choice of your life." (P555-556)

3. "The caterwauling horns had reached a crescendo and I turned away and cut across the lawn toward home. I glanced back once. A wafer of a moon was shining over Gatsby’s house, making his still glowing garden. A sudden emptiness seemed to flow now from the windows and the great doors, endowing with complete isolation the figure of the lost, who stood on the porch, his stand up in a formal gesture of farewell."

Questions:
1) Name the author and the title of the novel from which this passage is taken.
2) What is the setting of the novel?
3) What implied meaning can you get from reading this passage?

Answers:
1) The passage comes from "The Great Gatsby" written by Fitzgerald. (P597)
2) The Great Gatsby is a novel that is set against the ending of the war. (P581)
3) The passage hints at the meaninglessnes, spiritual emptiness and vanity of such a lift of pleasure-seeking. There is a tragic sense that the "party" will be over. Gatsby’s failure magnifies to a great extent the end of the American Dream. (However, the affirmation of hope and expectation is self-asserted in Fitzgerald’s artistic manipulation of the central symbol in the novel, the green light).
(P582)

III Questions and answers:
1. Analyze the background of the Modern Period.

Answer:
(1) The U.S. participated in The First World War marked a crucial stage in the nation’s evolution/development to a world power.

(2) The technology has brought about great changes in the life of the American people. (P544)

2. The ideology analyses about the people and especially the authors.
(The ideology analysis of "The Lost Generation)

Answer:
(1) People became less certain about what might arise in this changing world and more cynical about accepted standards of honesty and morality. The idea of "seize the day" or "enjoy the present" was pervasive.

(2) There was a decline in moral standard and the first few decades of the twentieth century was described as a spiritual wasteland. The censor/standard of a great civilization being destroyed or destroying itself, social breakdown, and individual powerlessness and hopelessness became part of the American experience as a result of the First World War, with resulting feelings of fear, loss, disorientation and disillusionment.

(3) Disillusioned and disgusted by the frivolous, greedy, and heedless way of life in America, they began to write and they wrote from their own experience in the war.

(4) The sense of loss and despair prevails among the post-war generation who are physically and psychologically scarred; Faulkner creates his own mythical kingdom that mirrors not only the decline of the Southern society but also the spiritual wasteland of the whole American society.
5) The world is even more disintegrating and fragmentary and people are even more estranged and despondent.

(6) These writers shared almost the same belief that human beings are trapped in a meaningless world and that neither God nor man can make sense of the human condition.

(7) In general terms, much serious literature written from 1912 onwards attempted to convey a vision of social breakdown and moral decay and the writer’s task was to develop techniques that could represent a break with the past. (P545-552)