7月美国文学选读自学考试浙江试题及答案解析试卷及答案解析

浙江省2019年7月高等教育自学考试

美国文学选读试题

课程代码：10055

Ⅰ.Choose the relevant match from column B for each item in column A.(10%)

Section A

Column A Column B

1. Henry James a. The Hairy Ape

2. William Faulkner b. Daisy Miller

3. F.S.Fitzgerald c. The House of the Seven Gables

4. Eugene O'Neill d. The Great Gatsby

5. Nathaniel Hawthorne e. Light in August

Section B

Column A Column B

1. Nick a. Sister Carrie

2. G.Hurstwood b. A Rose for Emily

3. Ishmael c. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

4. Huck d. Indian Camp

5. Emily Grierson e. Moby Dick

Ⅱ.Complete each of the following statements with a proper word or a phrase according to the textbook.(10%)

1.The Romantic Period in American literature stretches from the end of the 18th century to the outbreak of ______.

2.Ralph W.Emerson’s first little book ______ established him as the most eloquent spokesman of Transcendentalism.

3.Realism was a move away from the bias towards romance and self-creating fictions. It paved the way to ______ of the twentieth century.

4.American ______,another school of realism, resulted mainly from the impact of Darwin’s evolutionary theory and the influence of the 19th century French literature.

5.Altogether,Emily Dickinson wrote 1775 poems, of which only had appeared during her lifetime.

6.During the first part of the ______ century, despite its booming industry and material prosperity, there was a sense of unease and restlessness underneath.

7.The ______ Age of the 1920s was characterized by frivolity and carelessness and brought vividly to life in The Great Gatsby.

8.Eugene O’Neill is unquestionably America’s greatest ______ of the modern period, and he was the only one ever to win a Nobel Prize for dramas.

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9.During his life, Pound published several volumes of translations, from which we can see his strenuous effort in the study of ______ literature.

10.Greatly and permanently affected by the war experiences, Hemingway formed his own writing

style, together with his theme and hero. His heroes mirrored a vivid portrait of “______.”Ⅲ.Each of the following statements below is followed by four alternative answers. Choose the one that would best complete the statement.(50%)

1.Born of one common cultural heritage, the American Romanticists shared some common features…______,with the English Romanticists.

A. an increasing emphasis on the free expression of emotions

B. an increasing attention to the psychic states of their characters

C. an increasing emphasis on the desire to return to nature

D. both A and B

2.As a philosophical and literary movement, transcendentalism flourished in New England from the 1830s to the Civil War, whose most important representatives are ______.

A. Emerson and Thoreau

B. Emerson and Whitman

C. Hawthorne and Melville

D. Edgar Poe and James Cooper

3.Washington Irving’s ______ became the first work by an American writer to win financial success on both sides of the Atlantic in the first half of 19th century.

A. Sketch Book

B. Charles the Second

C. The Scarlet Letter

D. Moby Dick

4.Hawthorne’s unique gift was for the creation of ______ which touch the deepest roots of man’s moral nature.

A. symbolic stories

B. romantic stories

C. gothic stories

D. humorous stories

5.Which of the following is not written by Herman Melville?______

A. Typee and Omoo

B. Mardi and White Jacket

C. Moby-Dick and Pierre

D. The Bostonians and Billy Budd

6.The novel Moby Dick shows the rebellious struggle of Captain Ahab against ______.

A. the overwhelming, mysterious vastness of the universe and the awesome forces

B. the gliding great demon of the seas of life

C. the white whale

D. the savage harpooners and the motley crew

7.The American realists approached the harsh realities and pressures in the post-Civil war society by ______.

A. a comprehensive picture of modern life in its various occupations, class stratifications and

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manners

B. a psychological exploration of man’s subconsciousness

C. a disillusion of heroism resulting from the dark memories of the Civil War

D. both A and B

8.By the turn of the century, with the publication of The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg and The Mysterious Stranger, the change in Mark Twain from ______ to ______ could be felt.

A. an optimist...an almost despairing pessimist

B. an almost despairing pessimist...an optimist

C. a local colorist...a naturalist

D. a naturalist...a local colorist

9.The Portrait of A Lady is generally considered to be Jame’s masterpiece, which ______.

A. incarnates the clash between the Old World and the New in the life journey of an American

girl in a European cultural environment

B. tells a story about a young and innocent American confronting the complexity of the European

life

C. is about a young American girl who gets “killed”by the winter in Rome

D. tells about some Europeans who learn with difficulty to adapt themselves to the American life

10.About the titular heroine in the novel Daisy Miller, which of the following is not right?______

A. She has become a celebrated cultural type who embodies the spirit of the New World.

B. She comes from the new world but remains traditional and conservative.

C. Her innocence turns out to be an admiring but a dangerous quality in the new world

D. The author’s sympathy for her, a tender flower crushed by the harsh winter in Rome was

easily felt.

11.Which of the following is not right about Emily Dickinson’s poems about love?______

A. Her love poems show people’s feelings of rapture and happiness coming from their love

experience.

B. Some of her love poems treats the suffering and frustration love can cause.

C. Many of them give original depictions of the longing for shared moments, the pain of

separation, and the futility of finding happiness.

D. Some of them emphasizes the power of physical attraction and expresses a mixture of fear

and fascination for the mysterious magnetism between sexes.

12.In her life, Emily Dickinson makes enchanting poetry out of ______.

A. a happy and active life

B. adventurous experiences

C. a single household and an inactive life

D. a hard and suffering life

13.About Henry James’ literary criticism, which of the following is not right?______

A. It is both concerned with form and devoted to human values.

B. He indicates that the aim of the novel is to present life in every possible form.

C. He advocates the freedom of the artist to write about anything that concerns him.

D. He believes that the artist can’t feel the life, but he can understand human nature in their own

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way.

14.The characters presented by the naturalist writers were ______

A. more often than not dominated by their environment and heredity

B. usually idealized heroes or heroines of unspotted virtue and dazzling accomplishments

C. in most cases examples of human experience

D. people who were simply all good or all bad

15.About the first few decades of the 20th century, which of the following is right?______

A. There was a rise in moral standard and it was best described as a spiritual land of promise.

B. Individual power and hope became part of the American experience as a result of the First

World War.

C. There was a decline in social standard and it was described as a spiritual wasteland.

D. all of the above.

16.In his novels, Faulkner creates his own kingdom that mirrors not only ______ but also ______.

A. the decline of the Southern society...the spiritual wasteland of the whole American society

B. the spiritual wasteland of the Southern society...the decline of the whole American society

C. the sense of loss and despair among the post-war generation...the decline of the whole

American society

D. the frivolity and carelessness of the young generation...the sense of loss and despair of the

whole society.

17.In general terms, much serious American literature written from 1912 onwards attempted to

convey ______.

A. a vision of social breakdown and moral decay

B. a vision of social continuity and harmony

C. the continuity and discontinuity between the past and the modern time

D. all of the above

18.Which of the following is not said about the main principles of the Imagist Movement?______

A. a direct treatment of poetic subjects

B. the elimination of merely ornamental or superfluous words

C. the rhythmical composition in the sequence of the musical phrase rather than in the sequence

of a metronome

D. the treatment of the medium of poetry in agreement with Romanticism

19.Robert Frost rejected ______ choosing ______ instead.

A. the conventional poetic principles …the revolutionary way

B. he revolutionary poetic principles of his contemporaries —the old-fashioned way to be new

C. the revolutionary principles …the romantic way

D. the romantic way—the revolutionary principles

20.Which of the following is not written by Eugene O’Neill?______

A. Beyond the Horizon and Anna Christie

B. The Emperor Jones and The Hairy Ape

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C. Desire Under the Elms and The Great God Down

D. Long Day’s Journey into Night and The Great Gatsby

21.In the play The Hairy Ape, the major character Yank ______.

A. has a sense of belonging nowhere, hence homelessness and rootlessness

B. is typical of the mood of isolation and alienation in the early twentieth century in the United

States only

C. reflects the problem of modern man’s identity

D. both A and C

22.In his writings, Fitzgerald could present a panorama of the Jazz Age with a deep sight because

______.

A. He is both an insider and an outsider of the Jazz Age with a double vision.

B. He joined the big party in the 1920s,partaking of the wealth, frivolity, temptations of the time.

C. He stood aloof and kept a cold eye on the performance of his contemporaries.

D. He stayed sober enough to see the corruptive nature of the society and the vanity fair.

23.To Hemingway, man’s greatest achievement is to show ______.

A. bravery before danger

B. grace under pressure

C. encouragement under pressure

D. optimism under pressure

24.Which of the following is said of Hemingway’s heroes?______

A. He is a lonely individual struggling against nature and the environment.

B. He can be physically destroyed but never defeated spiritually.

C. In a world of chaos, he is doomed to a losing battle and failure in the end.

D. both A and B

25.A Rose for Emily is difficult to read because ______.

A. the chronology of narration is displaced alternatively

B. there are too many characters whose relations are too complicated

C. its language is too symbolic and the dialogues are fragmented

D. none of the above

Ⅳ.Interpretation(16%)

Read the following selections and then answer the questions. Write your answers on the Answer Sheet

Passage 1

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 off the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these preachers of beauty, and light the universe with their

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admonishing smile.

The stars awaken a certain reverence, because though always present, they are alsways inaccessible; but all natural objects make a kindred impression, when the mind is open to their influence. Nature never wears a mean appearance. Neither does the wisest man extort all her secret, and lose his curiosity by finding out all her perfection. Nature never became a toy or a wise spirit. The flowers, the animals, the mountains, reflected all the wisdom of his best hour, as much as they had delighted the simplicity of his childhood.

1.Which essay is this passage taken from? Who is the author?

2.According to the author, what relationship lies between man and nature?

Passage 2

In a Station of the Metro

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;

Petals on a wet, black bough.

3.Who’s the writer of this poem? Of what school of poetry has the poem been regarded as the specimen?

4.What object is treated in the poem? How does the poet bring it out?

Ⅴ.Give brief answers to the following questions.(14%)

1.Give a brief analysis of the differences between the three realists: William D.Howells, Henry James and Mark Twain.

2.Please give a brief comment on Hemingway’s heroes.

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