全国2008年4月高等教育自学考试
英美文学选读试题
课程代码：00604
I. Multiple Choice（40 points in all, 1for each）
Select from the four choices of each item the one that best answer the question or completes the statement. Write the corresponding letter on the Answer Sheet.
1．The Renaissance is actually a movement stimulated by a series of historical events EXCEPT_________.
A．the rediscovery of ancient Roman and Greek culture
B．the vast expansion of British colonies in North America
C．the new discoveries in geography and astrology
D．the religious reformation and the economic expansion
2．Henry Fielding has been regarded by some as “_______”,for his contribution to the establishment of the form of the modern novel.
A．Father of the English Novel B．Father of the English Poetry
C．Father of the English Drama D．Father of the English Short Story
3．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 Man B．The Waste Land
C．Murder in the Cathedral D．Ash Wednesday
4．George Bernard Shaw’s play _______ established his position as the leading play-wright of his time.
A．Widowers’ Houses B．Too True to Be Good
C．Mrs. Warren’s Profession D．Candida
5．William Blake’s central concern in the Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience is_______, which gives the two books a strong social and historical reference.
A．youthhood B．childhood
C．happiness D．sorrow
6．All of the following works are known as Hardy’s “novels of character and environment” EXCETP_______.
A．The Return of the Native B．Tess of the D’Urbervilles
C．Jude the Obscure D．Far from the Madding Crowd
7．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
8．The most distinguishing feature of Charles Dickens’ works is his _______.
A．simple vocabulary B．bitter and sharp criticism
C．character-portrayal D．pictures of happiness
9．Among the following writers _______ created the verse novel by adopting the novelistic presentation of characters.
A．Robert Browning B．Matthew Arnold
C．Alfred Tennyson D．Edward Fitzgerald
10．“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good for-tune, must be in want of a wife.” The quoted part is taken from ______.
A．Jane Eyre B．Wuthering Heights
C．Pride and Prejudice D．Sense and Sensibility
11．Because of her sensitivity to universal patterns of human behavior, ______ has brought the English novel ,as an art of form, to its maturity.
A．Charlotte Brontë B．Jane Austen
C．Emily Brontë D．Ann Radcliffe
12．Shelley’s greatest achievement is his four-act poetic drama ______, which is an exultant work in praise of humankind’s potential.
A．Adonais B．Queen Mab
C．Prometheus Unbound D．A Defence of Poetry
13．The assertion that poetry originates from “emotion recollected in tranquility” belongs to ______.
A．William Wordsworth B．Samuel Taylor Coleridge
C．Robert Southey D．William Blake
14．All of the following poems by William Wordsworth are masterpieces on nature EXCEPT ______.
A．“I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” B．“An Evening Walk”
C．“Tintern Abbey” D．“The Solitary Reaper”
15．All of the following are stream –of- consciousness novels EXCEPT________.
A．Pilgrimage B．Ulysses
C．Mrs. Dalloway D．Tess of the D’ Urbervilles
16．Shakespeare’s four greatest tragedies are ________.
A．Romeo and Juliet, Othello, King Lear, Hamlet
B．Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, The Merchant of Venice
C．Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth
D．Romeo and Juliet, The Merchant of Venice, Othello, Hamlet
17．As one of the greatest masters of English prose, ________ defined a good style as “proper words in proper places”.
A．Henry Fielding B．Jonathan Swift
C．Samuel Johnson D．Alexander Pope
18．All of the following novels by Daniel Defoe are the first literary works devoted to the study of problems of the lower-class people EXCEPT ______.
A．Robinson Crusoe B．Captain Singleton
C．Moll Flanders D．Colonel Jack
19．Among the three major works by John Milton ______ is indeed the only generally acknowledged epic in English literature since Beowulf.
A．Paradise Regained B．Samson Agonistes
C．Lycidas D．Paradise Lost
20．English Romanticism, as a historical phase of literature, is generally said to have ended in 1832 with ______.
A．the passage of the first Reform Bill in the Parliament
B．the publication of Wordsworth and Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads
C．the publication of T．S．Eliot’s The waste Land
D．the passage of the Bill of Rights in the Parliament
21．Contrary to the traditional romance of aristocrats, the modern English novel gives a realistic presentation of life of ______.
A．the common English people B．the upper class
C．the rising bourgeoisie D．the enterprising landlords
22．The major concern of ______ fiction lies in the tracing of the psychological development 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’
23．The Nobel Prize Committee highly praised ______ for “his powerful style-forming mastery of the art” of creating modern fiction.
A．Ezra Pound B．Ernest Hemingway
C．Robert Frost D．Theodore Dreiser
24．In 1950,______ was awarded the Nobel Prize for the anti-racist Intruder in the Dust.
A．William Faulkner B．Robert Frost
C．Ezra Pound D．Ernest Hemingway
25．Herman Melville wrote his semi-autobiographical novel ______ concerning the sufferings of a genteel youth among brutal sailors.
A．Typee B．Redburn
C．Moby-Dick D．Mardi
26．The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and, especially, its sequence ______ proved themselves to be the milestone in the American literature.
A．The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn B．Life on the Mississippi
C．The Gilded Age D．Roughing It
27．The Portrait of A Lady is generally considered to be ______ masterpiece, which describes the life journey of an American ________ in a European cultural environment.
A．Henry Adams’…widow B．William James’…girl
C．Henry James’…girl D．Theodore Dreiser’s…widow
28．Hawthorne intended to ______ in The Scarlet Letter.
A．tell a story of parental love
B．tell a story of sin and bloody violence
C．call the readers back to the plantation way of living
D．reveal the human psyche after they sinned
29．“The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water.” This “iceberg” analogy is put forward by ______.
A．Mark Twain B．Ezra Pound
C．William Faulkner D．Ernest Hemingway
30．In many of Hawthorne’s stories and novels, the Puritan concept of life is condemned, or the Puritan past is shown in an almost totally negative light, especially in his ______ and The Scarlet Letter.
A．Twice-Told Tales B．The Blithedale Romance
C．The Marble Faun D．The House of the Seven Gables
31．The white whale, Moby Dick, symbolizes ________ for Melville, for it is complex, unfathomable, malignant, and beautiful as well.
A．society B．nature
C．ocean animals D．both A and C
32．After the American Civil War, the literary interest in the so-called “reality” of life started a new period in the American literary writings know an the Age of ______.
A．Realism B．Reason and Revolution
C．Romanticism D．Modernism
33．H．L．Mencken considered ______ “the true father of our national literature”.
A．Bret Harte B．Mark Twain
C．Washington Irving D．Walt Whitman
34．Altogether, Emily Dickinson wrote 1775 poems, of which only ______ had appeared during her lifetime.
A．three B．five
C．seven D．nine
35．The ______ Age of the 1920s characterized by frivolity and carelessness is brought vividly to life in The Great Gatsby.
A．Lost B．Jazz
C．Reason D．Gilded
36．Robert Frost is generally considered a regional poet whose subject matters mainly focus on the landscape and people in ______.
A．the west B．the south
C．Alaska D．New England
37．As ______ saw it, poetry could play a vital part in the process of creating a new nation. It could enable Americans to celebrate their release from the Old World and the colonial rule.
A．Wordsworth Longfellow B．William Bryant
C．Walt Whitman D．Robert Frost
38．Walt Whitman is a poet with a strong sense of mission, having devoted all his life to the creation of the “single” poem, ______.
A．The Love Song of J．Alfred Prufrock B．The Waste Land
C．Murder in the Cathedral D．Leaves of Grass
39．Realism was a reaction against Romanticism and paved the way to ______.
A．Modernism B．Scientism
C．Post-Modernism D．Feminism
40．Mark Twain employed an unpretentious style of ______ in his novels which is best described as “vernacular”.
A．standard English B．Afro-American English
C．colloquialism D．urbanism
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．“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:”
Questions:
A．Identify the poet and the poem from which the quoted lines are taken.
B．Name the figure of speech employed in the poem.
C．What is the theme of the poem?
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．Identify the author and the novel from which the quoted part is taken.
B．To whom is the speaker speaking?
C．What does the quoted part imply about the speaker?
43．“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.”
Questions:
A．Identify the poet and the poem from which the quoted lines are taken.
B．What does the word “sleep” mean?
C．What idea do the four lines express?
44．“I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loafe and invite my soul,
I learn and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.”
(from Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself”)
Questions:
A．Whom does “myself” refer to?
B．How do you understand the line “I loafe and invite my soul”?
C．What does “a spear of summer grass” indicate?
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．“ ‘My boy!’ said the old gentleman, leaning over the desk. Oliver stated at the sound. He might be excused for doing so, for the words were kindly said, and strange sounds frighten one. He trembled violently, and burst into tears.”（from Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist）
Explain why Oliver Twist started first, then trembled violently and burst into tears when the words were “kindly” said.
46．It is said that B. Shaw’s play, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, has a strong realistic theme, which fully reflects the dramatist’s Fabianist idea. Try to summarize this theme briefly.
47．“In your rocking-chair, by your window dreaming, shall you long, alone. In your rocking-chair, by your window, shall you dream such happiness as you may never feel.”（from Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie）
What idea can you draw from the “rocking-chair”?
48．Why are naturalists inevitably pessimistic in their view?
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．Daniel Defoe’s novel Robinson Crusoe was a great success partly because the protagonist was a real middle-class hero. Discuss Crusoe, the protagonist of the novel, as an embodiment of the rising middle-class virtues in the mid-eighteenth century England.
50．“ ‘My faith is gone!’ cried he（Goodman Brown）,after one stupefied moment. ‘There is no good on earth; and sin is but a name. Come, devil! For to thee is this world given.’ ”（from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown”）
Make a comment on this passage.
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