高等教育自学考试英美文学选读试题及答案

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请将答案填在答题纸相应的位置上(全部题目用英文作答)

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 and write the corresponding letter on the answer sheet.

1. In Renaissance, the European humanist thinkers and scholars made attempts to do

the following EXCEPT ______.

A. getting rid of those old feudalist ideas

B. getting control of the parliament and government

C. introducing new ideas that expressed the interests of the rising bourgeoisie

D. recovering the purity of the early church, from the corruption of the Roman

Catholic Church

2. The Petrarchan sonnet was first introduced into England by ______.

A. Surrey

C. Sidney

B. Wyatt

D. Shakespeare

3. As the best of Shakespeare's final romances,______ is a typical example of his

pessimistic view towards human life and society in his late years.

A. The Tempest

C. Cymbeline

B. The Winter's Tale

D. The Rape of Lucrece

4. John Milton's greatest poetical work ______ is the only generally acknowledged

epic in English literarure since Beowulf.

A.

Areopagitica

C. Lycidas

B. Paradise Lost

D. Samson Agonistes

5. The British bourgeois or middle class believed in the following notions EXCEPT

______.

A. self - esteem

C. self - restraint

B. self - reliance

D. hard work

6. “Graveyard School〞writers are the following sentimentalists EXCEPT ______.

A. James Thomson

C. William Cowper

B. William Collins

D. Thomas Jackson

7. The best model of satire in the whole English literary history is Jonathan Swift's

______.

A. A Modest Proposal

C. Gulliver's Travels

B. A Tale of a Tub

D. The Battle of the Books

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8. As a representative of the Enlightenment,______ was one of the first to introduce

rationalism to England.

A. John Bunyan

C. Alexander Pope

B. Daniel Defoe

D. Jonathan Swift

9. For his contribution to the establishment of the form of the modern novel,______

has been regarded by some as “Father of the English Novel〞.

A. Daniel Defoe

C. Jonathan Swift

B. Henry Fielding

D. Samuel Richardson

10. Which of the following descriptions of Gothic Novels is NOT correct

A. It predominated in the early eighteenth century.

B. It was one phase of the Romantic movement.

C. Its principal elements are violence, horror and the supernatural.

D. Works like

The Mysteries of Udolpho and Frankenstein are typical Gothic romance.

11. “Byronic hero〞is a figure of the following traits EXCEPT ______.

proud

rebellious

B. being of humble origin

D. being mysterious

12. Robert Browning created ______ by adopting the novelistic presentation of

characters.

A. the verse novel

C. the heroic couplet

B. the blank verse

D. the dramatic poetry

13. Charles Dickens' novel ______ is famous for its vivid descriptions of the

workhouse and life of the underworld in the nineteenth- century London.

A. The Pickwick Paper

C. David Copperfield

B. Oliver Twist

D. Nicholas Nickleby

14. 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

C. self - esteem

B. self - realization

D. self - consciousness

15. The symbolic meaning of “Book〞 in Robert Browning's long poem The Ring and the

Book is ______.

A. the common sense

C. the comprehensive knowledge

B. the hard truth

D. the dead truth

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16. Thomas Hardy's pessimistic view of life predominated most of his later works

and earns him a reputation as a ______ writer.

A. realistic

C. romantic

B. naturalistic

D. stylistic

17. After the First World War, there appeared the following literary trends of

modernism EXCEPT ______.

A. expressionism

C. stream of consciousness

B. surrealism

D. black humour

18. The masterpieces of critical realism in the early 20th century are the three

trilogies of ______.

A. Galsworthy's Forsyte novels

C. Greene's Catholic novels

B. Hardy' s Wessex novels

D. Woolf's stream-of-consciousness novels

19. In the mid - 1950s and early 1960s, there appeared “______〞 who demonstrated

a particular disillusion over the depressing situation in Britain and launched

a bitter protest. against the outmoded social and political values in their

society.

A. The Beat Generation

C. The Angry Young Men

B. The Lost Generation

D. Black Mountain Poets

following are English stream-of-consciousness novels EXCEPT ______.

mage

ay

B. Ulysses

D. A Passage to Inida考证素材

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21. The leader of the Irish National Theater Movement in the early 20th century

was ______.

A.

C.

B. Lady Gregory

D. John Galworthy

22. 's most popular verse play is ______.

A. Murder in the Cathedral

C. The Family Reunion

B. The Cocktail Party

D. The Waste Land

23. The American writer ______ was awarded the Nobel Prize for the anti-racist In-

truder in the Dust in 1950.

A. Ernest Hemingway

C. William Faulkner

B. Gertrude Stein

D.T.S. Eliot

24. Hemingway's second big success is ______ , which wrote the epitaph to a decade

and to the whole generation in the 1920s, in order to tell us a story about the

tragic love affair of a wounded American soldier with a British nurse.

A. For Whom the Bell Tolls

C. The Sun Also Rises

B. A Farewell to Arms

D. The Old Man and the Sea

25. With the publication of ______ , Dreiser was launching himself upon a long career

that would ultimately make him one of the most significant American writers of

the school later known as literary naturalism.

A. Sister Carrie

C. The Genius

B. The Titan

D. The Stoic

26. Henry James is generally regarded as the forerunner of the 20th -century “stream

-of-consciousness〞novels and the founder of ______.

A. neoclassicism

C. psychoanalytical criticism

B. psychological realism

D. surrealism

27. In 1849, Herman Melville published ______ ,a semi-autobiographical novel, con-

cerning the sufferings of a genteel youth among brutal sailors.

A. Omoo

C. Redburn

B. Mardi

D. Typee

28. As a sequel to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,______ marks the climax of Mark Twain's

literary activity.

A. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn B. Life on the Mississippi

C. The Gilded Age D. Roughing It

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29. Realism was a reaction against ______ or a move away from the bias towards romance

and self- creating fictions, and paved the way to Modernism.

A. Romanticism

C. Post-modernism

B. Rationalism

D. Cynicism

30. When World War II broke out,______ began working for the Italian government,

engaged in some radio broadcasts of anti- Semitism and pro- Fascism.

A. Ezra Pound

C. Henry James

B.T.S. Eliot

D. Robert Frost

31. In 1915 ______ became a naturalized British citizen, largely in protest against

America's failure to join England in the First World War.

C. s D. Ezra Pound

32. What Whitman prefers for his new subject and new poetic feelings is “______ ,〞

that is, poetry without a fixed beat or regular rhyme scheme.

A. blank verse

C. balanced structure

B. free rhythm

D. free verse

33. The American woman poet ______ wanted to live simply as a complete independent

being, and so she did, as a spinster.

A. Emily Shaw

C. Emily Dickinson

B. Anna Dickinson

D. Anne Bret

34.

The Birthmark drives home symbolically ______ point that evil is a man's birthmark,

something he was born with.

A. Whitman's

C. Hawthorne's

B. Melville's

D. Emerson's

35. The Financier ,The Titan and The Stoic written by ______ are called his “Trilogy

of Desire〞.

A. Henry James

C. Mark Twain

B. Theodore Dreiser

D. Herman Melville

36. Disregarding grammar and punctuation,______ always used “i〞 instead of “I〞

in his poems to show his protest against self-importance.

A. Wallace Stevens B. Ezra Pound

37. Though Robert Frost is generally considered a regional poet whose subject matters

mainly focus on the landscape and people in ______ , he wrote many poems that

investigate the basic themes of man's life in his long poetic career.

A. the west B. the south

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C. New England D. Alaska

38. Most critics have agreed that Fitzgerald is both an insider and an outsider of

______ with a double vision.

A. the Gilded Age

C. the Jazz Age

B. the Rational Age

D. the Magic Age

39. In the American Romantic writings,______ came to function almost as a dramatic

character that symbolized moral law.

A. fire

C. trees

B. water

D. wilderness

40. The desire for an escape from society and a return to ______ became a permanent

convention of the American literature.

A. the family life

C. the ancient time

B. nature

D. fantasy of love

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. Wherefore feed and clothe and save

From the cradle to the grave

Those ungrateful drones who would

Drain your sweat- nay, drink your blood

Questions:

A. Identify the poet and the title of the poem from which the stanza is taken.

B. What figure of speech is used in Line 2

C. Whom does “drones〞 refer to

42. The following quotation is from one of the poems by T. S. Eliot:

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;

Am an attendant lord, one that will do

To swell a progress, start a scene or two

Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,

Deferential, glad to be of use,

Politic, cautious, and meticulous,

Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;

Questions:

A. Identify the title of the poem from which the quoted part is taken.

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B. Who's the speaker of the quoted lines

C. What does the first line show about the speaker

43．There was a child went forth every day,

And the first object he look'd upon, that object he became,

And that object became part of him for the day or a certain part of the day,

Or for many years or stretching cycles of years.

Questions:

A. Identify the poet.

which poem and which collection of the poet are these lines taken

does the poet describe in the poem

44. I heard a Fly buzz- when I died-

The Stillness in the Room

Was like the Stillness in the Air-

Between the Heaves of Storm-

The Eyes around- had wrung them dry-

And Breaths were gathering firm

For that last Onset- when the King

Be witnessed - in the Room-

Questions:

A. Identify the poet.

B. What does “the King〞 refer to

C. What moment is the poem trying to describe

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

Give brief answers to each of the following questions in English. Write your answers in

the corresponding space on the answer sheet.

45. List at least two leading neoclassicists in England. What did Neoclassicists

celebrate in literary creation

46. Jane Eyre is one of the most popular and important novels of the Victorian Age.

Why is Jane Eyre such a successful novel

47. Who are the three dominant figures of the American Age of Realism and what are

the differences in their understanding of the “truth〞

48. What's Dreiser' s naturalistic belief Please discuss the question with Carrie,

a character in Sister Carrie as an example.

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

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Write no less than 150 words on each of the following topics in English in the

corresponding space on the answer sheet.

49. Briefly discuss William Shakespeare's artistic achievements in characterization,

plot construction and language.

50. Briefly discuss Mark Twain's art of fiction in terms of the setting,the language,

and the characters, etc.,based on his novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

全国高等教育自学考试

英美文学选读真题答案及评分参考

〔课程代码 0604〕

I. Multiple Choice (40 points in all, 1 for each)

1. B 2. B 3. A 4. B 5.A 6.D 7.A 8.C 9.B 10.A 11.B 12.A

13.B 14.B 15.B 16.B 17.D 18.A 19.C 20.D 21.A 22.A 23.C

24.B 25.A 26.C 27.C 28.A 29.A 30.A 31.A 32.D 33.C 34.C

35.B 36.D 37.C 38.C 39.D 40.B

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

41. A. From Percy Shelley’s “Men of England〞 (1)

B. Metonymy (1)

C. Here “drones〞 refers to the parasitic class in human society. (2)

42. A. “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock〞 (1)

B. J. Alfred Prufrock (1)

C. Prufrock is conscious of the fact that he is like Hamlet in some respects. But he is sensible

enough that he cannot be compared with Hamlete. (2)

43. A. Walt Whitman (1)

B. “There Was a Child Went Forth〞 from “Leaves of Grass〞 (1)

C. The poem describes the growth of a child who learned about the world around him and

improved himself accordingly. In the poem, Whitman’s own early experience may well be

identified with the childhood of a young, growing American. (2)

44. A. Emily Dickinson (1)

B. The God of Death. (1)

C. The poem is trying to describe the moment of death. (2)

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

45. A. Alexander Pope, John Dryden, Samuel Johnson (任选2位作家). (2)

B. They believed that the artistic ideals should be order, logic, restrained emotion and

accuracy and that literature should be judged in terms of its service to humanity. (2) They

seek proportion, unity, harmony and grace in literacy expression, in an effort to delight,

instruct and correct human beings. Thus a polite, elegant, witty and intellectual art

developed. (2)

46. A. It is noted for its sharp criticism of the existing society. (2)

B. It is an intense moral fable. (2)

C. The success of the novel is also due to its introduction to the English novel the first

governess heroine. (2)

47. A. William Dean Howells, Mark Twain, Henry James. (3)

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B. Mark Twain and Howells seemed to have paid more attention to the “life〞 of the

Americans. Howells focused his discussion on the rising middle class and the way they

lived; Mark Twain preferred to have his own region and people at the forefront of his stories;

Henry James had apparently laid a greater emphasis on the “inner world〞 of man. (3)

48. A. Dreiser believes 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. (3)

B. Carrie, as one of such, senses that she is merely a cipher in an uncaring world yet seeks to

grasp the mysteries of life and thereby satisfies her desires for social status and material

comfort, but in spite of her success, she is lonely and dissatisfied. (3)

以上各题言语错误酌情扣分。

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

49. A. Shakespeare’s major characters are neither merely individual ones nor type ones; they

represent certain types; they are individuals representing certain types. By employing a

psycho-analytical approach, Shakespeare succeeds in exploring the characters’ inner world.

Shakespeare also portrays his characters in pairs. Contrasts are frequently used to bring

vividness to his characters. (3)

B. Shakespeare seldom invents his own plot; instead, he borrows them from old plays or

storybooks, from ancient Greek or Roman sources. In order to make the play more lively

and compact, he would shorten the time and intensify the story. There are usually several

clues running through the play, thus providing the story with the suspense and apprehension.

(3)

C. Shakespeare can write skillfully in different poetic forms, such as the sonnet, the blank

verse and the rhymed couplet. He has an amazing wealth of vocabulary and idiom. His

coinage of new words and distortion of the meaning of the old words also creates striking

effects on the readers. (4)

50. A. Mark Twain uses the Mississippi Vally as his fictional kingdom, writing about the

landscape and people, the customs and the dialects of one particular region, and is therefore

known as a local colorist. (3)

B. He creates life-like characters, especially the conventional Huckleberry Finn, who runs

away from civilization and stands opposite to conventional morality. (3)

C. He uses a simple, direct vernacular language, totally different from any previous literary

language. It is the kind of colloquial language belonging to the lower class, the living local

American English. (3)

D. He has created a special humor to satirize social injustices and the decayed convention. (1)

以上各题考生只要能答复出每个要点中的关键词即可酌情给分，言语错误酌情扣分。

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