英语专业英美文学 Essay Questions

英美文学Selective Essay Questions1.Ralph Waldo Emerson’s influence on the literature andintellectual thought of America.He was an American essayist, philosopher, poet and leader of the Transcendentalist movement in the early 19th century. Essays are important works of Emerson, which convey the best of his philosophical arguments and transcendental pursuits, such as Nature published in 1836, considered as a manifesto for Transcendentalism, and The American Scholar in 1837, considered to be “America’s Intellectual Declaration of Independence”. Emerson’s Transcendentalism is actually a philosophical school which absorbs some ideological concerns of American Puritanism and European Romanticism, with its focus on the intuitive knowledge of human beings to grasp the absolute in the universe and the divinity of man. Basically, Transcendentalism has been defined philosophically as “the recognition in man of the capacity of knowing truth intuitively, or of attaining knowledge transcending the reach of the senses”. Emerson once proclaimed in a speech, “Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.” Other concepts that accompanied Transcendentalism include the idea that “nature is ennobling”and “the individual is divine and, therefore, self reliant.” Emerson’s philosophy had inspired a lot of writers such as Thoreau, Whitman and Dickinson.2.The Victorian lady novelists.Typical Victorian lady novelists are the Bronte sisters and George Eliot. Charlotte Bronte, Emily Bronte and their gifted sister Anne Bronte came from a large family of Irish origin. Charlotte and her two younger sisters had a great fondness for literature. In 1845 appeared a volume of poetry entitled Poems by Carrer, Ellis and Acton Bell (the pseudonyms of Charlotte, Emily and Anne), but received little attention. Then the three sisters turned to novel writing. Charlotte’s first novel The Professor was rejected by the publisher, but her second one, Jane Eyre, won immediate success when it appeared in 1847; the same year, Emily’s single and unique work Wuthering Heights and Anne’s Agnes Grey were also published. Soon they were followed by Anne’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. After the death of Emily and Anne, Charlotte continued writing and published her next important novel Shirley. Another novel Villette appeared in 1853, her most autobiographical work, largely based on her experience in Brussels.George Eliot, pseudonym of Mary Ann Evans, was born into an estate agent’s family in Warwickshire, England. In 1857, she wrote her first three stories which were later published in book under the title of Scenes of Clerical life. Then there came successively her three most popular novels, Adam Bede, The Mill on the Floss and Silas Marner, all drawnfrom her lifelong knowledge of English country life and notable for their realistic details, pungent characterization and high moral tone. In 1863, she published Romola, a full elaborately documented story of Florence; then followed Felix Holt, the Radical, her only novel on English politics. In 1872, Middlemarch, a panoramic book considered today by many to be George Eliot’s greatest achievement, came out.3. Write a short essay about the basic features of Modernism. Modernism was a complex and diverse literary movement in the 20th century. After WWI, all kinds of literary trends of modernism appeared: symbolism, expressionism, surrealism, futurism, Dadaism, imagism and stream of consciousness. Towards the 1920s, these trends converged into a mighty torrent of modernist movement across Europe and America. One characteristic of English Modernism is “the dehumanization of art”. The major themes of the modernist literature are “the distorted, alienated and ill relationships between man and nature, man and society, man and man, man and himself”. The modernist writers concentrate more on the private than the public, more on the subjective than the objective. Therefore, they pay more attention to the psychic time than the chronological one. In their writings, the past, the present and the future are mingled together and exist at the same time in the consciousness of an individual. Modernism is a reaction against realism. By advocating a free experimentation onnew forms and new techniques in literary creation, it casts away almost all the traditional elements in literature such as story, plot, character, chronological narration, etc. , which are essential to realism.Code hero: As a concept from Hemingway’s works, code hero is defined by Hemingway as a man who lives correctly, following the ideals of honor, courage and endurance in a world that is sometimes chaotic, often stressful and always painful. A code hero is an average man of decidedly masculine tastes, sensitive and intelligent, a man of action and one of few words. This kind of people is usually spiritually strong, with certain skills and most of them encounter death many times. Hemingway uses his code hero, who is named in most of his novels as Nick Adams to teach readers a creative and disciplined way of life.Angry Y oung Man: Angry Y oung Men is a journalistic catchphrase applied to a number of British playwrights and novelists from the mid-1950s. Their works mainly express the bitterness of the lower classes toward the established socio-political system and toward the mediocrity and hypocrisy of the middle and upper classes. The playwright John Osborne was the archetypal example of these angry young men with his signature play Look Back in Anger in 1956.The Jazz Age: The Jazz Age describes the period of 1918 to 1929; the years after the end of WW1, continuing through the Roaring Twenties and ending with the rise of the Great Depression. Among the prominentconcerns and trends of the period is the public embrace of technological developments as well as new modernist trends in social behavior, the arts and culture. The traditional values of the previous period saw great decline. One of the most representative literary works of the Jazz age is American writer F.S. Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, which highlighted what some describe as the corruption of the post-WW1, as well as new attitudes, and the growth of individualism.4. Comment on an excerpt chosen from the novel Invisible Man by the American writer Ralph Waldo EllisonThe narrator accidentally bumped into a tall, blond man in the dark. The blond man called him an insulting name, and the narrator attacked him, demanding an apology. He threw the blond man to the ground, kicked his, and pulled out his knife, prepared the slit the man’s throat. Only at the last minute did he come to his senses. He realized that the blond man insulted him because he couldn’t really see him, therefore he ran away.The cause for the emotional change is that the narrator suddenly realized that he was an invisible man like a phantom, and the white man didn’t mean to insult him.5. What is the significance of this novel in literature history?From the moment of its publication in 1952, Invisible Man generated theimpact of a cultural tidal wave. It was a pioneering work of African-American fiction that addressed not only the social, but the psychic and metaphysical components of racism: the invisibility of a large portion of this country’s populace and the origins of that invisibility in one people’s willed blindness and another’s habit of self-concealment. Ellison’s narrator encounters the full range of strategies that African-Americans have used in their struggle for survival and dignity---as well as all the scams, alibis, and naked brutalities that the whites have used to keep them in their place.6. Transcendentalist movement was a reaction against 18th-century rationalism and a manifestation of the general humanitarian trend of the 19th-century thought. Comment on the Transcendentalist movement with reference to Ralph Waldo Emerson or Henry David Thoreau or Walt Whitman.Transcendentalism is a group of new ideas in literature, religion, culture and philosophy that emerged in New England in the early to middle 19th century. Transcendentalism began as a protest against the general state of culture and society, and in particular, the state of intellectualism at Harvard and the doctrine of the Unitarian church taught at Harvard Divinity School. Among transcendentalists’core beliefs is an ideal spiritual state that “transcends” the physical and empirical, and it is onlyrealized through the individual’s intuition, rather than through the doctrines of established religions. They took the “oversoul” as the most important thing in the universe. They stressed the importance of the individual. To them, the individual was the most important element of society. They offered a fresh perception of nature as symbolic of the Spirit or God. Nature was, to them, alive, filled with God’s overwhelming presence. Transcendentalism is based on the belief that the most fundamental truths about life and death can be reached only by going beyond the world of senses.Emerson and other like-minded intellectuals founded the Transcendental Club, which served as a center for the movement. Its first official meeting was held on September 19, 1836. Emerson anonymously published his first essay, Nature, which established him ever since as the most eloquent spokesman of New England Transcendentalism. Nature was the fundamental document of his philosophy and expressed also his constant, deeply-felt love for nature. It was called “the manifesto of American Transcendentalism”. He also helped to found and edit for a time the Transcendental journal, The Dial. Emerson lived an intellectually active and significant life between the mid-1830s and the mid-1840s, lecturing all over the country, and occasionally, abroad. He preached his Transcendental pursuit and his reputation expanded dramatically with his lectures and essays.7. Comment on self-relianceIn Self-reliance, Emerson expressed the romantic idea of individualism, with an emphasis on being self-sufficient. He promoted relying on oneself rather than on established society. Emerson was known for his repeated use of the phrase “trust thyself.”“Self-reliance”is his explanation---both systematic and passionate of what he meant by this, and why he was moved to make it his catch-phrase. Every individual possesses a unique genius, Emerson argues, that can only be revealed when that individual has the courage to trust his or her own thoughts, attitudes, and inclinations against all public disapproval.8. Write a short essay about the basic features of Realism.In art and literature, Realism refers to an attempt to describe human behavior and surroundings or to represent figures exactly as they act or appear in life. Realism emerged as a literary movement in Europe in the 1850s. In reaction to Romanticism, realistic writers should set down their observations impartially and objectively. They insisted on accurate documentation, sociological insight, and avoidance of poetic diction and idealization. The subjects were to be taken from everyday life, preferably from lower-class life. Realism entered American literature after the Civil War. Guided by the principle of adhering to the truthful treatment of life,the realists touched upon various contemporary social and political issues. In their works, instead of writing about the polite, well-dresses, grammatically correct middle-class young people who moved in exotic places and remote times, they introduced industrial workers and farmers, ambitious businessmen and vagrants, prostitutes and not heroic soldiers as major characters in the fiction. They approached the harsh realities and pressures in the post-Civil War society either by a comprehensive picture of modern life in its various occupations, class stratifications and manners, or by a psychological exploration of man’s sub-consciousness.9. Comment briefly on the importance of the following works in the history of British literature and American literature.The Canterbury T alesThe Canterbury Tales is a collection of stories written by Geoffrey Chaucer in the 14th century. Written in Middle English, it is well known for its contribution to popularizing the literary use of the English, rather than French or Latin. English had, however, been used as a literary language for centuries before Chaucer’s life, and several of Chaucer’s contemporaries. What’s more, Chaucer was responsible for starting a trend in English literature.Oliver TwistOliver Twist is the first novel in the English language to centerthroughout a child protagonist. It is also famous for its vivid descriptions of the workhouse and life of the underworld in the 19th-century’s London. An early example of the social novel, the book calls the public’s attention to various contemporary social evils, including the Poor Law that states that poor people should work in workhouses, child labor and the recruitment of children as criminals. Dickens mocks the hypocrisies of the time by surrounding the novel’s serious themes with sarcasm and dark humor.A Room of one’s own:The essay “A Room of One’s Own”examines whether women were capable of producing work of the quality of William Shakespeare. Woolf also examines the careers of several female authors, including Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters and George Eliot. She subtly refers to several of the most prominent intellectuals of the time, and her hybrid name for the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge-Oxbridge---has become a well-known term in English satire, although she was not the first to use it. The title comes from Woolf’s conception that, “a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction”. It also refers to any author’s need for poetic license and the personal liberty to create art.The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn:Hemingway once described the novel “the one book from which allmodern American literature comes.”The book is significant in many ways: The novel is written in a language that is simple, direct, lucid, and faithful to the colloquial speech. The book is noted for its colorful description of people and places along the Mississippi River. The profound portrait of Huckleberry Finn is another great contribution of the book to the legacy of the American literature.The Great Gatsby:The novel chronicles an era that Fitzgerald himself dubbed the “Jazz Age”. On the surface, The Great Gatsby is a story of the difficult love between a man and a woman, but in a real sense, it encompasses a more profound theme------the decline of the American Dream and the hollowness of the upper class. It is a highly symbolic meditation on 1920s, America as a whole, in particular the disintegration of the American dream in an era of unprecedented prosperity and material excess. The fact that the rich people turned to be more indifferent and careless brought forth the disillusionment of the American Dream.11。