常耀信《美国文学简史》(第3版)章节题库-第二十章至第二十三章【圣才出品】

第20章二战后诗歌·20世纪40年代的诗人

Ⅰ.Fill in the blanks.

The publication of Robert Lowell’s Life Studies marked the coming of the age of _____,which represents a new mode of perception and a way of writing.

【答案】Postmodernism

【解析】罗伯特·洛威尔（Robert Lowell）《人生探索》（Life Studies）是一部里程碑式的诗集，它的发表标志着后现代主义（Postmodernism）时代的到来。

Ⅱ.Multiple Choice

Of the following poets,who is NOT remembered as a confessional poet?

A.Anne Sexton

B.Sylvia Plath

C.Robert Lowell

D.Elizabeth Bishop

【答案】D

【解析】伊丽莎白·毕肖普属于20世纪40年代的诗人，她不是自白派诗人。

Ⅲ.Essay questions

1.Write a short essay(in no more than200words)about the basic features of Postmodernism.[上海交大2007研]

Key:Postmodernism is a disputed term that has occupied much recent debate about contemporary culture since the early1980s.As applied to literature and other arts,the term is notoriously ambiguous,implying either that modernism has been superseded or that it has continued into a new phase.Postmodernism may be seen as a continuation of modernism’s alienated mood and disorienting techniques and at the same time as an abandonment of its determined quest for artistic coherence in a fragmented world:in very crude terms,where a modernist artist or writer would try to wrest a meaning from the world through myth, symbol,or formal complexity,the postmodernist greets the absurd or meaningless confusion of contemporary existence with a certain numbed or flippant indifference,favoring self-consciously“depthless”works of fabulation, pastiche,bricolage,or aleatory disconnection.The term cannot usefully serve as an inclusive description of all literature since the1950s or1960s,but is applied selectively to those works that display most evidently the moods and formal disconnections described above.Opinion is still divided,however,on the value of the term and of the phenomenon it purports to describe.

2.What characterizes Elizabeth Bishop’s observation of the external world and how does she apply such observations to the internal and external experiences? With her style in mind,explicate“The Fish.”Does the grotesqueness of the poem mean the same as it does in Anderson or Flannery O’Connor?

Key:Bishop observes the external world and relates her observations to her

internal and external experiences.But she does so with such detachment that the external world seems to exist as a separate entity.“The Fish”is Bishop’s best-known poem.The speaker captures a fish,and when she examines it closely, she notices the external ugliness and decay and reflects on the beautiful entrails with their“dramatic reds and blacks.”

The interaction of nature with the things humans do is the constant subject of Bishop’s poetry.Such interaction,however,is seen in its grotesqueness.So,we can say that this grotesqueness is different from that in Anderson’s or Flannery O’Connor’s works.

第21章自白派·垮掉的一代

Ⅰ.Fill in the blanks.

1.In the1950s,there was a widespread discontentment among the postwar generation,whose voice was one of protest against all the mainstream culture that America had come to represent.This generation was known as the_____ generation.[天津外国语学院2009研]

【答案】beat

【解析】垮掉的一代：第二次世界大战后风行于美国的文学流派。该流派的作家都是性格粗犷豪放、落拓不羁的男女青年，他们生活简单、不修边幅，喜穿奇装异服，厌弃工作和学业，拒绝承担任何社会义务，以浪迹天涯为乐，反对一切世俗陈规和垄断资本统治，抵制对外侵略和种族隔离，讨厌机器文明，他们永远寻求新的刺激，寻求绝对自由，纵欲、