美国文学题库

美国文学题库I

I. Each of the following statements below is followed by four alternative answers. Choose the one that would best complete the statement.

1. For Melville, as well as for the reader and _________, the narrator, Moby Dick is still a mystery, an ultimate mystery of the universe.

A. Ahab

B. Ishmael

C. Stubb

D. Starbuck

2. Naturalism is evolved from realism when the author’s tone in writing becomes less serious and less sympathetic but more ironic and more_____________.

A. rational

B. humorous

C. optimistic

D. pessimistic

3. Dreiser’s Trilogy of Desire includes three novels. They are The Financier, The Titan and_____ .

A. The Genius

B. The Tycoon

C. The Stoic

D. The Giant

4. The impact of Darwin’s evolutionary theory on the American thought and the influence of the nineteenth-century French literature on the American men of letters gave rise to yet another school of realism: American___________ .

A. local colorism

B. vernacularism

C. modernism

D. naturalism

5. Robert Frost combined traditional verse forms -the sonnet, rhyming couplets, blank verse -with a clear American local speech rhythm, the speech of _______farmers with its idiosyncratic diction and syntax.

A. Southern

B. Western

C. New Hampshire

D. New England

6. As an autobiographical play, O’Neill’s ___________(1956) has gained its status as a world classic and simultaneously marks the climax of his literary career and the coming of age of American drama.

A. The Iceman Cometh

B. Long Day’s Journey Into Night

C. The Hairy Ape

D. Desire Under the Elms

7. Apart from the dislocation of time and the modern stream-of-consciousness, the other narrative techniques Faulkner used to construct his stories include_________, symbolism and mythological and biblical allusions.

A. impressionism

B. expressionism

C.multiple points of view

D. first person point of view

8. Stylistically, Henry James’ fiction is characterized by____________.

A. short, clear sentences

B. abundance of local images

C. ordinary American speech

D. highly refined language

9. One of the characteristics that have made Mark Twain a major literary figure in the 19th century America is his use of____________ .

A. vernacular

B. interior monologue

C. point of view

D. photographic description

10. It is on his____________ that Washington Irving’s fame mainly rested.

A. childhood recollections

B. sketches about his European tours

C. early poetry

D. tales about America

11. At the middle of 19th century, America witnessed a cultural flowering which is called “____________________”.

A. the English Renaissance

B. the Second Renaissance

C. the American Renaissance

D. the Salem Renaissance

12. As a philosophical and literary movement, the main issues involved in the debate of Transcendentalism are generally concerning ____________________.

A. nature, man and the universe

B. the relationship between man and woman

C. the development of Romanticism in American literature

D. the cold, rigid rationalism of Unitarianism

13. About the novel The Scarlet Letter, which of the following statements