美国文学复习资料+答案

1.The American Transcendentalists formed a club called _________ .

the Transcendental Club

2.______ was regarded as the first great prose stylist of American romanticism. Washington

Irving

3.At nineteen___________ published in his brother ’s newspaper, his "Jonathan

Oldstyle" satires of New York life.

4.In Washington Irving ’s work___________ appeared the first modern short stories and the

first great American juvenile literature.The Sketch Book

5.The first important American novelist was____________.James Fenimore Cooper

6.James FenimoreCooper’s novel ___________ was a rousing tale about espionage against

the British during the Revolutionary War.The Spy

7.The best of James Fenimore Cooper's sea romances was_____________. The Pilot

8."To a Waterfowl" is perhaps the peak of_______________’s work; it has been called by an

eminent English critic “themost perfect brief poem in the language. ” William Cullen

Bryant

9.__________ was the first American to gain the stature of a major poet in the world

literature.

10.Edgar Allan Poe’s poem____________ is perhaps the best example of onomatopoeia in the

11.Edgar Allan Poe's poem____________ was published in 1845 as the title poem of a

collection.The Raven

12.From Henry David Thoreau’s Concord jail experience, came his famous essay ______.

Civil Disobedience

By the 1830s Washington Irving was judged the nation' s greatest writer, a lofty position he later shared with James Fenimore Cooper and William Cullen Bryant.

In the early nineteenth century, the attitude of American writers was shaped by their New World environment and an array of ideas inherited from the romantic tradition of Europe.

As a moral philosophy, transcendentalism was neither logical nor systematical.

The foundation of American national literature was laid by the early American romanticists.

At mid-19th century, a cultural reawakening brought a "flowering of New England".

Romantic writers in the 19th century placed increasing value on the free expression of emotion and displayed increasing attention to the psychic states of their characters.

With a vast group of supporting characters, virtuous or villainous, James Fenimore Cooper made the America conscious of his past, and made the European conscious of America.

No other American poet ever surpassedEdgar Allan Poe’s ability in the use of English as a medium of pure musical and rhythmic beauty.

The Fall of the House of Usher is one of Edgar Allan Poe'sshort stories.

Ralph Waldo Emerson was recognized as the leader of transcendentalist movement, but

he never applied the term "Transcendentalist" to himself or to his beliefs and ideas.

In 1836, Ralph Waldo Emerson published his first book, Nature, which met with a mild reception.

Ralph Waldo Emerson's prose style was sometimes as highly individual as his poetry.

The harsh rhythms and striking images of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s poetry appeal to

many modern readers as artful techniques.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ’s writings belong to the milder aspects of the Romantic Movement.

American romanticism was in a way derivative: American romantic writing was some of

them modeled on English and European works.

Ralph Waldo Emerson’s aesthetics brought about a revolution in American literature in

general and in American poetry in particular.

Henry David Thoreau was an active Transcendentalist. He was by no means an "escapist" or

a recluse, but was intensely involved in the life of his day.

The Scarlet Letter is set in the seventeenth century. It is an elaboration of a fact which

the author took out of the life of the Puritan past.

2.Transcendentalism took their ideas from___________ .

A. the romantic literature in Europe

B.neo-Platonism

C.German idealistic philosophy

D.the revelations of oriental mysticism

ABCD

8.Transcendentalists recognized__________ as the "highest power of the soul.”

A. intuition

10.Transcendentalism appealed to those who disdained the harsh God of the Puritan ancestors, and it appealed to those who scorned the pale deity of New England

A. Transcendentalism

B.Humanism

C.Naturalism

D.Unitarianism

D

13.The desire for an escape from society and a return to nature became a

permanent convention of American literature, evident in _________ .

A.James Fenimore Cooper'sLeatherstocking Tales

B.Henry David Thoreau ’s Walden

C.Mark Twain ’s Huckleberry Finn

D.Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter

ABC

14. A preoccupation with the demonic and the mystery of evil marked the works of

_________ , and a host of lesser writers.

A. Nathaniel Hawthorne

B. Edgar Allan Poe

C. Herman Melville

D. Mark Twain

ABC

16.In the nineteenth century America, Romantics often shared certain general characteristics. Choose such characteristics from the following.

A.moral enthusiasm

B.faith in the value of individualism and intuitive perception

C.adoration for the natural world

D.presumption about the corrosive effect of human society

ABCD

17.Choose Washington Irving' s works from the following.

A. The Sketch Book

B. Bracebridge Hall

C. Tales of a Traveller

D. A History of New York

ABCD

18.In James Fenimore Cooper's novels, close after Natty Bumppo in romantic appeal , come the two noble red men. Choose them from the following.

A. the Mohican Chief

Chingachgook B. Uncas

C. Tom Jones

D. Kubla Khan

AB

In 1817, the stately poem called Thanatopsisintroduced the best poet___________ to appear in America up to that time.

A. Edward Taylor

B. Philip Freneau

C. William Cullen Bryant

D. Edgar Allan Poe

C To a Waterfowl Thanatopsis

21.From the following, choose the poems written by Edgar Allan Poe.

A. To Helen

B. The Raven

C. Annabel Lee

D. The Bells

ABCD

23.Edgar Allan Poe's first collection of short stories is___________ .

D.Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque

24.From the following, choose the characteristics of Ralph Waldo Emerson's poetry.

A. being highly individual

B. harsh rhythms

C. lack of form and polish

D. striking images

ABCD

25.Which book is not written by Ralph Waldo Emerson?

A.Representative Men

B.English Traits

C.Nature

D.The Rhodora

D

26.Which essay is not written by Ralph Waldo Emerson?

A. Of Studies

B. Self-Reliance

C. The American Scholar

D. The Divinity School Address

A

30.Nathaniel Hawthorne's ability to create vivid and symbolic images that embody great moral questions also appears strongly in his short stories. Choose his short stories from

the following.

A. Young Goodman Brown

B. The Great Stone Face

C. The Ambitious Guest ABCD

D. Ethan Brand

E. The Pearl

32.Herman Melville called his friend Nathaniel Hawthorne_____________ in American literature.

A. the largest brain with the largest heart

34. __________ was a romanticized account of Herman Melville's stay among the Polynesians. The success of the book soon made Melville well known as the " man who lived among cannibals".Typee

37.In the early nineteenth century American moral values were essentially Puritan. Nothing has left a deeper imprint on the character of the people as a whole than did__________ .

A. Puritanism

"The universe is composed of Nature and the soul... Spirit is present everywhere". This is

the voice of the book Nature written by Emerson, which pushed American Romanticism into a new phase, the phase of New England______ Transcendentalism

43.Which is generally regarded as the Bible of New England Transcendentalism?

A. Nature

45._________ is an appalling fictional version of Nathaniel Hawthorne' s belief that "the wrong doing of one generation lives into the successive ones" and that evil will come out

of evil though it may take many generations to happen.

A. The Marble Faun

B. The House of Seven Gables

C. The Blithedale Romance

D. Young Goodman Brown

B

Once upon a midnight dreary, while i pondered, weak and weary,

Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,

While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,

As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.

"Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door—

Only this, and nothing more. "

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December,

And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.

Eagerly I wished the morrow; —vainly I had tried to borrow

From my books surcease of sorrow-sorrow for the lost.

Edgar Allan Poe

The Raven

Describe the mood of this poem: A sense of melancholy over the death of a beloved beautiful young woman pervades the whole poem, the portrayal of a young man grieving for his lost Leno-re, his grief turned to madness under the steady one-word repetition of the talking bird.

Work 3: Nuture

1.As the leading New England Transcendentalist, Emerson effected a most articulate

synthesis of the Transcendentalist views. One major element of his philosophy if his firm belief in the transcendence of the "Oversoul". His emphasis on the spirit runs through

virtually all his writings. " Philosophically considered," he states in Nature, which is

generally regarded as the Bible of New England Transcendentalism, "the universe is

composed of Nature and the Soul. " He sees the world as phenomenal, and

emphasizes the need for idealism, for idealism sees the world in God. "It beholds the

whole circle of persons and things, of actions and events, of country and religion, as

one vast picture which God paints on the eternity for the contemplation of the soul. " He regards nature as the purest, and the most sanctifying moral influence on man, and

advocated a direct intuition of a spiritual and immanent God in nature. In this connection, Emerson' s emotional experiences are exemplary in more ways than one. Alone in the woods one day, for instance, he experienced a moment of "ecstasy" which he records

thus in hisNature:

2.Standing on the bare ground, my head bathed by the blithe air and uplifted into infinite

space, all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eyeball; I am nothing; I

see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle

of God.

3.Now this is a moment of "conversion" when one feels completely merged with the outside

world, when one has completely sunk into nature and become one with it, and when the

soul has gone beyond the physical limits of the body to share the omniscience

of the Oversoul. In a word, the soul has completely transcended the limits of

individuality and beome part of the Oversoul. Emerson sees spirit pervading

everywhere, not only in the soul of man, but behind nature, throughout nature. The

world proceeds, as he observes, from the same source as the body of man. "The

Universal Being" is in point of fact the Oversoul that he never stopped talking about for the rest of his life. Emerson' s doctrine of the Oversoul is graphically illustrated in such famous statements; "Each mind lives in the Grand mind," "There in one mind common to all individual men," and "Man is conscious of a universal soul within or behind his individual life. " In his opinion, man is made in the image of God and is just a little less than Him. This is as much as to say that the spiritual and immanent God is operative in the soul of man, and that man is divine. The divinity of man became, incidentally, a favorite subject in his lectures and essays.

4.This naturally led to another, equally significant, Transcendentalist thesis, that the

individual, not the crowd, is the most important of all. If man depends upon himself, cultivates himself, and brings out the divine in himself, he can hop to become better and even perfect. This is what Emerson means by the "infinitude of the privates man. " He tried to convince people that the possibilities for man to develop and improve himself are infinite. Men should and could be self-reliant. Each man should feel the world as his, and the world exists for him alone. He should determine his own existence. Everyone should understand that he makes himself by making his world, and that he makes the world by making himself. " Know then that the world exists for you " he says. "Build

therefore your own world. " "Trust thy self!" and "Make thyself!" Trust your own

discretion and the world is yours. Thus, as Henry Nash Smith ventures to suggest,

"Emerson' s message was eventually (to use a telegraphic abbreviation) self-reliance. "

Emerson' s eye was on man as he could be or could become; he was in the main

optimistic about human perfectibility. The regeneration of the individual leads to the regeneration of society. Hence his famous remark, "I ask for the individuals, not the nation. " Emerson ' s self-reliance was an expression, on a very high level, of the

buoyant spirit of his time, the hope that man can become the best person he could hope to be. Emerson ' s Transcendentalism, with its emphasis on the democratic

individualism, may have provided an ideal explanation for the conduct and activities of an expanding capitalist society. His essays such as "Power", "Wealth", and "Napoleon"

(in his The Representative Men) reveal his ambivalence toward aggressiveness and self-seeking.

5.To Emerson's Transcendentalist eyes, the physical world was vitalistic and evolutionary.

Nature was, to him as to his Puritan forebears, emblematic of God. It mediates between man and God, and its voice leads to higher truth. " Nature is the vehicle of thought," and " particular natural facts are symbols of particular spiritual facts. " Thus Emerson' s

world was one of multiple significance; everything bears a second sense and an ulterior sense. In a word, " Nature is the symbol of spirit." That is probably why he called his first philosophical work Nature rather ihan anything else. The sensual man, Emerson feels, conforms thoughts to things, and man' s power to connect his thought with its proper symbol depends upon the simplicity and purity of his character; "The lover of nature is he who has retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood. " To

him nature is a wholesome moral influence on man and his character. A natural implication of Emerson' s view on nature is that the world around is symbolic. A lowing river indicates the ceaseless motion of the universe. The seasons correspond to the life span of man. The ant, the little drudge, with a small body and a mighty heart, is the sublime image of man himself.