英美文学选读历年主观题及答案

英美文学选读历年客观题

1.“Let it not be supposed by the enemies of‘the system,’that during the period of his solitary incarceration, Oliver was denied the benefit of exercise, the pleasure of society, or the advantages of religious consolation.”What do you think Charles Dickens intends to say in the above ironic statement taken from Oliver Twist?

The sentence is a typical example of irony. What Dickens intends to say is just the opposite of the sentence’s literal meaning.

For the “benefit” of exercise, Oliver whipped every morning in a stone yard; for the “pleasure” of society, he was carried away every other day to the dinning hall and flogged as a public warning and example to the boys; as for the “advantages” of the religious consolation, he kicked out i nto apartment every evening at prayer time and listened to the boy’s prayer to be guarded against his sins and vices.

The ironic statement is, in fact, a bitter denunciation and fierce attack at the brutal, inhuman treatment of the poor orphan by the workhouse authority.

2. How is Romanticism different from Neoclassicism? Provide brief evidence from the literary works you know best?

Neoclassicists upheld 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, and thus, literary expressions should be of proportion, unity, harmony and grace.Alexander Pope’s “An Essay on Criticism” advocated grace, wit (usually though satire / humor), and simplicity in language (and the poem itself is a demonstration of those ideals, too), Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones helped establish the form of novel; Gray’s Elegy Written in Country Churchyard displays elegance in style, unified structure, serious tone and moral instructions.

Romanticists tended to see the individual as the very center of all experience, including art, and thus, literary work should be “spontaneous overflow of strong feelings”, and no matter how fragmentary those experiences are (Wordsworth’s I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud or The Solitary Reaper or Coleridge’s Keble Khan), the value of the work lied in the accuracy of presenting those unique feelings and particular attitudes.

In a word, Neoclassicism emphasized rationality and form but Romanticism attached great importance to the individual’s mind.

3. English Romanticism is generally said to have begun in 1798 with the publication of Wordsworth and Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads. Why is Lyrical Ballads considered the milestone to mark the beginning of English Romanticism?

In this book, Wordsworth and Coleridge explored new theories and innovated new techniques in poetry wring.

The preface to the Lyrical Ballads acts as a manifesto for the new school. In the preface, Wordsworth defines poetry and poets.

Wordsworth’s poems in this book differ in marked way from his early poetry: simplicity of the language, sympathy for the poor, and expressions of inward states of mind.

4. In Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen explored three kinds of motivations of marriage the middle-class people had in the second half of the 18th century. Try to make a brief discussion about them with specific examples from the novel. Make comments on Austen’s attitude towards these motivations.

Motivation one: to pursue material wealth and social position through marriage. Wickham, Miss Bingley and Charlotte Lucas are examples of this kind.

Motivation two: to seek sensual pleasure and beauty. Lydia and Mr. Bennet are examples of this kind.

Motivation three: to search for true love and also take personal merits and financial positions into consideration. Elizabeth Bennet is a typical example of this kind.

Austen celebrated the third kind of motivation of marriage while criticizing the first two motivations.

5．“ ‘My boy!’ said the old gentleman, leaning over the desk. Oliver started at the sound. He might be excused for doing so, for the words were kindly said, and strange sounds frighten one. He trembled violently, and burst into tears.”（from Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twis t）

Explain why Oliver Twist started first, then trembled violently and burst into tears when the words were “kindly” said. The boy started at the words because kind words were not expected; it must be the first time in all his life that the boy Oliver Twi st had ever “kindly” greeted, strange words may predict another suffering.

6. Discuss the way symbolism is used in Melville’s Moby-Dick.

To Ahab, the whale is either an evil creature itself or the agent of an evil force that controls the universe, or perhaps both. The chase of the white whale symbolizes Ahab’s pursuit of truth and fighting against the evil force.

To Ishmael, the whale is an astonishing force, an immense power, which defies rational explanation due to a sense of mystery it carries. It also represents the tremendous organic vitality of the universe.

To the reader, the whale can be viewed as a symbol of the physical limits that life imposes upon man. It may also be regarded as a symbol of nature.

7. As a rule, an allegory is a story in verse or prose with a double meaning: a surface meaning, and an implied meaning. List two works as examples of allegory. What is the implied meaning an allegory is usually concerned with?

Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress and Spenser’s The Faerie Queene

It usually concerned with moral, religious, political, symbolic or mythical ideas.

8. Take Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as an example to illustrate the statement that Mark Twain was a unique writer in American literature.

Mark Twain shaped t he world’s view of America and made the extensive combination of American folk humor and serious literature.

The novel has become a great contribution to the legacy of American literature.

The novel is written in a language that is totally different from the rhetorical language used by his contemporary writers such as Emerson, Poe and Melville. It is simple, direct, lucid and faith to the colloquial speech. This style of colloquialism is best described as vernacular.

He successfully used local color and historical settings to illustrate and shed light on the contemporary society. That’s why he is known as a local colorist.

Mark Twain’s humor is remarkable, too. Most of his works tend to be funny, containing some practical jokes, comic details, witty remarks, etc. some of them are typical of tall tales. And a great deal of his humor is characterized by puns, straight-faced exaggeration, repetition, and anti-climax. He uses his humor to criticize the social injustice and satirize the decayed romanticism.

9. How do you philosophically define Transcendentalism?

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 sense”. 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 idea that the individual is divine and, therefore, self-reliant.

10. Thomas Hardy is often regarded as a transitional writer. Some critics believe that he is emotionally traditional and intellectually advanced. How do you understand this idea?

Living at the turn of the century, Hardy is often regarded as the transitional writer. In him we see the influence from both the past and the modern. As some people put it, he is intellectually advanced and emotionally traditional.

In his Wessex novels, there is a nostalgic touch in his description of the simple and beautiful though primitive rural life, which was gradually declining and disappearing as England marched into an industrial country. And with those traditional characters he is always sympathetic.

On the other hand, the immense impact of scientific discoveries and modern philosophic thoughts upon the man is quite obvious, too. He read Darwin’s The Origin Species and accepted the idea of “survival of the fittest”. He was also influenced by Spenser’s The First Principle, which led him to the belief that man’s fate is predeterminedly tragic, driven by a combined force of “nature”, both inside and outside.

11. Hemingway Code heroes

It refers to some protagonists in Hemingway’s works. In the general situation of Hemingway’s novels, life is full of tension and battles; the world is in chaos and man is always fighting desperately a losing battle. Those who survive in the

process of seeking to master the code with the honesty, the discipline, and the restraint are Hemingway code heroes. 12．“In your rocking-chair, by your window dreaming, shall you long, alone. In your rocking-chair, by your window, shall you dream such happiness as you may never feel.”（from Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie）

What idea can you draw from the “rocking-chair”?

The “rocking-chair” is a symbol standing for fate. It is like a cradle that makes one feel peaceful. It is also like a tide that ever goes on with life, the destiny of which is uncertain.

At the end of novel, Carrie sits in the rocking-chair, which implies that her future is still uncertain and hard to foresee.

13. The theme of Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet Letter”

The Scarlet Letter tells a simple but very moving story in which four people living in a Puritan Community are involved in and affected by the sin of adultery in different way. Hawthorne does not intend to tell a love story nor a story of sin, but focuses his attention on the moral, emotional, psychological effects or consequences of the sin on the people in general and those main characters in particular, so as to show us the tension between society and individual.

14．It is said that B. Shaw’s play, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, has a strong realistic theme, which fully reflects the dramatist’s Fabianist idea. Try to summarize this theme briefly.

As one of the influential members of the Fabian Society, Shaw regarded the establishment of socialism by the emancipation of land and industrial capital from individual and class ownership as the final goal.

As a realist dramatist, he took the modern issues as his subject; most of his plays are concerned with political, economic, moral or religious problems

Mrs. Warren’s Profession is a play about the economic oppression of woman.

15. William Faulkner, a Nobel Priza winner, has an important position in American literature. Name two of his Major novels. Do you know anything about"Yoknapatawpha County?" What is unique of Faulkner's fiction, historically and geographically?

The Sound and the Fury, Light in August, Go Down, Moses, Absalom, Absalom!

Yoknapatawpha County is an imaginary place based on Faulkner’s own hometown, a place that he took for the setting of 15 of his 19 novels and many short stories. This small region in American South becomes in Faulkner’s fiction an allegory or a parable of the Old South.

His literary representation of the Old South; and his theme of the deterioration, loss and moral decay of the Old South when it was falling apart.

16. Mark Twain presented the 19th century America in his own unique way. Discuss Twa in’s art of fiction: the setting, the language, and the characters, etc., based on his novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Mark Twain uses Mississippi valley 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.

He creates life-like characters, especially the unconventional Huckleberry Finn, who runs away from civilization and stands opposite to conventional village morality.

He uses a simple, direct vernacular language, totally different from any previous language. It is the kind of colloquial belonging to the lower class, the living local American English.

He has created a special humor to satirize the decayed convention.

17．What is the most famous theme in Henry James’s fiction? And what is his favourite approach in characterization，which makes him different from Mark Twain and W·D.Howells as a realist? Give two titles of his first period works in which this theme and this approach are employed.

(1)Henry James’s most famous theme is the international theme.

(2) Psychological approach.

(3)Daisy Miller, The Portrait of A Lady, The American.

18. Discuss the way symbolism is used in Faulkner’s story “A Rose for Emily.”

Rose, as a symbol standing for love, may refer to the love between Emily and the Northerner, yet used rather ironically, in the way it is associated with decay and death in the story.

Rose could also stand for the pity, sympathy, or the l ament “we” show for Emily

The pity and lament goes not to Emily but all those who imprisoned in the past and fail to adapt to the change. 19. Whitman is one of the representative poets in America. He employed brand-new means in his poetry. What are the features of his poetry?

His poetic style is marked by the use of the poetic “I”

He adopted “free verse”, that is, poetry without a fixed beat or regular rhyme scheme.

The images in his poems are unconventional

He uses oral English

His vocabulary is amazing

Parallelism and phonetic recurrence are used at the beginning of the lines

20.Whitman has made radical changes in the form of poetry by choosing free verse as his medium of expression. What are the characteristics of Whitm an’s free verse?

It doesn’t have fixed beat or regular rhyme scheme

His poetic lines are simple and prose-like, varying in length, which allows him to express his ideas freely

He also applies oral English in his free verse to make it an effective way to express freely the feelings of common people.

21. Give a brief comment on Whitman’s style and language

radically innovative in terms of poetic form by using “free verse”, poetry without a fixed beat or regular rhyme scheme

the use of poetic “I” representing all those people in his poems as well the poet

relatively simple and crude

honest and undistorted images of different aspects of America of the day

strong tendency to use oral English

22. A Rose for Emil y is one of Faulkner’s short stories. Comment on the character of the protagonist, Emily Grierson, and analyze how this character is depicted.

Emily is an eccentric spinster who refuses to accept the passage of time, or the inevitable change and loss that accompanies it.

She is the symbols of the Old South but the prisoners of the past

In this story, Faulkner makes best use of the Gothic device in narrative, and deformed personality and abnormality Emily demonstrates in her relationship with her sweetheart is dramatized in such a way that we feel shocked and thrilled as we read along.

23. Some of Hemingway’s heroes are regarded as the Hemingway code heroes. Whatever the differences in experience and age, they all have something in common which Hemingway values. What are the characteristics of the Hemingway code hero?

They have seen the cold world and for one cause or another, they boldly and courageously face the reality, whatever the result is, they are ready to live with grace under pressure.

Almost all his heroes are “soldiers” either in a narrow or broad sense. They are out there against the nature or the world, or even themselves. But no matter where the battle-ground is and how tragic the ending is, they will never be defeated.

Hemingway himself is one of those code heroes, some critics say his protagonists are autobiographical, for they share something that is Hemingway.

24．“ ‘My faith is gone!’ cried he（Goodman Brown）,after one stupefied moment. ‘There is no good on earth; and sin is but a name. Come, devil! For to thee is this world given.’ ”（from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown”）Make a comment on this passage.

Goodman Brown utters this cry when he finds his wife Faith, together with lots of prominent people of the village and the church, attending a witches’ Sabbath in the woods.

His cry shows his great surprise and disillusionment. Thereafter, he becomes distrustful and doubtful. He lives in dismal and gloomy life because he is never able to believe in goodness or piety again. Here the author makes a pun of

the word “faith”, Goodman Brown loses not only his faith in religion and life, but also his faith in his wife, for his wife’s name is Faith.

From this story, we also can see that Hawthorne is a great allegorist and a master of symbolism. The story itself is an allegory and is full of symbols such as the forest, the snake, and pink ribbon.

38. The following passage is taken from The Merchant of Venice. Read it carefully and find the dramatic it contains. Use it as an example to illustrate what dramatic irony is.

“Bassanio: Antonio, I am married to a wife

Which is as dear to me as life itself;

But life itself, my wife, and all world,

Are not with me esteem’d abov e thy life;

I would lose all, ay, sacrifice them all

Here to this devil, to deliver you.

Portia: Your wife would give you little thanks for that,

If she were by to hear you make the offer.”

When the audience is aware of a discrepancy between a character’s perception of his or her own situation and the true nature of that situation, that is dramatic irony.

In the given example, Portia, Bassanio’s newly-married wife, disguised herself as a lawyer to take charge of the case, Portia herself and the audience know all this, but Bassanio is ignorant of it, so when Bassanio offers in front of his disguised wife to sacrifice her in order to deliver Antonia, he makes himself behave in a ridiculous way in the eyes of the audience. Thus an effect of dramatic irony is achieved.

26．Daniel Defoe’s novel Robinson Crusoe was a great success partly because the protagonist was a real middle-class hero. Discuss Crusoe, the protagonist of the novel, as an embodiment of the rising middle-class virtues in the mid-eighteenth century England.

A. Social background: the 18th century England witnessed the growing importance of the bourgeois or middle class

a. The Industrial Revolution

b. The expansion of international markets

c. Values/ virtues / moral standard different from those of the feudal aristocratic class—courageous, full of energy, hard working, practical, resourceful, self-reliant, etc. thus

d. Literature should give / provide a realist presentation of the life of the common life; it should meet the demand / interest of the middle class people

B. Robinson Crusoe embodies the virtue of the middle class people

a. Crusoe as an adventurous / courageous man full of energy and courage

b. Crusoe as a practical man

c. Crusoe as a resourceful / self-reliant man

d. Crusoe as a patient / persistent man

e. and others

27.Retell in a few sentences the story of the last chapter (Ch, 135) “The Chase－Th ird Day” of Melville’s novel Moby-Dick. Discuss the meaning of the ending of the story.

The story of Moby-Dick is simple, telling the battle between Ahab, captain of the whaling ship Pequod and the monstrous white whale Moby-Dick. Ahab is obsessed by his determination to revenge himself upon the fierce, cunning whale, because it has crippled him.

After many days of search and pursuit, the white whale finally sighted. Chapter 135 is a description of the third day’s chase. Three boats have been lowered in chase of the whale, two of them are later destroyed by the whale. Although the whale is harpooned at last, the ship is sunk and all the people in board are drowned excepted Ishmael, the narrator of the story who happens to be rescued by another whale ship.

Moby-Dick is not merely a whaling tale or sea adventure, it is a tragic epic. The voyage the Pequod has made is a

symbolic voyage of the mind in the quest of the truth and knowledge of the universe, a spiritual exploration into man’s deep reality and psychology. The battle between Ahab and the white whale symbolizes the struggle between man and nature, man and fate, good and evil.

28. William Shakespeare is one of the most remarkable playwrights the world has ever known.

(1)Name his four greatest tragedies.

Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, King Lear

(2)What are the characteristics of the four tragedies in common?

They have some characteristics in common. Each portray some noble hero, who faces the injustice in human life and is caught in difficult situation whose fate is closely connected with the fate of the whole nation.

(3)Briefly summarize each hero’s weakness of nature.

Each hero has weakness of nature.

Hamlet, the melancholic scholar-prince, faces the dilemma between action and mind

Othello’s inne r weakness is makes use by the outside evil force

The old king Lear who is unwilling to totally give up his power make him suffer from treachery and infidelity

And Macbeth’s lust for power stirs up his ambition and leads him to incessant crimes

29．Why are naturalists inevitably pessimistic in their view?

They accept the negative implication of Darwin’s theory of evolution, and believe that society is a “jungle” where survival struggles go on.

They believe that man’s instinct, the environment, an d other social and economic forces play an overwhelming role and man’s fate is “determined” by such forces beyond his control.

30. The Waste Land is T．S．Eliot’s most important single poem．Try to state the theme and the significance of the poem briefly.

(1)The theme of The Waste Land: The Waste Land is a poem concerned with the spiritual breakup of a modern civilization in which human life has lost its meaning, significance and purpose. The poem has developed a whole set of historical, cultural and religious themes; but it is often regarded as being primarily a reflection of the 20th-century disillusionment and frustration in a sterile and futile society.

(2)The significance of The Waste Land: The Waste Land has been hailed as a landmark and a model of the 20th century English poetry, comparable to Wordsworth’s Lyrical Ballads.

31. Mark Twain and Henry James are two representatives of realistic writers in American literature. How’s Twain’s realism different from James’s realism?

Mark Twain’s realis m is tainted with local color, preferring to have his own region and people at the forefront of his stories

James’s realism is concerned with the inner world of man

James’s realism is also concerned with the international theme.

Mark T wain’s language is simple, direct, and colloquial,

Mark Twain employs humor in his writing

James’s language is elaborate and refined with lengthy psychological analyses.

32.Why has Fielding been regarded as “Father of the English novel?”

Fielding has been regarded b y some as “Father of the English novel”, for his contribution to the establishment of the form of the modern novel. Of all the 18th century novelists, he was the first to set out, both in theory and practice, to write specifically a “comic epic in prose”, the first to give the modern novel its structure and style.

33.Summerize the story of Mark twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in about 100 words,and comment on the theme of the novel.

Mark Twain’s novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a sequence to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. The story takes place along the Mississippi river before the Civil War in United States, around 1850.

Along the river, floats in a small raft, with two people on it, one is an ignorant, uneducated black slave named Jim and the other is little uneducated, outcast white boy about the age of thirteen, called Huckleberry Finn, or Huck Finn.

The novel relates the story of the escape of Jim from slavery and, more important, how Huck Finn, floating with him and helping him as best as he could, changes his mind, his prejudice, about Black people, and comes to accept Jim as a man and as a close friend as well.

During their journey, they experience a series of adventures: coming across two frauds, the Duck and King, witnessing the lynching and murder of a harmless drunkard, being lost in a fog and finally Tom’s coming to rescue.

The theme of the novel may be best summed in a word “freedom”: Huck wants to escape from the bond of civilization and Jim wants to escape from the yoke of slavery. Mark Twain uses the raft’s journey down the Mississippi river to express his thematic contrasts between innocence and experience, nature and culture, wildness and civilization. 34．Analyze the character of Jane Eyre based on the selection taken from Chapter X X Ⅲof Jane Eyre.

Jane Eyre, an orphan child with a fiery spirit and a longing to love and be loved, a poor, plain, little governess who dares to love her master, a man superior to her in many ways, and even is brave enough to declare to the man her love for him, cuts a completely new woman image. She represents those middle-class working woman who are struggling for recognition of their basic rights and equality as a human being.

Chapter XXIII, Jane Eyre finds herself hopelessly in love with Mr. Rochester but she is aware that her love is out of the question, so when forces to confront Mr. Rochester, she desperately and openly declare her equality with him and her love for him.

35.Elizabeth Bennet, the heroine in Pride and Prejudice, is often regarded as the most successful character created by Jane Austen. Make a brief comment on Elizabeth’s character.

Elizabeth is clever, alert, and observant. She is more observant and less charitable than Jane in recognizing the characters of B ingley’s sisters. She is recognizes Mr. Collins’ character in his letter and after meeting him turns down firmly and with dignity his patronizing proposal. She is able to match wits with Darcy several times and with Colonel Fitzwilliam, earning their respect and admiration.

Fearless and frank, not rattled by the attack of Lady Catherine de Bourgh, she wins a notable victory, sending her Ladyship away completely routed. She is independent but not infallible in her judgment—taken in by the charm of the worthless Wickham, she cannot be blamed for misjudging Darcy.

She is able to control her emotions at times of stress—when she first encounters Darcy at Pemberley; when she realizes that she loves Darcy and has good reason to fear that she has lost him, she waits without replying for time to brig solution. She is witty, fun-loving, recognizing humor in herself and in others, but ridiculing only folly, nonsense, and inconsistencies. She recognizes the follies of her own-family and their shortcoming as well as their virtues.

She is considerate of others but quite capable of asserting herself when occasion demands. She has a playful and unaffected manner, sunny disposition, natural animation, sense of fun, and sweet reasonableness. She is ready to laugh at herself and everything save “what is wise and good”. She shows a sense a humor by telling what Darcy has said about her at Meryton ball.

36. William Faulkner is one of the greatest American novelists. What do you know about his narrative techniques?

The range of narrative techniques used by Faulkner is remarkable.

He would never step between the characters and the reader to explain, but let the characters explain themselves and hinder as little as possible the reader’s direct experience of the work of art.

The most characteristic way of structuring his stories is to fragment the chronological time. He deliberately broke up the chronology of his narrative by juxtaposing the past with the present, in the way the montage does in a movie.

The modern stream-of-consciousness technique was frequently and skillfully exploited by Faulkner to emphasize the reactions and inner musings of the narrator

Moreover, Faulkner was good at presenting multiple points of view

The other narrative techniques Faulkner used to construct his stories include symbolism and mythological and biblical allusion.

37. "Even then he stood there, hidden wholly in that kindness which is night, while the uprising fumes filled the room. When the odor reached his nostrils, he quit his attitude and fumbled for the bed.

‘What’s the use?’ he said, weakly, as he stretched himself to rest."

They above is quoted from Thoedore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie. Briefly tell the situation that leads to the suicide and interpret Hurstwood’s final words -"What’s the use?"

Sister Carrie has made a great success. As her fame arises, she deserts her former lover Hurstwood. In a cold winter, Hurstwood makes a last attempt to seek help from Carrie, but he failed, so in desperation, he decides to kill himself by turning on the gas.

By making that comment, Hurstwood seems to have realized that it is useless to continue to fight against fate. His fate is not controlled by his own effects but by some social forces too strong for him to resist, so he decides to give up. 38. The literary school of naturalism was quite popular in the late 19th century. What are the major characteristics of naturalism?

Strongly influenced by social Darwinism, naturalism emphasizes the determining power of the crushing forces of environment and heredity.

Being devoid of the freedom of choice and incapable of shaping their own destinies, men and women are helpless and insignificant in a cold and indifferent world.

The naturalistic writers reported truthfully and objectively, with a passion for scientific accuracy and overwhelming accumulation of factual detail.

39. What’s the artistic tendency of https://www.360docs.net/doc/8b1918932.html,wrence?

Lawrence’s artistic tendency is mainly realism, which combines dramatic scenes with an authoritative commentary. And the realistic feature is most obviously seen in its detailed portraiture. With the working-class simplicity and directness, Lawrence can summon up all physical attributes associated with the common daily objects. In presenting the psychological aspects of his characters, Lawrence makes use of poetic imagination and symbolism in his writing. Lawrence endows the traditional realism with fresh psychological meaning.

40. Inspiration for the romantic approach initially came from two great shapers of thought.Who are the two?And what ideas they expressed inspire the romantic writers?

The French philosopher, Jean Jacques Rousseau and the German writer Johna Wolfgan von Goethe

It is Rousseau who established the cult of the individual and championed the freedom of the human spirit; his famous announcement was “I felt before I thought”. Goethe and his compatriots extolled the romantic spirit.

41.Give a brief discussion of Henry James’ literary achievement.

International theme: James’s novels are always set against a larger international background, usually between America and Europe

Psychological realism: James’s realism is characterized by his psychological approach to his subject matter. His fictional world is concerned with the inner world of human beings. He is generally regarded as the forerunner of the 20th century “stream-of-consciousness” novels and the founder of psychological realism

His language is highly refined and insightful; he is the most expert of stylist of his time

Narrative point of view: moving away from authorial omniscience, making the characters reveal themselves Literary criticism: “The Art of Fiction”. The theme of “The Art of Fiction” clearly indicates that the aim of the novel is to present life, also advocates the freedom of the artist to write about anything that concerns him.

42. What are the major themes of modernist literature?

The major themes of the modernist literature are the distorted, alienated and ill relationship between man and nature, man and society, man and man, and man and himself.

43. What makes Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn more than a child's adventure story? Briefly discuss the question from THREE of the following aspects: the setting, the language, the character（s）, the theme and the style.

Setting: in the novel Mark Twain recreates a small-town world of America and presents the local color

Language: he uses simple, direct language faithful to the colloquial speech, the vernacular language of the local people

Character(s): the novel is a criticism of social injustice, hypocrisy, conservativeness and narrow-mindedness of the American small town society

Style: the novel employs a humorous style of narrative and is also highly symbolic with the central symbol.

44. Discuss Charles Dickens’ art of fiction：the setting，the character — portrayal，the language，etc．，based on his novel Oliver Twist．

(1)Charles Dickens uses a mixture of the contemporary and recollected past as his fictional setting. In his works, he sets out a full map and a large scale criticism of the 19th century England, especially London. Oliver Twist is his early novel, in which Dickens reveals the dehumanizing workhouse system and the dark, criminal underworld life.

(2)Character-portrayal is the most distinguished feature of Dickens’s works. His works best-depicted characters are those innocent, virtuous, persecuted, helpless child characters such as Oliver Twist, Little Nell. Dickens writes best when she writes from the child’s point of view. And he is also famous for the description of those horrible and grotesque characters like Fagin, Bill Sikes..

(3)With his first sentence, he engages the reader’s attention and holds it to the end. In language, he is often compared with Shakespeare for his adeptness with vernacular and large vocabulary with which he brings out many a wonderful verbal picture of man and scene. Dickens’s works are also characterized by a mingling of humor and pathos.His humor and wit seem inexhaustible.

45. What is literary naturalism?

The impact of Darwin’s evolutionary theory on the American thought and the influence of the 19th century French literature on the American men of letters gave rise to yet another school of realism: American naturalism The naturalists chose their subjects from the lower ranks of society and portrayed misery and poverty of the “underdogs” who were demonstrably victims of society and nature.

The most familiar theme in American naturalism is the theme of human “bestiality”, especially as an explanation of sexual desire.

Artistically naturalistic writings are usually unpolished in language, lacking in academic skills and unwieldy in structure. Philosophically the naturalists believe that the real and the true is always partially hidden from the eyes of the individual, or beyond his control.

In a word, naturalism is evolved from realism when the author’s tone in writing becomes less serious and less sympathetic but more ironic and more pessimistic. It is no more than a different philosophical approach to reality, or to human existence.

46. Greatly and permanently affected by the war experiences, Hemingway formed his own writing style，together with his theme and hero. Please discuss Hemingway’s writing style in relation to his novels you have read.

Hemingway himself once said, “The dignity of movement of an i ceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water”. Typical of this “iceberg” analogy is Hemingway’s style. He deals with a limited range of characters in quite similar circumstances and measures them against unvarying code, known as “grace under pressure”.

The characters he depicted, with the honesty, the discipline, and the restraint, survive in the process of seeking to master the code

According to Hemingway, good literary writing should be able to make readers feel the emotion of the characters directly and the best way to produce the effect is to set down exactly every particular kind of feeling without any authorial comments, without conventionally emotive language, and with a bare minimum of adjectives and adverbs.

Besides, Hemingway develops the style of colloquialism initiated by Mark Twain

Hemingway was highly praised by the Nobel Prize Committee for “his powerful style forming mastery of the art” of creating modern fiction.

47. Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown” is often read as a conventional allegory. What does the work symbolically concern?

Young Goodman Brown is one of Hawthorne’s most profound tales. In the manner of its concern with guilt and evil, it exemplifies what Melville called the “power of blackness” in Hawthorne’s wo rks.

It hero, a na?ve young man who accepts both society in general and his fellow men as individuals worth his regard, is confronted with the vision of human evil in one terrible night, and becomes thereafter distrustful and doubtful.

Allegorically, our p rotagonist becomes an Everyman named Brown, a “young” man, who will be aged in one night by an adventure that makes everyone in his world a fallen idol.

However, the story is manipulated in such a way that we as readers feel that Hawthorne poses the question of Good and Evil in man but withholds his answer, and he does not permits himself to determine whether the event of the night of trial are real or the mere figment of a dream.