自考英语 英美文学历年考题之2005年4月卷

ⅠMultiple choice (40 points, 1 for each)

Select from the four choices of each item the one that best answers the question or completes the statement. Mark your choice by blackening the corresponding letter [A],[B],[C]or[D] on the answer sheet.

1. Which of the following statements about the Elizabethan age is NOT true?
[A] It is the age of translation.
[B] It is the age of bourgeois revolution.
[C] It is the age of exploration.
[D] It is the age of the protestant reformation.
2. In lines “Which gold jewels cover every part, /And hide with ornaments their want of art,” Pope rejects .
[A] the “Follow Mature” fallacy [B] artificiality
[C] aesthetic order [D] good taste
3. William Wordsworth, a romantic poet, advocated all the following EXCEPT .
[A] the using of everyday language spoken by the common people
[B] the expression of the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings
[C] the humble and rustic life as subject matter
[D] elegant wording and inflated figures of speech
4. What as a cultural heritage exerted great influence over American moral values and American Romanticism as well?
[A] nationalism [B] rationalism [C] individualism [D] Puritanism
5. The poem “This is my letter to the World” expresses Emily Dickinson’s strong feeling of her relationship with the outside world, that is, .
[A] her indifference to the outside world
[B] her strong desire to escape from the world
[C] her anxiety about her communication with the outside world
[D] her eagerness to win favor from the readers
6. In The Tragic History of Doctor Faustus, the doctor sold his soul to the Devil for the right to use the Devil’s power at will for .
[A] as long as he lived
[B] twenty-four years
[C] two score and four years
[D] the last quarter of his life span
7. Hamlet’s melancholy derives from his .
[A] inability to avenge his father’s death timely
[B] fear of being killed in the action of revenge
[C] fear of the consequences if he should fail in the revenge
[D] painful thoughts of being deserted and betrayed by his close relatives and friends
8. In the first book of Milton’s Paradise Lost, the image of Satan is that of a(n) .
[A] proud and deceitful revolutionary
[B] evil and wretched demon
[C] defeated but not conquered hero
[D] somber and irreconcilable enemy
9. “Let not Ambition mock their useful toil, /Their homely joys, and destiny obscure; /Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile/The short and simple annals of the poor.”
The above lines are probably taken from .
[A] Alexander Pope’s Essay on Criticism
[B] Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene
[C] John Donne’s “The Sun Rising”
[D] Thomas Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”
10. As a literary figure, Sophia appears in Henry Fielding’s .
[A] Tom Jones [B] Amelia [C] Joseph Andrews [D] Jonathan Wild the Great
11. The lines “It was a miracle of rare device, /A sunny pleasure dome with caves of ice” are found in .
[A] Samuel Taylor Coleridge “Kubla Khan”
[B] William Wordsworth’s Lines Written in Early Spring”
[C] John Keats’s “Ode to Autumn”
[D] Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind”
12. Prometheus Unbound is Shelley’s greatest achievement. Prometheus, according to the Greek mythology, was chained by Zeus on Mount Caucasus and suffered the vulture’s feeding on his liver for .
[A] planning a revolt to dethrone God
[B] misinterpreting God’s decree to reconcile man and nature
[C] prophesying the arrival of spring in a winter season
[D] stealing the fire from heaven and giving it to man
13. “ ‘Damn the fool! There he is,’ cried Heathcliff, sinking back into his seat. ‘Hush, my darling! Hush, Hush, Catherine! I’ll stay. If he shot me so, I’d expire with a blessing on my lips.’ ”The novel from which the passage is taken must be .
[A] Janes Austen’s Pride and Prejudice
[B] Charles Dickens’s The Old Curiosity Shop
[C] Samuel Richardson’s Pamela
[D] Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights
14. “My Last Duchess” is a poem that best exemplifies Robert Browning’s .
[A] sensitive ear for the sounds of the English language
[B] excellent choice of words
[C] mastering of the metrical devices
[D] use of the dramatic monologue
15. Here is a passage from Middlemarch, a novel by George Eliot: “Her blooming full-pulsed youth stood there in a moral imprisonment which made itself one with the chill, colorless, narrowed landscape, with the shrunken furniture, the never read books, and the ghostly stag in a pale fantastic world that seemed to be vanishing from the daylight.”
Who is the lady mentioned in the quoted passage?
[A] Dorothea. [B] Emma. [C] Molly. [D] Irene.
16. Tess of the D’Urbervilles, one of Thomas Hardy’s best known novels, portrays man as
.
[A] being either hereditarily good or bad
[B] being self-sufficient
[C] having no control over his own fate
[D] still retaining his own faith in a world of confusion
17. Which of the following brings LITTLE impact on the development of 20th century literature?
[A] Friedrich Nietzche’s assertion: “God is dead.”
[B] Arthur Schopenhauer’s and Henry Bergerson’s philosophical ideas of irrationality.
[C] T. S. Eliot’s incantation “Shanti, shanti, shanti”, the very last line of The Waste Land
[D] Freudian-Jungian psycho-analysis
18. The term tome in literature means .
[A] sound effect such as rhyme and metrical device
[B] the pitch of a word used to determine its meaning in the given context
[C] the manner of expression to indicate the speaker’s attitude toward the subject
[D] a shade of color to reflect the change of light
19. Which of the following best describes the structure of T. S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”?
[A] “a pair of ragged claws/Scuttling across the floors of silent sea”
[B] “pinned and wriggling on the wall”
[C] “the yellow smoke . . . /Rubbing its back upon the windowpanes”
[D] “Streets that follow like a tedious argument/Of insidious intent”
20. In which of the following poems by William Butler Yeats did you find the allusion to Helen and the Trojan War?
[A] “Sailing to Byzantium”
[B] “Leda and the Swan”
[C] “The Lake Isle of Innisfree”
[D] “Down by the Sally Garden”
21. In Tess of the D’Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy resolutely makes a seduced girl his heroine, which clearly demonstrates the author’s of the Victorian moral standards.
[A] blind fondness [B] total acceptance
[C] deep understanding [D] mounting defiance
22. is the most representative Victorian poet whose poetry voices the doubt and the faith , the grief and the joy of the English people in an age of fast change.
[A] Robert Browning [B] Alfred Tennyson
[C] George G. Byron [D] Thomas Hardy
23. “She smiled, no doubt, / Whene’er I passed . . ./ . . .This grew; I gave commands;/ Then all smiles stopped together.”
The above quoted lines imply that she .
[A] obeyed his order and stopped smiling at everybody, including the duke
[B] obeyed his order and stopped smiling at anybody except the duke
[C] refused to obey the order and never smiled again
[D] was murdered at the order of the duke
24.Pip ,Estella, Havisham ,Magwitch, and Joe Gargery aare most likely the names of the characters in .
[A] Oliver Twist [B] David Copperfield
[C] Bleak House [D] Great Expectations
25. “ ‘I believe you are made of stone,’ he said, clenching his fingers so hard that he broke the fragile cup. ‘You seem to forget,’ she said, ‘that cup is not!’ ”
From the above quotation we might suppose the woman’s tone is very .
[A] sarcastic [B] delightful
[C] sentimental [D] humorous
26. The statement that love and life can be best enjoyed when they are treated in the natural way may well sum up the theme of .
[A] Browning’s “Meeting at Night” [B] Yeats’s “Down by the Salley Gardens”
[C] Tennyson’s “Break, Break, Break” [D] Keats’s “Ode to a Nightingale”
27. “Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind” is a famous quote from ’s writings.
[A] Walt Whitman [B] Henry David Thoreau
[C] Herman Melville [D] Ralph Waldo Emerson
28.The story “Rip Van Winkle” reveals, to some extent, the attitude of its author towards the American Revolution and the young Republic.

[A] conservative [B] sympathetic [C] indifferent [D] objective
29. “He thinks that a romance should be able to present the truth with the writer’s own creative imagination. And his narratives have thus become a neutral territory , somewhere between the real world and the fairyland, where the actual and the imaginary may meet, and each imbues itself with the nature of the other.”
The writer who expressed his ideas about romance and neutral territory in the above quoted passage must be .
[A] Washington Irving [B] Ralph Waldo Emerson
[C] Nathaniel Hawthorne [D] Henry James
30. 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
31. Dreiser’s Trilogy of Desire includes three novels. They are The Financer, The Titan and .
[A] The Genius [B] The Tycoon
[C] The Stoic [D] The Giant
32. Daisy Miller’s tragedy of indiscretion is intensified and enlarged by its narration from the point of view of
[A] the author Henry James
[B] the Italian youth Giovanelli
[C] the American youth Winterbourne
[D] her mother Mrs. Miller
33. 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 .
[A] local colorism [B] vernacularism
[C] modernism [D] naturalism
34. 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
35. “If honest labor be unremunerative and difficult to endure; if it be the long, long road which never reaches beauty, but wearies the feet and the heart; if the drag to follow beauty be such that one abandons the admired way, taking rather the despised path leading to her dreams quickly, who shall cast the first stone?” Where is the underlined part taken from?
[A] The Bible. [B] Milton.
[C] Shakespeare. [D] Hawthorne.
36. Most recognizable literary movement that gave rise to the 20th-century American literature, or we may say, the second American Renaissance, is the movement.
[A] transcendental [B] leftist
[C] expatriate [D] expressionistic
37. 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
38. 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
39. 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
40. Stylistically, Henry James’s fiction is characterized by .
[A] short, clear sentences
[B] abundance of local images
[C] ordinary American speech
[D] highly refined language

Ⅱ Reading comprehension (16 points, 4 for each)

Read the quoted parts carefully and answer the questions in English. Write your answer in the corresponding space on the answer sheet.
41. “A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company;
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought.”
Questions:
A. Identify the poem and the poet.
B. What does the word “jocund” mean?
C. What idea does the last line in the quotation express?
42. “What kind of living will it be when you –oh , God! Would you like to live with your soul in the grave?” ( Chapter 15, Wuthering Heights)
Questions:
A. What does “soul” refer to ?
B. The dash after the word “you” stands for something omitted. What does it stand?
C. What kind of life Heathcliff would live, according to your understanding, when his “soul” is in the grave?
43. “We passed the School, where Children strove
At Recess—in the Ring—
We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain—
We passed the Setting Sun— ”
Questions:
A. Identify the poem and the poet.
B. What do “the school,” “the Fields” and “the Setting Sun” stand for?
C. What idea does the quoted passage express?
44. “For I have had too much
Of apple-picking: I am overtired
Of the great harvest I myself desired.”
Questions:
A. Identify the poem and the poet.
B. Who is the speaker?
C. What idea do the quoted lines express?

Ⅲ Questions and answers (24 points in all, 6 for each)

Give brief answers to each of the following questions in English. Write your answers in the corresponding space on the answer sheet.
45. 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 of an allegory usually concerned with?
46. Here is the last stanza of the excerpt from Byron’s “The Isles of Greece”:
“Place me on Sunium’s marble steep,
Where nothing, save the waves and I,
May hear our mutual murmurs sweep;
There, swan-like, let me sing or die;
A land of slaves ne’er be mine—
Dash down yon cup of Samian wine.”
Determine the speaker first and then discuss BRIEFLY the main idea of the stanza or of the whole excerpt. You may want to consider the possible implications of the last two lines.
47. Why does Sister Carrie , as some critics think, best embody Dreiser’s naturalistic belief? What is Hurstwood doing when Carrie is rocking comfortably in her luxuriant hotel room before she boards a ship for London at the end of the novel?
48. William Faulkner, a Nobel Prize 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?

Ⅳ Topic discussions (20 points in all, 10 for each)

Write no less than 150 words on each of the following topics in English in the corresponding space on the answer sheet.
49. Comment on the special features of Daniel Defoe’s language.
You can discuss the topic from diction, syntax, images, figures of speech, formal or informal of the languages and so on.
50. Mark Twain has presented the 19th century America in his own unique way. Discuss Twain’s art of fiction, the setting, the language, and the characters, etc. , based on his novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.