《英美文学选读》(课程代码00604) 第一大题：单项选择题
1、“So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, / So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.”Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18 includes three stanzas according to the content with these last two lines as a（ ）, which completes the sense of the above lines.
A.prelude B.couplet C.epigraph D.exposition
2、“Therefore at this fair are all such merchandise sold, as houses, lands, trades, places, honors, preferments, titles, countries, kingdoms, lusts, pleasures, and delights of all sorts, as whores, bawds, wives, husbands, children, masters, servants?” The above sentences are taken from（ ）.
A.John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress B.Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels C.Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones D.Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe
3、As a lexicographer, he distinguished himself as the author of the first English dictionary—A Dictionary of the English Language. What is his name?（ ）.
A.Jonathan Swift B.Samuel Johnson C.Ben Jonson D.John Milton
4、The composition of “Kubla Khan”by S.T. Coleridge was based on （ ）.
A.a story B.a dream
C.a dialogue D.an experience
5、“Tiger! Tiger! Burning bright/ In the forests of the night, / What immortal hand or eye / Could frame thy fearful symmetry?”(“The Tiger”by William Blake) The above lines（ ）.
A.describe the tiger’s fierce eyes and forceful hands at night B.express the poet’s curiosity for the skillful creation of the tiger C.express the poet’s surprise at the sight of the tiger’s well-proportioned body
D.express the poet’s terror at the sight of the tiger in the forest at night
6、“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a （ ）.”This quotation in Austen’s Pride and Prejudice sets the tone of the novel.
A.house B.title C.wife D.fame
7、In Hardy’s Wessex novels, there is an apparent（ ）touch in his description of the simple and beautiful though primitive rural life.
A.realistic B.nostalgic C.romantic D.sentimental
8、“If I’ve done wrong, I’m dying for it. It is enough! You left me too; but I won’t upbraid you! I forgive you. Forgive me!” These above lines are uttered by the heroine in（ ）.
A.Shapespeare’s Romeo and Juliet B.Emily Bront ’s Wuthering Heights
C.Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles D.Bernard Shaw’s Mrs. Warren’s Profession 9、Modernism takes（ ）as its theoretical base.
A.the irrational philosophy B.Darwin’s evolutionary theory C.the French symbolism D.Utilitarianism
10、The beginning of “The Love Song of J.Alfred Prufrock”moves from a series of fairly concrete physical settings—a cityscape( the famous“patient etherized upon a table”)and several interiors (women’s arms in the lamplight, coffee spoons, fireplaces)—to a series of vague ocean images. It aims to convey（ ）.
A.Prufrock’s emotional distance from the world as he comes to recognize his second-rate status
B.Prufrock’s eagerness to meet his dating lover C.Prufrock’s reluctance to meet his dating lover D.Prufrock’s excitement about the modern world
11、“North Richmond Street, being blind, was a quiet street except at the hour when the Christian Brothers’ School set the boy free. An uninhabited house of two storeys stood at the blind end, detached from its neighbours in a square ground. The other houses of the street, conscious of decent lives within them, gazed at one another with brown imperturbable faces.”
The above passage is the first paragraph of Araby by James Joyce. It sets a(n)（ ）tone of the story.
A.optimistic B.active C.gloomy D.serious
12、In Young Goodman Brown by Hawthorne, the name of Goodman Brown’s
wife is（ ）, which also contains many symbolic meanings.
A.Ruth B.Hester C.Faith D.Mary
13、The Romantic Period, one of the most important periods in the history of American literature, stretches from the end of __________ to the outbreak of ___________.（ ）
A.the 17th century?the American War of Independence B.the 18th century?the American Civil War C.the 17th century?the American Civil War D.the 18th century?the U.S.-Mexican War
14、“The apparition of these faces in the crowd; / Petals on a wet, black bough.” This is the shortest poem written by（ ）.
A.E.E. Cummings B.T.S. Eliot C.Ezra Pound D.Robert Frost
15、Realism was a reaction against Romanticism or a move away from the bias towards romance and self-creating fictions, and paved the way to（ ）.
A.Cynicism B.Modernism
C.Transcendentalism D.Neo-Classicalism
16、In（ ）, William Faulkner illuminates the problem of black and white in the American Southern society as a close-knit destiny of blood brotherhood.
A.Go Down, Moses B.Light in August C.The Marble Faun D.As I Lay Dying
17、The theme of Washington Irving’s Rip Van Winkle is（ ）.
A.the conflict of human psyche
B.the fight against racial discrimination C.the familial conflict
D.the nostalgia for the unrecoverable past
18、Hemingway once described Mark Twain’s novel（ ）the one book from which “all modern American literature comes.”
A.The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn B.The Adventures of Tom Sawyer C.The Gilded Age
D.The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg
19、Which of the following historical events does not directly help to stimulate the rising of the Renaissance Movement?
A.The rediscovery of ancient Greek and Roman culture. B.The new discoveries in geography and astrology. C.The Glorious revolution.
D.The religious reformation and the economic expansion.
20、Which of the following statements best illustrates the theme of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18?
A.The speaker eulogizes the power of Nature. B.The speaker satirizes human vanity.
C.The speaker praises the power of artistic creation.
D.The speaker meditates on man’s salvation.
21、Romance, which uses narrative verse or prose to tell stories of adventures or other heroic deeds, is a popular literary form in the medieval period.
A.Christian B.Knightly C.Greek D.Primitive
22、Among the great Middle English poets, Geoffrey Chaucer is known for his production of
A.Piers Plowman
B.Sir Gawain and the Green Knight C.Confessio Amantis D.The Canterbury Tales
23、\ Which is as dear to me as life itself;
But life itself, my wife, and all the world, Are not with me esteem’d above thy life; I would lose all, ay, sacrifice them all, Here to the devil, to deliver you.
Portia: Your wife would give you little thanks for that, If she were by to hear you make the offer.\
The above is a quotation taken from Shakespeare’s comedy The Merchant of Venice. The quoted part can be regarded as a good example to illustrate
A.dramatic irony B.personification C.allegory D.symbolism
24、The true subject of John Donne’s poem, \
A.attack the sun as unruly servant
B.give compliments to the mistress and her power of beauty C.criticize the sun’s intrusion into the lover’s private life D.lecture the sun on where true royalty and riches lie
25、Of all the 18th century novelists Henry Fielding was the first to set out, both in theory and practice, to write specifically a \in prose,\the first to give the modern novel its structure and style.
A.tragic epic B.comic epic C.romance D.lyric epic
26、The Houyhnhnms depicted by Jonathan Swift in Gulliver’s travels are
A.horses that are endowed with reason
B.pigmies that are endowed with admirable qualities C.giants that are superior in wisdom
D.hairy, wild, low and despicable creatures, who resemble human beings not only in appearance but also in some other ways
27、Here are four lines from a literary work: \their care express,/And value books, and women men, for dress.\The work is
A.Thomas Gray’s \ B.John Milton’s Paradise Lost
C.Alexander Pope’s Essay on Criticism D.Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream
28、The phrase \seek salvation through constant struggles with their own weaknesses and all kinds of social evils\
A.Gulliver’s Travels B.The Rape of the Lock
C.Robinson Crusoe
D.The Pilgrim’s Progress
29、William Wordsworth, a romantic poet, advocated all the following EXCEPT
A.the use of everyday language spoken by the common people B.the expression of the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings C.the use of humble and rustic life as subject matter D.the use of elegant wording and inflated figures of speech 30、Which of the following is taken from John Keats’\Urn\
A.\B.\C.\D.\
31、\Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?\is an epigrammatic line by
A.J. Keats B.W. Blake C.W. Wordsworth D.P. B. Shelley
32、\the of human passin.
A.glory...ugliness
B.permanence... transience C.transience ... sordidness D.glory ... permanence
33、In the statement \in the grave?\
A.Heathcliff himself B.Catherine
C.one’s spiritual life D.one’s ghost
34、The typical feature of Robert Browning’s poetry is the
A.bitter satire
B.larger-than-life caricature C.Latinized diction D.dramatic monologue
35、The Victorian Age was largely and age of , eminently represented by Dickens and Thackeray.
A.poetry B.drama C.prose D.epic prose
36、is the first important governess novel in the English literary history.
A.Jane Eyre B.Emma
C.Wuthering Heights D.Middlemarch
37、The major concern of fiction lies in the tracing of the psychological development of his characters and in his energetic criticism of the dehumanizing effect of the capitalist industrialization on human nature.
A.D. H. Lawrence’s
B.J. Galsworthy’s C.W. Thackeray’s D.T. Hardy’s
38、Which is considered to be the best-known English dramatist since Shakespeare, and his representative works are plays inspired by social criticism.
A.Richard Sheridan B.Oliver Goldsmith C.Oscar Wilde D.Bernard Shaw
39、Which of the following is NOT a typical feature of Modernism?
A.To elevate the individual and inner being over the social being. B.To put the stress on traditional values.
C.To portray the distorted and alienated relationships betweenman and his environment.
D.To advocate a conscious break with the past.
40、The Romantic writers would focus on all the following issues EXCEPT the in the American literary history.
A.individual feelings
B.idea of survival of the fittest C.strong imagination D.return to nature
41、Henry David Thoreau’s work, has always been regarded as a masterpiece of New England Transcendentalism.
A.Walden B.The Pioneers C.Nature
D.Song of Myself
42、The famous 20-year sleep in \ the story in such a way that we are greatly affected by Irving’s
A.concern with the passage of time B.expression of transient beauty
C.satire on laziness and corruptibility of human beings D.idea about supernatural manipulation of man’s life
43、Walt Whitman was a pioneering figure of American poetry. His innovation first of all lies in his use of , poetry without a fixed beat or regular rhyme scheme.
A.bland verse B.heroic couplet C.free verse D.iambic pentameter
44、The literary characters of the American type in early 19th century are generally characterized by all the following features EXCEPT that they
A.speak local dialects
B.are polite and elegant gentlemen C.are simple and crude farmers
D.are noble savages(red and white) untainted by society
45、Hster Pryme, Dimmesdale, Cillingworth, and Pearl are most likely the names of the characters in
A.The Scarlet Letter
B.The House of the Seven Gablest C.The portrait of a Lady D.The Pioneers
46、\Dickinson’s about her communication with the outside world.
A.indifference B.anger C.anxiety D.sorrow
47、With Howells, James, and Mark Twain active on the literary scene, became the major trend in American literature in the seventies and eighties of the 19th century.
A.Sentimentalism B.romanticism C.realism D.naturalism
48、After The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Twain gives a literary independence to Tom’s buddy Huck in a book entitled
A.Life on the Mississippi B.The Gilded Age
C.The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
D.A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court
49、 However, the keynote of Daisy Miller’s character, turns out to be an admiring but a dangerous quality and her defiance of social taboos in the Old World finally brings her to a disaster in the clash between two different cultures.
A.experience B.sophistication C.worldliness D.innocence
50、Generally speaking, all those writers with a naturalistic approach
to human reality tend to be
A.transcendentalists B.idealists C.pessimists D.impressionists
51、 Emily Dickinson wrote many short poems on various aspects of life. Which of the following is NOT a usual subject of her poetic expression?
A.Religion and immortality B.Life and death C.Love and marriage D.War and peace
52、In \much / Of apple -picking: I am overtired/ Of the great harvest I myself desired.\
A.happy about the harvest
B.still very much interested in apple-picking C.expecting a greater harvest
D.indifferent to what he once desired
53、Chinese poetry and philosophy have exerted great influence over
A.Ezra Pound
B.Ralph Waldo Emerson C.Robert Frost D.Emily Dickinson
54、The Hemingway Code heroes are best remembered for their
A.indestructible spirit B.pessimistic view of life
C.war experiences D.masculinity
55、In The Emperor Jones and The Hairy Ape, O’Neill adopted the expressionist techniques to portray the of human beings in a hostile universe.
A.helpless situation B.uncertainty
C.profound religious faith D.courage and perseverance
56、In Hemingway’s \village and his experience inside the hut can be taken as
A.an essential lesson about Indian tribes B.a confrontation with evil and sin C.an initiation to the harshness of life D.a learning process in human relationship
57、Which of the following statements about Emily Grierson, the protagonist in Faulkner’s story \ for Emily,\
A.She has a distorted personality.
B.She is physically deformed and paralyzed.
C.She is the symbol of the old values of the South. D.She is the victim of the past glory. 第二大题：简答作者姓名 1、The Scarlet Letter Nathaniel Hawthorne 2、The Sun Also Rises Ernest Hemingway 3、Hamlet
William Shakespeare 4、David Copperfield
Charles Dickens 5、The Waste Land T. S. Eliot 6、Jane Eyre Emily Bront?
7、Sons and Lovers D. H. Lawrence 8、As I Lay Dying William Faulkner 9、Indian Camp Ernest Hemingway 10、Leaves of Grass Walt Whitman 11、Moby-Dick Herman Melville
12、Absalom, Absalom! William Faulkner
13、The Old Man and the Sea Ernest Hemingway
第三大题：选读并回答作者、题目及主题意义 1、Because I could not stop for Death, He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality. We slowly drove, he knew no haste, And I had put away
My labor, and my leisure too, For his civility. A. Emily Dickinson
B. Because I could not stop for Death
C. The author uses many literary devices to establish that death is inevitable and is not to be feared since it is a natural part of the endless cycle of nature . You should not be scared of it.
2、“The woods are lovely, dark and deep, But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep.” A. Robert Lee Frost
B. Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
C It explores the theme of the individual caught between nature and civilization. The speaker's location on the border between civilization and wilderness. Some critics have interpreted the poem as a meditation on death—the woods represent the allure of death, perhaps suicide, which the speaker resists in order to return to the mundane tasks which order daily life.
3、“Then I must go: --you have said it yourself.”
“No: you must stay! I swear it—and the oath shall be kept.”
“I tell you I must go!” I retorted, roused to something like passion. “ Do you think I can stay to become nothing to you? Do you think I am an automaton? –a machine without feelings? And can bear to have my morsel of bread snatched from my lips, and my drop of living water dashed from my cup? Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? –You think wrong!—I have as much soul as you—and full as much of heart!” A. Charlotte Bronte B. Jane Eyre
C. The novel sharply criticizes the religious hypocrisy of charity institutions like Lowood School, where girls are trained to be humble slaves. It rebukes the social discrimination and false convention about love and marriage. Besides, the novel is a moral fable. It tells us that people have to go through all kinds of physical or moral tests to obtain their final happiness.
4、I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. A. Wordsworth
B. I wandered lonely as a cloud
C. 1). Nature' s beauty uplifts the human spirit.
2). People sometimes fail to appreciate nature's wonders as they go about their daily routines.
5、\eyes met his and he looked away. He neither believed nor disbelieved her, but he knew that he had made a mistake in asking; he never had known, never know, what she was thinking. The sight of her inscrutable face, the thought of all the hundreds of evenings he had seen her sitting there like that, soft and passive, but so unreadable, unknown, enraged him beyond measure.\
A.John Galasworthy B. The Man of Property
C. It presents the inner mind of Soames in face of his wife's coldness. He can never know what is on his wife's mind because the makeup of his and her mentality is different. His wife Irene, whose mind is romantically inclined, is disgusted with her husband's possessiveness. Being unable to read his wife's mind is as good as saying that he really can't regard her as his property- this is the very reason why he is enraged beyond measure.
6、\ When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall, Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways.\A. T.S.Eliot
B. The Love Song of J.Alfred Pruforck.
C.Here, It expores Prufrock's inability to do anything against the society he is in .Prufrock imagines himself as a kind of insect pinned
on the wall and struggling in vain to get free.This image vividly shows Prufrock's current predicament.
7、\-I’m somebody else-- ... and I’m changed, and I can’t tell what’s my name, or who I am.\ A.Washington Irving. B. Rip Van Winkle
C. When Rip is back home after a period of 20 years,he finds that everything has changed.All those old values are gone,and he can hardly feel at home in a changed society.One of the functions that Rip serves in the story is to provide a measuring stick for change. It is through him that Irving drives home the theme that a desire for change,improvement,and progress could subvert stable society. 8、\ Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--- I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.\A.Robert Frost B. The Road Not Taken
C.The speaker is telling his experience of making choices.He seems to suggest that“Make good choice of your life.” 9、\ His house is in the village though; He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow A. Robert Lee Frost
B. Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
C It explores the theme of the individual caught between nature and civilization. The speaker's location on the border between civilization and wilderness. Some critics have interpreted the poem as a meditation on death—the woods represent the allure of death, perhaps suicide, which the speaker resists in order to return to the mundane tasks which order daily life.
10、Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st; So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. A. Shakespeare B. sonnet 18
C. His sonnet 18 expresses that beautiful things can rely on the force of literature to reach eternity. Literature is created by man, thus it declares man’s eternity. The poem shows the mighty self-confidence of the newly class. The vivid, variable and rich images reflect the lively and adventurous spirits of those who were opening new world.
11、I lingered before her stall, though I knew my stay was useless, to make my interest in her wares seem the more real. Then I turned away slowly and walked down the middle of the bazaar. I allowed the two pennies to fall against the sixpence in my pocket. I heard a voice call from one end of the gallery that the light was out. The upper part of the hall was now completely dark.
Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger.
A. James Joyce
B. Araby(from Dubliners):
C. Theme :The child does not live with his parents but with an uncle and aunt, which is a symbol of isolation and lack of proper relation between parents and children.
第四大题：名词解释题 1、Lake Poets
William and his sister settled in the English Lake District. The poet
Robert Southey as well as Coleridge lived nearby, and the three men became known as the Lake Poets.
2、Robinson Crusoe
Robinson Crusoe, is a novel by Daniel Defoe. It is sometimes considered to be the first novel in English. The book is a fictional autobiography of the title character—a castaway who spends 28 years on a remote tropical island , encountering Native Americans, captives, and mutineers before being rescued.
3、Jazz Age
The Jazz Age describes the period after the end of World War I, through the Roaring Twenties, ending with the onset of the Great Depression. In this age traditional values of the previous period declined.
The phrase was coined by the writer F. Scott Fitzgerald, who greatly criticized this new era of 'relaxation'.
4、The Lost Generation
It refers to the group of U.S. writers who came of age during World War I and established their reputations in the 1920s. The term was coined by Gertrude Stein. The writers considered themselves “lost” because their inherited values could not operate in the postwar world and they felt spiritually alienated from a country they considered hopelessly provincial and emotionally barren. The term embraces Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Dos Passos, E.E. Cummings, among others.
5、Stream-of-consciousness
Stream of consciousness, which presents the thoughts of a character in the random. It has the following characteristics: First it reveals the action or plot through the mental processes of the characters. Second, character development is achieved through revelation of extremely personal and often typical thought processes. Third, the action of the plot seldom corresponds to real, chronological time. Fourth, it replaces narration, description, and commentary with dramatic interior monologue and free association.
6、 Modernism
During the first decades of the 20th century modernism became an international tendency in art and literature. It began in Germany in the 1890s, and spread worldwide, and ended in the early 1940s. It included
a wide range of artistic expressions such as symbolism, impressionism, post-impressionism, imagism, expressionism and so on
7、The American Dream
The American Dream is a national ethos of the United States of America in which freedom includes a promise of prosperity. The idea of the American Dream is rooted in that \they are \by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights\including \e, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.\
8、 The Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution began in mid-l8th century. During this period ,England was experiencing the change from a primarily agricultural society to a modern industrial nation. As a result, the ruling power was shifted from the old aristocracy to the bourgeoisie.
9、The Pilgrim Progress
The Pilgrim's Progress is an allegory in which general concepts such as sin, despair, and faith are represented as people or as aspects of the natural world. In The Pilgrim's Progress, the basis of the allegorical narrative is the idea of a journey. The traveler’s name is Christian, and he represents every Christian in human world. The figures and places Christian encounters on his journey stand for the various experiences
every Christian must go through in the quest for salvation.
10、Neoclassicism
These neoclassical writers endeavored to imitate the characteristics of the Roman writers, such as Horace. They tried to make English literature conform to rules and principles established by the great Roman and Greek classical writers. In writing plays they used rhymed couplet instead of blank verse. They observed the three unities. They thought poetry should follow some peculiar principles. Prose should be precise, direct and flexible. All the neo-classicists followed these standards in writing.
11、Paradise Lost
Paradise Lost is Milton's masterpiece, and the greatest English epic. It is a long epic in 12 books, done in blank verse. The stories were taken from the Old Testament. The poem was to preach submission to the Almighty. But the main idea of the poem is the heroic revolt against God's authority.
In the poem God is no better than a selfish despot; Satan is the real hero of the poem. Like a conquered and banished giant, he remains obeyed and admired by those who follow him down to hell.
第五大题：问答题
1、Define Romanticism and tell the feature of Romanticism.
A.The meaning of Romanticism
The Romantic Movement is simply, the expression of life as seen by the imagination, which was the central doctrine of English philosophy in the 18th century.
Romanticism was an international movement, which had great representatives all over Europe。 B. The Special Qualities of Romanticism
1)Romanticism favored innovation over traditionalism in the materials,
forms, and style of literature. It has the following prominent characteristics ：
2) The Spontaneous Overflow of Powerful Feelings b. The Creation of a world of Imagination c. The Return to Nature for Material
d. Sympathy' with the Humble and Glorification of the Commonplace e. Emphasis Upon the Expression of Individual Genius
f. The Return to Milton and the Elizabethans for Literary Models g. The Interest in Old Stories and Medieval Romances h. A Sense of Melancholy and Loneliness i. The Rebellious Spirit
2、How is Romanticism different from Neoclassicism? Provide brief evidence from the literary works you know best.
a.Neoclassicists upheld that artistic ideals should be order ,logic, restrained emoticon 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. Pope's An Essay on Criticism advocates grace, wit （usually though satire/ humor）,and simplicity in language（and the poem itself is a demonstration of those ideals, too）;Fielding's Tom Jones helped establish the form of novel; Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard' displays elegance in style, unified structure, serious tone and moral instructions.
b. 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 were （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.
c.In a word, Neoclassicism emphasized rationality and form but Romanticism attached great importance to the individual's mind （emotion, imagination, temporary experience?）
3、 Summarize the story of William Faulkner’s A Rose for Emily in about 100 words, and comment on the theme of the novel.
Emily is a symbol of old values, standing for tradition, duty and past glory. But she is also a victim to all those she cares and embrace. The source of Emily’s strangeness is from her born pride and self-esteem, the domineering behavior of her father and the betrayal of her lover. Barricaded in her house, she has frozen the past to protect her dreams. Her life is tragic because the defiance of the community, her refusal to accept the change and her extreme pride have pushed her to abnormality and insanity.
4、Define Modernism and tell the feature of Modernism.
A Modernism itself is a movement both wide and deep and extending into all the forms of literature and art. Because of its very complexity, it is difficult to define precisely, but both the modernist writers themselves and subsequent critical appraisals agree that it involved a radical and deliberate break not only with traditional forms of art but with traditional aesthetic principles reaching back to Aristotle that had formed the
B.The most important period for Modernism was between 1910 and 1925, characterized by such movements as Symbolism, Imagism, Futurism, Impressionism, Stream of Consciousness, Expressionism, Abstractism, Cubism, Surrealism. In the thirties and following the Second World War Existentialism prevailed in both literature and philosophy. The Theatre of the Absurd, and Black Humour can also be seen as deriving in some way from Modernism.
C.In England, the most important poets were William Butler Yeats and T. S. Eliot. Together with the American poet Ezra Pound, they led a revolution in the technique of modern poetry which has prevailed to the present day. In the novel, the modernist innovators were James Joyce with his \psychological penetration.
5、Summarize the story of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in about 100 words, and comment on the theme of the novel
A.Mark Twain's novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a Sequa to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.The Story takes place along the Mississippi River before the Civil War in the United States, around 1850. Along the river, floats 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 along with Jim and helping him as best he could, changes his mind ,his prejudice, about Black people, and comes to accept Jim as a man and as a close friends as well.
During their journey, they experience a series of adventures:coming across two frauds, the “Duke” and the “King”,witnessing the lynching and murder of a harmless drunkard, being lost in a fog and finally Tom's coming to rescue.
B. 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, wilderness and civilization.