英美语文[1]-10
Part I Multiple Choice: (30 scores, 2 scores for each)
1. The sentence "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" is the beginning line of one of Shakespeare's ________ .
A. comedies
B. tragedies
C. sonnets
D. histories
2. All the following have written plays in verse except ________.
A. George Gordon Byron
B. Percy Bysshe Shelley
C. C. George Bernard Shaw
D. T. S. Eliot
3. Shelley’s source for Prometheus Unbound was a play by ________.
A. William Shakespeare
B. Aeschylus
C. Euripides
D. Sophocles
4.In “Ode to the West Wind”, the wild west wind is referred to as the wind of ________.
A. spring
B. summer
C. autumn
D. winter
5. John Keats wrote the following except ______.
A. Endymion
B. The Eve of Saint Agness
C. "Ode to a Nightingale"
D. . "Ode to Duty"
6. In "Ode on a Grecian Urn" the references to Tempe and Arcady are ______.
A. Italian
B. British
C. Greek
D. Persian
7. The individuals mentioned in "Ode on a Grecian Urn" ______.
A. appear in the poet's dream
B. appear on a vase
C. are acquaintances of the poet
D. pass the poet's window while he is musing
8. John Keats ' “Ode to a Nightingale” expresses the contrast between the happy world of ____ loveliness and human of agony .
A. fairy
B. natural
C. pastoral
D. optimistic
9. It is generally regarded that Keats's most important and mature poems are in the form of _______ .
A. ode
B. elegy
C. epic
D. sonnet
10. The Lake Poets include the following except ________.
A. Robert Southe
B. William Wordsworth
C. Samuel Taylor Coleridge
D. William Blake
11. William Wordswoth is frequently referred to as ________.
A. a religious poet
B. a worshipper of nature
C. a modern poet
D. a worshipper of beauty
12."She lived unknown, and few could know
When Lucy ceased to be;
But she is in her grave, and, oh,
The difference to me!"
The word "me" in the last line of the above stanza quoted from Wordsworth's poem "She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways" may possibly refer to _______ .
A. the poet
B. the reader
C. her lover
D. everybody
13. Of the following definitions of poetry, the one which is incorrectly paired with its author is _______.
A. “Poetry is the most beautiful and effective mode of saying things”—Matthew Arnold
B. “Poetry—the best words in thei r best order”—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
C. “The record of the best and happiest moment of the happiest and best minds”—Percy Bysshe Shelley
D. “The spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings”—Robert Burns
14. "And where are they? And where art thou,"
My country? On thy voiceless shore
The heroic lay is tuneless now-
The heroic bosom beats no more!"（George Gordon Byron, Don Juan）
In the above stanza, "art thou" literally means _______ .
A. "are you"
B. "art though"
C. "are though"
D. "art you"
15. Daniel Defoe describes _______ as a typical English Middle-class man of the eighteenth century, the very prototype of the empire builder or the pioneer colonist.
A. Tom Jones
B. Gulliver
C. Moll Flanders
D. Robinson Crusoe
16."To be so distinguished is an honor, which, being very little accustomed to favors from the great, I know not well how to receive, or in what terms to acknowledge."
The above quoted sentence is presented by Samuel Johnson with a（n）_______ tone.
A. delightful
B. jealous
C. ironic
D. humorous
17._______ is a typical feature of Swift's writings.
A. Bitter satire
B. Elegant style
C. Casual narration
D. Complicated sentence structure
18. In William Blake's poetry, the father（and any other in whom he saw the image of the father such as God, priest, and king）was usually a figure of _______ .
A. benevolence
B. admiration
C. love
D. tyranny
19. "'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, 't hat cup is not!'"
From the above quoted passage, we can find the woman's tone is very _______ .
A. sarcastic
B. amusing
C. sentimental
D. facetious
20. The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan is often said to be concerned with the search for _______ .
A. material wealth
B. spiritual salvation
C. universal truth
D. self-fulfillment
21. is the successful religious allegory in the English language.
A. The Pilgrim’s Progress
B. Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners
C. The Life and Death of Mr. Badman
D.The Holy War
22. Of all the eighteenth-century novelists, _______ was the first to set out, both in theory and practice, to write specifically a "comic epic in prose," and the first to give the modern novel its structure and style.
A. Daniel Defoe
B. Samuel Richardson
C. Henry Fielding
D. Oliver Goldsmith
23. Fielding has been regarded by some as “_______________”,for his contribution to the establishment of the form of the modern novel.
A. Best writer of the English novel
B. Father of the English novel
C. the most gifted writer of the English novel
D. conventional writer of English novel
24. Henry Fielding’s first novel ____ was written in connection with Pamela of Samuel Richardson. But after the first 10 chapters, Henry Fielding became so interested and absorbed in his own novel as to forget his original plan of ridiculing Pamela.
A. Tom Jones
B. Jonathan Wild
C. Joseph Andrews
D. Amelia
25."Not on thy sole but on thy soul, harsh Jew,/Thou mak'st thy knife keen."
In the above quotation taken form The Merchant of Venice, Shakespeare employs a（n）_______ .
A. oxymoron
B. pun
C. simile
D. synecdoche
26. The most important work of _______ is the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, which is regarded as the best monument of the old English prose.
A. Alfred the Great
B. Caedmon
C. Cynewulf
D. Venerable Bede
27. Who is the monster half-human who had mingled thirty warriors in The Song of Beowulf?
A. Hrothgat.
B. Heorot.
C. Grendel.
D. Beowulf.
28. _____ is the first important religious poet in English Literature.
A. Cynewulf
B. Caedmon
C. Shakepeare.
D. Adam Bede
29. The epic, The Song of Beowulf, represents the spirit of ______.
A. monks
B. romanticists
C. sentimentalist
D. pagan
30.__________ is the “father of English poetry” and one of the greatest narrative poets of England?
A. Christopher Marlow
B. Geoffrey Chaucer
C. W. Shakespeare
D. Alfred the Great
31. It is alone who, for the first time in English literature, presented to us a comprehensi ve realistic picture of the English society of his time and created a whole gallery of vivid characters from all walks of life.
A. Geoffrey Chaucer
B. Martin Luther
C. William Langland
D. John Gower
32. Chaucer’s earlist work of any length is his “______” a translation of the French “Roman de la Rose” by Gaillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meung, which was a love allegory enjoying widespread popularity in the 13th and 14th centuries not only in France but through Europe.
A. Troilus and Criseyde
B. A Red, Red Rose
C. Romance of the Rose
D. Piers the Plowman
33. In his literary development, Chaucer was influenced by three literatures, which one is not true?
A. French literature.
B. Italian literature
C. English literature
D. American literature
34．The Renaissance is actually a movement stimulated by a series of historical events, which one of the following is NOT such an event?
A. The rediscovery of ancient Roman and Greek culture.
B. England’s domestic rest.
C. New discovery in geography and astrology.
D. The religious reformation and the economic expansion.
D. The religious reformation and the economic expansion.
35. Who is the greatest figure of the Cavalier poetry?
A. John Dryden
B. Richard Lovelace
C. Robert Herrick
D. John Suckling
16. Alexander Pope strongly advocated _______, emphasizing that literary works should be judged by rules of order, reason, logic, restrained emotion, good taste and decorum.
A. sentimentalism
B. romanticism
C. idealism
D. neoclassicism
36. Among the representatives of the Enlightenment, who was the first to introduce rationalism to England?
A. John Bunyan
B. Daniel Defoe
C. Alexander Pope
D. Jonathan Swift
37. The unquenchable spirit of Robinson Crusoe struggling to maintain a substantial existe nce on a lonely island reflects.
A. man’s desire to return to nature
B. the author’s criticism of the colonization
C.the ideal of the rising bourgeoisie
D. the aristocrats’ disillusionment of the harsh social reality
38. Here are four lines from a long poem: “Others for language all th eir care express, / And value books, as women men, for dress.”The poem must be.
A. Thomas Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”
B. John Milton’s Paradise Lost
C. Alexander Pope’s Essay on Criticism
D. Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream
39. “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” is a poem written in the form of___________.
A ballad B. sonnet C. heroic couplet D. Spenserian stanza
40. The title of Alfred Tennyson’s poem “Ulysses”reminds the reader of the following E XCEPT _____________.
A. the Trojan War
B. Homer’s Odyssey
C. adventures over the sea
D. religious quest
41. “In dream vision Arthur witnessed the loveliness of Gloriana, and upon awaking resolves to seek her.” The two literary figures Arthur and Gloriana are from___________.
A E dmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene
B. William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet
C. Christopher Marlowe’s “The Passionate Shepherd to His love”
D. John Donne’s “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning”
42. _______________is the successful religious allegory in the English language.
A. The Pilgrim’s Progress
B. Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners
C. The Life and Death of Mr. Badman
D. The Holy War
43. In 1704, Jonathan Swift published two works together, The Battle of the Books and ___, which made him well-known as a satirist.
A. A Modest Proposal
B. Bickerstaff Almanac
C. Gulliver’s Travels
D. The Tale of a Tub
44. Generally, the Renaissance refers to the period between the 14th and mid-17th centuries, its essence is_______________.
A. science
B. philosophy
C. arts
D. humanism
45. “So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, / So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.”(Shakespeare, Sonnets 18) What does “this” refer to?
A. Lover
B. Time
C. Summer
D. Poetry
46. Which of the following information about John Donne is NOT true?
A. He was born in a Roman Catholic family
B. He received his education at Oxford and Cambridge
C. Later he gave up his Catholic faith and took orders in the Anglican Church.
D.. He wrote only religious poems.
47. Here are four lines from a long poem: “Others for language all their care express, / And value books, as women men, for dress.” The poem must be.
A. Thomas Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”
B. John Milton’s Paradise Lost
C. Alexander P ope’s Essay on Criticism
D. Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream
48. “Drive my dead thought over the universe Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth.” (Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Ode to the West Wind”) What rhetorical device does the poet use in the quoted lines?
A. Synecdoche
B. Metaphor
C. Simile
D. Onomatopoeia
49. ____ is a classical poet in the period of English Enlightenment.
A. Alexander Pope
B. Henry Fielding
C. Richard Brinsley Sheridan
D. Daniel Defoe
50. Oliver Goldsmith’s ____ is one of the best English pastoral poems.
A. The Vicar of Wakefield
B. The Deserted Village
C. Tristram Shandy
D. The School for Scandal
51. ____ had supplied Shakespeare with the material for Julius Caesar.
A. History of the World
B. Miscellany of Songs and Sonnets
C. Don Quixote
D. Lives of Greek and Roan Heroes
52. Pope’s ____ criticized mildly the dull life of high society of England.
A. Essay on Criticism
B. “Moral Essays”
C. “The Dunciad”
D. The Rape of the Lock
53. _____ is one of the forerunners of modern socialist thought.
A. Phillip Sidney
B. Edmund Spenser
C. Walter Raleigh
D. Thomas More
54. Which of the following works is not written by Oliver Goldsmith? ____.
A. The Traveler
B. The Deserted Village
C. The School for Scandal
D. The Vicar of Wakefield
55. The first complete English Bible was translated by _______, “the morning star of the Reformation” and his followers.
A. William Tyndal
B. James I
C. John Wycliffe
D. Bishop Lancelot Andrews
56. Sh akespeare’s plays written between _____ are sometimes called “romances” and all end in reconciliation and reunion.
A. 1590 and 1594
B. 1595 and 1600
C. 1608 and 1612
D. 1601 and 1607
57. Among many poetic forms, Shakespeare was especially at home with the _______.
A. song
B. dramatic blank verse
C. sonnet
D. couplet
58. ____ is the leading figure of Metaphysical poetry.
A. George Herbert
B. John Donne
C. Andre Marvell
D. Henry Vaughan
59. Milton’s Paradise Lost took its material from_____.
A. . the Bible
B. Greek myth
C. Roman myth
D. French romance
60. William Shakespeare's history plays are mainly written under the____ that national unity under a mighty and just sovereign is a____.
A. fact/possibility
B. story/probability
C. principle/necessity
D. reality/truth
61.___________ was regarded as the greatest English revolutionary poet of the 17th century.
A. John Donne
B. John Bunyan
C. John Milton
D. John Keats
62. There are two revolutionary leaders in English Revolution: Cromwell was considered“the man of action” and _________was regarded as“the man of thought”.
A. John Donne
B. John Bunyan
C. John Milton
D. John Keats
63__________ is the representative of the poets of the graveyard school.
A. William Blake
B. . Thomas Gray
C. William Wordsworth
D. John Keats
64. After reading the first chapter of Pride and Prejudice, we may come to know that Mrs. Bennet is a woman of _______ .
A. simple character and quick wit
B. simple character and poor understanding
C. intricate character and quick wit
D. intricate character and poor understanding
65. Which of the following words NOT appropriate to describe Mrs. Bennet, a character i n Pride and Prejudice.
A. Beautiful
B. Intelligent
C. Snobbish
D. Vulgar
66.An attack on Byron’s early poetry was launched by the editors of ________.
A. The London Gazette
B. The Manchester Guardian
C. The Liverpool Press
D. The Edinburgh Review
67. Byron wrote the following except ________.
A. Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage
B. Manfred
C. Don Juan
D. The Revolt of Islam
68. The description of “a man proud, moody, cynical, with defiance on his brow, and mis ery in his heart, a scorner of his kind, implacable in revenge, yet capable of deep and str ong affection” may be applied to ________.
A. an epic hero
B. an antihero
C. a Byronic hero
D. a modern hero
Part III. Read the following quoted parts carefully and answer the questions in English briefly (20 scores).
1. To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them. To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
A.Identify the author and the title of this work. (Shakespeare, Hamlet)
https://www.doczj.com/doc/0016623532.html,e three adjectives to describe the most outstanding character of the speaker in this work and
explain his character one by one. (hesitant, noble, wise, humane)
2. Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:
Some time too hot the eye of heaven shines,
An d often is his gold complexion dimm’d,
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm’d:
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,
Nor shall Death brag thou wan der’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.Who is the author of this poem? What does he mainly deal with?
(William Shakespeare; He mainly deals with the friendship between good friends, and the eternity of their friendship.)
B.What’s the theme of this poem?
(“So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee” is the conclusion (or theme) of the poem: your (my love’s) beauty and life will last forever since poetry is permanent and immortal.)
3. Doubted his Empire, that were low indeed,
That were an ignominy and shame beneath
This downfall; since by Fate the strength of Gods
And this Empyreal substance cannot fail,
Since through experience of this great event
In Arms not worse, in foresight much advanc't,
We may with more successful hope resolve
To wage by force or guile eternal Warr
Irreconcileable, to our grand Foe,
Who now triumphs, and in th' excess of joy
Sole reigning holds the Tyranny of Heav'n.
A Identify the author and the title of this poem. (John Milton, Paradise Lost)
B Comment on the hero of this stanza.
(Satan is:
1) a being of divinity and humanity
2) a tragic hero: possesses the stature of the typical tragic hero who is guilty of pride, envy and over-ambition; divine birth, just-minded, noble-spirited, invincible.
3) He is also a traditional hero
4) a new type of hero:aggressive, powerful, proud, ambitious, and rebellious, against the meek, humble, faithful, and submissive servant of God.)
4. Tiger! Tiger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
A. Identify the author and the title of the poem. (William Blake, “The Tiger”)
B. What’s the main idea of this stanza and what’s the theme of the poem?
(The main idea: ask who could create the tiger.
The theme: The poem seems to admire God, the Creator as a blacksmith who has the mystic power of creation and to praise the creative power of an artist.)
5. “Never did sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendor, valley, rock, or hill;
Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! The very houses seem asleep;
And a ll that mighty heart is lying still!“
（William Wordsworth's sonnet: “Composed upon Westminster Bridge”）
A. What does the word “glideth” in the fourth line mean? What kind of figure of speech is used by Wordsworth to describe the “river”? ("Glideth" means "flows"; personification)
B. What idea does the fourth line express?
(It expresses the idea that the river is flowing happily as a living things , which implies the beauty of the nature)
6. Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance
The waves beside them danced: but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
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:
A. Identify the author and the title of the poem. (William Wordsworth, “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud”)
B. What’s the main idea of the two stanzas and what’s the theme of the poem?
(Main idea of the two stanzas: happy sensation at the sight of the dancing flowers;
Theme of the poem: Through describing a scene of joyful daffodils recollected in memory, the poet hopes to put illustrate his theory of poetic inspiration—“spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings, which originates in emotion recollected in tranquility.”)
7. Behold Her, single in the field,
Yon solitary Highland Lass!
Reaping and singing by herself;
Stop here, or gently pass!
Alone she cuts and binds the grain,
And sings a melancholy strain;
O listen! For the vale profound
Is overflowing with the sound.
A. Identify the author and the title of the poem. (William Wordsworth, “The Solitary Reaper”)
B. What’s the theme of this stanza and can you find the evidence in this stanza to support it? (theme: solitude.
evidence: The words “single”, “solitary”, “by herself”and “alone”appear in the first six lines of the first stanza show the solitude of the girl)
8. Drive my dead thoughts over the universe
Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!
And, by the incantation of this verse,
Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unawakened Earth
The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?
A.Identify the author and the title of the poem. (Shelley, “Ode to the West Wind”)
B.What do “Wind” and “prophecy” refer to respectively?
(“Wind refers to the west wind, a “spirit” witch destroys in autumn in order to revi ve in the spring; “prophecy” refers to the “clarion” and an allusion to the last trump of the apocalypse.)
9. The wingèd seeds, where they lie cold and low,
Each like a corpse within its grave, until
Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow
Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill
(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)
With living hues and odours plain and hill;
Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;
Destroyer and Preserver; hear, O hear!
A. Identify the poem and the poet.( Shelley, “Ode to the West Wind”)
B. What is the “Wild Spirit” and what does the “Wild Spirit” destroy and preserve?
(The “Wild Spirit is the West Wind, “breath of Autumn's being”. It destroys
things/thoughts/ideas that are dead or obsolete; it preserves new life （or seeds that represent new life or new birth）).
10. Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!
Bird thou never wert,
That from Heaven, or near it,
Pourest thy full heart
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.
Higher still and higher
From the earth thou springest
Like a cloud of fire;
The blue deep thou wingest,
And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.
A. Identify the author and the title of the poem. (Percy Bysshe Shelley, “To a Sky-lark”)
B. In this stanza, the poet uses the feminine rhyme. Can you explain what the feminine
rhyme is?
(When the repetition of the same sound at the end of the line extends over two or more syllables, with the first one stressed and the following unstressed, it is named the feminine rhyme.)
11. Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
The same that oft-times hath
Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.
A. Identify the author and the title of this poem. (John Keats, Ode to a Nightingale)
B. Who is Ruth? What’s the meaning of the word “forlorn”?
(Ruth is the ancestress of king David in the Old Testament. “Forlorn” means “long past” as well as “sorrowful”.)
12. O Attic shape! fair attitude! with brede
Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
Thou, silent form! dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,”—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
A. Identify the author and the title of this poem. (John Keats, Ode on a Grecian Urn)
B Who is addressing in this stanza, the speaker or the urn? Why do you think so?
(It could be the speaker addressing the urn, and it could be the urn addressing mankind.
If it is the speaker addressing the urn, then it would seem to indicate his awareness of its limitations: The urn may not need to know anything beyond the equation of beauty and truth.
If it is the urn addressing mankind, then the phrase has rather the weight of an important lesson, as though beyond all the complications of human life, all human beings need to know on earth is that beauty and truth are one and the same.)
13. It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.
However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered as the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters.
“My dear Mr. Bennet,” said his lady to him one day, “Have you heard that Netherfield Park is l et at last?”
Mr. Bennet replied that he had not.
“But it is,” returned she; “for Mrs. Long has just been here, and she told me all about it.”
Mr. Bennet made no answer.
“Do you not want to know who has taken it?” cried his wife impatiently.
“You want to tell me, and I have no objection to hearing it.”
This was invitation enough.
A.Identify the author and the title of this novel. (Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice)
B.The author has cleverly done three things in the first sentence of this excerpt. What are they? (In this statement, Jane has cleverly done three things:
1) She has declared that the main subject of the novel will be courtship and marriage;
2) She has established the humorous tone of the novel by taking a simple subject to elaborate and to speak intelligently of;
3) She has prepared the reader for a chase in the novel of either a husband in search of a wife, or
a woman in pursuit of a husband.)
14. Studies serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability. Their chief use for delight is in privateness and retiring; for ornament, is in discourse; and for ability, is in the judgment and disposition of business. For expert men can execute, and perhaps judge of particulars, one by one; but the general counsels, and the plots and marshaling of affairs, come best from those that are learned. To spend too much time in studies is sloth; to use them too much for ornament is affectation; to make judgment wholly by their rules is the humor of a scholar. They perfect nature, and are perfected by experience; for natural abilities are alike natural plants, that need pruning by study; and studies themselves do give forth directions too much at large, except they be bounded in by experience. Crafty men contemn studies, simple men admire them, and wise men use them. For they teach not their own use; but that is a wisdom without them, and above them, won by observation. Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention. Some books also may be read by deputy and extracts made of them by others, but that would be only in the less important arguments and the meaner sort of books; else distilled books are like common distilled waters, flashy things.
(From Of Studies by Francis Bacon)
A.What, according to Bacon, are the chief aims of studies? Does he think it good to overdo any
of these? Why (not)?
(Studies serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability.
It is not good to overdo any of these. To spend too much time in studies is sloth; to use them too much for ornament is affectation; to make judgment wholly by their rules is the humor of a scholar.)
B. How does Bacon advise us to read?
(Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is , some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention. Some books also may be read by deputy and extracts made of them by others, but that would be only in the less important arguments and the meaner sort of books.)
15. It happened one day, about noon, going towards my boat, I was exceedingly surprised with the print of a man’s naked foot on the shore, which was very plain to be seen in the sand. I stood like one thunder-struck, or as if I had seen an apparition. I listened, I looked round me, I could hear nothing, nor see anything. I went up to a rising ground, to look farther. I went up the shore, and down the shore, but it was all one; I could see no other impression but that one. I went to it again to see if there were any more, and to observe if it might not be my fancy; but there was no room
for that, for there was exactly the very print of a foot—toes, heel, and every part of a foot. How it came thither I knew not, nor could in the least imagine. But after innumerable fluttering thoughts, like a man perfectly confused and out of myself, I came home to my fortification, not feeling, as we say, the ground I went on, but terrified to the last degree, looking behind me at every two or three steps, mistaking every bush and tree, and fancy every stump at a distance to be a man; nor is it possible to describe how many various shapes affrighted imagination represented things to me in, how many wild ideas were found every moment in my fancy, and what strange, unaccountable whimsies came into my thoughts by the way.
A.Please tell us the author and the title of this novel. (Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe)
B.What is the major theme of this novel?
(Man is good and noble by nature but may succumb to an evil environment and can only be changed by education.)
Part II Please define the literary items listed below. (20 scores, 4 scores fore each) 1. SAGA
Saga is a literary genre consisting of a prose narrative sometimes of legendary content but typically dealing with prominent figures and events of the heroic age in Norway and Iceland, especially as recorded in Icelandic manuscripts of the late 12th and 13th centuries.
The term Saga is also used to refer to any of various historical or fictional narratives, such as a modern retelling usually in verse or highly stylized prose of the events of the Icelanders’ sagas or of similar subjects; an episodic story centering on a usually heroic figure of earlier ages with factional details drawn from various sources; a series of legends that embodies in detail the oral history of a people; or a long, detailed narrative usually without psychological or historical depth(for example, of a particular occupation, area, historical event, period, or person).
2. EPIC
Epic is a long narrative poem in an elevated style that celebrates heroic achievement and treats themes of historical, national, religious or legendary significance.
The main aspects of epic convention are the centrality of a hero — sometimes semi divine — of military, national or religious importance; an extensive, perhaps even cosmic, geographic setting; heroic battle; extended and often exotic journeying; and the involvement of supernatural beings, such as Gods, angels, or demons, in the actions. Epic t treat familiar and traditional subjects.
3. Ballad
A narrative folk song. The ballad is traced back to the Middle Ages. Ballads were usually created by common people and passed orally due to the illiteracy of the time. Subjects for ballads include killings, feuds, important historical events, and rebellion. For example, in the international ballad “Lord Randall,” the young man is poisoned by his sweetheart, and in “Edward,” the son commits patricide. A common stylistic element of the ballad is repetition. “Lord Randall” illustrates this well with the phrase at the end of each verse: “…mother, mak my bed soon, for I’m sick at the heart and I fain wad lie down.” A Handbook to Literature notes the ballad occurs in very early
literature in nearly every nation. Therefore, in addition to being entertaining, ballads can help us to understand a given culture by showing us what values or norms that culture deemed important.
4. Romance
Romance could be:
a. A medieval tale based on ledend, chivalric love and adventure, or the supernatural.
b. A prose narrative treating imaginary characters involved in events remote in time or space and usually heroic, adventurous, or mysterious.
c. A love story.
d. A class or division of literature comprising romance or romantic fiction.
In the Middle Ages, they referred to tales of exciting adventures written in the vernacular (French) instead of Latin. The medieval romances were tales of chivalry or amorous adventure occurring in King Arthur's court. "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" is an example of a medieval romance.
The romance literary form, usually characterized by its treatment of chivalry, came into being in France in the mid-12th century. It had antecedents in many prose works from classical antiquity( the so-called Greek romances), but as a distinctive genre it was developed in the context of the aristocratic courts of such patrons as Eleanor of Aquitaine The staple subject matter of romance is chivalric adventure. Love stories and religious allegories can often be found interwoven with this material, but they are not essential to it. The majority of romances drew their plots from three basic areas: classical history and legend, the adventures of King Arthur and the knights of the Round Table(certainly the most significant group), and of the doings of Charlemagne and his knights. The French Arthurian romances were of particular importance for English literature, since they provided the material that sir Thomas Malory later adapted in Le Morte Darthur, first printed in 1485.
5. heroic couplet
Heroic couplet refers to a couplet of rhyming iambic pentameter, often forming a distinct rhetorical as well as metrical unit.
The origin of the form in English poetry is unknown, but Geoffery Chaucer in the 14th century was the first to make extensive use of it. The heroic couplet became the principal meter used in drama in about the mid-17th century, and the form was perfected by John Dryden and Alexander Pope in the late 17th and the early 18th century.
Blank Verse, in literature, unrhymed poetry, typically in iambic pentameter, and, as such, the dominant verse form of English dramatic and narrative poetry since the mid-16th century. Blank verse was adapted by Italian Renaissance writers from classical sources; it became the standard form of such dramatists as Ludovico Ariosto, Torquato Tasso, and Battista Guarini. From Italy, blank verse was brought into English literature by the poet Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, who first used it in his translation of books II and IV of the Aeneid,by the Roman poet Virgil. Christopher Marlowe used blank verse for dramatic verse; and English playwright William
Shakespeare transformed blank verse into a supple instrument, uniquely capable of conveying speech rhythms and emotional overtones. According to the English poet John Milton, only unrhymed verse could give English the dignity of a classical language, as he explained in the preface to his epic Paradise Lost, one of the greatest of all poems in blank verse.
Aesthetic distance: degree of emotional involvement in a work of art. The most obvious example of aesthetic distance (also referred to simply as distance) occurs with paintings. Some paintings require us to stand back to see the design of the whole painting; standing close, we see the technique of the painting, say the brush strokes, but not the whole. Other paintings require us to stand close to see the whole; their design and any figures become less clear as we move back from the painting.
Similarly, fiction, drama, and poetry involve the reader emotionally to different degrees. Emotional distance, or the lack of it, can be seen with children watching a TV program or a movie; it becomes real for them. Writers like Faulkner, the Bronte sisters, or Faulkner pull the reader into their work; the reader identifies closely with the characters and is fully involved with the happenings. Hemingway, on the other hand, maintains a greatr distance from the reader.
Alliteration: the repetition of the same sound at the beginning of a word, such as the repetition of b sounds in Keats's "beaded bubbles winking at the brim" ("Ode to a Nightingale") or Coleridge's "Five miles meandering in a mazy motion ("Kubla Khan"). A common use for alliteration is emphasis. It occurs in everyday speech in such prhases as "tittle-tattle," "bag and baggage," "bed and board," "primrose path," and "through thick and thin" and in sayings like "look before you leap."
Some literary critics call the reptition of any sounds alliteration. However, there are specialized terms for other sound-repetitions. Consonance repeats consonants, but not the vowels, as in horror-hearer. Assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds, please-niece-ski-tree. See rhyme .
An allusion: a brief reference to a person, event, place, or phrase. The writer assumes will recognize the reference. For instance, most of us would know the difference between a mechanic's being as reliable as George Washington or as reliable as Benedict Arnold. Allusions that are commonplace for readers in one era may require footnotes for readers in a later time.
Ambiguity:(1) a statement which has two or more possible meanings; (2) a statement whose meaning is unclear. Depending on the circumstances, ambiguity can be negative, leading to confusion or even disaster (the ambiguous wording of a general's note led to the deadly charge of the Light Brigade in the Crimean War). On the other hand, writers often use it to achieve special effects, for instance, to reflect the complexity of an issue or to indicate the difficulty, perhaps the impossibility, of determining truth.
The title of the country song "Heaven's Just a Sin Away" is deliberately ambiguous; at a religious level, it means that committing a sin keeps us out of heaven, but at a physical level, it means that committing a sin (sex) will bring heaven (pleasure). Many of Hamlet's statements to the King, to Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern, and to other characters are deliberately ambiguous, to hide his real purpose from them.
Alliteration, repetition of the initial letter (generally a consonant) or first sound of several words, marking the stressed syllables in a line of poetry or prose. A simple example is the phrase "through thick and thin." The device is used to emphasize meaning and thus can be effectively employed in oratory. Alliteration is a characteristic of Anglo-Saxon poetry, notably the epic Beowulf; it is still used, with modifications, by modern poets.
Ballad: a relatively short narrative poem, written to be sung, with a simple and dramatic action. The ballads tell of love, death, the supernatural, or a combination of these. Two characteristics of the ballad are incremental repetition and the ballad stanza. Incremental repetition repeats one or more lines with small but significant variations that advance the action. The ballad stanza is four lines; commonly, the first and third lines contain four feet or accents, the second and fourth lines contain three feet . Ballads often open abruptly, present brief descriptions, and use concise dialogue.
The folk ballad is usually anonymous and the presentation impersonal. The literary ballad deliberately imitates the form and spirit of a folk ballad. The Romantic poets were attracted to this form, as Longfellow with "The Wreck of the Hesperus," Coleridge with the "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" (which is longer and more elaborate than the folk balad) and Keats with "La Belle Dame sans Merci" (which more closely resembles the folk ballad).
Byronic hero, an idealized but flawed character whose attributes include:
1. being a rebel;
2. having a distaste for social institutions;
3. being an exile;
4. expressing a lack of respect for rank and privilege;
5. having great talent;
6. hiding a mysterious past;
7. being highly passionate;
8. ultimately, being self-destructive
Characterization:the way an author presents characters. In direct presentation, a character is described by the author, the narrator or the other characters. In indirect presentation, a character's traits are revealed by action and speech.
Characters can be discussed in a number of ways.
The protagonist is the main character, who is not necessarily a hero or a heroine. The antagonist is the opponent; the antagonist may be society, nature, a person, or an aspect of the protagonist. The antihero, a recent type, lacks or seems to lack heroic traits.
A persona is a fictional character. Sometimes the term means the mask or alter-ego of the author; it is often used for first person works and lyric poems, to distinguish the writer of the work from the character in the work.
Characters may be classified as round (three-dimensional, fully developed) or as flat (having only
a few traits or only enough traits to fulfill their function in the work); as developing (dynamic) characters or as static characters.
A foil is a secondary character who contrasts with a major character; in Hamlet, Laertes and Fortinbras, whose fathers have been killed, are foils for Hamlet.
Convention: (1) a rule or practice based upon general consent and upheld by society at large; (2) an arbitrary rule or practice recognized as valid in any particular art or discipline, such as literature or art (NED). For example, when we read a comic book, we accept that a light bulb appearing above the head of a comic book character means the character suddently got an idea.
Dramatic monologue is a piece of spoken verse that offers great insight into the feelings of the speaker. Not to be confused with a soliloquy in a play (which the character speaking speaks to themselves), dramatic monologues suggest an auditor or auditors. They were favoured by many poets in the Victorian period, in which a character in fiction or in history delivers a speech explaining his or her feelings, actions, or motives.
Humanism is a perspective common to a wide range of ethical stances that attaches importance to human dignity, concerns, and capabilities, particularly rationality. Although the word has many senses, its meaning comes into focus when contrasted to the supernatural or to appeals to authority. Since the nineteenth century, humanism has been associated with an anti-clericalism inherited from the eighteenth-century Enlightenment philosophes.
Literary convention: a practice or device which is accepted as a necessary, useful, or given feature of a genre, e.g., the proscenium stage (the "picture-frame" stage of most theaters), a soliloquy, the epithet or boast in the epic (which those of you who took Core Studies 1 will be familiar with).
Stock character: character types of a genre, e.g., the heroine disguised as a man in Elizabethan drama, the confidant, the hardboiled detective, the tightlipped sheriff, the girl next door, the evil hunters in a Tarzan movie, ethnic or racial stereotypes, the cruel stepmother and Prince Charming in fairy tales.
Stock situation:frequently recurring sequence of action in a genre, e.g., rags-to-riches, boy-meets-girl, the eternal triangle, the innocent proves himself or herself.
Stock response: a habitual or automatic response based on the reader's beliefs or feelings, rather than on the work itself. A moralistic person might be shocked by any sexual scene and condemn a book or movie as dirty; a sentimentalist is automatically moved by any love story, regardless of the quality of the writing or the acting; someone requiring excitement may enjoy any violent story or movie, regardless of how mindless, unmotivated or brutal the violence is.
Fiction: prose narrative based on imagination, usually the novel or the short story.
Genre: a literary species or form, e.g., tragedy, epic, comedy, novel, essay, biography, lyric poem. Click here for a fuller discussion of genres .
Irony: the discrepancy between what is said and what is meant, what is said and what is done, what is expected or intended and what happens, what is meant or said and what others understand. Sometimes irony is classified into types: in situational irony, expectations aroused by a situation are reversed; in cosmic irony or the irony of fate, misfortune is the result of fate, chance, or God; in dramatic irony. the audience knows more than the characters in the play, so that words and action have additional meaning for the audience; Socractic irony is named after Socrates' teaching method, whereby he assumes ignorance and openness to opposing points of view which turn out to be (he shows them to be) foolish. Click here for examples of irony .
Irony is often confused with sarcasm and satire:
Sarcasm is one kind of irony; it is praise which is really an insult; sarcasm generally invovles malice, the desire to put someone down, e.g., "This is my brilliant son, who failed out of college."
Satire is the exposure of the vices or follies of an indiviudal, a group, an institution, an idea, a society, etc., usually with a view to correcting it. Satirists frequently use irony.
Language can be classified in a number of ways.
Denotation: the literal meaning of a word; there are no emotions, values, or images associated with denotative meaning. Scientific and mathematical language carries few, if any emotional or connotative meanings.
Connotation: the emotions, values, or images associated with a word. The intensity of emotions or the power of the values and images associated with a word varies. Words connected with religion, politics, and sex tend to have the strongest feelings and images associated with them.
For most people, the word mother calls up very strong positive feelings and associations--loving, self-sacrificing, always there for you, understanding; the denotative meaning, on the other hand, is simply "a female animal who has borne one or more chldren." Of course connotative meanings do not necessarily reflect reality; for instance, if someone said, "His mother is not very motherly," you would immediately understand the difference between motherly (connotation) and mother (denotation).
Abstract language refers to things that are intangilble, that is, which are perceived not through the senses but by the mind, such as truth, God, education, vice, transportation, poetry, war, love. Concrete language identifies things perceived through the senses (touch, smell, sight, hearing, and taste), such as soft, stench, red, loud, or bitter.
Literal language means exactly what it says; a rose is the physical flower. Figurative language changes the literal meaning, to make a meaning fresh or clearer, to express complexity, to capture a physical or sensory effect, or to extend meaning. Figurative language is also called figures of speech. The most common figures of speech are these:
A simile: a comparison of two dissimilar things using "like" or "as", e.g., "my love is like a red, red rose" (Robert Burns).
A metaphor: a comparison of two dissimilar things which does not use "like" or "as," e.g., "my love is a red, red rose" (Lilia Melani).
Personification: treating abstractions or inanimate objects as human, that is, giving them human attributes, powers, or feelings, e.g., "nature wept" or "the wind whispered many truths to me."
hyperbole: exaggeration, often extravagant; it may be used for serious or for comic effect.
Apostrophe: a direct address to a person, thing, or abstraction, such as "O Western Wind," or "Ah, Sorrow, you consume us." Apostrophes are generally capitalized.
Onomatopoeia: a word whose sounds seem to duplicate the sounds they describe--hiss, buzz, bang, murmur, meow, growl.
Oxymoron: a statement with two parts which seem contradictory; examples: sad joy, a wise fool, the sound of silence, or Hamlet's saying, "I must be cruel only to be kind"
Elevated language or elevated style: formal, dignitifed language; it often uses more elaborate figures of speech. Elevated language is used to give dignity to a hero (note the speechs of heros like Achilles or Agamemnon in the Iliad), to express the superiority of God and religious matters generally (as in prayers or in the King James version of the Bible), to indicate the importance of certain events (the ritual language of the traditional marriage ceremony), etc. It can also be used to reveal a self-important or a pretentious character, for humor and/or for satire.
Lyric Poetry: a short poem with one speaker (not necessarily the poet) who expresses thought and feeling. Though it is sometimes used only for a brief poem about feeling (like the sonnet ).it is more often applied to a poem expressing the complex evolution of thoughts and feeling, such as the elegy, the dramatic monologue, and the ode . The emotion is or seems personal In classical Greece, the lyric was a poem written to be sung, accompanied by a lyre. Click here for a discussion of Reading Lyric Poetry .
Meter: a rhythm of accented and unaccented syllables which are organized into patterns, called feet. In English poetry, the most common meters are these:
Iambic: a foot consisting of an unaccented and accented syllable. Shakespeare often uses iambic, for example the beginning of Hamlet's speech (the accented syllables are italicized), "To be or not to be. Listen for the accents in this line from Marlowe, "Come live with me and be my love." English seems to fall naturally into iambic patterns, for it is the most common meter in English.
Trochaic: a foot consisting of an accented and unaccented syllable. Longfellow's Hiawatha uses this meter, which can quickly become singsong (the accented syllable is italicized):
"By the shores of GitcheGumee
By the shining Big-Sea-water."
The three witches' speech in Macbeth uses it: "Double, double, toil and trouble."
Anapestic:a foot consisting of two unaccented syllables and an accented syllable. These lines from Shelley's Cloud are anapestic:
"Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb
I arise and unbuild it again."
Dactylic: a foot consisting of an accented syllable and two unaccented syllables, as in these words: swimingly, mannikin, openly.
Spondee: a foot consisting of two accented syllables, as in the word heartbreak. In English, this foot is used occasionally, for variety or emphasis.
Pyrrhic: a foot consisting of two unaccented syllables, generally used to vary the rhythm.
A line is named for the number of feet it contains: monometer: one foot, dimeter: two feet, trimeter: three feet, tetrameter: four feet, pentameter: five feet, hexameter: six feet, heptameter: seven feet.
The most common metrical lines in English are tetrameter (four feet) and pentameter (five feet). Shakespeare frequently uses unrhymed iambic pentameter in his plays; the technical name for this line is blank verse. In this course, I will not be asking you to identify meters and metrical lines, but I would like you to have some awareness of their existence.
Modern English poetry is metrical, i.e., it relies on accented and unaccented syllables. Not all poetry does; Anglo-Saxon poetry relied on a system of alliteration. Skillful poets rarely use one meter throughout a poem but use these meters in combinations; however, a poem generally has one dominant meter.
Ode: usually a lyric poem of moderate length, with a serious subject, an elevated style, and an elaborate stanza pattern.There are various kinds of odes, which we don't have to worry about in an introductiory course like this. The ode often praises people, the arts of music and poetry, natural scenes, or abstract concepts. The Romantic poets used the ode to explore both personal or general problems; they often started with a meditation on something in nature, as did Keats in "Ode to a Nightingale" or Shelley in"Ode to the West Wind." Click here for a fuller discussion of the ode .
Paradox:a statement whose two parts seem contradictory yet make sense with more thought. Christ used paradox in his teaching: "They have ears but hear not." Or in ordinary conversation, we might use a paradox, "Deep down he's really very shallow." Paradox attracts the reader's or the listener's attention and gives emphasis.
Point of view: the perspective from which the story is told.
The most obvious point of view is probably first person or "I."
The omniscient narrator knows everything, may reveal the motivations, thoughts and feelings of the characters, and gives the reader information.