20th British Literature题目

English Literature in the Early Twentieth CenturyI. Multiple Choice.1. The Way of All Flesh written by _____gives a devastating picture of the bourgeois family and hypocrisy of the British middle class.A. Samuel ButlerB. George MeredithC. Herbert George WellsD. John Galsworthy2. _____ is considered “the bard of imperialism”.A. Joseph ConradB. Arnold BennettC. Rudyard KiplingD. Sean O’Casey3. Arnold Bennett’s masterpiece is _____.A. KimB. The Old Wives’TaleC. Lord JimD. The History of Polly4. Henry James is the forerunner of the _____.A. ImagismB. ChartismC. impressionismD. stream of consciousness5. Katharine Mansfield is a master of ____ at the turn of the century.A. short story writerB. dramatic poetryC. realistic novelsD. humor6. After writing _____, Hardy turned to poetry.A. Under the Greenwood TreeB. The Return of the NativeC. Jude the ObscureD. The Mayor of Casterbridge7. John Galsworthy won the Nobel Prize for Literature because of _____.A. The End of the ChapterB. The Forsyte SagaC. A Modern ComedyD. The Island Pharisees8. The Man of Property is taken from Galsworthy’s trilogy, _____.A. The End of the ChapterB. The Forsyte SagaC. A Modern ComedyD. The Island Pharisees9. The Abbey Theatre performed works by _____ dramatists.A. IrishB. BritishC. AmericanD. Scottish10. Yeats’s fame rests chiefly on his ______, using a lot of symbols in his poem.A. novelsB. poetryC. dramasD. prose11. ____ was a leader of the modernist movement in English poetry and a great innovator of verse technique.A. W.B. Yeats B. T. S. EliotC.D. H. Lawrence D. G. B. Shaw12. ____ is a great novel spending James Joyce 7 years of hard working to complete.A. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young ManB. UlyssesC. Finnegans WakeD. Dubliners13. ____ is a collection of short stories which reflect three aspects of life in politics, culture and religion.A. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young ManB. UlyssesC. Finnegans WakeD. Dubliners14. Which of the following is Not written by D. H. Lawrence? _____A. The Waste LandB. The RainbowC. Lady Chatterley’s LoverD. Women in Love15. Which of the following is not written by Yeats? _____A. Four QuartetsB. A VisionC. The Winding StairD. The TowerII. True-or-False Statement.1. George Meredith’s novels are masterpieces of satirical portrayal and psychological analysis.2. Joseph Conrad’s novels have groups: jungle novels, sea novels and political novels.3. Henry James’s fundamental theme was the innocence of the New World and the corruption of the Old.4. The story of Tess is filled with a feeling of dismal foreboding and doom.5. Fateful circumstances and tragic coincidences abound in the book of Jude the Obscure.6. Lady Gregory, John Millington Synge and Sean O’Casey were great Irish dramatists.7. The house in Shaw’s Heartbreak House embodies bourgeois England.8. Shaw’s Saint Joan is a historical play devoted to the great daughter of the English people, Joan of Arc, and her struggle for the liberty of her country.9. Alfred Edward Housman, a classical scholar of the highest order and professor of Latin at London University and Cambridge wrote poetry of crystal clarity.10. James Joyce and Virginia Woolf are the two best-known novelists of the “stream of consciousness” school.III. Matching.Column A Column B1. John Galsworthy A. The Waste Land2. James Joyce B. The Man of Property3. Virginia Woolf C. Dubliners4. Joseph Conrad D. A Passage to India5. D. H. Lawrence E. Heart of Darkness6. George Bernard Shaw F. The Rainbow7. E. M. Forster G. The Waves8. T. S. Eliot H. Saint Joan9. James Joyce I. When You Are Old10. William Butler Yeats J. Ulysses1-5: BC/JGEF 6-10: HDAJ/CIIV. Appreciation of Literature Works.1. PoetryWhen you are old and gray and full of sleepAnd nodding by the fire, take down this book,And slowly read, and dream of the soft lookYour eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;How many loved your moments of glad grace,And loved your beauty with love false or true;But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,And loved the sorrows of your changing face;And bending down beside the glowing bars,Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fledAnd paced upon the mountains overhead,And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.Questions:1) Who is the writer? What is the name of the poem?2) What is the meter? What is the rhyme scheme?3) What are features of the language in this poem?2. PlayMRS W ARREN:(piteously) Oh, my darling, how can you be so hard on me? Have I no rights over you as your mother?VIVIE: Are you my mother?MRS W ARREN: (appalled)Am I your mother? Oh, Vivie!VIVIE: Then where are our relatives? My father? Our family friends? You claim the rights of a mother; the right to call me fool and child; to speak to me as no woman in authority over me at college dare speak to me; to dictate my way of life; and to force on me the acquaintance of a brute whom anyone can see to be the most vicious sort of London man about town. Before I give myself the trouble to resist such claims, I may as well find out whether they have any real existence. MRS W ARREN: (distracted, throwing herself on her knees) Oh no, no. Stop, stop. I am your mother I swear it. Oh, you can 't mean to turn on me--my own child! It's not natural. You believe me, don't you? Say you believeme.VIVIE: Who was my father?MRS W ARREN: You don't know what you're asking. I can't tell you.VIVIE: (determinedly) Oh yes you can, if you like. I have a right to know; and you know very well that I have thatright. You can refuse to tell me, if you please, but if you do, will see the last of me tomorrow morning. MRS W ARREN: Oh, it's too horrible to hear you talk like that. You wouldn't--you couldn't leave me.VVIE: (ruthlessly)Yes，without a moment 's hesitation, if you trifle with me about this. (shivering with disgust) How can I feel sure that I may not have the contaminated blood of that brutal waster in my veins?MRS W ARREN: No, no. On my oath it’s not he, nor any of the rest that you have ever met. I’m certain of that, at least.(Vivie’s eyes fasten sternly on her mother as the significance of this flashes on her.) Questions:1. Identify the author and the title of the play.2.The sentence “Are you my mother?” is said to her mother by Vivie, which is very inappropriate and therefore unlikely in a congenial conversation between daughter and mother. Why does Vivie say to her mother in this way?3. Do you know what Mrs. Warren's profession is?4. Describe the female protagonist, Vivie.5. What is the theme of the play?V. Topic Discussion.Discuss the character of Lord Henry and his impact on Dorian.English Literature in the Early Twentieth CenturyI. Multiple Choice.1-5: ACBDA 6-10: CBBAB 11-15: BBDAAII. True-or-False Statement.1-5: TTTTF 6-10: TTFTTIII. Matching.1-5: BC/JGEF 6-10: HDAJ/CIIV. Appreciation of Literature Works.1. PoetryAnswers:1) William Butler Yeats. When You Are Old.2) Meter: Iambic pentameter; rhyme scheme: abba cddc effe3) The language of the poem is plain and veiled; there is no enthusiastic vent, only a quiet, sincere express. At the end of the poem, we can feel a kind of holy and tragedy beauty. Flowing and elegant in the screen revealed a faint sadness, but there is no lack of cordial and warm feeling.2. PlayAnswers:1.George Bernard Shaw; Mrs. Warren's Profession.2. Vivie is suspicious of her mother 's profession and she is determined to know the answer. She seems to have guessed the answer, thus she feels shameful and angry for the harsh reality.3.She runs brothels for profit.4. Vivie is a kind of new woman, intelligent and well educated, with a strong sense of justice and a passion for “honest” work. To Vivie, it is unacceptable that Mrs. Warren takes running brothels as profession，yet not excusable. Then she breaks off with her mother and starts to make her own living by finding an “honest” job in London, which shows Vivie’s search for a meaningful life and woman's independence in the man's world.5.In this play, Shaw proceeds from attacking one of the abuses in the capitalist world to the condemnation of the entire bourgeois, the whole capitalist system. At the same time Shaw exposes the extreme hypocrisy in that society. The noble and ruling class lives their grand civilized lives by the dirtiest and the cruelest ways of exploitation which lead to untold miseries for millions of poor down-trodden people.V. Topic Discussion.Discuss the character of Lord Henry and his impact on Dorian.Lord Henry’s charm, wit, and intellect hold tremendous sway over the impressionable Dorian. This influence is primarily negative —if Dorian is like Faust, the fictional character who sells his soul for knowledge, then Lord Henry is something of a Mephistopheles, the devil who tempts Faust into the bargain. Lord Henry is a cynical aesthete, a lover of beauty with contempt for conventional morality，and he views Dorian as a disciple with the potential to live out hisphilosophy of hedonism.Indeed, above all else, Lord Henry values individualism，which allows one to live one's life boldly and freely. Because Dorian so willingly assumes the role of disciple, the real source of his downfall rests in his willingness to sacrifice himself to another’s vision. Following Lord Henry's advice and influenced by the “yellow book” that Lord Henry gives him，Dorian gradually allows himself to fall deep into a life of sin, all in the name of pursuing pleasure —which, according to Lord Henry, is the highest good. But, significantly, Lord Henry himself never seems to stray from the straight and narrow: he shocks cocktail guests with his ideas but never puts them into practice himself. He is a thinker, not a doer, and by the end of the novel, he seems curiously naive about where his philosophy, if put into action, would lead him. Unable to see the effects of his philosophy, he continues to champion his ideas even after they have ruined his protégé's life.。

Part One Early and Medieval English LiteratureⅠ. Fill in the blanks.1. In 1066, ____, with his Norman army, succeeded in invading and defeatingEngland.A. William the ConquerorB. Julius CaesarC. Alfred the GreatD. Claudius2. In the 14th century, the most important writer (poet) is ____ .A. LanglandB. WycliffeC. GowerD. Chaucer明朝3. The prevailing form of Medieval English literature is ____.中世纪A. novelB. dramaC. romanceD. essay4. The story of ___ is the culmination of the Arthurian romances.亚瑟王的顶峰A. Sir Gawain and the Green KnightB.BeowulfC. Piers the PlowmanD. The Canterbury Tales5. William Langland’s ____ is written in the form of a dream vision.A. Kubla KhanB. Piers the PlowmanC. The Dream of John BullD. Morte d’Arthur6. After the Norman Conquest, three languages existed in England at that time. TheNormans spoke _____.A. FrenchB. EnglishC. LatinD. Swedish7. ______ was the greatest of English religious reformers and the first translator ofthe Bible.A. LanglandB. GowerC. Wycliffe威克利夫D. Chaucer8. Piers the Plowman describes a series of wonderful dreams the author dreamed,through which, we can see a picture of the life in the ____ England.A. primitiveB. feudal封建的；领地的；世仇的C. bourgeois 资本家D. modern9. The theme of ____ to king and lord was repeatedly emphasized in romances.A. loyaltyB. revolt反抗C. obedience顺从D. mockery嘲弄10. The most famous cycle of English ballads民歌centers on the stories about alegendary outlaw called _____.A. Morte d’ArthurB. Robin HoodC. The Canterbury TalesD. Piers the Plowman11. ______, the “father of English poetry” and one of the greatest narrative poets ofEngland, was born in London in about 1340.A. Geoffrey ChaucerB. Sir GawainC. Francis BaconD. John Dryden12. Chaucer died on October 25th, 1400, and was buried in ____.A. FlandersB. FranceC. ItalyD. Westminster Abbey威斯敏斯特教堂（英国名人墓地13. Chaucer’s earliest work of any length is his _____, a translation of the FrenchRoman 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 throughout Europe.A.The Romaunt of the Rose 传奇故事B. “A Red, Red Rose”C. The Legend of Good WomenD. The Book of the Duchess14. In his lifetime Chaucer served in a great variety of occupations that had impact onthe wide range of his writings. Which one is not his career? ____.A. engineerB. courtierC. office holderD. soldierE. ambassadorF. legislator (议员)15. Chaucer composes a long narrative poem na med _____ based on Boccaccio’spoem “Filostrato”.A. The Legend of Good WomenB. Troilus and CriseydeC. Sir Gawain and the Green KnightD. BeowulfKey to the multiple choices：1-5 ADCAB 6-10 ACBAB 11-15 ADAABⅡ. Questions1.What are the features of Beowulf?文体。

20th British LiteratureWhich of the following is NOT a typical feature of Modernism?所选答案： [未给定]正确答案： C. to put more emphasis on traditional values问题2As a literary figure, Leopold Bloom appears in ______所选答案： [未给定]正确答案： C. Joyce’s Ulysses问题3In My Last Duchess, “She smiled, no doubt,/ Whene’er I passed her…/…This grew;I gave commands; /Then all smiles stopped together.” The last line of theabove quoted passage implies that she_________.所选答案： [未给定]正确答案： A. was murdered at the order of the duke问题4William Golding’s first novel_______, which describes a group of boys working out their lives on an isolated island, paves the way for him to win the Nobel Prize in 1983.所选答案：[未给定]正确答案：Lord of Flies问题5Which of following statements about Yeats is true?所选答案：[未给定]正确答案： B.In a certain way, Yeats’s experiments in drama anticipated the abstract movement of modern theater.问题6Sameul Beckett is an absurdist dramatist who is well known for his daring formalexperimentation. His works are strongly suggestive of the two prominent literary phases modernism and postmodernism. The most famous of his plays is _______written in 1952.所选答案：[未给定]正确答案：Waiting for Godot问题7In The French Lieutenant’s Woman, is an existentially independent woman, as she said in the novel, “No limit, no blame, can touch me.”所选答案： [未给定]正确答案： B. Sarah问题8The Old Wives’ Tale was written by .所选答案：[未给定]正确答案： D. Arnold Bennett问题9A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is ’s first novel.所选答案：[未给定]正确答案：James Joyce问题10John Fowles’s novel _________is a metafiction model of postmodernist form of writing fiction in the form of fiction, trying to use burlesque and parody as a means to reveal the discrepancybetween the imitation and the original.所选答案：[未给定]正确答案：French Lieutenant’s Woman问题11. __________ is the most outstanding stream-of-consciousness novelist of 20th century.所选答案：[未给定]正确答案： A.JamesJoyce问题12All of Joyce’s novels and short stories have the same setting of his native country Irelandespecially the city of .所选答案：[未给定]正确答案：Dublin问题13The modernist writers such as Dorothy Richardson, James Joyce and Virginia Woolf are mainly concerned with the ______.所选答案： [未给定]正确答案： B. inner life of an individual问题14To create his modern Odyssey—Ulysses, Joyce adopts a kind of ________ style.所选答案：[未给定]正确答案：mock-heroic问题15D. H. Lawrence’s poems fall roughly into three categories—satirical and comic poems, poemsabout human relationship and emotions, and poems about .所选答案：[未给定]正确答案：nature问题16得0 分，满分2 分Artistically, Samuel Beckett has come under the strong influence of , whose worksparody the unsympathetic world and man’s wretched lot.所选答案： [未给定]正确答案： C. James Joyce问题17A typical Forsyte, according to John Galsworthy, is a man with a strong sense of , whonever pays any attention to human feelings.所选答案：[未给定]正确答案： B. property问题18In his famous essay “Tradition and Individual Talent”puts great emphasis on theimportance of tradition both in creative writing and in criticism.所选答案：[未给定]正确答案：T. S. Eliot问题19written by Iris Murdoch is remarkable for its meta-fictional structure, containingvarious narrators and narrative descriptions, and its multi-dimensional psychology.所选答案： [未给定]正确答案： C. The Black Prince问题20The textual insinuation of Joyce’s Ulysses is parallel to Homeric epic_____, thus revealing the vast difference between the grandeur of the ancient Greek heroand the pettiness of the degraded modern anti-hero.所选答案：[未给定]正确答案：Odyssey问题21Which writer belongs to “stream-of-consciousness” school?所选答案：[未给定]正确答案： A.Virginia Woolf问题22Virginia Woolf’s novel, published in1925, made her reputation as an importantpsychological writer.所选答案：[未给定]正确答案：Mrs. Dalloway问题23By presenting a conventional hero as a villain, or a conventional villain as a hero,intends to give a shocking impression to his audience and challenge the conventional way of thinking.所选答案：[未给定]正确答案： B. George Bernard Shaw问题24______represents the much more readable novelists of the stream of consciousness school. She isa fine artist, a woman of sharp sensitivity who, in one of her frequent mental depressions,committed suicide.所选答案：[未给定]正确答案：Virginia Woolf问题25G. B. Shaw’s play Mrs. Warren’s Profession is a realistic exposure of the in the Englishsociety.所选答案：[未给定]正确答案： A. economic exploitation of women问题26The statement “A demanding mother turns away from her husband and gives all her affection toher sons” sums up the main plot of D. H. Lawrence’s.所选答案： [未给定]正确答案： B. Sons and Lovers问题27得0 分，满分2 分Joyce seems to mean that the novel_________ describes the mental activities of two Dubliners ina single day, while Finnegans Wake, his second novel, describes the sub-conscious world inwhich a man lives through a good part of his life.所选答案：[未给定]正确答案：Ulysses问题28Muriel Spark’s The Girls of Slender Means is set in a hostel in the city of __________ in 1945 when the detonation of an unexploded bomb sets fire to the hostel, a moment whencharacters’ spiritual world is depicted in a biting satire.所选答案：[未给定]正确答案：London问题29In the beginning of 20 century, the seminal developments in the fields of philosophy andpsychology that impacted literary creativity and criticism are Bergson’s notion of ______andFreud’s theory of psychoanalysis.所选答案：[未给定]正确答案：time问题30得0 分，满分2 分The theory of psychoanalysis put forward first by ______exerts great influence over modern literature.所选答案： [未给定]正确答案： C. Sigmund Freud问题31Between 1912 and 1922 there came a great poetry movement______ in England and America toexpress the modern sense of fragmentization and dislocation. T.E. Hulme is considered thefirst outstanding theorist of this movement.所选答案：[未给定] 正确答案：imagism问题32____is Galsworthy’s masterpiece which gives a profound and true -to-life picture of the English society from the 80’s of the 19th century up to the 20’s of the 20th century.所选答案：[未给定]正确答案：The Forsyte Saga问题33In Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf adopted a writing technique called , in which the whole story was presented with the interior monologues of the characters.所选答案：[未给定]正确答案：stream-of-consciousness问题34T. S. Eliot’s poem_______, which is 433 lines long, is broadly acknowledged as one of the most recognizable landmarks of modernism, the first part of the poem is the Burial of the Dead.所选答案：[未给定]正确答案：The Waste Land问题35Which of the following statements about D. H. Lawrence is NOT true?所选答案： [未给定]正确答案： A. He was daringly innovative in the techniques of novel writing.问题36The Golden Notebook is considered to be __________’s masterpiece, taken as a milestone workin Feminist Literature.所选答案：[未给定]正确答案：Doris Lessing问题37得0 分，满分2 分Rudyard Kipling was the spokesman for imperialist sentiment. Which one is NOT his work?所选答案：[未给定]正确答案： A.Dubliners问题 38Eliot’s poem, The Waste Land, is mainly concerned with the ______of a moderncivilization.所选答案：[未给定]正确答案： B. spiritual breakup问题 39William Golding’s Lord of the Flies deals with the conflict between the forces of reason and those of irrationality represented by .所选答案： [未给定] 正确答案： C. Jack问题 40 得 0 分，满分 2 分The statement that a sensitive young man is at first shaped by excessively powerfuland oppressive forces of his environment but gradually realizes the pressureand rebels against it and tries to find his own identity mat well sum up themajor theme of _____.所选答案： [未给定] 正确答案： C.Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man问题 41“She frankly wanted him to climb into the middle class, a thing not very difficult, she knew. And she wanted him in the end to marry a lady.” is taken from D. H. Lawrence’snovel .所选答案： [未给定] 正确答案： Sons and Lovers问题 42Which of the following statements about writers in 1920s is true?所选答案：[未给定]正确答案：C. Freudian psychology influenced many modern writers.问题 43______, which bears a strong thematic resemblance to “The Waste Land”, is generally regardedas the darkest of T. S. Eliot’s poems.所选答案： [未给定] 正确答案： The Hollow Men问题 44In his poem “The Lake Isle of Innifree,” W. B. Yeats expressed his _____.所选答案：[未给定] 正确答案： D.desire to escape the materialistic world问题 45“The Bliss” is one of ’s famous short stories. She was skilled in psychologicalanalysis, whose favorite technique is the flash-back.所选答案： [未给定]正确答案： Katherine Mansfield问题 46William Butler Yeats experienced a slow and painful change in his poetic creation, starting in the romantic tradition and finishing as a mature poet.所选答案： [未给定] 正确答案： modernistmodernism问题 47presents in his works strong Christian nihilism, which is reflected explicitly by hisfamous saying “The dirty dog, he doesn’t even exits!” in his play against the God, Endgame .所选答案： [未给定]正确答案： B. Samuel Beckett问题 48_______is claimed as the best Irish poet since W.B.Yeats, and his work has been among the most profusely commented upon in the contemporary. The volumes of his verse include Death of aNaturalist (1966), The Haw Lantern (1987), and the spirit Level (1999).所选答案： [未给定] 正确答案： Seamus Heaney问题 49Which of the following novels was NOT written by H. G. Wells?所选答案：[未给定]正确答案： B. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man问题50Modernism upholds a new view of time by emphasizing the time over the chronological one.所选答案：[未给定]正确答案：Psychicpsychological。

---------------------------------------------------------------最新资料推荐------------------------------------------------------ English Literature in the 20th CenturyEnglish Literature in the 20th Century I. Please define the following terms. 1. Modernism: A general term applied retrospectively to the wide range of experimental and avant-garde (Fr. 先锋派) trends in literature of the early 20th century, including Symbolism, Futurism, Expressionism, Imagism, Vorticism （旋涡画派——现代资产阶级文艺思潮未来主义的一种支派）, Dada （达达派——现代资产阶级颓废文艺流派），and Surrealism （超现实主义） , along with the innovations of the unaffiliated writers. Modernism takes the irrational philosophy and the theory of psycho-analysis at its theoretical base. It is a reaction against realism. It rejects rationalism which is the theoretical base of realism; it excludes from its major concern the external, objective, material world, which is the only creative source of realism; by advocating a free experimentation on new forms and new techniques in literary creation, it casts away almost all the traditional elements in literature such as story, plot, character, chronological narration, etc., which are essential to realism. As a result, the works created by the modernist writers can often be labeled as anti-novel, anti-poetry or anti-drama.2. Allusive language:1/ 37Modernist writers seem to talk a Dadaist language. It is full of allusions to myths, the Bible, foreign languages, often in form of collages（抽象派的贴拼画）that are random-seeming, making a poem1---------------------------------------------------------------最新资料推荐------------------------------------------------------ read like a riddle, a story work like a labyrinth. It is highly allusive, which one signifier gliding to several signifiers. Reading this kind of language, the reader is forced to search for meaning on his own.3. Feminist criticism: A development and movement in critical theory and in the evaluation of literature which was well under way by the late 1960s and which has burgeoned steadily since. It is an attempt to describe and interpret and reinterpret women’s experience as depicted in various kinds of literature – especially the novel; and, to a lesser extent, poetry and drama. It questions the long-standing, dominant, male, phallocentric ideologies, a patriarchal attitudes and male interpretations in literature. It attacks male notions of value in literature and challenges traditional and accepted male ideas about the nature of women and about how women feel, act and think, or are supposed to feel, act and think, and how in general they respond to life and living. It thus questions numerous prejudices and assumptions about women made by male writers, not least any tendency to cast women in stock character roles.4. Reader-response criticism: A general term for those kinds of modern criticism and literary theory that focus on the response of readers to literary works,3/ 37rather than on the works themselves considered as self-contained entities. It is not a single agreed theory so much as a shared2---------------------------------------------------------------最新资料推荐------------------------------------------------------ concern with a set of problems involving the extent and nature of readers’ contribution to the meanings of literary works, approached from various positions including those of structuralism, psychoanalysis,phenomenology, and hermeneutics. The common factor is a shift from the description of texts in terms of their inherent properties to a discussion of the production of meanings within the reading process.5. Post-modernism: A term referring to certain radically experimental works of literature and art produced after World War II. Post-modernism is distinguished from modernism, which generally refers to the revolution in art and literature that occurred during the period 1910-1930, particularly following the disillusioning experience of World War I. Much of post-modernist writing reveals and highlights the alienation of individuals and the meaninglessness of human existence. Postmodernists break away from traditions through experimentation with new literary devices, forms, and styles.6. Post-structuralism: A term referring to the general attempt to contest and subvert structuralism and to formulate new theories regarding interpretation and meaning. It was initiated particularly by deconstructors but also associated with5/ 37certain aspects and practitioners ofpsychoanalytic, Marxist, cultural, feminist, and gender criticism.3---------------------------------------------------------------最新资料推荐------------------------------------------------------ Post-structuralists claim that in the grand scheme of signification, all “signifieds” are also signifiers, for each word exists in a complex web of language and has such a variety of denotation and connotations that no one meaning can be said to be final, stable, and invulnerable to reconsideration and substitution. Leading post-structuralists include French philosophers Derrida, Lacan, Foucault, etc.II．Comment on the development of William Butler Yeats’s poetic career and characteristics of his poetry. William Butler Yeats is considered to be one of the greatest poets in the English language; and his poetic achievement stands at the center of modern literature. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923. Yeats is not a poet of nature, but of man. His poems tend to present life in the mode of drama and conflicts in place and time with the value residing in the conflict rather than in the final victory. He had a very long poetic career, stretching from the 1880s to the 1930s, and had experienced a slow painful change in his poetic creation, starting in the romantic tradition and finishing as a matured modernist poet. Generally, his poetic career can be divided into three periods according to the contents and style of his poetry. As a young7/ 37man in the last decades of the 19th century, Yeats started his poetic career in the romantic tradition. The major themes are usually Celtic legends, local4---------------------------------------------------------------最新资料推荐------------------------------------------------------ folktales, or stories of the heroic age in Irish history. His early work is imbued with a haunting beauty, a soreness of heart born of a fundamental loneliness of spirit, and an idealistic longing to transcend the miseries and imperfections of the mundane world. In these early lyrics, his longings often take the form of a rather simplistic but beautifully expressed escapism, as in “The Lake Isle of Innisfree”. The style of his early poetry is very delicate with natural imagery, dream-like atmosphere and musical beauty. The first two decades of the 20th century were a period of transition to Yeats, during which his attitude towards politics, life and poetry experienced a great change. Now Yeats began to write with realistic and concrete themes on a variety of subjects, studying the profound and complicated human problems, such as life, love, politics, and religion. He accepted the modernist ideas in poetry. Gradually, Yeats turned from a traditional poet into a modernist one. The poems of this period are characterized by the mood of anger, disillusion and bitter rhythms. “The Second Coming”, raw and visionary, gives an air of cyclic inevitability to the occurrence of the death and rebirth of the gods as part of the recurring cycles of history,9/ 37which marks Yeats’ maturity as a modernist poet. Yeats reached the last stage of his poetic creation when he was over fifty. His concern has turned to the great subjects of dichotomy, such as, youth and age, love and war, vigor and wisdom, body and soul, and life5---------------------------------------------------------------最新资料推荐------------------------------------------------------ and art. In this last period, Yeats has developed a realistic, tough complex and symbolical style. In his famous poem, “Sailing to Byzatium”, Yeats explores the problems of death, love, old age and art. The Tower and The Winding Stair are two collections which represent the maturity of his modernist poetry. The mastery of technique that enables Yeats to perfect subtle, forceful and highly unusual poetic style makes him one of the greatest modern poets.III. Discuss the possible theme in William Butler Yeats’s “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” and how that theme is presented in the poem. The major themes in Yeats’ s poems are usually Celtic legends, local folktales, or stories of the heroic age in Irish history. Many of his poems have a dream quality, expressing melancholy, passive and self-indulgent feelings. But in a number of poems, Yeats has achieved suggestive patterns of meaning by a careful counterpointing of contrasting ideas or images like human and fairy, natural and artificial, domestic and wild, and ephemeral and permanent. “Innisfree” is just a popular representative of such poems; around a “fairyland” background, the poem is closely woven, easy, subtle and musical; the clarity and control of the imagery give the poem a haunting quality. The11/ 37overall style of his early poetry is very delicate with natural imagery, dream-like atmosphere and musical beauty. The possible theme is that tired of the life of his day, Yeats sought6---------------------------------------------------------------最新资料推荐------------------------------------------------------to escape into an ideal “fairyland” where he could live calmly as a hermit and enjoy the beauty of nature. The poem consists of three quatrains of iambic pentameter, with each stanza rhymed abab. Innisfree is an inlet in the lake in Irish legends. Here the author is referring to a place for hermitage.IV. Make a contrast between 1950s’ poetry and 1960s’ poetry. The 1950s is the heyday of the so-called Movement. It reacts against the neo-Romanticism of Dylan Thomas and others and against the modernist mode. It is in some sense the revival of the English tradition. Yet to characterize the style of the Movement in such phrases is difficult, but it may suggest the type of realistic, reflective, moralizing, empirical, personally honest, occasionally satirical poetry, suspicious of human nature and saturated with a sense of life’s pain, which was dominant in Britain for the past thirty years. The most important Movement poets include Philip Larkin, Donald Davie, Thom Gunn, etc. Its influence extended to many years later. The 1960s is a mixture of traditional style with Modernist and Post-modernist styles of the US and of Europe. The Movement poets generated opposition in the 1960s because they carry the anti-modernist, insular reaction, which was present in English poetry since the 1920s,13/ 37to7---------------------------------------------------------------最新资料推荐------------------------------------------------------ unusual length. And the movement poetry was attacked for their gentility. English poetry of the new poetry is formed in tension between the strong, persisting appeal of native English styles, on the one hand, and on the other hand, the modernist and post-modernist styles of the US and of Europe. The interaction of opposed values showed itself not only in particular volumes and poems but in the same poet’s reversals of direction over the years. Both international or transatlantic, modernist or post-modernist mode, English traditional modes are shown in the works of the same poets. These poets include Ted Hughes, Geoffrey Hill, etc. V. What are the features of modernist poetry? The 20th century has witnessed a great achievement in English poetry. The early poems of Pound and Eliot and Yeats, with its hardening and maturing style, marked the rise of “modernist poetry”, which is, in a way, a revolution against the conventional ideas and forms of the Victorian poetry. The modernist poets fight against the romantic fuzziness and self-indulged emotionalism, advocating new ideas in poetry writing such as to use the common speech, to create new rhythms as the expression of a new mood, to allow absolute freedom in the choice of subjects, and to use hard, clear and precise15/ 37images in poetic creation.VI. Comment on T.S. Eliot’s achievements in poetry. T. S. Eliot is a great modernist poet. In poetry, Eliot, with Ezra Pound,8---------------------------------------------------------------最新资料推荐------------------------------------------------------ replaced the logical exposition of thoughts with collages of fragmentary images and complex allusions. Eliot had a long poetic career, which was generally divided into two periods. As a young man with bitter disillusionment and with boldness in the handling of language, Eliot had explored in his early poetry various aspects of decay of culture in the modern Western world, expressing a sense of the disintegration of life. The more important works of this period are “Prufrock, Gerontion”, “The Waste Land” and “The Hollow Man”. “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” was written with a faultless ear for rhythm and in striking images. Eliot traced the continuous flow of the protagonist’s sense, thoughts, feelings, and memories instream-of-consciousness style, suggesting a confession of the speaker ’s incapability of facing love and life in a sterile modern world. As Eliot ’s most important single p oem, “The Waste Land” has been regarded as a landmark and a model of the 20th century English poetry, comparable to Wordsworth’s Lyrical Ballads. With bold innovations in versification and style, the poem not only presents a panorama of physical disorder and spiritual desolation in the modern Western world, but also reflects the prevalent mood of disillusionment and17/ 37despair of a whole post-war generation. The structure of the poem is built out of contrast in time and also based on the contrasting ideas between life and death, fertility and sterility, love and lust, and reality and imagination. Unlike the traditional9---------------------------------------------------------------最新资料推荐------------------------------------------------------ poems, the shape of the poem is more circular than linear, its order more simultaneous than developing. In his later period, Eliot produced only two major volumes of poetic works: Ash Wednesday (1930) and Four Quartets (1944). Both clearly reflect his loyalty to the Church of England. Four Quartets is characterized by a fourfold structure, a symphonic structure and fourfold themes. Man, alienated from self and society, finds reconciliation in God. Thus, Four Quartets are characterized by a philosophical and emotional calm quite in contrast to the despair and suffering of the earlier works. Four Quartets sufficiently consolidated Eliot’s reputation that in 1948 he was awarded both the Order of Merit and the Nobel Prize for literature.VII. Make comments on George Bernard Shaw as a playwright. George Bernard Shaw is the greatest critical playwright in the 20 th century England. In 1925, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. In his long dramatic career, Shaw wrote as many as 53 plays altogether. His artistic views are largely shaped by his radical political stand. He is strongly against “art for art’s sake”, and thinks art should serve social purposes by reflecting human life, revealing social contradictions and educating common people. Shaw’s19/ 37plays deal with modern social problems, which bitterly criticize and attack English10---------------------------------------------------------------最新资料推荐------------------------------------------------------ bourgeois society. He tears away the mask of capitalism and deeply exposes the social conflicts. His plays have only one passion: indignation (anger –fury). He portrays the situations frankly and honestly, intending to shock his audiences with a new view of society. Widower ’s House, a grotesquely realistic exposure of slum landlordism, and Mrs. Warren’s Profession, a play about the economic oppression of women, can be regarded as the typical representatives of Shaw’s early plays. He wrote quite a few history plays, such as Caesar and Cleopatra and St. Joan. He believes in “Life Force”, which is reflected in Man and Superman and Back to Methuselah. Too True to Be Good is a better play of the later period, with the author ’s almost nihilistic (虚无主义的) bitterness on the subjects of the cruelty and madness of World War I and the aimlessness and disillusion of the young. Structurally and thematically, he follows the great traditions of realism. With his wit and love of paradox, he makes full use of comic satire and brought a new kind of intelligence to the drama. He is skilled in ridiculing, upsetting, scandalizing and astonishing his public. The humor of Shaw is always a sharp social lash that exposes and discredits vice or folly of the age. Much of Shavian21/ 37drama is constructed around the inversion of a conventional theatrical situation. Shaw’s language is easy, witty and forceful. The dialogue and interplay of the minds of the characters take primacy over mere story, instead of action.11---------------------------------------------------------------最新资料推荐------------------------------------------------------ VII. Please analyze the excerpt from Bernard Shaw’s Mrs. Warren’s Profession (pp. 405-406) and answer the following questions. 1. The sentence “Are you my mother?” is said to her mother by Vivie, which is very inappropriate and therefore unlikely in a congenial conversation between daughter and mother. Why does Vivie say to her mother in this way? 2. Do you know what Mrs. Warren’s profession is? 3. Describe the female protagonist, Vivie. 4. What is the theme of the play?Possible literary understandings. 1. Vivie suspects her mother ’s profession and she is determined to know the answer. She seems to have guessed the answer, thus she feels shameful and angry for the harsh reality. 2. She runs a business of prostitution for profit. 3. Vivie is a kind of new woman, intelligent and well educated, with a strong sense of justice and a passion for “honest” work. In the play, Vivie discovers her mother ’s profession, which leads to a sharp conflict between Mother and Daughter. To Vivie, Mrs. Warren ’s choice of profession is understandable, yet not excusable. Finally,1223/ 37Vivie breaks off with her mother and starts to make her own living by finding and “honest” job in London, which show Vivie’s search for a meaningful life and woman’s independence in the man’s world. 4. The play deals with Mrs. Warren’s running prostitution as big business in the bourgeois society, which criticized the evils of the “civilized” capitalist world tartly. The play is not only moral, but has a strong realistic theme of reforming the evil and corrupt capitalist society by exposing its vices, educating the people, and improving the living standard of the lower classes.VIII. Comment on Virginia Woolf ’s literary achievements. Virginia Woolf is an important modernist novelist and she is also a strong advocator of the feminist movement. In her fiction and essays, she makes extended analysis of male-female relations to reveal women’s experience and find an alternative to the male-dominated views of reality. Her concern with feminist themes is dominant in A Room of One’s Own (1929). As an important essayist, Woolf is prolific, publishing some five hundred essays in periodicals and collections, beginning in 1905. Characteristics for Woolf ’s essays are dialogic nature of style and contitual questioning of opinion in a conversational tone. Though her essays are highly praised, her important literary achievement---------------------------------------------------------------最新资料推荐------------------------------------------------------ lies in her1325/ 37novel writing. She has engaged ceaselessly in experiments of new forms and fresh techniques in novel writing. To evoke the life stories of her characters, Woolf employs the devices of memory and psychic time, restricting her novels to the limited time span of a single day as, in Mrs. Dalloway and in Between the Acts. Thus, by shaping her major novels with a narrow framework of time, Virginia Woolf represented the dual aspect of human life – the inner life simultaneously with the outer life. To provide a necessary unified form for her novel, Virginia Woolf also makes use of recurrent images or symbols, such as: the flashlight of the lighthouse, the tide of the sea, the striking sound of Big Ben, and other natural or artificial cyclical schemes. With To the Lighthouse (1927) and The Waves (1931), Woolf established herself as one of the leading writers of modernism. In each of her major novels, Woolf creates a very limited number of main characters, whose personalities are revealed primarily through the presentation of interior monologues or streams of consciousness. But unlike James Joyce, Woolf presents her characters’innermind activities by a continual shifting from mind to mind so as to reproduce a psychic structure in the novel. For instance, in Mrs. Dalloway, the streams of consciousness of Mrs. Dalloway, Septimus Smith,---------------------------------------------------------------最新资料推荐------------------------------------------------------ and Peter Walsh are presented in a shifting way. A common stimulus, such as the loud burst of a car tyre, the white1427/ 37trace left by an airplane in the sky, the striking sound of Big Ben, will trigger the switch of the flowing thoughts from one character to another, while the style of the presentation is uninterrupted. The psychic presentation in To the Lighthouse is mainly focused upon Mrs. Ramsays’ thoughts and moods. Woolf goes even further in The Waves, by presenting six characters with their separate interior monologues, which shows a diversity of personal experience in a single design. Thus Woolf brings her experiments of stream-of-consciousness technique to the climax. Woolf ’s language is rich, lucid, and transparent. Her novels usually operate on two planes: prose and poetry. Between the Acts is considered to be the most lyrical of all her books, not only in feeling but in style. Virginia Woolf makes a special contribution to the novel of subjectivity by developing a rich and buoyant style of lyrical poetry with sharpened images, central symbols, profound allusions, and varied rhythms.IX. Comment on James Joyce’s creation and literary achievements James Joyce, one of the most radical innovator of twentieth-century writing, dedicated himself to exuberant exploration of the total resources of language. As a great modernist writer, James Joyce wrote altogether three novels, a collection of short stories, two volumes of poetry,---------------------------------------------------------------最新资料推荐------------------------------------------------------ and one play. The novel and short stories are regarded as his great works.1529/ 37Dubliners (1914), a collection of 15 short stories, is the first important work of Joyce’s lifelong preoccupation with Dublin life. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is Joyce’s first novel. The novel can be read as a naturalistic record of the hero’s bitter experiences and his final artistic and spiritual liberation. Enormously long and complex, using a variety of styles –notably the “stream-of-consciousness” method –Ulysses is one of the great literary achievements of the twentieth-century, and has been described as the greatest novel ever written. Ulysses can be called revolutionary prose, a combination a stream-of-consciousness immediacy and protean flexibility. In Ulysses, the narrative does not merely convey the story, it acts as a collaborative agency, often shifting between a kaleidoscope of styles in order to illuminate alternate meanings, resonances, ironies, or counterpoints within the text. It is such an uncommon novel that there arises the question whether it can be called a “novel” at all; for it seems to lack almost all the story, no plot, almost no action, and little characterization in the usual sense. Ulysses gives an account of man’s life during one day (16 June, 1904) in Dublin. Joyce intends to present a microcosm of the whole human life by providing an instance of how a single event contains all the---------------------------------------------------------------最新资料推荐------------------------------------------------------ events of its kind, and how history is recapitulated in the happenings of one day. It presents a realistic picture of the modern wasteland in which modern men are portrayed as vulgar1631/ 37and trivial creature. Another remarkable feature of Joyce’s writing is his straightforward style. To create his modern Odyssey – Ulysses, Joyce also adopts a kind of mock-heroic style. Joyce’s other major novel, Finnegans Wake, is even more uncompromising than Ulysses , written in a language of his own devising, a great mixture of linguistic fragments and borrowings.XI. Compared with Virginia Woolf, D.H. Lawrence and other writers of transitional age in the 20th century, should E.M. Forster be labeled as a traditional writer or a modernist or a writer of transitional age? State your opion. E.M. Forster can be regarded as a writer of the transitional age. On one side, he carries the fine traditions of realism; on the other he accepts and concerns with new ideas of modernism. Forster ’s modernistic trend is shown in his themes, in his major concerns with personal relationships and in his use of poetic style and symbolism. Forster has a close affinity to Virginia Woolf in points of view and in writing style. For they both belong to the Bloomsbury group and both write about the middle-class people in the poetic style. Forster also shares with D. H. Lawrence a similar view on personal relaltionships. They both concentrate their efforts on exploring the possibilities of realizing natural and harmonious---------------------------------------------------------------最新资料推荐------------------------------------------------------ relationships between man and man in a1733/ 37suppressing and decaying world. But comparing with the modernist masters like James Joyce or Virginia Woolf, Forster is a less experimental writer in forms or techniques. Basically he follows the traditional pattern of realistic novels from Defoe to Meredith. His novels have well-organized, sometimes melodramatic, plots with considerable complexity in structure; his stories are told in a masterly way with incident after incident in a series of pictures, which are easily, vividly and economically drawn his insight into certain aspects of character is acute and with microscopic exactness; he traces and analyses the blended course of thought and feeling and the changing mood of his characters. By using the third-person omniscient narrative, Forster, like Fielding and Thackery, presents subtle comments on his characters. Influenced by S. Butler and T. Hardy, Forster shows great concerns with the social and moral issues. As a matter of fact, he has never cut himself off from the political and economic questions of the outer world. In order to expose the “undeveloped heart” of the English middle class, Forster makes a skillful use of the comic satire inherited from Jane Austen. Thus, E. M. Forster should be labeled as a writer of the transitional age.18---------------------------------------------------------------最新资料推荐------------------------------------------------------ XII. Through analyzing the symbolic meaning of major characters, Estragon (Gogo), Vladimir (Didi), Pozzo, Lucky, Godot, comment on the symbolic values in Waiting for Godot. In Waiting for Godot, the heroes of the play are two tramps, Estragon (Gogo) and Vladimir (Didi), who spend consecutive evenings waiting for somebody called Godot on a country road. Gogo, who is more elemental and less intelligent and who is always beaten up, never remembers things, and worries about eating, may stand for the body; and Didi, who is more rational, intellectual and philosophical and who expresses awareness of their poverished circumstances, may stand for the soul. Two other characters, Pozzo and Lucky, come along as master and slave, Pozzo being momentary thought to be Godot, whose nature of identity is totally unknown. Beckett has given his characters a wide identity. Estraton, Vladimir, Pozzo and Lucky are not simply four particular men. In a broader sense, they are representatives of mankind. For instance, judging the names of the characters, it can be said that Estragon is French; Vladimir is Russian; Pozzo is Italian; and Luck is English. Thus they represent the whole human race. Estragon is the sensualist, the common, unthinking materialist, while Vladimir might be said35/ 37。

20th Century British LiteratureLecture 9Modernist Poetry1. 20th Century British Poetry: An Outline1.1 Georgian PoetryA. Tradition formed by Thomas Hardy and A. E. HousmanThomas Hardy: canon of English poetry; philosophical poetTwo features—uniformity of his poems (impossible to trace any kind of development, any growth or decline in power, any change in subject-matter, technique or even the emotional tone from the beginning to the end of his poetic career); Variety (various genres of poems like lyrics, love-songs, ballads, sonnets, and blank verse on various themes; verse-forms, rhythms, and rhyme-scheme varying from poem to poem and from genre to genre).Influence on W.H.Auden and Philip Larkin and others in threefold fashion:delicacy of his observations of the natural world; capability to state straight into the duplicities of human passion; philosophical scope of his mind.Ideas: --Nature is never inert: we remain part of nature and it part of us.--He refused the comforts of religious belief.--He is obsessed with the instability and transience of all humanemotions and human life—and thus pessimism.1. 20th Century British Poetry: An OutlineA. E. Housman (1859-1936): classical poet and scholar—narrow, profound, isolated, brooding (meditative), and on occasion ferocious.Both of them are conservative in artistic form buttry to innovate in content.B. War Poets:Robert BlookWelfred IrvingSegfred SasoonConservative in form while dealing with theevents and the war of their time, and thusdemonstrating kind of modernity.C. Rise of Modernist Poetry1- French Symbolists (1870s-1890s):Arthur Rimbaud, Stephane Mallame, etc.(1) By writing against realism and naturalism as well as theobjectivity and technical conservatism, they aimed for a poetry ofsuggestion rather than of direct statement, evoking subjectivemoods through the use of private symbols while avoiding thedescription of the external reality or the expression of opinion.(2) They were interested in musical properties of languageand believed that sound had mystical affinities with other senses(eg. synaesthesia).(3) Influential innovations include free verse and the prose poem.2- Imagists (1912-17) : Ezra Pound, T. E. Hulme, H.D., Amy Lowell, etc—•They rejected most 19th century poetry as cloudy verbiage (meaningless language);•They aimed at a clarity and exactness in a short lyric poem, and emphasized concision and directness; •They preferred looser cadences to traditional regular rhythms.e.g. Ezra Pound’s “In a Station of the Metro”The apparition of these in the crowd;Petals on a wet, black bough.1.2 Modernist Age (1920s)T. S. Eliot as the leading figure--modern poetry is experimental;--challenging and rebellious against conventions in both form and content;--an intellectual sophistication that the Victorian poetry lacked was introduced into the poetry from metaphysical poetry. (nature and emotions replaced with intellectuality)--Poet’s role changed from Wordsworth’s emphasis on direct involvement with the author’s feelings in poetic composition to a particular medium in which impressions and experiences are arranged in special ways. Thus meaning becomes symbolic and open to various interpretation.1. 3. Auden’s Generation (1930s)1.3.1 Major figures: W. H. Auden (1907-1973), Stephen Spender, C. Day Lewis, MacNeice.They accepted their creating ideas from Thomas Hardy instead of T. S. Eliot.1.3.2 Themes: Before 1939--1) Ideology: reflecting the political upheaval of the 1930s; sympathetic to the leftist movement and interested in Marxism; anti-fascism; critical against the bourgeois society and focusing on the breakdown of English capitalist society. 2) psychological problems. After 1939—his poetry became more personal and religious.1.3.3. Form: They accepted conventional form with occasional innovations in rhythm and rhyme.1.4 Apocalyptical Poetry(Also New Romanticism, late 1930s and early 1940s)1.4.1 Major figures: Henry Trist, J. F. Hendley, G.S. Frizer, W. S. Graham, Dylan Thomas (1914-1953) They shared little in artistry but shared similar attitude to poetry: romantic, self-expressing; experimental in poetic form and trying to following poetic conventions, esp. romanticism.3.4 Apocalyptical Poetry(Also New Romanticism, late 1930s and early 1940s)1.4.2 Dylan Thomas: received two traditions: romanticism and modernism, so both romanticist and a mystical symbolist.Romanticism leads to his sharp imagery and natural beauty; Modernism, esp. symbolism, leads to his mystical touch and elements of surrealism and personal fantasy.Linguistic genius: good at using poetic diction and imagery. This allows him to be good at expressing his personal feelings in fresh warm and exuberant language.1.5 The Movement Poetry (1950s)A revival of realism in poetry, named after a comment upon a book of poetry New Lines (1956).1.5.1 Major Figures: Kingsley Amis, Elizabeth Jennings, Tom Gunn, and Philip Larkin--Refusing modern poetry and opposed to romanticism while advocating reason, irony and conventional poetic form;--characterized by irony, understatement, and a witty and mocking tone, which were employed to dissolve the serious themes or strong and emotional rhetoric vein of Apocalyptical poetry and modernist poetry.--traced British Poetry to Chaucer, Wordsworth and Hardy instead of Eliot and Pound.1.5.2 Philip Larkin (1922-1985)--the most influential after Auden;--addressing everyday British life in plain, straightforward language and often in traditional forms;--avoiding sentimentality and high-sounding words, but adopting a cool and restricted attitude to the subjects described in his poetry;--Good at turning ordinary things into poetry and reveal some simple truth people usually fail to see in daily life.2. William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)2.1 Literary Career：(1) 1st period (1800s-1900):--following romantic tradition of Spenser, Shelly and Blake; also influenced by the Pre-Raphaelite style;--writing poems of “impersonal beauty” and creating an dream-like effect;--themes: spiritual live and frustratons and uncertainty about the world;--seeking to transform Irish folk-lore into poetry.e. g. “The Lake Isle of Innisfree”—a strong and urgent desire for peace in original and fresh language, evocative images and musical properties.2nd Period (1900-1920):--t rying to “carry the normal, passionate, reasoning self” into his poetry;--showing his concern for the fate of his people and the future of the world, but never pessimistic for he believed that history was circular and death brought birth.e.g. “The Second Coming”3rd Period (1920-1939): a mature poet--learning to reconcile the conflict between life and art, the real and the ideal to develop a unity between the two.--emphasizing the harmonious coexistence of the eternal opposites of objectivity and subjectivity, art and life, and soul and body.--mythology, symbolism and philosophy much used.Eg. “Sailing to Byzantium” (1927): In this poem, Yeats faced pld age with a courage that comes out of intellectual wisdom: “An aged man is but a paltry thing,…” bu t aging is also a sign of maturity, where spiritual freedom grows from.3. T. S. Eliot (1888-1965)“an Anglo Catholic in religion, a classicist in literature and royalist in politics”3.1 Ideology: After initial disillusionment with world politics after the WWI, he turned to religion as a possible solution to the spiritual crisis of modern man.3.2 His essays are influential: 1) favored Donne over Milton; 2) Replaced Tennyson with Hopkins in the 19th century canon; 3) helped to establish the influential New Criticism movement (close analysis of the text itself instead of the background information about the text or the author).3.3 Poetic Views:•Poetry is not “the expression of personality, but an escape from personality”—Impersonal theory opposite to Wor dsworth’s advocacy about good poetry.2) Poetry should bear the historical sense of literature, or take a historical stand.3) He opposed the separation of feelings from intellectuality.4) Objective correlative (客观对应物)：a group of objects, a situation or a series of events can be used as a formula to express particular feelings, which should also be evocative.5) Art is to impose the readers a trustworthy order so as to lead them to a harmonious and steady state. L iterary criticism is to promote the understanding of literary works. The poet’s greatest social responsibility is to defend his native language.。

20世纪英美文学选读（试题）Name_____Marks________ 一. Multiple Choice:（20 %）Select from the four choices of each item the one that best answers the question or completes the statement.1. The sentence "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" is the beginning lineof one of Shakespeare's ________ .A. comediesB. tragediesC. sonnetsD. histories2. "And where are they? And where art thou,"My country ? On thy voiceless shoreThe 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"3. 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. Charles Dickens'sB. D.H. Lawrence'sC. Thomas Hardy'sD. John Galsworthy's4. 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 JonesB. GulliverC. Moll FlandersD. Robinson Crusoe5._______ is a typical feature of Swift's writings.A. Bitter satire B .Elegant styleC. Casual narrationD. Complicated sentence structure6.It is generally regarded that Keats's most important and mature poems are in the form of _______ .A. odeB. elegyC. epicD. sonnet7.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. benevolenceB. admirationC. loveD. tyranny8.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 witB. simple character and poor understandingC. intricate character and quick witD. intricate character and poor understanding9. Of all the eighteenth-century novelists, _______ was the first to set out, both intheory and practice, to write specifically a "comic epic in prose," and the first to give the modern novel its structure and style.A. Daniel DefoeB. Samuel RichardsonC. Henry FieldingD. Oliver Goldsmith10.We can perhaps describe the west wind in Shelley's poem "Ode to the WestWind" with all the following terms except _______ .A. tamedB. swiftC. proudD. wild11.Most of the poems in Whitman's Leaves of Grass sing of the "en-mass" and the_______ as well.A. natureB. self-relianceC. selfD. life12.Emily Dickinson's poem "This is my letter to the World" expresses the poet's _______ about her communication with the outside world.A. indifferenceB. joyC. anxietyD. indignation13.Which of the following statements about writers in 1920s is true?A. Mark Twain published his last and most important novel.B. F. Scott Fitzgerald received the Nobel Prize.C. Freudian psychology influenced many modern writers.D. Most writers were politically radical.14.Naturalism is evolved from realism when the author's tone in writing becomes less serious and less sympathetic but more ironic and more _______ .A. rationalB. humorousC. optimisticD. pessimistic15.Mark Twain's first novel _______ , written in collaboration with Charles D.Warner and published in 1873,though not an artistic success, gives its name to the America of the post-Civil War period which it attempts to satirize.A. The Gilded AgeB. The Age of InnocenceC. The Roughing TimeD. The Jazz Age16.It is on his _______ that Washington Irving's fame mainly rested.A. childhood recollectionsB. sketches about his European toursC. early poetryD. tales about America17.Most recognizable literary movement that gave rise to the twentieth-centuryAmerican literature, or we may say, the second American Renaissance, is the _______ movement.A. transcendentalB. leftistC. expatriateD. expressionistic18.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. SouthernB. WesternC. New HampshireD. New England19.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. impressionismB. expressionismC. multiple points of viewD. first person point of view20.Stylistically, Henry James' fiction is characterized by _______ .A. short, clear sentencesB. abundance of local imagesC. ordinary American speechD. highly refined language 二．Match the works and the author: (10%)1. Daisy Miller: A Study A. Carl Sandburg2. Sons and Lovers B. Eugene O‟Neill3. Soldier’s Home C. T.S. Eliot4. The 42nd Parallel D. Wallace Stevens.5. A Good Man Is Hard to Find E. Flannery O‟Connor6. Leda and the Swan F. William Butler Yeats7. The Waste Land G. Ernest Hemingway8. The Snow Man H. John Dos Passos9. Fog I. Henry James10. The Hairy Ape J. D.H. Lawrence 三．Complete each of the following statements with a proper word or a phrase according to the textbook.（10%）1．Modernist writing is predominantly ________ _____________, often expresses a sense of _________ __________ dislocation, along with an awareness of new anthropological and psychological theories.2. The technique of __________________________ was not invented by modernistwriters, but it had been fully developed and become matured in the hands of James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and William Faulkner. Modernists like them preoccupied with ________ ________________ ( as opposed to a mimetic concern with the human environment and social conditions) and therefore prefer an “________ ________”, that is, to look into the psyche of men instead of the ________ world.3. Writings by ________ _________, who is generally acknowledged as naturalist, andHenry James, who is generally known as ____________, are also collected here.四．Reading comprehension: (12 %，4 points for each)Read the quoted parts carefully and answer the questions in English. Write your answer in the corresponding space on the answer sheet.1．“And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall.Then how should beginTo spit out all the butt-ends o f my days and ways.”Questions:A. Identify the poem and the poet.B. What does the phrase “butt-ends” mean?C. What idea does the quoted passage express?2. “…Is dying hard, Daddy?‟‘No, I think it‟s pretty easy, Nick, It all depends.”‟Questions:A. Identify the work and the author.B. What was Nick preoccupied with when he asked the question?C. Why did the father add “It all depends” after he answered his son‟s question?3.Read the following passage and then answer the questions:I glanced back once. A wafer of a moon was shining over Gatsby's house, making the night fine as before, and surviving the laughter and the sound of his still glowing garden. A sudden emptiness seemed to flow now from the windows and the great doors, endowing with complete isolation the figure of the host, who stood on the porch, his hand up in a formal gesture of farewell. Questions:A. Identify the author and the title of the novel from which this passage is taken.B. The passage describes the end of an event. What is it?C. What implied meaning can you get from reading this passage?五．For each of the quotations listed below please give the name of the author and the title of the literary work from which it is taken :(12 %，3points for each) 1. Down by the salley gardens my love and I did meet;She passed the salley gardens with little snow-white feet.She bid me take love easy, as the leaves grow on the tree;But I, being young and foolish, with her would not agree.In a field by the river my love and I did stand,And on my leaning should she laid her snow-white hand.She bid me take life easy, as the grass grows on the weirs;But I was young and foolish, and now am full of tears.2. I have eatenthe plumsthat were inthe iceboxand whichyou were probablysavingfor breakfast3. Nature‟s first green is gold,Her hardest hue to hold.Her early leaf‟s a flower;But only so an hour.Then leaf subsides to leaf.So Eden sank to grief,So dawn goes down to day.Nothing gold can stay.4. The fog comeson little cat feetIt sits lookingover harbor and cityon silence haunchesand then moves on六．Define the literary terms listed below: （15 % , 5points for each）1．Hemingway Hero:2. rhyme:3. free verse:七．Questions and Answers：（21％）１．"The only thing I don‟t like, she proceeded, is the society." ("Daisy Miller" by Henry James)What kind of society does Daisy not like?Why?2. What does “the Second Coming” refer to?What kind of Second Coming does Yeats expect?According to Yeats, what savage deity would next appear on earth?The Second ComingTurning and turning in the widening gyreThe falcon cannot hear the falconer;Things fall apart; the center cannon hold;Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhereThe ceremony of innocence is drowned;The best lack all conviction, while the worstAre full of passionate intensity.…。

Part One Early and Medieval English LiteratureⅠ. Fill in the blanks.1. In 1066, ____, with his Norman army, succeeded in invading and defeatingEngland.A. William the ConquerorB. Julius CaesarC. Alfred the GreatD. Claudius2. In the 14th century, the most important writer (poet) is ____ .A. LanglandB. WycliffeC. GowerD. Chaucer明朝3. The prevailing form of Medieval English literature is ____.中世纪A. novelB. dramaC. romanceD. essay4. The story of ___ is the culmination of the Arthurian romances.亚瑟王的顶峰A. Sir Gawain and the Green KnightB.BeowulfC. Piers the PlowmanD. The Canterbury Tales5. William Langland’s ____ is written in the form of a dream vision.A. Kubla KhanB. Piers the PlowmanC. The Dream of John BullD. Morte d’Arthur6. After the Norman Conquest, three languages existed in England at that time. TheNormans spoke _____.A. FrenchB. EnglishC. LatinD. Swedish7. ______ was the greatest of English religious reformers and the first translator ofthe Bible.A. LanglandB. GowerC. Wycliffe威克利夫D. Chaucer8. Piers the Plowman describes a series of wonderful dreams the author dreamed,through which, we can see a picture of the life in the ____ England.A. primitiveB. feudal封建的；领地的；世仇的C. bourgeois 资本家D. modern9. The theme of ____ to king and lord was repeatedly emphasized in romances.A. loyaltyB. revolt反抗C. obedience顺从D. mockery嘲弄10. The most famous cycle of English ballads民歌centers on the stories about alegendary outlaw called _____.A. Morte d’ArthurB. Robin HoodC. The Canterbury TalesD. Piers the Plowman11. ______, the “father of English poetry” and one of the greatest narrative poets ofEngland, was born in London in about 1340.A. Geoffrey ChaucerB. Sir GawainC. Francis BaconD. John Dryden12. Chaucer died on October 25th, 1400, and was buried in ____.A. FlandersB. FranceC. ItalyD. Westminster Abbey威斯敏斯特教堂（英国名人墓地13. Chaucer’s earliest work of any length is his _____, a translation of the FrenchRoman 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 throughout Europe.A.The Romaunt of the Rose 传奇故事B. “A Red, Red Rose”C. The Legend of Good WomenD. The Book of the Duchess14. In his lifetime Chaucer served in a great variety of occupations that had impact onthe wide range of his writings. Which one is not his career? ____.A. engineerB. courtierC. office holderD. soldierE. ambassadorF. legislator (议员)15. Chaucer composes a long narrative poem na med _____ based on Boccaccio’spoem “Filostrato”.A. The Legend of Good WomenB. Troilus and CriseydeC. Sir Gawain and the Green KnightD. BeowulfKey to the multiple choices：1-5 ADCAB 6-10 ACBAB 11-15 ADAABⅡ. Questions1.What are the features of Beowulf?文体。