吴定柏《美国文学大纲》(第2版)(考研真题精选 简答题)【圣才出品】

五、简答题

1.Describe and make comment on the character:Blanche(in A Streetcar Names Desire).(in about50words)（厦门大学2013研）

Key:Blanche DuBois,Stella’s older sister,who was a high school English teacher until she was forced to leave her post.Blanche is a loquacious and fragile woman around the age of thirty.She avoids reality,preferring to live in her own imagination. As the play progresses,Blanche’s instability grows along with her misfortune. Behind her veneer of social snobbery and sexual propriety,Blanche is an insecure, dislocated individual.

2.Summarize Puritans’beliefs.（北航2011研）

Key:The Puritans are seen as a society of prudish and extremely strict Christians who possess rigid orthodox and disciplined rules and beliefs,and live their lives according to the Holy Bible.The puritans believe in leading a simple and plain life, according to the most supreme scriptures of God,the Bible.They believe that their destinies are predetermined by God in terms of the soul that will be saved.They also believe that reading the Bible is the only way to reach the true salvation. Original sin,total depravity,and limited atonement,from God’s grace are their beliefs,too.

3.Describe and make a comment on the character in about50words:Frederic Henry(from:A Farewell to Arms)（厦门大学2012研）

Key:Frederic Henry is a brave young American ambulance driver in the Italian army during World War I.His life lacks real passion until he meets Catherine with whom he has a passionate love affair,which distracts himself from the brutality around him.He is a cool-headed and unselfish man who exercises grace under pressure when he is injured.He is a“Hemingway Code Hero”.

4.In the course of American literary history,some authors enjoyed extremely high level of success and popularity in their lifetime,but with the passage of time,their fame faded considerably.Some authors,however,were quite obscure in their lifetime,but their importance and fame grew greatly afterwards.Please give TWO examples for the first case and ONE example for the second case and explain why these things happened.（西安交大2008研）

Key:(1)The first case is represented by Herman Melville and Francis Scott Fitzgerald.Melville got famous for his novels were based on his sailor experiences on the sea which were very popular at the romantic period.But in the late days,as the American Civil War ended,romanticism was replaced by realism.His later novels can’t be appreciated by people.He turned to poem which didn’t win any fame to him.A writer’s life in some degree is influenced by the social environment. As to Fitzgerald,since he published This Side of Paradise,he became a great figure in American writing realm which was his dream.He began to live a luxury life.At last,he had to write the best-seller to cater to the public taste to win money for his luxury life,which finally buried his fame.