【考研类试卷】北京外国语大学英语语言文学专业英美文学真题2008年及答案解析.doc

1、北京外国语大学英语语言文学专业英美文学真题 2008年及答案解析(总分：149.99，做题时间：90 分钟)一、Section Matching(总题数：1，分数：30.00)Passage 1 1. Milton! Thou should“st be living at this hour: England hath need of thee: she is a fen Of stagnant waters: altar, sword and pen, Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower, Have forfeited their an

2、cient English dower Of in ward happiness. Passage 2 2. When I reached home, my sister was very curious to know all about Miss Havisham“s, and asked a number of questions. And I soon found myself getting heavily bumped from behind in the nape of the neck and the small of the back, and having my face

3、ignominiously shoved against the kitchen wall, because I did not answer those questions at sufficient length. Passage 3 3. I started across to the town from a little below the ferry landing, and the drift of the current fetched me in at the bottom of the town. I tied up and started along the bank. T

4、here was a light burning in a little shanty that hadn“t been lived in for a long time, and I wondered who had taken up quarters there. I slipped up and peeped in at the window. There was a woman about forty years old in there, knitting by a candle that was on a pine table. Passage 4 4. In the midst

5、of dinner my Mistress“s favorite cat leapt into her lap. I heard a noise behind me like that of a dozen stocking-weavers at work; and turning my head, I found it proceeded from the purring of this animal, who seemed to be three times larger than an ox, as I computed by the view of her head, and one

6、of her paws, while her mistress was feeding and stroking her. Passage 5 5. Two roads diverged in a wood, and I I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. Passage 6 6. The awful shadow of some unseen power, Floats though unseen amongst us, visiting, This various world with

7、 as inconstant wing, As summer winds that creep from flower to flower. Passage 7 7. Something there is that doesn“t love a wall, That sends the frozen ground swell under it, And spills the upper boulders in the sun, And makes gaps even two can pass abreast. Passage 8 8. The scenery of Walden is on a

8、 humble scale, and though very beautiful, does not approach to grandeur, not can it much concern one who has not long frequented it or lived by its shore; yet this pond is so remarkable for its depth and purity as to merit a particular description. Passage 9 9. The world is too much with us; late an

9、d soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers; Little we see in Nature that is ours; We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! Passage 10 10. Mr. Harthouse professed himself in the highest degree instructed and refreshed by this condensed epitome of the whole of Coketown question. Author

10、s A. Henry David Thoreau B. William Wordsworth C. Charles Dickens D. Jonathan Swift E. John Milton F. Francis Bacon G. Percy Bysshe Shelley H. Robert Frost I. Mark Twain J. William Shakespeare K. Emily Dickinson L. Christopher Marlowe（分数：30.00）二、Section Short Stor(总题数：1，分数：100.00)A Worn PathEudora W

11、eltyIt was Decembera bright frozen day in the early morning. Far out in the country there was an old Negro woman with her head tied red rag, coming along a path through the pinewoods. Her name was Phoenix Jackson. She was very old and small and she walked slowly in the dark pine shadows, moving a li

12、ttle from side to side in her steps, with the balanced heaviness and lightness of a pendulum in a grand father clock. She carried a thin, small cane made from an umbrella, and with this she kept tapping the frozen earth in front of her. This made a grave and persistent noise in the still air that se

13、emed meditative like the chirping of a solitary little bird. She wore a dark striped dress reaching down to her shoe tops, and an equally long apron of bleached sugar sacks, with a full pocket: all neat and tidy, but every time she took a step she might have fallen over her shoelaces, which dragged

14、from her unlaced shoes, she looked straight ahead. Her eyes were blue with age. Her skin had a pattern all its own of numberless branching wrinkles and as though a whole little tree stood in the middle of her forehead, but a golden color ran underneath, and thee two knobs of her cheeks were illumine

15、d by a yellow burning under the dark. Under the red rag her hair came down on her neck in the frailest of ringlets, still black, and with an odor like copper. Now and then there was a quivering in the thicket. Old Phoenix said, “Out of my way, all you foxes, owls, beetles, jack rabbits, coons and wi

16、ld animals. Keep out from under these feet, little bob-whites. Keep the big wild hogs out of my path. Don“t let none of those come running my direction. I got a long way.“ Under her small black-freckled hand her cane, limber as a buggy whip, would switch at the brush as if to rouse up any hiding thi

17、ngs. On she went. The woods were deep and still. The sun made the pine needles almost too bright to look at, up where the wind rocked. The cones dropped as light as feathers. Down in the hollow was the mourning doveit was not too late for him. The path ran up a hill. “Seem like there is chains about

18、 my feet, time I get this far,“ she said, in the voice of argument old people keep to use with themselves. “Something always take a hold of me on this hillpleads I should stay.“ After she got to the top she turned and gave a full, severe look behind her where she had come. “Up through pines,“ she sa

19、id at length. “Now down through oaks.“ Her eyes opened their widest, and she started down gently. But before she got to the bottom of the hill a bush caught her dress. Her fingers were busy and intent, but her skirts were full and long, so that before she could pull them free in one place they were

20、caught in another. It was not possible to allow the dress to tear. “I in the thorny bush,“ she said. “Thorns, you doing your appointed work. Never want to let folks pass, no sir. Old eyes thought you was a pretty little green bush.“ Finally, trembling all over, she stood free, and after a moment dar

21、ed to stoop for her cane. “Sun so high!“ she cried, leaning back and looking, while the thick tears went over her eyes. “The time getting all gone here.“ At the foot of this hill was a place where a log was laid across the creek. “Now comes the trial,“ said Phoenix. Putting her right foot out, she m

22、ounted the log and shut her eyes. Lifting her skirt, leveling her cane fiercely before her, like a festival figure in some parade, she began to march across. Then she opened her eyes and she was safe on the other side. “I wasn“t as old as I thought,“ she said. But she sat down to rest. She spread he

23、r skirts on the bank around her and folded her hands over her knees. Up above her was a tree in a pearly cloud of mistletoe. She did not dare to close her eyes, and when a little boy brought her a plate with a slice of marble-cake on it she spoke to him. “That would be acceptable,“ she said. But whe

24、n she went to take it there was just her own hand in the air. So she left that tree, and had to go through a barbed-wire fence. There she had to creep and crawl, spreading her knees and stretching her fingers like a baby trying to climb the steps. But she talked loudly to herself: she could not let

25、her dress be torn now, so late in the day, and she could not pay for having her arm or her leg sawed off if she got caught fast where she was. At last she was safe through the fence and risen up out in the clearing. Big dead trees, like black men with one arm, were standing in the purple stalks of t

26、he withered cotton field. Thee sat a buzzard. “Who you watching?“ In the furrow she made her way along. “Glad this not the season for bulls,“ she said, looking sideways, “and the good Lord made his snakes to curl up and sleep in the winter. A pleasure I don“t see no two-headed snake coming around th

27、at tree, where it come once. It took a while to get by him, back in the summer.“ She passed through the old cotton and went into a field of dead corn. It whispered and shook and was taller than her head. “Through the maze now,“ she said, for there was no path. Then there was something tall, black, a

28、nd skinny there, moving before her. At first she took it for a man. It could have been a man dancing in the field. But she stood still and listened, and it did not make a sound. It was as silent as a ghost. “Ghost“, she said sharply, “who be you the ghost of? For I have heard of nary death close by.

29、“ But there was no answeronly the ragged dancing in the wind. She shut her eyes, reached out her hand, and touched a sleeve. She found a coat and inside that an emptiness, cold as ice. “You scarecrow,“ she said. Her face lighted. “I ought to be shut up for good,“ she said with laughter. “My senses i

30、s gone. I too old. I the oldest people I ever know. Dance, old scarecrow,“ she said, “while I dancing with you“. She kicked her foot over the furrow, and with mouth drawn down, shook her head once or twice in a little strutting way. Some husks blew down and whirled in streamers about her skirts. The

31、n she went on, parting her way from side to side with the cane, through the whispering field. At last she came to the end, to a wagon track where the silver grass blew between the red ruts. The quail were walking around like pullets, seeming all dainty and unseen. “Walk pretty,“ she said. “This the

32、easy place. This the easy going.“ She followed the track, swaying through the quiet bare fields, through the little strings of trees silver in their dead leaves, past cabins silver from weather, with the doors and windows boarded shut, all like old women under a Spell sitting there. “I walking in th

33、eir sleep,“ she said, nodding her head vigorously. In a ravine she went where a spring was silently flowing through a hollow log. Old Phoenix bent and drank. “Sweet gum makes the water sweet,“ she said, and drank more. “Nobody know who made this well, for it was here when I was born.“ The track cros

34、sed a swampy part where the moss hung as white as lace from every limb. “Sleep on, alligators, and blow your bubbles.“ Then the track went into the road. Deep, deep the road went down between the high green-colored banks. Overhead the live-oaks net and it was as dark as a cave. A black dog with a lo

35、lling tongue came up out of the weeds by the ditch. She was meditating, and not ready, and when he came at her she only hit him a little with her cane. Over she went in the ditch, like a little puff of milkweed. Down there her senses drifted away. A dream visited her, and she reached her hand up, bu

36、t nothing reached down and gave her a pull. So she lay there and presently went to talking. “Old woman“, she said to herself, “that black dog come up out of the weeds to stall you off and now there he sitting on his fine tail, smiling at you.“ A white man finally came along and found hera hunter, a

37、young man, with his dog on a chain. “Well, Granny!“ he laughed. “What are you doing there?“ “Lying on my back like a June-bug waiting to be fumed over, mister,“ she said, reaching up her hand. He lifted her up, gave her a swing in the air, and set her down. “Anything broken, Granny?“, “No, sir, them

38、 old dead seeds is spring enough,“ said Phoenix, when she had got her breath. “I thank you for your trouble.“ “Where do you live, Granny?“ he asked, while the two dogs were growling at each other. “Away back yonder, sir, behind the ridge. You can“t even see it from here?“ “On your way home?“ “No sir

39、, I going to town.“ “Why, that“s too far! That“s as far as I walk when I come out myself, and I get something for my trouble.“ He patted the stuffed bag he carried, and there hung down a little closed claw. It was one of the bobwhites, with its beak hooked bitterly to show it was dead. “Now you go o

40、n home, Granny!“ “I bound to go to town, mister“, said Phoenix. “The time comes around.“ He gave another laugh, filling the whole landscape. “I know you old colored people! Wouldn“t miss going to town to see Santa Claus!“ But something held old Phoenix very still. The deep lines in her face went int

41、o a fierce and different radiation. Without warning, she had seen with her own eyes a flashing nickel fall out of the man“s pocket onto the ground. “How old are you, Granny?“ he was saying. “There is no telling, mister,“ she said, “no telling.“ Then she gave a little cry and clapped her hands and sa

42、id, “Git on away from here, dog! Look! Look at that dog!“ She laughed as if in admiration. “He ain“t scared of nobody. He a big black dog.“ She whispered, “Sic him!“ “Watch me get rid of that cur,“ said the man. “Sic him, Pete! Sic him!“ Phoenix heard the dogs fighting, and heard the man running and

43、 throwing sticks. She even heard a gunshot. But she was slowly bending forward by that time, further and further forward, the lids stretched down over her eyes, as if she were doing this in her sleep. Her chin was lowered almost to her knees. The yellow palm of her hand came out from the fold of her

44、 apron. Her fingers slid down and along the ground under the piece of money with the grace and care they would have in lifting an egg from under a setting hen. Then she slowly straightened up, she stood erect, and the nickel was in her apron pocket. A bird flew by. Her lips moved, “God watching me t

45、he whole time. I come to stealing.“ The man came back, and his own dog panted about them. “Well, I scared him off that time,“ he said, and then he laughed and lifted his gun and pointed it at Phoenix. She stood straight and faced him. “Doesn“t the gun scare you?“ he said, still pointing it. “No, sir

46、, I seen plenty go off closer by, in my day, and for less than what I done,“ she said, holding utterly still. He smiled, and shouldered the gun. “Well, Granny,“ he said, “you must be a hundred years old, and scared of nothing. I“d give you a dime if I had any money with me. But you take my advice an

47、d stay home, and nothing will happen to you.“ “I bound to go on my way, mister,“ said Phoenix. She inclined her head in the red rag. Then they went in different directions, but she could hear the gun shooting again and again over the hill. She walked on. The shadows hung from the oak trees to the ro

48、ad like curtains. Then she smelled wood-smoke, and smelled the river, and she saw a steeple and the cabins on their steep steps. Dozens of little black children whirled around her. There ahead was Natchez shining. Bells were ringing. She walked on. In the paved city it was Christmas time. There were

49、 red and green electric lights strung and crisscrossed everywhere, and all turned on in the daytime. Old Phoenix would have been lost if she had not distrusted her eyesight and depended on her feet to know where to take her. She paused quietly on the sidewalk where people were passing by. A lady came along in the crowd, carrying an armful of red, green and silver wrapped presents; she gave off perfume like the red roses in hot summer, and Phoenix stopped her. “Please, missy, will you lace up my shoe?“ She held up her foot. “What do you want, Grandma?“ “See my s