1、2010 年厦门大学英语专业（英美文学）真题试卷及答案与解析一、名词解释1 Vanity Fair 2 “Anecdote of the Jar“3 The Color Purple 4 “Dover Beach“5 A Passage to India 6 Possession7 O Pioneers! 8 Desire Under the Elms9 black humor 10 Beat Generation11 New Criticism 12 round character二、评论题13 Holden Caulfield(from; The Catcher in the Rye)14
2、 Willy Loman(from; Death of a Salesman)15 Elizabeth Bennet(from: Pride and Prejudice)16 Sartoris Snopes, or the younger son(from: “Barn Burning“)17 Tess(from; Tess of the dUrbervilles)18 Ahab(from: Moby Dick)三、问答题19 English Romanticism is generally said to have begun in 1798 with the publication of
3、Wordsworth and Coleridges Lyrical Ballads. Why is Lyrical Ballads considered the milestone to mark the beginning of English Romanticism?20 Please explain Ernest Hemingways “iceberg theory“ of writing, How does Hemingways own writing illustrate this theory? Please illustrate your points with examples
4、 from one of his novels or short stories.四、分析题21 Read the following poem and write a short essay based on the following questions in about 100 words.(8 points)Saturday at the Canal(1998)By Gary Soto(1952)I was hoping to be happy by seventeen.School was a sharp check mark in the roll book,An obnoxiou
5、s tuba playing at noon because our teamWas going to win at night. The teachers wereToo close to dying to understand. The hallwaysStank of poor grades and unwashed hair. Thus,A friend and I sat watching the water on Saturday,Neither of us talking much, just warming ourselvesBy hurling large rocks at
6、the dusty groundAnd feeling awful because San Francisco was a postcardOn a bedroom wall. We wanted to go there,Hitchhike under the last migrating birdsAnd be with people who knew more than three chordsOn a guitar. We didnt drink or smoke,But our hair was shoulder length, wild whenThe wind picked up
7、and the shadows ofThis loneliness gripped loose dirt. By bus or car,By the sway of train over a long bridge,We wanted to get out. The years frozeAs we sat on the bank. Our eyes followed the water,White-tipped but dark underneath, racing out of town.Questions:A. What does the first line “I was hoping
8、 to be happy by seventeen“ imply about the theme of the poem? How is the theme developed in this poem?B. The poem is marked with vivid imagery. Please pick out some dominant images/ motion/ activity and stillness/ stagnation and tell the meanings they each convey.C. What kind of reaction to life doe
9、s this poem display? How universal is the schoolboys emotional experience?D. Meanwhile, considering the fact that the poet comes from a Mexican American working-culture background, how does the poem specifically relate to minority groups experience in the United States?2010 年厦门大学英语专业（英美文学）真题试卷答案与解析一
10、、名词解释1 【正确答案】 William Makepeace Thackeray2 【正确答案】 Wallace Stevens3 【正确答案】 Alive Walker4 【正确答案】 Mathew Arnold 5 【正确答案】 E. M. Forster6 【正确答案】 A. S. Byatt7 【正确答案】 Willa Cather 8 【正确答案】 Eugene ONeill9 【正确答案】 Black humor is the grotesque or morbid humor used to express the absurdity, insensitivity, parad
11、ox, and cruelty of the modern world. Ordinary characters or situations are usually exaggerated far beyond the limits of normal satire or irony. The novels of such writers as Kurt Vonnegut, John Bath contain elements of black humor.10 【正确答案】 The Beat Generation referred to a loose-knit group of poets
12、 and novelists, writing in the second half of the 1950s and early 1960s. They shared a set of social attitudesanti-establishment, anti-political, anti-intellectual, opposed to the prevailing cultural, literary, and moral values, and in favor of unfettered self-realization and self-expression.The mos
13、t famous literary creations produced by this group should be Allen Ginsbergs long poem Howl and Jack Kerouacs On the Road.11 【正确答案】 New Criticism is a movement in literary theory that dominates American literary criticism in the middle decades of the 20th century. It emphasizes close reading, partic
14、ularly of poetry, to discover how a work of literature functions as a self-contained, self-referential aesthetic object.12 【正确答案】 Round characters are complex and undergo development, sometimes sufficiently to surprise the readers. This type of characters is defined by E. M. Forster in his book Aspe
15、cts of the Novel. The opposite of round characters is flat characters, who are two-dimensional and relatively uncomplicated and do not change throughout the course of a work.二、评论题13 【正确答案】 Holden is the protagonist and the narrator of the novel, a sixteen-year-old junior, who has just been expelled
16、from a school for academic failure. Although he is intelligent and sensitive, he narrates in a cynical and jaded voice. He finds the hypocrisy and ugliness of the world around him almost unbearable, and through his cynicism he tries to protect himself from the pain and disappointment of the adult wo
17、rld.14 【正确答案】 Loman is an insecure, self-deluded traveling salesman. He believes wholeheartedly in the American Dream of easy success and wealth, but he never achieves it, nor do his sons fulfill his hope that they will succeed where he has failed. When his illusions begin to fail under the pressing
18、 realities of his life, his mental health begins to unravel. The overwhelming tensions caused by this disparity, as well as those caused by the societal imperatives drives Willy to commit suicide.15 【正确答案】 Elizabeth is the second daughter of the Bennet family, and the most intelligent and quick-witt
19、ed one. Her admirable qualities are numerousshe is lovely, clever. Her honesty, virtue, and lively wit enable her to rise above the nonsense and bad behaviors that pervade her class-bound and often spiteful society. Nevertheless, her sharp tongue and tendency to make hasty judgments often lead her a
20、stray.16 【正确答案】 Sartoris Snopes is a ten-year-old boy and the storys protagonist. He has inherited his innocence and morality from his mother, but his fathers influence has made him old beyond his years. He is forced to confront an ethical quandary that pits his loyalty to his family against the hig
21、her concepts of justice and morality.17 【正确答案】 Tess is the protagonist of the novel. She is a beautiful, loyal young woman living with her impoverished family. Tess has a keen sense of responsibility and is committed to doing the best she can for her family, although her inexperience and lack of wis
22、e parenting leave her extremely vulnerable. Tess is a symbol of unclear and unstable notions of class in nineteenth-century Britain. Beyond her social symbolism, she also represents fallen humanity in a religious sense.18 【正确答案】 Ahab is an egomaniacal captain, who lost his leg to the whale Moby Dick
23、. He is single-minded in his pursuit of the whale, using a mixture of charisma and terror to persuade his crew to join him. As a captain, he is dictatorial but not unfair. He is as much a victim as he is an aggressor, and the symbolic opposition that he constructs between himself and the whale Moby
24、Dick propels him toward what he considers a destined end.三、问答题19 【正确答案】 In Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth set forth his principle of poetry. As contrasted with the classicists who made reason, order and the old, classical tradition the criteria in their poetical creations, he based his own poetical pri
25、nciple that “ all good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feeling. “ He appealed directly to individual sensations as the foundation in the creation and appreciation of poetry. He also held that the function of poetry lies in its power to give an unexpected splendour to familiar and comm
26、onplace things. As to the language used in poetry, he “ endeavored to bring language near to the real language of men,“ “ by fitting to metrical arrangement a selection of the real language of men“ to a state of vivid sensation. These principles helped to crumble the theoretical foundations of the c
27、lassical school of English poetry and to inspire a new generation of poets. So Lyrical Ballads served as the milestone to mark the beginning of English Romanticism.20 【正确答案】 The iceberg theory is that the meaning of a piece is not immediately evident, because the crux of the story lies below the sur
28、face, just as most of the mass of a real iceberg similarly lies beneath the surface. In Hemingways writing, the words only give one small bit of the meaning. The rest is implied. His short story Hills like White Elephants is nothing more than a casual conversation between two people waiting for a tr
29、ain; an American and his girlfriend. Neither of the two speakers truly communicates with the other, highlighting the rift between the two. In fact, they are actually talking about having an abortion and going their separate ways. The short sentences, simple and active words in the story imply the un
30、stated dramatic tension lurking between each line. In fact, Hemingway firmly believed that perfect stories conveyed far more through subtext than through the actual words written on the page. The more a writer strips away, the more powerful the “iceberg“ , or a story, becomes.四、分析题21 【正确答案】 The firs
31、t line implies that this poem is about dream of a better place, but it also implies that some dreams are unattainable. The poet creates a thematic landscape through the use of metaphor and vivid imagery. In the initial reflection of the speaker, high school is described as “a sharp check mark in the
32、 roll book“. Here, the image of a sharp check mark captures the similarity of the speakers experience at school. Kids are not individuals, they are merely marks in a teachers book, meaningless in the long run. Additionally, the boys dream of escape. But Soto writes San Francisco is just “a postcard
33、on a bedroom wall“. The postcard metaphor turns a city into a bit of paper and ink rather than an actual possibility for the speaker and his friend. These images develop a deeper message of the poem, the message related to unattainable dreams. The speaker and his friend are unsatisfied with their li
34、fe, because they hurl “large rocks at the dusty ground“. This image of a pointless activity captures the pointless, frustration thoughts the boys have. Another is that of “loose dirt“. The loose dirt seems to suggest a poor foundation, a place where the inhabitants seem to lose the weak foundation in order to find new ground. The desire is unavailable. Consider the Mexican American working-culture background of the poet, we can sense the unsatisfying life of minority groups of the U. S. , who are expecting a better change, but the change seems always impossible.
