1、2011 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 The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy 2 The Bluest Eye3 The Heart of Darkness 4 Mansfield Park5 Midnights Children 6 The Golden Notebook7 “In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!“ 8
2、 The Sea of Faith / Was once, too, at the full, and round earths shore / lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled. “9 Byronic hero10 Southern Gothic 11 Puritanism12 New Criticism 13 Bildungsroman二、评论题14 Jack(in Lord of the Flies)15 Blanche(in A Streetcar Named Desire)16 Pip(in Great Expectations
3、)17 Granny Weatherall(in The Jilting of Granny Weatherall)18 Faustus(in The Tragic History of the Life and Death of Dr. Faustus)19 Gatsby(in The Great Gatsby)三、问答题20 Literary postmodernism was officially inaugurated in the United States in the 1970s. Please discuss the main features of postmodern Am
4、erican literature, and illustrate your points with two or three examples.21 The desire to escape from society and return to nature has become a permanent convention of American literature since the 19th century. Please discuss this literary motif in social and cultural contexts, and illustrate it wi
5、th two or three examples from the 19th and 20th American literature.四、分析题22 Read the following poem and write a short essay based on the following questions in about 100 words:(8 points)Thoughts in a Zooby Countee Cullen(1903 1946)They in their cruel traps, and we in ours, Survey each others rage, a
6、nd pass the hours Commiserating each the others woe,To mitigate his own pains fiery glow.Man could but little proffer in exchangeSave that his cages have a larger range.That lion with his lordly, untamed heartHas in some man his human counterpart.Some lofty soul in dreams and visions wrapped,But in
7、the stifling flesh securely trapped.Gaunt eagle whose raw pinions stain the barsThat prison you, so men cry for the stats!Some delve down like the mole far underground,(Their nature is to burrow, not to bound).Some, like the snake, with changeless slothful eye,Stir not, but sleep and smoulder where
8、they lie.Who is most wretched, these caged ones, or we.Caught in a vastness beyond our sight to sec?Questions:A)What does the first line “They in their cruel traps, and we in ours“ imply about the theme of this poem? How is the theme developed in this poem?B)The poem is marked with vivid imagery. Pl
9、ease comment on the animal images and tell the symbolic meanings they each convey.C)What kind of reaction to life does this poem display? How universal is the poets emotional experience?D)Considering the fact that the poet is regarded as “perhaps the most representative voice of the Harlem Renaissan
10、ce,“ how does the poem specifically relate to African Americans experience in the United States?2011 年厦门大学英语专业（英美文学）真题试卷答案与解析一、名词解释1 【正确答案】 Laurence Sterne【试题解析】 项狄传(The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy)是英国著名作家劳伦斯斯特恩(LaurenceSterne ，17131768)的代表作，这部作品打破了传统小说的常规叙述模式，写法奇特。小说各章长短不一，有的甚至是空白或者黑页。书中还充
11、满长篇累牍的议论和插话，甚至出现乐谱、星号、省略号等莫名其妙的表达方式，同时穿插着无休止的离题话、不完整的句子、古怪的句法结构、幽默的奇思和伤感情调等。项狄传被称作是“世界文学中最奇特的小说”，文学界普遍认为 20 世纪小说中的意识流手法可以追溯到这部奇异的小说，同时，项狄传也被誉为 20 世纪后现代派小说的开山鼻祖。2 【正确答案】 Toni Morrison3 【正确答案】 Joseph Conrad4 【正确答案】 Jane Austen5 【正确答案】 Salman Rushdie【试题解析】 萨尔曼拉什迪(Salman Rushdie)是印度裔英国作家，他的作品午夜的孩子通过对三代印
12、度人的命运的描写，将 1919 年至 1977 年间印度的重大历史事件呈现出来，描述了殖民后遗症，揭示了英帝国在印度留下的诸如宗教冲突、民族分裂等灾难性后果。6 【正确答案】 Doris Lessing【试题解析】 多丽丝莱辛(Doris Lessing)是英国女作家，2007 年诺贝尔文学奖得主。代表作是金色笔记本(The Golden Notebook)。书中女主人公伍尔芙有五本笔记本，记述了她对非洲、对政治、对党派、对与男人关系、对性等问题的思考。这部作品中，莱辛采用了复杂的叙述技巧，描述政治现实与情感世界间的交织缠斗。7 【正确答案】 Allen Ginsberg【试题解析】 艾伦金斯
13、伯格(Allen Ginsberg)是战后 “垮掉的一代”文学运动中的主要代表诗人，其代表作为长诗嚎叫(Howl)。金斯伯格在这首加州水果超市(A Supermarket in California)中叙述了他在某夜翻阅惠特曼诗歌时所产生的幻觉。诗人跳跃性的想象使物质世界和精神生活交替出现，反衬了诗人面对这个丰富的物质世界时，时刻感受到的却是精神上的空虚和匮乏。8 【正确答案】 Mathew Arnold【试题解析】 马修阿诺德是英国著名的文学批判家，这首多佛海滩(Dover Beach)是他最著名的一首诗，全诗深刻地反映了 19 世纪西方社会中的宗教信仰在新知识的冲击下普遍沦丧的时代风貌。9
14、 【正确答案】 Byronic hero is an idealized but flawed character exemplified in the life and writings of English romantic poet Lord Byron. It is characterized by Lady Caroline Lamb, later a lover of Byrons, as being “ mad, bad, and dangerous to know“. Byronic hero first appeared in Byrons semi-autobiograph
15、ical epic narrative poem Childe Harolds Pilgrimage.10 【正确答案】 Southern Gothic is a distinctly American sub-genre of Gothic fiction, setting largely but not exclusively in the Southern American. Southern Gothic employs elements such as the horrific, the violent, the unorthodox, or the supernatural. It
16、 conveys a sense of uncertainty through bizarre twists, violence and moral ambivalence to create suspense, while also using it to explore the social, political, and racial issues of America.11 【正确答案】 Puritanism is the practices and beliefs of the Puritans. Puritanism stresses predestination, origina
17、l sin, total depravity, and limited atonement from Gods grace. Their way of life stresses hard work, thrift, piety and sobriety. These religious and moral principles become one of the enduring influences in American thought and American literature.12 【正确答案】 New Criticism is a movement in literary th
18、eory that dominates American literary criticism in the middle decades of the 20th century. It emphasizes close reading, particularly of poetry, to discover how a work of literature functions as a self-contained, self-referential aesthetic object.13 【正确答案】 Bildungsroman defines a genre of the novel w
19、hich focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from youth to adulthood, and in which characters change is thus extremely important. In a Bildungsroman, the goal is maturity. Charles Dickens David Copperfield is a classic Bildungsroman.二、评论题14 【正确答案】 Jack is the novels antagoni
20、st. He is one of the older boys stranded on the island. Jack is the leader of the hunters, but longs for total power and becomes increasingly wild, barbaric, and cruel as the novel progresses. Jack, adept at manipulating the other boys, represents the instinct of savagery within human beings, as opp
21、osed to the civilizing instinct Ralph represents.15 【正确答案】 Blanche was once a high school English teacher, but when she arrives in New Orleans, she is destitute. She is a loquacious and fragile woman around the age of thirty. Though she has strong sexual urges and has many lovers, she puts on the ai
22、rs of a woman who has never known indignity. She avoids reality, preferring to live in her own imagination. As the play progresses, her instability grows along with her misfortune.16 【正确答案】 Pip is the protagonist and narrator of Great Expectations. He begins the story as an orphan boy being raised b
23、y his sister and brother-in-law in the southeast of England. He is passionate, romantic, and somewhat unrealistic at heart. And he tends to expect more for himself than that is reasonable. Pip also has a powerful conscience, and he deeply wants to improve himself, both morally and socially.17 【正确答案】
24、 Granny Weatherall is a woman about eighty. She lives a hard life but still believes herself as a gritty survivor. She prides herself on her strength, mothering skills, and ability to run a household single-handedly. As her name suggested, she has weathered all kinds of difficulties and cant conceiv
25、e of ever giving up the fight.【试题解析】 被遗弃的韦瑟罗尔奶奶是美国女作家凯瑟琳安 波特(Katherine Anne Porter，18901980)的作品。波特擅长写短篇小说，她将素材、主题、结构和风格融为一体，是个出色的文体家。被遗弃的韦瑟罗尔奶奶描述了女主人公韦瑟罗尔奶奶临终前一天的心理活动，展现了其一生 80 年的坎坷经历，生动刻画了老妇人临终前的悲愤心情。18 【正确答案】 Faustus is a Wittenberg scholar who sells his soul to the devil in exchange for twenty-fo
26、ur years of power. In many ways, Faustus typifies the Renaissance hero who strove for and sometimes attained ambitious military or navigational goals. Faustus sought ultimate; power and forbidden knowledge, so the tragedy of Faustus is characteristic of a humanist in the age of Renaissance.19 【正确答案】
27、 Gatsby is a young man, around thirty years old, who grew up from an impoverished childhood in rural North Dakota to become fabulously wealthy. However, he achieves this lofty goal by participating in organized crime. Though Gatsby has always wanted to be rich, his main motivation in acquiring his f
28、ortune is his love for Daisy. As the novel progresses, Gatsby reveals himself to be an innocent, hopeful young man who stakes everything on his dreams, not realizing that his dreams are unworthy of him.三、问答题20 【正确答案】 Postmodern writers reject the traditional referential of art, so fundamental rule o
29、f postmodern fiction is absurd and arbitrary, whose text explicitly concerns itself with the process of narration, with writing and composition. It is a kind of characteristic of gimmicks, playfulness, and narcissism through parody and burlesque. Donald Barthelmes Snow White is an absurdist dissecti
30、on of the fairy tale. In this book, the frequent narration is made up of word games and random allusion to both literature and popular culture.Postmodern writers believe that the reality of modern life is too elusive and uncertain for people to rationalize and idealize. By rendering language irratio
31、nal, postmodern writers neutralize the fiasco of reality and the imposture of history and suggest participation in the chaos and absurdity of the world as the only meaningful way of life. In Barths The Sot-Weed Factor, for example, he retells the American history of the colonial period in an inverte
32、d direction; not about the European immigrants who come to America to make great fortune, but about the Americans who return to Europe to retrace their confused origin and unmake their fortune. In this way, the author reduces American history to an absurd farce.21 【正确答案】 Since the 19th century the d
33、esire to escape from society and return to nature has become a permanent convention of American literature. With the founding of the American independent government, the nation felt an urge to have its own literary expression, to make known its new experience that other nations did not have; the ear
34、ly Puritan settlement, the confrontation with the Indians, the frontiersmens life, and the Wild West. Such a desire is particularly evident in Coopers Leatherstocking Tales, which is a legendary presentation of the frontier life that fosters individualism and love of nature.This desire can also be f
35、ound in American transcendentalism, which is a liberal philosophy favoring nature over formal religious structure and human instinct over social convention. It is a reaction against the direction that a mechanized, capitalist America is taking, against the popular tendency to get ahead in world affa
36、irs. Being dissatisfied with the materialistic-oriented society and eagering to save soul with a doctrine of the mind, writers of the transcendentalism see nature as a symbol of the Spirit of God. Thoreaus Walden, for example, is deceptively casual and reads like a diary of a nature lover. It contai
37、ns essays of a semi-philosophical character, expanding the spiritual life by simplifying material needs.四、分析题22 【正确答案】 The first line implies that this poem laments about human beings as well as animals being all trapped in someway. To develop this theme, the poem makes a series of comparisons betwe
38、en trapped human beings and animals in cage. The animal images in the poem include lion, eagle, mole and snake. The lion and eagle image represents the noble men with high ambition and hopes. But they are confined by their own physical limitation, as it is their “stifling flesh“ that “securely trap“
39、 their lofty dreams and visions. The mole and snake image represents the men who are impassive to the misery of life, but in the end they will be bound in this “smoulder“ forever. These two kinds of animal images are also two kinds of reaction to life, the positive one and the impassive one. Conside
40、ring the poet is regarded as “ perhaps the most representative voice of the Harlem Renaissance“ , we can regard the bound of “stifling flesh“ as the colored identity that traps African Americans. But no matter their reactions are positive or impassive, it is hard for them to escape from the bound, b
41、ecause there is always a cage beyond the sight. Therefore we can find that this poem is not only about the limited life of the black, it also laments universally about the trapped woe of all human beings.【试题解析】 康特卡伦(Countee Cullen，1903 一 1946)是哈莱姆文艺复兴(Harlem Renainssance)时期优秀的黑人诗人之一。他的诗歌语言机智风趣，简练明达。他曾深受英国诗人济慈的影响。他自称希望以“诗人”而不是“黑人诗人”闻名于世，因而诗中反映黑人对社会抗议的内容较少。
