Chapter 1 The Romantic Period
III. Questions and answers:
1. The Romantic Period was called "The American Renaissance". Discuss the background of the Romantic Period, and compare it with the Romanticism of Britain.
Answer:
1) The two Romanticism both stress the imaginative and emotional qualities of literature;
2) They all pay attention to psychic states of the characters and exalt the individual and common man;
3) American Romanticism revealed unique characteristics: (difference)
<1> American authors describe their native land,, especially the spirit of the pioneering into the west, the desire for an escape from society and a return to nature;
<2> American writers u local dialect in language;
<3> Puritanism has great influence over American Romantics;
<4> Calvinism of original sin is obvious in their works;
<5> Transcendentalism is very important theory in American Romanticism;
<6> The important tting in American Romanticism are: ① the early puritan ttlement; ② the confrontation with the Indians; lionking③ the frontiersmen’s life; ④ the wild west; ⑤ imagination. (P399—402)
2. Analyze the themes and characteristic of Hawthorne.
Answer:
Hawthorne was a man with inquiring imagination, meditative mind and dark vision to life.99宿舍四级查询
His themes in writing are:
1) Man was born with evil and sin, one source of them is over-reaching intellect, who image was always villain; ()
英孚网络课程2) Hawthorne was influenced greatly by Puritanism, while he criticized it bitterly;
3) He believed Calvinistic ideas, thinking man was depraved and corrupted; they should obey God for saving the spirits;
4) He concerned the moral life of man and human history;
5) He was keen on the description of man’s development of psychology. (P432—433)
3. Explain the theory of Transcendentalism, then list its important author and works.
Answer:
Transcendentalism is a very important theory in American Romanticism, its main ideas are:
1) Man has the capacity of knowing truth intuitively, or the ability of getting knowledge transcending the ns;
2) Nature is ennobling and individual is divine, therefore, man should be lf-reliant.
3) Man is divine/holy and perfectible and man can trust himlf to decide what is right and act accordingly; (but to Hawthorne and Melville man is a sinner);
4) Univer is over-soul -a symbol of the spirit, God or the univer, there is an emotional communication between an individual soul and the universal "over-soul" -unity of Nature.
5) The important authors are: Emerson (The American Scholar) and Thoreau.
6) "Nature", Emerson’s works, is called the unofficial manifesto for the club. (P421—P422)
4. Hawthorne was a master in using symbol and allegory; cite some example to analyze it.
Answer:
1) Allegorically, Young Goodman Brown becomes an Everyman called Brown, who will be aged in one night by an evil adventure, and the evilness makes everyone a fallen idol in the world.
2) In the angle of Symbol: "Brown look up to the Heaven and resist the wicked one" symbols Brown has the force to resist the evilness of the Nature and he still has the faith to God; but "he is alone in the forest" symbols the society is the place full of sins and evilness, Brown’s strength is not enough at all; then after returning, he lives a dismal and gloomy life symbols he has been crushed down by the social evilness and lost his belief in goodness and piety. (P434—435)
木瓜的英文5. Washington Irving was called "Father of the American short stories" and "the American Goldsmith". What characteristics did he have?
Answer:六级作文万能模板
1) He was nostalgic author, and he always juxtaposing the Old and the New world;
2) He remained a conrvative and always exalted a disappearing past, and he prefer the past to prent, prefer a dream-like world to a real one;
3) His stories were always from legend, especially German legends, showing best classic style. (P405—406)
6. Sea adventures are Melville’s favorite subject; "Moby-Dick" is a great novel in the theme, which is also noted for its symbolism, plea analyze it in detail.
Answer:
1) About the a adventure: it symbols the voyage of the mind in quest of the truth and knowledge of the univer; a spirit exploration into man’s deep reality and psychology;
2) About the boat; it symbols the society, and the crew symbol all kinds of people with different social and ethnic ideas;
3) About the white whale: To the author, it symbols nature, it is a complex, unfathomable
and beautiful; To the captain Ahab, it is evilness, is a wall. So he will lead all his crew to cut through the wall to dig out all the unknown, mysterious things behind it. To the narrator, Ishmael, it is a mystery. (P460—461)
7. Walt Whitman is a unique poet. Can you explain what make him unique?
Answer:
1) His themes are: Democracy; the Revolutionary War and the Civil War; freedom; openness; brotherhood; individualism; the growth of industry and the wealth of the cities; universality.
2) His styles are special: "free ver"; "catalogue"; simple and even crude language. (P448-551)
PART TWO: AMERICAN LITERATURE
Chapter 2 The Realistic Period
III. Questions and answers:
1. What are the main ideas of Realists of America?
wife的复数Answer:
The harsh life and disillusion from the dark memories of the Civil War made the nation dislike the romance, the new generation of writers came up with new inspirations:
1) They were interested in the realities of life. It aimed at the interpretation of the actuality of any aspect of life;
2) People’s attention was now directed the interesting features/things of everyday existence/things -something brutal, sordid/mean, class struggle etc.
3) The authors introduced common people such as: industrial workers and farmers, ambitious businessmen, vagrants, prostitutes/street girls, and unheroic soldiers in fiction;
the u4) American writers displayed native trends in portrayal of the landscape ad social surface realistically;
5) They formed perfect vernacular style in language;
6) Some authors explored and exploited/ud the literary possibilities of the interior life/psychology, such as Henry James;
7) The reprentatives were: Mark Twain, Henry James, William Dean Howells;
In short, they t the example and pictured the future cour for the modernism. (in the subject, themes, techniques, and styles of fiction)
(P472---474)
2. Take examples to analyze the style and theme of Mark Twain.
Answer:
Mark Twain is a great literary of America, H. L. Mencken considered him "the true father of our national literature".
1) Twain’s works like "Adventure of Huckleberry Finn" and "Life on the Mississippi" shaped the views of America and combined American folk humor and rious literature together;
2) "The adventures of Tom Sawyer" and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" proved to be the milestone in American literature, and they were the record of a vanishing way of life in the pre-Civil War Mississippi.
3) The books were noted for their unpretentious, colloquial, poetic, humorous, innocent and free style;
4) The language of Twain was simple, direct, lucid and faithful to truth -"vernacular";
5) Twain was famous for a local colorist, who prented social life through portraits of the local characters of his region -people living in the area, the landscape, the customs, dialects, costumes. Especially the theme of the Mississippi valley and the West;
6) The work of Twain were always confined to a particular region, historical moment, strong accent, intensified humor to criticize the social injustice and satirize the decayed romanticism. (P477-481)
3. Give a comment on the experience of Carrie.
参考答案：
1) Penniless and "full of the illusions of ignorance and youth", Sister Carrie leaves her rural home to ek work in Chicago, she grows from an innocent, pure country girl to be a girl mature in intellect and emotion, and she becomes a star of musical comedies. But in
spite of her success in material, she is not happy but lonely and dissatisfied.
2) Sister Carrie best embodies Dreir’s naturalistic belief that while men are controlled and conditioned by heredity, instinct and chance, a few extraordinary and unsophisticated human beings refu to accept their fate wordlessly and instead strive, unsuccessfully, to find meaning and purpo for their existence. (P527-528)
4. The characteristic and theme analys of Henry James.
Answer:
1) The Freudian approach is famous in his novels and his literary essays.
2) James took great interest in international themes -the clashed between two different cultures and the emotional and moral problems of Americans in Europe, or Europeans in America in his first period.
阿拉巴马大学3) "The Portrait of A Lay" is generally considered to be his masterpiece.
4) James experimented with different themes and forms in his middle period.
5) In his last an major period, James returned to his "international-theme."
6) The typical pattern of the conflict between the two cultures would be that of a young American man or an American girl (Daisy Miller) who goes to Europe and affronts/met with his or her destiny. The unsophisticated boy or girl would be beguiled, betrayed, cruelly wronged at the hands of tho who pretend to stand for the highest possible civilization.
7) He focus on psychological approach. His fictional world is concerned more with the inner life of human beings -this emphasis on psychology and on the human consciousness proves to be a big breakthrough in novel writing.
8) He is regarded as the forerunner of the 20th century "stream-of-consciousness" novels and the founder of psychological realism.
9) James avoids the authorial omniscience as much as possible and makes his characters reveal themlves with his minimal intervention. (P495-498)
5. The period from 1865 to 1914 has been referred to the Age of Realism (The Gilded Age) in the literary history of the United States, why did it happen and what characters di
d it have?
Answer:
1) The American society after the Civil War provided rich soil for the ri and development of Realism, and Civil War affected the social and the value system of the country, America had transformed into an industrialized and commercialid society.
2) The war stimulated the technological development;
3) The booming economy and industry stepped up urbanization;
4) The phenomenon of polarization is rious;
5) People became doubtful about the human nature and the benevolence/grace of God;
formulate6) Gone was the frontier, the spirit of the frontiersman/pioneer, the spirit of freedom and the American dream. (P471---472)
6. Plea analyze the characteristics of Emily Dickinson’s poems.
Answer:
1) Dickinson’s poems are usually bad on her own experiences, her sorrows and joys. B
ut within her little lyrics Dickinson address tho issues that concern the whole human beings, which include religion, death, immortality, love, and nature. (theme)
2) Her masterpiece -----"I heard a Fly buzz---when I died", she looked at death from the point of view of both the living and the dying. She even imagined her own death, the loss of her own body, and the journey of her soul to the unknown.
3) The style of Dickinson:
A: A particular stress pattern: dash“-------”
B: Capital letters as a means of emphasis;
C: Language: brief, direct, and plain;
青岛英语培训D: Poem: short, always on single image or symbol (e.g. "I like to e it lap the miles"---------describe a train in the personification of the literary device)
E: Her poems tend to be personal and meditative (e.g. “Becau I could not stop for Death”).
(P517---519)
7. In the reprentatives of "Local colorism", the writers shared some things in common and also had some differences, plea analyze them.
Answer:
1) 3 prominent writers differed in the understanding of the "truth": Mark Twain and Howells paid attention to the life of the Americans; Henry James emphasized the "inner world";
2) Howells focud on the rising middle class, while Twine dealt with the region and the people at the forefront;
3) The other local colorists concerned with the life of the small, well-defined region or province, the tting is always the isolated small town;
4) They were nostalgic historians, recording the vanishing way of life, and the fading prent. (P474---475)
