美国文学史及选读期末考试

2021年1月22日发(作者：闵恩泽)
Ⅰ
. Write the author of each item.
10’

1
．

Anne Bradstreet
（
The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America
）

①
Contemplation
②
To My Dear and Loving Husband
2. Benjamin Franklin

①
The Autobiography (early American Dream)
3. Philip Freneau (Poet of American Revolution; The Father of American Poetry)
①
The Wild Honey Suckle
②
The Indian Burying Ground
③
To a Caty-Did
4.
Washington Irving (The Father of American Short Story; first American writer of imaginative
literature to gain international fame; regarded as Father of American literature.)
①
The legend of Sleep Hollow
②
Rip Van Winkle
③
The Sketch Book(the beginning of American Romanticism)
5. James Fennimore Cooper
①
The Last Mohicans
②
Leather Stocking Tales
6. William Cullen Bryant
①

Thanatopsis
②

To a Water Fowl
7. Edgar Allen Poe (Father of Modern Short Story; Father of Psychoanalysis criticism)
①
To Helen
②
The Raven

③
The Fall of the House of Usher
④
The Black Cat
8. Ralph Waldo Emerson (leading New England transcendentalist)
①
Nature
②
Self-Reliance
③
The American Scholar
9. Henry David Thoreau (an active transcendentalist)
①
Walden
10. Nathaniel Hawthorne (a master of symbolism; first great American writer of fiction to work
in
moralistic
tradition.
combined
the
American
romanticism
with
puritan
moralism;
created
a
new genre psychological romance)
①
The Scarlet Letter
②
Twice Told Tales
③
The Marble Faun
④
Blithedale Romance
⑤
The Minister’s Black Veil

11
.
Herman Melville

①
Moby Dick
12. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (the fireside poet; love of nature, love for the past)
①
A Psalm of Life
②
The Slave’s Dream

③
My Lost Youth
④
The Song of Hiawatha
13. Walt Whitman
①
Leaves of Grass(first genuine epic poem)
②
Song of Myself
③
I Sit and Look Out
④

Beat
！
Beat
！
Drums
！

14.
Emily Dickinson (the theme of her poetry concern religion, life, death, marriage, immorality,
nature etc.)
①
I Taste a Liquor Never Brewed
②
I Felt a Funeral, in My Brain
③
A Bird Came Down the Walk
④
I Died for Beauty ___but Was Scarce
⑤
I Hear a Fly Buzz ___When I Died
⑥
Because I Could not Stop for Death
Ⅱ
. True or False choice
. 20’

Ⅲ
.

Choose the best answer
10’

Ⅳ
.

Appreciation
30’

The Scarlet Letter
Author: Nathaniel Hawthorne
Symbolism
：

The Scarlet Letter, A symbol of shame, but instead it becomes a powerful symbol of identity to Hester.
The letter’s meaning shifts as time passes. Originally intended to mark Hester as an adulteress, the “A”
eventually comes to stand for “Able.”

The Meteor , to Dimmesdale, the meteor implies that he should wear a mark of shame just as Hester
does. The meteor is interpreted differently by the rest of the community, which thinks that it stands for
“Angel” and marks Governor Winthrop’s entry into heaven

The Rosebush, Next to the Prison Door .The narrator chooses to begin his story with the image of the
rosebush beside the prison door. The rosebush symbolizes the ability of nature to endure and outlast
man’s activities.

Pearl is a sort of living version of her mother’s scarlet letter. She is the physical consequence of sexual
sin and the indicator of a transgression (evildoing). Upward American spirit
Character analysis:
Hester:
disloyalty,
betrayal,
deception,
sexual
desire,
adultery.
Face,
correct,
redeem,
purify.
Praise,
content, conformability.
Dimmesdale: adultery, cowardice, hypocrisy, dishonesty, selfishness, too coward to confess, tortured by
his conscience. Sympathetic, disfavor his hesitation, indecisiveness and cowardice.
Chillingworth: revenge. Tortured by the desire of revenge, twisted and reduced to nothing. disgusted,
think he committed greater crime.
Puritanism in The Scarlet Letter
Puritan background: setting, events, characters, thoughts, behaviors.
Puritan doctrines: original sin, total depravity, predestination, limited atonement.
Ralph Waldo Emerson