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I. Multiple Choices. (40%)
1. The Romantic Period in American
literature started from the publication of
Washington Irving’s ______ and
ended
with Whitman’s Leaves of Grass.
A. The Sketch
Book
B. Tales of a Traveller
C. A History of New
York
D. The Scarlet Letter
2. In the middle of 19th century,
America witnessed a cultural flowering which is
called “_____”
。
A. the English
Renaissance
B. the Second Renaissance
C.
the American Renaissance
D. the Salem Renaissance
3.
As a philosophical and literary movement, the main
issues involved in the debate of Transcendentalism
are
generally concerning ______.
A. nature, man
and the universe
B. the relationship between man and
woman
C. the
development of Romanticism in American literature
D. the cold,
rigid rationalism of Unitarianism
4. In
the history of American
literature
，
______ is usually agreed to be the
summit of the American Romanticism.
A. the Harlem
Renaissance
B. England
Transcendentalism
C. New England
Transcendentalism
D. New Transcendentalism
5.
About the novel The Scarlet
Letter
，
which of the
following statements is not
right
？
A. It’s very hard to say
that it is a love story or a story of
sin.
B. It’s a highly symbolic story and the
author is a master of symbolism.
C. It’s
mainly about the
moral
，
emotional and
psychological effects of the sin upon the main
characters and
the people in general.
D. In it the
letter A takes the same symbolic meaning
throughout the novel.
6. The great sea
adventure story Moby-Dick is usually
considered______.
A. a symbolic voyage of the mind in
quest of the truth and knowledge of the universe
B. an
adventurous exploration into man’s relationship
with nature
C. a simple whaling tale or sea
adventure
D. a
symbolic voyage of the mind in quest of the
artistic truth and beauty
7. In his
poems
，
Walt
Whitman is innovative in the terms of the form of
his poetry
，
which is called
“______.”
A. free verse
B. blank verse
C. alliteration
D.
end rhyming
8. After the Civil War
America was transformed from ______ to ______.
A. an agrarian
community … an industrialized and commercialized
society
B. an agrarian community … a society of
freedom and equality
C. a poor and backward
society … an industrialized and commercialized
society
D
. an industrialized and
commercialized society … a highly developed
society
9. Which of the
following is said of the American
naturalism
？
A. They preferred to have
their own region and people at the forefront of
the stories.
B.
Their characteristic setting is usually an
isolated town.
C. Humans should be united because they
had to adapt themselves to changing harsh
environment.
D. Their characters were conceived more
or less complex combinations of inherited
attributes
，
their
habits
conditioned by social and
economic forces.
10. Which of the
following is not right about Mark Twain’s style of
language
？
A. His sentence structures
are long, ungrammatical and difficult to read.
B. His words
are colloquial, concrete and direct in effect.
C. His humor is
remarkable and characterized by puns, straight-
faced
exaggeration
，
repetition and
anti-climax.
D.
His style of language had exerted rather deep
influence on the contemporary writers.
11. The impact of Darwin’s evolutionary
theory on the American thou
ght and the
influence of the 19th century
French
literature on the American men of letters gave
rise to another school of
realism
：
American ______.
A.
Romanticism
B.
Transcendentalism
C. Realism
D.
Naturalism
12. Which of the following
is not written by Henry
James
？
A. The Portrait of A Lady
and The Europeans
B. The Wings of the Dove and The
Ambassadors
C.
What Maisie Knows and The Bostonians
D. The Genius and The
Gilded Age
13. More than five hundred
poems Dickinson wrote are about nature, in which
her general Skepticism about the
relationship between ______ is well-
expressed.
A.
man and man
B. men and women
C. man and
nature
D. men
and God
14. Which of the following is
right about Emily Dickinson’s poems
abou
t nature
？
A. In them, she
expressed her general affirmation about the
relationship between man and nature.
B. Some of them showed her
disbelief that there existed a mythical bond
between man and nature.
C. Her poems reflected her feeling that
nature is restorative to human beings.
D. Many of them showed her feeling of
nature’s inscrutability and indifference to the
life and interests of
human
beings.
15. As a great innovator in
American literature
，
Walt
Whitman wrote his poetry in an unconventional
style which
is now called free
verse
，
that is ______.
A. lyrical
poetry with chanting refrains
B. poetry without a fixed
beat or regular rhyme scheme
C. poetry without rhymes at
the end of the lines but with a fixed beat
D. poetry in an
irregular metric form and expressing noble
feelings
16. By the end of the 19th
century, the American realists sought to ______and
therefore rejected the portrayal of
idealized characters and events in
their writings.
A. describe the wide range of American
experience
B.
show animal nature of human beings
C. present the subtleties
of human personality
D. both A and C
17. In the
first part of the 20th
century
，
apart from
Darwinism
，
there were two
thinkers -______
，
whose ideas had
the greatest
impact on the period.
A. the German Karl Marx and the
Austrian Sigmund Freud
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B.
the German Karl Marx and the American Sigmund
Freud
C. the
Swiss Carl Jung and the American William James
D. the Austrian
Karl Marx and the German Sigmund Freud
18. Which of the following
c
an be said about Eugene O’Neill
plays
？
A. Most of his plays are
concerned about the root
，
the
truth of human desires and human frustrations.
B. His tragic
view of life is reflected in many of his works.
C. His plays
are concerned about the relationship between man
and nature as well as man and woman.
D. both A and B.
19. Most of O’Neill’s plays are
concerned about the following
except______.
A. success and failure in man’s
literary career
B. life and death, illusion and
disillusion, dream and reality
C. alienation and
communication, self and society, desire and
frustration
D.
the basic issues of human existence and
predicament
20. Which of the following
can be said about a typical modern literary
work
？
A. It is a record of
sequence and coherence of the history and the
world.
B. It is
a juxtaposition of the past and present, of the
history and the memory.
C. It is a book of integrity drawn from
diverse areas of experience.
D. Its perspective is
shifted from the internal to the external, from
the private to the public.
21. As to
the great American poet Ezra Pound, which of the
following is not right
？
A. His language
is usually oblique yet marvelously compressed and
his poetry is dense with personal, literary,
and historical allusions.
B. His artistic talents are
on full display in the history of the Imagist
Movement.
C.
From his analysis of the Chinese ideogram Pound
learned to anchor his poetic language in concrete,
perceptual reality, and to organize
images into larger patterns through juxtaposition.
D. For he was
politically controversial and notorious for what
he did in the wartime
，
his literary achievement
and
influence are somewhat reduced.
22. In
his poetry, Robert Frost made the colloquial
______ speech into a poetic expression.
A.
England
B. New England
C. Plymouth
D. Boston
23.
Which of the following statements is right about
Robert Frost’s poetry
？
A. He combined
traditional verse forms with the difficult and
highly ornamental language.
B. He combined traditional
verse forms with the pastoral language of the
Southern area.
C. He combined traditional verse forms
with a simple spoken language-the speech of New
England farmers.
D. He combined traditional verse forms
with the experimental.
24. Which of the
following statements can be said about the works
of Scott Fitzgerald, a spokesman of the
“Roaring 20s”
？
A. Many of them
portrayed the hollowness of the American worship
of riches and the unending American
dream of fulfillment.
B. They are symbolic of the
psychological journey of the modern man and his
helplessness in the modern
world.
C. They show
the primitive struggle of individuals in the
context of irresistible natural forces.
D.
They penetrate into the problems of the human
heart in conflict with itself.
25. As
Fitzgerald’s writing style is concerned, which of
the following is right
？
A. The author
dropped off the device of having events observed
by a “central consciousness”.
B. His
intervening passages of narration leaves the
tedious pro
cess of transition to the
author’s imagination.
C. The scenic method is
employed, each of which consists of one or more
dramatic scenes.
D. His diction and metaphors are
partially original and details accurate.
26. Which of the following is right
about the hero of
The Great
Gatsby
?(
)
A. The contradictions and
disillusionment of the American dream is presented
in him.
B. The cynicism among American
veteran soldier is reflected partially in him.
C. The hypocrisy and materialism of
small town life resulted in his tragedy.
D. The moral confusion and
social decay of the South after the Civil War
resulted in his tragedy.
27. ________ of the 1920s was
characterized by frivolity and carelessness and
brought vividly to life in
The Great
Gatsby
. (
)
A. The Lost Generation
B. The American Renaissance
C. The Jazz Age
D. The
Harlem Renaissance
28. John Steinbeck
is a novelist of the 1930s. His
The
Grapes of Wrath
is a record of the life
of the dispossessed
and the wretched
farmers during. (
)
A. the Great Depression
B.
the Glorious Revolution
C.
the Second World War
D.
both A and C
29. Which of
the following can be said about the general
situation of Hemingway’s novels?(
)
A. Human life
is full of chaos while man can overcome it in the
long run.
B. Human life is full of
tension and tattles while man is always pursuing a
place of peace and happiness.
C. Life
is a losing battle, but it is a struggle man can
dominate in such a way that loss becomes dignity.
D. Human life can be symbolic of man’s
spiritual world though it is full of
failures.
30. Which of the following
can be said of the experimental features of
William
Faulkner’s narrative
techniques
are.(
)
A. the dislocation of
narrative time and the use of stream-of-
consciousness techniques
B. parallel
constructions and multiple use of natural symbols
C. no chronological order of his
narration and selective employment of the Southern
dialect
D. all of the above
31
. Whitman’s poems are
characterized by all the following features
EXCEPT.(
)
A. a free and natural rhythmic pattern
B. a simple and
conversational language
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