英语专业 美国文学史复习题

美国文学思考习题与练习

Week 2:

Jonathan Edwards, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”: 1. What is the purpose of Edwards in delivering the sermon? 2. Who are the sinners?

3. What is the significance of the essay against the cultural background of Puritanism? Benjamin Franklin, The Autobiography:

1. What kind of life style does Franklin advocate? Do you share his principles? 2. Do you agree with the idea that Franklin’s principles are universal? 3. Why does Franklin NOT list “piety” as one of the virtues?

4. What do you think of Franklin’s emphasis on material success?

5. What role does Franklin’s autobiography play in the pioneering experience? 6. How can you translate Franklin’s principles into Chinese?

Week 3:

Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self-Reliance”:

1. What does Emerson think of man in his time? How should a man behave, according to Emerson?

2. Why does Emerson ask us to accept the place the divine providence has found for us? How does Emerson perceive the relationship between man and God?

3. How does Emerson perceive the relationship between an individual and society/others? 4. How does Emerson perceive the relationship between man and nature? 5. What role does Emerson’s essay play in the spirit of American Romanticism? 6. Can you share Emerson’s optimism about man?

7. What Chinese philosopher does Emerson find affinity with?

Week 4:

Edgar Allan Poe, “The Raven”:

1. How does the speaker’s mood change throughout the poem? 2. Why is the word “nevermore” repeated again and again? 3. What musical devices does the poet use in the poem? 4. What do you think of Poe’s philosophy of composition?

Week 5:

Nathaniel Hawthorne, “The Minister’s Black Veil”: 1. What does the veil symbolize?

2. Why does the minister wear the veil?

3. Do you think the minister is an evil or good character?

4. How is the theme of the individual’s isolation from society represented in the story?

5. How do you understand the following sentence—“I look around me, and lo! On every visage a black veil!”?

6. What attitude toward religion can you find in the story?

7. How does Hawthorne view the relationship between human beings? Week 6:

Walt Whitman,

“Calvary Crossing the Ford”:

1. What is the significance of the use of colors? 2. What mood can you find in the poem? “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer”:

1. How does the speaker respond to the astronomer’s lecture and the silence of the night?

2. What relationship between nature and science can you find in the poem? What is the attitude of the poet toward nature and science? “Come Up from the Fields, Father”:

1. How does the description of the harvest season set off the theme of the poem?

2. In what way is this poem similar or different from other literary pieces about the Civil War?

Week 7:

Emily Dickinson,

“Because I could not stop for Death—”

1. What is the significance of the journey experience (lines 9-12)? 2.

“I heard a Fly buzz—when I died—”

1. What does the image of the fly signify?

2. How do you understand the two “sees” in the line “I could not see to see”? “Essential Oils—are Wrung—”

1. Why does Dickinson say that the attar is “the gift of Screws” (line 4)? 2. How is the poem related to the artistic creation of the poet?

Week 8:

Mark Twain, “The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County”: 1. What realistic elements can you find in this story? 2. What role does language play in the story? 3. How is the story narrated?

Week 9:

Jack London, “The Law of Life”:

1. What is the law of life? How does Old Koskoosh view it?

2. How is death represented in the story?

3. How is Darwin’s theory of evolution influence the story?

Week 10:

Ezra Pound, “In a Station of the Metro”:

1. How is the central image in the poem related to the subject the poet intends to present? 2. In what way do you think the Imagists learned from the ancient Chinese poetry? 3. What disadvantages can you find with the Imagist theory?

Week 11:

May Day holiday

Week 12:

Robert Frost, “Mending Wall”:

1. What does the wall possibly symbolize?

2. Why does the poet say that the wall stays always where we do not need it (line 23)? 3. How do you understand “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall” (line 1)? 4. How do you understand “Good fences make good neighbors” (lines 27, 45)? 5. How do you understand “He moves in darkness” (line 41)? 6. What do we wall in and what do we wall out? 7. Can we do away with all walls?

8. What is the speaker’s attitude toward mending wall? 9. What does the wall symbolize?

10. What are the outstanding musical devices?

“The Road Not Taken”:

1. What is the significance of the title of the poem?

2. What decision does the speaker make at the entrance of the forest? 3. How does the speaker view the choice that he has made?

“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”: 1. Why is the last line repeated?

2. In what way does the rhyming scheme add to the lyric quality of the poem? Week 13:

Ernest Hemingway, “A Clean, Well-lighted Place”: 1. In what ways do the two waiters differ? 2. What does the title of the story mean?

3. What is the significance of the garbled Lord’s prayer?

4. What is the meaning of “nada”? What is the writer’s intention of replacing many words in the prayers with “nada”?

5. Why does the writer not give the names of the characters? 6. How can you distinguish the two waiters?

7. Why does this place have to be clean and well-lighted? What do cleanliness and brightness represent?

8. What is the historical background of the story? Week 14:

William Faulkner, “A Rose for Emily”:

1. Why is Emily’s House the most appropriate setting for the story? Discuss the ways in which Faulkner uses Miss Emily’s house as an appropriate setting.

2. Why does Faulkner use this particular narrator? Is this narrator reliable? Does the sex of the narrator affect the telling of the story?

3. What is the disadvantage of taking Emily as a symbol of the post-Civil-War South?

4. How do you explain Emily’s behavior? What is the writer’s attitude toward Emily?

5. How does this story handle the linked themes of female oppression and empowerment? What does it say about the various kinds of male-female relationships in American society of this period?

Week 15:

Eugene O’Neill, Desire Under the Elms 1. What is the central conflict in the play?

2. What do the big elm trees symbolize?

3. How is the subject of “desire” represented in the play? “Desire” over what? Does each character have a different desire?

4. What is the relationship between the characters in application of Freudian psychoanalysis? 5. Why does Abbie marry Ephraim? Why does she kill the baby?

6. What is the relationship between Abbie and Eben in the first half of the play? How does this relationship change in the second half?

7. Does this play remind you of any Chinese play? In what ways are they similar?

Weeks 16-17:

J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye:

1. symbol. What is the meaning of the title of the novel? Where does it come from? How do you understand it?

2. growth of a child. How do you understand the pain in the growth of a child? What kind of experience does he/she have to go through?

3. attitudes. What is Holden’s attitude towards museums and the exhibits? What is his attitude towards death?

4. childhood vs. adulthood. How is adulthood portrayed in the eyes of a child? What are some of