美国文学练习题

14. Jack London' s sincere intellectual and personal involvement in the socialist movement is recorded in such novels and polemical works as_____________ .

A. The People of the Abyss B. The Iron Heel C. Revolution D. The War of the Classes

17. While embracing the socialism of Marx, London also believed in the triumph of the strongest individuals. This contradiction is most vividly projected in the patently autobiographical novel___________ .

A. The Call of the Wild B. The Sea Wolf C. Martin Eden D. The Iron Heel 18. In 1900, London published his first collection of short stories, named___________

A. The Son of the Wolf B. The Sea Wolf C. The Law of Life D. White Fang 19. Dreiser's Trilogy of Desire includes three novels. Find them from the following.

A. The Financier B. The Titan C. The Genius D. The Stoic E. Jannie Gerhardt

20. \A. An American Tragedy B. Sister Carrie C. Dreiser Looks at Russia D. Jannie Gerhardt 21. The main theme of___________ The Art of Fiction reveals his literary credo that representation of life should be the main object of the novel.

A. Henry James' B. William Dean Howells' C. Mark Twain's D. O. Henry's 22. With William Dean Howells, James, and Mark Twain active on the scene, _______ became the major trend in the seventies and eighties of the nineteenth century.

A. sentimentalism B. romanticism C. realism D. naturalism 23. Choose the three staunch advocates of nineteenth-century American realism.

A. Mark Twain B. Henry James C. William Dean Howells D. Jack London 24. Choose the works which contain bitter attacks on the human race.

A. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court B. The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg C. The Mysterious Stranger D. The Autobiography

25. Mark Twain was a great social critic and a friend of the Chinese. His Disgraceful Percecution of a Boy is a scathing piece of criticism directed against the persecution of the___________ immigrants in California.

A. Quakers B. Chinese C. French D. Japanese 26. Mark Twain stood on the side of China in its struggle against foreign invasions. His_______ and________ are two notable examples of his vigorous at? tacks on the imperialist behavior of the United States__________ . A. The Treaty with China

B. To the Person Sitting in Darkness

of environment and heredity overwhelming man.

A. Open Boat B. The Blue Hotel C. An Experiment in Misery D. The Red Badge of Courage 28. Which writers have naturalist tendency?

A. Stephen Crane B. Benjamin Frank Norris C. Theodore Dreiser D. Edwin Arlington Robinson 29. Theodore Dreiser was left-oriented in his views. He visited Russia and wrote and _________ to express his new faith, and shortly before his death, he joined the Communist Party.

A. Dreiser Looks at Russia B. Tragic America C. An American Tragedy D. The Titan 30. Choose Jack London' s works from the following. A. The Call of the Wild B. White Fang

C. The Sea Wolf

D. Martin Eden

C. Disgraceful Persecution of a Boy D. Goldsmith' s Friend Abroad Again

27. Stephen Crane's best short stories include _________, _________, all reinforcing the basic Crane motif

Part V. Twentieth Century Literature (I) Before WWII

I. Fill in the blanks.

1.

____stands as a great dividing line between the nineteenth century and the contemporary American literature.

2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

American writers of the first postwar era self-consciously acknowledged that they were a \”, The most significant American poem of the twentieth century was_____________.

The publication of The Waste Land, written by____________, helped to establish a modern tradition of In 1920, Sinclair Lewis published his memorable denunciation of American small-town provincialism F. Scott Fitzgerald summarized the experiences and attitudes of the 1920s decade in his masterpiece The__________ of the 1930s greatly weakened the American nation's self-confidence.

An American woman writer named ____________ who had lived in Paris since 1903, welcomed the young _____ wrote about the disintegration of the old social system in the American Southern States, and its effect

devoid of faith and alienated from a civilization.

literature rich with learning and allusive thought. in___________. novel___________ .

expatriates to her literary salon, and gave them a name \on the lives of modern people, both black and white.

10. Ezra Pound was the leader of a new movement in poetry which he called the \_” movement. 11. Ezra Pound's major work of poetry is the long poem called______________

12.One of Edwin Arlington Robinson's early books, __once came to the attention of President Theodore Roosevelt. 13. Edwin Arlington Robinson produced a large body of works and was honored with the___________ Prize in 1922, 1925 and 1928.

14. Robert Frost's first book___________ brought him to the attention of influential critics, such as Ezra Pound, who praised him as an authentic poet.

15. Robert Frost's second volume of poems was______________ 16. \

17. _________ one of Robert Frost' s longest poems, is a very witty and wise anecdotal discussion about the values of life and character.

18. At one time, Sandburg's reputation mainly rested on a multi-volume biography of__________ including “The Prairie Years\

19. Carl Sandburg's love of folklore developed in time into a rather modern tendency to represent it in literature such as in his___________.

20. __________ was successful in two fields of activity which did not seem compatible with one another; he was a very successful businessman and a very remarkable contemporary poet at the same time.

21. At the age of 44, Wallace Stevens was finally persuaded to publish a book of poems, entitled___________ . 22. __________ is a collection of Wallace Stevens’s occasional lectures on poetry.

23. For the publication of his Collected Poems, ______ received the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. 24. After his death, Wallace Stevens' s previously uncollected works appeared under the title__________ . 25. In 1915, __________ published his Prufrock and Other Observations.

26. In 1920, Thomas Stearns Eliot published his________, containing, among other essays, \Individual Talent\

27.In 1920, Thomas Stearns Eliot began to write his masterpiece____,one of the major works of modern literature. 28. As Thomas Stearns Eliot declared, he followed strictly the advice of his close friend___________ in cutting and concentrating The Waste Land.

29. Thomas Stearns Eliot's later poetry took a positive turn toward faith in life. This was demonstrated by____________, a poem of mystical conflict between faith and doubt.

30. In his work___________, Thomas Stearns Eliot satirized the straw men, the Guy Fawkles men, whose world

would end \.”

31. Few men of letters have been more fully honored in their own day than_____________ , and even those who strongly disagree with him seemed content with his selection for the Nobel Prize in 1948.

32. Thomas Steams Eliot wrote seven plays, the best of which is________________, a verse play on an ancient historical subject, written in 1935.

33. Thomas Stearns Eliot's last important work was____________, a profound meditation on time and timelessness, written in four parts.

34. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s first novel____________, with its portrayal of casual dissipations of \”, was an immediate commercial success.

35. In 1925, F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote his best novel_____________ . It is the story of an idealist who was destroyed by the influence of the wealthy, pleasure-seeking people around him.

36. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s second novel______________ describes a handsome young man and his beautiful wife, undoubtedly modeled after himself and Zelda.

37. The hero in F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel_____________ is a psychiatrist who marries a rich patient. The author condemns the wasted energy of misguided youth.

38. F. Scott Fitzgerald's last novel_____________ remained unfinished.

39. With the publication of The Sun Also Rises, _____________ became the spokes? man for what Gertrude Stein had called \

40. Emest Hemingway's stature as a writer was confirmed with the publication of his novel___________ in 1929. The novel portrayed a farewell both to war and to love.

41. Set in Spain during the Civil War, the novel_____________ stated again Hemingway’s view of love found and lost, and described the indomitable spirit of the common people.

42. In the story The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway portrayed an old fisherman named___________ , who shows triumphant even in defeat.

43. In 1954, Ernest Hemingway was awarded a________ for his \44. Numerous parallels exist between the events of Ernest Hemingway's life and those of his characters, but fewer were closer than those of Richard Cantwell, the hero of the work _________

45. In 1952, Ernest Hemingway published a successful novel entitled__________ which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1953 and occasioned the award of the Nobel Prize in 1954.

46. In the same way that F. Scott Fitzgerald' s Tales of the Jazz Age became the symbol for an age, Ernest Hemingway' s novel ______ painted the image of a whole generation, the Lost Generation.

47. Ernest Hemingway' s________ can be read as a footnote to The Sun Also Rises in that it explains how people, like Jake Barnes, come to behave the way they do.

48. The Spanish war was conductive to Ernest Hemingway' s writing_____________ , a play which was universally deplored.

49. __________was the foremost novelist of the American Depression of the 1930s.

50. In the short novel__________ John Steinbeck portrayed the tragic friendship between two migrant workers. 51. In the work___________ John Steinbeck described the fate of the lowly whose instinctive responses to life led only to destruction.

52. __________ is generally regarded as John Steinbeck's masterpiece.

53. In 1935, John Steinbeck published _________a collection of short stories which vividly described the life of poor Mexican-Americans with affection and humor.

54. John Steinbeck’s post-war novel __________ reflected his bitter feelings against those greedy, rapacious elements of society which made the war possible.

55. Quentin is a character in William Faulkner's novel____________ . 56. Joe Christmas is a character in William Faulkner's novel____________ .

57. The works written by___________ may be viewed as a culmination of the development of twentieth-century southern fiction.

58. Katherine Ann Porter's novel Ship of Fools consists of three parts, __________, ________ and_________ . 59. In her essay \”, Eudora Welty emphasizes the importance of ________ for literary creations. She is noted for her fidelity to the American South, so her major theme relate to__________

60. Carson McCullers was said to touch William Faulkner in writing, and her well-known novels are___________ and__________.

61. One of the important figures in the 1930s who tried to adapt European avant-gardism to American writing is 62. The New Criticism first emerged in 1920s as a reaction against the prevailing time-honored critical tendency to focus on the theme often in disregard of the form of the work. The name is given by John Crowe Ransom's collection of critical essays________ III. Make multiple choices.

1. The best-selling American books in the first decades of the twentieth century were__________. A. traveling books A. Ezra Pound

B. commercial books B. T. S. Eliot

C. historical romances D. news reports C. Robert Frost D. Both A and B

2. Early in the 20th century, _________ published works that would change the nature of American poetry. 3. The American social upheavals and the literary concerns of the Great Depression years ended with the prosperity and turmoil brought by the _____________.

A. First World War B. Second World War C. Civil War D. War of Independence 4. The American \the Second World War 1939. This was a period of__________.

A. poverty B. bleakness C. important social movements D. a new social consciousness E. all of the above 5. In the pre-war period, such writers as______________ , pointed out the contradictions between what American preached and they practiced.

A. Mark Twain B. Jack London C. Stephen Crane D. Theodore Dreiser E. all of the above

6. In the Thirties, poets like Archibald Macleish and______________ wrote compassionately about common people, workers and farmers.

7. The Imagist writers followed three principles, they respectively are _________ .

A. direct treatment B. economy of expression C. clear rhythm D. blank verse

8. \by____________ .

A. Thomas Stearns Eliot B. Robert Frost C. Ezra Pound D. E. E. Cummings

9. __________ showed great interest in Chinese literature and translated the poetry of Li Po (Li Bai) into English, and was influenced by Confucian ideas.

A. Ezra Pound B. Robert Frost C. T. S. Eliot D. E. E. Cummings 10. Ezra Pound' s long poem____________ contained more than one hundred poems loosely connected.

A. The Waste Land B. The Cantos C. Don Juan D. Queen Mab 11. \Robinson’s ______ attitude. 12. \

A. Emily Dickinson B. Ezra Pound C. Robert Frost D. Langston Hughes

A. romantic B. fantastic C. realistic D. materialistic