美国文学题库(选择题网上合集)范文.doc

1. For Melville, as well as for the reader and _________, the narrator, Moby Dick is still a mystery, an ultimate mystery of the universe.
A. Ahab B. Ishmael
C. Stubb D. Starbuck
2. Naturalism is evolved from realism when the author’s tone in writing becomes less serious and less sympathetic but more ironic and more_____________.
A. rational B. humorous
C. optimistic D. pessimistic
3. Dreiser’s Trilogy of Desire includes three novels. They are The Financier, The Titan and_____ .
A. The Genius B. The Tycoon
C. The Stoic D. The Giant
4. The impact of Darwin’s evolutionary theory on the American thought and the influence of the nineteenth-century French literature on the American men of letters gave rise to yet another school of realism: American___________ .
A. local colorism B. vernacularism
C. modernism D. naturalism
5. Robert Frost combined traditional verse forms -the sonnet, rhyming couplets, blank verse -with a clear American local speech rhythm, the speech of _______farmers with its idiosyncratic diction and syntax.
A. Southern B. Western
C. New Hampshire D. New England
6. As an autobiographical play, O’Neill’s ___________(1956) has gained its status as a world classic and simultaneously marks the climax of his literary career and the coming of age of American drama.
A. The Iceman Cometh B. Long Day’s Journey Into Night
C. The Hairy Ape D. Desire Under the Elms
7. Apart from the dislocation of time and the modern stream-of-consciousness, the other narrative techniques Faulkner used to construct his stories include_________, symbolism and mythological and biblical allusions.
A. impressionism B. expressionism
C. multiple points of view D. first person point of view
8. Stylistically, Henry James’ fiction is characterized by____________.
A. short, clear sentences B. abundance of local images
C. ordinary American speech D. highly refined language
9. One of the characteristics that have made Mark Twain a major literary figure in the 19th century America is his use of____________ .
A. vernacular B. interior monologue
C. point of view D. photographic description
10. It is on his____________ that Washington Irving’s fame mainly rested.
A. childhood recollections B. sketches about his European tours
C. early poetry D. tales about America
11. At 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
12. 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
13. 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.
14. 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
15. 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
16. 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
17. 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.
18. 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.
19. The impact of Darwin’s evolutionary theory on the American thought 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
20. 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.
21. 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
22. Which of the following is right about Emily Dickinson’s poems about 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.
23. 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
24. 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
　　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
25. Which of the following can 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.
26. 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
27. 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.
28. 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.
29. In his poetry, Robert Frost made the colloquial ______ speech into a poetic expression.
　　A. England B. New England
C. Plymouth D. Boston
30. 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.
31. 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.
32. Which of the following is not written by Ernest Hemingway, one of the best-known American authors of the 20th century?
　　A. The Sun Also Rises. B. The Old Man and the Sea.
C. Mosses From the Old Manse. D. The Green Hills of Africa.
33. Which of the following statements is right about the novel A Farewell to Arms?
　　A. The author favored the idea of nature as an expression of either god’s design or his beneficence.
　　B. The author attempted to write the epitaph to a decade and to the whole generation in the 1930s.
　　C. The author emphasizes his belief that man is trapped both physically and mentally and suggests that man is doomed to be entrapped.
　　D. It tells a story about the tragic love affair of a wounded American soldier with an Italian nurse.
34. Which of the following is depicted as the mythical county in William Faulkner’s novels?
　　A. Cambridge. B. Oxford.
C. Mississippi. D. Yoknapatawpha.
35. To Faulkner, the primary duty of a writer was to explore and represent the infinite possibilities inherent in human life. Therefore a writer should ______.
　　A. observe with no judgment whatsoever.
　　B. reduce authorial intrusion to the lowest minimum.
　　C. observe at a great distance and sometimes participate in the events.
D. both A and B.
36. Which of the following is right about American fiction from 1945 onwards?
　　A. A group of new writers who survived the war wrote about their ideals within the artistic field.
　　B. There appeared a significant group of Jewish-American writers whose works were set against the Jewish experience and tradition.
　　C. Black fiction began to attract critical attention during the 1950s.
　　D. American fiction in the 1950s and 1960s proves to be a harvest which derived from its predecessors.
37. Which of the following is not a work of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s?
A. The House of the Seven Gables. B. The Blithedale Romance.
C. The Marble Faun. D. White Jacket.
38. In Hawthorne’s novels and short stories, intellectuals usually appear as ______________.
A. commentators B. observers
C. villains D. saviors
39. Besides sketches, tales and essays, Washington Irving also published a book on ______, which is also considered an important part of his creative writing.
A. poetic theory B. French art
C. history of New York D. life of George Washington
40. In Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, there are detailed descriptions of big parties. The purpose of such descriptions is so show _______.
A. emptiness of life B. the corruption of the upper class
C. contrast of the rich and the poor D. the happy days of the Jazz Age
41. In American literature, escaping from the society and returning to nature is a common subject. The following titles are all related, in one way or another, to the subject except _________.
A. Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
B. Dreiser’s Sister Carrie
C. Copper’s Leather-Stocking Tales
D. Thoreau’s Walden
42. Which of the following novels can be regarded as typically belonging to the school of literary modernism?
A. The Sound and the Fury B. Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
C. Daisy Miller. D. The Gilded Age.
43. Emily Dickinson wrote many short poems on various aspects of life. Which of the following is not a usual subject of her poetic expression?
A. Religion. B. Life and death.
C. Love and marriage. D. War and peace.
44. In 1837, Ralph Waldo Emerson made a speech entitled _______ at Harvard, which was hailed by Oliver Wendell Holmes as "Our intellectual Declaration of Independence."
A. "Nature" B. "Self-Reliance"
C. "Divinity School Address" D. "The American Scholar"
45. Which of the following statements about writers in 1920s is true?
A. Mark Twain published his last and most important novel.
B. F. Scott Fitzgerald received the Nobel Prize.
C. Freudian psychology influenced many modern writers.
D. Most writers were politically radical.
46. In American literature the first important writer who earned an international fame
on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean is_______________.
A. Washington Irving B. Ralph Waldo Emerson
C. Nathaniel Hawthorne D. Walt Whitman
47. The American novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne is known for his“black vision．”The
Term “black vision” refers to______________.