英国文学史及作品选读习题集(7)

7 English Literature in the 20th Century

Ⅰ. Essay questions.

1. Comment on the development of William Butler Yeats’ poetic career and characteristics of his poetry.

2. Make comments on George Bernard Shaw as a playwright. 3. Comment on John Galsworthy.

4. Comment on Virginia Woolf’s literary achievements.

5. Compared with Virginia Woolf, D. H. Lawrence and other writers of transitional age in the 20th century, should E. M. Forster be labeled as a traditional writer or a modernist or a writer of transitional age? State your opinion.

6. Discuss the possible theme in William Butler Yeats’ “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” and how that theme is presented in the poem.

7. Comment on James Joyce’s creation and literary achievements. 8. Comment on T. S. Eliot’s achievements in poetry.

9. Introduce the plot of Lucky Jim and analyze the character of Jim. 10. Make a contrast between 1950s’ poetry and 1960s’ poetry.

11. Through analyzing the symbolic meaning of major characters, Estragon (Gogo), Vladimir (Didi), Pozzo, Lucky, Godot, comment on the symbolic values in Waiting for Godot.

Ⅱ. Define the following terms.

1. Modernism 2. Epiphany

3. Interior monologue 4. Fragmentation 5. Non-linear, discontinuous narratives 6. Allusive language

7. Feminist criticism 8. Reader-response criticism 9. Epigraph 10. Epilogue

11. Post-modernism 12. Post-structuralism 13. Theatre of the absurd 14. Kitchen sink drama 15. Meta-fiction

Ⅲ. Fill in the blanks.

1. Modernism takes their rational philosophy and the theory of as its theoretical base.

2. The three trilogies of ’s Forsyte novels are masterpieces of critical realism in the early 20th century.

3. “Araby” from Dubliners is a tale of the frustrated quest for in the midst of drabness.

4. The major themes of the modernist literature are the distorted, alienated and ill relationships between man and , man and society, man and man, and man and himself.

5. William Butler Yeats experienced a slow and painful change in his poetic creation, starting in the tradition and finishing as a mature poet.

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6. T. S. Eliot’s major achievement in playwriting has been the creation of a in the 20th century to express the ideas and actions of modern society with new accents of the speech. 7. In his famous essay “Tradition and Individual Talent” puts great emphasis on the importance of tradition both in creative writing and in criticism.

8. is Galsworthy’s masterpiece which gives a profound and true-to-life picture of the English society from the 80’s of the 19th century up to the 20’s of the 20th century.

9. The trilogy The Forsyte Saga consists of The Man of Property, and To Let.

10. , which bears a strong thematic resemblance to “The Waste Land”, is generally regarded as the darkest of T. S. Eliot’s poems.

11. Structurally and thematically, George Bernard Shaw follows the great tradition of . 12. Joyce seems to mean that the novel describes the mental activities of two Dubliners in a single day, while , his second novel, describes the sub-conscious world in which a man lives through a good part of his life.

13. represents the much more readable novelists of the stream of consciousness school. She is a fine artist, a woman of sharp sensitivity who, in one of her frequent mental depressions, committed suicide.

14. Virginia Woolf’s novel , published in1925, made her reputation as an important psychological writer.

15. Modernism upholds a new view of time by emphasizing the time over the chronological one.

16. All of Joyce’s novels and short stories have the same setting, , especially ,and the same subject, Dubliners and their life. 17. was much concerned about the crying contradictions of bourgeois civilization and made protests against imperialism and fascism, but he believed in the possibilities of improving capitalism with a system of “technocracy”. The First Men in the Moon is one of his novels.

18. The statement “A demanding mother turns away from her husband and gives all her affection to her sons” sums up the main plot of D. H. Lawrence’s . 19. According to James Joyce, the three required things for the perception of beauty are wholeness, harmony and . 20. In Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf adopted a writing technique called , in which the whole story was presented with the interior monologues of the characters.

21. “She frankly wanted him to climb into the middle class, a thing not very difficult, she knew. And she wanted him in the end to marry a lady.” is taken from D. H. Lawrence’s novel . 22. D. H. Lawrence’s poems fall roughly into three categories—satirical and comic poems, poems about human relationship and emotions, and poems about . 23. Galsworthy distinguished himself as a playwright. His two important plays include and Strife.

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24. In his novels of social satire, H. G. Wells makes realistic studies of the aspirations and frustrations of the “ man.”

25. “The Bliss” is one of ’s famous short stories. She was skilled in psychological analysis, whose favorite technique is the . 26. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is ’s first novel. 27. Our Betters and The Circle are two of ’s plays. 28. To the Light house was written by __________. 29. The Good Companions is a novel by __________.

30. The Stars Look Down is a well-known novel by __________.

31. To create his modern Odyssey—Ulysses, Joyce adopts a kind of ________ style. 32. “Sailing to Byzantium” is a well-known poem written by __________.

33. T. S. Eliot’s classic expression of the temper of his age is “___________”, two years after which “__________”, is also a powerful expression of an age of doubt that longs in despair for belief.

34. The poem “The Waste Land”, which is 433 lines long, is broadly acknowledged as one of the most recognizable land marks of _________, the first part of “The Waste Land” is “__________”, and the third is “__________”.

35. In 1913, Eliot published his first volume of verse, “__________” in which the influence of some French symbolists can be seen.

36. Sean O’Casey employs unique stagecraft in his expressionistic play, __________, in which four scenes, Morning, Noon, Evening, and Night, correspond to four seasons, Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter.

37. Known as the most significant representative of the “__________”, Kingsley Amis writes a satire on social and academic pretensions in his Lucky Jim.

38. A Booker Prize winner, Iris Murdoch said “The ego disappears and you see the world with absolute vividness and clarity”, which is the theme of her novel __________.

39. Muriel Spark’s The Girls of Slender Means is set in a hostel in __________ in 1945 when the detonation of an unexploded bomb sets fire to the hostel, a moment when characters’ spiritual world is depicted in a biting satire.

40. The Golden Notebook is considered to be __________’s masterpiece, taken as a milestone work in Feminist Literature.

41. The French Lieutenant’s Woman is considered to be the masterpiece of John Fowles, in which the story is set in 1867, in __________ society.

42. In Look Backin Anger, John Osborne creates an image, __________, who forges a voice for the “Angry Young Man” of his generation in 1950s.

43. Through the military life experience of Guy, and disillusionment of his dream of elimination of the evils through just wars, Evelyn Waugh explores in his work, __________, the nature of war.

44. Jean Rhys’s is taken as one of the major works of West Indian literature. It explores the psychological dimension of race and violence and slavery. Ⅳ. Choose the best answer.

1. __________ is the most outstanding stream-of-consciousness novelist. A. William Butler Yeats B. John Galsworthy

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C. James Joyce D. George Bernard Shaw

2. Rudyard Kipling was the spokesman for imperialist sentiment. Which one is NOT his work?

A. Dubliners B. The Jungle Book

C. The Second Jungle Book D. Plain Tales from the Hills 3. The main characters in The Man of Property do NOT include . A. Soames B. Irene

C. Bosinney D. Heathcliff

4. Which of the following novels was NOT written by H. G. Wells? A. The Time Machine

B. The First Men in the Moon C. The War in the Air

D. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

5. G. B. Shaw’s play Mrs. Warren’s Profession is a realistic exposure of the in the English society. A. slum landlordism

B. inequality between men and women C. political corruption

D. economic exploitation of women

6. Which of the following is NOT John Boynton Priestley’s work? A. Angel Pavement B. The Good Companions C. The Waves D. They Walks in the City 7. was written by James Joyce. A. Dubliners B. Portrait of a Lady C. Picture of Dorian Gray D. To the Lighthouse

8. Undershaft is a character in the play by George Bernard Shaw. A. The Devil’s Disciple B. The Man of Property C. Major Barbara D. Justice

9. Which writer belongs to “stream-of-consciousness” school? A. Virginia Woolf B. Thomas Wolfe C. Sommerset Maugham D. Thomas Hardy

10. By presenting a conventional hero as a villain, or a conventional villain as a hero, intends to give a shocking impression to his audience and challenge the conventional way of thinking.

A. Rudyard Kipling B. George Bernard Shaw C. T. S. Eliot D. D. H. Lawrence

11. A typical Forsyte, according to John Galsworthy, is a man with a strong sense of , who never pays any attention to human feelings. A. justice B. humor C. morality D. property

12. “He was silent with conceit of his son. Mrs. Morel sniffed, as if it were nothing.” (Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence) From the above quotation, we can see that Mrs. Morel’s attitude to her husband is . 4

A. sincerely warm B. genuinely kind

C. seemingly angry D. merely contemptuous 13. Which of following statements about Yeats is true?

A. In a certain way, Yeats’s experiments in drama anticipated the abstract movement of modern theater.

B. The major themes of Yeats’s later poetry are usually Celtic legends, local folk tales, or stories of the heroic age in Irish history.

C. Yeats is a great poet as well as an accomplished novelist. D. In 1948, Yeats was offered the Nobel prize for literature.

14. 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.

15. What metrical foot is used in William Butler Yeats’s poem “The Lake Isle of Innisfree”?

A. Dactyl B. Anapest C. Trochee D. Iamb

16. Which of the following statements about G. B. Shaw is NOT true?

A. One feature of his characterization is that he makes the trick of showing up one character vividly at the expense of another.

B. He was strongly against the credo of “art for art’s sake”. C. He wrote plays to discuss social problems.

D. Too Good to be True is one of Shaw’s plays. It shows the decay of capitalism and growth of a republic.

17. is the pen name of Robert Noonan. A. Robert Tressell B. Robert Frost C. Robert Louis D. Robert Jordan 18. “Saint Joan” by G. B. Shaw is a . A. historical play B. novel C. poem D. ballad

19. The Old Wives’ Tale was written by .

A. Sommerset Maugham B. Catherine Mansfield C. D. H. Lawrence D. Arnold Bennett

20. The socialist Owen is the central character of the novel . A. Lady Chatterley’s Lover B. The Good Companions

C. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists D. Women in Love

21. Which of the following statements about Ralph Foxis NOT true?

A. Fox’s best contribution to literature is a critical work entitled The Novel and the People.

B. Ralph Fox was a progressive English dramatist.

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