英美文学考试题

英国文学习题与练习

Week 2 Early and Medieval English Literature

Reference Questions:

1. Who were the earliest settlers of Britton/England? What do you know about them (home, language, belief, life style)?

2. What are the 3 conquests? What effects they had upon the nation?

3. Ideologically what is the most significant change in people’s spiritual life?

4. How was the nation developed politically or what changes were there in the form of the social structure?

5. In terms of literature, what influence had the French upon England?

6. How many languages were spoken during the French reign? How do you understand modern English as a language?

7. What was the essence of Christian doctrine preached at the time? Was there any ignoble reason behind it?

8. Why was the Middle Ages known as the Dark Ages?

9. What was the form of literature at the time? What features does it have? 10. What are the 3 periods/stages of Chaucer’s literary career?

11. In what way do we call Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales the first work of English literature?

Text study: Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (6-7) 1. What is image of the nun?

2. Is she favorably and admirably or satirically portrayed? How? 3. What figures of speech are used?

Week 3 Renaissance (1)

Reference questions:

1. What is Renaissance? How and why did it come about?

2. What is the development of drama? What were the original forms and content and practice of drama?

3. Why did drama flourish in Elizabethan age? Who are the major playwrights of the time?

4. Who is Marlowe? What contributions did he make to English drama?

5. Who is Shakespeare? What famous and great plays (history, comedy, tragedy)? What features?

6. What did Ben Jonson write about? What representative work?

7. Prepare the excerpt from Hamlet (31-32). What is it mainly about? What humanist idea can you find in the soliloquy?

8. What was the most important translation of the time?

Week 4 Renaissance (2)

Reference questions on Shakespeare and Hamlet:

1. Why is Shakespeare an eternal subject of study? Where lies his greatness? 2. What are the themes of Hamlet?

3. What is the significance of Hamlet as a character? 4. What is blank verse? 5. What is soliloquy?

Text study Hamlet’s soliloquy “To be or not to be” (31-32)

1. What is the main idea of Hamlet’s soliloquy? Summarize in one or two sentences the main idea of the soliloquy?

2. How does the soliloquy reflect the spirit of the time or the idea of humanism? 3. How do you analyze Hamlet’s argument in terms of structure?

Week 5 Renaissance (3)

Questions for Renaissance poetry and prose:

1. Who was thought to be the greatest English poet since Chaucer? What is his representative work? What are the features of this poem?

2. What new forms (rhyme—blank verse, stanza--sonnet) of poetry were introduced into England? By whom?

3. Who were the famous sonneteers of the time?

4. How do you tell an Italian (Petrarchan) sonnet from an English (a Shakespearean) one?

5. How many sonnets did Shakespeare write? What are the major subjects?

6. Who were the two major prose writers? What is Utopia? Where do you think More possibly got the idea or was it all his own invention? How do you interpret the title of the book?

7. What contribution did Bacon make to the English system of thinking and learning?

8. What’s the purpose of his Essays?

9. Based on your reading of his work, give your personal impression of/comment on

his Essays?

10. The English Renaissance period is known for its translations. What are the most important translations of this age?

Text study

Questions on Sonnet 18 by Shakespeare (58):

1. What is the English sonnet form? Study the metrical and rhyme scheme as well as the structure?

2. What’s the main idea? Is it really about love? What is peculiar of this love poem? 3. What figures of speech are used?

Questions on “Of Studies” by F. Bacon (52-53): 1. How do you define the style?

2. Study the essay by comparing the English version with the translation of Mr Wang. How do you like the Chinese version? 3. Paraphrase and comment on sentences 1-6, 10-12.

Week 6 Revolution and Restoration

Reference questions:

1. What was the most important social event during the mid-17th century? 2. What were the two most popular forms of lyric?

3. Why is Milton the greatest poet of the period? What is the significance of Paradise Lost?

Text study: Paradise Lost by John Milton (67-68) 1. What is the historical background of the work?

2. As a transitional writer, how does Milton combine his humanistic ideas with his Puritan ideas?

3. What is the image and the significance of Satan in the two extracts? 4. What philosophy can we get from the text?

Week 7 18th century Enlightenment(1)

Questions:

1. What was the most important intellectual event of the time?

2. The 18th century is called an age of the bourgeoisie. Why? And what effect it had on literature of the century?

3. Why did English novel appear in this century?

4. What are the major forms of literature?

5. What have neo-classicism and realism got to do with the Enlightenment Movement?

6. Why did literature of Sentimentality and Gothicism come into being in the latter part of the century?

Text study: J. Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” (81-89) 1. How do you describe the narrator’s tone?

2. What or who are the targets of Swift’s mockery? 3. Is the proposal modest? Prove your point.

Week 8 18th century Enlightenment(2)

Text study:

An Essay on Man by A. Pope (89-90) 1. What is heroic couplet? 2. What is the poetic pattern?

3. What are the themes of the two extracts?

4. Paraphrase the texts or tell in brief your interpretation.

“Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” by Thomas Gray (91-92) 1. What do you know of the Graveyard poetry? 2. What is the poetic pattern?

3. What is the predominant mood? 4. What is the theme ?

5. Summarize each stanza in your own words.

Week 9 19th-century Romanticism (1)

Questions:

1. How is the period defined in time?

2. What was the historical background, politically, economically and ideologically? 3. What was the predominant genre of literature? Who were the important writers of the time?

4. In what way was romanticist literature different from that of neoclassicism in the 18th century, such as in form, guiding principle, subject matter, purpose, style, etc.?

Text study: “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” by Wordsworth (103) 1. What is the theme?

2. What is the predominant image?

3. How does it reflect the poet’s idea of romantic poetry? 4. What is the poetic pattern?

5. Paraphrase each stanza in one sentence.

Week 10 19th-century Romanticism (2)

Text study:

“The World Is Too Much with Us” by Wordsworth (116-7) 1. What is the theme, i.e. the meaning, of the first line? 2. What romantic ideas does it advocate? 3. What type of sonnet form it is?

4. What romantic spirit does it represent? 5. Paraphrase the poem in your own words.

“Ode on a Grecian Urn” by John Keats (109-110) 1. What is the theme of the poem? 2. What is the rhyme scheme?

3. What romantic feature does the poem reflect? 4. Summarize each stanza in one or two sentences.

Week 11 Victorian Literature (1)

Questions:

1. What is the historical background politically, economically and ideologically? 2. What is the predominant form of literature during this period?

3. Who are the representative writers? And what was the literary tendency? 4. What changes came about towards the end of the century?

Week 12-13 Victorian Literature (2)(3)

Suggested Topics for workshop on Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

[be sure to support your argument with evidence from the text]

1. Creator vs. Creature

What is the relation between the creator and the creature?

[Prometheus and Zeus; Adam and Eve and God; Monster and Victor; Parents and Victor]

2. Growth and Corruption of the Monster

What kind of a creature is he at first? Why and how does he change? What does he become?

3. Psychoanalytical Study of Frankenstein

Why does he create the monster? In what way is the monster a reflection of himself/his inner desire? Can you apply Freudian theory of id, ego, and superego or his theory of dreams to the study of the character of Victor? What dual structure is there within him?

4. The Novel and the Author

Why did Mary create the monster/the book? What’s the revelation of the experience (love, hatred, fear, guilt), personality, and interest of the author as reflected in the novel?

5. Frankenstein, the First Science Fiction

What is scien-fiction? What scien-fictional features are there? What gothic elements?

6. The Modern Prometheus

How has the concept of creation (material, way, purpose & result)changed from that in the Bible? What message is left about modern science?

7. Women in Modern life

What role do women play in modern life as reflected in the novel?

8. The Relayed Narration/ On the Narrative Structure

How and by whom is the story told? Why three different narrators? How is the narration related to the theme development?

9. The Journey of Exploration and Discovery

What is the purpose of Walton’s journey? What is his actual discovery?

10. The Style

What is the style of the novel? And what strength and weakness?

Week 14 20th-century Literature (1)

Reference questions:

1. What is the historical background of the period? 2. What is modernism? 3. What is postmodernism?

Week 15 20th-century Literature (2)

Text study:

Extract from Mrs Dalloway by V. Woolf (handout) 1. What is stream-of-consciousness?

2. How is the heroine’s character split into two or portrayed at two different levels?

Extract from Ulysses by James Joyce (handout) 1. How is random thought portrayed?

Week 16 20th-century Literature (3)

Text study: “Eveline” by James Joyce (192-195) 1. What is setting, historical and social?

2. Why makes Eveline decide not to go away with her boyfriend? How is epiphany achieved?

3. How does the story contribute to the theme of the work---Dubliners---as a whole?

Week 17 Revision

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