Ⅰ.Multiple Choice Select from the four choices of each item the one that best answers the question or completes the statement. Mark your choice by blacking the corresponding letter A, B, C or D on the answer sheet. Ⅱ.Reading Comprehension Read the quoted parts carefully and answer the questions in English. Write your answers in the corresponding space on the answer sheet.1. "To he, or not to he—that is the question."
Questions: A. Identify the writing from which this sentence is taken.
B. Who is the protagonist in this work?
C. From this sentence, try to deduce the character of the protagonist.
A. William Shakespeare's Hamlet.
B. Hamlet.
C. He is speculative, questioning and contemplative.
2. "A violet by a mossy stone
Half hidden from the eye!
—Fair as a star, when only one
Is shining in the sky."
Questions: A. Identify the author and the title of the poem from which this stanza is taken.
B. Pick out the metaphor used in this stanza.
C. What quality does the author intend to show by using the metaphor?
A. The stanza is taken from "She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways" written by W. Wordsworth.
B. The flower (violet) is used as a metaphor.
C. By comparing a country girl (Lucy) to a violet, the poet intends to show her quality of beauty and her virtue which are often neglected by the common people just like a wild flower blooming by an untrodden road.
3. "We paused before a House that seemed
A Swelling of the Ground—
The Roof was scarcely visible—
The Cornice—in the Ground—"
Questions: A. Who's the author of the stanza?
B. Which period does the poem belong to?
C. What idea does the poem express?
A. Emily Dickinson.
B. The Realistic Period.
C. In this poem Dickinson personifies death and immortality so as to make her message strongly felt.
4. "... only Miss Emily's house was left, lifting its stubborn and coquettish decay above the cotton wagons and the gasoline pumps—an eyesore among eyesores."
Questions: A. Identify the author and the title of the story from which the quoted lines are taken.
B. What is the meaning of "an eyesore among eyesores"?
C. What does this quoted passage indicate?
A. Faulkner's A Rose for Emily.
B. The most unpleasant thing to look at.
C. The house is a perfect mirror image of the owner who is stubborn and coquettish and deliberately detaches herself from the communal life in this small town.
Ⅲ.Questions and Answers Give a brief answer to each of the following questions in English. Write your answers in the corresponding space on the answer sheet.1. What's Swift's achievements?
Swift is a master satirist. His satire is usually masked by an outward gravity and an apparent earnestness which renders his satire all the more powerful. His A Modest Proposal is generally taken as a perfect model.
Swift is one of the greatest masters of English prose. He is almost unsurpassed in the writing of simple, direct, precise prose. He defined a good style as "proper words in proper places". Clear, simple, concrete diction, uncomplicated sentence structure, economy and conciseness of language mark all his writings—essays, poems and novels.
Swift's chief works arena Tale of a Tub, The Battle of the Books, The Drapier's Letters, Gulliver's Travels and A Modest Proposal.
2. What are the main characteristics of the English critical realism?
The English critical realists of the 19th century not only gave a satirical portrayal of the bourgeoisie and all the ruling classes, but also showed profound sympathy for the common people. Hence humor and satire abound in the English realistic novels of the 19th century. The critical realists of the 19th century did not find a way to eradicate social evils.
3. Theodore Dreiser is a celebrated American novelist in the realistic period. What does he discuss in his novels? Give examples to prove your viewpoint.
Dreiser set himself to project the American values for what he had found them to be materialistic to the core. Living in such a society with such a value system, the human individual is obsessed with a neverending, yet meaningless search for satisfaction of his desires. One of the desires is for money which was a motivating purpose of life in the United States in the late 19th century.
For example, in Sister Carrie, there is not one character whose status is not determined economically. Sex is another human desire that Dreiser explored to considerable lengths in his novels to reveal the dark side of human nature. In Sister Carrie, Carrie climbs up the social ladder by means of her sexual appeal. Like all naturalists he was restrained from finding a solution to the social problems that appeared in his novels and accordingly almost all his works have tragic endings.
4. Give a comment on Robert Frost's The Road Not Taken.
The poem is in classic five-line stanza, with the rhyme scheme a-b-a-b-a and conventional rhythm.
In the poem, the poet hesitates for a long time, wondering which road to take, because they are both pretty. In the end, he follows the one which seems to have fewer travelers on it.
Symbolically, he chose to become a poet rather than some commoner profession. But he always remembers the road he might have taken, and which would have given him a different kind of life.
Ⅳ.Topic Discussion Write no less than 150 words on each of the following topics in English in the corresponding space on the answer sheet.1. Robinson Crusoe is Defoe's first novel and also his masterpiece. Discuss the change and growth of Crusoe and the characteristics of him.
The growth of Robinson Crusoe:
Robinson Crusoe changes a lot with his experiences and adventures. When he ran away from home, he was an inexperienced teenager and a young man full of bright fancies about the future. He naturally chose going to sea, because in those days it meant a chance to live a chivalrous life, to see the wonders of the world and to make a fortune. Since then he had a lot of adventures and he also grew from a naive and artless youth into a shrewd and hardened man, tempered by numerous trials in his eventful life.
The characteristics of Robinson Crusoe:
Robinson Crusoe is a real hero: a typical eighteenth-century English middle-class man, with a great capacity for work, inexhaustible energy, courage, patience and persistence in overcoming obstacles, in struggling against the hostile natural environment. He is a new man—a man sure of himself and sure of being able to establish himself anywhere in the world. He is a man of new age, in which doubt and uncertainty are replaced by hope and confidence. Robinson Crusoe is the enterpriser of this age. He is ready to command nature, his enemy, and to found his colony beyond the seas. He is a merchant-adventurer, interested in material profits. He is the colonist, the empire builder. Robinson Crusoe is an embodiment of the spirit of individual enterprise and colonial expansion of the rising bourgeoisie.
2. Thomas Hardy is often regarded as a transitional writer. Some critics believe that he is emotionally traditional and intellectually advanced. How do you understand this idea?
(1)In his Wessex novels, there is an apparent nostalgic touch in his description of the simple and beautiful though primitive rural life, which was gradually declining and disappearing as England marched into an industrial country. And with those traditional characters he is always sympathetic.
(2)On the other hand, the immense impact of scientific discoveries and modern philosophic thoughts upon the man is quite obvious, too.
(3)In his works, man is shown inevitably bound by his own inherent nature and hereditary traits which prompt him to go and search for some specific happiness or success and set him in conflict with the environment.