Ⅰ.Multiple ChoiceSelect from the four choices of each item the one that best answers the question or completes the statement. Mark your choice by blackening the corresponding letter A, B, C or D on the answer sheet. Ⅲ.Questions and AnswersGive 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 the theme of Jane Eyre?
A. The work is one of the most popular and important novels of the Victorian Age. It is noted for its sharp criticism of the existing society, e. g. the religions hypocrisy of charity institutions such as Lowood School where poor girls are trained, through constant starvation and humiliation, to be humble slaves, the social discrimination Jane experiences first as a dependent at her aunt's house and later as a governess at Thornfield, and the false social convention as concerning love and marriage.
B. At the same time, it is an intense moral fable. Jane, like Mr. Rochester, has to undergo a series of physical and moral tests to grow up and achieve her final happiness.
2. How did Walt Whitman make use of the poetic "I" in his works?
A. Whitman's poetic style is marked, first of all, by the use of the poetic "I." Speaking in the voice of "I," Whitman becomes all those people in his poems, and yet still remains "Walt Whitman," hence a discovery, of the self in the other with such an identification.
B. Usually, the relationship Whitman is dramatizing is a triangular one: "I" the poet, the subject in the poem, and "you" the reader. In such a manner, Whitman invites us, as we read his lines, to participate in the process of sympathetic identification.
3. What are the characteristics of English romantic literature? Please discuss the above question in relation to one or two examples.
A. In poetry writing, the Romantics explored new theories and innovated new techniques, for example, Wordsworth' s theory of poetry is calling for simple themes drawn from humble life expressed in the language of ordinary people.
B. The Romantics not only extol the faculty of imagination, but also elevate the concepts of spontaneity and inspiration, regarding them as something crucial for true poetry.
C. Nature is not only the major source of poetic imagery, but also provides the dominant subject matter.
D. Romantics also tend to be nationalistic, defending the great poets and dramatists of their own national heritage against the advocates of classical rules.
4. Robinson Crusoe is universally considered as Daniel Defoe's masterpiece. Discuss why it became so successful when it was published.
A. Robinson Crusoe is supposedly based on the real adventure of an Alexander Selkirk who once stayed alone on the uninhabited island Juan Fernandez for five years. In fact, the story is an imagination.
B. In Robinson Crusoe, Defoe traces the growth of Robinson from a naive and artless youth into a shrewd and hardened man, tempered by numerous trials in his eventful life.
C. In the novel, Robinson is a real hero and he is an embodiment of the rising middle-class virtues in the mid-eighteenth-century England.
D. Robinson Crusoe is an adventure story very much in the spirit of the time. Because of the above reasons, when it was published, people all liked that story, and it became an immediate success.
Ⅳ.Topic DiscussionWrite no less than 150 words on each of the following topics in English in the corresponding space on the answer sheet.1. Please give a short introduction to the major characteristics of D. H. Lawrence's literary creation in novel writing.
A. Lawrence expresses a strong reaction against the mechanical civilization on the sensual tenderness of human nature, and it is this agonized concern that haunts his writing.
B. Lawrence, introducing psychological elements into his works, holds that human sexuality is the dominating "Life Force," and frankly describes scenes of sex.
C. As far as artistic tendency is concerned, Lawrence is mainly realistic, and he makes the use of poetic imagination, symbolism and psychological description in his writing.
2. How is Romanticism different from Neoclassicism? Provide brief evidence from the literary works you know best.
A. Neoclassicists upheld that artistic ideals should be order, logic, restrained emotion and accuracy, and that literature should be judged in terms of its service to humanity, and thus, literary expressions should be of proportion, unity, harmony and grace. Pope's An Essay on criticism advocates grave, wit, and simplicity in language; Fielding's Tom Jones helped establish the form of novel; Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard displays elegance in style, unified structure, serious tone and moral instruction.
B. Romanticists tended to see the individual as the very center of all experience, including art, and thus, literary work should be "spontaneous overflow of strong feelings," and no matter how fragmentary those experiences were, the value of the work lied in the accuracy of presenting those unique feelings and particular attitudes.
C. In a word, Neoclassicism emphasizes rationality and form but Romanticism attached great importance to the individual's mind.