5.3　考研真题和典型题详解

I. Fill in the blanks.

1．The Legend of Sleepy Hollow was written by _____.（大连外国语2008研）

【答案】Washington Irving

【解析】华盛顿·欧文，美国著名作家，被称为“美国文学之父”。《睡谷传奇》是欧文的著名短篇小说，收在他的著名散文集《见闻札记》中。

2．The Spy was written by _____.（大连外国语2007研）

【答案】James Fenimore Cooper

【解析】《间谍》是美国早期作家James Fenimore Cooper的一篇小说。

3．In the early nineteenth century, Washington Irving wrote _____ which became the first work by an American writer to win financial success on both sides of the Atlantic.

【答案】The Sketch Book

【解析】美国作家华盛顿·欧文被英国作家萨克雷称为“新世界文坛送往旧世界的第一使节”。《见闻札记》被当时的英国评论界誉为“美国富有想象力的第一部真正杰作”，它“组成了它所属的那个民族文学的新时代”。

4．In The Pioneers, _____ represents the ideal American, living a virtuous and free life in God’s world.

【答案】Natty Bumppo

【解析】在詹姆斯•费尼莫尔•库柏的小说《拓荒者》（The Pioneers）中，主人公Natty Bumppo正直善良，向往无拘无束的生活，是理想美国人的化身。

5．The best of James Fenimore Cooper’s sea romances was _____ .The hero of the novel represents John Paul Jones, the great naval fighter of the Revolutionary War.

【答案】The Pilot

【解析】小说《领航者》（The Pilot）是詹姆斯·费尼莫尔·库柏（James Fenimore Cooper）最好的海上传奇故事。小说主人公影射了美国独立战争期间的伟大的海军斗士—约翰·保罗·琼斯。

6．“To a Waterfowl” is perhaps the peak of _____’s work, it has been called by an eminent English critic “the most perfect brief poem in the language.”

【答案】William Cullen Bryant

【解析】威廉·柯伦·布赖恩特（William Cullen Bryant）是美国首位著名的抒情诗人。抒情诗《致水鸟》是其最好的诗歌，被英国某知名评论家誉为“用美国英语写作的最完美的短诗”。

7．Among William Cullen Bryant’s most important later works are his translations of the Iliad and the _____ into English blank verse.

【答案】Odyssey

【解析】威廉·柯伦·布赖恩特（William Cullen Bryant）晚年将荷马的两部长篇史诗《伊利亚特》(the Iliad)和《奥德带》(the Odyssey)译成了英语无韵诗(blank verse)。

II. Multiple choices.

1．Which of the following words does not describe the features of Irving’s writings? （天津外国语学院2009研）

A. decorum

B. humor

C. musicality

D. imagination

【答案】C

【解析】华盛顿·欧文的作品具有幽默风趣的笔调，活跃而优雅的写作风格，富于幻想的浪漫色彩。

2．James Fennimore Cooper’s novel _____ is the first to reveal the west and Native Americans’ life in a passionate way. （北二外2007研）

A. Go Down, Moses

B. The Last of the Mohicans

C. Winesburg, Ohio

D. O, Pioneers!

【答案】B

【解析】《最后的莫西干人》是库柏《皮裹腿》五部曲之一，描写的是美国西部边疆和美洲土著印第安人的生活。选项A《去吧，摩西》的作者是William Faulkner（威廉·福克纳）；选项C《小城畸人》的作者是Sherwood Anderson（舍伍德·安德森）；选项D的作者是女作家Willa Cather（薇拉·凯瑟）。

3．It is on his _____ that Washington Irving’s fame mainly rested.

A. tales about America

B. early poetry

C. childhood recollections

D. sketches about his European tours

【答案】A

【解析】欧文的声望主要体现在关于美国的小说上。

4．In 1817, the stately poem called Thanatopsis introduced the best poet _____ to appear in America up to that time.

A. Edward Taylor

B. Philip Frenean

C. William Cullen Bryant

D. Edgar Allan Poe

【答案】C

【解析】威廉·柯伦·布赖恩特William Cullen Bryant(1794～1878)，美国诗人和报纸编辑。1817创作了《死亡随想录》。其后，又创作了大量优美的诗歌，自然风物在他的诗中显得和谐而柔美，静谧而有节制，反映了他在那个时代所追求的理想。

III. Read the following quotations and answer the questions.

Passage 1

“There was, as usual, a crowd of folk about the door, but none that Rip recollected. The very character of the people seemed changed. There was a busy, bustling, disputatious tome about it, instead of the accustomed phlegm and drowsy tranquility. He looked in vain for the sage Nicholoas Vedder…”

Questions:

(1) From which work is this passage taken?

Key: This passage is taken from Washington Irving’s “Rip Van Winkle”.

(2) How do you understand this selection?

Key: It shows the change that Rip sees as he enters the village after the 20-year sleep and the destructive effect of the change. It also reveals, to some extent, the conservative attitude of its author.

Passage 2

“Arms and the clarion for the battle, but the song of thanksgiving to the victory!” answered the liberated David. “Friend,” he added, thrusting forth his lean, delicate hand forwards Hawkeye, in kindness, while his eyes twinkled and grew moist, “I thank thee the hairs of my head still grow where they were first rooted by Providence for, though those of other men may be more glossy and curling, I have ever found mine own well suited to the brain they shelter. That I did not join myself to the battle, was less owing to disinclination, than to the bonds of the heathen. Valiant and skillful hast thou proved thyself in the conflict, and I hereby thank thee, before proceeding to discharge other and more important duties, because thou hast proved thyself well worthy of a Christian’s praise.” …

Questions:

(1) This novel was written by the first American novelist. What is his name?

Key: James Fenimore Cooper

(2) What is the name of the novel?

Key: The Last of the Mohicans

(3) The central figure in this novel appeared in this passage. It is _____.

Key: Hawkeye

Passage 3

Questions:

(1) What is the title of the poem from which the selection is taken?

Key: Thanatopsis

(2) What does the title mean?

Key: View of death

(3) What is the meter of the poem?

Key: Iambic pentameter

(4) According to this selection, to whom does nature speak? To what two different human moods does nature respond?

Key: Nature speaks to him who in the love of nature holds communion with nature’s visible forms. Nature responds to two human moods. One is gladness; the other is gloominess, or sadness.

IV. Short answer questions.

1．What is the theme of Rip Van Wrinkle? Please list the major works of Washington Irving.

Key: ①Washington Irving (1783-1859) is the first American author to achieve international renown. Rip Van Wrinkle is a short story embraced in Irving’s The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent, which dealt with the nostalgia for the unrecoverable past. The story reveals, to some extent, the conservative attitude of its author. It might be taken as an illustration of Irving’s argument that change—and revolution—upset the natural order of things and of the fact that Irving never seems to accept a modern democratic American.

② His major works include A History of New York ,  The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent, of which the most famous and frequently anthologized are “Rip Van Winkle” and “ The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” the Life of Goldsmith and Life of Washington.

2．How much do you know about James Fenimore Cooper’s frontier saga The LeatherStocking Tales?

Key: The Leather Stocking Tales is a series of novels by American writer James Fenimore Cooper. Natty Bumppo is the protagonist of the series. Although he is the child of white parents, he grows up with Native Americans, becoming a near-fearless warrior skilled in many weapons, one of which is the long rifle. He respects his forest home and all its inhabitants, hunting only what he needs to survive. When it comes time to fire his trusty flintlock, he lives by the rule, “One shot, one kill.” He and his Mohican “brother” Chingachgook champion goodness by trying to stop the incessant conflict between the Mohicans and the Hurons. He is known as “Deerslayer” in The Deerslayer, “Hawkeye” and “La Longue Carabine” in The Last of the Mohicans, “Pathfinder” in The Pathfinder, “Leatherstocking” in The Pioneers, and “the trapper” in The Prairie. The novels recount significant events in Natty Bumppo’s life from 1740-1806.

V. Essay question.

1．Analyze The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.

Key: Washington Irving’s short story The Legend of Sleepy Hollow is about the memorable event of an apparently headless horseman throwing his head at his rival in love, and the memorable character of Ichabod Crane with his mixture of shrewdness, credulity, self-assertiveness and cowardice.

The creation of archetypes is a particularly subtle feat of Irving’s consummate craftsmanship. We may see in Ichabod Crane a precocious, effete New Englander, shrewd, commercial, a city-slicker, who is rather an interloper, a somewhat destructive force, and who comes along to swindle the villagers. His book learning turns on him, and he is driven away from where he does not belong, so that the serene village remains permanently good and happy. Brom Bones, on the other hand, is of a Huck Finn-type of country bumpkin, rough, vigorous, boisterous but inwardly very good, a frontier type put out there to shift for himself. Thus the rivalry in love between Ichabod and Brom, viewed in this way, suddenly assumes the dimensions of two ethical groups locked in a kind of historic contest.

As to the style of the piece, it represents Irving at his best. The association between a certain local and the inward movement of a character, the emotional loading of almost every line of the story, their effect on the five senses of the reader whose attention is so fully engaged and who feels so much involved in what is happening—all these have placed this and other Irving stories among the best of American short stories.

2．Say something about the artistic achievements of James Fenimore Cooper, and list some of his major works.

Key: ①James Fenimore Cooper is regarded as the first great American writer of fiction. He initiated three genres of fiction: historical novel, sea novel, and frontier novel. His novels are filled with action-packed plots and vivid portrayal of American life in frontier and wilderness. He turned whatever American history can offer—the west and the frontier as a usable past—to good account and helped to introduce the “Western” tradition into American literature.

②Coopers claim to greatness in American literature lies in the fact that he created a myth about the formative period of the American nation. In 1823 Cooper wrote The Pioneers, the first of the five novels that make up The Leatherstocking Tales. The remaining four books: The Last of Mohicans (1826), The Prairie (1827), The Pathfinder (1840), and The Deerslayer (1841), continue the story of Natty Bumppo, one of the most famous characters in American fiction. The Leatherstcoking Tales are noted for their portrayal of American subject matter in American settings. The hero of the tales, Natty Bumppo, embodies the conflict between preserving nature unspoiled and developing the land in the name of progress.