6.3　考研真题和典型题详解

I. Fill in the blanks.

1．Author: _____

Title: _____（南京大学2008研）

Virtues are, in the popular estimate, rather the exception than the rule. There is the man and his virtues. Men do what is called a good action, as some piece of courage or charity, much as they would pay a fine in expiration of daily non-appearance on paradise.

【答案】Author: Ralph Waldo Emerson；Title: Self-Reliance

【解析】题目节选自爱默生的Self-Reliance（《论自立》）。爱默生是思想家、散文作家、诗人，是超验主义运动的主要代表。

2．“The greatest delight which the fields and woods minister, is the suggestion of an occult relation between man and the vegetable. I am not alone and unacknowledged. They nod to me, and I to them. The waving of the boughs in the storm, is new to me and old. It takes me by surprise, and yet is not unknown. Its effect is like that of a higher thought or a better emotion coming over me, when I deemed I was thinking justly or doing right.

Yet it is certain that the power to produce this delight, does not reside in _____, but in _____, or in a harmony of both. It is necessary to use these pleasures with great temperance.”（天津外国语2010研）

【答案】nature; man

【解析】该选段选自爱默生的《论自然》（Nature）。

3．Ralph W. Emerson believes in the concept of the _____. It is the _____ within which every man’s particular being is contained and made one with all other. （国际关系学院2009研）

【答案】Transcendentalism；Oversoul

【解析】爱默生信奉超验主义，在他看来，超灵为人所共有，每个人的思想存在于超灵之中，人能以直觉官能与之交融。

4．Ralph Waldo Emerson’s truest disciple, the man who put into practice many of Emerson’s theories, was _____.

【答案】Henry David Thoreau

【解析】亨利·戴维·梭罗（Henry David Thoreau）是美国作家、哲学家，他最著名的作品为著名散文集《瓦尔登湖》和论文《论公民的不服从权利》。梭罗是爱默生最忠实的追随者并且将爱默生的许多理论付诸了实践。

5．From Henry David Thoreau’s Concord jail experience came his famous essay _____.

【答案】Civil Disobedience

【解析】在瓦尔登湖生活期间，梭罗因为反对黑奴制拒交“人头税”而被捕入狱。友人替他代交了税款保其出狱，但这一亲身体验却激发他写成了著名的政论《抵制国民政府》（Resistance to Civil Government，后改名为《论公民的不服从权利》（Civil Disobedience）。

6．Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay _____ has been regarded as “America’s Declaration of Intellectual Independence”. It called on American writers to write about America in a way peculiarly American.

【答案】The American Scholar

【解析】1837年爱默生发表的论文《美国学者》(The American Scholar)。这是一篇著名的演讲辞，它宣告了美国文学脱离了欧洲的影响而独立。它奉劝美国学者不要成为学究、不要盲从传统、不要摹仿、不要被金钱腐蚀，要强调人的价值。《美国学者》被誉为美国思想文化的“独立宣言”。

II. Multiple choices.

1．_____ is regarded as “America’s Declaration of Intellectual Independence”.（首师大2009研）

A. “The American Scholar”

B. Representative Men

C. Society and Solitude

D. Walden

【答案】A

【解析】爱默生在题为《美国学者》的演讲辞中，告诫美国学者不要盲目追随英国的传统，宣告美国文学脱离英国文学独立存在，被誉为美国思想文化领域的“独立宣言”。

2．_____ usually stresses the close relationship between man and nature. It views nature as a source of physical beauty, a revelation of truth，a manifestation of spirit in the universe, and the living garment of God. It holds that humanity close to nature will behave well, and will not be hindered by civilization. （武汉大学2011研）

A. Puritanism

B. Romanticism

C. Realism

D. Naturalism

【答案】B

【解析】爱默生是浪漫主义中的超验主义的主要代表人物，他在《自然》一文中表现了其对自然的亲近和对人的精神的信仰。有迷惑性的自然主义为美国现实主义文学的分支。

3．Which ONE of the following is generally believed to be the main idea of American Transcendentalism? （四川大学2010研）

A. glorification of the environmental forces

B. advocating the notion of the futility of human efforts

C. stressing hard-work, piety and sobriety

D. emphasis on spirit or the Oversoul, an all-pervading power for goodness

【答案】D

【解析】超验主义的核心思想是超灵（Oversoul），认为真理超越人的有限感觉之外，不能通过理性认识，而要以直觉来领悟普遍真理。

4．Transcendentalists recognized _____ as the “highest power of the soul”.

A. intuition

B. logic

C. data of the senses

D. thinking

【答案】A

【解析】超验主义者将直觉作为“心灵最伟大的力量”。

5．Which is generally regarded as the Bible of New England Transcendentalism?

A. Nature

B. Walden

C. On Beauty

D. Self-Reliance

【答案】A

【解析】《论自然》（Nature）是爱默生的第1部重要哲学著作，最初发表于1836年。它集超验主义思想之大成，被称为超验主义理论的“圣经”。

III. Explain the following terms.

1．Transcendentalism（南开大学2008研，北二外2010研；北航2010研；南开大学2011研；四川大学2008研；国际关系学院2007研）

Key: Transcendentalism: Transcendentalism is a New England movement, which flourished from about 1835 to 1860. It had its roots in romanticism and in post-Kantian idealism by which Coleridge was influenced. It had a considerable influence on American art and literature. Basically religious, it emphasized the role and importance of the individual conscience, and the value of intuition in matters of moral guidance and inspiration. The actual term was coined by opponents of the movement, but accepted by its members. The group of people was also social reformers. Some of the members, besides Emerson, were famous, including Bronson Alcott, Henry David Thoreau and Nathaniel Hawthorne.

2．Ralph Waldo Emerson（北航2007研）

Key: Ralph Waldo Emerson: Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) was an American essayist, philosopher, and poet, best remembered for leading the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. He gradually moved away from the religious and social beliefs of his contemporaries, formulating and expressing the philosophy of Transcendentalism in his 1836 essay, Nature. As a result of this ground breaking work, he gave a speech entitled The American Scholar in 1837, which Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. considered to be America’s “Intellectual Declaration of Independence”.

IV. Read the following quotations and answer the questions.

Passage 1

To go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society. I am not solitary whilst I read and write, though nobody is with me. But if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars. The rays that come from those heavenly worlds, will separate between him and vulgar things. One might think the atmosphere was made transparent with this design, to give man, in the heavenly bodies, the perpetual presence of the sublime. Seen in the streets of cities, how great they are! If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these preachers of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile.

Questions:

(1) This paragraph is taken from a famous essay. What is the name of the essay?

Key: Nature

(2) Who is the author?

Key: Ralph Waldo Emerson

(3) What does the author say would happen if the stars appeared one night in a thousand years?

Key: Then, the men cannot believe and adore the God, cannot preserve the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown.

(4) Give a peculiar term to cover the author’s belief.

Key: Transcendentalism

Passage 2

There’s a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion… Trust thyself; every heart vibrates to that iron string.

Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist.

Questions:

(1) This selection is selected from an essay. What is the title of that?

Key: Self-Reliance

(2) Who is the author of the essay?

Key: Ralph Waldo Emerson

(3) According to the selection, what do you think the author believes in?

Key: He believed above all the individualism, independence of mind, and self-reliance.

V. Short answer questions

1．Which of Emerson’s works is called “America’s intellectual Declaration of independence”? （国际关系学院2007研）

Key: The American Scholar is called “America’s intellectual Declaration of independence”. It was a speech given by Ralph Waldo Emerson on August 31, 1837, to the Phi Beta Kappa Society in Harvard. He was invited to speak in recognition of his groundbreaking work Nature, published a year earlier, in which he established a new way for America’s fledgling society to regard the world. Sixty years after declaring independence, American culture was still heavily influenced by Europe, and Emerson, for possibly the first time in the country’s history, provided a visionary philosophical framework for escaping “from under its iron lids” and building a new, distinctly American cultural identity.

2．What is the major thematic concern of Walden? （国际关系学院2007研）

Key: Walden is informed by American Transcendentalism, a philosophy developed by Thoreau’s friend and spiritual mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson. It emphasizes the importance of solitude, contemplation, and closeness to nature in transcending the “desperate” existence that, he argues, is the lot of most people. Thoreau was putting into practice the Transcendentalist belief that one can best transcend normality and experience the Ideal, or the Divine, through nature.

VI. Essay question.

1．Make a comment on Ralph Waldo Emerson’s work Nature.

Key: Ralph Waldo Emerson is the leading New England Transcendentalist, and his work Nature is the regarded as the Bible of New England Transcendentalism.

One major element of Emerson’s philosophy is his firm belief in the transcendence of the “Oversoul”. In Nature, he states “the universe is composed of Nature and the Soul”. He sees the world as phenomenal, and emphasizes the need for idealism, for idealism sees the world in God. Emerson regards nature as the purest, and the most sanctifying moral influence on man, and advocated a direct intuition of a spiritual and immanent God in nature. When one feels completely merged with the outside world, when one has completely sunk into nature and become one with it, and when the soul has gone beyond the physical limits of the body to share the omniscience of the Oversoul. It is the moment of “conversation”. In a word, the soul has completely transcended the limits of individuality and become part of the Oversoul. Emerson sees sprit pervading everywhere, not only in the soul of man, but behind nature, throughout nature.

The other significant Transcendentalist thesis is that the individual, not the crowd, is the most important of all. If man depends upon himself, cultivates himself, and brings out the divine in himself, he can hope to become better and even perfect. This is what Emerson means by the “infinitude of the privates man”. He tried to convince people that the possibilities for man to develop and improve himself are infinite. Men should and could be self-reliant.

To Emerson, the physical world was vitalistic and evolutionary. Nature was emblematic of God. It mediates between man and God, and its voice leads to higher truth. “Nature is the vehicle of thought,” and “particular natural facts are symbols of particular spiritual facts.” In a word, “Nature is the symbol of spirit.

2．Say something about the main idea of Henry David Thoreau’s Walden?

Key: ①Henry, David Thoreau is an American transcendentalist writer, he was by no means an “escapist” or a recluse, but was intensely involved in the life of his day. Walden is a great transcendentalist work. ②In this work, Thoreau saw nature as a genuine restorative, healthy influence on man’s spiritual well-being and regarded it as a symbol of the spirit. Indeed, Walden is a faithful record of his reflections when he was in solitary communion with nature, an eloquent indication that he not only embraced Emerson’s Transcendentalist philosophy he went further to illustrate the pantheistic quality of nature. ③Walden can be many things and can be read on more than one level. It is, first and foremost, a book on self-culture and human perfectibility. If is about man, what he is and what he should be and must be. Second, Thoreau was very critical of modern civilization. It was, In Thoreau’s opinion, degrading and enslaving man. He felt that man should seek truth directly by leaving the life of hurry and bustle to get ahead in worldly affairs and sinking himself in the wholesome atmosphere of nature. Furthermore, the book is full of ideas expressed jostle his neighbors out of their smug complacency. And he goes on to prescribe a panacea for the fatal modern craze for monetary success that comes the wake of mechanization and commercialization of life.