Answer: A (P524)
3. More than five hundred poems that Dickinson wrote are about nature, in which her general _____about the relationship between man and nature is well expressed.
A. skepticism B. eulogy C. happiness D. denial
Answer: A (P518)
4. "This is my letter to the World" is a poem expressing Emily Dickinson’s _____about her communication with the outside world.
A. happinessB. angerC. Anxiety D. sorrow
Answer: C (P520)
5. Though secluded herself in her own house, Emily Dickinson was never really indifferent of the outside world, as could be seen in her poems such as "I like to see it lap the Miles", which describes a(n) ______, an embodiment of modern civilization.
A. snake B. animal C. the road D. train
Answer: D (P521)
6. After "The Adventure of Tom Sawyer", Twain gives a literary independence to Tom’s buddy Huck in a book called_____, and the book from which "all modern American literature comes".
A. Life on the Mississippi River B. The Gilded Age C. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn D. The Sun Also Rises
Answer: C (P479---480)
7. Winterbourne is used as a ______in Henry James’s "Daisy Miller".
A. Protagonist B. Narrator of the events C. A character of central consciousness D. Persona
Answer: C (P499)
8. Emily Dickinson’s verse is most aptly characterized as ___________.
A. exposing the evils of the society B. paving the way for the following generation of free verse poets
C. sharing the same poetic conventions as Walt Whitman D. exhibiting sensitiveness to the symbolic implications of experience, such as love, death, immortality and etc.
Answer: D (P518)
9. The author of "The Portrait of a Lady" is best at_______.
A. probing into the unsearched secret part of human life
B. a truthful delineation of the motives, the impulses, the principles that shape the lives of actual men and women.
C. a dramatizing the collisions between two very different cultural systems on an international scene
D. disclosing the social injustices and evils of a civilized society after the Civil War.
Answer: C (P496)
10. The period ranging from 1865 to 1914 has been referred to as _____________.
A. the Age of Realism B. the Age of Modernism C. the Age of Romanticism D. the Age of Colonicalism
Answer: A (P471)
11. Who exerts the simple most important influence on literary naturalism?
A. Emerson  B. Jack London C. Theodore Dreiser D. Darwin
Answer: D (P475)
12. One of the most familiar themes in American naturalism is the theme of human "______".
A. bestiality B. goodness  C. compassion D. greed
Answer: A (P476)
13. ______is considered by H.L. Mencken as "the true father of our national literature."
A. Hemingway B. Poe C. Irving D. Twain
Answer: D (P477)
14. Mark Twain wrote most of his literary works with a _______language.
A. grand B. pompous C. simple D. vernacular
Answer: D (P481)
15. Henry James’s fame generally rests upon his novels and stories with________.
A. international theme B. national theme C. European theme D. Regional theme
Answer: A (P497)
16. In the following writers, who is generally regarded as the forerunner of the 20th century "Stream-of-consciousness" novels and the founder of psychological realism______________.
A. Henry James B. Mark Twain C. Emily Dickenson D. Theodore Dreiser
Answer: A (P498)
17. In Henry James’ "Daisy Miller", the author tries to portray the young woman as an embodiment of ___________.
A. the corruption of the newly rich B. the free spirit of the New World C. the decline of aristocracy D. the force of convention
Answer: B (P499)
18. Which of the following is NOT a usual subject of poetic expression of Emily Dickinson’s?
A. War and peace B. Love and marriage C. Life and death D. Religion
Answer: A (P517)
19. The following titles are all related to the subject that escapes from the society and returns to nature except__________.
A. Dreiser’s Sister Carrie B. Copper’s Leather-Stocking Tales C. Thoreau’s Walden D. Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Answer: A (P401 / P526)
20. The greatest work written by Theodore Dreiser is__________.
A. Sister Carrie B. An American Tragedy C. The Financier D. The Titan
Answer: B (P525)
21. Closely related to Emily Dickinson’s religious poetry are her poems concerning ___________.
A. Childhood B. Youth and happiness C. Loneliness D. Death and immortality
Answer: D (518)
22. With Howells, James, and Mark Twain active on the literary scene, _________became the major trend in American literature in the seventies and eighties of the 19th century.
A. sentimentalism B. romanticism C. realism D. naturalism
Answer: C (P474)

II. Read the quoted part and answer the questions:
1. "It was a close place. I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was a trembling, because I’d got to decide, forever, betwixt tow things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to my self:
"All right, then, I’ll go to hell"----and tore it up.
It was awful thoughts, and awful words, but they was said. And I let them stay said; and never though no more about reforming."
1) Who was the "I", which book was the passage taken from? And by whom? 2) Why did he think "it was awful thought"? Analyze it.
3) Analyze the characteristic of the hero.
Answer:
1) The character is Huckleberry Finn, the passage is taken from "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" by Mark Twain. (P489)
2) It is the climax of the Huck’s inner struggle on the Mississippi, when Huck is conflicting whether or not he should write a letter to tell Miss Watson where Jim is, and he is polarizing/contradicting by the two opposing forces between his heart and his head, between his affection for Jim and the laws of the society against those who help slaves escape. Huck’s final decision -to follow his own good hearted moral impulse rather than conventional village morality. During his thinking Huck thinks of the consequence of helping Jim (the runaway slave), he might go to hell, "it was awful thought", with the eventual victory of his moral conscience over his social awareness, Huck grows. (P480)
3) Huck is an innocent and reluctant rebel, a typical American Boy with a "sound heart and deformed conscience". Through the eyes of Huck, the Pre-Civil War American society is fully exposed and we are deeply impressed by Mark Twain’s thematic contrasts between innocence and experience, nature and culture, wildness and civilization. (P483)

2. "I should think it might be arranged," Winterbourne was thus emboldened to reply. "Couldn’t you get some one to stay----for the afternoon---with Randolph?"
Miss Miller looked at him a moment; and then with all serenity, "I wish you’d stay with him!" she said.
Questions:
1) Please identify the work and the author.2) Please analyze the character of Daisy Miller in literature.
参考答案:
1) It is taken from Henry James’s "Daisy Miller". (P513)
2) She is the American Girl in Europe, a celebrated type who embodies the spirit of the New World. However, innocence, the keynote of her character, turns out to be an admiring but a dangerous quality and her defiance of social taboos in the Old World finally brings her to a disaster in the clash between two different cultures. (P499-500)

3. "We passed the School, where Children strove
At Recess---in the Ring---
We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain----
We passed the Setting Sun---”
Questions:
1) Please identify the poem and the poet;2) What does "the School, the Fields of Gazing Grain and the Setting Sun" stands for?

Answers:
1) The lines are from "Because I could not stop fro Death", Emily Dickinson. (P523)
2) It stands for three stages of life: the School----youth;
the Fields of Gazing Grain----mature period;
the Setting Sun------end of life. (P523)

4. "The Eyes around---had wrung them dry---
And breaths were gathering firm
For that last Onset----when the King
Be witnessed---in the Room----"
Questions:
1) What is the meaning of the first line? 2) What does "the King" refer to? 3) What idea does the poem from which this stanza is taken express?

Answers:
1) It means the relatives and friends had cried and cried so that there were no tears any more. (P521)
2) "The King" refers to the God of death. (P521) 3) The poem expresses that the author even imagined her own death, the loss of her own body, and the journey of her soul to the unknown. (P518)

III. Questions and answers:
1. What are the main ideas of Realists of America?
Answer:
The harsh life and disillusion from the dark memories of the Civil War made the nation dislike the romance, the new generation of writers came up with new inspirations:
1) They were interested in the realities of life. It aimed at the interpretation of the actuality of any aspect of life;
2) People’s attention was now directed the interesting features/things of everyday existence/things -something brutal, sordid/mean, class struggle etc.