Modal Test 2

 

Ⅰ. Fill in the blanks. (20%)

1.Both being unconventional in poetic form,____________ and worked together to create American national poetry.

2.The imaginary place of ____________ functions as an allegory or a parable of the South.

3.The term “Jazz Age” was coined by Fitzgerald who used it in his work ____________ .

4.The ____________ is “ a turbulent, troubled and tempestuous era” as described by Publisher Weekly.

5.Dry September is one masterpiece of ____________ .

6.Broadly, a ____________ is an invented personality to resemble but never to equal a real person in life.

7.Whitman once revealed a world of equality, without rank and hierarchy through a poem ____________ .

8.____________ were the immediate predecessors of Shakespeare.

9. ____________ in the 1840s brought derision for Browning.

10.When G.K. Chesterton said, “The novel of the 19th century was female”, he must have been referring to the emergence of a number of brilliant woman writers such as ____________ .

Ⅱ.Mark the following statements as true (T) or false (F). (10%)

1.（ ）A sonnet is a short song in the original meaning of the word. Later it became a poem of 14 lines.

2.（ ）Shakespeare represents the trend of history in giving voice to the desires and aspirations of the people.

3.（ ）The Hundred Years’ War was a series of wars fought between the English kings and the German kings for English throne.

4.（ ）Among the Romantic poets William Blake is regarded as a “worshipper of nature”

5.（ ）Characterization is the way an author presents and establishes the character.

6.( ) According to the subjects, William Wordsworth’s short poems can be classified into two groups, poems about symbolism and imagination .

7.( ) The best representatives of the English humanists are Thomas More, Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare.

8.( ) As a poet with a strong sense of mission, Walt Whitman devoted all his life to the creation of the “single” poem, Leaves of Grass.

9.( ) William Faulkner creates his own mythical kingdom that mirrors not only the decline of the Eastern society of America but also the spiritual wasteland of the whole American society.

10.( ) “Though life is but a losing battle, it is a struggle man can dominate in such a way that loss becomes dignity. ” This is an outlook towards life that F•Scott Fitzgerald had been trying to illustrate in his works.

Ⅲ. Answer the following questions briefly. (30%)

1.Who is Geoffrey Chaucer and what is his masterpiece The Canterbury Tales about?

 

2.What are the unique features of Shakespeare’s sonnets?

 

3.In Hamlet’s soliloquy “ to be, or not to be”, there are these words: “and the native hue of resolution / Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought.” What does the “native hue of resolution” mean? What does the “pale cast of thought” stand for? What idea do the two lines express?

 

4.Tell about Robert Browning’s principle achievement in English poetry.

 

5.Why is Jane Eyre a successful novel?

 

6.Wordsworth's short poems can be classified into two groups: poems about nature and poems about human life. How do you understand the worshipper of nature?

 

Ⅳ. Questions and Answers. (40%)

1.What are the periods of Shakespeare’s dramatic composition? And what are their respective features? 

 

2.Answer the question according to the following passage

When April with its sweet-smelling showers

Has pierced the drought of March to the root,

And bathed every vein (of the plants) in such liquid

By which power the flower is created;

When the West Wind also with its sweet breath,

In every wood and field has breathed life into

The tender new leaves, and the young sun

Has run half its course in Aries,

And small fowls make melody,

Those that sleep all the night with open eyes

(So Nature incites them in their hearts),

Then folk long to go on pilgrimages,

And professional pilgrims to seek foreign shores,

To distant shrines, known in various lands;

And specially from every shire's end

Of England to Canterbury they travel,

To seek the holy blessed martyr,

Who helped them when they were sick.

Questions:

1) What is expressed in these opening lines of The Canterbury Tales?

2) How does the author emphasize the transition from nature to divinity?

3) Comment on Chaucer’s contribution of rhymed stanzas.