6.2　考研真题与典型题详解

I. Fill in the blanks.

1．Author ______  Title ______（南京大学2008研）

【答案】Emily Dickinson; Success is Counted Sweetest

【解析】题目节选自迪金森的Success is Counted the Sweetest《成功最甜美》。艾米莉·迪金森，美国最富传奇性的抒情诗人。生前只发表了7首诗，诗作几乎全部在她死后才发表。她被视为20世纪现代主义诗歌的先驱之一，和美国文学之父欧文、诗人惠特曼比肩。

2．Leaves of Grass, either in content or form, is an epoch-making work in American literature; its democratic content marked the shift from ______ to ______, and its ______ form broke from old poetic conventions to open a new road for American poetry.

【答案】Romanticism; Realism; free verse

【解析】《草叶集》无论是从内容上还是形式上都是美国文学划时代的作品，它有关民主的内容标志着浪漫主义到现实主义的转变，它采用自由体，从而打破了旧时诗歌的传统，为美国诗歌独辟蹊径。

3．In______, Whitman’s own early experience may well be identified with the childhood of a young growing America.

【答案】Song of Myself

【解析】在惠特曼的《自我之歌》中他将自己早期的经历同一个正在成长中的美国等同起来。

4．The poetic style Walt Whitman devised is now called ________, that is poetry without a fixed beat or regular rhyme scheme.

【答案】free verse

【解析】沃尔特•惠特曼（Walt Whitman, 1810-1892）是美国著名诗人、人文主义者，他创造性地运用了诗歌的自由体（Free Verse），其代表作品是诗集《草叶集》（Leaves of Grass）。自由诗是诗体的一种，其结构自由﹐段数﹑行数﹑字数没有一定规格；语言有自然节奏而不用韵。

5．In his cluster of poems called Leaves of Grass, ________ gave America its first genuine epic poem.

【答案】Walt Whitman

【解析】《草叶集》（Leaves of Grass）是十九世纪美国作家沃尔特·惠特曼（Walt Whitman）浪漫主义诗集。《草叶集》是惠特曼一生创作的总汇，也是美国诗歌史上一座灿烂的里程碑。作品包含了丰富而深刻的思想内容，充分反映了十九世纪中期美国的时代精神。

II. Multiple Choice.

1．Which ONE of the following is the author of the poem Song of Myself?（四川大学2008研）

A. Walt Whitman

B. Stephen Crane

C. Edgar Allan Poe

D. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

【答案】A

【解析】Walt Whitman（沃尔特·惠特曼），美国著名诗人，Song of Myself（《自我之歌》）代表其创作的最高峰，后来收录在他的Leaves of Grass（《草叶集》）中。

2．“By day her meals untouch’d, then at night fitfully sleeping, often waking” is taken from “I Hear America Singing”. The female described here is the ______ of the dead person.（首师大2009研）

A. mother

B. wife

C. sister

D. daughter

【答案】A

【解析】这首诗是惠特曼“Come Up From The Fields, Father”里的几句，描写的是母亲接到儿子的死讯以后痛苦的心情。节译：白天她茶饭不思，晚上她无法安睡。

3．“I celebrate myself, and sing myself, /And what I assume you shall assume, /For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.”

In the above quoted verse lines taken from Walt Whitman’s poem “Song of Myself”, what does the central image “myself” refer to?（四川大学2009研）

A. Merely the poet himself

B. The common people of America

C. Masculine sublime ego

D. American puritans

【答案】B

【解析】惠特曼在《自我之歌》里歌颂的是伟大的美国劳动人民。

4．Which ONE of the following is an influential poet whose poems often express a thematic concern about the issue of death and eternity?（四川大学2009研）

A. Walt Whitman

B. Ralph Waldo Emerson

C. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

D. Emily Dickinson

【答案】D

【解析】艾米丽·狄金森的诗歌表达了一种对于死亡和永恒的关注，如“因为我不能停下来等待死亡”、“我死前听见一只苍蝇在嗡嗡”等。

5．The following poems were all composed by Emily Dickinson EXCEPT ______.（四川大学2007研）

A. “Because I Could Not Stop for Death”

B. “A Psalm of Life”

C. “I Died for Beauty—but Was Scarce”

D. “I Heard a Fly Buzz—When I Died”

【答案】B

【解析】《人生礼赞》的作者是美国诗人Henry Wadsworth Longfellow（朗费罗），其余选项都是狄金森的诗作。

6．Which of the following features cannot characterize poems by Walt Whitman?

A. Lyrical and well-structured

B. Free-flowing

C. Simple and rather crude

D. Conversational and casual

【答案】A

【解析】沃尔特·惠特曼创造性地运用了诗歌的自由体（Free Verse）自由诗是诗体的一种，其结构自由﹐段数﹑行数﹑字数没有一定规格；语言有自然节奏而不用韵。

7．In Walt Whitman’s “There was a Child Went Forth.” the child refers to______.

A. the poet himself as a child

B. any American child

C. the young America

D. one of the poet’s neighbor

【答案】C

【解析】惠特曼的诗歌《有一个孩子向前走去》中孩子是指成长中的美国。

8．American literature produced only one female poet during the 19th century. She was______.

A. Anne Bradstreet

B. Jane Austen

C. Emily Dickenson

D. Harriet Beecher

【答案】C

【解析】Emily Dickenson是19世纪美国浪漫主义时期的唯一的女诗人，Anne Bradstreet是17世纪的女诗人，Jane Austen是英国18世纪末的小说家，Harriet Beecher是美国19世纪的小说家。

9．The main theme of Emily Dickinson is the following except______.

A. religion

B. love and marriage

C. life and death

D. war and peace

【答案】D

【解析】艾米丽·狄金森诗歌的主题不涉及战争与和平。

10．Emily Dickinson’s poetic idiom is noted for the following except______.

A. brevity

B. directness

C. plainest words

D. obscure

【答案】D

【解析】艾米丽·狄金森的用词简洁、直率、平易，而非晦涩。

III. Explain the following term.

1．free verse（首师大2009研）

Key: Free verse is a term describing various styles of poetry that are written without using a strict rhyme scheme, but still recognizable as poetry by virtue of complex patterns of one sort or another that readers will perceive to be part of a coherent whole. Walt Whitman is a representative who employed free verse successfully.

IV. Read the following quotations and answer the questions.

Passage 1（北航2008研）

Questions:

(1) Identify the author of the passage.

(2) What are the effect and the meaning of “I heard a Fly buzz—when I died—”?

(3) What is the meaning of the last two lines?

Key:

(1) The author is Emily Dickenson.

(2) In this poem, the speaker is waiting for her last moment. The room is still, and the eyes of her relatives have been dry. All these together create a solemn and woeful atmosphere. The speaker is going to see the “King”, but at this time, she hears a fly buzz. Fly is generally regarded as a disgusting creature, and sometimes it gathers around the corpse. Its appearance disconcerts us and makes the “immortality” doubtful.

(3) The fly’s wings cut the speaker off from the light, and then the speaker closes her eyes and dies. Here, the light that she sees is from the Heaven. The speaker imagines that she is on the way to the Heaven. Just at this moment, the fly appears, between the speaker and the heaven. Thus, her hope of immortality becomes doubtful. The speaker is not sure whether she can really go to the heaven with “the King”.

Passage 2

Questions:

(1) Who wrote these lines? What is the poet celebrating?

(2) Whom does “you” refer to?

(3) What are the two principle beliefs that the poet set forth on this poem?

Key:

(1) These lines are taken from Walt Whitman’s Songs of Myself. The poet is celebrating individualism and nationalism in this poem. Here “I” does not necessarily mean the poet or a particular person, because the poet mingles the first person with the second person by the word “assume”.

(2) Here “you” refers to the democratic “en-mass” of America.

(3) The two beliefs are the theory of universality and the belief in the singularity and equality.

Passage 3

Questions:

(1) Who is the writer of these lines?

(2) In which category would you place this poem?

(3) Emily Dickinson is noted for her use of ________ to achieve special effects.

Key:

(1) Emily Dickinson

(2) dramatic

(3) slant rhyme

V. Short answer questions

1．Emily Dickinson is now recognized not only as a great poetess on her own right but as a poetess of considerable influence upon American poetry of the present century. What are the qualities of her poems?

Key: There are four characteristics:

①Dickinson’s poems are usually based on her own experiences，her sorrows and joys.

②Love is another subject Dickinson dwells on.

③Many poems Dickinson wrote are about nature, in which her general skepticism about the relationship between man and nature is well expressed.

④Dickinson’s poetry is unique and unconventional in its own way. Her poems have no titles，hence are always quoted by their first lines.

2．Why Leaves of Grass is considered a milestone in American literature?

Key: Whitman’s Leaves of Grass has always been considered a monumental work because of its uniquely poetic embodiment of American democratic ideal.

In this work, the abundance of themes voices freshness. Whitman shows concern for the whole hardworking people and the burgeoning life of the cities. The realization of the individual value also found a tough position in Whitman’s poems in a particular way. In celebrating the self, Whitman gives emphasis to the physical dimension of the self and openly celebrates sexuality. And some of Whitman’s poems are politically committed.

Stylistically, Whitman experiments with a mixture of the colloquial diction and prose rhythm of journalism. The direct address is another salient feature of his poetry. He constructs a democratic “I”, a voice that sets out to celebrate itself and the rapture of its sense experiencing the world. In addition, Whitman initiated the form of free verse in America that endows his poems with a flow of musicality and a sense of rhythm.

VI. Essay question

1．Emily Dickinson’s poetry abounds in images. In the best of her poems every word is a picture seen. Comment on the images in either “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” or “I Like to See It Lap the Miles”.（天津外国语学院2008研）

Key: Because I Could Not Stop for Death is one of Emily Dickinson’s very popular poems in which she portrays Death as a central image—a gentleman caller or as a suitor. The event is couched in a metaphorical use of an activity familiar enough to men and women of the nineteenth century—a formal but friendly drive in a carriage in the country of a gentleman and his intended lady. The gentleman in question, however, is Death himself; and the lady is an imagined persona of the poet. The whole poem and other images are extended from this image. The poem is a dramatic representation of the passage from this world of the living to the afterlife.

In the first stanza the gentleman has called on persona as a beau; and, like a true gentleman, he has included, “Immortality” as an image of a chaperone. The second stanza indicates the peacefulness and pleasantness surrounding an appointment with a beau. By the third stanza, they are nearing the edge of town. Rich images are used. The seemingly disparate elements of children, “Gazing Grain”, and “Setting Sun”, the sensations that dying lady experiences, are transferred to these parts of the world. She is gazing, and the notion is transferred to the grain; she is “setting”, and this notion is transferred to the sun. The mention of children “striving” at recess is a subtle preparation for the stasis, or lack of motion, described in the succeeding images. In addition, the three elements summarize the progress and passage of a lifetime. It includes the three states of youth, maturity, and age, the cycle of day from morning to evening, and even a suggestion of seasonal progression from spring through ripening to decline.

In the fourth stanza, the lady is getting closer to death; for “The Dews” now grow “quivering and chill” upon her skin, the traditional associations of the coldness of death. Her tippet made of lace is something one might expect to see around the shoulders of a deceased woman lying in repose. In the fifth stanza, they have arrived at a country cemetery. The House is a fresh grave. The roof is a small tombstone; and the cornice, the molding around a coffin’s lid, is already placed “in the Ground”. The lady is alone now; her gentleman friend has vanished unexplained. In the sixth stanza it was not until after the school children, the “Gazing Grain”, the “Setting Sun”, and the “Swelling of the Ground” that she began to realize where she was heading. She had, therefore, apparently been tricked, seduced, and then abandoned.