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2012年北京航空航天大学822英美文学考研真题及详解
I.Define and exemplify the followingterms (20／150，5×4)
1.Symbol
2.Tragedy
3.Aesthetic distance
4.Ambiguity
5.Paradox
II. Essay Questions and Literary Analysis (30／150，3×10)
1. In Shakespeare’s Hamlet,the tragic hero Hamlet seems to be delaying his revenge. Why? Please give your
explanations by in-depth analysis with textualevidences.
2. How do you understand the Enlightenment Spirit?Please illustrate your points by analyzing at least two literary works from theEnglish eighteenth century.
3. How do you understand the nature of the American Dream? Pleaseanalyze the theme of American Dream as revealed in literary works with at leasttwo examples.
Ⅲ. LiteraryTranslation(40／150, 2×20)
1.Translate the following English into Chinese.
No woman can be too rich or too thin. This saying often attributed to the late Duchessof Windsor embodies much of the odd spirit of our times. Being thin is deemed as such a virtue. The problem withsuch a view is that some people actually attempt to live by it. I myself have fantasies of slipping into narrowdesigner clothes. Consequently, I have been on a diet for the better—orworse—part of my life. Being rich wouldn’tbe bad either, but that won’thappen unless an unknown relative dies suddenly in some distant land, leaving me millions of dollars.
2.Translate the following Chinese into English.
人有时非常矛盾。本来活得好好的，各方面的环境都不错，然而当事者却常常心存厌倦。对人类这种因生命的平淡和缺少激情而苦恼的心态，有时是不能用不知足来解释的。我曾对住在森林的一对夫妻羡慕不已，因为森林里有清新的空气，有大片的杉树、竹林，有幽静的林间小道，有鸟语和花香。然而，当这对夫妇知道有人羡慕他们的住所时，却神情诧异。他们认为这儿没有多少值得观光和留恋的景致，远不如城市丰富有趣。
IV. Literary Selections and Analysis (60／150，6×10)
1．
WHEN the sweet showersof April fall and shoot,
Down throw the droughtof March to pierce the root,
Bathing every vein inliquid power
From which theresprings the endangering of the flower,
When also Zephyrus withhis sweet breath
Exhales an air in everygrove and heath
Upon the tender shoots, and the young sun
His half-course in thesign of the Ram has run,
And the small fowl aremaking melody
That sleep away thenight with open eye
Then people long to goon pilgrimages.
a. Identify the author and the work from which thepassage is selected.
b. Why is the work regarded as a masterpiece?
c. Comment on the language style of the writer.
2．
And yet nothing hadchanged since the moments when he had been kissing her: or rather, nothing in the substance of things. But the essence of things had changed.
…
These and other of hiswords were nothing but the perfunctory babble of the surface while the depthsremained paralyzed. He turned away, and bent over a chair. [She] followed him to the middle of the room where he was, and stood there staring at him with eyes thatdid not weep.Presently she slid down upon herknees beside his foot, and from thisposition she crouched in a heap.
‘In the name of ourlove, forgive me!’ she whispered with a dry mouth. ‘I have forgiven you for the same!’
And, as he did not answer, she said again—
Forgive me as you areforgiven! Iforgive you, Angel. ‘
‘You—yes, you do. ‘
But you do not forgiveme?’
‘O […], forgiveness does not apply to the case! You wereone person:now you are another. My God—how can forgiveness meet such agrotesque—prestidigitation as that!’
He paused, contemplating this definition: then suddenly broke into horrible laughter—asunnatural and ghastly as a laugh in hell.
‘Don’t—don’t! It killsme quite, that!’ she shrieked. ‘O have mercy upon me—have mercy!’
He did not answer: and, sickly white, she jumped up.
a. Identify the author and the work from which thepassage is selected.
b. Analyze the significance of the book’s subtitle.
c. Analyze the personality of the heroine and hero.
3．
She became aware of something about her. With an effort she roused herself to see what itwas that penetrated her consciousness. The tall whitelilies were reeling in the moonlight, and the air wascharged with their perfume, as with apresence. Mrs. Morel gaspedslightly in fear. She touched the big, pallid flowers on their petals, then shivered. They seemed to be stretching in the moonlight. She put her hand into one white bin: the gold scarcely showed on her fingers bymoonlight.She bent down to look at the binfulof yellow pollen：but it only appeareddusky. Then she drank a deep draught of the scent. It almost made her dizzy.
Mrs. Morel leaned on the garden gate, looking out, and she lost herself awhile. She did not know what she thought. Except for a slight feeling of sickness, and her consciousness in the child, herself melted out like scent into the shiny, pale air. After a time the child, too, melted with herin the mixing-pot of moonlight, and she restedwith the hills and lilies and houses, all swum togetherin a kind of swoon.
a. Identify the author and the work from which thepassage is selected.
b. Define the author’s realism with the analysis ofthe above text.
c. What is theme of his work? Also explain theauthor’s understanding of sexuality.
4．
The founders of a new colony, whatever Utopia of human virtue and happinessthey might originally project, have invariablyrecognised it among their earliest practical necessities to allot a portion ofthe virgin soil as a cemetery, and anotherportion as the site of a prison. In accordancewith this rule, it may safely beassumed that the forefathers of Boston had built the first prison-housesomewhere in the vicinity of Cornhill, almost asseasonably as they marked out the first burial-ground, on Isaac Johnson’s lot, and round about his grave, which subsequently became the nucleus of all thecongregated sepulchres in the old churchyard of King’s Chapel. Certain it is that, some fifteen or twenty years after the settlement of thetown, the wooden jail was already marked with weather-stainsand other indications of age, which gave a yetdarker aspect to its beetle-browed and gloomy front. The rust on the ponderous iron-work of its oaken doorlooked more antique than anything else in the New World. Like all that pertains to crime, it seemed never to have known a youthful era. Before this ugly edifice, and between it and the wheel-track of the street, was a grass-plot, much overgrown with burdock, pig-weed, apple-peru, and such unsightly vegetation, which evidently found something congenial in thesoil that had so early borne the black flower of civilised society, a prison. But, on one side ofthe portal,and rooted almost at the threshold, was a wild rose-bush, covered, in this month ofJune, with its delicate gems, which might be imagined to offer their fragrance andfragile beauty to the prisoner as he went in, and to the condemned criminal as he came forth to his doom, in token that the deep heart of Nature couldpity and be kind to him.
This rose-bush, by a strange chance, has been kept alive in history: but whether it had merely survived out of the stern oldwilderness,so long after the fall of thegigantic pines and oaks that originally overshadowed it-or whether, as there is fair authority for believing, it had sprung up under the footsteps of thesainted Ann Hutchinson, as she enteredthe prison-door—we shall not take upon us to determine. Finding it so directly on the threshold of our narrative, which is now about to issue from thatinauspicious portal, we could hardly dootherwise than pluck one of its flowers, and present it to the reader. It may serve, let us hope, to symbolise some sweet moral blossom, that may be found along the track, or relieve the darkening close of a tale ofhuman frailty and sorrow.
……
But the point which drew all eyes, and, as it were, transfigured the wearer,—so that both men and women, who had been familiarly acquainted with HesterPrynne, were now impressed as if they beheld her for thefirst time,—was that scarlet letter, so fantastically embroidered and illuminated upon her bosom. It had the effect of a spell, taking her out of the ordinary relations withhumanity, and inclosing her in a sphere by herself.
a. Identify the author of the work from which thepassage is selected.
b. What is the structure ofthe story?
c. What are the symbolic meanings of the letterborne by the heroine?
d. What are the symbolic meanings of the four majorprotagonists?
e. Comment on the selected passages.
5．
There was, of course, a catch.
“Catch-22?” inquiredYossarian.
“Of course,”Colonel Korn answeredpleasantly,after he had chased the mighty M. P. s out with aninsouciant flick of his hand and a slightly contemptuous—most relaxed, as always, when he could be most cynical. His rimless square eyeglasses glinted with sly amusement ashe gazed at Yossarian. “After all, we can’t simply send you home for refusing tofly more missions and keep the rest of the men here, can we? That would hardly be fair to them.”
a. Identify the author from which the passage isselected.
b. What is the absurd ruleor regulation in the novel?
c. What writing technique is the novel famous for?
6.
The Apparition of thesefaces in the crowd: Petals on a wet, black bough.
a. Identify the author and the work from which thepassage is selected.
b. What literary school does the poet belong to? Pleasegive a definition of that school.
c. Please analyze the poem.
参考答案及解析
I.Define and exemplify the followingterms
1. A symbol is an object thatrepresents, stands for, or suggests an idea, visual image, belief, action, ormaterial entity.
Symbols take the form of words, sounds,gestures, or visual images and are used to convey ideas and beliefs. Forexample, a red octagon may be a symbol for “STOP”. On a map, a picture of atent might represent a campsite. Numerals are symbols for numbers. Personalnames are symbols representing individuals. A red rose symbolizes love andcompassion.
2. Tragedy is a form of drama based on human suffering thatinvokes in its audience an accompanying catharsis or
pleasure in the viewing. While many cultureshave developed forms that provoke this paradoxical response, the term tragedyoften refers to a specific tradition of drama that has played a unique andimportant role historically in the self-definition of Western civilization.That tradition has been multiple and discontinuous, yet the term has often beenused to invoke a powerful effect of cultural identity and historicalcontinuity—“the Greeks and the Elizabethans, in one cultural form; Hellenes andChristians, in a common activity,” as Raymond Williams puts it.
3. Aesthetic distance refers to the gap between a viewer’sconscious reality and the fictional reality presented in a work
of art. When areader becomes fully engrossed in the illusory narrative world of a book, theauthor has achieved a close aesthetic distance. If the author then jars thereader from the reality of the story, essentially reminding the reader they arereading a book, the author is said to have “violated the aesthetic distance.”The notion of aesthetic distance derives from an article by William Bulloughpublished in 1912. In that article, he begins with the image of a passenger ona ship observing fog at sea. If the passenger thinks of the fog in terms ofdanger to the ship, the experience is not aesthetic, but to regard thebeautiful scene in detached wonder is to take legitimate aesthetic attitude.One must feel, but not too much. Bullough writes, “Distance … is obtained byseparating the object and its appeal from one’s own self, by putting it out ofgear with practical needs and ends. Thereby the ‘contemplation’ of the objectbecomes alone possible.
Authors of film, fiction, drama, and poetry evoke differentlevels of aesthetic distance. For instance, William Faulkner tends to invoke aclose aesthetic distance by using first-person narrative and stream ofconsciousness, while Ernest Hemingway tends to invoke a greater aestheticdistance from the reader through use of third person narrative.
4. Ambiguity is an attribute of any concept, idea, statementor claim whose meaning, intention or interpretation cannot be
definitively resolved according to a rule orprocess consisting of a finite number of steps.
The concept of ambiguity is generally contrasted withvagueness. In ambiguity, specific and distinct interpretations are permitted(although some may not be immediately apparent), whereas with information thatis vague, it is difficult to form any interpretation at the desired level ofspecificity.
Context may play a role in resolving ambiguity. Forexample, the same piece of information may be ambiguous in one context andunambiguous in another.
5. A paradox is astatement that apparently contradicts itself and yet might be true. Mostlogical paradoxes are known to
be invalid arguments but are still valuable inpromoting critical thinking.
Some paradoxes have revealed errors in definitions assumedto be rigorous, and have caused axioms of mathematics and logic to be re-examined.One example is Russell's paradox, which questions whether a “list of all liststhat do not contain themselves” would include itself, and showed that attemptsto found set theory on the identification of sets with properties or predicateswere flawed. Others, such as Curry's paradox, are not yet resolved.
Examples outside logic include the Ship of Theseus fromphilosophy (questioning whether a ship repaired over time by replacing each ofits wooden parts would remain the same ship). Paradoxes can also take the formof images or other media. For example, M.C. Escher featured perspective-basedparadoxes in many of his drawings, with walls that are regarded as floors fromother points of view, and staircases that appear to climb endlessly.
In common usage, the word “paradox” often refers tostatements that are ironic or unexpected, such as “the paradox that standing ismore tiring than walking”.
II. Essay Questions and Literary Analysis
1. There aremany reasons as to why Hamlet might be delaying the revenge. One of Hamlet’smany reasons could be that
he is afraid of the consequence after killing. He worries that thekilling will cause turbulence to his country. He can not decide to take suchrevenge. Hamlet is quite religious seeing that he fears his fait if murderingClaudius during his prayer, “Now might I do it pat, now he is a-praying, andnow I’ll do’t - and so goes to heaven, and am I reneged. That would be scanned.A villain kills my father, and for that, I his sole son do this same villainsend to Heaven.” This shows the audience that Hamlet is religious and that hefears the result of killing, Hamlet knows that if he kills Claudius while heprays, Claudius will go to heaven, and Hamlet will have to suffer the sin ofkilling. Another reason as to why Hamlet postponed the revenge, could be thathe didn’t want to hurt his mother Gertrude, especially after his father warnedhim not to hurt her in any way “I will speak daggers to her but use non”, thisindicates Hamlets protection over his mother, he will “speak in daggers” talkto her with a sharp tone but “use non” to hurt his mother. It could be saidthat Hamlet didn’t want to kill Claudius because he didn’t want to see hismother suffer a loss of another loved one.
2. Enlightenment refers to a progressiveintellectual movement beginning in Franceand then spread throughout Europe. It is anexpression of struggle of the then progressive class of bourgeoisie againstfeudalism. The phrase was frequently employed by writers of the period itself,convinced that they were emerging from centuries of darkness and ignorance intoa new age enlightened by reason, science, education and a respect of humanity. Theenlighteners fought against class inequality, stagnation, prejudice, and othersurvivals of feudalism. They attempted to place all branches of science at theservice of mankind by connecting them with the actual deeds and requirements ofthe people. They accepted bourgeois relationships as rightful and reasonablerelationships among people. As to works, Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe and Swift’s Gulliver’sTravels are representative works of Enlightenment. They fully reveal theenlightenment spirit of that age.
3. American Dream means that America is aplace full of opportunities to be successful and if people work hard and arediligent enough, they can get the wealth and fame that they want; wealth,material possession and power are the core values of American Dream. Gatsby in The Great Gatsby and Willy in Death of a Salesman are two representativesof the victims of American Dream. Gatsby gets money by doing illegal businessand lives luxurious life which makes him lonely and meaningless, finally, hewas killed; thus, his American dream is shattered. While Willy is a salesmanand he is eager to be successful, but he is frustrated by the environment andpeople around him, being not able to stand such reality, he commits suicide;his American dream is shattered as well.
Ⅲ.Literary Translation
1.Translate the following English into Chinese.
女人钱再多也不多，女人再瘦也不瘦。这句常被认为是已故温莎公爵夫人说的话，很大程度上体现了时代精神的怪异———瘦被视为难得的优点。此观点的问题在于有些人实际上力图身体力行。我自己就幻想能轻松套上瘦小的时装，结果不管对自己生活有无好处，一味节食。有钱也不是什么坏事，但这种情况不会落在我身上———除非某个遥远国度有个不认识的亲戚突然死了，留给我几百万美元遗产。
2.Translate the following Chinese into English.
People are forever in a dilemma. They live afairly good life and their circumstances are as good as can be, but from timeto time they grow tired of all this. One can hardly attribute this mentality,arising from life’s monotony and lack of passion, to insatiability on the partof humans. I used to envy a married couple who lived in a forest, where grovesof fir trees and bamboos flourished, with quiet and secluded cobble stone pathsmeandering through the woods, birds chirping beautifully and flowers permeatingfragrance. Yet when they realized that they had unwittingly become an object ofadmiration owing to the unique location of their house, they were trulyperplexed. In their eyes, there was little in the forest which deserved to beseen or made such a fuss about when compared to the fun and abundant life ametropolis can provide!
IV. Literary Selections and Analysis
1．
a. The author isGeoffrey Chaucer, and the work is selected from The Canterbury Tales.
b. Because in this work, Chaucershows a true-to-life panorama of his then time. Taking from the stand of rising
bourgeoisie, Chaucer affirms men and opposes thedogma of asceticism preached by the church. He praises man’s energy, intellect,quick wit and love for life. His tales expose and satirize the evils of histime, attack degeneration of the noble and the corruption of the church. Thiswork is full of beautiful thoughts and language, so it is regarded as a masterpiece.
c. Chaucer’s language is vivid andexact. His verse is among the smoothest in English literature. Chaucer’scontribution
to English poetry is that he introduced fromFrance the rhymed stanza of various types, especially the heroic couplet toEnglish poetry. He did much in making the London dialect the standard for themodern English speech. He is good at the terza rima, which makes his language ahigh style. Chaucer is a master of language.
2．
a. The author is ThomasHardy, and the passage is selected from Tess of the D’Urbervilles.
b. The subtitle of the book is A Pure Woman which shows the greatsympathy of Thomas Hardy. And from this subtitle
we can see that Hardy confirms the inner purityof Tess, at the same time, he criticizes people’s hypocrisy and the harshreality.
c. Tess is a beautiful young womanwho is intelligent, na?ve, passionate and kind-hearted. She is trapped into herfate and
can not get out. She is unfortunate and deducedby Alec, who is the evil representative in the book and killed by Tessdesperately in the end. As a result, Tess is sentenced to death.
Angel is the very man that Tess loves, but he does notcherish her love for him, and he abandons Tess when he knows that Tess isdeduced by Alec. Although he is a freethinking young man and a typical 19th-centuryprogressive, believing in the nobility of man, he sticks to the traditionalvalues firmly, which make him mean, selfish, narrow-minded and unable toforgive.
3.
a. The author is D. H.Lawrence, and the passage is selected from Sonsand Lovers.
b. D. H. Lawrence was one of theheirs of the genre of realism, especially psychological realism. Through outthis novel, Lawrencereflects the reality, criticizes the reality and fully embodies the realistthoughts of his. In the above text, Lawrenceshows the realistic depiction of Mrs. Morel’s actions and feelings, which istrue to life.
c. This work is taken as a typicalexample and lively manifestation of Oedipus complex in fiction, as the resultof
Lawrence’s long-range study of psychoanalysistheories of Sigmund Freud. But the theme of the novel is usually said toconcern the effect of maternal love on the development of a son. At the sametime, Lawrencecriticizes the dehumanization caused by industrialization, under whichspiritual love and physical love can not be integrated with each other.
4.
a. The author isNathaniel Hawthorne, and the passage is selected from The Scarlet Letter.
b. The author employs a kind ofcircular narrative structure（环形叙事结构）and gives people a kind of completeness.
c. The scarlet letter “A” hasseveral symbolic meanings through out the story. At the beginning, itsymbolizes “adultery” which indicates the sin that the heroine has committed;later, it becomes “able”, because of the heroine’s ability and goodness; atlast, it symbolizes “angel”, which confirms the heroine’s inner morality andpurity.
d. Hester Prynne symbolizes truth,beauty and goddess; Arthur Dimmesdale symbolizes the inner darknees of humanbeings; Roger Chillingworth symbolizes the evil, ruthlessness and revenge; Pearl symbolizes thetreasure of her mother, the living scarlet letter, the code of ethics, and akind of spiritual and moral burden of Hester and Dimmesdale.
e. These passages are adescription of condition and environment in which the protagonist confront.Hawthorne likes to
depict the environmental conditions around thecharacters, which help readers to grasp the atmosphere of his story and get abetter understanding of it. His language is vivid and full of symbolic images.
5.
a. The author is JosephHeller, and the passage is selected from Cthch-22.
b. The absurd rule is a paradoxicaltrap for the soldiers. It stipulates that only a madman can be free from theflight
mission, but if you say that you are mad, itturns out that you are not, so you must perform your flight task, etc.
c. The novel is famous for itswriting technique of using of black humor. And it becomes the mostrepresentative work of black humor.
6.
a. The author is EzraPound, and the poem is “In a Station of the Metro”.
b. The poet belongs to Imagism School. Imagism is a literary movement which cameinto being in Britain and U. S.
around 1910 as a reaction to thetraditional English poetry to express the sense of fragmentation anddislocation. The imagists hold that the most effective means to express thesemomentary impressions is through the use of one dominant image. Imagism ischaracterized by the following three poetic principles: i) direct treatment ofsubject matter; ii) economy of expression; iii) as regards rhythm, to composein the sequence of the musical phrase, not in the sequence of metronome.
c. This is a classic example of the Imagistpoetry. Pound was once in a Parissubway station and was struck by the faces
of a few pretty women and childrenhurrying out of the dim, damp, and somber station. So impressed was he by thespectacle that he resolved to bring it out in poetic language. The result was,of course, the poem. “The object” to be treated is the faces in that dim anddamp context. The impression is brought out most vividly by the simple,dominant image of flower petals on a wet, black bough, which serves as the mostconcise, direct, and definite metaphor for the “faces in the crowd.”
