1. ① It refers to a school of poets of the 18th century whose poems are mostly devoted to a sentimental lamentation or meditation on life, past and present, with death and graveyard as themes.(3分)
② Thomas Gray is the leading figure(1分)
③His Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard is a case in point of this school. (1分)
2. ①The term refers to analysis, interpretation, and evaluation of works of literature in light of existing standards of taste, or with the purpose of creating new standards.(2分)
② There are two approaches to literary criticism. Theoretical criticism is the study of principles governing fiction, poetry, and drama with the aim of defining th distinct nature of literature. Practical criticism is the threefold act of reading and experiencing a literary work, judging its worth, and interpreting its meaning. (3 分)
3. It means a pair of lines of a type once common in English poetry, in other words, it means iambic pentameter rhymed in two lines.(5分)
4. ① In Greek and Roman times, the term elegy was used to refer to any poem composed in elegiac meter.(2分)
② Since the 17th century, elegy has typically been used to refer to reflective poems that lament the loss of something or someone, or death more generally, although in Elizabethan times it was also used to refer to certain love poems.(2分)
③ Elegies written in English frequently take the form of the pastoral elegy.(1分)
5. ① A parable is a very short narrative about human beings presented so as to stress the tacit analogy, or parallel, with a general thesis or lesson that the narrator is trying to bring home to his audience.(3分)
② The parable was one of Jesus’ favorite devices as teacher.(2分)
6. ① A literary manner which blends a critical attitude with humor and wit to the end that human institutions or humanity may be improved.(3分)
② The satirist aims to correct, by an exposure to ridicule, deviations from normal conduct or reasonable opinion.(2分)
7. ① Allegory is a work of art in which a deeper meaning underlies the superficial or literal meaning or the presentation of an abstract idea through concrete means. (1 分)
② It is often referred to a work of fiction in which the author intends characters and their actions to be understood in terms other than their surface appearances and meanings, and the implied or extended meanings involve moral or spiritual concepts more significant than the actual narrative itself(2分)
③ Allegorical novels use extended metaphors to convey moral meanings or attack certain social evils. Characters in these novels often stand for different values such as virtue and vice.(1分)
④ Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress , Golding’s Lord of the Flies and Melville’s Moby Dick are three examples of this kind.(1分)
8. ① A story is said to be didactic if it deliberately teaches some moral lesson. The use of literature for such teaching is one of its traditional justifications(2分)
② Most modern literary works tend to show humanity as it is rather than as it should be, but even such works point to general values and distinguish between admirable and contemptible behavior.(3分)
1. A. Jonathan Swift: Gulliver’s Travels.(3分)
B. Satirical.(3分)
C. By presenting the Lilliputians exaggerated compliments to their king, Swift parodies absurdly an arrogant style of the Englishmen (or the Europeans) in their speeches to their God or their monarchs.(4分)
2. A. It is taken from John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress .(3分)
B. The Vanity fair .(3分)
C. All kinds of evils are being sold and bought at the fair.(4分)
3. A. It is taken from Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe .(3分)
B. Robinson Crusoe.(3分)
C. Robinson Crusoe is hoping to find a ship, which can take him back to England (4分)
4. A. It is taken from Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels .(3分)
B. The Man-Mountain.(3分)
C. The Emperor is going to enjoy himself by ordering his troops to cross under the Man-Mountain’s legs when he stands with his legs far asunder.(4分)
5. A. It is taken from Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones. (3分)
B. It is describing a fight between two women(3分)
C. One of them is Molly, the other Goody Brown.(4分)
6. A. It is taken from Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s The School for Scandal. (3分)
B. Charles Surface.(3分)
C. Charles Surface’s brother, Joseph Surface.(4分)
7. A. It is taken from Alexander Pope’s An Essay on Criticism .(3分)
B. Here Pope advises the critics not to stress too much the artificial use of Conceit or the external beauty of language but to pay special attention to True Wit.(3分)
C. The poem, as a comprehensive study of the theories of literary criticism, exerted great influence upon Pope’s contemporary writers in advocating the classical rules and popularizing the neoclassicist tradition in England.(4分)
8. A. It is taken from Samuel Johnson’s To the Right Honorable the Earl of Chesterfiel .(3分)
B. The work (letter) is written in a refined and very polite language, with a bitter undertone of defiance and anger(3分)
C. The letter expresses the author’s strong indignation at the lord’s fame-fishing and his firm resolution not to be reconciled with the hypocritical lord(4分)
9. A. It is taken from Alexander Pope’s An Essay on Criticism .(3分)
B. The two lines express the poet’s idea that true wit is best set in a plain style.(3分)
C. The poem exerted great influence upon Pope’s contemporary writers in advocating the classical rules and popularizing the neoclassicist tradition in England.(4分)
10. A. Iambic pentameter with the rhyming scheme of abab.(3分)
B. The third foot contains two accented syllables.(3分)
C. Two accented syllables slow down the pace in keeping with the literary meaning of the phrase “wind slowly.”(4分)
11. A. This passage is taken from Alexander Pope’s An Essay on Criticism .(3分)
B. The phrase “take upon content” means “take for granted.”(3分)
C. The author’s main concern in this passage is the relation between language and content. Here Pope advises the critics not to stress too much the artificial use of Conceit or external beauty of language but to pay special attention to True Wit that is set in a plain style.(4分)
12. A. John Bunyan: The Pilgrim’s Progress .(3分)
B. Jesus Christ.(2分)
C. John Bunyan is talking about vanity, one of the evils of human life. The idea that everybody is potentially vain and vanity is something that the “world”encourages, and that it takes courage and effort to get rid of one of vanity. Even Jesus Christ (the Prince of princes) was troubled by vanity, but he stood the test and conquered it. Thus Christians should do like Christ if they wish to reach the kingdom of God.(5分)
13. A. Alexander Pope: An Essay on Criticism .(3分)
B. It means the expressive language that is intended to impress the reader but which
only misleads him in his understanding of the issue in question.(3分)
C. By criticizing false eloquence, Pope is advocating that writers should use language that is plain, proper, and suitable for the purpose and occasion.(4分)
14. A. Daniel Defoe: Robinson Crusoe .(3分)
B. Having undergone a thunderstorm, Robinson became aware that his gunpowder might catch fire in another thunderstorm. So immediately after the storm was over, he laid aside all his work and began making small bags and boxes to separate the powder and he divided in “not less than a hundred parcels” and hid them in a safe place.(4分)
C. This great detail shows that Robinson is a prudent man of quick action, with a clear logical mind. Such qualities are important to a man surviving in a lonely island.(3分)
15. A. Jonathan Swift: Gulliver’s Travels .(3分)
B. Skyresh Bolgolam is the High Admiral of Lilliput.(3分)
C. To modern reader, who knows little about the political situation of Swift’s time,this detail description provides a good case for understanding the evilness in humam nature, that is, some people will choose to be doing harm to others without any provocation, for no good reason, out of no reasonable motive.(4分)
16. A. Henry Fielding: Tom Jones .(3分)
B. A high-flown tone and grand epic style(3分)
C. In the epic, the gods intervene to keep a kind of balance in battle.(4分)
1. ① This shows that although he kills, he is not a cold-blooded killer. He is practical but merciful; he cares about his own interest with a due regard to the principle of humanity and a respect for life.(3分)
② His attempt to raise the little goat shows his spirit of cultivation, and his sparing consumption of the meat reflects the bourgeois value of economy(3分)
③ These facts help to portray Crusoe as a typical representative of the rising bourgeoisie who are economical-minded, pioneering and humanistic.(4分)
2. ① The two examples are John Milton’s Paradise Lost and John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress .(5 分)
② It is concerned with something spiritual and the relevance to the time.(5分)
3. ① It was a progressive intellectual movement, which flourished in France and then swept through the whole Western Europe.(2.5分)
② The movement was a furtherance of the Renaissance from the 14th century to the mid-17th century.(2.5分)
③ The purpose of the movement was to enlighten the whole world with the light of modern philosophical and artistic ideas.(2.5分)
④ It celebrated reason or rationality, equality and science. It advocated universal education. Literature at the time became a very popular means of public education.(2.5分)
4. ① With the introduction of the Enlightenment Movement into England, a revival of interest in the old classical works was in full swing. This tendency is known as neoclassicism.(3分)
② According to the neoclassicists, all forms of literature were to be modeled after the classical works of the ancient Greek and Roman writers (Home, Virgil, Ovid,etc.) and those of the contemporary French ones.(3分)
③ They believed that the artistic ideals should be order, logic, restrained emotion and accuracy, and that literature should be judged in terms of its service to humanity.(4分)
5.① Robinson Crusoe is supposedly based on the real adventure of an Alexander Selkirk who once stayed alone on the uninhabited island for five years. Actually,the story is an imagination.(2.5 分)
② In Robinson Crusoe , Defoe traces the growth of Robinson from a naïve and artless youth into a shrewd and hardened man, tempered by numerous trials in his eventful life.(2.5分)
③ In the novel, Robinson is a real hero and he is an embodiment of the rising middle-class virtues in the mid-eighteenth century England.(2.5分)
④ Robinson Crusoe is an adventure story very much in the spirit of the time. Owing to these reasons, when it was published, it became popular among people, and it became an immediate success.(2.5分)
6.① The Pilgrim’s Progress is the most successful religious allegory in the English language.(3分)
② Its purpose is to urge people to comply with Christian doctrines and seek salvation through constant struggles with their own weakness and all kinds of social evils.(3分)
③ It is not only about something spiritual but also bears much relevance to the time. Its predominant metaphor—life as journey—is simple and familiar.(4分)
7.① Thomas Gray’s poems are generally sentimental and melancholic. This may have something to do with the themes of his poems: the mysterious and transient human life, its endless sufferings, and its inevitable death and decay. (3分)
② As a scholarly poet, Gray writes slowly and carefully. He prefers a distorted word order for rhetoric effect and pays great attention to diction, trying to achieve perfection of form and content. His poems also abound in images and biblical and mythological allusions.(4分)
③ All these features can be easily found in his well-known poem Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard .(3分)
8. ① As a representative of the Enlightenment, Pope was one of the first to introduce rationalism to England.(3分)
② The publication of An Essay on Criticism established his position as a great poet.The poem, as a comprehensive study of the theories of literary criticism, had great influence upon Pope’s contemporary writers in advocating the classical rules and spreading the neoclassicist tradition in England. The Rape of the Lock ,a finest mock epic, ridicules the foolish, meaningless life of the lords and ladies in the aristocratic bourgeois society of the 18th-century England. The Dunciad is generally considered Pope’s best satiric work. In this book, dullness as reflected in the corruptness of government, social morals, education and even religion, is best exposed and satirized.(4分)
③ Pope, as the greatest poet of his time, strongly advocated neoclassicism. He worked painstakingly on his poems, developed a satiric, concise, smooth,graceful and well-balanced style and finally brought the heroic couplet to its last perfection.(3分)
9. ① Morality is the constant theme in Sheridan’s plays. He is much concerned with the current moral issues and lashes harshly at the social vices of the day.(4分)
② In The School for Scandal , for example, he attacks the moral degeneracy of the aristocratic-bourgeois society in the 18th-century England. The idle rich spend their time scheming deception and intrigues and mongering scandals. By contrasting the life and deeds of the Surface brothers, Sheridan lays bare the depraved morality of Joseph Surface behind the mask of honorable life and high-sounding moral principles. He turns out a liar, a moral corruptor, and a hypocrite.(6分)
10.① Alexander Pope’s An Essay on Criticism is a didactic poem written in heroic couplets. It consists of 774 lines and is divided into three parts.(3分)
② It sums up the art of poetry as upheld and practiced by the ancients such as Aristotle, and the eighteenth-century European classicists. Pope first laments the death of true taste in poetic criticism of his time and calls on people to turn to the old Greek and Roman writers for guidance.(3分)
③ The poem, as a comprehensive study of the theories of literary criticism, exerted great influence upon Pope’s contemporary writers in advocating the classical rules and spreading the neoclassicist tradition in England.(4分)
11. ① Swift is a master prose writer.(4分)
② His prose is simple, direct and precise. Clear, simple, concrete diction, uncomplicated sentence structure, economy and conciseness of language mark all his prose.(6分)
12.① In Robinson Crusoe , Defoe traces the growth of Robinson from a naïve and simple youth into a mature and hardened man, tempered by numerous trials in his eventful life.(2.5分)
② The realistic presentation of the successful struggle of Robinson single-handedly against the hostile nature proves the best part of the novel. Robinson is here a real hero: a typical eighteenth-century English middle-class man, with a great capacity for work, inexhaustible energy, courage, patience and persistence in overcoming obstacles, in struggling against the hostile natural environment. (2.5 分)
③ He is the very prototype of the empire builder, the pioneer colonist.(2.5分)
④ In describing Robinson’s life on the island, Defoe glorifies human labor and the Puritan fortitude, which save Robinson from despair and are a source of pride and happiness. He toils for the sake of subsistence, and gets his reward.(2.5分)
13.① The letter is regarded as a strong indignation of Samuel Johnson at the Earl’s fame-fishing, for the latter coldly refused to give him help when he compiled his dictionary and hypocritically wrote articles to give honeyed words when the dictionary was going to be published. The Earl was a well-known “patron of literature” at the time, and it remained a rule for writers to get a patron if they wanted to get financial support or make themselves known by public(6分)
② But this letter of Johnson made a breakthrough in that tradition implying their independence in economy and writing, and therefore opened a new era in the development of literature.(4分)
14.① Tom Jones is Henry Fielding’s masterpiece on the subject of human nature. It brings its author the name of the Prose Homer.(3分)
② The panoramic view it provides of the 18th-century English country and city life with different places and about 40 characters is unsurpassed.(3分)
③ The language is one of clarity and suppleness. And last of all, the plot construction is excellent. Its eighteen books of epic form are divided into three sections, 6 books each, clearly marked out by the change of scenes: in the country, on the highway and in London. By this, Fielding has indeed achieved his goal of writing a comic epic in prose.(4分)
15. ① Samuel Johnson was the last great neoclassicist enlightener in the late eighteenth century.(3分)
② He was very much concerned with the theme of the vanity of human wishes:almost all of his major writings bear this theme. He tried to warn men against this folly and hoped to cure them of it through his writings. In literary creation and criticism, he was rather conservative, openly showing his dislike for some newly rising form of literature and his appreciation for those writings which carried a lot of moralizing and philosophizing. He held that a writer must adhere to universal truth and experience, i. e. Nature; he must please, but he must also instruct; he must not offend against religion or promote immorality; and he must let himself be guided by old principles.(4分)
③ Like Pope, he was particularly fond of moralizing and didacticism.(3分)
16.① Samuel Johnson’s language is characteristically general, often Latinate and polysyllabic.(3分)
② His sentences are long and well structured with parallel words and phrases.However, no matter how complex his sentences are, his idea is always clearly expressed; and though he tends to use “learned words,” they are always accurately used.(4分)
③ Reading his works gives the reader the impression that he is talking with a very learned man.(3分)
17. ① Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard is recognized as Thomas Gray’s best and most representative work.(3分)
② In this poem, Gray reflects on death, the sorrows of life, and the mysteries of human life with a touch of his personal melancholy. The poet compares the ordinary people with the great ones, wondering what the commons could have achieved if they had had the chance.(4分)
③ Here he reveals his sympathy for the poor and the unknown, but scorns the great ones who despise the poor and bring havoc on them.(3分)
1. ① Social background: The 18th-century England witnessed the growing importance of the bourgeois or middle class.(2分)
a. The Industrial Revolution;(1分)
b. The expansion on international markets;(1分)
c. Values/ virtues/ moral standards/ are different from those of the feudal aristocratic class. Such qualities as courageous, full of energy, hard-working,practical, resourceful, self-reliant are emphasized; thus(3分)
d. Literature should give/ provide a realistic presentation of the life of the common people; it should meet the demand/ interest of the middle class people.(2分)
② Robinson Crusoe embodies the virtues of the middle-class people:(1分)
a. Crusoe as an adventurous/ courageous man full of energy and courage: (example from the text);(2分)
b. Crusoe as a practical man: (example from the text)(1分)
c. Crusoe as a resourceful/ self-reliant man: (example from the text)(1分)
d. Crusoe as a patient/ persistent man: (example from the text)(1分)
e. And others.
2. ① Alexander Pope: As a representative of the Enlightenment, Pope was one of the first to introduce rationalism to England. He assumed the role of champion of traditional civilization: of reason, classical learning, sound art, good taste and public virtue. For him, the supreme value was order.(5分)
② Daniel Defoe: Defoe spoke for and to the members of middle class in most of his works, and he gave his praise to the hard-working, sturdy middle class. He eulogized the rising bourgeoisie.(5分)
③ Samuel Johnson: As the last great neoclassicist enlightener, Johnson was very much concerned with the theme of the vanity of human wishes. In literary creation and criticism, he advocated the works carrying a lot of moralizing and philosophizing. He insisted that a writer must adhere to universal truth and experience, i.e. Nature; he must please, but he must also instruct; he must not offend against religion or promote immorality; and he must let himself be guided by old principles. Like Pope, he was particularly fond of moralizing and didacticism.(5分)