美国文学史及作品选读习题集(1)

1 Basic Literary Knowledge

Ⅰ. Fill in the blanks

1. The _____is the most commonly used foot in English poetry, in which an unstressed syllable comes first, followed by a ______syllable.

2. Rhyme is the _____of sounds in two or more words or phrases that usually appear close to each other in a poem. For example: we/thee, man/can, and gold/hold.

3. A _____is a sign that suggests more than its literal meaning.

4. The two-line stanza form is called the _____, the best-known being the _____which is written in iambic pentameter with an end rhyme.

5. The _____foot, which is the reverse of the iambic foot, also consists of one stressed and one unstressed syllables, but with the stressed one coming first.

6. An anapestic foot is made up of two _____and one stressed syllables, with the two unstressed in front.

7. American achievements in the short story have demanded international respect and admiration for more from ______in the early 19th century.

8. ______is generally thought of as the true beginner of the short stories because he was the first writer who formulated a poetics of the short stories.

9. There were two other American writers who had made significant contributions to the literary form of short story: ______, with his stories of early life in California, started a vogue of local color stories and made the short story seem completely at home in the US, and Henry James, brought to the form a careful writing that made his stories models.

10. In the 20th century, there have been many who have won fame abroad as well as in the US for their stories: ______, _______, _______, ________, and dozens of others.

11. As you read from writer to writer, from ______ s Rip Van Winkle to ______ s A Good Man is Hard to Find, you will see the coming of a short story age, growing from an entertaining tale into a store which probes deep into human souls.

12. Modern literary fiction has been dominated by two forms: _______

13. Washing Irving, the father of American literature, developed the _____as a genre in American literature.

14. ______is usually acknowledged as the originator of detective stories. He is also credited with developing many of the standard features of detective fiction. His detective M August Dupin of Murders in the Rue Morgue and The Purloined Letter is the forerunner of a long line of fictional detectives who are eccentric and brilliant.

15. ______is the repetition of similar vowel sounds situated in a sentence, a verse line or series of words.

16. A dactylic foot is made up of one ______ and two _______syllables, with the stressed in front.

17. The _____is a structured division of a poem, consisting of a series of verse lines which usually comprise a recurring pattern of meter and rhyme. In traditional