4.2　考研真题与典型题详解

I. Fill in the blanks.

1．Ralph W. Emerson believes in the concept of the ________. It is the ________ within which every man’s particular being is contained and made one with all other.（国际关系学院2009研）

【答案】Transcendentalism; Oversoul

【解析】爱默生信奉超验主义，在他看来，超灵为人所共有，每个人的思想存在于超灵之中，人能以直觉官能与之交融。

2．Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote ________, which has been called “the Manifesto of American Transcendentalism,” and ________, which has been regarded as America’s “Declaration of Intellectual Independence.”（南开大学2007研）

【答案】Nature; “The American Scholar”

【解析】爱默生的《论自然》被称为“美国超验主义的宣言”，其《美国学者》则被誉为美国知识分子的独立宣言。

3．In 1836, a little book came out which made a tremendous impact on the intellectual life of America. It was entitled Nature by ________.

【答案】Ralph Waldo Emerson

【解析】拉尔夫·沃尔多·爱默生（Ralph Waldo Emerson，1803-1882）美国散文作家、思想家、诗人。1836年出版处女作《论自然》（Nature）。《论自然》的发表为美国思想界吹来一股清风，一扫机械主义自然观的乌烟瘴气。

4．The great work ________ not only demonstrates Emersonian ideas of self-reliance but also develops and tests Thoreau’s own transcendental philosophy.

【答案】Self-Reliance

【解析】富兰克林的《论自立》不仅表现了爱默生关于自立的思想，同时也表达了他的超验主义思想。

5．Ralph Waldo Emerson’s truest disciple, the man who put into practice many of Emerson’s theories, was ________.

【答案】Henry David Thoreau

【解析】亨利·戴维·梭罗（Henry David Thoreau）是美国作家、哲学家，他最著名的作品为著名散文集《瓦尔登湖》和论文《论公民的不服从权利》。梭罗是爱默生最忠实的追随者并且将爱默生的许多理论付诸了实践。

6．A superb book entitled ________ came out of Henry David Thoreau’s two year experiment at Walden Pond.

【答案】Walden

【解析】《瓦尔登湖》（Walden）出版于1854年，梭罗在书中详尽地描述了他在瓦尔登湖湖畔一片再生林中度过两年零两月的生活以及期间他的许多思考。

7．From Henry David Thoreau’s Concord jail experience came his famous essay ________.

【答案】Civil Disobedience

【解析】在瓦尔登湖生活期间，梭罗因为反对黑奴制拒交“人头税”而被捕入狱。友人替他代交了税款保其出狱，但这一亲身体验却激发他写成了著名的政论《抵制国民政府》（Resistance to Civil Government）后改名为《论公民的不服从权利》（Civil Disobedience）。

II. Multiple Choice.

1．American renaissance started from ________.（北二外2009研）

A. Pragmatism

B. utilitarian

C. New England transcendentalism

D. the age of Realism

【答案】C

【解析】美国的文艺复兴，又称为新英格兰文艺复兴，源于新英格兰超验主义。

2．Which one of the following statements is applicable to the understanding of Transcendentalism?（四川大学2008研）

A. It is strongly influenced by social Darwinism.

B. Belief in individualism, independence of mind, and self-reliance.

C. Man has no free-will.

D. It holds that determinism governs everything.

【答案】B

【解析】超验主义肯定人的神圣性，主张人能超越感觉和理性而直接认识真理，“相信你自己”，是超验主义者的座右铭。

3．Ralph Waldo Emerson’s ________is regarded as the “Declaration of Intellectual Independence”.（北二外2008研；首师大2009研）

A. Nature

B. The Conduct of Life

C. Representative Men

D. The American Scholar

【答案】D

【解析】The American Scholar（《论美国学者》）是爱默生在哈佛大学的一篇演讲词，爱默生在演说中主张建立独立的民族文化与文学，吹起了美国文化独立的号角。

4．Point out the work that was written by Henry David Thoreau. __________（四川大学2009研）

A. The Fall of the House of Usher

B. The Rise of Silas Lapham

C. Walden

D. “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”

【答案】C

【解析】梭罗是美国先验主义作家之一，其代表作是Walden（《瓦尔登湖》）。选项A《厄舍古屋的倒塌》是Edgar Allan Poe（爱伦·坡）的作品；选项B《塞拉斯·拉帕姆的发迹》是William Dean Howells（豪威尔斯）的小说；选项D《睡谷传奇》的作者是Washington Irving（华盛顿·欧文）。

5．“The universe is composed of Nature and the soul… Spirit is present every where”. This is the voice of the book Nature written by Emerson, which pushed American Romanticism into a new phase, the phase of New England ________.

A. Romanticism

B. Transcendentalism

C. Naturalism

D. Symbolism

【答案】B

【解析】《论自然》（Nature）是爱默生的第1部重要哲学著作，最初发表于1836年。它集超验主义思想之大成，有新英格兰超验主义宣言的美称。《论自然》中强调精神，或超灵，认为这是宇宙至为重要的存在因素。超灵是一种无所不容、无所不在、扬善抑恶的力量，是万物之本、万物之所属，它存在于人和自然界内。

6．There is a good reason to state that New England Transcendentalism was actually ________ on the Puritan soil.

A. Romanticism

B. Puritanism

C. Mysticism

D. Unitarianism

【答案】A

【解析】新英格兰超验主义深受清教思想的影响，由于清教主义自身积极性与消极性共存的复杂性，超验主义者对清教的态度也是复杂的。认同、接受与怀疑、超越共存，他们一方面肯定了清教思想与价值，另一方面又批判了清教社会对人的精神的负面影响。

7．Transcendentalists recognized ________ as the “highest power of the soul”.

A. intuition

B. logic

C. data of the senses

D. thinking

【答案】A

【解析】超验主义者将直觉作为“心灵最伟大的力量”。

8．Transcendentalist doctrines found their greatest literary advocates in ________ and Henry David Thoreau.

A. Thomas Jefferson

B. Ralph Waldo Emerson

C. Philip Freneau

D. Oversoul

【答案】B

【解析】美国超验主义（American Transcendentalism）是美国的一个重要思潮，它兴起于十九世纪三十年代的新英格兰地区。它是与拉尔夫·沃尔多·爱默生以及梭罗相关的一种文学和哲学运动，宣称存在一种理想的精神实体，超越于经验和科学之处，通过直觉得以把握。

III. Explain the following terms.

1．Transcendentalism（南开大学2008研；北二外2010研；北航2010研）

Key: Transcendentalism: Transcendentalism is a New England movement, which flourished from about 1835 to 1860. It had its roots in romanticism and in post-Kantian idealism by which Coleridge was influenced. It had a considerable influence on American art and literature. Basically religious, it emphasized the role and importance of the individual conscience, and the value of intuition in matters of moral guidance and inspiration. The actual term was coined by opponents of the movement, but accepted by its members. The group of people was also social reformers. Some of the members, besides Emerson, were famous, including Bronson Alcott, Henry David Thoreau and Nathaniel Hawthorne.

2．Ralph Waldo Emerson（北航2007研）

Key: Ralph Waldo Emerson: Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) was an American essayist, philosopher, and poet, best remembered for leading the Transcendentalist movement of the mid 19th century. He gradually moved away from the religious and social beliefs of his contemporaries, formulating and expressing the philosophy of Transcendentalism in his 1836 essay, Nature. As a result of this ground breaking work, he gave a speech entitled The American Scholar in 1837, which Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. considered to be America’s “Intellectual Declaration of Independence”.

3．Oversoul（武汉大学2008年）

Key: Oversoul: “The Over-soul” is an essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson, first published in 1841. For Emerson, the term denotes a supreme underlying unity which transcends duality or plurality, much in keeping with the philosophy of Advaita Vedanta. Over-soul has more recently come to be used by Eastern philosophers such as Meher Baba and others as the closest English language equivalent of the Vedic concept of Paramatman. The term is used frequently in discussion of Eastern metaphysics and has also entered western vernacular. In this context, the term “Over-soul” is understood as the collective indivisible Soul, of which all individual souls or identities are included.

4．self-reliance（北二外2009研）

Key: self-reliance: Self-Reliance is an essay written by American Transcendentalist philosopher and essayist, Ralph Waldo Emerson. It contains the most solid statement of one of Emerson’s repeating themes, the need for each individual to avoid conformity and false consistency, and follow his or her own instincts and ideas. Emerson’s ideas are considered a reaction to a commercial identity; he calls for a return to individual identity.

IV. Read the following quotations and answer the questions.

Passage 1

To go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society. I am not solitary whilst I read and write, though nobody is with me. But if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars. The rays that come from those heavenly worlds, will separate between him and vulgar things. One might think the atmosphere was made transparent with this design, to give man, in the heavenly bodies, the perpetual presence of the sublime. Seen in the streets of cities, how great they are! If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these preachers of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile.

Questions:

(1) This paragraph is taken from a famous essay. What is the name of the essay?

(2) Who is the author?

(3) What does the author say would happen if the stars appeared one night in a thousand years?

(4) Give a peculiar term to cover the author’s belief.

Key: (1) Nature

(2) Ralph Waldo Emerson

(3) Then, the men cannot believe and adore the God, cannot preserve the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown.

(4) Transcendentalism

Passage 2

Standing on the bare ground—my head bathed by the blithe air and uplifted in to infinite space—all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eyeball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God.

Questions:

(1) Which work is this selection taken from?

(2) How do you understand the philosophical ideas in these words?

Key: (1) Nature

(2) He regards nature as the purest, and the most sanctifying moral influence on man, and advocated a direct intuition of a spiritual and immanent God in nature. In this connection, Emerson’s emotional experiences are exemplary in more ways than one. Now this is a moment of “conversation” when one feels completely merged with the outside world, when one has completely sunk into nature and become one with it, and when the soul has gone beyond the physical limits of the body to share the omniscience of the Oversoul. In a word, the soul has completely transcended the limits of individuality and become part of the Oversoul. Emerson sees sprit pervading everywhere, not only in the soul of man, but behind nature, throughout nature.

Passage 3

There’s a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion… Trust thyself; every heart vibrates to that iron string.

Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist.

Questions:

(1) This selection is selected from an essay. What is the title of that?

(2) Who is the author of the essay?

(3) According to the selection, what do you think the author believes in?

Key: (1) Self-Reliance

(2) Ralph Waldo Emerson

(3) He believed above all the individualism, independence of mind, and self-reliance.

V. Short answer questions

1．Which of Emerson’s works is called “America’s intellectual Declaration of independence”?（国际关系学院2007研）

Key: The American Scholar is called “America’s intellectual Declaration of independence”. It was a speech given by Ralph Waldo Emerson on August 31, 1837, to the Phi Beta Kappa Society in Harvard. He was invited to speak in recognition of his groundbreaking work Nature, published a year earlier, in which he established a new way for America’s fledgling society to regard the world. Sixty years after declaring independence, American culture was still heavily influenced by Europe, and Emerson, for possibly the first time in the country’s history, provided a visionary philosophical framework for escaping “from under its iron lids” and building a new, distinctly American cultural identity.

2．Emerson states: “Let a man then know his worth, and keep things under his feet.” This indicates the author’s belief in real virtue. Please make comments on this line.（南京大学2009研）

Key: This line is a representation of Emerson’s transcendental ideas that the individual is the most important of all and an individual should know about his own worth and give full play to his worth. If man depends upon himself, cultivates himself and brings about the divine in himself, he can hope to become better and even perfect. He tries to convince people that doing things according to their knowledge of their worth is a perfect way to develop and improve themselves. Each man should determine his own existence. Men should and could be self-reliant. Self-reliance is also an expression of the hope that man can become the best person he could hope to be.

3．What is the major thematic concern of Walden?（国际关系学院2007研）

Key: Walden is informed by American Transcendentalism, a philosophy developed by Thoreau’s friend and spiritual mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson. It emphasizes the importance of solitude, contemplation, and closeness to nature in transcending the “desperate” existence that, he argues, is the lot of most people. Thoreau was putting into practice the Transcendentalist belief that one can best transcend normality and experience the Ideal, or the Divine, through nature.

VI. Essay question

1．Analyze Ralph Waldo Emerson’s theory of Transcendentalism with the analysis of Nature.

Key: Emerson was the leading New England Transcendentalist. His Nature is generally regarded as the Bible of New England Transcendentalism. In Nature Emerson affected a most articulate synthesis of the Transcendentalist views.

One major element of his philosophy is his firm belief in the transcendence of the “Oversoul”. He states in Nature “the universe is composed of Nature and the Soul.” He sees the world as phenomenal, and emphasizes the need for idealism, for idealism sees the world in God. He regards nature as the purest, and the most sanctifying moral influence on man, and advocates a direct intuition of a spiritual and immanent God in nature. In this connection, Emerson’s emotional experiences are exemplary in more ways than one.

Emerson holds that the individual, not the crowd, is the most important of all. If man depends upon himself, cultivates himself, and brings out the divine in himself, he can hope to become better and even perfect. He tries to convince people that the possibilities for man to develop and improve himself are infinite. Men should and could be self-reliant.

To Emerson’s Transcendentalist eyes, nature was, to him as to his Puritan forebears, emblematic of God. It mediates between man and God, and its voice leads to higher truth. In a word, “Nature is the symbol of spirit.” That is probably why he called his first philosophical work Nature rather than anything else. To him nature is a wholesome moral influence on man and his character. A natural implication of Emerson’s view on nature is that the world around is symbolic.