英国文学问答题答案.docVIP

PAGE43 / NUMPAGES43 英国文学课后习题答案 Unit 1 Geoffrey Chaucer The Canterbury Tales: How is the setting of the tales described? With such a setting, could you predict the general tone of the tales that are to follow? The setting of the tale is that a group of saints lived in the same hotel determined to continue their journey as a group and they tell different stories on their way. The general tone of the tale is comedy. In your own words, summarize the character of the Knight from the brief introduction in this excerpt. The knight is a good person, he is a sincere saint. He is going on his pilgrimage as he just comes back from his voyage. And at the same time, he is a brave soldier and made contributions to the wars. But he is very polite and wears simple cloth in his life. Without comparison with the translated version, are there words still recognizable to you in the original Middle English version? Although the words used in The Canterbury Tales are Middle English, to a modern reader, they are not entirely unrecognizable. Some of the vocabularies are much similar to Modern English, therefore, in most cases, readers can guess and then interpret the meaning of these words, i.e., droghte is equivalent to drought, licour is equivalent to liquor and so on. Unit 2 William Shakespeare Hamlet： Why sleep is so frightening, according to Hamlet, since it can “end” the heartache and the thousand natural shocks”? Nobody can predict what he will dream of after he falls asleep. Death means the end of life, you may go to an unknown world and you can’t come back. If he dies, Hamlet cant realize his will. Though “sleep” can end the heartache and the thousand natural shocks, it is a state of mind. Hamlet didn’t know at all. He is frightened by the possible suffering in the long “dream”. He can’t predict what will happen in the sleep, may be good may be evil. Why would people rather hear all the sufferings of the world instead choosing death to get rid of them, according to Hamlet? De