[欧洲文化入门课后习题答案]

　 欧洲文化入门课后习题答案：

　Division one: Greek culture and Roman culture

　希腊、罗马文化

　Ⅰ.Greek culture 希腊文化

　1. What are the major elements in European culture?

　There are two main elements ——the Greco-Roman element and the Judeo-Christian element.

　2. What were the main features of ancient Greek society?

　In Greek society, only adult male citizen had real power and the citizenship was a set of rights which a man inherited from his father. The economy of Athens rested on an immense amount of slave labor. Slaves worked for their masters. The exploitation was a serious social problem. The Greeks loved sports. They often took part in the contests of sports in Olympus Mount, thus Olympic Games came into being.

　3. What did Homer do? Why is he important in the history of European literature?

　He depicted the great Greek men who lived in the period 1200-1100B.C. and wars happening at that time. As an author of epics, he employed fine literary language to describe wars and men, even though they were dull. He stood in the peek of Greek literature and exerted a great influence on his followers.

　4. Who were the outstanding dramatists of ancient Greece? What important plays did each of them write?

　Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides were three outstanding dramatists of ancient Greece.

　Aeschylus: Prometheus Bound, Persians, Agamemnon

　Sophocles: Oedipus the King, Electra, Antigone

　Euripides: Andromache, Medea, Trojan Women

　5. Were there historians then? Who were they? What did each of them write about?

　Yes, there are. They were Herodotus and Thucydides.

　Herodotus wrote about the wars between Greeks and Persians. Thucydides wrote about the war between Athens and Sparta and between Athens and Syracuse.

　6. Would you say that philosophy was highly developed then? Who were the major philosophers?

　No, I wouldn’t. Because those philosophical ideas were only idealism or simple materialism or metaphysics. Socrates, Plato and Aristotle were the major philosophers at that time.

　7. Did Socrates write any book? How then do we know about him? What distinguished his philosophy?

　No, he didn’t. We know Socrates chiefly through what Plato recorded of him in the famous Dialogues written by Plato. He considered that philosophy rested with the dissect of oneself and virtue was high worth of life. His method of argument, by questions and answers, was known as the dialectical method.

　8. Tell some of Plato’s ideas. Why do people call him an idealist?

　(1) Men have knowledge because of the existence of certain general “ideas”, like beauty, truth, and goodness. (2) We should not look at the things which are not seen: for the things which are not seen eternal. Because he emphasized the importance of “ideas” and believed that “thought” had created the world, people call him an idealist.

　9. In what important ways was Aristotle different from Plato? What are some of Aristotle’s works that are still influential today?

　(1) Aristotle emphasized direct observation of nature and insisted that theory should follow fact. This is different from Plato’s reliance on subjective thinking.

　(2) He thought that “idea” and matter together made concrete individual realities in which he differed from Plato who held that ideas had higher reality than the political world. His significant works includes:

　 Ethics, Politics and Rhetoric.

　10. Who were some of the other philosophers active in that period? Does the word “Epicurean” in its modern sense convey the true meaning of the philosophy of the ancient Epicureans? What were their views on pleasure?

　(1) They were Heracleitue, Democritus, Diogenes, Pyrrhon, Epicurus and Zeno.

　(2)No, it doesn’t. The ancient Epicureans believed pleasure to be the highest worth of life, but by pleasure they meant, not sensual enjoyment but that attained by the practice of virtue. But this idea was misled by modern people, in their sense, the word “Epicurean” has come to mean indulgence in luxurious living.

　11. Say something about Greek sculpture, pottery and architecture. What was the most famous Greek temple? Is it still there?

　(1) Along with the formation of Greek civilization, Greek sculpture, pottery and architecture got many great achievements. Greeks put into works of art the things they admired and worshiped, the scientific rules they discovered. Greek art evolved from the archaic period to the classical period which marked its maturity. (2) the most famous temple was the Acropolis at Athens. (3) Yes, it is still there.

　12. Give some examples to show the enormous influence of Greek culture on English literature.

　 Some examples:

　(1) A Freudian term “Oedipus Complex” of 19th century originating from a Greek tragedy in which king Oedipus unknowingly killed his father and married his mother. (2) In the early part of the 19th century , in England alone, three young Romantic poets expressed their admiration of Greek culture in works which have themselves become classics: Byron’ s Isle of Greece, Shelley’ s Hellas and Prometheus Unbound and Keats’ s Ode on a Grecian Urn. (3) In the 20th century, there are Homeric parallels in the Irishman James Joyce’s modernist masterpiece Ulysses.

　 Ⅱ. Roman culture 罗马文化

　1. What did the Roman have in common with the Greeks? And what was the chief difference between them?

　(1)The Romans had a lot in common with the Greeks. Both peoples had traditions rooted in the idea of the citizen-assembly, hostile to monarchy and to servility. Their religions were alike enough for most of their deities to be readily identified —Greek Zeus with Roman Jupiter, Greek Aphrodite with Roman Venus, and so on—and their myths to be fused. Their languages worked in similar ways and were ultimately related, both being members of the Indo-European language family which stretches from Bangladesh to Iceland.

　(2) There was one big difference. The Romans built up a vast empire. The Greeks didn’t, excepted for the brief moment of Alexander’s conquests, which soon disintegrated.

　2. Explain Pax Romana.

　In the year 27 B.C., Octavius took supreme power as emperor with the title of Augustus. Two centuries later, the Roman empire reached its greatest extent in the North and East. The emperors mainly relied on a strong army—the famous Roman Legions and an influential bureaucracy to exert their rules. Thus the Romans enjoyed a long period of peace lasting 200 years. This remarkable phenomenon in the history is known as Pax Romana.

　3. What contributions did the Romans make to the rule of law?

　In Roman’s earliest stage, only a number of patricians knew the customary legal procedure. When the rules were put into writing in the middle of the third century B.C. it marked a victory for the plebeians. There was further development of law under the emperors until it was codified, eventually to become the core of modern civil and commercial law in many Western countries.

　4. Who were the important prose writers in ancient Rome? What does “Ciceronian” mean? Did

　 Cicero write that kind of rhetorical prose all the time?

　<1>Marcus Tullius Cicero and Julius Caesar were two important prose writers. <2> Ciceronian means Cicero’s eloquent oratorical manner of writing, Which has had an enormous influence on the development of European prose.<3> No, he didn’t. Because Cicero appears as a different man with a different style, far less rhetorical, but colloquial and intimate.

　5. Give the example of the terse style of Julius Caesar’s prose.

　An example: I came, I saw, I conquered (models of succinct Latin).

　6. Who was Lucretius? What did he do?

　(1)Lucretius was a poet of ancient Rome.(2)He wrote the philosophical poem On the Nature of Thing to expound the ideas of Epicurus the Greek atomist.

　7. What is the book for which Virgil has been famous throughout the countries? In what ways is the book linked with the Greek past?

　(1)The book was Aeneid. (2)The story was about Aeneas, one of the princes of Troy, who escaped from that burning city when it fell to the Greeks, to carry on the Trojan cause in a new place, Rome. He didn’t go alone, but, carrying his father on his shoulders and leading his little son by the hand, a family group of three generations moved together. Thus in this way the book is linked with the Greek past.

　8. Why do we say Aeneus is a truly tragic hero?

　Because Aeneas had to betray the great passion of his life, his love for Dido, queen of Carthage, so that he could fulfill his historic mission.

　9. What is the chief Roman achievement in architecture? Give some examples.

　(1) The Romans were great engineers. They covered their world from one end to the other with roads, bridges, aqueducts, theatres and arenas.

　(2) Some examples:

　 A. The Pantheon: the greatest the best preserved Roman temple built in 27B.C..

　B. Pont du Gard: it is an exceptionally well-preserved aqueduct that spans a wide valley in southern France.

　10. Why are the wall-paintings of the ancient Romans still significant to us today?

　Roman painting was strongly influenced by the art of Greece. And it also had pecularities of its own. Unfortunately much of the painting no longer exists. There are, however, some wall-paintings from Pompeii and other towns near Naples. These wall-paintings include still lives, landscape paintings and figure paintings. Among them were Lady Musician and Young Girl, the Maiden Gathering Flowers and the Landscape.

　Division two: the Bible and Christianity

　 基督教及其《圣经》

　1. What was the Hebrew’s major contribution to world civilization?

　The history of the Hebrews was handed down orally from one generation to another in the form of folktales and stories, which were recorded later in the Old Testament, which still later became the first part of the Christian Bible. Thus the Hebrews made one of the greatest contributions to the world civilization.

　2. Why do we say Judaism and Christianity are closely related?

　Judaism and Christianity are closely related: ⑴it was the Jewish tradition which gave birth to Christianity; ⑵both originated in Palestine—the hub of migration and trade route, which led to exchange ideas over wide areas.

　3. When did the great exodus take place?

　Around 1300 B.C., Moses, the famous Hebrew leader, went to see the pharaoh of Egypt, telling him that Yahweh wanted the pharaoh to end Hebrew

　 slavery and let the Hebrew leave Egypt. With this began the Exodus, which lasted forty years.

　4. Who was Moses? What did he do for the Hebrews?

　Moses was a famous Hebrew leader. Around 1300 B.C., Moses led the Hebrews to leave Egypt for the Promised Land. This was called the Exodus which lasted forty years. When the wandering Hebrews left the desert and entered the mountainous Sinai, Moses climbed to the top of the mountain to receive form god message, which came to be known as the Ten Commandments. He died shortly before the Hebrews arrived at their homeland.

　5. What are the Ten Commandments about?

　The Ten Commandment are a set of rules Moses commands all Israel to obey in the name of God: ⑴Yahweh is the only God all Israel should worship;⑵ Do not carve and serve any idol to worship; ⑶Do not take the name of God in vain; ⑷Keep the Sabbath day and labor in the other six days; ⑸Honor and respect one’s parents; ⑹Do not kill; ⑺Do not commit adultery; ⑻Do not steal; ⑼Do not bear false witness against people; ⑽Do not desire one’s neighbor’s wife, nor his house, nor his field, nor his servants, nor his livestock, nor anything else.

　6. What writings make up the New Testament?

　The New Testament consists of 14 books. The four accounts, which were believed to have been written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, four of Jesus’ early followers, are the first part of the New Testament and tell of the birth, teaching, death and Resurrection of Jesus. Then come: the Acts of the Apostles, a history of the early Christian movement: the Epistles, or letters to the church groups around the Mediterranean; and lastly the book of Revelation, a visionary account of the final triumph of God’s purpose.

　7. How did the relations between Christians and the Roman government change?

　The early Christian were subject to persecutions by the Roman government. Jesus Christ was crucified by the Roman government. After Jesus died, his disciplines St. Peter and St. Paul suffered martyrdom under the Roman Emperor Nero about 65 A.D. Nero even burned Christians in his garden in 64 A.D. For 240 years after the martyrdoms of Peter and Paul, persecutions of Christians continued. The chief persecutions were under Nero, Domitian, Trajan, Valerian and Diocletian. Despite these persecutions, Christians continued to spread steadily over the Mediterranean region. It began to draw men and women from all classes and the attitude of the Roman government toward Christianity began to change. By 305 Diocletian gave up his effort to destroy the young religion. When ConstantineⅠ won the throne from his rivals, he believed that God had helped him, and in 313 he issued the Edict of Milan which granted religious freedom to all and made Christianity legal. Under Constantine Christianity made great contribution of the empire. The emperors who followed ConstantineⅠ continued pro-Christian policies. In 392 A.D., Emperor Theodosius made Christianity the official religion of the empire and outlawed all other religions. Now Christianity had changed from an object of oppression to a weapon in the hands of the ruling class to crush their opponents.

　8. How did Christian monks help Western civilization survive?

　The Christian monks helped western civilization survive in many ways: ⑴The Christian monks spread Christianity to the Mediterranean region and some of them even suffered martyrdom; ⑵Some monks translated the Old Testament into Greek and St. Jerome translated the whole Bible into Latin. Later some such as John Wycliffe and William Tyndale translated the Bible into the vernacular; ⑶In the Middle Ages, people in Western Europe were mainly divided into three classes: clergy, lords and peasants. Of these three classes, the only literate section was the clergy. The Christian monks did a lot to help preserve and transmit a large part of the traditional heritage of the western culture. They not only translated the Bible into Latin or the Vernacular but also copied or translated the ancient works into the vernacular, such as the monks in these

　 monasteries set up by Charlemagne and Alfred the Great.

　 9. Why do we say the Bible has shaped Western culture more decisively than anything else ever written?

　Judeo-Christian tradition constitutes one of the two major components of European culture. The Bible which is virtually related to every phase of human life greatly influences people’s daily life, especially in the Middle Ages when almost everyone was a Christian; The Bible has great impact upon western literature. For a long period of time, the Latin Bible was accepted as the authority and Latin was official language of the Roman Catholic Church, so most Europe literature at that time was in Latin. Besides it is generally accepted that the English Bible and Shakespeare are two great reservoirs of Modern English. Furthermore, the use of Biblical themes has been a literary tradition. In fact few great English and American writers of the 17th, 18th, 19th and 20th century can be read and appreciated with satisfaction without a sufficient knowledge of the Bible; The study of the Christian teaching especially the Bible has become an important branch of knowledge—scholasticism which has been prevalent for centuries; The Bible has also influenced western philosophies and science. Thus the Bible has shaped western culture more decisively than anything else ever written.

　Division three: The Middle Ages

　 中世纪

　1. What happened in Western Europe after the decline of the Roman Empire?

　After the Roman Empire lost its predominance, a great many Germanic Kingdoms began to grow into the nations know as England, France, Italy, and Germany in its place. These nations of Western Europe were in the scene of frequent wars and invasions. The political unity had given way to widespread destruction and confusion. Hunger and disease killed many lives and village fell into ruin and great areas of land lay waste. There was no central government to keep the order. The only organization that seemed to unite Europe was the Christian church. Christianity was almost the all and the one of Medieval lives in western Europe and took lead in politics, law, art, and learning for hundreds years.

　2. What were the cultural characteristics of the period from 500 to 1000?

　Above all, the cultural characters of this period were the heritage and achievement of Roman culture and the emergence of Hebrew and Gothic culture.

　3. Who was Charles Martel?

　Charles Martel was a Frankish ruler who gave his soldiers estates known as fiefs as a reward for their services in 732.

　4. What was the relationship between lord and vassal?

　Lords granted parts of their lands known as fiefs to vassals. In return, the vassals promised to fight for the lords.

　5. Into what three groups were people divided under feudalism?

　Under feudalism, people of their Western Europe were mainly divided into three classes: clergy, lords, and peasants.

　6. What was the different between a serf and a free man?

　A serf had no land and no freedom. He was bond to the land where he had been born. A free man was a peasant who usually was a worker who made the ploughs, shod the horses, and made harnesses for oxen and horses.

　7. What is the importance of the using of vernacular languages in Medieval literature?

　In the Middle Ages, some “national epics” were written in vernacular language—the language of various national states that came into being at that period, and some monks advocated translating the Bible in vernacular. Literary works were no longer all written in Latin. It was the starting point of a gradual transition of European literature from Latin culture that was the combination of a variety od national characteristics.

　8. In what ways did Gothic art differ from Romanesque art?

　⑴Although Gothic was an outgrowth of the Romanesque, it was given directions by a different aesthetic and philosophical spirit and reflected a much more ordered feudal society with full confidence.

　⑵Romanesque architecture is characterized by massiveness, solidity, and monumentality with an overall blocky appearance. Sculpture and painting, primary in churches, developed a wonderful unity with architecture. Both arts often are imbued with symbolism and allegory. They are not based on natural forms but use deliberate distortions for expressive impact.

　⑶Gothic cathedrals soared high, their windows, arched and towers reaching heavenward, flinging their passion against the sky. They were decorated with beautiful stained glass windows and sculptures more lifelike than any since ancient Rome.

　9. What was the merit which Charlemagne and Alfred the Great share?

　Both Charlemagne and Alfred the Great contribution greatly to the European culture. Both of them encouraged learning by setting up monastery schools. The scholars in Alfred the Great’s monasteries translated the Latin works into the vernacular. Thus both helped preserve the ancient classics and culture.

　Division four: Renaissance and Reformation

　文艺复兴与宗教改革

　1. What made Italy the birthplace of the Renaissance?

　Because of its geographical position, foreign trade developed early in Italy. This brought Italy into contact with other cultures and gave rise to urban economy and helped Italy accumulate wealth which was an essential factor for the flowering of art and literature.

　For two centuries beginning from the late 15th century, Florence was the golden city which gave birth to a whole generation of poets, scholars, artists and sculptors. There was in Florence a revival of interest in classical learning and rising of humanist ideas. And to spread the new ideas, libraries and academies were founded. In the 15th century printing was invented and helped to spread humanist ideas.

　2. What are the main elements of humanism? How are these elements reflected in art and literature during the Italian Renaissance?

　Humanist is the essence of Renaissance. Humanists in renaissance believed that human beings had rights to pursue wealth and pleasure and they admires the beauty of human body. This belief ran counter to the medieval ascetical idea of poverty and stoicism, and shifted man’s interest from Christianity to humanity, from religion to philosophy, from heaven to earth, from the beauty of God to the beauty of human in all its joy, senses and feeling.

　The philosophy of humanism is reflected in the art and literature during the Italian Renaissance in the literature works of Boccaccio and Petrarch and in the art of Giotto, Brunelleschi, Donatello, Giorgione, da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, and Titian, etc. In their works they did not stress death and other world but call on man to live and work for the present.

　3. Why do we look upon Petrarch as the father of modern poetry?

　Petrarch was a prominent figure of his time, a great figure in Italian literature and one of the great humanists during the Renaissance. He has written numerous lyrics, sonnets and canzonets. Petrarch rejected medieval country conventions and sang for true love and earthly happiness in his sonnets.

　 Later sonnets became a very important literary form of poetry in Europe and a lot of poets, such as Shakespeare, Spencer, and Mrs. Browning, were indebted to him. Thus we look upon him as the father of modern poetry

　4. How did Italian Renaissance art and architecture break away from medieval traditions?

　The Italian Renaissance art and architecture radically broke away from the medieval methods of representing the visible world. Compared with the latter, the former has the following distinct features:

　⑴Art broke away from the domination of church and artist who used to be craftsmen commissioned by the church became a separate strata doing noble and creative works;

　⑵Themes of painting and architecture changed from purely celestial realm focusing on the stories of the Bible, of God and Mary to an appreciation of all aspects of nature and man;

　⑶The artists studied the ruins of Roman and Greek temples and put many of the principles of ancient civilization into their works;

　⑷Artists introduced in their works scientific theories of anatomy and perspective.

　5. In what way was Da Vinci important during the Renaissance?

　Leonado da Vinci was a man of many talents, a Renaissance man in the true sense of the word. He was a painter, a sculptor, an architect, a musician, an engineer, and a scientist all in one.

　As an artist, he was very important. He has left to the world famous works such as Last Supper and Mona Lisa. Then his excellent use of contrast between light and darkness showed him as an excellent painter. Most important of all, da Vinci had profound understanding of art. In his 5000 notebooks, he put down his observations of life and his sketch drawing. In his painting he stressed the expression of emotional states. His understandings of art exerted great influence upon painters of his own generation and generations to follow.

　He was also very important in the science of medicine. During his life he dissected more than thirty corpses and was a great anatomist in Italy. He placed art in the service of anatomy as a science based on extensive research.

　 6. What are the doctrines of Martin Luther? What was the significance of the reformation in European civilization?

　In Reformation began in 1517, Martin Luther put forth the following doctrines:

　⑴He rejected the absolute authority of the Roman Catholic church and replace it with absolute of the Bible. People can communicate with God directly instead of through the church;

　⑵He opposed the purchase of indulgences and called for institutional reform of the church;

　⑶advocated translating the whole Bible into vernaculars and made the Bible accessible to every man;

　⑷He preached love and ideals of equality, and he was a fighter for democracy and nationalism, a humanist who helped to build a competent educational system in Germany.

　 The Reformation was significant in the European civilization. Before Reformation, Europe was essentially feudal and medieval. In all aspects of politics, economy and spirit, it was under the absolute rule of the Roman Catholic Church and the Holy Roman Empire. But after the Reformation things were different. In educational and cultural matters, the monopoly of the church was broken. In religion, Protestantism brought into being different forms of Christianity to challenge the absolute rule of the Roman Catholic Church. In language, the dominant position of Latin had to give way to the national languages as a result of various translations of Bible into vernacular. In spirit, absolute obedience became out-mode and the spirit of quest, debate, was ushered in by the reformists. In word, after the reformation Europe was to take a new course of development, a scientific revolution was to be under way and capitalism was to set in with its dynamic economic principles.

　7. What was Counter—Reformation? Who were the Jesuits? Are they still active now?

　The counter the Reformation and to bring back its vitality, the Roman Catholic Church mustered their forces to examine the Church institu

　tions and introduce reforms and improvements. In time, the Roman Catholic Church did re-establish itself as a dynamic force in European affairs. This recovery of power is often called by historians the Counter-Reformation. The seed-bed for this Catholic reformation was Spain with the Spanish monarchy establishing the inquisition to carry out cruel suppression of heresy and unorthodoxy.

　Ignatius, a Spaniard who devoted his life to defending the Roman Catholic Church, and his followers called them the Jesuits members of the Society of Jesus.

　Today the Society of Jesus is still active with a membership of 31,000, having institutions in various parts of the world.

　8. What did French Renaissance writers propose in their writings?

　⑴The French Renaissance writer Rabelais expressed hid ideas in Gargantua and Pantagruel that the only rule of the house was “Do As Thou Wilt”—to follow our natural instinct;

　⑵Ronsard held that man of letters should write in a style that was clear and free from useless rhetoric;

　⑶The Essais of Montaigne records his views on life, death and his skepticism towards knowledge, in simple, straightforward style, his famous motto is “What do I know?”

　9. Why did England come later than other countries during the Renaissance? In what way was English Renaissance different from that of other countries? Who were the major figures and what their contributions?

　Because of the War of Roses within the country and its weak and unimportant position in world trade, Renaissance came later in England than other European countries. Compared with the Renaissance in other countries, the Renaissance in England has the following features:

　⑴It came later; but when it did come, it was to produce some towering figures in English literature and the world literature;

　⑵The Renaissance in England found its finest expression in drama, crowned by Shakespeare;

　⑶The Renaissance in England enjoyed a period of political and religious stability under the reign of Elizabeth Ⅰ.

　The major figures of this period were William Shakespeare, Edmund Spencer, Sir Thomas more, Francis Bacon, and etc. Shakespeare has contributed to the world a legacy of literature heritage by turning out so many outstanding plays and poems. He was one of the two reservoirs of modern English language. Thomas More has written Utopia and depicted in this work an ideal non-Christian state where everybody lives a simple life and shares the goods in common. He contributed to the western tradition of envisioning an ideal state. Spencer has influenced many English poets.

　10. What were some of scientific advances during the Renaissance?

　During the Renaissance, many sciences has made great progress.

　 Firstly, it was an age of geographical discoveries: Columbus has discovered the New World in 1492; Dias discovered the Cape of Good Hope in 1487; da Gama discovered the route to India round the Cape of Good Hope in 1497; Amerigo discovered and explored the mouth of the Amazon and accepted South America as a new continent.

　Secondly, Copernicus believed that the earth and other planets orbit about the sun and that earth is not at the center of the universe. Here began the modern astronomy.

　Thirdly, both da Vinci and Vesalius were good at anatomy. Vesalius wrote Fabrica and was regarded as the founder of modern medicine.

　Fourthly, printing was invented in Italy.

　Finally, Dante, Machiavelli, and Vosari have contributed a great deal to political science and historiography. Machiavelli was called “Father of political science” in the west.

　Division five: The seventeenth Century

　17世纪

　1. What were Galileo’s contributions to modern science?

　Galileo is the greatest name in physics in the 17th century. He has made contributions to the world:

　⑴He was the first to apply telescope to the study of the skies. He even made a telescope for himself and used it to observe the stars;

　⑵In 1609 he announced a series of astronomical discoveries which caught the attention of the whole of Europe. With the help of telescope, e proved that Ptolemy’s system would not work and that Copernicus’s hypothesis had been right;

　⑶Galileo discovered the importance of acceleration in dynamics and the law of inertia;

　⑷Galileo was the first to establish the law of falling bodies;

　⑸He invented thermometer.

　2. How did Kepler’s laws clarify and amend Copernican theory?

　Copernicus heliocentric theory was put forward only as a hypothesis. It was Kepler who supported him scientifically. Kepler is best known for his discovery of ht three laws of planetary motion, the three laws being called Kepler’s laws published in 1609 an 1619. They may be stated as follows:

　①Each planet moves in an ellipse, not a perfect circle, with the sun at one focus;

　②Each planet moves more rapidly when near the sun than farther from it;

　③The distance of each planet from the sun bears a definite relation to the time period the planet took to complete a revolution around the sun. This law was reduced to a mathematical formula: the square of the period of revolution of a planet about the sun is proportional to the cube of the mean distance of the planet from the sun.

　Kepler’s laws supported, clarified and amended the Copernican system and turned the system from a general description of the sun and the planets into a precise mathematical formula/ these three laws formed the basis of all modern planetary astronomy and led to Newton’s discovery of the laws of gravitation.

　3. Why Newton is generally considered to be the greatest scientist that ever lived?

　Newton has made great contributions to history of science:

　①As a mathematician, he invented calculus;

　②In optics, he discovered that while light is composed of all the colors of the spectrum;

　③Most important of all, he discovered the law of the universal gravitation. According to this law, every body attracts every other with a force directly proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. To put it simply, the sun, the moon, the earth, the planets, and all other bodies in the universe move in accordance with the same basic force, which is called gravitation. The law of gravitation is considered to be one of the most important discoveries in the history of science and had not been questioned until Einstein discovered the law of relativity;

　④Newton’s influence was not limited to the physical universe. His analytical method, the way he approached natural laws by observation, experiment and calculation, began to be applied to human society, to all branches of knowledge and thought. Thus he was generally considered to be the greatest scientist that ever lived.

　4. Why do we say that Bacon was a founder of modern philosophy?

　Bacon was regarded as the founder of modern philosophy:

　The whole basis of his philosophy was practical. He held the philosophy should be kept separate from theology instead of being blended with it as the Scholasticism;

　Bacon maintained that it was crucial to supply mankind with a scientific method of inquiry into nature. He rejected the traditional deductive method and founded modern inductive method;

　To expert any great advancement in science, bacon held that we must begin anew. The fresh start required the mind to overcome all the preconceptions, all prejudices, all the assumption, to sweep away all the fallacies and false beliefs, in a word, to break with the past, and to restore man to his lost mastery of the natural world. This was what Bacon called the Great Instauration.

　 5. What were the major differences between Locke’s concept of “social contract” and Hobbes’s?

　①Hobbes’s concept of “social contract” is as follows. To escape anarchy, men enter into a social contrast, by which they submit to the sovereign. In return, men attain peace and security. In his theory, the powers of the sovereign must be absolute, and it is only by the centralization of authority in one person that the evil can be avoided. And the sovereign is not a party himself to the social contract. The subjects of the sovereign cannot either change the form of the government or repudiate the authority of the sovereign. As to the form of government, Hobbes preferred monarchy.

　②Locke tried to show the rational foundation of political society and government. He emphasized that the social contract must be understood as involving the individual’s consent to submit to the will of the majority and that the will of the majority must prevail. For him, absolute monarchy was contrary to the original social contract and dangerous to liberty. For him, the ruler of government is one partner of the social contract.

　③Although both Hobbes and Locke used the term “social contract”, they differ fundamentally. First, Hobbes argued that men enter into a social contract to escape the state of war, for, in his view, men are enemies and at war with each other. Locke argued that men are equal and that individuals surrender their rights to one man, the sovereign whose power is absolute. Locke argued that the individuals surrender their rights to the community as a whole. According to him, by majority vote a representative is chosen, but his power is not absolute. If he fails to implement the people’s will, the people have the right to overthrow him.

　6. How did Locke justify rebellion against government?

　Locke believed that the ruler of government is one partner of the social contract. If the ruler substitutes his arbitrary will for the laws and shows no regard for people’s wills, in a word, if he violates the social contract, the government is effectively dissolved. When the government is dissolved. Rebellion is justified. As to who is to judge when circumstance render rebellion legitimate, Locke replied, “The people shall be the judge.”

　7. What is the theme of John Milton’s Paradise Lost?

　The theme of Milton’s Paradise Lost is the fall of men: man’s disobedience and the loss thereupon of the Paradise, with its prime cause-Satan. In this epic poem, the evil, rebellious, courageous, heroic and tragic Satan is the most successfully portrayed character and is different from the traditional image.

　8. What is Descartes’ method of Cartesian doubt? What is its significance?

　Descartes employed methodic doubt with a view to discovering whether there was an indubitable truth. And he expressed this truth in this famous motto: “I doubt, therefore I think: I think, therefore I am.” This Cartesian doubt is the most important point in his philosophy. According to Descartes, “I think therefore I am” makes mind more certain than matter. He believed that is thinking is one that doubts, understands, conceives, affirms, denies, wills, imagines, and feels. Doubting is thinking, thinking is the essence of mind. So he concluded that knowledge of things that we conceive very clearly and distinctly are true, and that knowledge of things must be by the mind. As to the senses, he believed that they are not dependable.

　9. Who was the most well—known writer in the 17th century French literature? Say something about one of his major works.

　Corneille, Racine and Moliere were the most well-known writers in the 17th century French literature. Corneille’s masterpiece was Le Cid which shows the intense conflict between love and duty. One of the representative tragedies of

　 Racine is Phaedra which tells the story of the overwhelming passion of Phaedra for her stepson. The theme of the play is the conflict of passion with reason. Tartuffe is one of Moliere’s best known comedies. In this play, he exposes religious hypocrisy.

　10. What are some of the characteristics of Baroque art?

　Baroque art, flourished first in Italy, and then spread to Spain, Portugal, France in south Europe and to Flander and the Netherland in the North. It was characterized by dramatic intensity and sentimental appeal with a lot of emphasis on light and color. The representatives were Bernini, Michelangelo Caravaggio, Borromini, Rubens, Velazquez, Rembrandt, etc.

　In architecture, it referred to architecture of the period with its proliferation of ornament. Later the term “baroque” was applied to paintings and music. In music, the new art represented a transformation of its elements into a swelling, emotional style.

　Division six: the Age of Enlightenment

　启蒙运动

　1. When and where did the Enlightenment take place?

　The Enlightenment was an intellectual movement originating in France, which attracted widespread support among the ruling and intellectual classes of Europe and North America in the second half of the 18th century.

　2. Why the Enlightenment is also called “the Age of Reason”?

　The Enlightenment characterizes the efforts by certain European writers to use critical reason to free minds from prejudice, unexamined authority and oppression by Church or State. Therefore it is called the Age of Reason.

　3. What were Locke and Newton’s influence on the Enlightenment?

　Locke and Newton were the two most important forerunners of the Enlightenment in the 17th century. Locke’s materialist theory attributed the origin if ideas to sensations inscribed on the blank slate of mind. Newton’s theory of gravitation further demonstrated to the world that the universe was governed by laws that could be understood by human mind. Their theories fostered the belief in natural law and universal order and established confidence in human reason.

　4. Who were the philosophes?

　The philosophes refer to these well — known French philosophers in he 18th century: Montesquieu, Voltaire and Rousseau. They popularized and propagated new ideas for the general reading public and were the major force of the Enlightenment.

　5. Who wrote The Spirit of the laws?

　Montesquieu wrote The Spirit of the laws.

　6. What kind of book is Candide?

　Candide is the most famous of Voltaire’s novel. It is a satire on the previous adventure novels of the age, an attack upon the claims of unlimited optimism. It is the story of a naïve and innocent young man who becomes gradually disillusioned.

　7. In which book did Montesquieu discuss the separation of powers?

　Both Montesquieu and Rousseau touched upon the separation of powers, Montesquieu in his The Spirit of the Laws and Rousseau in his The Social Contract.

　8. What is Diderot famous for?

　Diderot is the best known as the editor of the Encyclopédie.

　 9. Was Pope a famous prose writer? Which movement of art and literature was he known to represent?

　 Pope was not a famous prose writer but a great poet. He represented the rationalistic neoclassical movement in literature and has often been called the spokesman in verse of the Age of Reason,

　10. Who is the author of Gulliver’s Travels? What is the story about?

　Jonathan Swift is the author of Gulliver’s Travels. It is a social and political prose satire, in the form of a book of travels. It tells the four voyages by Gulliver, an honest, blunt English ship’s captain, to Lilliput (a land of Pygmies), Brobdingnag (a land of giants), the flying island of Laputa, and finally to the land of the Houyhnhnms , a race of supremely intelligent horses, who are served by the Yahoos, reasonless and conscienceless beasts in the shape of men.

　11. Which book(s) was Defoe chiefly known for?

　Defoe was chiefly known for his novel Robinson Crusoe.

　12. What was Fielding’s major contribution to English literature? Name one of his novels.

　Henry Fielding’s major contribution to English literature was his creation and development of modern novel—a new art from which is realistic, comic, unsentimental, showing contemporary life and manners. He was also the first person to approach the genre with a fully worked-out theory of the novel l. The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling is one of his novels.

　13. What is an epistolary novel?

　An epistolary novel is a novel in which the stories are told in a series of letters.

　14. What is Dr. Johnson well known for?

　Dr. Johnson is well known for being the editor of A Dictionary of the English Language, the first great English dictionary.

　15. What were the two periodical to which Addison and Steele contributed essays?

　The two periodicals to which Addison and Steele contributed essays were The Talter and The Spectator.

　16. Which essay was Lessing’s major contribution to aesthetic theory?

　Lessing’s major contribution to aesthetic theory was his essay Laocoon.

　17. Are Faust and The Sorrows of Young Werther novels? Who wrote them?

　Faust and The Sorrows of Young Werther were both written by Geothe. Faust is a tragedy chiefly in verse. The Sorrows of Young Werther is an epistolary novel.

　18. Which play by Schiller is widely known in China?

　Schiller’s play Cabal and Love is widely known in China,

　19. Who first proposed the nebula hypothesis?

　Kant was the first one to propose the nebular hypothesis.

　20. Give the full titles of Kant’s three most important critiques.

　Kant’s three most important critiques are: Critique of Pure Reason, Critique of Practical Reason, and Critique of Judgment.

　21. What are the major characteristics of Rococo Art?

　Rococo art is characterizes by elaborate ornamentation imitating shellwork and foliage and it has a curving and elastic pattern. It was luxurious, sensual and delicate, characterizing the taste of a pleasure class. It was not a style in fine arts, but a style in such minor arts as furniture, tapestries, clocks and ceiling chandeliers.

　22. Who were the three best—known composers of the “Viennese School”? Do you know any of Mozart’s works?

　The three best-known composers of the “Viennese School” are Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven.

　Division nine: Realism

　现实主义

　1. When and in what country did realism movement arise?

　The Realist movement arose in the 50s of the 19th century and had its origin in France.

　2. What is the chief difference between Romanticism and Realism?

　①In art and literature realism came as a protest against the falseness and sentimentality which realists thought they saw in romantic fiction

　②If romanticism allows full play to the imagination and stresses love of beauty and interest in the past, the central issues of life for realists tend to be ethical or issues of conduct

　 ③And their democratic attitude tended to make them value the individual very highly and to regard characterization as the centre of the novel.

　④In this sense, realism means more than a literary method; it defines a particular kind of subject matter –the surface details, the common—place actions and the tragedies of the ordinary people constitute the chief matter if realist movement.

　⑤Its language was simple, clear, and direct, while the tone was often comic, frequently satiric.

　3. What were the conditions in western Europe in the 1840s?

　In 1848 there was revolution throughout Europe. And once again the revolution started in France and was followed by a series of revolution in other parts of Europe.

　4. Who were the important French and English realist novelists? Name a few of their works.

　⑴The important France writers and some of their works:

　Stendhal: The Red and the Black

　Balzac: Le Pere Goriot, La Cousine Bette, The Human Comedy

　Flaubert: Madame Bovary

　Zola: Les Rougen-Macquarts

　Maupassant: The Necklace, The Piece of String

　⑵English realist novelists and some of their works:

　Dickens: Hard Times, Black House, David Copperfield

　George Eliot: The Mill on the Floss, Middlemarch

　Thackeray: Vanity Fair

　Hardy: Jude the Obscure, Tess of the D’Urberyvilles, Far from the Madding Crown, The Return of the Native

　George Bernard Shaw: Heartbreak House, The Doctor’s Dilemma, Major Barbara

　5. Who has been called “the French Dickens” and who “the English Balzac”? Why?

　Charles Dickens has been called “the English Balzac,” and Balzac has been called “ the French Dickens.” Both are realist writers, both depict many walks of life in their novels and touches on most fields of knowledge.

　6. Explain “A novel is a mirror walking along the road.”

　This is Stendhal’s words. It tells that the realists wanted a truthful representation in their works of contemporary life and manners. They thought of their method as observational and objective.

　7. Can you account for the great achievement of Russian literature in the nineteenth century?

　It was no until the eighteenth century, when Peter the Great carried through the reforms that Russians really came into contact with the literature of Western Europe. Between 1700 and 1815 Russia absorbed what she could of the classical Renaissance, classicism, neo-classicism, etc. after 1815 modern Russian literature began at once with an enormous power and full of vigour. Gogol was born in 1821 and Tolstoy, in 1828. besides them was a host of other writers. At one step, literature in Russia raised itself from nothingness to the centre of Russian life.

　The beginnings of modern Russian literature are to be traced to the Napoleonic wars. Napoleon had tried to invade Moscow. The army was defeated not by the Russian army but by the unfavorable conditions: cold and hunger. Later the Russian participated in the battle of Waterloo and many intelligent young Russians spent enough time in France to become acquainted with the ideas of democracy. They became “dangerous men” when they returned to Russia, where anyone who should say anything against the government was punished by severe sentences to labour in Siberia. Therefore the political and philosophical aspirations of the Russian people expressed themselves in the form of literature, and literature became the voice of the people.

　8. Who among all the European novelists of the twentieth century?

　Dostoyevsky.

　9. What is the book for which Whitman is famous throughout the world?

　Leaves of Grass.

　10. Who is regarded as the father of American literature? What did Hemingway say about him?

　Mark Twain was regarded as the father of American literature. Hemingway thought highly of him, as he put it, “All modern literature comes from one book by Mark Twain, called Huckleberry Finn…”

　Division ten: Modernism and Other Trends

　现代主义及其他

　1. What are the most salient characteristics of the modernist movement?

　①Modernism has been called “the tradition of the new”. It was characterized by a conscious rejection of establishment rules, traditions and conventions. It strove to reflect 20th century’s social and political changes. It provided fresh ways of looking at man’s position and function in the universal.

　②Modernism has also been called the “dehumanization of art”. It pushes into the background traditional humanistic notions of the individual and society. Yet, it is not divorced from the past. It restates, in new terms, the same questions about existence and human nature found in former works of art.

　③Modernism has also become the synonym of revolution in form. The term “modernism” is reserved for more experimental and innovative modern works.

　④Modernism is indebted much to Freud and many other theorists. The modern tradition is pluralistic, marked by different ways, experimental and traditional, in which it embodies 20th century.

　2. In what historical context did the Modernist movement take place?

　①The World WarⅠtook place from 1914 to 1918. Ten million people were killed or missing and many more were wounded during the war. When this massive manslaughter was going on in most parts of Europe, a socialist Russia was born in 1917. From then on, the Russian working class established the world’s first democratic government of the workers and peasant.

　②After the World War, economic crisis in all the imperialist countries deepened. Everywhere prices were altered and international tensions mounted. All aspects of Western culture, including art, literature, theatre, education and science were shaken and given new direction

　 ③The World WarⅡ, the most destructive war in history, was fought between 1939—1945. This time, the war was not confined to European continent. More than 17million members of the armed forces of the various countries were killed.

　④The war turned out to be a victory for democracy over fascism; it strained the economic capabilities of the major nations and left many countries on the verge of collapse.

　3. Who was Freud? In what ways did his theory influence the modernists?

　Modernists were very much indebted to Sigmund Freud. He was the “father” of psychoanalysis, a new school of psychology embodying revolution and controversial views of human behavior.

　 His books entitled The Interpretation of Dreams, Three Contributions to the Sexual Theory and The Ego and Id had a profound influence upon the modernist movement. In his theory, the unconscious is emphasized and human sexuality is given prime importance in analyzing human behavior. His discovery opened up a new dimension for the modernists, who later strove to explore this new “inner” reality in many of their works.

　4. Who is the author of The Waste land？

　T.S. Eliot is the author of The Waste land

　5. Who wrote the novel Remembrance of Things Past?

　Marcel Proust wrote the novel Remembrance of Things Past.

　6. Which book(s) is Joyce famous for?

　Joyce is famous for his Ulysses, Finnegans Wake, Dubliners, and A portrait of a Artist as a Young Man.

　7. What is the Bloomsbury group?

　Virginia Woolf was a very famous writer. Quite early in her career, her house in Bloomsbury became a literary and art centre. The artists, critics and writers who were attracted to it became known as the Bloomsbury group.

　8. What are the major characteristics of Faulkner’s novels?

　①Faulkner wrote about America’s south and used the method of the stream of consciousness and multiple—narrators.

　②In his novels, he created a Mississippi community modeled on his own country. In this community, he put the characters he observed, using brilliant and complicated literary techniques to tell their stories.

　③He wrote of conflicts: the conflicts of different generations, of social classes, of races, and of men.

　④His philosophy was that the brotherhood of man would triumph.

　9. What makes out Hemingway’s style of writing?

　Hemingway is known for his mastery of the art of modern narration. He helped to accomplish a revolution in literary style and language. He tried to cut out all words that were not strictly necessary. His style is characterized by short and simple sentences with very few adjectives and adverbs. But they are full of emotion.

　10. Who is the major figure in 20th century German literature?

　Thomas Mann is the major figure in the 20th century German literature.

　11. What place does Gorky hold in 20th century Russian literature?

　Gorky was the founder of the literary doctrine of socialist realism and has been regarded as the greatest Russian Literary figure of the 20th century. Many of this works are largely autobiographical. Mother, is now considered to a classic of socialist realism. The trilogy containing Childhood, My Apprenticeship and My University depicts a panorama of Russian society of his time.

　12. How do you describe “Angry Young Men” in England?

　“Angry Young Men” was a term referring to a group of English writers who found they to be social misfits. They felt they were socially stateless, even though they were university graduates. They were very sensitive to the undesirable things of the society. The term “Angry Young Men” came to be widely used only after the publication of John Osborne’s play Look Back in Anger.

　13. Who belonged to the Beat Generation?

　 Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac belonged to the Beat Generation.

　14. Who wrote the poem Howl?

　Allen Ginsberg wrote the poem Howl.

　15. What is new about the Noveau Roman?

　① The New Novel pays much attention “to the ties that exist between objects, gestures, and situations, avoiding all psychological and ideological commentary on the actions of the characters”.

　 ② The New Novel tends to be objective. Human characters are on an equal footing with things. Things and their interactions are the major interest of these novelists. Plot, action, narrative, ideas and analysis of characters are no longer important. They try to avoid taking sides when they come to description of characters, making no distinction between good and bad or between important and trivial. Their characters are often shapeless and sometimes even nameless.

　16. What is the key concept of Existentialism?

　The key concept of Existentialism is that the man is nothing but what he makes of himself. Existence is believed to precede and decide essence. As an individual and active existence, each man must have the freedom of choice, and create his own existence.

　17. What do Beckett and Ionesco intend to convey through their plays?

　They wanted to convey the idea of irrationality of events.

　18. What characterizes Black Humour? Which particular book represents Black Humour?

　Black Humour is a tern derived from Black Comedy. Its origin can be traced back to Shakespeare’s time. But now the term is usually used to refer to some Western, especially American post-World WarⅡwriters. Black Humour is a kind of desperate humour. It is the laughter at tragic things. In his meaningless world, man’s fate is decided by incomprehensible powers. We can’t do anything about it, therefore we may as well laugh. Joseph Heller’s Novel Catch-22 is regarded as the major work of Black Hunour.

　19. Who are the best known artists and musicians in modern times? What do you know about masterpieces?

　 Fauvism

　Henri Matisse: The Joy of Life and Harmony in Red

　Expressionism

　Emil Nolde: The Prophet, Christ Among Children

　Max Beckmann: Dream

　Paul Klee: Twittering Birds

　Wassily Kandinsky: SketchⅠfor Composition Ⅶ

　Cubism

　Pablo Picasso: Demoiselles d’ Avignon, The Musicians

　Georges Braque: Le Courrier

　Fururism

　Umberto Boccioni: The City Rises

　Dadaism

　Marcel Duchamp: The Bride

　Surrealism

　 Salvador Dali: Persistence of Memory

　Music

　 Arnold Schoenberg: Violin Concerto, Op. 36, Piano Concerto, Op. 42

　Igor Stravinsky: The Rite of Spring, The Firebird

　Bela Bartok: Concerto for Orchestra.