完形填空The Beg i n n i ng of America n LiteratureAme

完形填空

The Beg i n n i ng of America n Literature

American has always been a land of beginnings._____(51)Europeans“discovered”

America in the fifteenth century,the mysterious New World became for many people a genuine hope of a new life,an escape from_____(52)and persecution,a chance to start again.We can say that,as nation,America begins with that hope.When,______(53),does American literature begin?

American literature begins with American experiences.Long before the first colonists ar-rived,before Christopher Columbus,before the Northmen who“found”America about the year 1,000,_____(54)Americans lived here.Each tribe’s literature was______(55)woven into the fabric of daily life and reflected the unmistakably American experience of lining with the land._______(56)kind of experience,one filled with fear and excitement,found its expression in the reports that Columbus and other explorers________(57)home in Spain,French and Eng-lish.In addition,the journals of the people who lived and died in the New England wilderness tell unforgettable tales of hard and sometimes______(58)experiences of those______(59) years.

Experience,then,is the key to early American literature .The New World______(60)a great variety of experiences,and these experiences______(61)a wide variety of expressions by an even wider variety of early American writers.These writers,included John Smith,______ (62)spent only two-and-a-half years on the American continent. They included Jonathan Ed-wards and William Byrd,who______(63)of themselves as British subjects,never______(64)a revolution that would create a United States of America with a literature of its own.Ameni-can Indians,explorers,Puritan ministers,frontier wives,plantation owner-they are all the______(65)of the first American literature.

58._________

A. favourable

B. unforgettable

C. heartbreaking

D. significant