新GRE长篇阅读题精选
Quite different is the outcome of successful insurrections like those of July 1830 and February 1848. Experiences are retold, but participants typically resume their daily routines without ever recording their activities. Those who played salient roles may become the objects of highly embellished verbal accounts or in rare cases, of celebratory articles in contemporary periodicals. And it is true that the publicly acknowledged leaders of an uprising frequently write memoirs. However, such documents are likely to be highly unreliable, unrepresentative, and unsystematically preserved, especially when compared to the detailed judicial dossiers prepared for everyone arrested following a failed insurrection.
As a consequence, it may prove difficult or impossible to establish for a successful revolution a comprehensive and trustworthy picture of those who participated, or to answer even the most basic questions one might pose concerning the social origins of the insurgents.
1. With which of the following statements regarding revolution would the author most likely agree?
A. Revolutionary mobilization requires a great deal of planning by people representing disaffected groups.
B. The objectives of the February Revolution were more radical than those of the June insurrection.
C. The process of revolutionary mobilization varies greatly from one revolution to the next.
D. Revolutions vary greatly in the usefulness of the historical records that they produce.
E. As knowledge of the February Revolution increases, chances are good that its importance will eventually eclipse that of the June insurrection.
2. Which of the following is the most logical objection to the claim made in the last paragraph?
A. The February Revolution of 1848 is much less significant than the July insurrection of 1830.
B. The backgrounds and motivations of participants in the July insurrection of 1830 have been identified, however cursorily.
C. Even less is known about the July insurrection of 1830 than about the February Revolution of 1848.
D. Historical records made during the July insurrection of 1830 are less reliable than those made during the May insurrection of 1871.
E. The importance of the July insurrection of 1830 has been magnified at the expense of the significance of the February Revolution of 1848.
3. The purpose of the second paragraph is to explain why
A. the people of Paris revolted in February 1848 against the rule of Louis-Philippe
B. there exist excellent narrative accounts of the February Days
C. the February Revolution met with little resistance
D. a useful description of the participants in the February Revolution is lacking
E. the February Revolution failed to generate any real sense of historical drama
4. It can be inferred from the passage that the author considers which of the following essential for understanding a revolutionary mobilization?
A. A comprehensive theory of revolution that can be applied to the major insurrections of the nineteenth century
B. Awareness of the events necessary for a revolution to be successful
C. Access to narratives and memoirs written by eyewitnesses of a given revolution
D. The historical perspective provided by the passage of a considerable amount of time
E. Knowledge of the socioeconomic backgrounds of a revolution’s participants
答案：D B D E
Passage 4
“Blues is for singing,” writes folk musicologist Paul Oliver, and “is not a form of folk song that stands up particularly well when written down.” A poet who wants to write blues can attempt to avoid this problem by poeticizing the form—but literary blues tend to read like bad poetry rather than like refined folk song. For Oliver, the true spirit of the blues inevitably eludes the self-conscious imitator. However, Langston Hughes, the first writer to grapple with these difficulties of blue poetry, in fact succeeded in producing poems that capture the quality of genuine, performed blues while remaining effective as poems. In inventing blues poetry, Hughes solved two problems: first, how to write blues lyrics in such a way that they work on the printed page, and second, how to exploit the blues form poetically without losing all sense of authenticity.
There are many styles of blues, but the distinction of importance to Hughes is between the genres referred to as “folk blues” and “classic blues.” Folk blues and classic blues are distinguished from one another by differences in performers (local talents versus touring professionals), patronage (local community versus mass audience), creation (improvised versus composed), and transmission (oral versus written). It has been a commonplace among critics that Hughes adopted the classic blues as the primary model for his blues poetry, and that he writes his best blues poetry when he tries least to imitate the folk blues. In this view, Hughes’ attempts to imitate the folk blues are too self-conscious, too determined to romanticize the African American experience, too intent on reproducing what he takes to be the quaint humor and naïve simplicity of the folk blues to be successful.