新GRE长篇阅读题精选
The major difficulty, however, with the findings of critics such as de Jongh is that it is not easy to assess the multiplicity of levels in which Dutch viewers interpreted these pictures. De Jongh’s followers typically regard the pictures as purely symbolic. Not every object within Dutch paintings need be interpreted in terms of the gloss given to its equivalent representation in the emblem books. Not every foot warmer is to be interpreted in terms of the foot warmer in Rowmer Visscher’s Sinnepoppen of 1614, not every bridle is an emblem of restraint (though many were indeed just that).
To maintain as Brown does, that the two children in Netscher’s painting A Lady Teaching a Child to Read stand for industry and idleness is to fail to understand that the painting has a variety of possible meanings, even though the picture undoubtedly carriers unmistakable symbolic meanings, too. Modern Art historians may well find the discovery of parallels between a painting and a specific emblem exciting, they may, like seventeenth-century viewers, search for the double that lie behind many paintings. But seventeenth-century response can hardly be reduced to the level of formula. To suggest otherwise is to imply a laboriousness of mental process that may well characterize modern interpretations of seventeenth-century Dutch Art, but that was, for the most part, not characteristic in the seventeenth century.
1. The passage is primarily concerned with which of the following?
A. Reconciling two different points of view about how art reflects
B. Criticizing a traditional method of interpretation
C. Tracing the development of an innovative scholarly approach
D. Describing and evaluating a recent critical approach
E. Describing a long-standing controversy and how it was resolved
2. The author of the passage mentions bridles in the highlighted portion of the passage most likely in order to
A. Suggest that restraint was only one of the many symbolic meanings attached to bridles
B. Provide an example of an everyday, physical object that was not endowed with symbolic meaning
C. Provide an example of an object that modern critics have endowed with symbolic meaning different from the meaning assigned it by seventeenth-century Dutch artists
D. Provide an example of an object with symbolic meaning that was not always used as a symbol E. Provide an example of an everyday object that appears in a significant number of seventeenth century Dutch paintings
3. Which of the following best describes the function of the last paragraph of the passage?
A. It provides specific applications of the critical approach introduced in the preceding paragraph
B. It present a caveat about the critical approach discussed in the preceding paragraph
C. It presents the research on which a theory presented in the preceding paragraph is based
D. It refutes a theory presented in the preceding paragraph and advocates a return to a more traditional approach
E. It provides further information about the unusual phenomenon described in the preceding paragraph
4. The passage suggests which of the following about emblem books in seventeenth-century Holland?
A. They confirm that seventeenth century Dutch painting depict some objects and scenes rarely found in daily life.
B. They are more useful than vernacular literature in providing information about the symbolic content of seventeenth-century Dutch painting.
C. They have been misinterpreted by art critics, such as de Jongh, who claim seventeenth-century
Dutch paintings contain symbolic meaning
D. They are not useful in interpreting seventeenth-century Dutch landscape painting.
E. They contain material that challenges the assumptions of the nineteenth-century critics about seventeenth-century Dutch painting.
答案： D D B E
Passage 3
In February 1848 the people of Paris rose in revolt against the constitutional monarchy of Louis-Philippe. Despite the existence of excellent narrative accounts, the February Days, as this revolt is called, have been largely ignored by social historians of the past two decades. For each of the three other major insurrections in nineteenth-century Paris—July 1830, June 1848, and May 1871—there exists at least a sketch of participants’ backgrounds and an analysis, more or less rigorous, of the reasons for the occurrence of the uprisings. Only in the case of the February Revolution do we lack a useful description of participants that might characterize it in the light of what social history has taught us about the process of revolutionary mobilization.
Two reasons for this relative neglect seem obvious. First, the insurrection of February has been overshadowed by that of June. The February Revolution overthrew a regime, to be sure, but met with so little resistance that it failed to generate any real sense of historical drama. Its successor, on the other hand, appeared to pit key socioeconomic groups in a life-or-death struggle and was widely seen by contemporary observers as marking a historical departure. Through their interpretations, which exert a continuing influence on our understanding of the revolutionary process, the impact of the events of June has been magnified, while, as an unintended consequence, the significance of the February insurrection has been diminished. Second, like other “successful” insurrections, the events of February failed to generate the most desirable kinds of historical records. Although the June insurrection of 1848 and the Paris Commune of 1871 would be considered watersheds of nineteenth-century French history by any standard, they also present the social historian with a signal advantage: these failed insurrections created a mass of invaluable documentation as a by-product of authorities’ efforts to search out and punish the rebels.