单选题 In 1885 Owen Wister (1850～1938) recorded that "it won't be a century before the West is simply the true America, with thought, type, and life of its own" and he wanted "to be the hand that once, for all, chronicled and laid bare the virtues and the vices of this extraordinary phase of American social progress." He never became that self-envisioned Tolstoi of the old West, but in 1902 The Virginian was published. It won instant success and skyrocketed its author to fame. It is still the most popular "Western" novel ever published and the master design for the fiction of the Wild West.
The Virginian established a literary form, a formula popularly known as "horse opera", whose conventions, cliches, and values have reappeared in novels and short stories, in movies and television serials, ever since. The romantic cowboy is the hero and gentleman, one of those "good men in the humbler walks of life", who sees through shams, defends justice and a lady's honor, shoots it out with the villain and conquers evil. Because of The Virginian, Wister created a character who is the original type for the Western folk hero. He represents the embodiment of certain American ideals--a man who is equal to all occasions, who shows independence of action, a man who keeps his word who is "a broad-guage fellow living among narrow-guage folk". But the literary device and cowboy code which Wister established dictated that the hero must kill the bad man. This necessity for sanctioning murder and romanticizing of the cowboy as a gentleman prohibited The Virginian and the genre it created from becoming serious fiction, or even an authentic product of the western experience. Instead of achieving his ambition, therefore, Wister gave us a sort of American folk epic, the cowboy story.

单选题 Owen Wister believed ______.
A. the way of life in the West in 1885 was a passing phase
B. the cowboy in 1885 symbolized the typical American male.
C. the West would be always isolated from the rest of the country by its moral code.
D. none of these.

单选题 The reference to Wister as a self-envisioned Tolstoi implies that ______.
A. The Virginian is as great a novel as War and Peace
B. Wister underestimated himself as an author
C. Wister wanted to be a writer of light novels
D. as Tolstoi had laid bare the virtues and vices of Russian society, so Wister would do for the society of the American West.

单选题 Stylistically, The Virginian is noted for the fact that it ______.
A. was written according to a pre-established formula.
B. established the formula known as "horse opera".
C. followed the literary conventions of the day.
D. abandoned American conventions in favor of foreign ones.'

单选题 The popularity which was accorded The Virginian indicates that Wister ______.
A. realized his stated ambition
B. gave us an authentic account of the western experience
C. became the American Tolstoi
D. had written an account of the cowboy which appealed to American aspirations

单选题 The author of the article believes that ______.
A. The Virginian did not deserve the success it won
B. Wister made a definite contribution to American literature
C. Wister was a hack
D. cowboy stories should be considered serious fiction