单选题 At the tail end of the 19th century, Friedrich Nietzsche suggested that natural history—which he saw as a war against fear and superstition—ought to be narrated "in such a way that everyone who hears it is irresistibly inspired to strive after spiritual and bodily health and vigour", and he grumbled that artists had yet to discover the right language to do this.
"None the less," Nietzsche admitted, "the English have taken admirable steps in the direction of that ideal ... the reason is that they [natural history books] are written by their most distinguished scholars—whole, complete and fulfilling natures."
The English language tradition of nature writing and narrating natural history is gloriously rich, and although it may not make any bold claims to improving health and wellbeing, it does a good job—for readers and the subjects of the writing. Where the insights of field naturalists meet the legacy of poets such as Clare, Wordsworth, Hughes and Heaney, there emerges a language as vivid as any cultural achievement.
That this language is still alive and kicking and read every day in a newspaper is astounding. So to hold a century"s worth of country diaries is, for an interloper like me, both an inspiring and humbling experience. But is this the best way of representing nature, or is it a cultural default? Will the next century of writers want to shake loose from this tradition? What happens next?
Over the years, nature writers and country diarists have developed an increasingly sophisticated ecological literacy of the world around them through the naming of things and an understanding of the relationships between them. They find ways of linking simple observations to bigger issues by remaining in the present, the particular. For writers of my generation, a nostalgia for lost wildlife and habitats and the business of bearing witness to a war of attrition in the countryside colours what we"re about. The anxieties of future generations may not be the same.
Articulating the "wild" as a qualitative character of nature and context for the more quantitative notion of biodiversity will, I believe, become a more dynamic cultural project. The re-wilding of lands and seas, coupled with a re-wilding of experience and language, offers fertile ground for writers. A response to the anxieties springing from climate change, and a general fear of nature answering our continued environmental injustices with violence, will need a reassessment of our feelings for the nature we like—cultural landscapes, continuity, native species—as well as the nature we don"t like—rising seas, droughts, "invasive" species.
Whether future writers take their sensibilities for a walk and, like a pack of wayward dogs unleashed, let them loose in hills and woods to sniff out some fugitive truth hiding in the undergrowth, or choose to honestly recount the this-is-where-I-am, this-is-what-I-see approach, they will be hitched to the values implicit in the language they use. They should challenge these.
Perhaps they will see our natural history as a contributor to the commodification of nature and the obsessive managerialism of our times. Perhaps they will see our romanticism as a blanket thrown over the traumatised victim of the countryside. But maybe they will follow threads we found in the writings of others and find their own way to wonder.

【正确答案】 C

【答案解析】[解析] 对文章的主旨大意的归纳能力。本篇文章内容给人洋洋洒洒、引经据典之感，既有深度，也有广度，有比较，有批评。但是主题还是鲜明的，那就是英国语言拥有的自然写作和叙述的传统。有考生因第一段即引介哲学家Friedrich Nietzsche的话语就选了A，也有不少人选了B，D。这是未能对全文主题有一整体了解，也可能是受了某些考试指导书的影响，以为抓到所谓的“主题句”就抓住文章的主题了。其实作者引用Friedrich Nietzsche的话只是为了证明自己讨论的主题。选项B，D对文辛主题的概括或过于笼统，或过于具体，应予排除。