单选题 Perhaps the most striking quality of satiric literature is its freshness, its originality of perspective. Satire rarely offers original ideas. Instead.it presents the familiar in a new form. Satirists do not offer the world new philosophies. What they do is look at familiar conditions from a perspective that makes these conditions seem foolish, harmful, or affected. Satire jars us out of complacence into a pleasantly shocked realization that many of the values that we unquestionably accept are false. Don Quixote makes chivalry seem absurd;Brave New World ridicules the pretensions of science; A Modest Proposal dramatizes starvation by advocating cannibalism. None of these ideas is original. Chivalry was suspect before Cervantes, humanists objected to the claims of pure science before Aldous Huxley, and people were aware of famine before Swift It was not the originality of the idea that made these satires popular. It was the manner of expression, the satire method, that made them interesting and entertaining. Satires are read because they are aesthetically satisfying works of art, not because they are morally wholesome or ethically instructive. They are stimulating and refreshing because with commonsense briskness they brash away illusions and secondhand opinions. With spontaneous irreverence, satire rearranges perspectives, scrambles familiar objects into incongruous combination, and speaks in a personal idiom instead of abstract platitude. Satire exists because there is need for it It has lived because the readers appreciate a refreshing stimulus, an irreverent reminder that they live in a world of platitudinous thinking, cheap moralizing, and foolish philosophy. Satire serves to prod people into an awareness of truth, though rarely to any action on behalf of truth. Satire tends to remind people that much of what they see, hear, and read in popular media is hypocritical .sentimental, and only partially true. Life resembles in only a slight degree the popular image of it Soldiers rarely hold the ideals that movies attribute to them, nor do ordinary citizens devote their lives to unselfish service of humanity. Intelligent people know these things but tend to forget them when they do not hear them expressed.
单选题 What does the passage mainly discuss?
【正确答案】 D
【答案解析】解析:文章指出,讽刺文学是通过独特的新视角来吸引读者的喜爱,它在思想上并没有什么创造性。它用一种新的形式将大家熟悉的事物呈现出来。使那些事物似乎是愚蠢的、有害的或受到影响。第一段Perhaps the most striking quality of satiric literature is its freshness,its originality of per-spective.Satire rarely ofrers original ideas.Instead,it presents the familiar in a new form. Satirists donot offer the world new philosophies.What they do is look at familiar conditions from a perspectivethat makes these conditions seem foolish,harmful,or affected.
单选题 Why does the author mention Don Quixote, Brave New World and A Modest proposal in the first paragraph?
【正确答案】 A
【答案解析】解析:文章指出,讽刺文学是以新的角度将我们熟悉的事物再次呈现在我们的面前,以达到教育读者的目的,为了更好地说明,作者提到三部著名的讽刺文学来证明自己的观点。
单选题 Which of the following can be found in satiric literature?
【正确答案】 B
【答案解析】解析:文章指出,讽刺文学将我们熟知的事物自相矛盾地混杂在一起,并以自己的独特语言风格来表述。第一段最后一句With spontaneous irreverence,satire rearranges perspectives,scrambles famil-iar objects into incongruous combination,and speaks in a personal idiom instead of abstract platitude.
单选题 According to the passage, there is a need for satire because people need to be______.
【正确答案】 C
【答案解析】解析:文章指出,讽刺文学能够向人们指出我们生活在一个思想平凡、道德廉价和愚蠢的哲学世界里。能够让人们认识事物的真相。文章It has lived because the readers appreciate a refreshing stimulus,an irreverent reminder that they live in a world of platitudinous thinking,cheap moralizing,andfoolish philosophy.