单选题 It was not until modern scholarship uncovered the secret of reading Middle English that we could understand that Chaucer, far from being a rude versifier, was a perfectly accomplished technician, and that his verse is rich in music and elegant to the highest degree. Chaucer's own urbane personality is a delight to encounter in his books, He is avowedly a bookworm, yet few poets observe nature with more freshness and delight. He is a master of genial satire but can sympathize with true piety and goodness with as much pleasure as he attacks the hypocritical.
It is not an uncommon estimate of Chaucer that he must be counted among the few greatest of English poets. In range of interest he is surpassed only by Shakespeare. He was recognized already in the Renaissance, when it came to England, as the Father of English Poetry. He was a man of wide learning and wrote with ease on religion, philosophy, ethics, science, rhetoric. No man has more completely summed up an age than Chaucer has his, yet the people of his great poems, are revealed as men and women are in all times.
Master of verse, as Chaucer was, he introduced into English poetry many verse forms: the heroic couplet (in which form most of The Canterbury Tales is written), verse written in iambic pentameter, rhyming aa, bb, cc, etc.--a form that was to be very important in the eighteenth century; the rime royal, a seven-line stanza in iambic pentameters, rhyming ababbcc (Troilus and Criseyde); the terza rima, three-line stanzas, rhyming aba, bcb cdc, etc.(which he imitated from Dante, in some of his minor poems); and the eight-line iambic pentameter stanza, rhyming ababbcbc (The Monk's Tale).

单选题 This passage does not indicate that Chaucer wrote on the topic of ______.
【正确答案】 D
【答案解析】这篇短文并没有说明乔叟撰写有关政治论题的著作。第二段指出,他是一位知识广博的人,轻松地撰写宗教、哲学、伦理学、科学和修辞学方面的著作,并没有提到政治著作。
单选题 Chaucer was unpopular in the 18th century because ______.
【正确答案】 C
【答案解析】乔叟在18世纪不受欢迎,因为人们不知道如何阅读他的诗歌。根据第一段首句,直到当代的学者们揭示出解读中古英语的奥秘,我们才了解到,乔叟决不是一位粗鲁的诗人,而是一位卓有成就的技师。他的诗富于乐感,雅致到了极点。
单选题 The title below that best expresses the main idea of this passage is ______.
【正确答案】 D
【答案解析】表达本文大意的是最佳标题是:英国伟大的诗人之一。A(Chaucer-- Father of Poetry)不准确,乔叟是英国诗歌之父,而不是世界诗歌之父,如果标题改为 Chaucer--Father of English Poetry则非常合适。B(Chaucer-Shakespeare's Peer)只是文中的一个论据,不适合作为本文的标题。C(The Crudities of Chauce's Poetry)的意思是:乔叟诗歌的粗糙之处,与文章的基调不符。全文总体上赞扬乔叟,而没有贬低他的意思。
单选题 The Monk's Tale is a poem containing stanzas of ______.
【正确答案】 C
【答案解析】《僧侣的故事》是一首每节含有八行的诗歌。根据第三段最后一句,《僧侣的故事》的每一节八行,属抑扬格,有五个音步,韵式为ababbebc。