单选题Questions 14—16 are based on the following passage. You now have 15 seconds to read Questions 14—16.

单选题American humor and American popular heroes were born together, The first popular heroes of the new nation were comic heroes, and the first popular humor of the new nation was the antics of its hero-clowns. The heroic and the comic were combined in novel American proportions in popular literature. The heroic themes are obvious enough and not much different from those in the legends of other times and places: Achilles, Beowulf, Siegfried, Roland, and King Arthur. The American Davy Crockett legends repeat the familiar pattern of the Old World heroic story: the pre-eminence of a mighty hero whose fame in myth has a tenuous basis in fact; the remarkable birth and precocious strength of the hero; single combats in which he distinguished himself against antagonists, both man and beast; vows and boasts; pride of the hero in his weapons, his dog, and his woman. Davy Crockett conquered man and beast with a swaggering nonchalance. He overcame animals by force of body and will. He killed four wolves at the age of six; he hugged a bear to death; he killed a rattlesnake with his teeth. He mastered the forces of nature. Crockett's most famous natural exploit was saving the earth on the coldest day in history. First, he climbed a mountain to determine the trouble. Then he rescued all creation by squeezing bear-grease on the earth's frozen axis and over the sun's icy face. He whistled, "Push along, keep moving!" The earth gave a grunt and began moving. Neither the fearlessness nor the bold huntsman's prowess was peculiarly American. Far more distinctive was the comic quality, All heroes are heroic; few are also clowns. What made the American popular hero heroic also made him comic. "May be," said Crockett, "you'll laugh at me, and not at my book." The ambiguity of American life and the vagueness which laid the continent open to adventure, which made the land a rich storehouse of the unexpected, which kept vocabulary ungoverned and the language fluid — this same ambiguity suffused both the comic and the heroic. In a world full of the unexpected, readers of the Crockett legends were never quite certain whether to laugh or to applaud, or whether what they saw and heard was wonderful, awful, or ridiculous.

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单选题We can describe Kenneth Davis as______.

单选题Who is famous for his historical novel of Rob Roy? A. Scott B. Richard Sheridan C. Ben Johnson D. Bernard Shaw

单选题The following material can be used to design costume EXCEPT______.

单选题 The Great Wall of China Walls and wall building have played a very important role in Chinese culture. These people, from the dim mists of prehistory have been wail-conscious; from the Neolithic period when ramparts of pounded earth were used to the Communist Revolution, walls were an essential part of any village. Not only towns and villages; the houses and the temples within them were somehow walled, and the houses also had no windows overlooking the street, thus giving the feeling of wandering around a huge maze. The name for "city" in Chinese (cheng) means wall, and over these walled cities, villages, houses and temples presides the god of walls and mounts, whose duties were, and still are, to protect and be responsible for the welfare of the inhabitants. Thus a great and extremely laborious task such as constructing a wall, which was supposed to-run throughout the country, must not have seemed such an absurdity. However, it is indeed a common mistake to perceive the Great Wall as a single architectural structure, and it would also be erroneous to assume that it was built during a single dynasty, for the building of the wall spanned the various dynasties, and each of these dynasties somehow contributed to the refurbishing and the construction of a wall, whose foundations had been laid many centuries ago. It was during the fourth and third century B.C. that each warring state started building walls to protect their kingdoms, both against one another and against the northern nomads. Especially three of these states: the Chin, the Chao and the Yen, corresponding respectively to the modem provinces of Shensi, Shansi and Hopei, over and above building walls that surrounded their kingdoms, also laid the foundations on which Chin Shih Huang Di would build his first continuous Great Wall. The role that the Great Wall played in the growth of Chinese economy was an important one. Throughout the centuries many settlements were established along the new border. The garrison troops were instructed to reclaim wasteland and to plant crops on it, roads and canals were built, to mention just a few of the works carried out. All these undertakings greatly helped to increase the country's trade and cultural exchanges with many remote areas and also with the southern, central and western parts of Asia--the formation of the Silk Route. Builders, garrisons, artisans, farmers and peasants left behind a trail of objects, including inscribed tablets, household articles, and written work, which have become extremely valuable archaeological evidence to the study of defence institutions of the Great Wall and the everyday life of these people who lived and died along the wall.

单选题According to author, the failure of the Seattle meeting is chiefly caused by______.

单选题Confidence in the economy was expressed by all of the following EXCEPT

单选题 Questions 17—20 are based on the following news story.

单选题It was not "the comet of the century" experts predicted it might be. However, Kohoutek has provided a bonanza of scientific information. It was first spotted 370 million miles from Earth, by an astronomer who was searching the sky for asteroids, and after whom the comet was named. Scientists who tracked Kohoutek the ten months before it passed the Earth predicted the comet would be a brilliant spectacle. But Kohoutek fell short of these predictions, disappointing millions of amateur sky watchers, when it proved too pale to be seen with the unaided eye. Researchers were very happy nonetheless with the new information they were able to glean from their investigation of the comet. Perhaps the most significant discovery was the identification of two important chemical compounds—methyl cyanide and hydrogen cyanide—never before seen in comets, but found it the far reaches of interstellar space. This discovery revealed new clues about the origin of comets. Most astronomers agree that comets are primordial remnants from the formation of the solar system, but whether they were born between Jupiter and Neptune or much farther out toward interstellar space has been the subject of much debate, If compounds no more complex than ammonia and methane, key components of Jupiter, were seen in comets, it would suggest that comets form within the planetary orbits. But more complex compounds, such as the methyl cyanide found in Kohoutek, point to formation far beyond the planets; there the deep freeze of space has kept them unchanged.

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