[转载]现代大学英语听力4 原文及题目答案 Unit 10 Literature
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Unit 10
Task 1:
【答案】
A.
1) T
2) F
3) F
4) T
5) T
6) F
B.
1) engaging
2) phenomenon，myth
3) ferment，burgeoning
4) history plays，comedies，fantasies，tragedies
5) theatre，companies
6) linguistic
C.
1) each of his plays has its own individuality
2) this sense of language，the importance of words themselves
【原文】
Presenter: It's hard to know where to begin talking about
Shakespeare. No other writer in the story of the world has
succeeded so well in engaging the imaginations of different
generations. He is a cultural phenomenon, a kind of myth; yet
behind that there is the reality of a man, who lived and wrote and
felt, 400 years ago. Who was he? Here's Professor Stanley Wells
from the Shakespeare Institute who is one of the leading
authorities on Shakespeare.
Wells: Shakespeare was a genius who was fortunate in that he was
born
at exactly the right time. He was born at a time, for one thing,
when the English language was in a state of ferment, when it was
burgeoning, when new words were entering the language at an
extraordinary rate. He himself introduced many of them. He was born
at a time when the theatre was developing with extraordinary speed;
when he was born, there were no public theatres in England at all,
but by the time he died, the English theatre had started on a
renaissance of quite amazing power of virtuosity.
Presenter: Shakespeare was born on 26th April, 1564, the son of a
glover and wool dealer in the town of Stratford-on-Avon, in central
England. When he was 18 he roamed a local woman Anne Hathaway, but
sometime soon after this, he moved to London and became an actor in
one of the leading theatre companies of the time. Dr. David Starkey
teaches 18th-century history at the London School of Economics.
London, as he points out, was an exciting place to be.
Starkey: There was a shift taking place, in the quite dramatic
growth of London. One of the things that's striking about
Shakespeare is where his plays were written. Some of them, of
coupe, were produced at court, but they were essentially produced
for this very remarkable city, the city of London--which at the
beginning of the 16th century was an ordinary, big European city of
about 50,000 inhabitants. But by the time you re getting towards
about 1600, its population is multiplying at the rate of a modem
Bombay.
Presenter: When Shakespeare began to write for the stage isn't
known. His first play was probably performed in the early 1590s and
may well have been The Two Gentlemen of Verona. Over the
next 20 years, a cascade of masterpieces—history plays, comedies,
fantasies, and tragedies—flowed from his pen. As Stanley Wells
says, their variety is astonishing.
Wells: Shakespeare wrote at the rate of about two plays a year.
This is a good rate, but it's not the rate of somebody who is
expanding all his energy at extraordinary speed and therefore is in
danger of repeating himself. To me, one of the great things about
Shakespeare is that each of his plays has its own individuality.
He's constantly experimenting. It's astonishing that the same man,
for example, could have written the light, delicate comedy of
The Comedy of Errors and also the profound, thoughtful
tragedy of King Lear. And yet those two plays have things in
common. This range is one of his greatest characteristics.
Presenter: In performance, most of Shakespeare's plays take between
two and three and a half hours They're written in a mixture of
prose and poetry, in a great range of styles: some very wordy and
artificial, others much plainer. Every linguistic technique seems
to be found Shakespeare: bawdy sexual jokes, intellectual puns and
beautiful romantic metaphors. It's as if the language is being
squeezed like clay into lots of different shapes. As David Starkey
points out, words and the meaning of words were becoming enormously
important to people in the late 16th century.
Starkey: For them, there was a single medium that dominated, which
is words. Their world was a verbal world. It was a world that
existed through words, through language. And so words are
everywhere, everything is in words. And it's this sense of
language, the importance of words themselves, which is the key to
Shakespeare.
Task 2:
【答案】
A.
1) Shakespeare in his plays is very deeply concerned with moral
issues.
2) Shakespeare clearly valued Christian virtues like honesty and
love and trust.
3) People learn about Shakespeare's own views by looking at his
sonnets.
4) The Tempest is the last play that Shakespeare
wrote.
B.
1) c
2) a
3) b
4) c
C.
twofold，works，great performances，over the centuries，a part of
culture，extending far beyond the West，a great writer，a great
presence，dominating status
【原文】
Wells: Shakespeare in his plays is very deeply concerned with moral
issues. We're constantly invited to think about the reasons why
people do what they do, about the justification for them.., but I
think one of Shakespeare's greatnesses is that he doesn't attempt
to solve these moral questions in any way. And this is one of the
reasons for the warmth we feel in Shakespeare, for the deep
humanity we feel in Shakespeare—that we feel all the time, with his
greatest characters, that he's more concerned with understanding
them than judging them. So that these plays don t end in moral
judgments: They end having given us fully rounded portraits of
people who have the same sorts of difficulties in living as
everybody else does at any time in human existence.
Presenter: Although Shakespeare clearly valued Christian virtues
like honesty and love and trust none of his plays conveys a neat
moral; They seem to emerge from life itself, with all its
complexities, and it's very hard indeed to gain any sense from them
of what Shakespeare's own views were. We know that while he was
writing plays he also had a career as a leading actor, but no
biography of him was written, and the tributes to him after his
death shed no light on his personality. In trying to probe this
mystery, people have usually looked not at his plays, but at his
poems—in particular, at a sequence of highly elaborate poems called
'sonnets', which he probably wrote in the 1590s.
Wells: They're very varied. Some of them are very formal; some of
them are beautiful and have become appreciated in anthologies of
verse, as some of the greatest love poetry in the language. But
some of them are deeply tortured utterances that could almost be
the soliloquies of a suffering character in one of the plays. Some
of them seem to take us into the heart of Shakespeare himself, as a
man who suffered a very great deal from emotions turbulence, from a
struggle in his affections between his love, on the one hand, for
young man who is always portrayed in a very idealized manner, and
on the other hand for a woman, the woman known as 'the Dark Lady',
who he writes of with a curious mixture of love and scorn. He hated
himself for being so emotionally entangled with her. So think the
sonnets, if one regards them as autobiographical documents, are the
place in which we get closest to Shakespeare himself.
Presenter: When he was in his mid 40s, Shakespeare seems to have
decided to write less for the theatre. We don't know why this is.
It may be that he needed to spend time looking after his business
interests in Stratford; it may be that he was unwell; or he may
have simply felt that his amazing creative energies were
slackening. After The Tempest, he spent more and more time
in Stratford, and died there in 1616.
Wells: I think Shakespeare's greatness is twofold. It's partly in
the works themselves, the plays themselves, the opportunities for
great performances that they give. It's also what's happened as a
result of Shakespeare over the centuries. Shakespeare has become
very mull a part of culture in England, in the West generally, and
extending far beyond the West. now, in many other countries, too.
So I think Shakespeare is both a great writer and a great presence.
So I think he does deserve his dominating status.
Presenter: Shakespeare was buried in the local church at Stratford.
His grave has never been opened because of a poem he wrote,
inscribed on the tombstone, stating that anyone who disturbed his
bones would be cursed. But nearby in the church there's his statue:
that of a man with a little pointed beard and neat moustache,
holding a quill pen. He doesn't look that exceptional. But
Shakespeare is the greatest writer in the English language; and
many great poets, novelists and playwrights in the West stand in
his shadow.
Task 3:
【答案】
A.
1) F
2) F
3) T
4) T
5) T
6) T
B.
1) a hole under a hedge
2) into a long passage
3) in a long hall of many doors, all locked
4) through a deep wood
5) to a little white house
6) beside a mushroom to rest
【原文】
Alice’s Adventure in Wonderland
Alice sat nodding sleepily on a mossy bank beside her big sister,
who was reading.
Presently a pink-eyed white Rabbit ran by, looking at its watch and
crying, 'Oh dear-I shall be late!' Alice bounded after the Rabbit,
across a field and into a hole under a hedge. After running through
the hole a distance she suddenly stepped off into space and began
to fall. She fell slowly, and it was a very pleasant sensation.
Alice was wondering whether she would stop at the earth's center
when, bump!-she landed on a heap of leaves, unhurt.
The Rabbit was scampering down the passage.
Springing to her feet, she pursued, but it disappeared around the
next corner and Alice found herself in a long hall of many doors,
all locked. On a table was a golden key which fitted the smallest
door, only fifteen inches high. Unlocking this, she be-held a
beautiful flower-garden, but could not squeeze through the
door.
Beneath the table in a glass dish she found
a cookie on which were the words, 'Eat Me.' She ate this and soon
grew nine feet tall. Presently the Rabbit entered and, seeing
Alice, fled in dismay, dropping his gloves and fan. Alice picked
them up and began to fan herself. Soon she was only two feet high
and dropped the fan in a fright. Thereupon she stopped growing
smaller and knew it was a magic fan.
Hearing footfalls, she turned to see the
Rabbit standing near. It was nearly as tall as she and seemed very
angry. 'You go to my house and bring me a pair of gloves and a
fan!' commanded the Rabbit, sternly. Alice, badly frightened,
started to obey. Strangely enough, the hall vanished and she found
her-self running through a deep wood. Soon she came to a little
white house. The door-plate said 'W. Rabbit.' Entering, she hurried
up-stairs to the Rabbit's bedroom and found, not gloves and a fan,
but a bottle on the bureau. It was not labeled, but Alice drank the
contents. She grew so rapidly that the room was hardly big enough
to contain her, although she was lying on the floor with her head
drawn up to her chin.
While in this predicament some one threw a
handful of pebbles through the window into the room. These turned
into bits of candy. Alice ate several of them and soon shrank until
she could escape from the house. Running into the wood, she sat
down beside a mushroom to rest.
'What can I do for you?' asked a voice.
Alice looked up, and on top of the mushroom sat a blue Caterpillar,
smoking a pipe.
'Oh, please, sir,' replied Alice, 'make me
larger!'
'That's easy,' said the Caterpillar; 'one
side of this mushroom will make you taller, and the other side
shorter.'
Before Alice could ask more the Caterpillar
disappeared.
Alice broke off a piece from each side of
the mushroom. After eating a bit of one she grew so short her chin
struck her foot. Hastily eating some of the other, she grew so tall
her head was among the tree-tops. 'Oh dear, shall I never be my
regular size again!' she cried, nibbling from the first piece and
shrinking down to only nine inches.
In despair she started to walk through the
wood, and soon came to a little house about four feet high. Without
knocking, Alice walked into the kitchen. The Duchess sat rocking a
little pig in her lap, the Cook was sprinkling quantities of pepper
into a kettle of soup, and a Cheshire Cat on the hearth grinned
from ear to ear at her. All three sneezed violently from time to
time.
'Please go away-I don't like your grin,'
said Alice to the Cat.
'All right,' replied the Cat, and vanished,
beginning with the tail and ending with the grin-but the grin
remained after the rest had disappeared.
Task 4:
【答案】
A.
1) escape from the horrid grin of the Cheshire Cat
2) did not fancy white roses
3) Alice played croquet
4) live hedgehogs，the arches
5) stealing some tarts
6) to have a sentence before a verdict
B.
1) People: The King and Queen of Hearts
The gardeners who were painting the white roses red
Soldiers with clubs
Courtiers bedecked with diamonds
The royal children ornamented with hearts
The Royal Executioner
2) Animals and birds: The Cheshire Cat who grinned from ear to
ear
The White Rabbit
The flamingo
The hedgehogs
C.
1) She realized that her wonderful journey had been only a
wonderful dream.
2) She is a nice, kind-hearted, honest, and adventurous girl.
【原文】
To escape from this horrid grin Alice ran out of the house and into
the wood, closely pursued by the grin. Seeing a little door open
leading into a big tree, Alice slipped through and slammed the door
behind her, shutting out the grin.
Turning about, she at last found herself in
the beautiful garden. Standing about a rose-tree near the entrance
were three gardeners painting the white roses red. 'Why are you
doing that?' asked Alice.
'Because,' replied one, 'the Queen does not
fancy white roses.'
'Hush!' said another; 'here comes the Queen
now!”
Alice turned eagerly to behold the royal
procession. There were soldiers with clubs, courtiers bedecked with
diamonds, and the royal children were ornamented with hearts, while
in and out among them hopped the White Rabbit. Last of all came the
King and Queen of Hearts.
When the Queen came to Alice she stopped
and asked, 'My child, do you play croquet?'
'Y - y - y - yes,' stammered Alice, much
confused.
'Then here is your mallet,' replied the
Queen, handing Alice a live flamingo. Then the game began, and such
a crazy game of croquet Alice had never seen.
The croquet balls were live hedgehogs and
the soldiers bent over to make the arches. Besides, the ground was
full of hummocks and ridges. All played at once. When Alice would
get ready to hit her ball with the flamingo's head, either the
hedgehog would walk off, or the soldier making the arch would stand
up to rest his back.
'How do you like the game?' asked a voice.
Looking up, Alice beheld the grin of the Cheshire Cat. Before she
could answer the Cat's head appeared, but no more of it.
'I don't like it at all,' replied Alice,
drop-ping her mallet, which at once flew off. The Cat turned to
look at the King, who did not like being grinned at, and complained
to the Queen, who ordered the Cat beheaded on the spot.
'That is all very well,' said the King,
'but I should like to know how it is possible to behead a cat which
has no body?' While they were arguing the Cheshire Cat vanished,
head, grin, and all.
Alice went to look for her flamingo, but
could not find it. When she returned, all the players had gone to
the Palace. Alice followed and, entering, found a trial in
progress. The King and Queen sat on their throne hearing the
evidence. The Knave of Hearts was being tried for stealing some
tarts the Queen had made. Several witnesses testified, but they
talked of everything else except the stolen tarts.
'What a silly trial ! ' thought Alice,
nibbling absent-mindedly at a piece of mush-room she had left.
Almost before she knew it she grew so tall her head bumped against
the ceiling.
'Call the next witness!' commanded the
King.
'ALICE!' cried the White Rabbit.
'But I don't know anything about the stolen
tarts,' protested Alice.
'That's very important,' remarked the
King.
'It's against the rules for a witness over
a mile high to testify,' said the Queen.
'Leave this court at once!' ordered the
King, addressing Alice.
'I sha'n't leave until I hear the verdict,'
retorted Alice.
'In that case,' said the King, 'let the
jury consider the verdict.'
'Sentence first and verdict afterward,'
objected the Queen.
'How absurd to have a sentence before a
verdict!' said Alice, scornfully.
'Off with that girl's head!' shouted the
Queen, pointing at Alice.
'Will you please stoop down so I can carry
out the Queen's orders?' asked the Royal Executioner,
politely.
'No, I won’t!” cried Alice; 'you are all
nothing but a naughty pack of cards, anyhow, and I am not afraid of
you!'
Thereupon the whole pack rose up into the
air and flew straight into Alice's face.
'Come, Alice dear, wake up,' said her big
sister, shaking her gently; 'you've been sleeping nearly an hour
and it's time to go home.'
Then little Alice knew that her wonderful
journey had been only a wonderful dream.
Task 5:
【答案】
A.
1) b
2) a
3) c
4) c
5) a
6) b
B.
1) President John Kennedy.
2) He wrote mainly pastoral poems.
3) It is located in the northeastern United States.
4) In England.
5) It is called A Boy’s Will.
C.
1) d
2) a
3) d
4) b
5) c
6) d
【原文】
In 1961, John Kennedy was sworn in as president of the United
States. He asked one of America's best-known writers to read a poem
on the President's inauguration. Robert Frost stood in the cold
sunlight that day, his white hair blowing in the wind. He read the
lines from his poem, The Girl Outright.
Robert Frost was one of America's leading 20th-century poets and a
four-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize. An essentially pastoral
poet often associated with the land of cold winters in the
north-eastern United States, the area called New England, Frost
wrote poems whose philosophical dimensions transcend any region.
Although his verse forms are traditional—he often said that he
would as soon play tennis without a net as write free verse—he was
a pioneer in the interplay of rhythm and meter and in the poetic
use of the vocabulary and inflections of everyday speech. His
poetry is thus both traditional and experimental, regional and
universal.
Frost was born in San Francisco, California. After his father's
death in 1885, when young Frost was 11, the family left California
and settled in Massachusetts. Frost attended high school in that
state, entered Dartmouth College, but remained less than one
semester. Returning to Massachusetts, he taught school and worked
in a mill and as a newspaper reporter. In 1894 he sold his poem
My Butterfly to The Independent, a New York literary
journal. From 1897 to 1899, he attended Harvard University as a
special student but left without a degree. Over the next 10 years
he wrote (but rarely published) poems, operated a farm in Derry,
New Hampshire and supplemented his income by teaching at Derry's
Pinkerton Academy.
In 1912, at the age of 38, Frost decided to
try to make a new start. He sold the farm and used the proceeds to
take his family to England, where he could devote himself entirely
to writing. His efforts to establish himself and his work were
almost immediately successful. His first book of poems A Boy's
Will was accepted by a London publisher and brought out in
1913, followed a year later by another one North of Boston.
Favorable reviews on both sides of the Atlantic resulted in
American publication of Frost's books and in the establishing of
Frost's transatlantic reputation. As part of his determined efforts
on his own behalf, Frost had called on several prominent literary
figures soon after his arrival in England. One of these was Ezra
Pound, another American poet living in Britain, who wrote the first
American review of Frost's verse.
In 1915, both of Frost's books were published 'in the United
States. He felt that his books had “gone home”, and he should go
home, too. When he reached America, he was surprised by the praise
he received and the acceptance of American publishers. In the words
of the poem he read at President Kennedy's inauguration many years
later: The land was his before he was the land.
Frost's importance as a poet derives from the power and
memorability of particular poems. The Death of the Hired Man
combines lyric and dramatic poetry in blank verse. After
Apple-Picking is a free-verse dream poem with philosophical
undertones. Mending Wall demonstrates Frost's simultaneous
command of lyrical verse, dramatic conversation, and ironic
commentary. The Road Not Taken and Birches and the
off-studied Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening exemplify
Frost's ability to join the pastoral and philosophical modes in
lyrics of unforgettable beauty.
Robert Frost died in 1963. He had lived for almost 100 years, and
over the years he received an unprecedented number and range of
literary, academic, and public honors. He unquestionably succeeded
in realizing his life's ambition: to write 'a few poems it will be
hard to get rid of'.
Task 6:
【答案】
A.
1) b
2) c
3) c
4) b
5) a
B.
1) revealing her name，a locket and ring，in attendance
2) cruel neglect and semi-starvation，his unheard-of act
3) snuff-boxes, jewelry, watches, and handkerchiefs，in imaginary
store-windows
4) efforts，in some safe refuge，rewards
【原文】
Oliver Twist
Oliver Twist was born about seventy-five miles from London, in the
lying-in room of the almshouse. His mother, worn and exhausted from
a long and painful journey on foot, had been found unconscious in
the road, and had been carried to the only place of refuge for such
as she seemed to be. The unhappy mother died without revealing her
name, and the only proofs of the boy's identity, a locket and ring,
kept even at the price of starvation, were stolen from the corpse
before it was cold by the old crone who had been in
attendance.
The orphan's childhood, passed in cruel
neglect and semi-starvation, was brought to an abrupt close by his
own unparalleled act. Desperate through hunger, he and his
companions determine that some one of them shall secure for all an
extra helping of the thin and watery gruel which is their principal
diet. The lot falls upon Oliver. Nineyear-old child though he was,
he was 'reckless with misery.' He rose from the table, and,
advancing to the workhouse-master, basin and spoon in hand, he
said, 'Please, sir, I want some more ! ' Such unheard-of daring
receives speedy treatment. The next morning a bill, posted upon the
gate, offers five pounds to any one who will take Oliver Twist off
the hands of the parish.
Then there follows a brief stay as the
apprentice of a coffin-maker and undertaker. His master is, on the
whole, treats him well, but a fight with a bullying older
apprentice brings him into unmerited disgrace and punishment and he
runs away.
On the outskirts of London he chances upon
the fascinatingly droll Artful Dodger, pickpocket and pupil of
Fagin. The curious behavior of his new associates is only a game to
the innocent boy, when Fagin places snuff-boxes, jewelry, watches,
and handkerchiefs in his pockets, and then stands looking in
imaginary store-windows while (in an unbelievably short time) every
one of the things is taken from him. The true meaning of it all
bursts upon the horrified Oliver when he is taken on an expedition
and sees the 'game' in full operation. Dazed and con-fused, he is
the only one captured and taken before a magistrate. His innocence
is established, but he faints in the court-room, and is taken home
by the remorseful Mr. Brown-low, the man whose pocket he was
supposed to have picked. In his new friend's house Oliver is nursed
through a serious illness, and better days seem to have dawned for
him, when he again falls into the hands of Fagin. Dreading the
information which the boy may give, Fagin has Oliver kidnapped
while on an errand for Mr. Brownlow, by Nancy, a wretched girl of
the streets, pupil of Fagin, and mistress of Bill Sikes, the
greatest ruffian of the whole gang.
In order to close Oliver's mouth, by making
him also a criminal, he is taken along on a housebreaking attempt.
Protesting, he is put through a small window that he may open the
door to his companions. He is firmly determined to warn the people
of the house, but the burglary is a failure, and Oliver, wounded by
a stray shot, is left in a ditch by the fleeing gangsters. The next
morning he crawls, injured as he is, to the same house, where his
story is believed and he finds new and lasting friends.
Again the lad is sought out by Fagin, aided
by a mysterious man who has shown great emotion at a chance sight
of Oliver in the street, and who now plots with Fagin, not merely
for the possession of the boy, but for his moral ruin, which seems
to be desired especially by this so-called Monks.
Their whispered plottings are overheard by
Nancy, who atones for her former kidnapping of Oliver by risking
her life to inform his new friends of his true parentage. Then
comes the startling account of what Nancy had overheard: Monks has
secured, by clever inquiry and bribery, the locket and the ring; he
recognized Oliver; he alludes to his father's will and speaks of
the gratification it will be to him (Monks) to make a common felon
of his young brother, Oliver. He also says with a laugh that there
is some comfort in the fact that his identity has been kept from
his latest friends, 'since how many thousands and hundreds of
thousands of pounds they would give to know who their two-legged
spaniel is.
Rejecting all Rose's efforts to place her
in some safe refuge from her horrible associates, and refusing all
rewards, the weeping girl returns to the only life she has ever
known. Nancy’s kindness, however, costs her her life, as suspicious
Fagin has had her followed and watched. Sikes, insane with rage,
brutally disregards her protestations that she has shielded him and
has remained faithful to him. Disbelieving her, he beats her to
death with a club, then flees vainly from the terrors of his own
memory of the deed, and dies by an accident as he is trying to
escape arrest.
Task 7:
【答案】
A.
1) F
2) T
3) F
4) T
5) T
6) T
7) F
B.
1) tragic，heroic，against certain fears and terrors，to the end
2) instability，uncertainty，the surface of order
C.
1) His view on mid-18th-century England: It is often depicted as
an age dominated by ideas of reason and order. But beneath the
surface of genteel life lay an enormous amount of hidden tension,
with widespread poverty and crime.
2) His view on Dr. Johnson: Dr. Johnson stands as a vast,
magisterial figure. But in fact, he was not nearly as confident and
assured a presence as he sometimes appears.
【原文】
Looking back 200 years, over the landscape of English literature,
Dr. Samuel Johnson stands as la vast, magisterial figure. Dr.
Johnson the man is much more famous than his work. English people
who have never read a single word he wrote nonetheless have a
distinct sense of his presence: confident, commanding, oratorical,
that of a man whose voice rings with authority, whose sayings are
often quoted in today's newspapers as peculiarly English examples
of common sense.
Mid-18th-century England is often depicted as an age dominated by
ideas of reason and order. Yet the picture is not entirely
accurate. True, England was at peace, but beneath the surface of
genteel. life lay an enormous amount of hidden tension, with
widespread poverty and crime. Dr. Johnson was, equally, not nearly
as confident and assured a presence as he sometimes appears. Born
in 1709 in the town of Lichfield, some 150 kilometers northwest of
London, Johnson suffered from lifelong depression and melancholy.
He went to Oxford University but was too poor to complete his
degree. For several years in his 20s he was a desperately
unsuccessful teacher; and finally at the age of 27 he went down to
London to seek his fortune. When he arrived in London he had no
money and no lob. Arid for several years he worked in what was
known as Grub Street, a particular part of London where the
penniless authors and journalistic hacks or freelance writers
worked, living from hand to mouth. Dr. Johnson learned a lot about
life here. He saw life from the bottom level up, and it formed him
very much as a writer.
But his fortunes were to change, for he had been commissioned to
write a new dictionary of the English language. Conquering what he
saw as his own laziness, he toiled away for years in a garret near
London's River Thames. The Dictionary is an extraordinary
work for a man who is reputed to be slothful. It took him
approximately 8 years to write. Johnson employed 6 part-time
clerks, who didn't do the work but simply copied down what he
directed. By the end he had defined 40,000 separate words, and he
did this in a very particular way: He read through the entire bulk
of English literature, including a considerable amount of
scientific and philosophical literature, and he picked out
quotations which illustrated the meanings of certain words. But it
is the width of the Dictionary, its solidity, is fantastic
coverage, which was such an achievement; and when it was published
in 1755 Johnson was given an honorary M.A. from the University of
Oxford where he had failed to complete his degree, and he almost
immediately became famous as a literary man.
By 1767, Johnson's eminence was such that he was offered a state
pension. Free from financial worries, acknowledged as a leading
essayist and critic, he was able to work as he wished. It was at
this Joint that he met a young man named James Boswell, who was to
become his close friend—though the friendship was never that of
equals. Boswell would eventually write two books about Dr.
Johnson—one an account of a trip they made together round Scotland,
the other a full-length biography. Boswell's biography has been
described as the best biography ever written in English, and
certainly it gives us an intimate picture of the late Dr. Johnson,
who in his 50s and 60s had edited an edition of Shakespeare and
written a series of volumes on the lives of English poets. This is
the confident, magisterial Dr. Johnson, by turns serious or
sarcastic or witty. But scholars and biographers have begun to draw
back the curtain, revealing a somewhat different man. His
melancholy, his loneliness, his fear of madness, his strong
romantic streak, his unhappy marriage, the way his poetry and his
essays grew it of great and intense private suffering—all this has
given us a much deeper and more complicated se of Johnson. And in
many ways, there is a sense of him as a tragic but heroic figure a
man who is always fighting against certain fears and terrors, but
fights to the end. He is a figure almost of tragic courage.
Dr. Johnson's statue stands in London's Fleet Street, and nearby is
the house in which he lived while laboring over his
Dictionary. Now a Johnson museum, it contains among much
else a striking oil painting of him in his mid 60s. The face is not
that of a man at ease with himself: the expression sullen,
truculent, the powerful eyes seeming to glare with a certain
suspicion. Dr. Johnson is a key to the 18th century, a time when
instability and uncertainty were never that far below the surface
of order. Five years after his death in 1784, the French revolution
was to transform the course of European history, and also the way
writers, composers and artists looked at the world.
Task 8:
【答案】
1) He had come to the House of Usher in response to a written plea
from his boyhood friend.
2) The letter had told of an illness of body and mind suffered by
Usher.
3) The Usher family, unlike most, had left only a direct line of
descent.
4) Usher's eyes were liquid, and his lips pale. His web-like hair
was untrimmed and floated over his brow. All in all, he was a
depressing figure.
5) He believed that the house itself exerted great influence over
his morale, and even over his spirit. What was worse, he was
terribly worried about his dying sister, the only living relative
he had.
6) They carried the encoffined body down into the burial vault
beneath the house and deposited it upon a trestle.
7) Lady Madeline returned to find her brother. The two fell to the
floor in death.
8) The house of horror split asunder in a zigzag manner, down the
line of the visitor had seen before.
【原文】
The Fall of the House of Usher
As the visitor approached the House of Usher, he was forewarned by
the appearance of the old mansion. The fall weather was dull and
dreary, the countryside shady and gloomy, and the old house seemed
to fit perfectly into the desolate surroundings. The stone was
discolored and covered with fungi. The building gave the impression
of decay, and a barely discernible crack extended in a zigzag line
from the roof to the foundation.
The visitor had come to the House of Usher in response to a written
plea from his boyhood friend, Roderick Usher. The letter had told
of an illness of body and mind suffered by the last heir in the
ancient line of Usher, and although the letter had strangely filled
him with dread, the visitor had felt that he must go to his former
friend. The Usher family, unlike most, had left only a direct line
of descent, and perhaps it was for this reason that the family
itself and the house had become one—the House of Usher.
The visitor entered the house, gave his
things to a servant, and proceeded through several dark passages to
the study of the master. There he was stunned at the appearance of
his old friend. Usher's eyes were liquid and lips pallid. His
web-like hair was untrimmed and floated over his brow. All in all,
he was a depressing figure. In fact, he was haunted incessantly by
unnamed fears.
Even more strangely, he was imbued with the
thought that the house itself exerted great influence over his
morale and that it had obtained influence over his spirit. Usher's
moodiness was heightened by the approaching death of his sister,
Lady Madeline. His only living relative, she was wasting away from
a strange malady that baffled the doctors. Often the disease
revealed its cataleptic nature. The visitor saw her only once, on
the night of his arrival. Then she passed through the room without
speaking, and her appearance filled him with awe and
foreboding.
For several days, the visitor attempted to
cheer the sick master of Usher and restore him to health, but the
visitor was helpless to dispel Usher’s fear. One day Usher informed
his friend that Madeline was no more. It was his intention to bury
her in one of the vaults under the house for a period of two weeks.
The strangeness of her malady, he said, demanded the precaution of
not placing her immediately in the exposed family burial plot. The
two men took the encoffined body into the burial vault beneath the
house and deposited it upon a trestle. Turning back the lid of the
coffin, they took one last look at the lady, and the visitor
remarked on the similarity of appearance between her and her
brother. Then Usher told him that they were twins and that their
natures had been singularly alike. The man then closed the lid,
screwed it down securely, and ascended to the upper room.
A noticeable change now took possession of
Usher. He paced the floors with unusual vigor. He became more
pallid, while his eyes glowed with even greater wildness. His words
were utterances of extreme fear. He seemed to have a ghastly secret
that he could not share.
One night, during a severe storm, the visitor heard low and
unrecognizable sounds that filled him with terror. Then he heard a
soft knock at his door. Usher entered, carrying a lamp. His manner
was hysterical and his eyes those of a madman. The visitor picked
up the first book that came to hand and tried to calm his friend by
reading a story. As he read he seemed to hear the echo of a
cracking and ripping sound described in the story. Usher sat facing
the door, as if in a trance. His head and his body rocked from side
to side in a gentle motion. He was murmuring something, as if he
were not aware of his friend's presence.
At last, his ravings became intelligible.
He spoke louder and louder until he reached a scream. Madeline was
alive. For days, he had heard her feebly trying to lift the coffin
lid. Now she had escaped her tomb and was coming in search of him.
At that pronouncement, the door of the room swung back and on the
threshold stood the shrouded Lady Madeline of Usher. There was
blood on her clothing and evidence of superhuman struggle. She ran
to her terrified brother, and the two fell to the floor in
death.
The visitor fled from the house in terror.
He gazed back as he ran and saw the house of horror split asunder
in a zigzag manner, down the line of the crack he had seen as he
first looked upon the old mansion. There was a loud noise, like the
sound of many waters, and the pond at its base received all that
was left of the ruined House of Usher.
