2. 外语
  3. The two articles arouse suspicion. The theory? The novel? Since there is no such thing as the novel, how can there be a single t

The two articles arouse suspicion. The theory? The novel? Since there is no such thing as the novel, how can there be a single t

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问题     The two articles arouse suspicion. The theory? The novel? Since there is no such thing as the novel, how can there be a single theory? Or is the editor some soil of monist? Blinkered hedgehog in wild fox country? The jacket identifies in wild fox country? The jacket identifies Mr. Halperin as "Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of English at the University of Southern California." This is true academic weight. "He is also the author of The Language of Meditation: Four Studies in Nineteenth-Century Fiction and Egoism and Self-Discovery in the Victorian Novel." Well, meditation if not language is big in Southern California, where many an avocado tree shades its smogbound Zen master, while the Victorian novel continues to be a growth industry in Academe. Eagerly, one turns to Professor Halperin’s "A Critical Introduction" to nineteen essays by as many professors of English Professor Halperin has not an easy way with our rich language. Nevertheless, one opens his book in the hope that the prose of "some of the most distinguished critics of our time" will be better than his own.
    American professors of English have never had an easy time with French theoreticians of the novel(close scrutiny of the quotation from Barthes reveals that it was taken from an English not an American translation). Nevertheless, despite various hedges like "may inevitably, " Professor Halperin has recklessly enrolled himself in the school of Paris(class of 56). As a result, he believes that the autonomous novel "is not created as a conscious representation of anything outside itself. " Aside from the presumption of pretending to know what any writer has in mind(is he inevitably but not consciously describing or mimicking the real world?), it is native to assume that a man-made novel can ever resemble a meteor fallen from outer space, a perfectly autonomous artifact whose raison detre is "with the relationships among the various structural elements within the work of fiction itself rather than "between reader and text". Apparently the novel is no longer what James conceived it, a story told, in Professor Halperin’s happy phrase, from "the limited perspective of a single sentient consciousness". And so, in dubious battle, unconscious sentiencies clash in the English departments of the West with insentient consciousnesses.
    In general, Professor Halperin’s novel-theorists have nothing very urgent or interesting to say about literature. Why then do they write when they have nothing to say? Because the ambitious teacher can only rise in the academic bureaucracy by writing at complicated length about writing that has already been much written about. The result of all this book-chat cannot interest anyone who knows literature while those who would like to learn something about books can only be mystified and discouraged by these commentaries. Certainly it is no accident that the number of students taking English courses has been in decline for some years. But that is beside the point. What matters is that the efforts of the teachers now under review add up to at least a half millennium of academic tenure.
    Rebirth of the novel? That seems unlikely. The University-novel tends to be stillborn, suitable only for classroom biopsy. The Public-novel continues to be written but the audience for it is reading anything at all difficult and unrewarding. Ambitious novelists are poignantly aware of the general decline in what Professor Halperin would call "reading skills". Much of Mr. Donald Barthelme’s means to be ironic. Of course he knows his book is not very interesting to read, but then life is not very interesting to live, either. Hopefully, as Professor Halperin would say, the book will self-destruct once it has been ritually praised wherever English is taught but not learned.  
The author argues that contemporary literary criticism produced by the academy______.
选项 A、is strongly influenced by critical works written by French philosophers
B、is useful only insofar as is secures its author’s academic career
C、reflects an unhealthy sense of nihilism
D、serves as an example of the interface "between reader and text"
答案B
解析 本题为细节分析题。根据文章第三段“Because the ambitious teacher can onlyrise in the academic bureaucracy by writing at complicated length about writing that hasalready been much written about．”可知，有远大目标的教师写文章的目的是为了提高自己在学术上的地位。B选项符合原文意思。A和C选项文中并未提及，属无中生有。D选项中的between reader and text，文中是说小说不再是反映读者和文本的关系，与题目无关。因此，B选项为正确选项。
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