2. 外语
  3. Critics maintain that the fiction of Herman Melville (1819-1891) has limitations, such as its lack of inventive plots after Moby

Critics maintain that the fiction of Herman Melville (1819-1891) has limitations, such as its lack of inventive plots after Moby

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问题 Critics maintain that the fiction of Herman Melville (1819-1891) has limitations, such as its lack of inventive plots after Moby-Dick (1851) and its occasionally inscrutable style. A more serious, yet problematic, charge is that Melville is a deficient writer because he is not a practitioner of the "art of fiction," as critics have conceived of this art since the late nineteenth-century essays and novels of Henry James. Indeed, most twentieth-century commentators regard Melville not as a novelist but as a writer of romance, since they believe that Melville’s fiction lacks the continuity that James viewed as essential to a novel: the continuity between what characters feel or think and what they do, and the continuity between characters’ fates and their pasts or original social classes. Critics argue that only Pierre (1852), because of its subject and its characters, is close to being a novel in the Jamesian sense.
    However, although Melville is not a Jamesian novelist, he is not therefore a deficient writer. A more reasonable position is that Melville is a different kind of writer, who held, and should be judged by, presuppositions about fiction that are quite different from James’s. It is true that Melville wrote "romances"; however, these are not the escapist fictions this word often implies, but fictions that range freely among very unusual or intense human experiences. Melville portrayed such experiences because he believed these best enabled him to explore moral questions, an exploration he assumed was the ultimate purpose of fiction. He was content to sacrifice continuity or even credibility as long as he could establish a significant moral situation. Thus Melville’s romances do not give the reader a full understanding of the complete feelings and thoughts that motivate actions and events that shape fate. Rather, the romances leave unexplained the sequence of events and either simplify or obscure motives. Again, such simplifications and obscurities exist in order to give prominence to the depiction of sharply delineated moral values, values derived from a character’s purely personal sense of honor, rather than, as in a Jamesian novel, from the conventions of society.  
Which of the following can most logically be inferred about the author’s estimation of the romantic and novelistic traditions of fiction?
选项 A、The romantic tradition should be considered at least as valuable as the novelistic tradition in the examination of human experience.
B、The romantic tradition should be considered the more vital tradition primarily because Melville is part of that tradition.
C、The romantic tradition should be considered the superior tradition because it is so widespread.
D、The romantic tradition has had as much success in pleasing literary critics as has the novelistic tradition.
E、The romantic and novelistic traditions have always made important contributions to literature, but their most important contributions have been in the twentieth century.
答案A
解析 We must determine which statement regarding the authors evaluation of the romantic and novelistic traditions of fiction is most strongly supported by the information in the passage. The passage states: although Melville is not Jamesian novelist, he is not therefore a deficient writer. The author of the passage tells us that Melville sought to explore moral questions, an exploration that Melville assumed to be the ultimate purpose of fiction. These statements indicate that the author of the passage regards the romantic tradition’s fictional examination of human experience as at least equal in value to the novelistic tradition’s examination of it.
A    Correct. The passage suggests that both traditions are concerned with the examination of human experience, yet their approaches to this examination differ. The passage argues that Melville’s body of fiction is no less valuable as literature than James’s.
B    The passage provides nothing to indicate that Melville’s position as a romantic writer therefore implies that romance is "more vital" than the novelistic tradition. Note that such a comparison would need to be clearly made for this to be a valid answer choice.
C    The passage provides no information regarding how widespread the romantic tradition is.
D    The passage provides no information to suggest that literary critics are more pleased by romantic works than they are by novelistic works. Note that such a comparison would need to be clearly made for this to be a valid answer choice.
E    The passage provides no information to suggest that the most important contributions of the romantic and novelistic traditions have been during the twentieth century. In fact, given that Melville and James both worked in the nineteenth century, it seems doubtful that the passage would make such a claim.
The correct answer is A.
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