首页
外语
计算机
考研
公务员
职业资格
财经
工程
司法
医学
专升本
自考
实用职业技能
登录
考研
In its modem form the concept of "literature" did not emerge earlier than the eighteenth century and was not fully developed unt
In its modem form the concept of "literature" did not emerge earlier than the eighteenth century and was not fully developed unt
admin
2012-01-05
29
问题
In its modem form the concept of "literature" did not emerge earlier than the eighteenth century and was not fully developed until the nineteenth century. Yet the conditions for its emergence had been developing since the Renaissance. The word itself came into English use in the fourteenth century, following French and Latin precedents; its root was Latin littera, a letter of the alphabet. Litterature, in the common early spelling, was then in effect a condition of reading: of being able to read and of having read. It was often close to the sense of modem literacy, which was not in the language until the late nineteenth century, its introduction in part made necessary by the movement ofliteratureto a different sense. The normal adjective associated with literature was literate. Literary appeared in the sense of reading ability and experience in the seventeenth century, and did not acquire its specialized modem meaning until the eighteenth century.
Literature as a new category was then a specialization of the area formerly categorized as rhetoricand grammar: a specialization to reading and, in the material context of the development of printing, to the printed word and especially the book. It was eventually to become a more general category than poetry or the earlier poesy, which had been general terms for imaginative composition, but which in relation to the development of literature became predominantly specialized, from the seventeenth century, to metrical composition and especially written and printed metrical composition. But literature was never primarily the active composition—the " making"—which poetry had described. As reading rather than writing, it was a category of a different kind. The characteristic use can be seen in Bacon "learned in all literature and erudition, divine and humane"—and as late asJohnson "he had probably more than common literature, as his son addresses him in one of his most elaborate Latin poems." Literature, that is to say, was a category of use and condition rather than of production. It was a particular specialization of what had hither to been seen as an activity or practice, and a specialization, in the circumstances, which was inevitably made in terms of social class. In its first extended sense, beyond the bare sense of "literacy," it was a definition of "polite" or "humane" learning, and thus specified a particular social distinction. New political concepts of the "nation" and new valuations of the "vernacular" interacted with a persistent emphasis on "literature" as reading in the "classical" languages. But still, in this first stage, into the eighteenth century, literaturewas primarily a generalized social concept, expressing a certain (minority) level of educational achievement. This carded with it a potential and eventually realized alternative definition of literatureas "printed books:" the objects in and through which this achievement was demonstrated.
It is important that, within the terms of this development, literature normally included all printed books. There was not necessary specialization to "imaginative" works. Literature was still primarily reading ability and experience, and this included philosophy, history, and essays as well as poems. Were the new eighteenth century novels literature? That question was first approached, not by definition of their mode or content, but by reference to the standards of "polite" or "humane" learning. Was drama literature? This question was to exercise successive generations, not because of any substantial difficulty but because of the practical limits of the category. If literature was reading, could a mode written for spoken performance be said to be literature, and if not, where was Shakespeare?
At one level the definition indicated by this development has persisted. Literature lost its earliest sense of reading ability and reading experience, and became an apparently objective category of printed works of a certain quality. The concerns of a "literary editor" or a "literary supplement" would still be defined in this way. But three complicating tendencies can then be distinguished: first, a shift from "learning" to "taste" or "sensibility" as a criterion defining literary quality; second, an increasing specialization of literature to "creative" or "imaginative" works; third, a development of the concept of "tradition" within national terms, resulting in the more effective definition of "a national literature." The source of each of these tendencies can be discerned from the Renaissance, but it was in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that they came through most powerfully, until they became, in the twentieth century, in effect received assumptions.
What challenged the definition of literature as reading in the eighteenth century?
选项
A、The emergence of novels.
B、The emergence of dramas.
C、The emergence of poems.
D、The emergence of essays.
答案
B
解析
由倒数第二段Was drama literature?...If literature was reading,could a mode written for spoken performance be said to be literature...可知,对于literature的阅读内涵提出挑战的是戏剧这一以表演为形式的创作。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/UAua777K
本试题收录于:
翻译硕士(翻译硕士英语)题库专业硕士分类
0
翻译硕士(翻译硕士英语)
专业硕士
相关试题推荐
quality-orientededucation
accordwith;agreewith;conformto;meet
InEnglandintheearly17thcentury,theStuartmonarchy,tofinanceitsexpenditures,increasinglyresortedto"forcedloans"—
PhilipKnight,Nike’smultibillionaireChairmanandchiefexecutive,managedtogeneratealotofpositivepressrecentlywhen
ThemostfamousnationalepicinOldEnglishliteratureis().
MillionsofelderlyGermansreceivedanoticefromtheHealth&SocialSecurityMinistryearlierthismonththatstruckadamagi
Althougharchitecturehasartisticqualities,itmustalsosatisfyanumberofimportantpractical______.
Ihadno______aboutspeakingthelanguagewhenIwasinGreece;itwasdrivingontheothersideoftheroadwhichbothersme.
AtHarvardUniversity’smostrecentCommencementCeremony,femalePresidentDrewFausthadanimportantreminderforstaffands
Oneimportantoutcomeoftheworkontheexpressionofgenesindevelopingembryosissuretobeknowledgethatcanhelpp
随机试题
在小组工作的结束阶段,社会工作者的任务不仅需要处理小组成员的离别情绪,还需要()。
Inouronlinelife,weneedtousepasswordsfrequently.Weusepasswords【C1】______e-mail,gamingsites,socialnetworkingsite
心脏右前斜位摄影,身体冠状面与胶片夹角为
以下关于口腔白斑病恶变倾向,说法不正确的是()
在爆炸压力公式中,当P。=0.1MPa,T。=27℃,T=2411K时,一氧化碳与空气混合物的最大爆炸压力则为()MPa。
某软件公司为增值税一般纳税人,某月销售自行开发生产的中文处理软件产品,销售收入为80万元,假设该纳税人当月允许抵扣的进项税额为3.4万元,则该纳税人当月可以获得即征即退的增值税应退税额为( )。
以下哪项最可能是上述广告所假设的?以下哪项最能说明上述广告存在漏洞?
求=________.
Writeareplytothisbusinessletter.OfficeSuppliesCompanyABCEngineeringCompany,222NathanRoad
PartⅡReadingComprehension(SkimmingandScanning)Directions:Inthispart,youwillhave15minutestogooverthepassageq
最新回复
(
0
)