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 would be the most appropriate title for the passage?
选项 A、Melville’s Unique Contribution to Romantic Fiction
B、Melville’s Growing Reputation Among Twentieth-Century Literary Critics
C、Melville and the Jamesian Standards of Fiction: A Reexamination
D、Romantic and Novelistic: The Shared Assumptions of Two Traditions
E、The Art of Fiction: James’s Influence on the Novelistic Tradition
答案C
解析 Given the content of the passage, which of these choices could most reasonably be used as a title? The passage’s main purpose is to counter the criticisms of those critics who describe Melville’s works of fiction as romances. These critics claim that Melville’s works lack significant literary value because they fail to satisfy James’s criteria for literary worth in novels, a standard that is widely accepted by literary critics. The passage argues that Melville’s novels would be more appropriately evaluated using the criteria that Melville himself espoused; these criteria differ significantly from James’s criteria.
A    This choice is inappropriate because nothing in the passage suggests that Melville’s approach was unique; that is, nothing in the passage indicates that Melville’s contribution is the only one of its kind.
B    This choice is inappropriate because the passage never states how Melville’s literary reputation among twentieth-century critics evolved.
C    Correct. This choice reflects the central idea of the passage that the literary worth of Melville’s fiction is not appropriately judged using the Jamesian standard; rather, it is appropriately judged using Melville’s own notion of the ultimate purpose of fiction.
D    Although the passage suggests that issues of morality figured in the fiction of both James and Melville, the passage does not address any assumptions shared between James and Melville.
E    Although the passage suggests that James had a significant influence on critical standards for the novel, the passage centers on Melville’s works rather than James’ influence.
The correct answer is C.
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