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.
The author draws which of the following conclusions about the fact that Melville’s fiction often does not possess the qualities of a Jamesian novel?
Literary critics should no longer use Jamesian standards to judge the value of novels.
Literary critics who have praised Melville’s fiction at the expense of James’s fiction should consider themselves justified.
Literary critics should no longer attempt to place writers, including Melville and James, in traditions or categories.
Melville and James should be viewed as different sorts of writers and one should not be regarded as inherently superior to the other.
Melville and James nevertheless share important similarities and these should not be overlooked or slighted when literary critics point out differences between the two writers.
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正确答案是 D。答案解释如下:文章的内容表明,作者认为对于梅尔维尔和詹姆斯这样的作家来说,应该以不同的方式看待他们,而不是以一方角度认为其中一位较优。
错选A,题目问的是基于M作品和J的关系,作者得出什么观点?A选项扩大化,到了all novels,可是这里仅仅在于这两者之间的对比。
D选项的信息来源:”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. “
这道题错选了A
题目:The author draws which of the following conclusions about the fact that Melville’s fiction often does not possess the qualities of a Jamesian novel? 作者基于M小说不具备J小说的事实得出以下哪个结论?
事实就是ALTHOUGH让步状语从句中说的这一句,结论是从句之后的主句,以及主句之后的解释。结论中从未提及literary critics干啥干啥啊?!