Colonial historian David Allen's intensive study of five communities in seventeenth-century Massachusetts is a model of meticulous scholarship on the detailed microcosmic level, and is convincing up to a point. Allen suggests that much more coherence and direct continuity existed between English and colonial agricultural practices and administrative organization than other historians have suggested. However, he overstates his case with the declaration that he has proved "the remarkable extent to which diversity in New England local institutions was directly imitative of regional differences in the mother country."

Such an assertion ignores critical differences between seventeenth-century England and New England. First, England was overcrowded and land-hungry; New England was sparsely populated and labor-hungry. Second, England suffered the normal European rate of mortality; New England, especially in the first generation of English colonists, was virtually free from infectious diseases. Third, England had an all-embracing state church; in New England membership in a church was restricted to the elect. Fourth, a high proportion of English villagers lived under paternalistic resident squires; no such class existed in New England. By narrowing his focus to village institutions and ignoring these critical differences, which studies by Greven, Demos, and Lockridge have shown to be so important, Allen has created a somewhat distorted picture of reality.

Allen's work is a rather extreme example of the "country community" school of seventeenth-century English history whose intemperate excesses in removing all national issues from the history of that period have been exposed by Professor Clive Holmes. What conclusion can be drawn, for example, from Allen's discovery that Puritan clergy who had come to the colonies from East Anglia were one-third to one-half as likely to return to England by 1660 as were Puritan ministers from western and northern England? We are not told in what way, if at all, this discovery illuminates historical understanding. Studies of local history have enormously expanded our horizons, but it is a mistake for their authors to conclude that village institutions are all that mattered, simply because their functions are all that the records of village institutions reveal.

第1题 第2题 第3题 第4题 第5题

It can be inferred from the passage that the author of the passage considers Allen's "discovery" (see highlighted text) to be


already known to earlier historians

based on a logical fallacy

improbable but nevertheless convincing

an unexplained, isolated fact

a new, insightful observation

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题目分析：

题目释义：

细节题目

考点：

推断（Inference）
旨在考察我们对文章的深度理解，以及逻辑推断能力。

这个题目重要考察我们关于高亮词所在的这句话的理解。“We are not told in what way, if at all, this discovery illuminates historical understanding.”我翻译一下这句话这个题目就很容易选了。

我们不知道是什么方法，如果这种方法的存在话，这个发现将会点亮历史的认识。



选项分析：

A选项：以前的历史学家已经知道的。这个无从谈起，文中没有提到过。

B选项：基于一个错误的逻辑。作者没有提到“Allen”基于的逻辑有什么错误。

C选项：难以置信但有说服力。作者对于“discovery”持否定态度，“Allen”也没有点亮历史，所以也就不可能有说服力。

D选项：Correct。一个没有解释，孤立的事实。从高亮词所在句句意以及前一句话可以看出，作者承认“Allen”发现的这个事实的真实性，但是不承认能从这样一个事实中得到什么有用的信息。因为“Allen”没有点亮历史，所以可以证明这个事实是没有被解释的。

E选项：一个新的，有见地的意见。从定位句的意思可以看出，作者对这个意见表现出的是否定的态度。

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