题目内容
At the time Jane Austin's novels were published—between 1811 and 1818—English literature was not part of any academic curriculum. In addition, fiction was under strenuous attack. Certain religious and political groups felt novels has the power to make so-called immoral characters so interesting that young readers would identify with them: these groups also considered novel to be of little practical use. Even Coleridge, certainly no literary reactionary, spoke for many when he asserted that "novel-reading occasions the destruction of the mind ' s power"
These attitudes toward novels help explain why Austin received little attention from early 19—century literary critics. The literary response that was accorded her, however, was often as incisive as 20th century criticism. In his attack in 1816 on novelistic portrayal "outside of ordinary experience", for example, Scott made an insightful remark about the merits of Austin' s fiction. Her novels, wrote Scott, "present to the reader an accurate and exact picture of ordinary everyday people and places, reminiscent of 17th century Flemish Painting." Scott did not use the word "realism", but he undoubtedly used a standard of realistic probability in judging novels. The critic Whately did not use the word realism either, but he expressed agreement with Scott' s evaluation, and went on to suggest the possibilities for moral instruction what we have called Austin' s realistic method. Her characters, wrote Whately, am persuasive agents for moral truth since they are ordinary persons "so clearly evoked that we feel an interest in their fate as if it were our own" Moral instruction, explained Whately, is more likely to be effective when conveyed through recognizably truman and interesting characters than when imparted by a sermonizing narrator. Whately especially praised Austin' s ability to create characters who "mingle goodness and villainy, weakness and virtue, as in life they arc always mingled." Whitely concluded this remarks by comparing Austin' s art of characterization to Dickens' , stating his preference to Austin' s.
Yet the response of 19-century literary critics to Austin was not always so laudatory, and often anticipated the reservations of 20th century critics. An example of such a response was Lewes' complaint in 1859 that Austin' range of subjects and characters was too narrow. Praising her verisimilitude, Lewes added that nonetheless her focus was too often upon only the unlofty and the commonplace. (20th century Marxists, on tile other hand, were to complain about what they saw as her exclusive emphasis on a lofty upper-middle class. ) In any case, having been rescued by some literary critics from neglect and indeed gradually lionized by them, Austin steadily reached, by the midnineteenth century, the enviable pinnacle of being considered controversial.
The author mentions that English literature "was not part of any academic curriculum" in the early 19th century in order to______.
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When we consider great painters of the past, the study of art and the study of illusion cannot always be separated. By illusion I mean those contrivances of color, line, shape, and so forth that lead us to see marks on a flat surface as depicting three-dimensional objects in space. I must emphasize that I am not making a plea, disguised or otherwise, for the exercise of illusionist tricks in painting today, although I am, in fact, rather critical of certain theories of non-representational art. But to argue over these theories would be to miss the point. That the discoveries and effects of representation that were the pride of earlier artists have become trivial today I would not deny for a moment. Yet I believe that we are in real danger of losing contact with past masters if we accept the fashionable doctrine that such matters never had anything to do with art. The very reason why the representation of nature can now be considered something commonplace should be of the greatest interest to art historians. Never before has there been an age when the visual image was so cheap in every sense of the word. We are surrounded and assailed by posters and advertisements, comics and magazine illustrations. We see aspects of reality represented on television, postage stamps, and food packages.
Painting is taught in school and practiced as a pastime, and many modest amateurs have mastered tricks that would have looked like sheet magic to the fourteenth-century painter Giotto. Even the crude colored renderings on a cereal box might have made Giotto' s contemporaries gasp. Perhaps there are people who conclude from this that the cereal box is superior to a Giotto; I do not. But I think that the victory and vulgarization of representational skills create a problem for both art historians and critics.
In this connection it is instructive to remember the Greek saying that to marvel is the beginning of knowledge and if we cease to marvel we may be in danger of ceasing to know. I believe we must restore our sense of wonder at the capacity to conjure up by forms, lines, shades, or colors those mysterious phantoms of visual reality we call "pictures." Even comics and advertisements rightly viewed, provide food for though. Just as the study of poetry remains incomplete without an awareness of the language of prose, so, I believe, the study of art will be increasingly supplemented by inquiry into the "linguistics" of the visual image. The way the language of art refers to the visible world is both so obvious and so mysterious that it is still largely unknown except to artist who use it as we use all language—without needing to know its grammar and semantics.
The author of the passage explicitly disagrees with which of the following statements？
Pardon one: how are your manners？
The decline of civility and good manners may be worrying people more than crime, according to Gentility Recalled, edited by Digby Anderson, which laments the breakdown of traditional codes that once regulated social conduct. It criticizes the fact that "manners" are scorned us repressive and outdated.
The result, according to Mr. Anderson-director of the Social Affairs Unit, an independent think-tank—is a society characterized by rudeness: loutish behaviour on the streets, jostling in crowds, impolite shop assistants and bad-tempered drivers.
Mr. Anderson says the cumulative effect of these—apparently trivial, but often offensive—is to make everyday life uneasy, unpredictable and unpleasant. As they are encountered far more often than crime, they can cause more anxiety than crime.
When people lament the disintegration of law and order, he argues, what they generally mean is order, as manifested by courteous forms of social contact. Meanwhile, attempts to re-establish restraint and self-control through "politically correct" rules are artificial.
The book has contributions from 12 academic in disciplines ranging from medicine to sociology and charts what it calls the "coarsening" of Britain. Old- fashioned terms such as "gentleman" and "lady" have lost all meaningful resonance and need to be re-evaluated, it says. Rachel Trickett, honorary fellow and former principal of St Hugh' s College, Oxford, says that the notion of a "lady" protects women rather than demeaning them.
Feminism and demands for equality have blurred the distinctions between the sexes, creating situations where men are able to dominate women because of their more aggressive and forceful natures, she says. "Women, without some code of deference or respect, become increasingly victims."
Caroline Moore, the first woman fellow of Peterhouse, Cambridge, points out that "gentleman" is now used only with irony or derision.
"The popular view of a gentleman is poised somewhere between the imbecile parasite and the villainous one: between Woosteresque chinless wonders, and those heartless capitalist toffs who are the stock-in-trade of television."
She argues that the concept is neither class-bound nor rigid; conventions of gentlemanly behavior enable a man to act naturally as and individual within shared assumptions while taking his place in society.
"Politeness is no constraint, precisely because the manners are no ' code' but a language, rich, flexible, restrained and infinitely subtle."
For Anthony O' Hear, professor of philosophy at the University of Bradford, manners are closely associated with the different forms of behavior. appropriate to age and status. They curb both the impetuosity of youth and the bitterness of old age. Egalitarianism, he says, has led to people failing to act their age. "We have vice-chancellors with earrings, aristocrats as hippies the trendy vicar on his motorbike."
Dr. Athena Leoussi, sociology lecturer at Reading University, bemoans the deliberate neglect by people of their sartorial appearance.
Dress, she says, is the outward expression of attitudes and aspirations. The ubiquitousness of jeans "displays a utilitarian attitude" that has "led to the cultural impoverishment of everyday life". Dr. Leoussi says that while clothes used to be seen as a means of concealing taboo forces of sexuality and violence, certain fashions—such as leather jackets--have the opposite effect.
Dr. Bruce Charlton, a lecturer in public health medicine in Newcastle upon Tyne, takes issue with the excessive informality of relations between professionals such as doctors and bank managers, and their clients. He says this has eroded the distance and respect necessary in such relationships. For Tristarn
Although any destruction of vitamins caused by food irradiation could be______ the use of
Though he refused any responsibility for the failure of the negotiations, Stevenson had no
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