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"I want to criticize the social system, and to show it at work, at its most intense." Virginia Woolf"s provocative statement about her intentions in writing Mrs Valloway has regularly been ignored by the critics, since it highlights an aspect of her literary interests very different from the traditionally picture of the "poetic" novelist concerned with examining states of reverie and vision and with following the intricate pathways of individual consciousness. But Virginia Woolf was a realistic as well as a poetic novelist, a satirical and social critic as well as a visionary: literary critics" cavalier dismissal of Woolies social vision will not withstand scrutiny.In her novels, Woolf is deeply engaged by the questions of how individuals are shaped ( or deformed) by their social environments, how historical forces impinge on people"s lives, how class, wealth, and gender help to determine people"s fates. Most of her novels are rooted in a realistically rendered social setting and in a precise historical time.Woolf"s focus on society has not been generally recognized because of her intense antipathy to propaganda in art. The pictures of reformers in her novels are usually satirical or sharply critical. Even when Woolf is fundamentally sympathetic to their causes, she portrays people anxious to reform their social and possessed of a message or program as arrogant or dishonest, unaware of how their political ideas serve their own psychological needs. (Her Writer"s Diarynotes: "the only honest people are the artists," whereas "these social reformers under the disguise of loving their kind...") Woolf detested what she called "preaching" in fiction, too and criticized novelist D. H. Lawrence (among others) for working by this method.Woolf"s own social criticism is expressed in the language of observation rather than in direct commentary, since for her, fiction is a contemplative, not an active art. She describes phenomena and provides materials for reader"s work to put the observations together and understand the coherent point of view behind them. As a moralist, Woolf works by indirection, subtly undermining officially accepted mores, mocking, suggesting, calling into question, rather than asserting, advocating beating witness: here is the satirist"s art.Woolf"s literary models were acute social observers like Chekhov and Chaucer. As she put it in The Common Reader, "It is safe to say that not a single law has been framed or one stone set upon another because of anything Chaucer said or wrote; and yet, as we read him, we are absorbing morality at every pore." Like Chaucer, Woolf chose to understand as well as to judge, to know her society root and branch—a decision crucial in order to produce art rather than polemic.Questions: Why did Woolf choose Chaucer as a literary model

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"I want to criticize the social system, and to show it at work, at its most intense." Virginia Woolf"s provocative statement about her intentions in writing Mrs Valloway has regularly been ignored by the critics, since it highlights an aspect of her literary interests very different from the traditionally picture of the "poetic" novelist concerned with examining states of reverie and vision and with following the intricate pathways of individual consciousness. But Virginia Woolf was a realistic as well as a poetic novelist, a satirical and social critic as well as a visionary: literary critics" cavalier dismissal of Woolies social vision will not withstand scrutiny.In her novels, Woolf is deeply engaged by the questions of how individuals are shaped ( or deformed) by their social environments, how historical forces impinge on people"s lives, how class, wealth, and gender help to determine people"s fates. Most of her novels are rooted in a realistically rendered social setting and in a precise historical time.Woolf"s focus on society has not been generally recognized because of her intense antipathy to propaganda in art. The pictures of reformers in her novels are usually satirical or sharply critical. Even when Woolf is fundamentally sympathetic to their causes, she portrays people anxious to reform their social and possessed of a message or program as arrogant or dishonest, unaware of how their political ideas serve their own psychological needs. (Her Writer"s Diarynotes: "the only honest people are the artists," whereas "these social reformers under the disguise of loving their kind...") Woolf detested what she called "preaching" in fiction, too and criticized novelist D. H. Lawrence (among others) for working by this method.Woolf"s own social criticism is expressed in the language of observation rather than in direct commentary, since for her, fiction is a contemplative, not an active art. She describes phenomena and provides materials for reader"s work to put the observations together and understand the coherent point of view behind them. As a moralist, Woolf works by indirection, subtly undermining officially accepted mores, mocking, suggesting, calling into question, rather than asserting, advocating beating witness: here is the satirist"s art.Woolf"s literary models were acute social observers like Chekhov and Chaucer. As she put it in The Common Reader, "It is safe to say that not a single law has been framed or one stone set upon another because of anything Chaucer said or wrote; and yet, as we read him, we are absorbing morality at every pore." Like Chaucer, Woolf chose to understand as well as to judge, to know her society root and branch—a decision crucial in order to produce art rather than polemic.Questions: How did Woolf criticize novelist D. H. Lawrence (among others)

David Landes, author of TheWealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are So Rich and Some So Poor, credits the world"s economic and social progress over the last thousand years to "Western civilization and its dissemination". The reason, he believes, is that Europeans invented systematic economic development. Landes adds that three unique aspects of culture were crucial ingredients in Europe"s economic growth.First, science developed as an autonomous method of intellectual inquiry that successfully disengaged itself from the social constraints of organized religion and from the political constraints of centralized authority. Though Europe lacked a political center, its scholars benefited from the use of a single vehicle of communication: Latin. This common tongue facilitated an adversarial discourse in which new ideas about the physical world could be tested, demonstrated, and then accepted across the continent and eventually across the world.Second, Landes espouses a generalized form of Max Weber"s thesis that the values of work, initiative, and investment made the difference for Europe. Despite his emphasis on science, Landes does not stress the notion of rationality as such. In his view, "what counts is work, thrift, honesty, patience, and tenacity." The only route to economic success for individuals or states is working hard, spending less than you earn, and investing the rest in productive capacity. This is his fundamental explanation of the problem posed by his book"s subtitle: "Why Some Are So Rich and Some So Poor". For historical reasons—an emphasis on private property, an experience of political pluralism, a temperate climate, an urban style—Europeans have, on balance, followed those practices and therefore have prospered.Third, and perhaps most important, Europeans were learners. They "learned rather greedily", as Joel Mokyr put it in a review of Landes"s book. Even if Europeans possessed indigenous technologies that gave them an advantage (spectacles, for example), as Landes believes they did, their most vital asset was the ability to assimilate knowledge from around the world and put it to use—as in borrowing the concept of zero and rediscovering Aristotle"s Logic from the Arabs and taking paper and gunpowder from the Chinese via the Muslim world. Landes argues that a systematic resistance to learning from other cultures had become the greatest handicap of the Chinese by the eighteenth century and remains the greatest handicap of Arab countries today.Although his analysis of European expansion is almost nonexistent, Landes does not argue that Europeans were beneficent bearers of civilization to a benighted world. Rather he relies on his own commonsense law: "When one group is strong enough to push another around and stands to gain by it, it will do so." In contrast to the new school of world historians, Landes believes that specific cultural values enabled technological advances that in turn made some Europeans strong enough to dominate people in other parts of the world. Europeans therefore proceeded to do so with great viciousness and cruelty. By focusing on their victimization in this process, Landes holds, some postcolonial states have wasted energy that could have been put into productive work and investment, if one could sum up Landes"s advice to these states in one sentence, it might be "Stop whining and get to work." This is particularly important, indeed hopeful, advice, he would agree, because success is not permanent. Advantages are not fixed, gains from trade are equal, and different societies react differently to market signals. Therefore, not only is there hope for undeveloped countries, but developed countries have little cause to be complacent, because the current situation "will press hard" on them.The thrust of studies like Landes"s is to identify those distinctive features of European civilization that lie behind Europe"s rise to power and the creation of modernity more generally. Other historians have placed a greater emphasis on such features as liberty, individualism, and Christianity. In a review essay, the art historian Craig Clunas listed some of the less well known linkages that have been proposed between Western culture and modernity, including the propensities to think quantitatively, enjoy pornography, and consume sugar. All such proposals assume the fundamental aptness of the question: What elements of European civilization led to European success It is a short leap from this assumption to outfight triumphalism. The paradigmatic book of this school is, of course,The End of History and the Last Man, in which Francis Fukuyarna argues that after the collapse of Nazism in the twentieth century, the only remaining model for human organization in the industrial and communications ages is a combination of market economics and limited, pluralist, democratic government. In discussing Landes"s work, the author"s tone is ______.

A. enthusiastic
B. skeptical
C. reproachful
D. matter of fact

In the art of the Middle Ages, we never encounter the personality of the artist as an individual; rather it is diffused through the artistic genius of centuries embodied in the rifles of religious art. Art of the Middle Ages is first a sacred script, the symbols and meanings of which were well settled. The circular halo placed vertically behind the head signifies sainthood, while the halo impressed with a cross signifies divinity. By bare feet, we recognize God, the angels, Jesus Christ and the apostles, but for an artist to have the Virgin Mary depicted with bare feet would have been tantamount to heresy. Several concentric, wavy lines represent the sky, while parallel lines water or the sea. A tree which is to say a single stalk with two or three stylized leaves informs us that the scene is laid on earth. A tower with a window indicates a village, and, should an angel be watching from depicted with curly hair, a short beard, and a tonsure, while Saint Paul has always a bald head and a long beard.A second characteristic of this iconography is obedience to a sacred mathematics. "The Divine Wisdom", wrote Saint Augustine, "reveals itself everywhere in numbers", a doctrine attributable to the Neo-Platonists who revived the genius of Pythagoras. Twelve is the master number of the Church and is the product of three, the number of the Trinity, and four, the number of material elements. The number seven, the most mysterious of all numbers, is the sum of four and three. There are the seven ages of man, seven virtues, and seven planets; in the final analysis, the seven-tone scale of Gregorian music is the sensible embodiment of the order of the universe. Numbers require also symmetry. At Charters, a stained glass window show the four prophets, Isaac, Eekiel, Danniel, and Jerimiah, carrying on their shoulders the four evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.A third characteristic of art is to be a symbolic language, showing us one thing and inviting us to see another. In this respect, the artist was called upon to imitate God, who had hidden a profound meaning behind the literal and wished itself to be a moral lesson to man. Thus, every painting is an allegory. In a scene of the final judgment, we can see the foolish virgins at the left hand of Jesus and the wise at his right hand, and we understand that this symbolizes those who are lost and those who are saved. Even seemingly insignificant details carry hidden meaning: The lion in a stained glass window is the figure of the Resurrection.These, then, are the definite characteristics of art of the Middle Ages, a system within which even the most mediocre talent was elevated by the genius of the centuries. The artists of the early renaissance broke with tradition at their own peril. When they are not outstanding, they are scarcely able to avoid insignificant and banality in their religious works, and even when they are great, they"re no more than the equals of the old masters who passively followed the sacred rules. Which of the following can be substituted for the word "mediocre" in the last paragraph

A. Mysterious
B. Undistinguished
C. Unorthodox
D. Outstanding

In the art of the Middle Ages, we never encounter the personality of the artist as an individual; rather it is diffused through the artistic genius of centuries embodied in the rifles of religious art. Art of the Middle Ages is first a sacred script, the symbols and meanings of which were well settled. The circular halo placed vertically behind the head signifies sainthood, while the halo impressed with a cross signifies divinity. By bare feet, we recognize God, the angels, Jesus Christ and the apostles, but for an artist to have the Virgin Mary depicted with bare feet would have been tantamount to heresy. Several concentric, wavy lines represent the sky, while parallel lines water or the sea. A tree which is to say a single stalk with two or three stylized leaves informs us that the scene is laid on earth. A tower with a window indicates a village, and, should an angel be watching from depicted with curly hair, a short beard, and a tonsure, while Saint Paul has always a bald head and a long beard.A second characteristic of this iconography is obedience to a sacred mathematics. "The Divine Wisdom", wrote Saint Augustine, "reveals itself everywhere in numbers", a doctrine attributable to the Neo-Platonists who revived the genius of Pythagoras. Twelve is the master number of the Church and is the product of three, the number of the Trinity, and four, the number of material elements. The number seven, the most mysterious of all numbers, is the sum of four and three. There are the seven ages of man, seven virtues, and seven planets; in the final analysis, the seven-tone scale of Gregorian music is the sensible embodiment of the order of the universe. Numbers require also symmetry. At Charters, a stained glass window show the four prophets, Isaac, Eekiel, Danniel, and Jerimiah, carrying on their shoulders the four evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.A third characteristic of art is to be a symbolic language, showing us one thing and inviting us to see another. In this respect, the artist was called upon to imitate God, who had hidden a profound meaning behind the literal and wished itself to be a moral lesson to man. Thus, every painting is an allegory. In a scene of the final judgment, we can see the foolish virgins at the left hand of Jesus and the wise at his right hand, and we understand that this symbolizes those who are lost and those who are saved. Even seemingly insignificant details carry hidden meaning: The lion in a stained glass window is the figure of the Resurrection.These, then, are the definite characteristics of art of the Middle Ages, a system within which even the most mediocre talent was elevated by the genius of the centuries. The artists of the early renaissance broke with tradition at their own peril. When they are not outstanding, they are scarcely able to avoid insignificant and banality in their religious works, and even when they are great, they"re no more than the equals of the old masters who passively followed the sacred rules. All the following conclusions can be deducted from the passage EXCEPT ______.

A. little originality is allowed in the art of the Middle Ages
B. art has become an embodiment of the religious beliefs
C. the artists are generally confirmed in establishing themselves in the artistic community
D. the images in the art of the Middle Ages are so symbolic that they are difficult to understand

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