問題詳情
Passage BPerhaps the most striking quality of satiric literature is its freshness, its originalityof perspective. Satire rarely offers original ideas. Instead it presents the familiar in a newform. Satirists do not offer the world new philosophies. What they do is look at familiarconditions from a perspective that makes these conditions seem foolish, harmful oraffected. Satire jars us out of complacence into a pleasantly shocked realization thatmany of the values we unquestioningly accept are false. Don Quixote makes chivalryseem absurd. Brave New World ridicules the pretensions of science. A Modest Proposaldramatizes starvation by advocating cannibalism. None of these ideas is original.Chivalry was suspected before Cervantes, humanists objected to the claims of purescience before Aldous Huxley and people were aware of famine before Swift. It was notthe originality of the idea that made these satires popular. It was the manner ofexpression the satiric method that made them interesting and entertaining Satires areread because they are aesthetically satisfying works of art, not because they are morallywholesome or ethically instructive. They are stimulating and refreshing because withcommonsense briskness they brush away illusions and secondhand opinions. Withspontaneous irreverence, satire rearranges perspectives, scrambles familiar objects intoincongruous juxtaposition and speaks in a personal idiom instead of abstract platitude.Satire exists because there is a need for it. It has lived because readers appreciate arefreshing stimulus, an irreverent reminder that they lived in a world of platitudinousthinking, cheap moralizing, and foolish philosophy. Satire serves to prod people into anawareness of truth. Satire tends to remind people that much of what they see, hear, andread in popular media is sanctimonious, sentimental, and only partially true. Liferesembles in only a slight degree the popular image of it. Soldiers rarely hold the idealsthat movies attribute to them, nor do ordinary citizens devote their lives to unselfishservice of community. Intelligent people know these things but tend to forget them whenthey do not hear them expressed.
【題組】46. What does this passage mainly discuss? .
(A) Reasons for the popularity of satire
(B) Popular topics of satire
(C) New philosophies emerging from satiric literature
(D) Difficulties of writing satiric literature
參考答案
答案：A
難度：簡單0.742268
統計：A(72),B(8),C(13),D(4),E(0)
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