Thomas Hardy was born at Higher Bockhampton, Dorset, on June 2, 1840, where his father worked as a builder. From his father he gained an appreciation of music, and from his mother an appetite for learning and the delights of the countryside about his rural home.
Due to his poor health, Hardy did not start school until he was eight. At 16, Hardy helped his father with architectural drawings and then started to work for architects. Later he moved to London and began writing poems, but his works were rejected by publishers. In 1870, he was sent to work in Cornwall. There he met his future wife Emma Gifford, who encouraged him in his writing.
Hardy published his first novel Desperate Remedies in 1871, to universal disinterest. But the following year Under the Greenwood Tree brought Hardy popular praise for the first time. As with most of his fictional works, this novel incorporated real places around Dorset into the plot, including the village school that Hardy attended. After Under the Greenwood Tree came a serialized novel A Pair of Blue Eves. Once more Hardy drew upon real life, and the novel mirrors his romance with Emma.
Hardy followed this with Far From the Madding Crowd, set in Puddletown, near his birthplace. This novel finally netted Hardy the success that enabled him to give up his architectural practice and concentrate only on writing.
The Hardys lived in London for a short time, then in Yeovil, then in Sturminster Newton, which Hardy described as “idyllic (田园诗般的)”. It was at Sturminster Newton that he penned Return of the Native, one of his most enduring (持久的) works.
In 1887, Hardy published The Woodlander, a story concerning an honest woodsman in a small village. Then in 1891 one of his best works, Tess of the d’Urbervilles, came out, which was set primarily in the English countryside during the 19th century.
Tess excited interest, but his next work, Jude the Obscure (1896), threw Hardy into a storm of controversy (争议), which made him turn away from fiction and focused on poetry for the rest of his life.
1. What do we know about Hardy?| A．He was into drawing as a young man. | B．He got fame at first attempt of writing. |
| C．His writing career started with poems. | D．His wife Emma shared his interest. |
| A．Integrated. | B．Changed. | C．Developed. | D．Forced. |
| A．A Pair of Blue Eyes. | B．Far From the Madding Crowd. |
| C．Tess of the d’Urbervilles. | D．Jude the Obscure. |
| A．Campus life. | B．Life in London. |
| C．Marriage life. | D．Life in the countryside. |
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【推荐1】I grew up in New Hampshire, a small town in South Canada, where in my father’s words for the seasons were “Spring, Summer, Fairtime and Winter!” At that time, a week-long fair (展销会) was held in the town every autumn. Thousands of people from other towns came to sell and buy things. It was the busiest time of the year.
When “Fairtime” came, my grandma became the most “useful” and busiest person of the family. Grandma was a kind, well-educated old lady. She was good at cooking. All her relatives liked the food she cooked. During “fairtime”, they would come to live in her house and have meals there. Grandma was always happy to look after them.
Year after year, many people moved to big cities. There was no longer “Fairtime”. Grandma became very old and was gradually going blind. My parents and I moved to live with Grandma in her house. We did our best to make her day-to-day life as comfortable as possible. I was at high school then. What I often did at home was to help Grandma with the daily newspaper’s crossword puzzle. However, she didn’t look happy. She often sat in her room for hours, without saying a word.
To attract people to move back, the Town Hall decided to reopen the Fair. One day, when I came back from school, I saw Grandma wearing her glasses, washing the dishes in the kitchen. With a big smile on her face, she looked a lot much younger. She told me that her two nieces would come. “They said the food I cooked was very delicious and they want to stay in my house again,” Grandma said happily. “They will stay here for one week and we can have a big party. That must be the busiest week I’ve had in years!”
I suddenly realized that Grandma didn’t want to be looked after. She wanted to be “useful”, appreciated and helpful.
1. According to the writer, the busiest time of the year was in ______.| A．spring | B．summer | C．autumn | D．winter |
| A．To enjoy Grandma’s food. | B．To sell and buy things. |
| C．To learn to cook. | D．To have a big party. |
| A．She was too busy. | B．No one lived with her. |
| C．She couldn’t see anything. | D．She was not “useful”. |
| A．Fairtime | B．My Old Grandma |
| C．A Small Town | D．Grandma’s Family |
【推荐2】Sandra Cisneros was born in Chicago in 1954 to a Mexican American family. As the only girl in a family of seven children, she often felt like she had “seven fathers”, because her six brothers, as well as her father, tried to control her. Feeling shy and unimportant, she hid herself into books. Despite her love of reading, she did not do well in elementary school because she was too shy to participate.
In high school, with the encouragement of one particular teacher, Cisneros improved her grades and worked for the school literary magazine. Her father encouraged her to go to college because he thought it would be a good way for her to find a husband. Cisneros did attend college, but instead of searching for a husband, she found a teacher who helped her join the famous graduate writing program at the University of Iowa. At the University’s Writers’ Workshop, however, she felt lonely—a Mexican American from a poor neighborhood among students from wealthy families. The feeling of being so different helped Cisneros find her “creative voice”.
“It was not until this moment when I considered myself truly different that my writing acquired a voice. I knew I was a Mexican woman, but I didn’t think it had anything to do with why I felt so much imbalanced in my life, but it had everything to do with it! That’s when I decided I would write about something my classmates couldn’t write about.”
Cisneros published her first work, The House on Mango Street, when she was twenty-nine. The book tells about a young Mexican American girl growing up in a Spanish-speaking area in Chicago, much like the neighborhoods in which Cisneros lived as a child. The book won an award in 1985 and has been used in classes from high school through graduate school level. Since then, Cisneros has published several books of poetry, a children’s book, and a shortstory collection.
1. Which of the following is TRUE about Cisneros in her childhood?| A．She had seven brothers. | B．She felt herself a nobody. |
| C．She was too shy to go to school. | D．She did not have any good teachers. |
| A．make a lot of friends | B．develop her writing style |
| C．run away from her family | D．work for a school magazine |
| A．Her early years in college. | B．Her childhood experience. |
| C．Her training in the Workshop. | D．Her feeling of being different. |
| A．It is quite popular among students. |
| B．It is the only book ever written by Cisneros. |
| C．It wasn't a success as it was written in Spanish. |
| D．It won an award when Cisneros was twenty-nine. |
| A．she didn't enjoy reading |
| B．she met a Mexican American girl |
| C．her brothers treated her very kindly |
| D．she lived an uneasy life in her childhood |
【推荐3】When Stephen Sondheim died on Nov. 26, 2021, at age 91. I didn’t show an inclination to watch his Broadway musicals. Something in me instead wanted to see Al Hirschfeld’s drawings of Sondheim’s shows and characters over the decades.
As a boy growing up in the Boston suburbs in the 1970s, Hirschfeld’s images were my first ticket to Broadway, transported by their publication in The Times’s Arts& Leisure section. And they were also how I formed an early bond with my parents, one that stood over time and even into their years with Alzheimer’s(阿尔茨海默症).
“Oklahoma!” was the first musical my parent took me to, in Boston, when I was six.
Around that time, I asked them why we got The Times when we didn’t live in New York. They said they still considered themselves New Yorkers and they loved Arts& Leisure and Hirschfeld’ s drawings about theater. His drawings were like a lifeline for my parents to New York City over the decades, and they helped open the door for me to Sondheim.
This is how:
I made my way to New York in 1989, as a freshman at N. Y. U. , where I met a dorm mate who looked like Hirschfeld’s drawing of little Red Riding Hood from Sondheim’s “Into that Woods.” Her name was Daniclle Ferland. I told my parents about this Hirschfeld-in-the-flesh excitedly by phonc. Danielle and other friends introduced me to Sondheim’s music which evoke (唤起)my memories of Hirschfeld’s drawings.
As my parents grew older, it was harder to take them to see shows with me. But in my years as the theater reporter at The Times, they would ask what I was seeing in New York and were happy to hear about Angela Lansbury performing in a 2009 revival(重演)of Sondheim’s “A Little Night Music.” They remembered her characteristic eyes from Hirschfeld’s drawings.
1. What does the underlined part “an inclination” in paragraph I mean?| A．An ability. | B．A tendency. |
| C．An opportunity. | D．A responsibility, |
| A．A difficult childhood | B．A chance to work for Broadway, |
| C．A cure for a disease in her later years. | D．An inseparable life with her parents |
| A．Stories publicized in The Times, |
| B．The musical her parents took her to |
| C．A course she signed up for at university |
| D．Recommendations made by her friends |
| A．The time of its first staging | B．The excitement it had caused |
| C．The drawings of its performer | D．The performance on Broadway |
【推荐1】Many things come to mind when people talk about US author Mary Robinette Kowal, 50 years old. She’s a space enthusiast, feminist, and puppeteer (演木偶戏的人). But she is best known for her novels.
This August, her book, The Calculating Stars, won Hugo Award for Best Novel. It also received a Nebula Award earlier this year. It is the first novel to win both top awards for science fiction since 1966. What made the book such compelling(不可抗拒的) choice for judges?
The Verge sys, “Kowal creates a different space race that's running not against any nations, but against the coming changes in Earth's climate.”
The story takes place in the 1950s, when an asteroid(小行星) strikes the east cost of the United States. It causes a rapid temperature rise that threatens all of humanity. Humans have 50 years to colonize Mars or they won't survive Earth's deadly climate change.
“The novel focuses on the combat between people and nature. That steers our attentions from people to nature, which is what we should do today,” wrote a reader at US book review website Goodreads.
The Calculating Stars is not only about nature, but also takes on issues of gender inequality.
Book review platform Utopia State of Mind praises the book's strong female character. "It's about courage and strength in the face of injustice. "
Husband-and-wife protagonists (主人公) Elma and Nathaniel York offer their scientific knowledge to save Earth. Elma is a mathematician and former Air Force pilot, and Nathaniel is a well-known physicist.
However, the strict gender roles of that era mean that men work and women stay at home. Nathaniel receives a position of power while Elma gets simple administration jobs. She is even prevented from applying for the all-male astronaut selection process, despite her experience as a pilot.
Fighting this unfairness, Elma launches a campaign to include women in the selection process. “You can be the hero and make changes if you overcome society's limitations,” said a reviewer at The Verge.
1. What causes the deadly climate change in The Calculating Stars?| A．Constant wars. | B．An asteroid. |
| C．Space colonization. | D．Too much carbon dioxide in the air. |
| A．transfers | B．focuses |
| C．applies | D．ranges |
| A．She leads to fight against gender injustice. |
| B．She is elected leader in the campaign for more rights. |
| C．She is selected to be an astronaut due to her work experience. |
| D．She must save the world while being a housewife, |
| A．The gender roles are equal in the ending part of the novel. |
| B．The Calculating Stars is the first novel to win both top awards for science fiction. |
| C．Elma fights for the equality of female besides saving Earth with her husband. |
| D．Nathaniel receives a high-level job for his courage and mathematical knowledge. |
【推荐2】Samuel Langhorne Clemens, who is better known all over the world as Mark Twain, left school when he was twelve. He had little school education. However, he still became the most famous writer of his time. He made millions of dollars by writing.
Mark Twain was born in 1835 and he was not a healthy baby. In fact, he was not expected(期望) to live through the first winter. But with his mother’ s care, he managed to survive. As a boy, he caused much trouble for his parents. He used to play jokes on all his friends and neighbors. He didn’t like to go to school, and he often ran away from home. He always went in the direction of the nearby Mississippi. He was nearly drowned（淹没）nine times.
After his father’s death, Mark Twain began to work for a printer(印刷厂), who only provided him with food and clothing. Then, he worked as a printer, a river-boat pilot（引航员）and later joined the army. But soon after that he became a miner. During this period, he started to write short stories. Afterwards（后来） he became a full-time writer.
In 1870, Mark Twain got married. In the years that followed he wrote many books including Tom Sawyer in 1876, and Huckleberry Finn in 1884, which made him famous, and brought him great fortune.
Unfortunately, Mark Twain got into debts in bad investments(投资) and he had to write large numbers of stories to pay these debts. In 1904, his wife died, and then three of his children passed away.
At the age of 70, his hair was completely white. He bought many white suits and neckties（领带）. He wore only white from head to foot until his death on April 21, 1910.
1. Which of the following shows the right order about Mark Twain?a. He became a miner.
b. He worked as a printer.
c. He got into debts.
d. His father died.
e. He became a full-time writer.
f. He joined the army.
| A．a—d—b—c—e—f | B．d—b—f—a—e—c |
| C．d—a—f—e—b—c | D．c—b—d—f—e—a |
| A．always worked as a printer |
| B．did many kinds of work |
| C．wrote stories in the beginning |
| D．joined the army after he worked in a mine |
| A．had a happy childhood |
| B．was a good boy and always did what he was asked |
| C．was very naughty（淘气的）when he was young |
| D．lived a pleasant life |
【推荐3】Louise Gluck has been no stranger to awards over her long and storied career, since her first publication in 1968. In 1993, she won the Pulitzer Prize for her collection of poems, The Wild Iris (《野鸢尾》). And on Oct 8 she became the 16th woman to win the Nobel Prize in literature with the Nobel prizes first awarded in 1901.
Gluck was honored “for her unmistakable poetic voice that, with austere (朴素的) beauty, makes individual existence universal”. Often said to be an autobiographical (自传体的) poet, drawing from the inner parts of her life, “she is not to be regarded as a confessional poet (告白派诗人). Gluck seeks the universal,” Nobel Committee Chair Anders Olsson said in a statement.
Gluck, 77, the author of 12 poetry collections, has been able to turn her life experiences into universal themes covering life, loss, and isolation. Because of this, readers have often found her poetry to be “dark”. However, there is much more than darkness in her voice, as noted by Olsson. “It is straightforward and ... also a voice full of humor and biting wit,” he said.
For example, in her poem Snowdrops, she uses the coming of spring after winter to show rebirth of life after death. She leads readers down a depressing path only to reconnect with the light at the near end. At the conclusion of the poem, readers are left to feel the “raw wind of the new world” as they watch a new spring. This is often the case in Gluck’s poetry, being able to feel joy even after not having done so for a long time.
When her work Faithful Virtuous Night (《忠诚与善良之夜》) received a National Book Award for Poetry in 2014, a judge for the award went on to say, the collection comes from “a world where darkness blurs (使模糊) ordinarily sharp edges (边界) around the oppositions of our lives – loss and renewal, male and female, the living and the dead”.
Although she’s already a well-known writer, experienced in exploring trauma (痛苦经历) and healing, Gluck did feel honored to be given the prestigious Nobel award. However, when asked what the prize means to her, the lyric poet responded by saying, “It’s too new … I don’t know really what it means.” Her only hope is that she can preserve her daily life.
1. What can we know about Louise Gluck?| A．Her first book was published in 1993. |
| B．The Wild Iris won her the Nobel Prize in literature. |
| C．She draws from her life experiences in her writing. |
| D．She is seen as a successful confessional poet. |
| A．They are all about human psychology. | B．They are too dark for readers. |
| C．They ignore individual existence. | D．They are frank and humorous in style. |
| A．To introduce the main plots of this poem. |
| B．To describe Gluck’s creativity in choosing themes. |
| C．To show the features of Gluck’s poetry. |
| D．To explain Gluck’s purpose in writing Snowdrops. |
| A．She is not qualified for the prize. |
| B．It may change her daily life. |
| C．It is not meaningful for her. |
| D．The history of this award is not long enough. |
