Passage 5
Although vastly popular during its time, much nineteenth-century women’s fiction in the United States went unread by the twentieth-century educated elite, who were taught to ignore it as didactic. However, American literature has a tradition of didacticism going back to its Puritan roots, shifting over time from sermons and poetic transcripts into novels, which proved to be perfect vehicles forconveying social values. In the nineteenth century, critics reviled Poe for neglecting to conclude his stories with pithy moral tags, while Longfellow was canonized for his didactic verse. Although rhetorical changes favoring the anti-didactic can be detected as nineteenth-century American transformed itself into a secular society, it was twentieth-century criticism, which placed aesthetic value above everything else, that had no place in its doctrine for the didacticism of others.
1. Which of the following best describes the function of the highlighted sentence?
A. It explains why the fiction mentioned in the first sentence was not popular in the twentieth century.
B. It assists in drawing a contrast between nineteenth-century and twentieth-century critics.
C. It provides an example of how twentieth – century readers were taught to ignore certain literature.
D. It questions the usefulness of a particular distinction between Poe and Longfellow made by critics.
E. It explains why Poe’s stories were more popular than Longfellow’s verse during the nineteenth century.
2. In the context in which it appears, “conveying” most nearly means
A. carrying
B. transferring
C. granting
D. imparting
E. projecting
答案：D B
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