Wherever the crime novels of P. D. James are discussed by critics, there is a tendency on the one hand to exaggerate her merits and on the other to castigate her as a genre writer who is getting above herself. Perhaps underlying the debate is that familiar, false opposition set up between different kinds of fiction, according to which enjoyable novels are held to be somehow slightly lowbrow, and a novel is not considered true literature unless it is a tiny bit dull.
Those commentators who would elevate James’ books to the status of high literature point to her painstakingly constructed characters, her elaborate settings, her sense of place, and her love of abstractions: notions about morality, duty, pain, and pleasure are never far from the lips of her police officers and murderers. Others find her pretentious and tiresome; an inverted snobbery accuses her of abandoning the time-honored conventions of the detective genre in favor of a highbrow literary style. The cr
A. contradict an assertion cited previously
B. present previously mentioned positions in greater detail
C. analyze a dilemma in greater depth
D. propose an alternative to two extreme opinions described earlier
Wherever the crime novels of P. D. James are discussed by critics, there is a tendency on the one hand to exaggerate her merits and on the other to castigate her as a genre writer who is getting above herself. Perhaps underlying the debate is that familiar, false opposition set up between different kinds of fiction, according to which enjoyable novels are held to be somehow slightly lowbrow, and a novel is not considered true literature unless it is a tiny bit dull.
Those commentators who would elevate James’ books to the status of high literature point to her painstakingly constructed characters, her elaborate settings, her sense of place, and her love of abstractions: notions about morality, duty, pain, and pleasure are never far from the lips of her police officers and murderers. Others find her pretentious and tiresome; an inverted snobbery accuses her of abandoning the time-honored conventions of the detective genre in favor of a highbrow literary style. The cr
A. attention to the concepts of morality and responsibility
B. concern for the weaknesses and doubts of the characters
C. transparent devices to advance the plot
D. the straightforward assignment of culpability for the crime
| James’s first novels used conventional
narrative techniques: explicit characterization, action which related events in
distinctly phased sequences, settings firmly outlined and specifically
described. But this method gradually gave way to a subtler, more deliberate,
more diffuse style of accumulation of minutely discriminated details whose total
significance the reader can grasp only by constant attention and sensitive
inference. His later novels play down scenes of abrupt and prominent action, and
do not so much offer a succession of sharp shocks as slow piecemeal additions of
perception. The curtain is not suddenly drawn back from shrouded things,
but is slowly moved away. Such a technique is suited to James’s essential subject, which is not human action itself but the states of mind which produce and are produced by human actions and interactions. Jam A. Conventional Narrative Techniques B. The Psychological Novel C. Evolution of Manner from Matter D. Drawing Back the Curtain [单项选择]James’s first novels used conventional narrative techniques: explicit characterization, action which related events in distinctly phased sequences, settings firmly outlined and specifically described. But this method gradually gave way to a subtler, more deliberate, more diffuse style of accumulation of minutely discriminated details whose total significance the reader can grasp only by constant attention and sensitive inference. His later novels play down scenes of abrupt and prominent action, and do not so much offer a succession of sharp shocks as slow piecemeal additions of perception. The curtain is not suddenly drawn back from shrouded things, but is slowly moved away.
Such a technique is suited to James’s essential subject, which is not human action itself but the states of mind which produce and are produced by human actions and interactions. James was less interested in what characters do, than in the moral and psychological antecedents, realizations, and consequences whi A. telling an exciting story B. capturing a setting C. analyzing the mental adjustments of his characters D. describing the behavior of Americans in Europe 我来回答: 提交
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