(word)2010考研英语真题英语一阅读部分.docVIP

Text 1 ①Of all the changes that have taken place in English-language newspapers during the past quarter-century, perhaps the most far-reaching has been the inexorable decline in the scope and seriousness of their arts coverage. ①It is difficult to the point of impossibility for the average reader under the age of forty to imagine a time when high-quality arts criticism could be found in most big-city newspapers. ②Yet a considerable number of the most significant collections of criticism published in the 20th century consisted in large part of newspaper reviews. ③To read such books today is to marvel at the fact that their learned contents were once deemed suitable for publication in general-circulation dailies. ①We are even farther removed from the unfocused newspaper reviews published in England between the turn of the 20th century and the eve of World War II, at a time when newsprint was dirt-cheap and stylish arts criticism was considered an ornament to the publications in which it appeared. ②In those far-off days, it was taken for granted that the critics of major papers would write in detail and at length about the events they covered. ③Theirs was a serious business, and even those reviewers who wore their learning lightly, like George Bernard Shaw and Ernest Newman, could be trusted to know what they were about. ④These men believed in journalism as a calling, and were proud to be published in the daily press. ⑤“So few authors have brains enough or literary gift enough to keep their own end up in journalism,”Newman wrote,“that I am tempted to define‘journalism as‘a term of contempt applied by writers who are not read to writers who are .” ①Unfortunately, these critics are virtually forgotten. ②Neville Cardus, who wrote for the Manchester Guardian from 1917 until shortly before his death in 1975，is now known solely as a writer of essays on the game of cricket. ③During his lifetime, though, he was also one of Englands foremost classical-music critics, a stylist s