研究生英语精读教程[上册]Unit 7.ppt

《研究生英语精读教程》(第三版·上);Unit Seven;Good Taste, Bad Taste; [ 1 ] The things you own tell stories about you as surely as the Joneses youre keeping up with. Each purchase reveals something your partner or closest friend may not realise from your intimate exchanges. Every time you buy something you exercise your taste.; [ 2 ] Before the age of mass production, taste used to be the province of an educated elite*. But when the entire population became consumers for the first time, taste came out of the salons* and onto the streets. Suddenly, everybody had the opportunity to make a choice.; [ 3 ] There cannot objectively* be such a thing as good or bad. It is rather as the novelist Arnold Bennett① put it: good taste might be better than bad, but bad taste is certainly better than no taste at all.; [ 4 ] Exercising taste is not difficult. You decide what stories you want your possessions to tell and then get on and orchestrate* them. But be warned: not every story is a flattering* one.;Buy an onyx* ashtray* and you might as well rent poster* space and tell the world “I am the dupe*;of cynical* manipulators* who have succeeded in seducing* me with flashy* rubbish.;[ 5 ] Since the 18th century when taste was first discussed, people have believed that it was an endowment* of an elite, handed down to those poor souls below who wanted to better themselves. ;This opened up the market to tastemakers - either the patrician﹡ bureaucrats﹡ of Victorias reign﹡①, or the teams of slick﹡ decorators of today who have made careers out of introducing new money to old furniture.; [ 6 ] But is the question of taste just one of household* hints? No. Taste is an expression of a whole system of values. And that means yours. [ 7 ] To achieve an understanding of taste means that you should have conviction* in your choices.;If you look at the history of taste you will see that it is like a sketch* of the history of civilisation: for 200 years rococo*①, cla