河北省学位英语阅读理解.docVIP

Passage 1 The ballad(民谣)and the folk song have long been recognized as important keys to the thoughts and feelings of a people，but the dime novel(通俗小说)，though sought by the collector and deferred to in a general way by the social historian，is dismissed with a smile of amusement by almost everyone else． Neither folk songs nor dime novels were actually created by the plain people of America．But in their devotion to these modes of expression，the people made them their own．The dime novel, intended as it was for the great masses and designed to fill the pockets of both author and．publisher, quite naturally sought the lowest common denominator：themes that were found to be popular and attitudes that met with the most general approval became stereotyped． Moreover, the dime novel，reflecting a much wider range of attitudes and ideas than the ballad and the folk song，is the nearest thing we have had in this county to a true proletarian’literature，that is a literature written for the great masses of people and actually read by them． Although a study of our dime novels alone cannot enable anyone to determine what are the essential characteristics of the American tradition，it can contribute materially to that end．Sooner or later, the industrious researchers who have mined so many obscure lodes of American literary expression will almost certainly turn their attention to these novels and all their kinds．Let no one think，however, that the salmon covered paperbacks once so eagerly devoured by soldiers，lumberjacks，trainmen，hired girls，and adolescent boys now make exciting or agreeable reading even for the historian，much as the social and historical implications may interest him．As for the crowds today who get their sensational thrills from the movies and the tabloids，I fear that they would find these hair-raisers of an earlier age deadly dull． 以广大民众为目标，以作者和出版商盈利为目的，通俗小说很自然会追求最低的共同特征：流行的主题和大众普遍赞同的态度成为了一成不变的模式。 1．According to the passage，it is common to consider that a