2018届高三英语总复习课时作业18带答案.docxVIP

课时作业18 Ⅰ.阅读理解 (2017·成都外国语学校高三模拟) Something that has always interested me about Abraham Lincoln is, not surprisingly, his sense of humor. As far as I can tell, hes the first American President to have one. Thats because the term “sense of humor” really wasnt in common usage until the eighteen-sixties and seventies. In the eighteen-forties and fifties, it was called “the sense of the ridiculous”， and didnt have the positive connotations(隐含意义)that “sense of humor” has today. Back then, what was ridiculous was what invited ridicule(讥笑). Funniness and cruelty went hand in hand. Of course, they still do a lot of arm-in-arm walking in our day as well. Lincolns humor was very different, because, for one thing, it was actually “humor”as what the word meant in his time. We dont make the distinction between “wit(风趣)” and “humor” anymore; but in the nineteenth century people did. Wit was unpleasant and offensive while humor was pleasant and sympathetic. Its the difference we note now when we distinguish between “laughing with” and “laughing at”. Lincoln was much more about “laughing with” than “laughing at”. And when “laughing at”， it was often himself he was teasing. In the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates, when Douglas accused Lincoln of being two-faced, Lincoln replied, referencing his plain looking, “Honestly, if I were two-faced, would I be showing you this_one？” And, in a way, Lincolns face itself tells us much about his sense of humor. You can comb through thousands of photographs of politicians, soldiers, and the like from Lincolns time and not find a single smile. True, the long exposures(曝光)required for photographs of that time made smiling difficult. Yet Lincoln alone, as far as I can tell, overcame that difficulty. Interestingly, while having a sense of humor, or at least the appearance of one provided by comedy writers has become a necessary characteristic for an American President in our time, in the nineteenth century, too much humor was considered problem. And t