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ART AND CULTURE OF PACIFIC NORTHWEST COM

游客2024-01-02  22
问题                                         ART AND CULTURE OF PACIFIC NORTHWEST COMMUNITIES
    (1) The 1,600-kilometer stretch of the northwestern Pacific coast of North America (from southern Alaska to Washington State) provided an ideal environment for the growth of stable communities. Despite the northerly latitude, the climate is temperate. Natural resources were originally so rich that the inhabitants could subsist by fishing and hunting and gathering, without the need to domesticate livestock or cultivate the land. Forests yielded an abundance of wood for buildings, for boats, and for sculpture. Beyond them the Rocky Mountains were an impenetrable barrier against raids. The area appears to have been settled around 500 A.D. by tribes of diverse origins speaking mutually unintelligible languages: from north to south they include the Tlingit, the Haida, the Tsimshian, the Bella Coola, the Kwakiutl, and the Nootka. The culture to which they contributed has, nevertheless, an underlying homogeneity and a distinct visual character.
    (2) The peoples of the Northwest engaged in trade as well as warfare with one another, and this may account for the diffusion of cultural traits and artistic motifs throughout the area. Much of their art was concerned with religious ritual objects. But the rest is secular and springs from a preoccupation with the hereditary basis of their complex social structures.
    (3) The Tlingit and other nations or language groups were collections of autonomous village communities composed of one or more families, each with its own chief, who inherited his position through matrilineal descent. They had no centralized political or religious organization, but cohesion was given by extensive kinship networks established through marriage, and men and women were obliged to marry outside the larger divisions of clans and moieties (tribal subdivisions) into which they were born and into which the social group was divided by matrilineal or patrilineal descent. Thus families built up riches by marriage without any one family acquiring a dominant position.
    (4) Totem poles, the most distinctive artistic product of the Northwest, were conspicuous declarations of prestige and of the genealogy (family history) by which it had been attained. These magnificent sculptures that probably originated as funerary monuments were first described by travelers in the late 18th century. Each one was carved from a single trunk of cedar, and the increasing availability of metal tools both permitted and encouraged more complex compositions and greater height—up to 27.4 meters. Their superimposed figures—eagles, beavers, whales, and so on—were crests (symbols of identity) that a chief inherited from his lineage, his clan, and his moiety. They were not objects of worship, though the animals carved on them might represent guardian spirits. Poles were designed according to a governing principle of bilateral symmetry, with their various elements interlocked so that they seem to grow organically out of one another, creating a unity of symbolism, form, and surface.
    (5) [A] Masks are the most varied of the carvings from the Northwest, where they were an essential part of communal life. [B] In style they range from an almost abstract symbolism to combinations of human and animal features and to a lifelike naturalism sometimes bordering on caricature (a style that strongly exaggerates features or characteristics), taken to its extreme in Tlingit war helmets. Some differences must have been due to those among the cultures in which they were created, but their place of origin cannot always be ascertained as they seem to have passed from one contiguous nation to another in the course of trade or warfare. [C] Although carvers worked according to established conventions, no two masks are identical and those with basic similarities reveal varying degrees of skill. [D]
    (6) The major differences between masks were determined by their purpose. Some were representations of chiefs and their ancestors and made to be displayed and treasured as heirlooms. Although they appear to record the styles of facial tattooing customary in different groups, it is difficult to say how far they were intended to be portraits rather than generalized images. Many masks, sometimes quite large, were carved to be worn in dance dramas that re-enacted and kept alive the cohesive myths of a culture. Often, Tlingit masks were made for religious leaders and incorporated the animals that were believed to be their spirit helpers. Conjuring up forces of nature from the ocean, the forests, or the sky, they mediated between life on Earth and the inscrutable powers around and above. [br] The author mentions "Tlingit war helmets" in the passage to________.
选项 A、explain why masks were an essential part of communal life
B、provide an example of masks representing a stylistic extreme
C、identify one of the uses of masks
D、provide an example of masks characterized by abstract symbolism
答案 B
解析 修辞目的题，问作者提到特林吉特战盔的目的，可定位到原文第6段第2句。原句说这些面具的风格各异，而这种近似漫画手法的、栩栩如生的自然主义风格在特林吉特战盔上被运用到了极致(taken to its extreme in Tlingit war helmets)。这说明特林吉特战盔是作为“自然主义风格被运用到了极致”的例子被提到的，B项的说法与此相符，故选。A项“解释为什么面具是社群生活的重要组成部分”， Tlingit war helmets所在句子说的是面具的风格，与A项不相关，故不选。同理，C项“指出面具的用途之一”，也与风格无关，故也不选。D项“作为面具有抽象的象征意义的例子”，特林吉特战盔是用于论证自然主义(naturalism)风格的极致运用的例子，而不是抽象主义，故D项错误。
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