Question

 

A. The secret of the writer’s success B. A writer with enduring popularity C. Well-received creation to encourage Brits D. The insight into human nature E. Writing styles in different stages F. The stories appropriate for school students

 

80

Charles Dickens is often thought of as one of England’s greatest writers. Yet for many his language is old-fashioned and his story plots often improbable. Why, Dickens, out of so many other great English writers, has made the list? How then to explain Dickens’s enduring popularity?

81

One reason undoubtedly is the British government’s insistence that every child studies a Dickens novel at school. Alongside William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens is a compulsory(必读的) writer on every English literature school reading list. His stories, though often over-long by today’s standard, are superbly written moral tales. They are filled with colorful characters.

82

But what makes his books stand out from other English writers is his insight into human nature. Dickens, like Shakespeare, tells us truths about human behavior that are as true to citizens of the 21^st century as they were to his readers in the 19^th century. Readers have returned to Dickens’s books again and again over the years to see what he has to say about readers’ own time.

83

The BBC adapted one of his less well-known novels, Little Dorrit, into a popular television drama that introduced many Brits to the novel for the first time. A dark story about greed and money, it was the perfect story to illustrate the bad times. No surprise then that it was Dickens Britons turned to, during the economic crisis last year, to make sense of a world rapidly falling apart.

84

Readers of the 19th and early 20th century usually prized Dickens’s earlier novels for their humor and pathos. While recognizing the virtues of these books, critics today tend to rank more highly the later works because of their formal coherence and acute perception of the human condition. For as long as Dickens’s novels have something to say to modern audiences, it seems likely that he will remain one of Britain’s best loved writers.

Answer 1

80. B   81. F   82. D   83. C   84. E