2012年5月北京地区成人本科学士学位英语统一考试真题
Part I
Reading Comprehension
Passage 1
The most famous collections of fairy tales(童话) are the ones by Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm. The Grimms published their first fairy-tale collection in 1812. They didn't think they were writing for children. They thought they were preserving disappearing German folk culture. Their first edition(版本) was a scholarly book that carefully recorded the oral tales. They were surprised when some of their early readers suggested that the stories might be interesting to children.
最著名的童话集是雅各布和威廉·格林兄弟编写的。格林兄弟在1812年出版了他们的第一本童话集。他们并不认为自己是在为儿童写作。他们认为自己在保存即将消失的德国民间文化。他们的初版是一个学术书籍，仔细记录了口头流传的故事。当一些早期读者建议这些故事可能也会吸引儿童时，他们感到很惊讶。
But the Grimms needed money. They had made a bad deal with their publisher and received little payment for their first book. At one point Wilhelm complained there wasn't a chair in his house one could sit on without worrying it would break. So he took the hint and set to work to make a book that would be suitable for children. He selected a few of the tales, made them much longer, and polished up the language. He didn't add morals, but he did slip in character judgments and moralizing comments wherever he could.
但格林兄弟需要钱。他们与出版商的交易很糟糕，第一本书得到的报酬微乎其微。有一次，威廉抱怨说，家里没有一把椅子是可以坐上去而不必担心会断裂的。于是，他心领神会，开始着手制作一本适合儿童阅读的书。他挑选了一些故事，把它们扩展得更长，并且润色了语言。他没有添加道德训诫，但却在尽可能多的地方悄悄融入了对人物的评价和道德化的评论。
The Grimms' fairy tales also have one characteristic that would seem to make them unsuitable for children. Many of them include violent incidents. In "Hansel and Gretel" an old woman is burned to death in an oven, and in "Little Red Riding Hood" a child is eaten by a wolf. When he revised the tales for children, Wilhelm Grimm retained the violence. In fact, he sometimes even ramped it up. For example, in the first edition of the tales, Cinderella forgives her sisters at the end. It's only in the second edition, the one intended for children, that her birds peck(啄) out their eyes.
格林童话还有一个特点似乎使它们不适合儿童。其中许多故事包含了暴力事件。例如，在《韩赛尔与格蕾特》中，一个老妇人被关进烤炉活活烧死；而在《小红帽》里，一个孩子被狼吃掉。当威廉·格林修订这些童话以适合儿童时，他保留了故事中的暴力元素。实际上，有时候他甚至加重了这些暴力情节。例如，在故事集的第一个版本中，灰姑娘在最后原谅了她的姐妹。但在针对儿童的第二版中，她的小鸟啄瞎了她们的眼睛。
Why, then, have the Grimms' fairy tales become classics of children's literature, so much so that it is hard to imagine a child who doesn't know Cinderella's story or Snow White's?
那么，为什么格林兄弟的童话故事会成为儿童文学的经典之作，以至于我们很难想象有一个孩子不知道灰姑娘或白雪公主的故事呢？
One answer is that only a few of the tales survived into modern times. The first edition of the Grimms' fairy tales had 210 tales. By 1825 it was down to 50. And today only a dozen or so of the tales are often reprinted in children's collections.
一个答案是，只有少数故事流传到了现代。格林兄弟的童话第一版有210个故事。到了1825年，这一数量减少到了50个。而今天，只有十几篇左右的故事经常被收录在儿童读物中重新印刷。
(76) But the deeper answer is that the tales that have lasted are magical adventures that help children deal with the struggles and fears of their everyday lives.
但更深层次的答案是，那些经久不衰的故事都是富有魔力的冒险，帮助孩子们应对日常生活中的挑战和恐惧。
微信扫一扫 查看完整数据
微信小程序 《北瓜英语》 提供超15年真题数据，真题解析，高频单词，高频词组。
小程序免费，免费，免费！！！
