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2012考研英语二 · 新题型
本页为 2012考研英语二 新题型的完整原文、正确答案与逐题解析（原文约 541 词，共 5 题）。建议先自己作答，再逐题核对解析里的原文定位与干扰项说明。
2012考研英语二新题型原文
“Universal history, the history of what man has accomplished in this world, is at bottom the History of the Great Men who have worked here,” wrote the Victorian sage Thomas Carlyle. Well, not any more it is not.
Suddenly, Britain looks to have fallen out with its favorite historical form. This could be no more than a passing literary craze, but it also points to a broader truth about how we now approach the past: less concerned with learning from our forefathers and more interested in feeling their pain. Today, we want empathy, not inspiration.
From the earliest days of the Renaissance, the writing of history meant recounting the exemplary lives of great men. In 1337, Petrarch began work on his rambling writing De Viris Illustribus – On Famous Men, highlighting the virtus (or virtue) of classical heroes. Petrarch celebrated their greatness in conquering fortune and rising to the top. This was the biographical tradition which Niccolò Machiavelli turned on its head. In The Prince, he championed cunning, ruthlessness, and boldness, rather than virtue, mercy and justice, as the skills of successful leaders.
Over time, the attributes of greatness shifted. The Romantics commemorated the leading painters and authors of their day, stressing the uniqueness of the artist's personal experience rather than public glory. By contrast, the Victorian author Samuel Smiles wrote Self-Help as a catalogue of the worthy lives of engineers, industrialists and explorers. “The valuable examples which they furnish of the power of self-help, of patient purpose, resolute working, and steadfast integrity, issuing in the formation of truly noble and manly character, exhibit,” wrote Smiles, “what it is in the power of each to accomplish for himself.” His biographies of James Watt, Richard Arkwright and Josiah Wedgwood were held up as beacons to guide the working man through his difficult life.
This was all a bit bourgeois for Thomas Carlyle, who focused his biographies on the truly heroic lives of Martin Luther, Oliver Cromwell and Napoleon Bonaparte. These epochal figures represented lives hard to imitate, but to be acknowledged as possessing higher authority than mere mortals.
Not everyone was convinced by such bombast. “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles,” wrote Marx and Engels in The Communist Manifesto. For them, history did nothing, it possessed no immense wealth nor waged battles: “It is man, real, living man who does all that.” And history should be the story of the masses and their record of struggle. As such, it needed to appreciate the economic realities, the social contexts and power relations in which each epoch stood. For: “Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly found, given and transmitted from the past.”
This was the tradition which revolutionised our appreciation of the past. In place of Thomas Carlyle, Britain nurtured Christopher Hill, EP Thompson and Eric Hobsbawm. History from below stood alongside biographies of great men. Whole new realms of understanding – from gender to race to cultural studies – were opened up as scholars unpicked the multiplicity of lost societies. And it transformed public history too: downstairs became just as fascinating as upstairs.
答案与逐题解析
答案速查
41A
42F
43G
44C
45E
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41第 41 题:Petrarch 的观点对应右栏哪一项?
答案A
解析原文写Petrarch“highlighting the virtus (or virtue) of classical heroes”，并“celebrated their greatness in conquering fortune”，与A“emphasized the virtue of classical heroes”直接对应。正确项即复述该信息。B属浪漫派强调艺术家个人体验而非公共荣耀；C是Carlyle的“epochal figures…hard to imitate”；F是马基雅维利否定美德；G是Smiles写工程师等；E是马克思讲大众斗争。
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42第 42 题:Niccolò Machiavelli 的观点对应右栏哪一项?
答案F
解析原文称Machiavelli把传记传统“turned on its head”，在《君主论》中“championed cunning, ruthlessness, and boldness, rather than virtue”，即视美德非成功领袖必备，对应F。正确项概括其对美德的否定。A是Petrarch强调古典英雄美德；C是Carlyle写难以效仿的划时代人物；G是Smiles罗列实干家生平；E是马克思主张写群众斗争史。
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43第 43 题:Samuel Smiles 的观点对应右栏哪一项?
答案G
解析原文明确Smiles的《自助》“a catalogue of the worthy lives of engineers, industrialists and explorers”，并举Watt等为例，与G完全吻合。正确项几乎是原句转写。A属Petrarch；B是浪漫派画家作家；C是Carlyle聚焦难以模仿的英雄；F是马基雅维利摒弃美德；E是马克思、恩格斯主张历史是大众斗争。
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44第 44 题:Thomas Carlyle 的观点对应右栏哪一项?
答案C
解析原文写Carlyle“focused his biographies on the truly heroic lives of Martin Luther, Oliver Cromwell and Napoleon”，并称“These epochal figures represented lives hard to imitate”，对应C。正确项抓住“划时代、难效仿”。A是Petrarch的美德；G是Smiles的工程师探险家；F是马基雅维利；E是马克思的群众史观；B是浪漫派对艺术家公共荣耀的对照表述。
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45第 45 题:Marx and Engels 的观点对应右栏哪一项?
答案E
解析原文引马克思、恩格斯：“history should be the story of the masses and their record of struggle”，并强调“real, living man”与阶级背景，对应E。正确项即该句转述。A是Petrarch；C是Carlyle的难以模仿伟人；F是马基雅维利否定美德；G是Smiles写实干家；D并非文中对马恩的概括，而是后文史学新领域。
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