The Western has been the favorite type for American adventure story since the nineteenth century. While the American West was being settled, newspapers and dime novels could depend on stories of the frontier settlements and tell tales about living in the untamed wilderness to sell. The public back East was eager to read about the West, even if the stories were more fiction than fact.
In 1902, Owen Wister published his novel The Virginian, which was one of the first novels to treat the Western as a serious literary form; the novel still sold well and had inspired several movies and a television series. In 1905, Bertha H. Bower and Zane Grey published their first novels, and the popular Western novels had continued to flourish from that day on, with current novels by Luke Short, Max Brand, and Louis L’ Amour carrying on the tradition.
The first Western movie appeared even earlier than these serious Western novels. Before the turn of the century, an associate of Edison’s had filmed Cripple Creek Barroom Scene, a few seconds of film showing the inside of a saloon, to help publicize the invention of the movie camera. In 1903 the Edison’ pany filmed the first full-length Western — The Great Train Robbery. The film lasts less than fifteen minutes, but a story is told its entirety. In the movie, bandits (强盗) rob a train and its passengers, killing the engineer, and find themselves tracked down by a posse. Audiences loved the movie. Some theaters were actually opened for the single purpose of showing The Great Train Robbery and only later realized that they could do equally well showing other movies. The film was so successful that other panies, and finally even the Edison pany itself, began producing copies and other versions of The Great Train Robbery. Ironically, in an era when the West was still very real —-Arizona, New Mexico and Oklahoma were all territories rather than states in 1903 — The Great Train Robbery was filmed in New Jersey.
9. The purpose of this passage is to .
A. discuss the making of the movie The Great Train Robbery
B. discuss the early Western novels
C. discuss the art of movie making
D. trace the development of the Western as an American adventure story tradition
10. We can conclude from this passage that .
A. people lost interest in the West after 1903
B. Owen Wister was an ex-cowboy
C. New Jersey was still untamed wilderness in 1903
D. films were fairly unmon at the time The Great Train Robbery was made
11. The passage suggests that .
A. Edison’s invention of the movie camera happened;by accident
B. movie houses didn’t make much-money in the early days
C. Easterners were fascinated by the wild West
D. The Great Train Robbery was poorly received by the public because it lacked a plot
12. As used in this passage, the word “literary” means .
A. humorous B. financial C. appropriate to literature D. amateur 9-12 DDCC
网友回答
(答案→)9-12 DDCC
解析：9. 推断题。从1902年出版的小说，1903年拍的一部电影，到1905年的第一批小说等，作者如此不吝惜笔墨，是为了追溯具有冒险故事传统的美国西部发展史。故D项是正确答案。
10. 推断题。第三段，通过The Great Train Robbery影片的成功放映，人们才开始认识到在影剧院也可以同样放映一些其它影片,于是其它制片公司甚至于the Edison公司本身便开始生产其副本及The Great Train Robbery的其它译本。通过以上信息，我们得出的结论应是D项所表达的内容，那一时期的电影并非相当普及。
11. 推断题。第一段最后一句的was eager to read about the West(渴望看一些有关西部的书)，与题中were fascinated by the wild West (对荒芜的西部着了迷)表达了同样的信息，故C项为正确答案。
12. 词义题。根据上下文关系以及关键词语novels和form可推知literary的词义。因为“小说”与“形式”应属于“文学”范围。