2012年5月20日托福阅读内容重复2010年8月21日北美考试内容。其中包含三个话题：美国人跳槽、古埃及象形文字和十九世纪女性艺术家。北京新东方托福研发组葛旭老师为同学们带来本次考试阅读部分的文章复现和解析。
TOPIC 1 古埃及象形文字
考生回忆
该语言的兴起：宗教语言;
落衰：语言过于复杂;另一个文明的兴起(Rome; Greece; Macedonia; etc.)这门语言被彻底边缘化。然后讲现在人们来研究它，讲了一个人的研究成果。
文章复现
该文于考前已在相关课程进行过讲解。先行熟悉“象形文字”的概念有利于对全文的把握。在阅读该参考文章的时候，重点关注下文最长段落(“Hieroglyphs continued to…”);其中提到了多种外族对其衰落的影响以及古埃及人对此文化“入侵”产生的类似于民族主义的反应。
其中“多种外族”包括：波斯、希腊城邦、罗马以及马其顿。
Hieroglyphs emerged from the preliterate artistic traditions of Egypt.
As writing developed and became more widespread among the Egyptian people, simplified glyph forms developed, resulting in the hieratic (priestly) and demotic (popular) scripts. These variants were also more suited than hieroglyphs for use on papyrus. Hieroglyphic writing was not, however, eclipsed, but existed alongside the other forms, especially in monumental and other formal writing. The Rosetta Stone contains three parallel scripts - hieroglyphic, demotic, and Greek.
Hieroglyphs continued to be used under Persian rule (intermittent in the 6th and 5th centuries BCE), and after Alexander the Great's conquest of Egypt, during the ensuing Macedonian and Roman periods. It appears that the misleading quality of comments from Greek and Roman writers about hieroglyphs came about, at least in part, as a response to the changed political situation. Some believe that hieroglyphs may have functioned as a way to distinguish 'true Egyptians' from some of the foreign conquerors. Another reason may be the refusal to tackle a foreign culture on its own terms which characterized Greco-Roman approaches to Egyptian culture generally. Having learned that hieroglyphs were sacred writing, Greco-Roman authors imagined the complex but rational system as an allegorical, even magical, system transmitting secret, mystical knowledge.
By the 4th century, few Egyptians were capable of reading hieroglyphs, and the myth of allegorical hieroglyphs was ascendant. Monumental use of hieroglyphs ceased after the closing of all non-Christian temples in 391 CE by the Roman Emperor Theodosius I.[1]
TOPIC 2 十九世纪女性艺术家
考生回忆
十九世纪的女人在艺术界被各种排斥
英国率先开始兴办女人艺术学校，培养女艺术家
法国接过英国的接力棒，成为世界第一艺术殿堂，女人们可以和男人一样上学，展出自己的作品
列举这个时期培养出来的著名女艺术家
文章复现
对该话题的熟悉主要集中在以下几个方面：十九世纪女性被艺术界排斥的原因、英国早期女性艺术家学院的相关背景以及当时著名女艺术家的简介。
下文的第一段关于十九世纪晚期因保守的社会观念并不提倡女性通过研究人体来获得艺术的专业训练。第二段(During the century)和第三段(The Society of Female Artists)着重介绍了伦敦女性艺术学院的大致背景、来源及发展。后文列举了当时为数不多的著名女艺术家，可作为扩展阅读理解主题。
In the late Renaissance the training of artists began to move from the master's workshop to the Academy, and women began a long struggle, not resolved until the late 19th century, to gain full access to this training. Study of the human body required working from male nudes and corpses. This was considered essential background for creating realistic group scenes. Women were generally barred from training from male nudes, and therefore they were precluded from creating such scenes, required for the large-scale religious compositions that received the most prestigious commissions.[2]
During the century, access to academies and formal art training expanded more for women in Europe and North America. The British Government School of Design, which later became the Royal College of Art, admitted women from its founding in 1837, but only into a "Female School" which was treated somewhat differently, with "life"- classes consisting for several years of drawing a man wearing a suit of armour. The Royal Academy Schools finally admitted women beginning in 1861, but students drew initially only draped models. However, other schools in London, including the Slade School of Art from the 1870s, were more liberal. By the end of the century women were able to study the naked, or very nearly naked, figure in many Western European and North American cities.[3]
The Society of Female Artists (now called The Society of Women Artists) was established in 1855 in London and has staged annual exhibitions since 1857, when 358 works were shown by 149 women, some using a pseudonym.[4]
Julia Margaret Cameron and Gertrude Kasebier became well known in the new medium of photography, where there were no traditional restrictions, and no established training, to hold them back.
Elizabeth Thompson (Lady Butler), perhaps inspired by her life-classes of armoured figures at the Government School, was one of the first women to become famous for large history paintings, specializing in scenes of military action, usually with many horses.
Berthe Morisot and the Americans, Mary Cassatt and Lucy Bacon, became involved in the French Impressionist movement of the 1860s and 1870s. American Impressionist Lilla Cabot Perry was influenced by her studies with Monet and by Japanese art in the late 19th century. Cecilia Beaux was an American portrait painter who also studied in France.
In the late 19th century, Edmonia Lewis, an African-Ojibwe-Haitian American artist from New York began her art studies at Oberlin College. Her sculpting career began in 1863. She established a studio in Rome, Italy and exhibited her marble sculptures through Europe and the United States.[5]
In 1894, Suzanne Valadon was the first woman admitted to the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts in France. Laura Muntz Lyall, a post-impressionist painter, exhibited at the 1893 World Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Illinois, and then in 1894 as part of the Société des artistes fran?ais in Paris.
【注释】
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_hieroglyphic
2.Internet resource, cite needed.
3.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_artists
4."History", The Society of Women Artists. Retrieved 17 February 2008.
5."Biography - Chronology of Mary Edmonia Lewis." Edmonia Lewis. (retrieved 24 August 2011)
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