PREP07 ESSAY 6 Q19 求解

bestorn

Colonial historian David Allen's intensive study of five communities in seventeenth-century Massachusetts is a model of meticulous scholarship on the detailed microcosmiclevel, and is convincing up to a point. Allen suggests that much more coherence and directcontinuity existed between English and colonial agricultural practices and administrativeorganization than other historians have suggested. However, he overstates his case withthe declaration that he has proved "the remarkable extent to which diversity in NewEngland local institutions was directly imitative of regional differences in the mothercountry."
           Such an assertion ignores critical differences between seventeenth-century England andNew England. First, England was overcrowded and land-hungry; New England was sparselypopulated and labor-hungry. Second, England suffered the normal European rate ofmortality; New England, especially in the first generation of English colonists, was virtuallyfree from infectious diseases. Third, England had an all-embracing state church; in NewEngland membership in a church was restricted to the elect. Fourth, a high proportion ofEnglish villagers lived under paternalistic resident squires; no such class existed in NewEngland. By narrowing his focus to village institutions and ignoring these critical differences,which studies by Greven, Demos, and Lockridge have shown to be so important, Allen hascreated a somewhat distorted picture of reality.
           Allen's work is a rather extreme example of the "country community" school ofseventeenth-century English history whose intemperate excesses in removing all nationalissues from the history of that period have been exposed by Professor Clive Holmes. Whatconclusion can be drawn, for example, from Allen's discovery that Puritan clergy who hadcome to the colonies from East Anglia were one-third to one-half as likely to return toEngland by 1660 as were Puritan ministers from western and northern England? We are nottold in what way, if at all, this discovery illuminates historical understanding. Studies oflocal history have enormously expanded our horizons, but it is a mistake for their authors toconclude that village institutions are all that mattered, simply because their functions are allthat the records of village institutions reveal.

                              
It can be inferred from the passage that the author of the passage considers Allen's "discovery" (see highlighted text) to be
(A) already known to earlier historians
(B) based on a logical fallacy
(C) improbable but nevertheless convincing
(D) an unexplained, isolated fact
(E) a new, insightful observation

答案是D，可是我的问题是完全看不懂文中定位的几句话，请大家帮帮我，给我说说这几句话该怎样理解，谢谢大家，

by_j2011

“We are not told in what way”是因为LZ你划了红线的后面一句话吧 所以得出选D

gdboy8888

正确答案D的意思是allen的发现是一个未解释清楚，且孤立存在的事实。如果你同意这个答案，那么红线划出的第一句话就好理解了。We are not told in what way, if at all, this discovery illuminates historical understanding.我们并没有（根本没有）从Allen的这个发现中得到任何有助于点亮（启发，开辟一个新的研究角度或者观点或者角度）我们对历史的认知的指导。地方性（局部性）历史的研究极大的拓展了我们的知识范围，但是如果相关地方史的作者（研究者）认为仅凭这些史料（微观范围内的史料）便可以对某段历史下论断则必然是要犯错误的。（这里属于意译）。因为这些地方性历史研究所引用的数据全部都仅是村镇层面上所能反映的记录数据而已。Their=Studies of local history(地方史研究）

bestorn

谢谢牛人,我仔细研究研究,