A RC NO. 9-4

[wangming]

Surprisingly enough, modern historians have rarely interested themselves in the history of the American South in the period before the South began to become self-consciously and distinctively “Southern”—the decades after 1815. Consequently, the cultural history of Britain’s North American empire in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries has been written almost as if the Southern colonies had never existed. The American culture that emerged during the Colonial and Revolutionary eras has been depicted as having been simply an extension of New England Puritan culture. However, Professor Davis has recently argued that the South stood apart from the rest of American society during this early period, following its own unique pattern of cultural development. The case for Southern distinctiveness rests upon two related premises: first, that the cultural similarities among the five Southern colonies were far more impressive than the differences, and second, that what made those colonies alike also made them different from the other colonies. The first, for which Davis offers an enormous amount of evidence, can be accepted without major reservations; the second is far more problematic.
What makes the second premise problematic is the use of the Puritan colonies as a basis for comparison. Quite properly, Davis decries the excessive influence ascribed by historians to the Puritans in the formation of American culture. Yet Davis inadvertently adds weight to such ascriptions by using the Puritans as the standard against which to assess the achievements and contributions of Southern colonials. Throughout, Davis focuses on the important, and undeniable, differences between the Southern and Puritan colonies in motives for and patterns of early settlement, in attitudes toward nature and Native Americans, and in the degree of receptivity to metropolitan cultural influences.
However, recent scholarship has strongly suggested that those aspects of early New England culture that seem to have been most distinctly Puritan, such as the strong religious orientation and the communal impulse, were not even typical of New England as a whole, but were largely confined to the two colonies of Massachusetts and Connecticut. Thus, what in contrast to the Puritan colonies appears to Davis to be peculiarly Southern—acquisitiveness, a strong interest in politics and the law, and a tendency to cultivate metropolitan cultural models—was not only more typically English than the cultural patterns exhibited by Puritan Massachusetts and Connecticut, but also almost certainly characteristic of most other early modern British colonies from Barbados north to Rhode Island and New Hampshire. Within the larger framework of American colonial life, then, not the Southern but the Puritan colonies appear to have been distinctive, and even they seem to have been rapidly assimilating to the dominant cultural patterns by the late Colonial period.

21. The author is primarily concerned with
(A) refuting a claim about the influence of Puritan culture on the early American South
(B) refuting a thesis about the distinctiveness of the culture of the early American South
(C) refuting the two premises that underlie Davis’ discussion of the culture of the American South in the period before 1815
(D) challenging the hypothesis that early American culture was homogeneous in nature
(E) challenging the contention that the American South made greater contributions to early American culture than Puritan New England did

26. The passage suggests that by the late Colonial period the tendency to cultivate metropolitan cultural models was a cultural pattern that was
(A) dying out as Puritan influence began to grow
(B) self-consciously and distinctively Southern
(C) spreading to Massachusetts and Connecticut
(D) more characteristic of the Southern colonies than of England
(E) beginning to spread to Rhode Island and New Hampshire

Can some guy help me out of here. The answer of 21 is B, the answer of 26 is C. I do not know why. Could some guy point out where we can I find the answer in the composition. Thank you!

[sham12345]

The whole glimpse of this is:

The Southern part of USA is advocated by the DAVIS as supportive ( by saying that southern are different and impressive Earthlings of culutre) where as other historians has ignored this fact.

Later on research of the scholars , they found that the SOUTH of USA represents the culture of the Connecticut and Rhode Island of the USA ( NORTH OF USA ). Author concluded that the USAs Connecticut and Rhode Island are the source that is present in the NORTH OF USA.

21. is B.
22. is C.



If we know the background the geographic locations of USA ( esp. Connecticut and southern parts of USA like boston ) will be helpful.

I truly believe that , we should know the background for the essays to make easier to understand. If we do not know the background, what we all see is the Bizzare words and all weirdo stuff that our brain goes beyond the head.



shortly : Practice the Rcs , google for the backgrounds to understand what really is there . If we get any ones of the RCS, it makes life easier.