托福official57听力lecture1 Sentimental Comedy原文解析+翻译音频

[00:00.00]NARRATOR: Listen to part of a lecture in a theater history class. The class is discussing 18th-century plays in Europe and the United States.
[00:10.32]MALE PROFESSOR: By far the most popular genre of plays during the 18th century was the sentimental comedy. [00:16.86]Now, in order to sort of get our heads around what a sentimental comedy is, where it came from, and why on earth it was so popular, we need to understand what sentimentality was, as a philosophical movement. [00:31.04]So, uh, during the 18th century, some thinkers, uh, philosophers, political theorists uh came up with this idea of sentimentality. [00:41.05]The main point in sentimentality is that-that people are inherently good, people are good by nature. [00:47.37]In the past, in other times, some people had believed or claimed that men and women are naturally selfish, or naturally evil; during the seventeenth century there was a very popular theory, known as-as the “social contract,” set out by thinkers like Thomas Hobbes, which argued that people are naturally selfish …. [01:09.67]Eh, during the eighteenth century, on the other hand, eh thinkers associated with sentimentality came along and said no, no, no, people are naturally good. Yes, Diane, question?
[01:21.77]FEMALE STUDENT: Yeah, sorry to interrupt, but… why was it called—that first one, uh, the “social contract”—why was it called that? I mean, if people are supposed to be naturally selfish, isn’t that the opposite of being social?
[01:35.07]MALE PROFESSOR: Uh. the emphasis was more on the contract part. [01:38.85]If people are naturally inclined to do what’s in their own self-interest, then, in order to have people living together in peace, you-you needed to develop some kind of a social contract, a sort of agreement—[01:52.42]I won’t hit you over the head and take your stuff if you don’t hit me over the head and take my stuff... [01:58.05]But, in the eighteenth century, the sentimental theorists came along and said that people are naturally good.
[02:04.86]FEMALE STUDENT: Hard to believe sometimes if you watch the evening news.
[02:08.38]MALE PROFESSOR: Okay. If you try to argue that people are naturally good, you’re going to have to answer the question: “What about the fact that bad things happen? [02:17.76]How do we account for the fact that people do bad things?” [02:21.46]Sentimental theorists claimed that evil deeds happen because people are led astray by bad influences. [02:28.38]That is, people can be pressured, or seduced, or tricked into doing something wrong. [02:35.16]And, uh, the other question that comes up in relation to sentimentality is: “If you are led astray, how can you be redeemed? [02:44.52]Can you be brought back to your state of natural goodness?” What do you think?
[02:50.69]MALE STUDENT: I think, yeah, if you think people are basically good, then you probably also think they can be, you know, brought back to being good again.
[02:59.50]MALE PROFESSOR: That’s right. And they said you do this by appealing to a person’s natural instincts, trying to return them or connect them to their natural state, especially via the emotions. [03:13.23]Making someone cry, then, could make them good again. [03:17.56]Uh, picture, for example, uh, the evil villain, smirking at his latest, uh, robbery and theft, who happens to see a lost child, walking down the street, sobbing, and he starts to sniffle and cry and maybe his heart goes out to this, this lost child, and he wants to he the child and somehow he realizes that he’s been bad—or rather, been behaving badly—since according to sentimentalist theory, he was never truly bad to begin with.
[03:49.11]Alright, that’s sort of the hallmark of sentimentality, and it’s what became the driving force behind sentimental comedies.
[03:57.86]MALE STUDENT: I, I don’t get why they’re comedies—they don’t sound funny …
[04:02.61]MALE PROFESSOR: You’re right, a sentimental comedy is not specifically funny. [04:07.50]The goal isn’t to make the audience laugh; in fact, the goal’s to make the audience cry. [04:13.71]Thus, a sentimental comedy will usually depict someone virtuous, but in some sort of distress. [04:21.23]Perhaps a good virtuous man or woman who, who’s suffering financial hardships, and uh, we see them desperate for food, barely able to survive, tempted to, to rob someone. [04:34.82]But they resist that temptation and still triumph in the end. [04:40.25]And again, seeing this, the audience is expected to cry, and thus reconnect with their natural emotional state…