老烤鸭雅思-专注雅思备考

People of every culture tell each other fairy tales but the same story often takes a variety of forms in different parts of the world. In the story of Little Red Riding Hood that European children are familiar with, a young girl on the way to see her grandmother meets a wolf and tells him where she is going. The wolf runs on ahead and disposes of the grandmother, then gets into bed dressed in the grandmother’s clothes to wait for Little Red Riding Hood. You may think you know the story – but which version? In some versions, the wolf swallows up the grandmother, while in others it locks her in a cupboard. In some stories Red Riding Hood gets the better of the wolf on her own, while in others a hunter or a woodcutter hears her cries and comes to her rescue.

每一种文化的人都会向彼此讲述童话故事，但相同的故事在世界上不同的地方却往往采取不同的形式。在欧洲儿童所熟悉的《小红帽》这一故事里，一名小女孩在前去探望奶奶的路上遇到了一只狼，并且告诉他她要去哪里。狼跑到前面，解决掉了奶奶，然后穿着奶奶的衣服躺到床上等待小红帽的到来。你可能觉得你知道这个故事。但究竟是哪个版本呢？在一些版本里，狼吃掉了奶奶，而在另外一些版本里，它将她锁在衣柜里。在一些故事中，小红帽独自战胜了狼，而在另外一些故事中，一名猎人或者伐木工听到了她的哭喊，赶来救援。

第2段

The universal appeal of these tales is frequently attributed to the idea that they contain cautionary messages: in the case of Little Red Riding Hood, to listen to your mother, and avoid talking to strangers. ‘It might be what we find interesting about this story is that it’s got this survival relevant information in it,’ says anthropologist Jamie Tehrani at Durham University in the UK. But his research suggests otherwise. ‘We have this huge gap in our knowledge about the history and prehistory of storytelling, despite the fact that we know this genre is an incredibly ancient one,’ he says. That hasn’t stopped anthropologists, folklorists and other academics devising theories to explain the importance of fairy tales in human society. Now Tehrani has found a way to test these ideas, borrowing a technique from evolutionary biologists.

这些童话故事普世的吸引力通常被归功于他们所包含的警戒信息：以《小红帽》为例，就是要听妈妈的话，不要跟陌生人说话。“我们之所以觉得这个故事有趣，可能是因为它在其中包含了与生存相关的信息”，英国杜伦大学人类学家Jamie Tehrani说。但他的研究却表明并非如此。“我们对故事讲述的历史以及史前史的认知存在着巨大的空白，尽管我们知道这一体裁十分古老”，他说。但这并没有阻止人类学家，民俗学家和其他学者构建理论来解释童话故事在人类社会中的重要性。如今，Tehrani借用进化生物学家的方法，发现了一种测试这些观点是否正确的方式。

第3段

To work out the evolutionary history, development and relationships among groups of organisms, biologists compare the characteristics of living species in a process called ‘phylogenetic analysis’. Tehrani has used the same approach to compare related versions of fairy tales to discover how they have evolved and which elements have survived longest.

为了弄清楚生物群体的进化历史，发展历程与相互关系，生物学家通过一种叫作“系统进化分析法”的方式来比较物种特征。Tehrani利用相同方式来比较童话故事的关联版本，从而探询它们是如何演变的，以及那些元素存留的时间最长。

第4段

Tehrani’s analysis focused on Little Red Riding Hood in its many forms, which include another Western fairy tale known as The Wolf and the Kids. Checking for variants of these two tales and similar stories from Africa, East Asia and other regions, he ended up with 58 stories recorded from oral traditions. Once his phylogenetic analysis had established that they were indeed related, he used the same methods to explore how they have developed and altered over time.

Tehrani的分析主要集中在《小红帽》的多个版本上。这其中就包括另一个西方故事《狼与孩子》。在非洲、东亚和其他地区检索了这两个故事以及相似故事的变种后，他最终从口述传统中记录下来58个故事。一旦系统进化分析法证实它们确实彼此相关，他就利用同样的方法探索它们是如何随着时间的推移而发展改变的。

第5段

First he tested some assumptions about which aspects of the story alter least as it evolves, indicating their importance. Folklorists believe that what happens in a story is more central to the story than the characters in it – that visiting a relative, only to be met by a scary animal in disguise, is more fundamental than whether the visitor is a little girl or three siblings, or the animal is a tiger instead of a wolf.

首先，他测试了一些假设：故事在演化过程中哪些方面改变最少（这表明它们的重要性）。民俗学家认为，与角色相比，故事情节对于故事而言更为核心。即拜访亲戚，偶然遇到带有伪装的可怕动物，比拜访者究竟是一名小女孩还是三兄妹，又或者动物是狮子而不是狼更为重要。

第6段

However, Tehrani found no significant difference in the rate of evolution of incidents compared with that of characters. ‘Certain episodes are very stable because they are crucial to the story, but there are lots of other details that can evolve quite freely, ‘ he says. Neither did his analysis support the theory that the central section of a story is the most conserved part. He found no significant difference in the flexibility of events there compared with the beginning or the end.

然而，Tehrani发现事件的演变速度与角色相比并没有什么太大的区别。“由于特定的情节对故事至关重要，因而它们十分稳定，但也有许多其他细节可以十分自由地演变”，他说。他的分析也不支持以下理论，即故事的核心部分是留存最多的部分。他发现，与开头或结尾相比，该部分的事件灵活性并没有显著差异。

第7段

But the really big surprise came when he looked at the cautionary elements of the story. ‘Studies on hunter-gatherer folk tales suggest that these narratives include really important information about the environment and the possible dangers that may be faced there – stuff that’s relevant to survival,’ he says. Yet in his analysis such elements were just as flexible as seemingly trivial details. What, then, is important enough to be reproduced from generation to generation?

但他在研究该故事的警示元素时，真正令人吃惊的事情发生了。“对狩猎采集者的民间故事的研究表明，这些叙事中包含着有关环境以及那里可能存在的危险的重要信息 – 与生存相关的事项”，他说。然而，在他的分析中，这些元素文章来自老烤鸭雅思与那些看似无关紧要的细节同样灵活多变。那么，究竟是什么东西重要到在一代又一代人中不断再现呢？

第8段

The answer, it would appear, is fear – blood-thirsty and gruesome aspects of the story, such as the eating of the grandmother by the wolf turned out to be the best preserved of all. Why are these details retained by generations of storytellers, when other features are not? Tehrani has an idea: ‘In an oral context, a story won’t survive because of one great teller. It also needs to be interesting when it’s told by someone who’s not necessarily a great storyteller.’ Maybe being swallowed whole by a wolf, then cut out of its stomach alive is so gripping that it helps the story remain popular, no matter how badly it’s told.

答案似乎是恐惧，即故事中嗜血与可怕的部分（例如奶奶被狼吃掉）是所有内容中被保留的最好的。为什么这些细节能够在一代又一代的故事讲述者中留存下来，而故事的其他特征却没有呢？Tehrani有一个想法：“在口述情况下，故事不会因为一名伟大的讲述者而留存下来。当它由一个不一定伟大的讲述者说出来的时候，它还得有趣才行”。或许被一头狼整个吞下，然后切开胃部活着出来，这一情节如此扣人心弦，以至于无论讲的有多么糟糕，它都能保持流行。

第9段

Jack Zipes at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, is unconvinced by Tehrani’s views on fairy tales. ‘Even if they’re gruesome, they won’t stick unless they matter,’ he says. He believes the perennial theme of women as victims in stories like Little Red Riding Hood explains why they continue to feel relevant. But Tehrani points out that although this is often the case in Western versions, it is not always true elsewhere. In Chinese and Japanese versions, often known as The Tiger Grandmother, the villain is a woman, and in both Iran and Nigeria, the victim is a boy.

明尼阿波利斯明尼苏达大学的Jack Zipes不认同Tehrani有关童话的观点。“即使这些情节很可怕，除非它们确实重要，否则也不会保留下来”，他说。他认为，在诸如《小红帽》这样的故事中，女性作为受害者这一反复出现的主题解释了它们为什么让人觉得与自己休戚相关。但Tehrani指出，虽然在西方故事中确实经常如此，但在别的地方却并不总是这样。在中国和日本通常被称为《虎外婆》的版本中，反派角色是名女性。而在伊朗和尼日利亚的版本中，受害者是名男孩。

第10段

Mathias Clasen at Aarhus University in Denmark isn’t surprised by Tehrani’s findings. ‘Habits and morals change, but the things that scare us, and the fact that we seek out entertainment that’s designed to scare us – those are constant,’ he says. Clasen believes that scary stories teach us what it feels like to be afraid without having to experience real danger, and so build up resistance to negative emotions.

丹麦奥尔胡斯大学的Mathias Clasen并不吃惊于Tehrani的发现。“习惯与道德会发生改变，但让我们恐惧的事情，以及我们寻求设计出来让我们感到恐惧的娱乐这一事实是永恒的”，他说。Clasen认为，恐怖故事让我们可以体会害怕的感觉而无需经历真正的危险，从而加强我们对负面情绪的抵抗力。

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