Questões de Inglês - Grammar

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The fantastic appeal of fantasy

The fantasy genre starts where science ends

    Few things can brighten up a dark morning in a Scottish seaside resort during an Atlantic storm. Yet while sheltering in a bookshop from the rain, I had a moment of sunny revelation. Stacked almost as high as my 11-year-old self were copies of The Lord of the Rings, with a cover illustration that promised mystery and magic. That chance discovery started a lifelong love of the fantasy genre¹, both as reader and writer.

    The fantasy genre has had more and more success, but today we’re in the middle of an unprecedented fantasy boom. Sales continue to rise and it is now the biggest genre in publishing. The more rational the world gets, with super-science all around us, the more we demand the irrational in our fiction.

    Fantasy is not simply a case of swords² and sorcery³. Yes, there is that by the shelf. But the genre is as broad as the imagination. The genre starts where science ends.

    “In these modern times, where most of us sit at computers, fantasy books offer a chance to break out of mundane moments,” says Mark Newton, an editor with the genre. “People like to explore themes that go beyond the limited palette that literary fiction claims to offer.”

    A search for the origins of fantasy will usually have academics muttering about Beowulf or Homer’s The Iliad, but they come from a time when all stories were fantasy: gods and monsters and supernatural artefacts with humanity caught in the middle. The first modern fantasy writer is usually considered to be William Morris, in the late 19th Century. But it was the early 20th Century where fantasy really started to gain status.

    Fantasy fiction has always been about visionary ideas. You can get artful words in plenty of literary fiction, but being able to see beyond the boundaries⁴ of the world around us — now that’s a special skill.

    I don’t write fantasy fiction simply to provide a trapdoor⁵ from the real world. For me, the genre is about the reality. But instead of coming up against it, fantasy maps the unconscious aspirations of our modern society through allegory in story- -forms as old as humanity. It’s about turning off the mobile phone and the computer and remembering who we are in the deepest parts of ourselves.

(Mark Chadbourn. www.telegraph.co.uk, 12.04.2008. Adaptado.)

¹genre: gênero. Categoria distintiva de composição literária, como romance, poesia etc.
²sword: espada.
³sorcery: feitiçaria.
⁴boundary: fronteira.
⁵trapdoor: alçapão.

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    The Brazilian culture is one of the world’s most varied and diverse. This is due to its being a melting pot of nationalities, (I) __________ a result of centuries of European domination (II) _________ slavery, which brought hordes of African migrants across Brazil’s borders to live in and influence the local cultures with their ancient customs and ideas. The European settlers also brought ideas, innovations (III) ______ belief systems with them, shaping the local societies significantly. All of these different influences have meant that the modern-day Brazilian culture is unique and very complex.

    At present, Brazil has a population of about 190 million people. Of these, more than half are white (IV)__________ includes Portuguese, Italian, Polish etc... individuals), just fewer than 40% are mixed black and white and less than 10% are black.

    Approximately 80% of the population ascribes to the Roman Catholic faith. This is due to the intense Portuguese occupation of centuries ago. These European settlers taught the indigenous tribes Catholicism, built churches and established traditions and customs that originated in this church.

    Also due to the mass Portuguese settlements during the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, this language is the official language of Brazil. There are small numbers of indigenous people and immigrants who still speak their own tongues, but these are certainly among the vast minority.

    Brazilians, as a nation, focus much importance on the family structure and the values that are entrenched within that institution. Families are usually large, and even extended family members are close with one another, providing much-needed help and support to each other (V) ___________ and (VI) ______________ necessary.

Adapted Text - Available at: https://www.brazil.org.za/brazil-culture.html#:~:text= The%20Brazilian%20culture%20is%20one%20of%20the%20 world's%20most%20varied%20and%20diverse.&text=At%20 present%2C%20Brazil%20has%20a,less%20than%2010%25 %20are%20black.. Access on: 08 jan. 2021.

A questão refere-se ao texto destacado a seguir.

I is the standing reproach of a democratic society that it is the purgatory of genius and the paradise of mediocrity. With ourselves it has become notorious that when a man is so unfortunate as to exhibit uncommon abilities, he usually renders himself ineligible for political honors or distinctions. It would seem that the community is possessed with that groveling quality of a sordid mind which hates superiority, and would ostracize genius, as the Athenians did Aristides. One might believe it would not be unpleasing to the popular taste if some enterprising person could invent a machine for stunting intellectual development, after the fashion of idiotic barbarians who flatten the heads of their children. The masses of the community certainly appear to believe that political equality implies not only social, but should also imply intellectual equality, under pain of being severely frowned down by an outraged public opinion.

The prevalent sentiment manifests itself in many different ways. It finds expression in public conveyances and resorts and is not altogether unknown even to the pulpit. It is found to perfection in the speeches of demagogues, who feel certain they are never so successful as when their audience is satisfied that the intellect of the speaker is of no higher an order than that of the lowest intelligence among them. Worse than all, it is demonstrated in the election of public officers of nearly all grades up to the highest: of which latter it has now become quite the custom to assume that it is impossible for a man of first-rate powers to be made President of the United States.
The causes which lend to so singular a state of affairs are of an intricate and complex character. At the outset, it is difficult to realize the possibility of a system, the logical deduction from which appears to be that, if a man would rise in life, he must assiduously belittle his understanding. Perhaps it would be fairer to modify the proposition so far as to concede that ability is as useful here as elsewhere, provided the owner has the tact not to affront the sensibilities of the people by showing too much of it. No doubt a vague apprehension exists in the popular mind that shining talents are dangerous when intrusted with executive power in a republic: yet, it were a poor commentary on our institutions to intimate that, under them, for a man to be clever he must also be vicious. Experience rather teaches the contrary. If the diffusion of education, having the general tendency to elevate the understanding, is to produce more bad men than good, we had better abandon than foster our Common School system. Manifestly, we must look further for the solution of our enigmal[:] that minds of moderate calibre ordinarily condemn everything which is beyond their range.

THE NEW YORK TIMES. The worship of mediocrity. 17/08/1862. Disponível em: https://www.nytimes.com/1862/08/17/archives/the- worship-of-mediocrity.html. Acesso 20/08/2020.

Read the cartoon and answer question.

TEXTO:

                
    When Sudan, the last northern white rhino bull, died
in March 2018, that left alive only two females of
the subspecies once common in Central and East
Africa.Both are descendants of Sudan and live in Kenya,
[5] and were considered infertile. But now, new hope is
emerging that extinction of the species can still be
prevented. Researchers have successfully created living
embryos in the laboratory from frozen sperm of the
northern white rhinoceros and egg cells from the southern
[10] white rhinoceros. It’s the most closely related
subspecies, with more than 20,000 southern rhinos living
in the wild.
    Although such hybrid embryos are not pure northern
white rhinoceros, the researchers are optimistic. They
[15] plan to take egg cells from the still living northern
rhinoceros females in autumn of this year, and to fertilize
them with stored sperm from the same species.They
then intend to implant the oocytes into fertile southern
rhinoceros females in early 2019. This method is also
[20] used in human reproductive medicine.
    Even if healthy rhinoceros calves can be
produced, whether the northern white rhino can be saved
in the long term remains unclear. As the sperm comes
from a few rhinoceros bulls, limited genetic diversity could
[25] endanger the health of a newly bred northern white rhino
population. Due to the smaller gene pool, such inbreeding
typically leads to higher rates of recessive disorders,
translating into higher death rates and poorer overall
health.
[30]    Still, the research unit is hoping that stem cell
technology can create more eggs and sperm from the
skin cells of 12 northern whites, increasing the supply
and genetic variety. If the scientists pull it off, they’ll
both rescue a seemingly doomed animal and provide a
[35] blueprint for protecting other animals teetering on the
edge of oblivion.

WHEN SUDAN...Disponível em: https://www.dw.com/en/researcherscreate-hybrid-northern-white-rhino-embryos/a-44527410. Acesso em: 1 nov. 2018. Adaptado.