TEXT G

　　First read the question.
　　33. The passage is most probably from ___.
　　A. a review of a book on cowboys
　　B. a study of cowboy work culture
　　C. a novel about cowboy life and culture
　　D. a school textbook on the cowboy history

　　Now go through TEXT G quickly to answer question 33.
　　A cowboy is defined by the work that he does. Any man can lay claim to that name if he lives on a ranch and works—— drives, brands, castrates, or murmurs ——a cattleman’s herd. In addition, working accounts for ways in which cowboy s portray themselves in their art: in 19th-century poems that they orally compose d and sang on the ranch, in 20th-century poems that they write, in books that they publish, and in art objects that they fashion, cowboys always represent themselves as engaging in some form of labour. This book’s three fold purpose is, first, to look at art that cowboys produce——art, that has never been studied before——and, second, to demonstrate that cowboy art values historically document labour routines that cowboys have traditionally acted out in their work culture.
　　I use the term work culture not only to suggest that cowboys are defined b y the work that they do, but also to argue that they are serf-represented in culture by poems, prose, and art that ail reveal cowboys to be men who are culturally unified by engaging in labour routines that they think of as cowboy work. Art deals with cowboy work, as well as with concerns about economics, gender, religion, and literature, even though these thoughts sometimes express themselves as concerns about cattle branding, livestock castration, and other tasks. The book ’ s third and most important function is, therefore, to show that artistic self-re presentations of labour also formulate systems of thought which cowboys use as a metaphor for discussing economies, gender, religion, and literature, sometimes equating branding with religious salvation, at other times defining spur making as freedom, and so on.