PrepTest 112, Section 2, Question 11
In Intellectual Culture in Elizabethan and Jacobean England,(438 more words not shown)
Binns would be most likely(21 more words not shown)
- AThese writings have(12 more words not shown)
- BThese writings, according(15 more words not shown)
- CThese writings, as(20 more words not shown)
- DThese writings have(13 more words not shown)
- EThese writings need(15 more words not shown)
Reading the passage
The English writings supply part of the picture, but Binns thinks historians have treated that part as a self-contained whole. They miss the Latin background and Continental influences that helped produce the English works. I'd expect an answer about the resulting incomplete understanding, not an attack on the works' value.
Working the answers
- A
These English writings aren't the material historians have neglected. Nor does Binns say Latin specialists undervalue them because of nonliterary subject matter.
- B
Missing other influences doesn't make the English works unimportant. We aren't told they had very little influence or that Latin specialists think so.
- CCorrect
“Superficially coherent” means the account fits together on the surface but leaves important things out. Historians treat the English writings as “an autonomous and coherent whole,” ignoring connections to the Latin intellectual world. Their picture seems complete only because relevant background is missing.
- D
Continental works are discussed as sources of influence, not as better works against which historians judge the English writings unfavorably.
- E
Historians have treated the English material as independent. That doesn't establish that they argue it needs to be studied separately. We are told how they have approached it, not that they defend this rule. Binns's criticism points to the connections their approach overlooks.
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