PrepTest 112, Section 2, Question 9
In Intellectual Culture in Elizabethan and Jacobean England,(438 more words not shown)
Which one of the following(19 more words not shown)
- AContinental writers wrote(22 more words not shown)
- BContinental writers, more(20 more words not shown)
- CEnglish and Continental(19 more words not shown)
- DThe intellectual ties(23 more words not shown)
- EThe intellectual ties(23 more words not shown)
Reading the passage
There was an important connection, and scholars have underestimated it. English writers knew Latin and were influenced by Continental works written in it. Think back to the school-reading example: ideas absorbed through earlier reading can shape what someone writes later, even when the later work uses another language.
Working the answers
- A
We aren't told which group wrote in Latin more frequently. And English intellectuals could read Latin, so the language didn't automatically make Continental works inaccessible to them.
- B
Influence doesn't establish intellectual superiority. Nothing says Continental writers were more advanced or were chiefly responsible for familiarizing English audiences with Latin.
- C
Communication through Latin fits the general account. “For the most part different” adds a comparison of their concerns that we aren't given. The shared language doesn't prove that claim.
- DCorrect
Binns says scholars have been giving too little weight to Continental writers’ impact on English authors (paragraph 2). English intellectuals learned Latin and lived in a world where ideas recorded abroad in Latin mattered. That shared language supports the intellectual ties the answer describes.
- E
The ties have been underemphasized, not overemphasized. The lack of overlap among specialties helps explain why scholars have missed connections, not why they have exaggerated them.
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