PrepTest 150, Section 1, Question 14
Passage A In a 1978 lecture titled "The(449 more words not shown)
Passage A(186 more words not shown)
Passage B(271 more words not shown)
The authors of the passages(13 more words not shown)
- AShort works of(10 more words not shown)
- BThe first works(15 more words not shown)
- CThere is no(13 more words not shown)
- DGenre stories are(22 more words not shown)
- ETwo works of(15 more words not shown)
Reading the passage
The shared idea is that genre depends on how a work is read, not simply on the features we can list inside it. A says this directly in its last sentence; B replaces classification by thematic similarities with reading protocols. An answer the authors would both accept should fit that distinction.
Working the answers
- A
We never compare the ease of categorizing short and long works. Length is not the basis either author proposes.
- B
Neither author tells us why the first detective and science-fiction works were written. We cannot choose between artistic exercise and entertainment for them.
- C
B recommends a more fruitful way to distinguish genres. Difficulty with one method doesn't make the whole project worthless. A also offers an account of what unites a genre, rather than dismissing that question.
- D
Neither author says that defying a genre's conventions makes a story more valuable. B says central works especially reward a particular protocol, but that isn't a formula for ranking literary value by conformity or defiance.
- ECorrect
Matching plots, characters, and settings would not settle the genre question under these accounts. Those are features within the works; we still need to consider how the works are read. If they invite different approaches, their similar contents need not put them in the same genre. This follows from both authors' shift away from classifying works solely by shared features. It doesn't mean that a story's contents never matter to how we read it.
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