RC Question 8 Explanation
DISCUSSION: The author focusses on the scholars of Homer’s poems. Why did they lose interest in the poems themselves? And why did they restart?
___________
- The author never says this. They seem to imply that Homer’s poetry should be studied as poems.
(lines 18-20, 23-26) - This is true, but the author was mainly focussed on the scholars of Homer’s poems.
- CORRECT. This covers every paragraph. The focus of the passage is on what the scholars are studying.
- Lines 6-10 do say that non-academics were the only ones to study the poetry of the poems. But the passage doesn’t say anything else about the non-academics. Instead, it focussed on why the scholars stopped studying poetry.
- Milman Parry told us how the poems were written, but he didn’t say when or by whom.
(lines 29-34)
I still do not understand why C was correct, can you explain the answer choice in plain English. Lsat’s wording really threw me off and I don’t understand how it “covers every paragraph” after reading this explanation.
So, the paragraph summaries are roughly as follows:
1. In the 1900s, specialists were focused on nonpoetic elements of Homer’s poems rather than the poetry itself.
2. This came from Parry, who showed that Homer’s poems grew out of a rich oral tradition. But later scholars focused too much on the limits of oral poetry instead of the poetry itself, which made the field boring so people looked more at the nonpoetic elements.
3. Parry’s son (Adam) restored interest in Homer’s poetry as literary art (i.e. interest in the poetry itself).
C translated to simple English says: “People are now interested in Homer’s poems after a while of scholars mostly caring about the poems’ nonpoetic elements.”
That follows the timeline the passage gives us. Parry was interested in the poetic elements -> people focused on the wrong thing of Parry’s analysis and made the field boring -> since the field became boring, people started focusing on nonpoetic elements -> Parry’s son now restored interest in the actual poetic elements.
Hope that helps! Let me know if you have further questions.
It most definitely did thank you once again !!