LSAT 134 | Section 4 | Reading Comprehension: Q23

RC Question 23 Explanation

DISCUSSION: Lines 7-9 explain what the radicals meant by useful. They wanted literature to help create a new society.

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1. It was Dostoyevsky who used fantasy in his work, and he didn’t care whether art was demonstrably useful (paragraph 4).
2. Lines 35-41 mention a novel should communicate an author’s ideas. That was part of Dostoyevsky’s definition of “artistic merit”; he wasn’t talking about usefulness. 
3. CORRECT. This matches lines 7-9, which describe the radicals’ idea of the purpose of literature. They thought literature should help reform society.
4. This is Dostoyevsky’s view from lines 20-21, but he was describing whether or not artists should be realistic. Dostoyevsky didn’t mention anything about usefulness until paragraph 4.
5. Nobody mentioned the importance of promoting their theory of literature. The radicals wanted literature to promote social change, and Dostoyevsky seemed mostly concerned with artistic merit (paragraph 3).