In Intellectual Culture in Elizabethan and Jacobean England, J. W. Binns Asserts that the Drama of Shakespeare, the Verse of Marlowe, and the Prose of Sidney

Reading Passage Question

In Intellectual Culture in Elizabethan and Jacobean England, J. W. Binns asserts that the drama of Shakespeare, the verse of Marlowe, and the prose of Sidney—all of whom wrote in English—do not alone (5) represent the high culture of Renaissance (roughly sixteenth- and seventeenth-century) England. Latin, the language of ancient Rome, continued during this period to be the dominant form of expression for English intellectuals, and works of law, theology, and science (10) written in Latin were, according to Binns, among the highest achievements of the Renaissance. However, because many academic specialisations do not overlap, many texts central to an interpretation of early modern English culture has gone unexamined. Even the most (15) learned students of Renaissance Latin generally confine themselves to humanistic and literary writings in Latin. According to Binns, these language specialists edit and analyse poems and orations, but leave works of theology and science, law and medicine—the very (20) works that revolutionised Western thought—to “specialists” in those fields, historians of science, for example, who lack philological training. The intellectual historian can find ample guidance when

reading the Latin poetry of Milton, but little or none (25) when confronting the more alien and difficult terminology, syntax, and content of the scientist Newton.

Intellectual historians of Renaissance England, by contrast with Latin language specialists, have surveyed (30) in great detail the historical, cosmological, and theological battles of the day, but too often they have done so on the basis of texts written in or translated into English. Binns argues that these scholars treat the English-language writings of Renaissance England as (35) an autonomous and coherent whole, underestimating the influence on English writers of their counterparts on the European Continent. In so doing they ignore the fact that English intellectuals were educated in schools and universities where they spoke and wrote Latin, and

(40) inhabited as adults an intellectual world in which what happened abroad and was recorded in Latin was of great importance. Writers traditionally considered characteristically English and modern were steeped in Latin literature and in the esoteric concerns of late (45) Renaissance humanism (the rediscovery and study of ancient Latin and Greek texts), and many Latin works by Continental humanists that were not translated at the time into any modern language became the bases of classic English works of literature and scholarship.

(50) These limitations are understandable. No modern classicist is trained to deal with the range of problems posed by a difficult piece of late Renaissance science; few students of English intellectual history are trained to read the sort of Latin in which such works were (55) written. Yet the result of each side’s inability to cross boundaries has been that each presents a distorted reading of the intellectual culture of RenaissanceEngland.

“In Intellectual Culture in Elizabethan and Jacobean England, J. W. Binns asserts that the drama of Shakespeare, the verse of Marlowe, and the prose of Sidney”- is a GMAT reading comprehension passage with answers. Candidates need a strong knowledge of English GMAT reading comprehension.

This GMAT Reading Comprehension consists of 6 comprehension questions. The GMAT Reading Comprehension questions are designed for testing candidates’ abilities in understanding, analysing, and applying information or concepts. Candidates can actively prepare with the help of GMAT Reading Comprehension Practice Questions.

Solution and Explanation

1. Which one of the following best states the main idea of the passage?

(A) Analyses of the scientific, theological, and legal writings of the Renaissance have proved to be more important to an understanding of the period than have studies of humanistic and literary works.
(B) The English works of such Renaissance writers as Shakespeare, Marlowe, and Sidney have been overemphasised at the expense of these writers’ more intellectually challenging Latin works.
(C) Though traditionally recognized as the language of the educated classes of the Renaissance, Latin has until recently been studied primarily in connection with ancient Roman texts.
(D) Many Latin texts by English Renaissance writers, though analysed in depth by literary critics and philologists, have been all but ignored by historians of science and theology.
(E) Many Latin texts by English Renaissance writers, though important to an analysis of the period, have been insufficiently understood for reasons related to academic specialisation.

2. The passage contains support for which one of the following statements concerning those scholars who analyse works written in Latin during the Renaissance?

(A) These scholars tend to lack training both in language and in intellectual history, and thus base their interpretations of Renaissance culture on works translated into English.
(B) These scholars tend to lack the combination of training in both language and intellectual history that is necessary for a proper study of important and neglected Latin texts.
(C) Specialists in such literary forms as poems and orations too frequently lack training in the Latin language that was written and studied during the Renaissance.
(D) Language specialists have surveyed in too great detail important works of law and medicine, and thus have not provided a coherent interpretation of early modern English culture.
(E) Scholars who analyse important Latin works by such writers as Marlowe, Shakespeare, and Sidney too often lack the historical knowledge of Latin necessary for a proper interpretation of early modern English culture.

3. Which one of the following statements concerning the relationship between English and Continental writers of the Renaissance era can be inferred from the passage?

(A) Continental writers wrote in Latin more frequently than did English writers, and thus rendered some of the most important Continental works inaccessible to English readers.
(B) Continental writers, more intellectually advanced than their English counterparts, were on the whole responsible for familiarising English audiences with Latin language and literature.
(C) English and Continental writers communicated their intellectual concerns, which were for the most part different, by way of works written in Latin.
(D) The intellectual ties between English and Continental writers were stronger than has been acknowledged by many scholars and were founded on a mutual knowledge of Latin.
(E) The intellectual ties between English and Continental writers have been overemphasised in modern scholarship due to a lack of dialogue between language specialists and intellectual historians.

4. The author of the passage most likely cites Shakespeare, Marlowe, and Sidney in the first paragraph as examples of writers whose

(A) nonfiction works are less well known than their imaginative works
(B) works have unfairly been credited with revolutionising Western thought
(C) works have been treated as an autonomous and coherent whole
(D) works have traditionally been seen as representing the high culture of Renaissance England
(E) Latin writings have, according to Binns, been overlooked

5. Binns would be most likely to agree with which one of the following statements concerning the English language writings of Renaissance England traditionally studied by intellectual historians?

(A) These writings have unfortunately been undervalued by Latin-language specialists because of their nonliterary subject matter.
(B) These writings, according to Latin-language specialists, had very little influence on the intellectual upheavals associated with the Renaissance.
(C) These writings, as analysed by intellectual historians, have formed the basis of a superficially coherent reading of the intellectual culture that produced them.
(D) These writings have been compared unfavourably by intellectual historians with Continental works of the same period.
(E) These writings need to be studied separately, according to intellectual historians, from Latin-language writings of the same period.

6. The information in the passage suggests which one of the following concerning late-Renaissance scientific works written in Latin?

(A) These works are easier for modern scholars to analyse than are theological works of the same era.
(B) These works have seldom been translated into English and thus remain inscrutable to modern scholars, despite the availability of illuminating commentaries.
(C) These works are difficult for modern scholars to analyse both because of the concepts they develop and the language in which they are written.
(D) These works constituted the core of an English university education during the Renaissance.
(E) These works were written mostly by Continental writers and reached English intellectuals only in English translation.

7. The author of the passage mentions the poet Milton and the scientist Newton primarily in order to

(A) illustrate the range of difficulty in Renaissance Latin writing, from relatively straightforward to very difficult
(B) illustrate the differing scholarly attitudes toward Renaissance writers who wrote in Latin and those who wrote in English
(C) illustrate the fact that the concerns of English writers of the Renaissance differed from the concerns of their Continental counterparts
(D) contrast a writer of the Renaissance whose merit has long been recognized with one whose literary worth has only recently begun to be appreciated
(E) contrast a writer whose Latin writings have been the subject of illuminating scholarship with one whose Latin writings have been neglected by philologists

8. The author of the passage is primarily concerned with presenting which one of the following?

(A) an enumeration of new approaches
(B) contrasting views of disparate theories
(C) a summary of intellectual disputes
(D) a discussion of a significant deficiency
(E) a correction of an author’s misconceptions

Suggested GMAT Reading Comprehension Samples

• A One-Child Policy was Implemented in China in 1979
• The Pioneers of the Teaching of Science Imagined that its Introduction into Education would Remove the Conventionality, Artificiality, and Backward-Lookingness
• A Fundamental Principle of Pharmacology is that all Drugs have Multiple Actions. Actions that are Desirable in the Treatment of Disease are Considered therapeutic
• In the 1980's, Astronomer Bohdan Paczynski Proposed a Way of Determining Whether the Enormous Dark Halo Constituting the Outermost Part of the Milky Way Galaxy
• The General Density Dependence Model can be Applied to Explain the Founding of Specialist Firms
• Many People Believe that Wages are Lower in Developing Countries than in Developed Countries
• More Selective than Most Chemical Pesticides in that they Ordinarily Destroy only Unwanted Species
• Citing the Fact that the Real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita was Higher in 1997
• Historians have Identified Two Dominant Currents in the Russian Women's Movement of the Late Tsarist Period.
• Some Historians Contend that Conditions in the United States During the Second World War
• Comparable Worth, as a Standard Applied to Eliminate Inequities in Pay
• The United States Government has a Long-Standing Policy of Using Federal Funds to Keep Small Business Viable.
• A Recent Study has Provided Clues to Predator-Prey Dynamics in the Late Pleistocene Era.
• Even More Than Mountainside Slides of Mud or Snow, Naturally Occurring Forest Fires Promote the Survival of Aspen Trees.
• The Black Death, a Severe Epidemic that Ravaged Fourteenth Century Europe
• The System of Patent-Granting, Which Confers Temporary Monopolies for the Exploitation of New Technologies
• Ethnohistoric Documents from Sixteenth-Century Mexico Suggesting that Weaving and Cooking were the Most Common Productive Activities for Aztec Women
• Solar Ponds are Bodies of Water in Which Circulation is Incomplete and There is a Very High Salt Concentration that Increases with Depth
• Traditional Social Science Models of Class Groups in the United States are Based on Economic Status
• Conventional Wisdom has it that Large Deficits in the United States Budget Cause Interest Rates to Rise.