Passage Discussion

[gplaya123]

Teachers,
I need your help understanding the passage.

I was stuck at the latter part of second paragraph.

This is what I got so far...

First paragraph: this talks about those of who are studying for Latin stuff tends to focus primarily on literature works. Yet, the Renaissance (thereafter known as RE) cannot merely be represented by such works. Science, law stuff that are written in Latin also are important, yet they are studied by these people who aren't familiar with law and science stuff.
Author is ultimately pointing out a deficiency in studying RE.
(by the way... is passage suggesting that this specialists are actually translating latin stuff to english or just merely studying them? I think merely studying them right?)

Second paragraph: in contrast to Latin studying people, those who study RE in English primarily focus on stuff that are translated in English. Thus they tend to undermine the value of works that are written by other scholars who do not live in England yet still have written great stuff on RE.
Ultimately, author is again pointing out another deficiency.

Now the confusing stuff kicks in from 42 to 49.
I do not fully grasp this part but this is what I think (also deriving from answer is E for Q9...)
Traditionally, the writers in general believed that Latin literature is the "basis" for studying materials that are in English. In saying so, author is trying to convey the sense that each of the Latin works is like a fundamental block that one needs to understand in order to study more RE stuff in depth.

Uh... yeah... so that's my summary... well the last paragraph basically is the qualification of the whole passage, that this whole deficiency issue is a real problem.

1) I am sorry for not using proper terms to describe the contents. But are my summaries looking good?

2) I am especially concerned about 42 - 49. Someone please correct me if I am wrong!

3) I am also very concerned about the "role" that 42-49 plays. Is author trying to create this "contrast," where traditionally, the Latin works were the basis of English materials yet now, historians tend to overlook the former and focus on the latter more?

THANKS!!!!

[ohthatpatrick]

I was lovin' 90% of that.

Here's my quick version, for what it's worth.

The author's main objective here is to describe one big ol' problem:
People who study the RE tend to focus too much on the stuff available in English and miss out not only on some important texts written in Latin but also on the broader societal/intellectual context of the time period, which was primarily recorded in Latin.

Why does this problem exist?
The people who are exposed to all this RE English stuff typically don't know Latin or are relying on English only texts. The classicists who know Latin typically don't have the scientific background necessary to translate the really important scientific works of the RE into English.

Ultimately, the author is just bemoaning the fact that all these historians / language specialists / scientists / etc. all have their narrow specialty, but we're missing the beautiful connections between these specialties because today's specialists can't really handle learning and integrating it all.

I think your "building block" metaphor for lines 42-49 was perfect. I don't know if I agree with contrast you were describing in question 3.

I think the author was just saying that all these RE geniuses who were writing in English (and whose English language works are meticulously studied) were THEMSELVES studying Latin texts and learning about the world through Latin. So the author is just saying we can't really appreciate where these RE smarties were coming from if we can't share in the Latin texts to which they were exposed.

So this is just further elaboration of the big ol' problem. Whereas earlier stuff in the passage is saying that modern historians are missing out on RE geniuses who wrote mainly in Latin, the 2nd paragraph is telling the modern historians that they're not REALLY even getting the English-writing RE geniuses because of how influenced those geniuses were by Latin texts.

I don't think the passage ever specifies whether historians are just reading in Latin or translating from Latin to English. There is presumably some of both, but the idea is that the people reading in Latin don't understand what they're reading well enough to translate it usefully into English.

Nice work.