Q24 - For a work to be rightly thought

[ManhattanPrepLSAT1]

Question Type:
Inference/Most strongly supported

Stimulus Breakdown:
Conditional logic alert! And complex logic at that, since we bring up 3 possibilities in our second statement:

1) Proper world literature → Received/interpreted in national tradition + Received/intepreted in external traditions
2) Authors from tradition use as positive model to develop OR negative model to avoid OR radical model to refine → Received/interpreted in a tradition

Answer Anticipation:
Who knows where the answer is going to go for this one? There are so many moving parts.

However, it's important to note that the first rule talks about national and international (external) traditions and this overlaps with the second rule.

Correct Answer:
E

Answer Choice Analysis:
(A) Unsupported. No connection between acceptance by one's own national tradition and acceptance by another's national traditions is supported.

(B) Unsupported comparison. Our argument doesn't rank how much these works offer.

(C) Unsupported comparison in trigger. The stimulus only talks about whether the works are received/interpreted within certain traditions, not whether they are more/less meaningful in the traditions.

(D) Illegal reversal. Based on the argument, works of world literature will influence other traditions; this answer choice flips that around.

(E) Bingo. This is the contrapositive of the first statement (which would read: If a work is not interpreted in the national tradition of the writer OR if it is not interpreted within an external national tradition, then it's not world literature), coupled with the second. If a work affects only one national tradition, then it can't be received/interpreted by both the writers national tradition AND an external one, since that would be two national traditions. And since it's missing one of the two OR triggers, we can guarantee it's not world literature.

Takeaway/Pattern: It's rare to get a conditional logic-based Most Strongly Supported question but, when you do, go through the same process you normally would!

#officialexplanation

[stephaniem-n]

This one was very tricky to me as I originally interpreted the stimulus incorrectly (conflated writer with authors). I've been trying to work through the correct answer choice E. If my understanding is correct, world literature must affect the development of multiple national traditions (E) because it must be interpreted by more than one national tradition and all three ways for interpretation mentioned (role model, avoided tendency, and otherness) spur development of some sort or another.

[andrewgong01]

Copied from above
1) Proper world literature → Received/interpreted in national tradition + Received/intepreted in external traditions
2) Authors from tradition use as positive model to develop OR negative model to avoid OR radical model to refine → Received/interpreted in a tradition

(E) Bingo. This is the contrapositive of the first statement (which would read: If a work is not interpreted in the national tradition of the writer OR if it is not interpreted within an external national tradition, then it's not world literature), coupled with the second. If a work affects only one national tradition, then it can't be received/interpreted by both the writers national tradition AND an external one, since that would be two national traditions. And since it's missing one of the two OR triggers, we can guarantee it's not world literature.

I am still really lost at what "E" is getting at.
E says we trigger development of just one national tradition then it is not world literature.
I also undersand the first statement and its contrapositive. If a work is not interpreted in national tradition or not interpreted within an external national tradition then it is not world literature.
So now we need to say development of just one national tradition =a work is not interpreted in national tradition or not interpreted within an external national tradition to support Answer Choice "E" as true based of the text


However, it is from here that I lost in using how the second statement can be used to prove this. I am not quite seeing where this comes from (from the above post : ". If a work affects only one national tradition, then it can't be received/interpreted by both the writers national tradition AND an external one, since that would be two national traditions. And since it's missing one of the two OR triggers, we can guarantee it's not world literature" )

EDIT: Does it have to do with "at least one"? Does "at least one" mean 2 or more here?

Thank you

[LindsayC91]

E) Bingo. This is the contrapositive of the first statement (which would read: If a work is not interpreted in the national tradition of the writer OR if it is not interpreted within an external national tradition, then it's not world literature), coupled with the second. If a work affects only one national tradition, then it can't be received/interpreted by both the writers national tradition AND an external one, since that would be two national traditions. And since it's missing one of the two OR triggers, we can guarantee it's not world literature.

I have an issue with this explanation as well if you could help me out.


I'm confused on how "affects the development of only one national tradition" becomes "affect only one national tradition," if that makes sense. In my understanding, the work could only affect the development of one national tradition, and still be received and interpreted externally.....Does my point of view make sense?

I guess I could be getting tripped up on Must Be True vs. Strongly Supported because the answer doesn't have to be true, it just needs to be highly likely to be true. But if you could clarify, I'm still having a lot of trouble seeing why E. is strongly supported...

[SameerS691]

E) Bingo. This is the contrapositive of the first statement (which would read: If a work is not interpreted in the national tradition of the writer OR if it is not interpreted within an external national tradition, then it's not world literature), coupled with the second. If a work affects only one national tradition, then it can't be received/interpreted by both the writers national tradition AND an external one, since that would be two national traditions. And since it's missing one of the two OR triggers, we can guarantee it's not world literature.

I have an issue with this explanation as well if you could help me out.


I'm confused on how "affects the development of only one national tradition" becomes "affect only one national tradition," if that makes sense. In my understanding, the work could only affect the development of one national tradition, and still be received and interpreted externally.....Does my point of view make sense?

The way I interpreted the conditional structure of this question, and to help answer your question:
"Affecting the development of a national tradition" is sufficient to "receiving/interpreting a work from that tradition" (necessary). This comes from the second sentence of the stimulus, with emphasis on: "A work counts as being interpreted within A tradition IF authors from THAT tradition use...". The three ways a work can be used all have to do with affecting the development of that tradition (for the better): positive model for...the development of their tradition, negative case...that must be avoided (i.e. discouraging a bad trend), or an image...that prompts refinement of the tradition.

We also know that if a work is considered world literature, it must be received/interpreted within the writer's own national tradition AND within external national traditions. By contrapositive, we know if it is NOT interpreted within either the writer's national tradition OR an external tradition, then it cannot be considered a work of world literature.

Answer choice E: If it affects the development of *only one* national tradition, then it is satisfying the requirement of interpretation within *a* national tradition (let's say the writer's) – because affecting the development of a national tradition --> counts as being interpreted within that national tradition – but it is failing to be interpreted within another (let's say external) tradition – because it is not affecting the development of other traditions (minimum required is 2) – thus it cannot count as a work of world literature.

Hope that helps! This is my first time posting an explanation haha.

[HannahK994]

This may be too simplistic, but to understand arriving at E for the correct answer I just had to wrap my head around the fact that the first sentence refers to an internal national tradition and an external national tradition, but they're both national traditions. So although it is easy to dismiss E because you think, "one national tradition is enough to think of a work as world literature" (my instinct), in fact we are tricking ourselves because we may only need one internal national tradition but we still need one external (therefore, the two minimum mentioned in an earlier post). This is really basic but from the thread I thought it was a simple explanation that might clarify some confusion.

Please let me know if my thought process is off here!

[ohthatpatrick]

Nice simple summary. You thinking is on point.

Although I found it funny that you said, " it is easy to dismiss E because you think, "one national tradition is enough to think of a work as world literature" (my instinct)" ..... why would only being part of one nation's tradition make you world literature? to be world literature, wouldn't you need to be in at least two different places in the world? Otherwise it seems like you're just National Literature, not International (World) Literature. Sorry for unhelpfully critiquing your instincts.

[JinZ551]

a quick way to eliminate A here is the difference between "a work of literature" in A and "world literature" in stimulus.