Q5

[WaltGrace1983]

I am a bit confused on this one. To answer this question, I took a look at lines 27-28 and the lines around it. The word "too" in "It must be admitted too that Byron's literary craftsmanship is irregular" threw me off. I thought this "too" would signal that there are two distinct ideas going on here: that Byron is not "great" and that his poetry his irregular.

I was able to comfortably eliminate (A), (D), and (E) but I was staring too long at (B) and (C).

I reasoned that (B) looked pretty good because the paragraph is all about how, even though Byron has these things working against him (not being a "great" poet, his irregularity, an odd literary method, etc.), we should still appreciate and read Byron because of Byron's "illumination." So I was a little bit troubled that (C) was the right answer.

In these types of questions, what should we consider? Do RC passages work like regular essays in which the main point of the paragraph will come at the beginning and/or end while the rest of the stuff in the paragraph will support it? I know that it is often a good idea to read more than just the lines these questions give and instead read around the lines so we can more fully understand the context. However, how much is too much? Should we tie the answers to these types of questions into the greater point of the passage as a whole? I hope that makes sense.

[ohthatpatrick]

So, there's a pretty strong formula for this type of question:

the author mentions ____ in order to
the author's reference to ____ serves to
the author discussed ____ primarily to

We discussed it in this thread:
http://www.manhattanlsat.com/forums/pos ... bf3#p31794

You could call this a Local Purpose question if you want. I call them "Bookend" questions, because they point you to a detail / line reference, but they're testing the BIGGER idea that bookends the detail. Most of the time, they're testing the bigger claim that came right before the detail.

Were you to apply that formula here, you would certainly see that (C) is just reinforcing the previous sentence.

You were thrown off because the coordinating word "too" made these two claims distinct, not connected.

If we use connectors like "too", "also", "and", "moreover", then we are typically getting distinct points that BOTH stand in the service of supporting the SAME bigger idea.

Your confusion here seemed to be that you thought our consecutive ideas were:
- Byron was not "great"
- his craftsmanship is irregular

If you look at those for a second, doesn't it seem like irregular craftsmanship IS a reason for supporting that a poet is not "great"?

What happened is you overly condensed what line 24-26 is saying.

The first idea is
- Byron is not a great poet. Why? You can't read his poems simply as subtle verbal meanings (callback to line 17)
- Also, his literary craftsmanship is irregular and his temperament mucks with his method.

So the "too" / "also" going on here was saying there are at least three reasons for not thinking Byron was great:
1. poems can't be appreciated on their own
2. craftsmanship shoddy
3. temperament often disrupts method

I won't rehash the whole discussion of "where to look" because we covered that in the aforementioned thread about questions of this type.

But I will say that OFTEN the topic sentence of a paragraph is the Main Point of the paragraph ... probably even MOST of the time. But like everything LSAT, not always.

As you indicated, this 2nd paragraph does not follow through on "Byron is not great" for the whole paragraph. The author's REAL evaluation of Byron begins on line 32. The author wants to say flattering things about Byron, but (he's a stuffy literary critic) he feels the need to concede to his colleagues that Byron is not really in the highest class of poet.

So a paragraph may begin with the author conceding a point, in which case we have to read carefully for pivot language like but/yet/however to register when the author switches into his main emphasis.

All formulas aside, looking at these answer choices, I would ask myself:

(A) Are we still talking about Shakespeare? I don't think so. We never learned that HE had GOOD craftsmanship.

(B) "dismiss" is too extreme. The author is presently judging Byron on his craftsmanship. The author surely doesn't think that craftsmanship is the ONLY way to judge a poet, but that doesn't mean the author DISMISSES craftsmanship from being discussed.
(Formulaically, this is the typical trap answer for this type of question that focuses on words from the Detail sentence instead of reinforcing wording from the Bookend sentence)

(C) This relates to the previous sentence. Was craftsmanship related to the previous sentence? Yes, the author connects them with "too". "Too" is a paraphrase for "another".

(D) Wrong bookend. Byron's lax literary method is a consequence of the belief that the cosmos is incomprehensible.

(E) "most-often-cited" is too extreme.