Reading Comprehension

PT112 · S2 · P2 · Q9 Latin Texts

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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 represent the high culture of Renaissance (roughly sixteenth-and seventeenth-century) England.

Topic

The overlooked importance of Latin-language works in understanding the intellectual culture of Renaissance England.

Framework

Challenge Position

Main Point

Binns argues that focusing only on English-language works and ignoring Latin works gives a distorted view of Renaissance England's intellectual culture, since many key achievements and influences are in Latin and not properly studied by either language experts or historians. (The Most Valuable Sentence appears at the start of paragraph 1 and is further summed up at the end of paragraph 3.)

P1: The Overlooked Role of Latin in Renaissance England

Binns points out that when we think of Renaissance England's high culture, we usually focus on famous works written in English, but actually, Latin was still hugely important. A lot of groundbreaking law, theology, and science was written in Latin, but these works are often ignored because modern academics tend to have narrow specializations and don’t overlap much.

P2: English-Focused Scholarship Misses the Real Picture

Historians who study the era mainly look at works written in or translated into English and tend to ignore how central Latin and Continental European influences were for English intellectuals. Even the writers we think of as super English were deeply immersed in Latin literature and the broader European intellectual culture.

P3: The Roots of the Problem and Its Consequences

It’s understandable—modern classicists aren’t trained in the technical Latin used in Renaissance science, and historians of English culture often can't read this kind of Latin. However, because each group only looks at half the picture, their understanding of England’s Renaissance culture ends up incomplete and distorted.

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

Continental writers wrote in Latin
Unknown Comparison: more frequently Contradicted: inaccessible
While our common sense might suggest that Continental writers wrote in Latin more often than did English writers, we're explicitly told that the English writers went to schools and universities where they "spoke and wrote Latin", so it's possible that these English writers wrote in Latin a ton. More importantly, it would be hard to argue that any text written in Latin was inaccessible to English readers, since we know that English-speaking people of the time also spoke and wrote Latin.
13% picked this
Continental writers, more intellectually advanced
Unknown Comparison
Unknown Comparison: more advanced Too Strong: on the whole responsible The passage doesn't allow us to make this broad generalization that Continental writers were more intellectually advanced than their English counterparts. The passage is just saying that lots of intellectually advanced stuff happened in Latin-only texts, which modern scholars have tended to overlook. It's also too strong to say that Continental writers were the main causal source of familiarizing English audiences with Latin language and literature. Maybe it was university professors who were the main causal source. Maybe it was the Catholic church, which was the most powerful cultural institution for centuries and used (even uses to this day) Latin extensively.
3% picked this
English and Continental writers communicated
Too Strong: mostly different
We don't have any support text that would allow us to say that English and Continental writers had, for the most part, different intellectual concerns. The passage seems to be painting the opposite picture: the English writers inhabited an intellectual world in which what what happened abroad and was recorded in Latin was of great importance. Writers traditionally considered English and modern were steeped in Latin literature and in the esoteric concerns of late Renaissance humanism. It also seems to be an overstatement to say that English writers communicated their intellectual concerns by way of works written in Latin. They definitely wrote some stuff in Latin, but it seems like they also wrote some stuff in English.
6% picked this
Correct
The intellectual ties between English
Why this is right
In the second sentence of the 2nd paragraph, it says, Binns argues that these scholars treat the English-language writings .... as 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 ... The author / passage implicitly accepts Binns' views and agrees with him, so this sentence gives us support for "the intellectual ties were stronger than is acknowledged by many scholars". Was it founded on a mutual knowledge of Latin? For sure. The rest of the 2nd paragraph stresses how the English writers studied, spoke, and wrote in Latin. They inhabited a world concerned with Latin-language issues. Many Latin works by Continental humanists became the bases of classic English works of literature and scholarship.
Skill tested: Inference · how this choice captures the passage's function is the move to repeat next time.
69% picked this
The intellectual ties between English
Opposite
The main point of the passage is that due to a lack of dialogue between language specialists and intellectual historians, the intellectual ties between English and Continental writers has been underemphasized / overlooked.
8% picked this

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