Reading ComprehensionDifficulty: Easy

PT134 S4 P4 Q23 Explanation

Dostoyevsky’s Position on Literature

A free, expert breakdown of this official LSAT Reading Comprehension question.

TopicsMeaning in ContextHumanities

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Passage

During Dostoyevsky’s time there were two significant and opposing directions in Russian literary criticism. One position maintained that art stood high above the present and the everyday, while the radical view maintained that art had a right to exist only if it found its sources in concrete reality, and, through the exposure distinction in principle between fantasy and reality, and reality was far more than the merely tangible.

The radical critics’ demand that reality be depicted “as it is” was meaningless for Dostoyevsky; reality was necessarily shaped by the person who experienced it: what may not be reality for you may be reality for me. The task of the writer was to explode the boundaries of the so-called real world. be so intimately bound up with the real that one almost believes in it.”

The radical critics’ insistence that art must serve a particular political view was for Dostoyevsky the equivalent of assigning to art “a shameful destiny.” A literary work must stand or fall on its “artistic merit,” he explained. The utilitarian claim that the formal aspects of a work were of secondary importance so has fully understood the author’s thoughts. Therefore, artistry is quite simply the ability to write well.”

The radical critics’ requirement that art must at all costs be “useful” to people and society seemed to Dostoyevsky unsatisfactory. How can we know what will show itself to be useful? Can we say with assurance how useful the Iliad has been to humankind? No, Dostoyevsky believed, when it comes to this purpose because we cannot see clearly what paths it may take to become useful.

What this question is testing

Meaning in Context

Your task

Pin down exactly what the question asks about the passage — a detail, the author's view, the structure, or the main point — before looking at the choices.

Common trap

Answers that restate a true detail from the passage but don't answer the specific question being asked.

Winning move

Anticipate the answer in your own words from the passage, then find the choice that matches that prediction.

Reading along? Open the full official question in LawHub — we show a fragment here and keep the reasoning in our own words.

The question
23.

In the context of the passage, the description of a work of literature as “useful” mainly

Answer choices

  1. Wrong Point of View2% picked this

    proficiency at depicting the realm of

    The radical critics want "useful", whereas Dostoyevsky wants to include the "realm of the fantastic" within the boundaries of realism. Those two camps don't see eye to eye, so this answer is using the wrong point of view to answer a question about the radical critics' view.

  2. Wrong Point of View7% picked this

    effectiveness at communicating the author's

    The radical critics define "useful" as exposing want and injustice. In the 3rd paragraph, we might even infer that "useful" to them means "serving a particular political point of view". Meanwhile, this answer choice is using Dostoyevsky's language / point of view, from the latter part of the 3rd paragraph, saying that writers should focus on clearly communicating their ideas (otherwise their ideas have no chance of being useful). Just like (A), this is using Dostoyevsky's language to answer a question about the radical critics' point of view.

  3. Correct83% picked this

    ability to help bring about social

    Why this is right

    We can match this up with how the passage defined "useful" in the 2nd sentence: in other words, useful is "through the exposure of want and injustice, contributing to the creation of a new society" Contributing to the creation of a new society (that is presumably ameliorating some of the want and injustice) would be equivalent to having the ability to help bring about social change. This echoes the language in the beginning of the last paragraph, when we say "useful to people and society".

    Skill tested: Meaning in Context · how this choice captures the passage's function is the move to repeat next time.

  4. Wrong Point of View5% picked this

    facility for exploding the boundaries of the

    The radical critics use the term "useful", but just like (A) and (B), this answer defines it using Dostoyevsky's language / point of view. In the latter half of the 2nd paragraph (which is about realism, not usefulness, to make this answer even worse), Dostoyevksy says that the task of the writer is to explode the boundaries of the real world.

  5. Out of Scope: theory of literature3% picked this

    capacity to advance a particular theory

    This answer might start to sound sort of like how the radical critics might think of "useful" in the 3rd paragraph (although that term is never used there). But even that is talking about "serving a particular political view", which is way different from "serving to advance a particular theory of literature". We don't have any of our three debate positions saying that art's job i to advance a particular theory of literature.

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