#14 - Concept Reference, Must Be True

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

The correct answer choice is (D).

Answer choice (A):

Answer choice (B):

Answer choice (C):

Answer choice (D): This is the correct answer choice.

Answer choice (E):


This explanation is still in progress. Please post any questions below!

[LustingFor!L]

I incorrectly selected answer choice A and thought lines 60-63 supported my selection. The lines I used for support, I guess aren't specifically talking about his conception of tragedy. I thought "somewhat different" in answer choice D wasn't strong enough language...

Can anyone offer more light on this?

[Adam Tyson]

Hey there L, happy to shed a little light if I can. The best reason for rejecting answer A, in my opinion, is that our author does NOT see Webster's artistic vision as flawed at all. Certain critics did, because they viewed him through the lens of the Elizabethan morality play, but our author is saying that those critics were wrong about him. Instead, he tells us, we should view Webster as being more in keeping with the Italian dramas and their moral complexity.

While answer D does seem a bit tentative, it's the best answer of the bunch. Webster's conception of tragedy was not "as heavily influenced by the morality play's model of reality as were his Elizabethan contemporaries." That text is enough support for us to take answer D over the other four choices.

I hope that was light enough! Keep at it, we'll be here if you need us again.

[Ledesmanicole]

Hi,

Can you please help me understand why B is incorrect?

Doesn't the author imply that Webster's conception of tragedy was highly conventional?

He says "Aristotle implied that such contradictions are virtually essential to the tragic personality, and yet critics keep coming back to this element of inconsistency as though it were an eccentric feature of Webster's own tragic vision." and "He presents us not only with characters that we condemn intellectually or ethically and at the same time impulsively approve of, but also with judgments we must accept as logically sound and yet find emotionally repulsive. The dilemma is not only dramatic: it is tragic, because the conflict is irreconcilable, and because it is ours as much as that of the characters."

I understand that his contemporaries may have had different types of tragedies different to his, but aren't Webster's conventional re the conception of tragedy?

Thank you!

[Jeremy Press]

Hi Ledesmanicole,

Great question, and you've identified exactly the portions of the passage I would've identified to assist with the question, and with answer choice B specifically.

The problem is that the first reference you mention (lines 11-16) only supports the idea that Webster's emphasis on the tragic was not an "eccentric feature of Webster's own tragic vision." So Webster isn't the only one to emphasize contradictions in his tragedies, but that doesn't necessarily mean he's highly conventional (an intensifier that would require knowing he's on the extreme end of following the convention).

The second reference you mention (lines 53-61) merely affirms the same idea. He's drawing on a conception of the tragic that's consistent with Aristotle, and different from the Elizabethans, but is it "highly" conventional? Nothing in the reference supports that "highly" intensifier.

I hope this helps!

Jeremy

[annabelle.swift]

Hi Powerscore!

Like others on this thread, I was deciding between B and D. I understand that B is too extreme since it uses "highly", but I still am not 100% sold on D yet.

In addition to the tentativeness of "somewhat different" in D, I thought D was wrong because it references "the Elizabethan conception of tragedy," whereas the passage never explicitly refers to Elizabethan tragedy, only Elizabethan "drama" or "works."

How is my thinking incorrect, and what should I take away from this to use in future questions?

Thank you!

[Robert Carroll]

annabelle,

The "tentativeness" of answer choice (D), as so often, a good thing about the answer. Webster's conception of tragedy was definitely different from the conventional Elizabethan conception, which itself was heavily influenced by morality plays. Maybe it was a lot different! But if so, then "somewhat different" isn't wrong. The fact that answer choice (D) isn't extreme is good - the less extreme the answer, the less basis we need for it in the passage. We have enough basis to see what Webster and the conventional Elizabethan conceptions were different. "Somewhat different" avoids having to worry that they're not different enough to make the answer work, as would be the case if the answer said something like "irreconcilably different" or something extreme.

When the passage talks about how Webster's conception of tragedy differed from Elizabethan conceptions, that pretty clearly has to be about Elizabethan tragedy.

Robert Carroll

[annabelle.swift]

So does that mean "somewhat" encompasses "very"? For example, does "somewhat different" include "very different"? In the same way that "some" includes "all"?

Thank you!

[Adam Tyson]

That's correct!

I'll also add one more thing to this discussion, and that is that although Webster's plays seem to fit in nicely with an ancient Greek model, there's nothing to say that they are in any way "conventional." Having some precedent is not enough, in my view, to make something conventional, because that ancient precedent could still be viewed as being the exception rather than the standard. Aristotle may have thought this was the essential stuff, but who's to say whether Aristotle's view was commonly accepted?

Besides, the morality play was "conventional" by some standards, and Webster's plays weren't like those, right? I see answer B as an opposite answer, because at least as far as Webster's contemporaries and the critics were concerned, his plays were decidedly UNconventional! The author isn't arguing that they fit into the conventions of that time and place. They are just saying that the critics are evaluating him using the wrong set of standards, and that his influences were found elsewhere.

Just a little more food for thought on why B is a bad answer.