The author tells us that Pocock's investigations centered around the fruitful assumption that work of political thought must be understood within the linguistic constraint of its author (lines 1-5), where "fruitful" suggests an overall positive characterization of Pocock's efforts and is synonymous with "fertile" in the answer choice (D). The author further tells us that this approach is in sharp contrast with naive assumptions of the 1950s when a close reading was thought to be sufficient to establish the meaning of a political text (lines 15-21), suggesting that as Pocock's work contrasts with naive assumption, it is not naive as (C) suggests. The author acknowledges that his ideas are more controversial when applied to 18th century United States (lines 39-43), but this description is not reflective of the author's overall attitude toward Pocock's work as he ultimately concludes that we can applaud the historian (Pocock) has done the most to make us aware of the linguistic importance (lines 60-62).
