Which one of the following titles best expressed the main idea of the passage?

Veda-Bhadharla August 5, 2020

Why is E wrong?

I was stuck between B and E because I did see how a large focus was put on Byron and how his personality is present in his poetry, but I thought E was more fitting because it felt like the point the author was trying to make throughout the passage is that critics who only focused on his poetry without considering the personality behind it are wrong. Could someone please help?

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shunhe August 5, 2020

Hi @Veda-Bhadharla,

Thanks for the question! So it’s good you know why (B) is correct—as you mentioned, a lot of the passage is talking about how you can’t separate Byron’s personal life and Byron’s art. And so that’s kind of what (B) describes. Why is (E) wrong? Well, the title suggested in (E) is Verbal Shadings: The Fatal Flaw of Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism. But the passage is about Byron. Can we generalize to all twentieth-century literary criticism about other authors as well? No, we can’t. This passage is unique to Byron, and so (E) is just way too wide in scope and is incorrect.

Hope this helps! Feel free to ask any other questions that you might have.