GRE Exam Dumps : GRE General Test

The relevance of the literary personality—a writer's distinctive attitudes, concerns, and artistic choices—to the analysis of a literary work is being scrutinized by various schools of contemporary criticism. Deconstmctionists view the literary personality, like the writer's biographical personality, as irrelevant. The proper focus of literary analysis, they argue, is a work's intertextuality (interrelationship with other texts), subtexts (unspoken, concealed. or repressed discourses), and metatexts (self-referential aspects), not a perception of a writer's verbal and aesthetic "fingerprints." New historicists also devalue the literary personality, since, in their emphasis on a work's historical context, they credit a writer with only those insights and ideas that were generally available when the writer lived. However, to readers interested in literary detective work—say scholars of classical (Greek and Roman! literature who wish to reconstruct damaged texts or deduce a work's authorship— the literary personality sometimes provides vital clues.

It can be inferred from the passage that on the issue of how to analyze a literary work, the new historic its would most likely agree with the deconstructionists that

The following appeared in a letter from the owner of the Sunnyside Towers apartment complex to its manager.

"Last week, all the showerheads in the first three buildings of the Sunnyside Towers complex were modified to restrict maximum water flow to one-third of what it used to be. Although actual readings of water usage before and after the adjustment are not yet available, the change will obviously result in a considerable savings for Sunnyside Corporation, since the corporation must pay for water each month. Except for a few complaints about low water pressure, no problems with showers have been reported since the adjustment. Clearly, modifying showerheads to restrict water flow throughout all twelve buildings in the Sunnyside Towers complex will increase our profits further."

Write a response in which you examine the stated and or unstated assumptions of the argument. Be sure to explain how the argument depends on these assumptions and what the implications are for the argument if the assumptions prove unwarranted.

Robert Philip argues that the advent of recorded music has directed performance style into a search for greater precision and perfection, with a consequent loss of spontaneity and warmth. Various expressive devices once common in classical music have been almost outlawed, including portamento (sliding from one note to another on a stringed instrument), playing the piano with the hands not quite synchronized, and flexibility of tempo. Philip fully documents these changes. However, other forces independent of recording were also at work. For example, the freedom of tempo so valued by Philip was. in its time, both a necessary expedient and disastrously abused. Recording alone did not cause the reaction against it. although hearing a particularly unintelligent use of it on disc may have reinforced the prejudice.

Hie author would most likely agree with which of the following statements about the "devices"?