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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
As originally formulated, the selfish-herd theory of prey species aggregation assumed that predatory attacks were equally likely to be launched from any position within the environment. In some circumstances (e.g.. avian predators attacking prey from above), such an approach is appropriate. However, as James et at. argue, in many predator-prey associations, attacks are unlikely to occur from positions within the group. For example, it is likely that an ambushing predator waiting in the path of a group would be detected before the group moves over its position. Hence, in many ecological situations, predatory attacks on grouped prey will occur exclusively from outside the group. In such circumstances, there is a strong premium to a group member in being in the interior of the group.
The passage suggests that compared to members of the prey groups in "some circumstances." certain members of the prey groups in "many ecological situations" are likely to be less
Instances of "galactic cannibalism"—mergers in which large galaxies completely consume smaller ones—may be fairly common. Tidal forces produced by the Milky Way's powerful gravity, for example, appear to be dismantling and engulfing a dwarf galaxy in the constellation Sagittarius, producing large clumps and streamers of stars connecting the two galaxies. Astronomers have also observed two dense clusters of stars and gas at the heart of the Andromeda galaxy, an apparent "double nucleus" that may contain the remnant of a cannibalized dwarf galaxy. But this twin-lobed appearance could also be created by two parts of a single nucleus bisected by a lane of dust. Scientists believe that only about 25 percent of such apparent double nuclei actually represent galactic cannibalism. Many of the rest result from the illusion of proximity that occurs when objects at different distances appear along the same line of sight: others consist of debris from galactic "collisions." in which one galaxy has passed through another without merging, causing waves of new star formation.
The primary purpose of the passage is to