GRE Exam Dumps : GRE General Test

The poet Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906) was the premier Black writer of poetry that used the dialect of rural African Americans of the southern United States. Although Dunbar's works were both popular with readers am! acclaimed by literary critics during his lifetime, after the First World War a radical shift occurred, at least in critical opinion of his poetry, and twentieth-century critical evaluation of his work has been generally negative. Some critics attacked his work on social grounds for failing to challenge plantation stereotypes of African Americans. Other critics, such as the poet James Weldon Johnson, argued from aesthetic grounds that dialect poetry in general was too limited as an artistic medium, and capable of producing only two effects: pathos and humor. The negative critical trend only began to reverse itself in the 1970s, when scholars began to emphasize the importance of mythic, psyclwlogical. and historical dimensions of Dunbar's works, focusing on the interior and exterior realities of African American life after the Civil War.

Which of the following can be inferred from the passage concerning Litrary critics’ evaluations of Dunbar's poetry?

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"?

No act is done purely for the benefit of

Claim: others

All actions—even those that seem to be done

for other people—are based on self-interest.

Reason-

Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the claim and the reason on which that claim is based.