A letter by John Keats written in the same year as Ode on a Grecian

OFFICIAL EXPLANATION


THE PROMPT
• Issues?
→ Subject/verb agreement
→ Appropriate verb tense
→ Rhetorical construction: unwieldy construction, repetition of subject
→ Misplaced that-clause (noun modifier)

• subject/verb agreement
→ "Ode on a Grecian Urn" is the title of a poem, is singular, and does not agree with the plural verb were.
→ Titles of books, poems, songs, stories, plays, movies, and similar works of art are singular.
→ Correct: The Things They Carried is a haunting, lyrical collection of short stories by Tim O'Brien about the U.S. war in Vietnam.

• same year that is preferred to same year as

ELIMINATE A

• very clumsy construction, but unlike the next issue, not enough to eliminate this option on the first pass
→ which had been written in the same year of publication as is unnecessarily long.
-- options A and C, for example, "reduce" the relative clause by eliminating the relative pronoun ("which") and the to be verb("had been") and simply use written to describe the letter.
-- The phrase "of publication as" is clunky. (Compare to option C: was published. In general, verbs are preferred to adjectives.)

• wrong verb tense
→ The non-underlined portion contains the present tense verb reveals because in English, even if something was discovered or written in the past, if its content or effect is still true, we use the present tense.
As I have noted before, the classic example of such a sentence is, "In 1905, Einstein discovered that light is both a particle and a wave."
→ had been written is the past perfect tense, which we use to depict the earlier of two past events
→ almost without exception, the sentence must contain at least one past tense verb or a time stamp to mark the later-in-time event (unless we are talking about a Type 3 conditional)
→ No past tense verb or time marker exists. GMAC prefers simple past. No reason exists to use past perfect.
→ had been written should be was written

• same year that is preferred to same year as

ELIMINATE B

• I do not see any errors
• One of the greatest poets in the English language wrote a revealing letter in the same year that one of his apparently noteworthy poems was published.
KEEP

• no need to repeat the subject in full: use he twice rather than he and Keats
→ Typically, a proper name is used to "tag" the subject only once in the same sentence; barring ambiguity, in the rest of the sentence we use pronouns such as he to refer to the subject
→ Because John Keats is the subject in (D) rather than the letter (as in A, B, and C), in one sentence we see John Keats, he, and Keats.

• same year that is preferred to same year as

• avoid the use of that placed too close to another that
→ that reveals that is stylistically flawed.
On one hand, on the GMAT and in formal writing, we must use that after certain verbs. Reveal is such a verb.
On the other hand, on the GMAT and in formal writing, we should try to avoid phrasing in which we have instances of that placed too close together.
I am teaching you about this stylistic preference because on a few questions OE writers have mentioned the "awkwardness" of that _____ that constructions.
If you are confused, ignore me. This issue is subtle and sophisticated. Go study modifiers instead.

For a discussion of verbs followed by that, see Mike McGarry's excellent post, here.

• the placement of the that-clause is confusing
→ that reveals that Keats was often unsettled by his lover Fanny Brawne’s behavior towards him is placed right after "Ode on a Grecian Urn" and hence modifies the ode rather than the letter. That fact seems illogical.
If the letter is not the thing that reveals Keats's discomfiture, why mention the letter at all?

• ultimately, compare to option C. Option D loses.
ELIMINATE D

• stylistic problem: the second Keats should say he
See the analysis of (D)

• the placement of the that-clause is confusing
See the analysis of (D)

• ultimately, compare to (C). Option E loses.
ELIMINATE E

The best answer is C.

NOTES

• In option B, which does not refer to Keats but rather to letter.
→ which "reaches back over" the prepositional phrase "by Keats" and modifies letter.
One of GMAC's favorite traps is to put a long string of prepositional modifiers after the main noun (the noun that "anchors" a noun phrase), in order to make it harder for you to see subject/verb disagreement or to make you believe that which is misplaced.
→ Nothing is wrong with which in option B. Which modifies letter.
There is zero chance that which modifies Keats.

• which and the Modifier Touch Rule
→ In general, a which-clause (a noun modifier) should be placed adjacent to its noun.
Consequently, quite often, which modifies the noun immediately preceding it. Not always.
→ Sometimes this adjacent placement is impossible, and which is allowed to "reach back over" other words to target the main noun.
→ The most common type of these "other words" that come between a noun and its which-clause are prepositional phrases such as by Keats.
By Keats is an essential modifier. By Keats cannot be placed anywhere else.
Essential modifiers trump nonessential modifiers. Which is a nonessential modifier.
So the prepositional phrases follow the noun at issue, and which follows those phrases, but which still modifies the main/anchor noun.

Takeaway: When you are looking for an antecedent of which, keep looking to the left.
Look for a noun that which could logically modify.

COMMENTS

Those of you who explained wrote very good to outstanding answers.
Nicely done.