Hi Reaper795,You've zeroed in on exactly the right question:
is exploiting musical characteristics of language enough, by itself, to make a work of art a poem? The answer is yes, and the proof is one word in the first sentence.
Look at how the definition is phrased:"A poem is
any work of art that exploits some of the musical characteristics of language..."
That word
"any" is doing all the work. This isn't just telling us a property that poems happen to have - it's a full definition. It says: take
any object at all; if that object is (a) a work of art and (b) exploits some musical characteristics of language, then it qualifies as a poem. Nothing else is required. That's precisely what makes musical exploitation a
sufficient condition here.
So the definition reads as:
work of art + exploits musical characteristics of language → poem.Now apply that to (C). The choice hands you an object that is:
- a novel,
- a work of art, and
- exploits meter and rhyme (which are musical characteristics of language).
Points
two and
three exactly satisfy the poem definition - so the object is a poem. And it's still a novel by description.
Hence "both a novel and a poem." Fully supported.
You're also right that the passage says only that novels
usually don't exploit these features - which leaves room for the unusual novel that does. (C) simply picks up that leftover case and runs it through the definition.
A quick parallel to lock in the "any" move:"A bestseller is any book that sells over a million copies."
Now: if a
cookbook sells over a million copies, what is it? It's both a cookbook and a bestseller - because meeting the condition is all it takes. Same structure, same logic as this poem question. Whenever a definition says "an X is
any Y that does Z," then doing Z is enough to be X.
Answer: CReaper795
The passage says a poem is a work of art that exploits musical characteristics of language such as meter, rhythm, euphony, and rhyme, and a novel, though it may be a work of art in language, does not usually exploit the musical characteristics of language. Nowhere is it written that for a poem to be a poem, it needs to exploit musical characteristics of language such as meter, rhythm, euphony, and rhyme (in fact, the passage mentions that a Novel usually does not exploit musical characteristics; we can infer that a few novels do exploit musical characteristics of language). We cannot infer that any "art" exploiting musical characteristics of language will be deemed a poem. Is exploiting the musical characteristics of language a sufficient condition for an art to be a poem? WE DON'T KNOW... please help - How is Option C correct?