In Intellectual Culture in Elizabethan and Jacobean England, J. W. Bin

In Intellectual Culture in Elizabethan and
Jacobean England, J. W. Binns asserts that the drama
of Shakespeare, the verse of Marlowe, and the prose of
Sidney—all of whom wrote in English—do not alone
(5) represent the high culture of Renaissance (roughly
sixteenth- and seventeenth-century) England. Latin, the
language of ancient Rome, continued during this period
to be the dominant form of expression for English
intellectuals, and works of law, theology, and science
(10) written in Latin were, according to Binns, among the
highest achievements of the Renaissance. However,
because many academic specializations do not overlap,
many texts central to an interpretation of early modern
English culture have gone unexamined. Even the most
(15) learned students of Renaissance Latin generally
confine themselves to humanistic and literary writings
in Latin. According to Binns, these language specialists
edit and analyze poems and orations, but leave works
of theology and science, law and medicine—the very
(20) works that revolutionized Western thought—to
“specialists” in those fields, historians of science, for
example, who lack philological training. The
intellectual historian can find ample guidance when
reading the Latin poetry of Milton, but little or none
(25) when confronting the more alien and difficult
terminology, syntax, and content of the scientist
Newton.

Intellectual historians of Renaissance England, by
contrast with Latin language specialists, have surveyed
(30) in great detail the historical, cosmological, and
theological battles of the day, but too often they have
done so on the basis of texts written in or translated
into English. Binns argues that these scholars treat the
English-language writings of Renaissance England as
(35) an autonomous and coherent whole, underestimating
the influence on English writers of their counterparts
on the European Continent. In so doing they ignore the
fact that English intellectuals were educated in schools
and universities where they spoke and wrote Latin, and
(40) inhabited as adults an intellectual world in which what
happened abroad and was recorded in Latin was of
great importance. Writers traditionally considered
characteristically English and modern were steeped in
Latin literature and in the esoteric concerns of late
(45) Renaissance humanism (the rediscovery and study of
ancient Latin and Greek texts), and many Latin works
by Continental humanists that were not translated at the
time into any modern language became the bases of
classic English works of literature and scholarship.

(50) These limitations are understandable. No modern
classicist is trained to deal with the range of problems
posed by a difficult piece of late Renaissance science;
few students of English intellectual history are trained
to read the sort of Latin in which such works were
(55) written. Yet the result of each side’s inability to cross
boundaries has been that each presents a distorted
reading of the intellectual culture of Renaissance
England.

1. Which one of the following best states the main idea of the passage?

(A) Analyses of the scientific, theological, and legal writings of the Renaissance have proved to be more important to an understanding of the period than have studies of humanistic and literary works.
(B) The English works of such Renaissance writers as Shakespeare, Marlowe, and Sidney have been overemphasized at the expense of these writers’ more intellectually challenging Latin works.
(C) Though traditionally recognized as the language of the educated classes of the Renaissance, Latin has until recently been studied primarily in connection with ancient Roman texts.
(D) Many Latin texts by English Renaissance writers, though analyzed in depth by literary critics and philologists, have been all but ignored by historians of science and theology.
(E) Many Latin texts by English Renaissance writers, though important to an analysis of the period, have been insufficiently understood for reasons related to academic specialization.


2. The passage contains support for which one of the following statements concerning those scholars who analyze works written in Latin during the Renaissance?

(A) These scholars tend to lack training both in language and in intellectual history, and thus base their interpretations of Renaissance culture on works translated into English.
(B) These scholars tend to lack the combination of training in both language and intellectual history that is necessary for a proper study of important and neglected Latin texts.
(C) Specialists in such literary forms as poems and orations too frequently lack training in the Latin language that was written and studied during the Renaissance.
(D) Language specialists have surveyed in too great detail important works of law and medicine, and thus have not provided a coherent interpretation of early modern English culture.
(E) Scholars who analyze important Latin works by such writers as Marlowe, Shakespeare, and Sidney too often lack the historical knowledge of Latin necessary for a proper interpretation of early modern English culture.


3. Which one of the following statements concerning the relationship between English and Continental writers of the Renaissance era can be inferred from the passage?

(A) Continental writers wrote in Latin more frequently than did English writers, and thus rendered some of the most important Continental works inaccessible to English readers.
(B) Continental writers, more intellectually advanced than their English counterparts, were on the whole responsible for familiarizing English audiences with Latin language and literature.
(C) English and Continental writers communicated their intellectual concerns, which were for the most part different, by way of works written in Latin.
(D) The intellectual ties between English and Continental writers were stronger than has been acknowledged by many scholars and were founded on a mutual knowledge of Latin.
(E) The intellectual ties between English and Continental writers have been overemphasized in modern scholarship due to a lack of dialogue between language specialists and intellectual historians.


4. The author of the passage most likely cites Shakespeare, Marlowe, and Sidney in the first paragraph as examples of writers whose

(A) nonfiction works are less well known than their imaginative works
(B) works have unfairly been credited with revolutionizing Western thought
(C) works have been treated as an autonomous and coherent whole
(D) works have traditionally been seen as representing the high culture of Renaissance England
(E) Latin writings have, according to Binns, been overlooked


5. Binns would be most likely to agree with which one of the following statements concerning the English language writings of Renaissance England traditionally studied by intellectual historians?

(A) These writings have unfortunately been undervalued by Latin-language specialists because of their nonliterary subject matter.
(B) These writings, according to Latin-language specialists, had very little influence on the intellectual upheavals associated with the Renaissance.
(C) These writings, as analyzed by intellectual historians, have formed the basis of a superficially coherent reading of the intellectual culture that produced them.
(D) These writings have been compared unfavorably by intellectual historians with Continental works of the same period.
(E) These writings need to be studied separately, according to intellectual historians, from Latin-language writings of the same period.


6. The information in the passage suggests which one of the following concerning late-Renaissance scientific works written in Latin?

(A) These works are easier for modern scholars to analyze than are theological works of the same era.
(B) These works have seldom been translated into English and thus remain inscrutable to modern scholars, despite the availability of illuminating commentaries.
(C) These works are difficult for modern scholars to analyze both because of the concepts they develop and the language in which they are written.
(D) These works constituted the core of an English university education during the Renaissance.
(E) These works were written mostly by Continental writers and reached English intellectuals only in English translation.


7. The author of the passage mentions the poet Milton and the scientist Newton primarily in order to

(A) illustrate the range of difficulty in Renaissance Latin writing, from relatively straightforward to very difficult
(B) illustrate the differing scholarly attitudes toward Renaissance writers who wrote in Latin and those who wrote in English
(C) illustrate the fact that the concerns of English writers of the Renaissance differed from the concerns of their Continental counterparts
(D) contrast a writer of the Renaissance whose merit has long been recognized with one whose literary worth has only recently begun to be appreciated
(E) contrast a writer whose Latin writings have been the subject of illuminating scholarship with one whose Latin writings have been neglected by philologists


8. The author of the passage is primarily concerned with presenting which one of the following?

(A) an enumeration of new approaches
(B) contrasting views of disparate theories
(C) a summary of intellectual disputes
(D) a discussion of a significant deficiency
(E) a correction of an author’s misconceptions