Oscar Wilde & Decadent School of Writing

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Oscar Wilde & Decadent School of Writing

by Pdgmat2010 » Tue May 18, 2010 9:42 pm
The writings of Oscar Wilde, the 19th-century British author, exemplify the beliefs of the Decadent school of writing, which emphasized art over nature and adhered to the tenet "art for art's sake." Wilde's novel The Picture of Dorian Gray depicts a young man who agrees to sell his soul in return for eternal youth.


Which of the following, if true, is LEAST helpful in explaining how The Picture of Dorian Gray exemplifies the beliefs of the Decadent school of writing?


A. Like Dorian Gray, many of the Decadent authors experimented with drugs and led harmfully indulgent lifestyles.
B. The protagonist achieves eternal youth by having his portrait age instead of himself.
C. A character in the novel suggests that the only ends worth pursuing are beauty and sensory fulfillment.
D. Other writers in the Decadent school hoped to free art from the constraints of an industrialized society.
E. In the novel, Dorian Gray is highly influenced by a book written by another famous Decadent writer, J.K. Huysmans.


Source : 800Score Test i need help in analyzing where i went wrong. Am posting my breakdown of the question shortly after, so that someone can identify an error in my logic and post what they think is the answer and how they derived it. pls bear with me if you need the OA right away, as i want to discuss this question , know my errors in reasoning before i post the OA. Any exper will anyway come up with the correct answer.
Source: — Critical Reasoning |

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by Pdgmat2010 » Tue May 18, 2010 9:45 pm
okay here's my break up of the answer choices.


A. Like Dorian Gray, many of the Decadent authors experimented with drugs and led harmfully indulgent lifestyles. - will come back to this later as i am not able to reject it right away
B. The protagonist achieves eternal youth by having his portrait age instead of himself. - [this betrays nature. hence choice is eliminated as it exemplifies decadent SoW]
C. A character in the novel suggests that the only ends worth pursuing are beauty and sensory fulfillment.[ art for art's sake. choice is eliminated as it exemplifies decadent SoW]
D. Other writers in the Decadent school hoped to free art from the constraints of an industrialized society. [exemplifies art for art's sake]
E. In the novel, Dorian Gray is highly influenced by a book written by another famous Decadent writer, J.K. Huysmans. - [exemplifies Decadent SoW as the character Dorian Gray is influenced by Decadent writers a lot]
Since i could not place A in the category of 'exemplifies Decadent School of Writing' i chose A.
pls highlight the errors in my reasoning.

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by diebeatsthegmat » Mon May 24, 2010 6:20 pm
Pdgmat2010 wrote:The writings of Oscar Wilde, the 19th-century British author, exemplify the beliefs of the Decadent school of writing, which emphasized art over nature and adhered to the tenet "art for art's sake." Wilde's novel The Picture of Dorian Gray depicts a young man who agrees to sell his soul in return for eternal youth.


Which of the following, if true, is LEAST helpful in explaining how The Picture of Dorian Gray exemplifies the beliefs of the Decadent school of writing?


A. Like Dorian Gray, many of the Decadent authors experimented with drugs and led harmfully indulgent lifestyles.
B. The protagonist achieves eternal youth by having his portrait age instead of himself.
C. A character in the novel suggests that the only ends worth pursuing are beauty and sensory fulfillment.
D. Other writers in the Decadent school hoped to free art from the constraints of an industrialized society.
E. In the novel, Dorian Gray is highly influenced by a book written by another famous Decadent writer, J.K. Huysmans.


Source : 800Score Test i need help in analyzing where i went wrong. Am posting my breakdown of the question shortly after, so that someone can identify an error in my logic and post what they think is the answer and how they derived it. pls bear with me if you need the OA right away, as i want to discuss this question , know my errors in reasoning before i post the OA. Any exper will anyway come up with the correct answer.
my ans for this question is A

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by Stacey Koprince » Tue May 25, 2010 8:34 am
Received a PM asking me to respond.

Is this an RC question or a CR question? It wording of the question seems more like an RC question, but only two sentences of text were posted - is it the case that you just posted what you thought was the relevant text of the RC passage? Or is this actually supposed to be a CR question? (If the latter... this doesn't seem very CR-like to me.)

I'm going to assume it's an RC question and I'm also going to assume that you pasted all of the relevant text (obviously, if it is RC, and if some of the necessary text wasn't posted, that'll make it hard to answer the question!).

D school --> emphasized art over nature
OW writing --> follows D school
PDG (novel) about young man who sells soul for eternal youth

HOW does the novel PDG actually follow the D school (which emphasizes art over nature)?

A) this is mostly about other authors who wrote in the D style, though it does mention DG. Possible.
B) I know this is true (because I read the book), but I honestly don't think enough info is given in the text and in this answer in order for someone who hasn't read the book to reliably eliminate this. Perhaps there's more useful text that wasn't reproduced above.
C) Hmm. beauty and sensory fulfillment would be art, I guess? Art over nature? Probably eliminate.
D) "other writers." Totally not about PDG. Possible.
E) book character influenced by another D book... okay. Probably eliminate.

So I'm down to A and D. I would probably pick D over A, because A at least tells us something about DG, while D tells us only about other writers. The question specifically asked how PDG follows the D school.

But I'm really not confident. Either this is an RC question, in which case I need more text than what I've been given, or this is CR, in which case I would not study from this question any longer.
Please note: I do not use the Private Messaging system! I will not see any PMs that you send to me!!

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