Q14

[alovitt]

I got this one right, but an explanation would be good because I spent a lot of time wavering between C and E. The reason I didn't pick C was because of the "better hypothesis" part. Although I did consider the last couple of lines to be introducing a hypothesis, I don't think the author views that hypothesis favorably at all. But if it didn't say "better," would it have been a good answer? Or is something else wrong with it?

[giladedelman]

Thanks for your question!

So, let's check out the answers here.

(A) is incorrect because the author doesn't talk about why the phenomenon is "atypical." It's "curious," but that doesn't mean this kind of nostalgic revisionism doesn't happen all the time.

(B) is a disaster from start to finish. Let's just leave it at, there's no assumption.

(C) is no good because there is no hypothesis that gets rejected. In fact, the passage doesn't really offer hypotheses. It's just telling us what happened and commenting on that.

(D) is out because the passage doesn't go from general to specific.

(E) is our winner because we start by discussing 19th-century observers of Watteau, then learn about how inaccurate their viewpoint was, then hear about how they persisted in this point of view even when confronted with facts that would seem to contradict it.