Q24

[LolaC289]

I chose (C) based mainly on line 40-43 :"every aspect of the baroque...... of manipulating opinions and feelings", so I thought Maravall regards the baroque as a device to manipulate their subjects. (Also, I thought this was close to the main point of the passage)

I don't know why (D) is right. The Renaissance legacy was talked about in line 12-17, "monarchs,...... could now ally themselves with......to defend traditional orders and values in societies unsettled by the Renaissance's liberating forces......". But how can we tell from this that their efforts are "somewhat effective"?

My reason for eliminating (A) (B) (E) are briefly as follows,

(A) seems not to be supported. Even maybe contradicted by line 41-42 a little bit :"...... as public opinion grew increasingly important".
(B) comes from line 12-13, that the monarchs have already suppressed them.
(E) makes an unsupported comparison.

[ohthatpatrick]

First thing I want to warn you about is the sentiment of "plus, it seemed close to the main point of the passage". Too often, students are using that as a guide on questions that didn't ask for the main point. When our high school and university teachers would ask us to "infer", they usually DID mean "give me something deep / insightful .. extrapolate ... speculate".

On LSAT, we know that the actual definition of "an inference" is "a provable claim".

Tons of correct answers on inference questions either refer to minor details that weren't important or refer to details that may even cut against the main point. Our only standard of right/wrong is provability.

This question stem doesn't ask about our author's point of view at all. It just wants to know what Maravall would have said about baroque monarchs.

We start by hunting for that line reference. Where in the passage does it mention what Maravall thought about monarchs?

Unfortunately, there's a pretty wide 'Proof Window' ... the 2nd paragraph says several things from M's point of view about monarchs:
- they had suppressed aristocratic problems. Now they were concerned about general criticism and opposition unsettling their power.
- they helped to institute baroque culture, which was designed to reintegrate and unite the unsettled / disrupted society
- they were trying to steer the lust for newness away from re-shaping government and towards other ends .. ("manipulating opinions and feeling on a broad public scale")

As it turns out, the real supporting sentence for (D) isn't even in that paragraph. It's line 47-49, which says that "Maravall tended to exaggerate the capacity of those in authority to manipulate a society for their own ideological ends".

(D) is so safely worded that it's easy to support. In order for Maravall to exaggerate how successful monarchs were at manipulating their society, he would have to be arguing that monarchs were at least somewhat successful in doing so.


(C) is close, but you're thinking it says
"monarchs were captivated by designing cultural devices to control their subjects". Yes!

But what it says is that
"monarchs were captivated by the cultural devices designed to control their subjects".

No ... that would mean that monarchs designed these cultural brainwashing devices and then THE MONARCHS THEMSELVES were brainwashed by those devices.

Hope this helps.

[LolaC289]

Your reply is always inspiring and helpful, thank you a great deal, ohthatpatrick!