PRAXIS2 Real Exam Prep DEMO

Question 15: Those examples of poetic justice that occur in medieval and Elizabethan literature, and that
seem so
satisfying, have encouraged a whole school of twentieth-century scholars to "find" further examples.
In
fact, these scholars have merely forced victimized character into a moral framework by which the
injustices inflicted on them are, somehow or other, justified. Such scholars deny that the sufferers in
a
tragedy are innocent; they blame the victims themselves for their tragic fates. Any misdoing is
enough to
subject a character to critical whips. Thus, there are long essays about the misdemeanors of
Webster's
Duchess of Malfi, who defined her brothers, and he behavior of Shakespeare's Desdemona, who
disobeyed her father.
Yet it should be remembered that the Renaissance writer Matteo Bandello strongly protests the
injustice
of the severe penalties issued to women for acts of disobedience that men could, and did, commit
with
virtual impunity. And Shakespeare, Chaucer, and Webster often enlist their readers on the side of
their
tragic heroines by describing injustices so cruel that readers cannot but join in protest. By portraying
Griselda, in the Clerk's Tale, as a meek, gentle victim who does not criticize, much less rebel against
the
prosecutor, her husband Waltter, Chaucer incites readers to espouse Griselda's cause against
Walter's
oppression. Thus, efforts to supply historical and theological rationalization for Walter's persecutions
tend
to turn Chaucer's fable upside down, to deny its most obvious effect on reader's sympathies.
Similarly, to
assert that Webster's Duchess deserved torture and death because she chose to marry the man she
loved and to bear their children is, in effect to join forces with her tyrannical brothers, and so to
confound
the operation of poetic justice, of which readers should approve, with precisely those examples of
social
injustice that Webster does everything in his power to make readers condemn. Indeed. Webster has
his
heroin so heroically lead the resistance to tyranny that she may well in spire members of the
audience to
imaginatively joins forces with her against the cruelty and hypocritical morality of her brothers.
Thus Chaucer and Webster, in their different ways, attack injustice, argue on behalf of the victims,
and
prosecute the persecutors. Their readers serve them as a court of appeal that remains free to rule, as
the
evidence requires, and as common humanity requires, in favor of the innocent and injured parties.
For, to
paraphrase the noted eighteenth-century scholar, Samuel Johnson, despite all the refinements of
subtlety
and the dogmatism of learning, it is by the common sense and compassion of readers who are
uncorrupted by the characters and situations in mereval and Dlizabetahn literature, as in any other
literature, can best be judged.
The primary purpose of the passage is to
A. criticize the inflexibility of American economic mythology
B. contrast "Old World" and "New World" economic Ideologies
C. challenge the integrity of traditional political leaders
D. champion those Americans whom the author deems to be neglected
E. suggests a substitute for the traditional metaphor of a race
Correct Answer: A