Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct answer to each of the questions from 37 to 44. Life WritingsThe diary and the letter were the most extensively practiced forms of life writings in eighteenth-century America. From the numerous examples of these two types of writing from the period, a portrait of daily life of the period can be gleaned. Many of the diaries that were kept during this period were life diaries by authors interes...
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Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct answer to each of the questions from 37 to 44.
Life Writings
The diary and the letter were the most extensively practiced forms of life writings in eighteenth-century America. From the numerous examples of these two types of writing from the period, a portrait of daily life of the period can be gleaned.
Many of the diaries that were kept during this period were life diaries by authors interested in maintaining day-to-day records of reflective self-examination, but some of the most compelling were situational diaries; those prompted by and limited to lengthy descriptions of personal reflections about a particular event. Three of the many situational journals of this period are those written by Sarah Kemble Knight, William Burd II, and Dr. Alexander Hamilton. Sarah Kemble Knight's diary of her five-month trip at the end of 1704 and the beginning of 1705 from Boston to New Haven to New York and back again to Boston was published more than a century later as The Journal of Madam Knight. Though this diary does include an account of the hardship that she encountered along the way, it is principally composed of humorous descriptions of and commentary on the hospitality that she was offered and the manners of those that she encountered. William Burd II kept two diaries to describe his experiences on a 1729 surveying expedition to settle a border dispute between Virginia and North Carolina. One of the diaries, History of the Dividing Line between Virginia and North Carolina, was published in 1842, while its companion, Secret Diary, was published in 1929. In these diaries, Burd used a humorous and satirical approach to describe not just the day-to-day events of the trip but also the characteristics which set his beloved Virginia culture apart from the (in his opinion) decidedly less praiseworthy culture of those non-Virginians that he encountered in his trip. Dr. Alexander Hamilton's Itinerarium (1744) describes a four-month voyage of discovery undertaken by Hamilton through the mid-Atlantic and New England colonies; in the diary that he kept of this trip. Hamilton provides considerable commentary on the social customs of various areas, comparing the customs and culture of the better homes of the American colonies with those of the great salons of Europe.
Letter-writing also held a place of importance in eighteenth-century America (indeed, the ability to produce cultured letters was considered a form of art), and many letters extant from that period provide insights into the culture, mores, and styles of written communication of that era. Many of the letter writers employed devices in common usage in European models of the time, demonstrating that letter writers felt a sense of cohesiveness with the cultured classes of Europe: John and Abigail Adams signed the names Lysander and Constantia to their early letters, while Thomas Jefferson created an elaborate dialogue between his head and his heart to discuss the nature of friendship in a 1786 letter to Maria Cosway. The variety of purposes that these letters served provides additional insight into the priorities of the society of the time. The letters were used to cement love matches and friendships, as the previously mentioned letters did; they were the primary method for relaying news among family and friends who were scattered across various geographic locations; they were often used as a means of carrying out business in this era before more rapid long-distance communication; they were often used used as a way of sharing professional, social, or political ideas among leaders in various fields who perhaps had no other way to get together and exchange ideas.
Which of the sentences below expresses the essential information in the highlighted sentence in paragraph 3?
A. Examples from the time show that American letter writers were interested in following the style of letters that was fashionable in Europe
B. European letter writers were greatly influenced by Americans such as John and Abigail Adams and Thomas Jefferson
C. The use of letter-writing devices by some American authors was criticized by cultured Europeans
D. The devices used in letter writing from the period made the writing appear more cultivated and cohesive.
