You've Unlocked a New GRE Question!

Text Solution:

The keyword “despite” signals a contrast between the sentence portion containing the blank and the known information that “today he is almost exclusively revered as a poet.” However, we should notice that there is already a contrast present in the information given in the sentence: the contrast between being a philosopher and being “almost exclusively revered as a poet.” Let’s keep this contrast between philosopher and poet in mind as we’re evaluating answer choices.

Choice (A), preeminent, pairs with choice (E), renowned, as both mean “famous” or “celebrated.” And although preeminent/renowned agree with the concept of being “revered” (respected and admired) they do still create a logical contrast: a contrast between being known as a philosopher and being known as a poet.

Despite the fact that Coleridge was once cited as one of the most preeminent/renowned British philosophers of the eighteenth century, today he is almost exclusively revered as a poet.

This synonym pair makes sense in context, but let’s go through the other choices just to be sure there isn’t a more fitting pair.

Choice (B), ignored, pairs with choice (D), overlooked. However, being
“cited as one of the most ignored/overlooked British philosophers” does not contrast with being “almost exclusively revered as a poet.” Those two things could be perfectly in keeping with each other. Notice that this synonym pair would work only if the contrast were between being ignored as a poet and being revered as a poet. But since we are contrasting philosopher with poet, these answer choices don’t create the contrast we need. Eliminate (B) and (D).

The only choices left are (C) and (F), “obscure” (little known) and “mischaracterized” (not accurately described), which do not create equivalent sentence meanings, and thus cannot possibly be correct.

Thus, preeminent/renowned are the only logical pair to complete the sentence.

LEARNING JOURNAL

What went wrong, and what can you do differently next time?

Was there a particular sticking point, breakdown in your logic or conceptual knowledge, bad habit, or careless mistake that led you to the wrong answer? At what point in your process did that error occur?

Record an audio message

0:00

0

/

1500