16Hit 1600
Information and IdeasVery hardMain idea of a historiography passage

Information and Ideas practice question

For decades the Harlem Renaissance was narrated chiefly as a flowering of Black literature and music. Recent scholarship, without disputing those achievements, has traced how white patrons' money set the terms under which many artists worked — which subjects were bankable, which were discouraged. The result is a portrait less purely celebratory: a movement of extraordinary creativity pursued inside constraints its artists did not choose.

Which choice best states the main idea of the text?

  1. A. Attention to patronage has complicated celebratory accounts of the Harlem Renaissance.Correct
  2. B. The Harlem Renaissance was primarily an economic rather than an artistic movement.
  3. C. White patrons deserve more credit for the Harlem Renaissance than they receive.
  4. D. Literary scholars have exaggerated the quality of Harlem Renaissance writing.

Answer: A. Attention to patronage has complicated celebratory accounts of the Harlem Renaissance.

The text contrasts an older, purely literary account with newer scholarship on patronage, and ends on the result: a more complicated, less purely celebratory picture. Choice A captures that shift.

Why the other answers are wrong

B. The Harlem Renaissance was primarily an economic rather than an artistic movement.
The text says patronage shaped the movement's conditions, not that the movement was primarily economic.
C. White patrons deserve more credit for the Harlem Renaissance than they receive.
The text reports that patrons imposed constraints; it never argues they deserve more credit.
D. Literary scholars have exaggerated the quality of Harlem Renaissance writing.
No one in the text questions the quality of the writing — only the completeness of the older account.

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