Question: The passage given below is followed by four summaries. Choose the option that best captures the author’s position.
To me, a “classic” means precisely the opposite of what my predecessors understood: a work is classical by reason of its resistance to contemporaneity and supposed universality, by reason of its capacity to indicate human particularity and difference in that past epoch. The classic is not what tells me about shared humanity–or, more truthfully put, what lets me recognize myself as already present in the past, what nourishes in me the illusion that everything has been like me and has existed only to prepare the way for me. Instead, the classic is what gives access to radically different forms of human consciousness for any given generation of readers, and thereby expands for them the range of possibilities of what it means to be a human being.
Option 1 talks about what traditionally classic is understood to be – it does not capture the author’s position. Eliminate option 1.
Option 2 is similar to option 1 – it highlights what a classical work is and does not capture the author’s unique definition of what is a classic. Eliminate option 2.
Option 3 is correct – it captures what the author means by a classic and briefly captures all the points.
Retain option 3.
Option 4 is incorrect. Option 4 is contrary to the author’s conception of what is a classic. Eliminate option 4.
Hence, the correct answer is option 3.