Reading Comprehension

Ritual suicide of Hindu widows on their husbands' funeral pyres was

Directions: Answer the question based on the following passage.

Emile Durkheim, the first person to be formally recognised as a sociologist and the most scientific of the pioneers, conducted a study that stands as a research model for sociologists today. His investigation of suicide was, in fact, the first sociological study to use statistics. In Suicide (1964, originally published in 1897) Durkheim documented his contention that some aspects of human behaviour - even something as allegedly individualistic as suicide - can be explained without reference to individuals.
Like all of Durkheim’s work, suicide must be viewed within the context of his concern for social integration. Durkheim wanted to see if suicide rates within a social entity (for example, a group, organisation, or society) are related to the degree to which individuals are socially involved (integrated and regulated). Durkheim described three types of suicide: egoistic, anomic and altruistic. Egoistic suicide is promoted when individuals do not have sufficient social ties. Since single (never married) adults, for example, are not heavily involved with family life, they are more likely to commit suicide. On the other hand, altruistic suicide is more likely to occur when social integration is too strong. The ritual suicide of Hindu widows on their husbands' funeral pyres is one example. Military personnel, trained to lay down their lives for their country, provide another illustration.
Durkheim's third type of suicide - anomic suicide ­increases when the social regulation of individuals is disrupted. For example, suicide rates increase during economic depression. People who suddenly find themselves without a job or without hope of finding one are more prone to kill themselves. Suicide may also increase during periods of prosperity. People may loosen their social ties by taking new jobs, moving to new communities, or finding new mates.
Using data from the government population reports of several countries (much of it from the French Government Statistical Officer), Durkheim found strong support for his line of reasoning. Suicide rates were higher among single than married people, among military personnel than civilians, among divorced than married people, and among people involved in nation-wide economic crises.
It is important to realise that Durkheim's primary interest was not in the empirical (observable) indicators he used such as suicide rates among military personnel, married people, and so forth. Rather, Durkheim used the following indicators to support several of his contentions: (1) Social behaviour can be explained by social rather than psychological factors; (2) Suicide is affected by the degree of integration and regulation within social entities; and (3) Since society can be studied scientifically, sociology is worthy of recognition in the academic world. Durkheim was successful on all three counts.

Increase in suicide rate during economic depression is an example of

Directions: Answer the question based on the following passage.

Emile Durkheim, the first person to be formally recognised as a sociologist and the most scientific of the pioneers, conducted a study that stands as a research model for sociologists today. His investigation of suicide was, in fact, the first sociological study to use statistics. In Suicide (1964, originally published in 1897) Durkheim documented his contention that some aspects of human behaviour - even something as allegedly individualistic as suicide - can be explained without reference to individuals.
Like all of Durkheim’s work, suicide must be viewed within the context of his concern for social integration. Durkheim wanted to see if suicide rates within a social entity (for example, a group, organisation, or society) are related to the degree to which individuals are socially involved (integrated and regulated). Durkheim described three types of suicide: egoistic, anomic and altruistic. Egoistic suicide is promoted when individuals do not have sufficient social ties. Since single (never married) adults, for example, are not heavily involved with family life, they are more likely to commit suicide. On the other hand, altruistic suicide is more likely to occur when social integration is too strong. The ritual suicide of Hindu widows on their husbands' funeral pyres is one example. Military personnel, trained to lay down their lives for their country, provide another illustration.
Durkheim's third type of suicide - anomic suicide ­increases when the social regulation of individuals is disrupted. For example, suicide rates increase during economic depression. People who suddenly find themselves without a job or without hope of finding one are more prone to kill themselves. Suicide may also increase during periods of prosperity. People may loosen their social ties by taking new jobs, moving to new communities, or finding new mates.
Using data from the government population reports of several countries (much of it from the French Government Statistical Officer), Durkheim found strong support for his line of reasoning. Suicide rates were higher among single than married people, among military personnel than civilians, among divorced than married people, and among people involved in nation-wide economic crises.
It is important to realise that Durkheim's primary interest was not in the empirical (observable) indicators he used such as suicide rates among military personnel, married people, and so forth. Rather, Durkheim used the following indicators to support several of his contentions: (1) Social behaviour can be explained by social rather than psychological factors; (2) Suicide is affected by the degree of integration and regulation within social entities; and (3) Since society can be studied scientifically, sociology is worthy of recognition in the academic world. Durkheim was successful on all three counts.

According to the passage, which of the following has NOT contributed to the popular image of Tsavo lions as savage creatures?

Directions: Answer the question based on the following passage.

Fifty feet away three male lions lay by the road. They didn’t appear to have a hair on their heads. Noting the colour of their noses (leonine noses darken as they age, from pink to black), Craig estimated that they were six years old—young adults. “This is wonderful!” he said, after staring at them for several moments. “This is what we came to see. They really are maneless.” Craig, a professor at the University of Minnesota, is arguably the leading expert on the majestic Serengeti lion, whose head is mantled in long, thick hair. He and Peyton West, a doctOral student who has been working with him in Tanzania, had never seen the Tsavo lions that live some 200 miles east of the Serengeti. The scientists had partly suspected that the maneless males were adolescents mistaken for adults by amateur observers. Now they knew better.
The Tsavo research expedition was mostly Peyton’s show. She had spent several years in Tanzania, compiling the data she needed to answer a question that ought to have been answered long ago: Why do lions have manes? It’s the only cat, wild or domestic, that displays such ornamentation. In Tsavo she was attacking the riddle from the opposite angle. Why do its lions not have manes? (Some “maneless” lions in Tsavo East do have partial manes, but they rarely attain the regal glory of the Serengeti lions’.) Does environmental adaptation account for the trait? Are the lions of Tsavo, as some people believe, a distinct subspecies of their Serengeti cousins?
The Serengeti lions have been under continuous observation for more than 35 years, beginning with George Schaller’s pioneering work in the 1960s. But the lions in Tsavo, Kenya’s oldest and largest protected ecosystem, have hardly been studied. Consequently, legends have grown up around them. Not only do they look different, according to the myths, theybehave differently, displaying greater cunning and aggressiveness. “Remember too,” Kenya: The Rough Guide warns, “Tsavo’s lions have a reputation for ferocity.” Their fearsome image became well-known in 1898, when two males stalled construction of what is now Kenya Railways by allegedly killing and eating 135 Indian and African laborers. A British Army officer in charge of building a railroad bridge over the Tsavo River, Lt. Col. J. H. Patterson, spent nine months pursuing the pair before he brought them to bay and killed them. Stuffed and mounted, they now glare at visitors to the Field Museum in Chicago. Patterson’s account of the leonine reign of terror, The Man-Eaters of Tsavo, was an international best-seller when published in 1907. Still in print, the book has made Tsavo’s lions notorious. That annoys some scientists. “People don’t want to give up on mythology,” Dennis King told me one day. The zoologist has been working in Tsavo off and on for four years. “I am so sick of this man-eater business. Patterson made a helluva lot of money off that story, but Tsavo’s lions are no more likely to turn man-eater than lions from elsewhere.”
But tales of their savagery and wiliness don’t all come from sensationalist authors looking to make a buck. Tsavo lions are generally larger than lions elsewhere, enabling them to take down the predominant prey animal in Tsavo, the Cape buffalo, one of the strongest, most aggressive animals of Earth. The buffalo don’t give up easily: They often kill or severely injure an attacking lion, and a wounded lion might be more likely to turn to cattle and humans for food.
And other prey is less abundant in Tsavo than in other traditional lion haunts. A hungry lion is more likely to attack humans. Safari guides and Kenya Wildlife Service rangers tell of lions attacking Land Rovers, raiding camps, stalking tourists. Tsavo is a tough neighborhood, they say, and it breeds tougher lions.
But are they really tougher? And if so, is there any connection between their manelessness and their ferocity? An intriguing hypothesis was advanced two years ago by Gnoske and Peterhans: Tsavo lions may be similar to the unmaned cave lions of the Pleistocene. The Serengeti variety is among the most evolved of the species—the latest model, so to speak—while certain morphological differences in Tsavo lions (bigger bodies, smaller skulls, and maybe even lack of a mane) suggest that they are closer to the primitive ancestor of all lions. Craig and Peyton had serious doubts about this idea, but admitted that Tsavo lions pose a mystery to science.

The book 'Man-Eaters of Tsavo' annoys some scientists because

Directions: Answer the question based on the following passage.

Fifty feet away three male lions lay by the road. They didn’t appear to have a hair on their heads. Noting the colour of their noses (leonine noses darken as they age, from pink to black), Craig estimated that they were six years old—young adults. “This is wonderful!” he said, after staring at them for several moments. “This is what we came to see. They really are maneless.” Craig, a professor at the University of Minnesota, is arguably the leading expert on the majestic Serengeti lion, whose head is mantled in long, thick hair. He and Peyton West, a doctOral student who has been working with him in Tanzania, had never seen the Tsavo lions that live some 200 miles east of the Serengeti. The scientists had partly suspected that the maneless males were adolescents mistaken for adults by amateur observers. Now they knew better.
The Tsavo research expedition was mostly Peyton’s show. She had spent several years in Tanzania, compiling the data she needed to answer a question that ought to have been answered long ago: Why do lions have manes? It’s the only cat, wild or domestic, that displays such ornamentation. In Tsavo she was attacking the riddle from the opposite angle. Why do its lions not have manes? (Some “maneless” lions in Tsavo East do have partial manes, but they rarely attain the regal glory of the Serengeti lions’.) Does environmental adaptation account for the trait? Are the lions of Tsavo, as some people believe, a distinct subspecies of their Serengeti cousins?
The Serengeti lions have been under continuous observation for more than 35 years, beginning with George Schaller’s pioneering work in the 1960s. But the lions in Tsavo, Kenya’s oldest and largest protected ecosystem, have hardly been studied. Consequently, legends have grown up around them. Not only do they look different, according to the myths, theybehave differently, displaying greater cunning and aggressiveness. “Remember too,” Kenya: The Rough Guide warns, “Tsavo’s lions have a reputation for ferocity.” Their fearsome image became well-known in 1898, when two males stalled construction of what is now Kenya Railways by allegedly killing and eating 135 Indian and African laborers. A British Army officer in charge of building a railroad bridge over the Tsavo River, Lt. Col. J. H. Patterson, spent nine months pursuing the pair before he brought them to bay and killed them. Stuffed and mounted, they now glare at visitors to the Field Museum in Chicago. Patterson’s account of the leonine reign of terror, The Man-Eaters of Tsavo, was an international best-seller when published in 1907. Still in print, the book has made Tsavo’s lions notorious. That annoys some scientists. “People don’t want to give up on mythology,” Dennis King told me one day. The zoologist has been working in Tsavo off and on for four years. “I am so sick of this man-eater business. Patterson made a helluva lot of money off that story, but Tsavo’s lions are no more likely to turn man-eater than lions from elsewhere.”
But tales of their savagery and wiliness don’t all come from sensationalist authors looking to make a buck. Tsavo lions are generally larger than lions elsewhere, enabling them to take down the predominant prey animal in Tsavo, the Cape buffalo, one of the strongest, most aggressive animals of Earth. The buffalo don’t give up easily: They often kill or severely injure an attacking lion, and a wounded lion might be more likely to turn to cattle and humans for food.
And other prey is less abundant in Tsavo than in other traditional lion haunts. A hungry lion is more likely to attack humans. Safari guides and Kenya Wildlife Service rangers tell of lions attacking Land Rovers, raiding camps, stalking tourists. Tsavo is a tough neighborhood, they say, and it breeds tougher lions.
But are they really tougher? And if so, is there any connection between their manelessness and their ferocity? An intriguing hypothesis was advanced two years ago by Gnoske and Peterhans: Tsavo lions may be similar to the unmaned cave lions of the Pleistocene. The Serengeti variety is among the most evolved of the species—the latest model, so to speak—while certain morphological differences in Tsavo lions (bigger bodies, smaller skulls, and maybe even lack of a mane) suggest that they are closer to the primitive ancestor of all lions. Craig and Peyton had serious doubts about this idea, but admitted that Tsavo lions pose a mystery to science.

The sentence which concludes the first paragraph, “Now they know better”, implies that

Directions: Answer the question based on the following passage.

Fifty feet away three male lions lay by the road. They didn’t appear to have a hair on their heads. Noting the colour of their noses (leonine noses darken as they age, from pink to black), Craig estimated that they were six years old—young adults. “This is wonderful!” he said, after staring at them for several moments. “This is what we came to see. They really are maneless.” Craig, a professor at the University of Minnesota, is arguably the leading expert on the majestic Serengeti lion, whose head is mantled in long, thick hair. He and Peyton West, a doctOral student who has been working with him in Tanzania, had never seen the Tsavo lions that live some 200 miles east of the Serengeti. The scientists had partly suspected that the maneless males were adolescents mistaken for adults by amateur observers. Now they knew better.
The Tsavo research expedition was mostly Peyton’s show. She had spent several years in Tanzania, compiling the data she needed to answer a question that ought to have been answered long ago: Why do lions have manes? It’s the only cat, wild or domestic, that displays such ornamentation. In Tsavo she was attacking the riddle from the opposite angle. Why do its lions not have manes? (Some “maneless” lions in Tsavo East do have partial manes, but they rarely attain the regal glory of the Serengeti lions’.) Does environmental adaptation account for the trait? Are the lions of Tsavo, as some people believe, a distinct subspecies of their Serengeti cousins?
The Serengeti lions have been under continuous observation for more than 35 years, beginning with George Schaller’s pioneering work in the 1960s. But the lions in Tsavo, Kenya’s oldest and largest protected ecosystem, have hardly been studied. Consequently, legends have grown up around them. Not only do they look different, according to the myths, theybehave differently, displaying greater cunning and aggressiveness. “Remember too,” Kenya: The Rough Guide warns, “Tsavo’s lions have a reputation for ferocity.” Their fearsome image became well-known in 1898, when two males stalled construction of what is now Kenya Railways by allegedly killing and eating 135 Indian and African laborers. A British Army officer in charge of building a railroad bridge over the Tsavo River, Lt. Col. J. H. Patterson, spent nine months pursuing the pair before he brought them to bay and killed them. Stuffed and mounted, they now glare at visitors to the Field Museum in Chicago. Patterson’s account of the leonine reign of terror, The Man-Eaters of Tsavo, was an international best-seller when published in 1907. Still in print, the book has made Tsavo’s lions notorious. That annoys some scientists. “People don’t want to give up on mythology,” Dennis King told me one day. The zoologist has been working in Tsavo off and on for four years. “I am so sick of this man-eater business. Patterson made a helluva lot of money off that story, but Tsavo’s lions are no more likely to turn man-eater than lions from elsewhere.”
But tales of their savagery and wiliness don’t all come from sensationalist authors looking to make a buck. Tsavo lions are generally larger than lions elsewhere, enabling them to take down the predominant prey animal in Tsavo, the Cape buffalo, one of the strongest, most aggressive animals of Earth. The buffalo don’t give up easily: They often kill or severely injure an attacking lion, and a wounded lion might be more likely to turn to cattle and humans for food.
And other prey is less abundant in Tsavo than in other traditional lion haunts. A hungry lion is more likely to attack humans. Safari guides and Kenya Wildlife Service rangers tell of lions attacking Land Rovers, raiding camps, stalking tourists. Tsavo is a tough neighborhood, they say, and it breeds tougher lions.
But are they really tougher? And if so, is there any connection between their manelessness and their ferocity? An intriguing hypothesis was advanced two years ago by Gnoske and Peterhans: Tsavo lions may be similar to the unmaned cave lions of the Pleistocene. The Serengeti variety is among the most evolved of the species—the latest model, so to speak—while certain morphological differences in Tsavo lions (bigger bodies, smaller skulls, and maybe even lack of a mane) suggest that they are closer to the primitive ancestor of all lions. Craig and Peyton had serious doubts about this idea, but admitted that Tsavo lions pose a mystery to science.

A criticism that management education did not face was that

Directions: Answer the question based on the following passage.

Management education gained new academic stature within US Universities and greater respect from outside during the 1960's and 1970's. Some observers attributed the competitive superiority of US corporations to the quality of business education. In 1978, a management professor, Herbert A. Simon of Carnegie Mellon University, won the Nobel Prize in economics for his work in decision theory. And the popularity of business education continued to grow; since 1960, the number of master's degrees awarded annually has grown from under 5000 to over 50,000 in the mid 1980's and the MBA has become known as 'the passport to good life'.
By the 1980s, however, US business schools faced critics who charged that learning had little relevance to real business problems. Some went so far as to blame business schools for the decline in US competitiveness. Amidst the criticism, four distinct arguments may be discerned. The first is that business schools must be either unnecessary or deleterious because Japan does so well without them. Underlying this argument is the idea that management ability cannot be taught; one is either born with it or much acquire it over years of practical experience. A second argument is that business schools are overly academic and theoretical. They teach quantitative models that have little application to real world problems. Third, they give inadequate attention to shop-floor issues, to production processes and to management resources. Finally, it is argued that they encourage undesirable attitudes in students, such as placing value on the short term and 'bottom line' targets, while neglecting longer term developmental criteria. In summary, some business executives complain that MBAs are incapable of handling day to day operational decisions, unable to communicate and to motivate people, and unwilling to accept responsibility for following through on implementation plans. We shall analyse these criticisms after having reviewed experiences in other countries.
In contrast to the expansion and development of business education in the United States and more recently in Europe, Japanese business schools graduate no more than two hundred MBAs each year. The Keio Business School (KBS) was the only two year masters programme. The absence of business school in Japan would appear in contradiction with the high priority placed upon learning by its Confucian culture. Confucian colleges taught administrative skills as early as 1630 and Japan wholeheartedly accepted Western learning following the Meiji restoration of 1868 when Hundreds of students were despatched to universities in US, Germany, England and France to learn the secrets of western technology and modernisation. Moreover, the Japanese educational system is highly developed and intensely competitive and can be credited for raising the literary and mathematical abilities of the Japanese to the highest level in the world.
Until recently, Japanese corporations have not been interested in using either local or foreign business schools for the development of their future executives. Their in-company, training programmes have sought the socialisation of newcomers, the younger the better. The training is highly specific and those who receive it have neither the capacity nor the incentive to quit. The prevailing belief, says Imai, management should be born out of experience and many years of effort and not learnt from educational institutions'. A 1960 survey of Japanese senior executives confirmed that a majority (54%) believed that managerial capabilities can be attained only on the job and not in universities.
However, this view seems to be changing: the same survey revealed that even as early as 1960, 37% of senior executives felt that the universities should teach integrated professional management. In the 1980s, a combination of increased competitive pressures and greater multinationalisation of Japanese business are making it difficult for many companies to rely solely upon internally trained managers. This has led to a rapid growth of local business programmes and a greater use of American MBA programmes. In 1982-83, the Japanese comprised the largest single group of foreign students at Wharton, where they not only learnt the latest techniques of financial analysis, but also developed world-wide contracts through their classmates and became Americanised, something highly useful in future negotiations. The Japanese, then do not, do without business school as is sometimes contended. But the process of selecting and orienting new graduates even MBAs into corporations is radically different than in the US. Rather than being placed in highly paying staff positions, new Japanese recruits are assigned responsibility for operational and even menial tasks. Success is based upon Japan's system of highly competitive recruitment and intensive in-company management development, which in turn are grounded in its tradition of universal and rigorous academic education, lifelong employment and strong group identification.
The harmony among these traditional elements has made Japanese industry highly productive and the given corporate leadership a long term view. It is true that this has been achieved without much attention to university business education, but extraordinary attention has been devoted to the development of managerial skills both within the company and through participation in programmes sponsored by the Productivity Centre and other similar organisations.

According to the passage,

Directions: Answer the question based on the following passage.

Management education gained new academic stature within US Universities and greater respect from outside during the 1960's and 1970's. Some observers attributed the competitive superiority of US corporations to the quality of business education. In 1978, a management professor, Herbert A. Simon of Carnegie Mellon University, won the Nobel Prize in economics for his work in decision theory. And the popularity of business education continued to grow; since 1960, the number of master's degrees awarded annually has grown from under 5000 to over 50,000 in the mid 1980's and the MBA has become known as 'the passport to good life'.
By the 1980s, however, US business schools faced critics who charged that learning had little relevance to real business problems. Some went so far as to blame business schools for the decline in US competitiveness. Amidst the criticism, four distinct arguments may be discerned. The first is that business schools must be either unnecessary or deleterious because Japan does so well without them. Underlying this argument is the idea that management ability cannot be taught; one is either born with it or much acquire it over years of practical experience. A second argument is that business schools are overly academic and theoretical. They teach quantitative models that have little application to real world problems. Third, they give inadequate attention to shop-floor issues, to production processes and to management resources. Finally, it is argued that they encourage undesirable attitudes in students, such as placing value on the short term and 'bottom line' targets, while neglecting longer term developmental criteria. In summary, some business executives complain that MBAs are incapable of handling day to day operational decisions, unable to communicate and to motivate people, and unwilling to accept responsibility for following through on implementation plans. We shall analyse these criticisms after having reviewed experiences in other countries.
In contrast to the expansion and development of business education in the United States and more recently in Europe, Japanese business schools graduate no more than two hundred MBAs each year. The Keio Business School (KBS) was the only two year masters programme. The absence of business school in Japan would appear in contradiction with the high priority placed upon learning by its Confucian culture. Confucian colleges taught administrative skills as early as 1630 and Japan wholeheartedly accepted Western learning following the Meiji restoration of 1868 when Hundreds of students were despatched to universities in US, Germany, England and France to learn the secrets of western technology and modernisation. Moreover, the Japanese educational system is highly developed and intensely competitive and can be credited for raising the literary and mathematical abilities of the Japanese to the highest level in the world.
Until recently, Japanese corporations have not been interested in using either local or foreign business schools for the development of their future executives. Their in-company, training programmes have sought the socialisation of newcomers, the younger the better. The training is highly specific and those who receive it have neither the capacity nor the incentive to quit. The prevailing belief, says Imai, management should be born out of experience and many years of effort and not learnt from educational institutions'. A 1960 survey of Japanese senior executives confirmed that a majority (54%) believed that managerial capabilities can be attained only on the job and not in universities.
However, this view seems to be changing: the same survey revealed that even as early as 1960, 37% of senior executives felt that the universities should teach integrated professional management. In the 1980s, a combination of increased competitive pressures and greater multinationalisation of Japanese business are making it difficult for many companies to rely solely upon internally trained managers. This has led to a rapid growth of local business programmes and a greater use of American MBA programmes. In 1982-83, the Japanese comprised the largest single group of foreign students at Wharton, where they not only learnt the latest techniques of financial analysis, but also developed world-wide contracts through their classmates and became Americanised, something highly useful in future negotiations. The Japanese, then do not, do without business school as is sometimes contended. But the process of selecting and orienting new graduates even MBAs into corporations is radically different than in the US. Rather than being placed in highly paying staff positions, new Japanese recruits are assigned responsibility for operational and even menial tasks. Success is based upon Japan's system of highly competitive recruitment and intensive in-company management development, which in turn are grounded in its tradition of universal and rigorous academic education, lifelong employment and strong group identification.
The harmony among these traditional elements has made Japanese industry highly productive and the given corporate leadership a long term view. It is true that this has been achieved without much attention to university business education, but extraordinary attention has been devoted to the development of managerial skills both within the company and through participation in programmes sponsored by the Productivity Centre and other similar organisations.

The growth in popularity of business schools among students was most probably due to

Directions: Answer the question based on the following passage.

Management education gained new academic stature within US Universities and greater respect from outside during the 1960's and 1970's. Some observers attributed the competitive superiority of US corporations to the quality of business education. In 1978, a management professor, Herbert A. Simon of Carnegie Mellon University, won the Nobel Prize in economics for his work in decision theory. And the popularity of business education continued to grow; since 1960, the number of master's degrees awarded annually has grown from under 5000 to over 50,000 in the mid 1980's and the MBA has become known as 'the passport to good life'.
By the 1980s, however, US business schools faced critics who charged that learning had little relevance to real business problems. Some went so far as to blame business schools for the decline in US competitiveness. Amidst the criticism, four distinct arguments may be discerned. The first is that business schools must be either unnecessary or deleterious because Japan does so well without them. Underlying this argument is the idea that management ability cannot be taught; one is either born with it or much acquire it over years of practical experience. A second argument is that business schools are overly academic and theoretical. They teach quantitative models that have little application to real world problems. Third, they give inadequate attention to shop-floor issues, to production processes and to management resources. Finally, it is argued that they encourage undesirable attitudes in students, such as placing value on the short term and 'bottom line' targets, while neglecting longer term developmental criteria. In summary, some business executives complain that MBAs are incapable of handling day to day operational decisions, unable to communicate and to motivate people, and unwilling to accept responsibility for following through on implementation plans. We shall analyse these criticisms after having reviewed experiences in other countries.
In contrast to the expansion and development of business education in the United States and more recently in Europe, Japanese business schools graduate no more than two hundred MBAs each year. The Keio Business School (KBS) was the only two year masters programme. The absence of business school in Japan would appear in contradiction with the high priority placed upon learning by its Confucian culture. Confucian colleges taught administrative skills as early as 1630 and Japan wholeheartedly accepted Western learning following the Meiji restoration of 1868 when Hundreds of students were despatched to universities in US, Germany, England and France to learn the secrets of western technology and modernisation. Moreover, the Japanese educational system is highly developed and intensely competitive and can be credited for raising the literary and mathematical abilities of the Japanese to the highest level in the world.
Until recently, Japanese corporations have not been interested in using either local or foreign business schools for the development of their future executives. Their in-company, training programmes have sought the socialisation of newcomers, the younger the better. The training is highly specific and those who receive it have neither the capacity nor the incentive to quit. The prevailing belief, says Imai, management should be born out of experience and many years of effort and not learnt from educational institutions'. A 1960 survey of Japanese senior executives confirmed that a majority (54%) believed that managerial capabilities can be attained only on the job and not in universities.
However, this view seems to be changing: the same survey revealed that even as early as 1960, 37% of senior executives felt that the universities should teach integrated professional management. In the 1980s, a combination of increased competitive pressures and greater multinationalisation of Japanese business are making it difficult for many companies to rely solely upon internally trained managers. This has led to a rapid growth of local business programmes and a greater use of American MBA programmes. In 1982-83, the Japanese comprised the largest single group of foreign students at Wharton, where they not only learnt the latest techniques of financial analysis, but also developed world-wide contracts through their classmates and became Americanised, something highly useful in future negotiations. The Japanese, then do not, do without business school as is sometimes contended. But the process of selecting and orienting new graduates even MBAs into corporations is radically different than in the US. Rather than being placed in highly paying staff positions, new Japanese recruits are assigned responsibility for operational and even menial tasks. Success is based upon Japan's system of highly competitive recruitment and intensive in-company management development, which in turn are grounded in its tradition of universal and rigorous academic education, lifelong employment and strong group identification.
The harmony among these traditional elements has made Japanese industry highly productive and the given corporate leadership a long term view. It is true that this has been achieved without much attention to university business education, but extraordinary attention has been devoted to the development of managerial skills both within the company and through participation in programmes sponsored by the Productivity Centre and other similar organisations.

The 1960s and 1970s can best be described as a period

Directions: Answer the question based on the following passage.

Management education gained new academic stature within US Universities and greater respect from outside during the 1960's and 1970's. Some observers attributed the competitive superiority of US corporations to the quality of business education. In 1978, a management professor, Herbert A. Simon of Carnegie Mellon University, won the Nobel Prize in economics for his work in decision theory. And the popularity of business education continued to grow; since 1960, the number of master's degrees awarded annually has grown from under 5000 to over 50,000 in the mid 1980's and the MBA has become known as 'the passport to good life'.
By the 1980s, however, US business schools faced critics who charged that learning had little relevance to real business problems. Some went so far as to blame business schools for the decline in US competitiveness. Amidst the criticism, four distinct arguments may be discerned. The first is that business schools must be either unnecessary or deleterious because Japan does so well without them. Underlying this argument is the idea that management ability cannot be taught; one is either born with it or much acquire it over years of practical experience. A second argument is that business schools are overly academic and theoretical. They teach quantitative models that have little application to real world problems. Third, they give inadequate attention to shop-floor issues, to production processes and to management resources. Finally, it is argued that they encourage undesirable attitudes in students, such as placing value on the short term and 'bottom line' targets, while neglecting longer term developmental criteria. In summary, some business executives complain that MBAs are incapable of handling day to day operational decisions, unable to communicate and to motivate people, and unwilling to accept responsibility for following through on implementation plans. We shall analyse these criticisms after having reviewed experiences in other countries.
In contrast to the expansion and development of business education in the United States and more recently in Europe, Japanese business schools graduate no more than two hundred MBAs each year. The Keio Business School (KBS) was the only two year masters programme. The absence of business school in Japan would appear in contradiction with the high priority placed upon learning by its Confucian culture. Confucian colleges taught administrative skills as early as 1630 and Japan wholeheartedly accepted Western learning following the Meiji restoration of 1868 when Hundreds of students were despatched to universities in US, Germany, England and France to learn the secrets of western technology and modernisation. Moreover, the Japanese educational system is highly developed and intensely competitive and can be credited for raising the literary and mathematical abilities of the Japanese to the highest level in the world.
Until recently, Japanese corporations have not been interested in using either local or foreign business schools for the development of their future executives. Their in-company, training programmes have sought the socialisation of newcomers, the younger the better. The training is highly specific and those who receive it have neither the capacity nor the incentive to quit. The prevailing belief, says Imai, management should be born out of experience and many years of effort and not learnt from educational institutions'. A 1960 survey of Japanese senior executives confirmed that a majority (54%) believed that managerial capabilities can be attained only on the job and not in universities.
However, this view seems to be changing: the same survey revealed that even as early as 1960, 37% of senior executives felt that the universities should teach integrated professional management. In the 1980s, a combination of increased competitive pressures and greater multinationalisation of Japanese business are making it difficult for many companies to rely solely upon internally trained managers. This has led to a rapid growth of local business programmes and a greater use of American MBA programmes. In 1982-83, the Japanese comprised the largest single group of foreign students at Wharton, where they not only learnt the latest techniques of financial analysis, but also developed world-wide contracts through their classmates and became Americanised, something highly useful in future negotiations. The Japanese, then do not, do without business school as is sometimes contended. But the process of selecting and orienting new graduates even MBAs into corporations is radically different than in the US. Rather than being placed in highly paying staff positions, new Japanese recruits are assigned responsibility for operational and even menial tasks. Success is based upon Japan's system of highly competitive recruitment and intensive in-company management development, which in turn are grounded in its tradition of universal and rigorous academic education, lifelong employment and strong group identification.
The harmony among these traditional elements has made Japanese industry highly productive and the given corporate leadership a long term view. It is true that this has been achieved without much attention to university business education, but extraordinary attention has been devoted to the development of managerial skills both within the company and through participation in programmes sponsored by the Productivity Centre and other similar organisations.

The US business schools faced criticism in the 1980s because

Directions: Answer the question based on the following passage.

Management education gained new academic stature within US Universities and greater respect from outside during the 1960's and 1970's. Some observers attributed the competitive superiority of US corporations to the quality of business education. In 1978, a management professor, Herbert A. Simon of Carnegie Mellon University, won the Nobel Prize in economics for his work in decision theory. And the popularity of business education continued to grow; since 1960, the number of master's degrees awarded annually has grown from under 5000 to over 50,000 in the mid 1980's and the MBA has become known as 'the passport to good life'.
By the 1980s, however, US business schools faced critics who charged that learning had little relevance to real business problems. Some went so far as to blame business schools for the decline in US competitiveness. Amidst the criticism, four distinct arguments may be discerned. The first is that business schools must be either unnecessary or deleterious because Japan does so well without them. Underlying this argument is the idea that management ability cannot be taught; one is either born with it or much acquire it over years of practical experience. A second argument is that business schools are overly academic and theoretical. They teach quantitative models that have little application to real world problems. Third, they give inadequate attention to shop-floor issues, to production processes and to management resources. Finally, it is argued that they encourage undesirable attitudes in students, such as placing value on the short term and 'bottom line' targets, while neglecting longer term developmental criteria. In summary, some business executives complain that MBAs are incapable of handling day to day operational decisions, unable to communicate and to motivate people, and unwilling to accept responsibility for following through on implementation plans. We shall analyse these criticisms after having reviewed experiences in other countries.
In contrast to the expansion and development of business education in the United States and more recently in Europe, Japanese business schools graduate no more than two hundred MBAs each year. The Keio Business School (KBS) was the only two year masters programme. The absence of business school in Japan would appear in contradiction with the high priority placed upon learning by its Confucian culture. Confucian colleges taught administrative skills as early as 1630 and Japan wholeheartedly accepted Western learning following the Meiji restoration of 1868 when Hundreds of students were despatched to universities in US, Germany, England and France to learn the secrets of western technology and modernisation. Moreover, the Japanese educational system is highly developed and intensely competitive and can be credited for raising the literary and mathematical abilities of the Japanese to the highest level in the world.
Until recently, Japanese corporations have not been interested in using either local or foreign business schools for the development of their future executives. Their in-company, training programmes have sought the socialisation of newcomers, the younger the better. The training is highly specific and those who receive it have neither the capacity nor the incentive to quit. The prevailing belief, says Imai, management should be born out of experience and many years of effort and not learnt from educational institutions'. A 1960 survey of Japanese senior executives confirmed that a majority (54%) believed that managerial capabilities can be attained only on the job and not in universities.
However, this view seems to be changing: the same survey revealed that even as early as 1960, 37% of senior executives felt that the universities should teach integrated professional management. In the 1980s, a combination of increased competitive pressures and greater multinationalisation of Japanese business are making it difficult for many companies to rely solely upon internally trained managers. This has led to a rapid growth of local business programmes and a greater use of American MBA programmes. In 1982-83, the Japanese comprised the largest single group of foreign students at Wharton, where they not only learnt the latest techniques of financial analysis, but also developed world-wide contracts through their classmates and became Americanised, something highly useful in future negotiations. The Japanese, then do not, do without business school as is sometimes contended. But the process of selecting and orienting new graduates even MBAs into corporations is radically different than in the US. Rather than being placed in highly paying staff positions, new Japanese recruits are assigned responsibility for operational and even menial tasks. Success is based upon Japan's system of highly competitive recruitment and intensive in-company management development, which in turn are grounded in its tradition of universal and rigorous academic education, lifelong employment and strong group identification.
The harmony among these traditional elements has made Japanese industry highly productive and the given corporate leadership a long term view. It is true that this has been achieved without much attention to university business education, but extraordinary attention has been devoted to the development of managerial skills both within the company and through participation in programmes sponsored by the Productivity Centre and other similar organisations.

The absence of business schools in Japan

Directions: Answer the question based on the following passage.

Management education gained new academic stature within US Universities and greater respect from outside during the 1960's and 1970's. Some observers attributed the competitive superiority of US corporations to the quality of business education. In 1978, a management professor, Herbert A. Simon of Carnegie Mellon University, won the Nobel Prize in economics for his work in decision theory. And the popularity of business education continued to grow; since 1960, the number of master's degrees awarded annually has grown from under 5000 to over 50,000 in the mid 1980's and the MBA has become known as 'the passport to good life'.
By the 1980s, however, US business schools faced critics who charged that learning had little relevance to real business problems. Some went so far as to blame business schools for the decline in US competitiveness. Amidst the criticism, four distinct arguments may be discerned. The first is that business schools must be either unnecessary or deleterious because Japan does so well without them. Underlying this argument is the idea that management ability cannot be taught; one is either born with it or much acquire it over years of practical experience. A second argument is that business schools are overly academic and theoretical. They teach quantitative models that have little application to real world problems. Third, they give inadequate attention to shop-floor issues, to production processes and to management resources. Finally, it is argued that they encourage undesirable attitudes in students, such as placing value on the short term and 'bottom line' targets, while neglecting longer term developmental criteria. In summary, some business executives complain that MBAs are incapable of handling day to day operational decisions, unable to communicate and to motivate people, and unwilling to accept responsibility for following through on implementation plans. We shall analyse these criticisms after having reviewed experiences in other countries.
In contrast to the expansion and development of business education in the United States and more recently in Europe, Japanese business schools graduate no more than two hundred MBAs each year. The Keio Business School (KBS) was the only two year masters programme. The absence of business school in Japan would appear in contradiction with the high priority placed upon learning by its Confucian culture. Confucian colleges taught administrative skills as early as 1630 and Japan wholeheartedly accepted Western learning following the Meiji restoration of 1868 when Hundreds of students were despatched to universities in US, Germany, England and France to learn the secrets of western technology and modernisation. Moreover, the Japanese educational system is highly developed and intensely competitive and can be credited for raising the literary and mathematical abilities of the Japanese to the highest level in the world.
Until recently, Japanese corporations have not been interested in using either local or foreign business schools for the development of their future executives. Their in-company, training programmes have sought the socialisation of newcomers, the younger the better. The training is highly specific and those who receive it have neither the capacity nor the incentive to quit. The prevailing belief, says Imai, management should be born out of experience and many years of effort and not learnt from educational institutions'. A 1960 survey of Japanese senior executives confirmed that a majority (54%) believed that managerial capabilities can be attained only on the job and not in universities.
However, this view seems to be changing: the same survey revealed that even as early as 1960, 37% of senior executives felt that the universities should teach integrated professional management. In the 1980s, a combination of increased competitive pressures and greater multinationalisation of Japanese business are making it difficult for many companies to rely solely upon internally trained managers. This has led to a rapid growth of local business programmes and a greater use of American MBA programmes. In 1982-83, the Japanese comprised the largest single group of foreign students at Wharton, where they not only learnt the latest techniques of financial analysis, but also developed world-wide contracts through their classmates and became Americanised, something highly useful in future negotiations. The Japanese, then do not, do without business school as is sometimes contended. But the process of selecting and orienting new graduates even MBAs into corporations is radically different than in the US. Rather than being placed in highly paying staff positions, new Japanese recruits are assigned responsibility for operational and even menial tasks. Success is based upon Japan's system of highly competitive recruitment and intensive in-company management development, which in turn are grounded in its tradition of universal and rigorous academic education, lifelong employment and strong group identification.
The harmony among these traditional elements has made Japanese industry highly productive and the given corporate leadership a long term view. It is true that this has been achieved without much attention to university business education, but extraordinary attention has been devoted to the development of managerial skills both within the company and through participation in programmes sponsored by the Productivity Centre and other similar organisations.

"The usual dour moral lessons were drawn." Which of the following would be the most likely dour lesson drawn upon Moliere's death?

Directions: Answer the question based on the following passage.

Among the considerable number of men dedicated to the task of keeping Louis XIV entertained, several met bizarre ends. In 1671 at Chantilly, the great chef Vatel, after providing the king and some 2,000 courtiers with three superb meals on the first day of their visit, killed himself on the next, when a consignment offish he had ordered failed to appear (it turned up shortly thereafter). Jean-Baptiste Lully, in charge of music for all the royal festivities, managed to stab himself in the foot with his conductor's baton while directing a performance of one of his own works in 1687; he died soon afterwards when gangrene set in.
Nothing, however, quite equals the death of Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, the self-styled sieur de Moliere. a man established by 1672 as actor/manager and chief playwright of la troupe du ropi, performing at the Palais Royal in Paris and much in demand at court. But might it not be a bit dangerous to counterfeit death? Moliere, as Argan, the hypochondriac protagonist of his last comedy, Le Malade Imaginaire, enquired, when about to do just that, during the play's fourth performance on February 17th, 1673. No, no, the maid Toinette reassured him, what danger could there be? But Moliere did, in fact, die: not actually on stage - though he finished Argan's part with considerable difficulty - but an hour or two later at home. Predictably, a strictly Catholic France where actors were excommunicated and refused burial in consecrated ground (though churchmen patronised the theatre and wrote plays themselves), the usual dour moral lessons were drawn.
The stage chair in which Moliere as Argan was stricken in earnest, not in jest, can still be seen on permanent display in the upper lobby of the Comedie Francaise - the theatre which, in effect, he founded. It is, apart from the plays themselves and their prefaces, almost the only tangible relic of a man much written about by friends and enemies during and immediately after his lifetime, who nevertheless remains in many ways mysterious, despite endlessly proliferating scholarly and critical research. Virginia Scott, author of the latest attempt at a biography, is well aware of the difficulties. No one can disentangle legend from fact, fiction from truth - not even in the brief life attached to the collected edition of Moliere's works produced by his associate La Grange in 1682, or in the 1705 biography by Grimmarest. Moliere himself left no letters, no diaries, no memoirs. None of the various houses in which he is said to have lived remains, nor do any of his personal possessions. Not only do his contemporaries provide ambiguous and conflicting reports, but the basic facts are wanting. Shakespeareans may complain about a certain paucity of information, but at least they know where their man was buried and whom he married. Molieristes do not.
Ms. Scott is engagingly candid about her biographical method. "My agenda is to express those intersections between myself and the past that I experience imaginatively...I order what I know or believe I know so as to create characters whom I choose to call Moliere and Madeleine - who could have made with some degree of probability the choices I believe the real Moliere and Madeleine to have made." So she is free to decide that Armande Bejart, the teenager Moliere married in 1662, was indeed the daughter of his former mistress Madeleine Bejart by the Comte de Modene, rather than her youngest sister. (But not, as some of his enemies suggested, also Moliere’s daughter.) As to where and when the respectable Jean-Baptiste Poquelin first met the distinctly bohemian Madeleine, and how he was drawn away from the solid family upholstery business into the theatre, she does not pretend to offer more than speculation. Like everyone who writes about Moliere, Ms. Scott combs the plays themselves for clues about his private life and comes up with suggestions that mayor may not be right. Most innovative of all, perhaps, is her hypothesis that Moliere's relationship with his young protégé Baron was homoerotic - though even that was hinted at by the more malicious of his contemporaries.
The last biography of Moliere published in English, John Palmer's Moliere (1930; reprinted in 1970), is still worth reading. To compare it, however, with Ms. Scott's is to realise how enormously attitudes have changed during the intervening years. Nervous even about Moliere's illicit relationship with Madeleine, Palmer could not bring himself to say more than that probably they had an affair. Over Baron's possibly sexual appeal to Moliere he maintained total silence. Also very much of its period was his slight regard for that improvised Italian theatre which provided Moliere with many dramatic types, and his contempt for lavish baroque spectacle of the kind that Louis XIV loved and on which Moliere wasted his talents. The ballet de cour and comedies-ballets are now regarded with far more interest and respect than was the case in 1930 (as indeed are the court masques that Ben Jonson and Inigo Jones created for James I). Both the delicious Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme and Le Malade Imaginaire are, after all, comedies-ballets - a category that a more flexible 21st-century idea of theatre can once again accommodate.
Ms. Scott provides valuable correctives here. The strength of her book (as might be expected from the author of The Commedia dell' Arte in Paris, 1990) lies less in its portrait of Moliere himself than in the densely researched and persuasive background against which she is able to situate him. This is made up of families and places (she is particularly good on the 13 years during which Moliere and his troupe wandered the French provinces before returning to Paris), while also including portraits of his enemies, as well as eminent friends such as Boileau, La Fontaine and Racine. She does not offer much in the way of commentary on the plays themselves. What she does do is arrestingly illuminate the complex world of theatre and court, both in Paris and elsewhere, that finally constitutes almost all that can really be known of Moliere's life.

It can be inferred from the passage that Moliere was

I. a play wright II. an actor III. a novelist IV. a poet

Directions: Answer the question based on the following passage.

Among the considerable number of men dedicated to the task of keeping Louis XIV entertained, several met bizarre ends. In 1671 at Chantilly, the great chef Vatel, after providing the king and some 2,000 courtiers with three superb meals on the first day of their visit, killed himself on the next, when a consignment offish he had ordered failed to appear (it turned up shortly thereafter). Jean-Baptiste Lully, in charge of music for all the royal festivities, managed to stab himself in the foot with his conductor's baton while directing a performance of one of his own works in 1687; he died soon afterwards when gangrene set in.
Nothing, however, quite equals the death of Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, the self-styled sieur de Moliere. a man established by 1672 as actor/manager and chief playwright of la troupe du ropi, performing at the Palais Royal in Paris and much in demand at court. But might it not be a bit dangerous to counterfeit death? Moliere, as Argan, the hypochondriac protagonist of his last comedy, Le Malade Imaginaire, enquired, when about to do just that, during the play's fourth performance on February 17th, 1673. No, no, the maid Toinette reassured him, what danger could there be? But Moliere did, in fact, die: not actually on stage - though he finished Argan's part with considerable difficulty - but an hour or two later at home. Predictably, a strictly Catholic France where actors were excommunicated and refused burial in consecrated ground (though churchmen patronised the theatre and wrote plays themselves), the usual dour moral lessons were drawn.
The stage chair in which Moliere as Argan was stricken in earnest, not in jest, can still be seen on permanent display in the upper lobby of the Comedie Francaise - the theatre which, in effect, he founded. It is, apart from the plays themselves and their prefaces, almost the only tangible relic of a man much written about by friends and enemies during and immediately after his lifetime, who nevertheless remains in many ways mysterious, despite endlessly proliferating scholarly and critical research. Virginia Scott, author of the latest attempt at a biography, is well aware of the difficulties. No one can disentangle legend from fact, fiction from truth - not even in the brief life attached to the collected edition of Moliere's works produced by his associate La Grange in 1682, or in the 1705 biography by Grimmarest. Moliere himself left no letters, no diaries, no memoirs. None of the various houses in which he is said to have lived remains, nor do any of his personal possessions. Not only do his contemporaries provide ambiguous and conflicting reports, but the basic facts are wanting. Shakespeareans may complain about a certain paucity of information, but at least they know where their man was buried and whom he married. Molieristes do not.
Ms. Scott is engagingly candid about her biographical method. "My agenda is to express those intersections between myself and the past that I experience imaginatively...I order what I know or believe I know so as to create characters whom I choose to call Moliere and Madeleine - who could have made with some degree of probability the choices I believe the real Moliere and Madeleine to have made." So she is free to decide that Armande Bejart, the teenager Moliere married in 1662, was indeed the daughter of his former mistress Madeleine Bejart by the Comte de Modene, rather than her youngest sister. (But not, as some of his enemies suggested, also Moliere’s daughter.) As to where and when the respectable Jean-Baptiste Poquelin first met the distinctly bohemian Madeleine, and how he was drawn away from the solid family upholstery business into the theatre, she does not pretend to offer more than speculation. Like everyone who writes about Moliere, Ms. Scott combs the plays themselves for clues about his private life and comes up with suggestions that mayor may not be right. Most innovative of all, perhaps, is her hypothesis that Moliere's relationship with his young protégé Baron was homoerotic - though even that was hinted at by the more malicious of his contemporaries.
The last biography of Moliere published in English, John Palmer's Moliere (1930; reprinted in 1970), is still worth reading. To compare it, however, with Ms. Scott's is to realise how enormously attitudes have changed during the intervening years. Nervous even about Moliere's illicit relationship with Madeleine, Palmer could not bring himself to say more than that probably they had an affair. Over Baron's possibly sexual appeal to Moliere he maintained total silence. Also very much of its period was his slight regard for that improvised Italian theatre which provided Moliere with many dramatic types, and his contempt for lavish baroque spectacle of the kind that Louis XIV loved and on which Moliere wasted his talents. The ballet de cour and comedies-ballets are now regarded with far more interest and respect than was the case in 1930 (as indeed are the court masques that Ben Jonson and Inigo Jones created for James I). Both the delicious Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme and Le Malade Imaginaire are, after all, comedies-ballets - a category that a more flexible 21st-century idea of theatre can once again accommodate.
Ms. Scott provides valuable correctives here. The strength of her book (as might be expected from the author of The Commedia dell' Arte in Paris, 1990) lies less in its portrait of Moliere himself than in the densely researched and persuasive background against which she is able to situate him. This is made up of families and places (she is particularly good on the 13 years during which Moliere and his troupe wandered the French provinces before returning to Paris), while also including portraits of his enemies, as well as eminent friends such as Boileau, La Fontaine and Racine. She does not offer much in the way of commentary on the plays themselves. What she does do is arrestingly illuminate the complex world of theatre and court, both in Paris and elsewhere, that finally constitutes almost all that can really be known of Moliere's life.

We can say that Ms Scott's biographical method is

Directions: Answer the question based on the following passage.

Among the considerable number of men dedicated to the task of keeping Louis XIV entertained, several met bizarre ends. In 1671 at Chantilly, the great chef Vatel, after providing the king and some 2,000 courtiers with three superb meals on the first day of their visit, killed himself on the next, when a consignment offish he had ordered failed to appear (it turned up shortly thereafter). Jean-Baptiste Lully, in charge of music for all the royal festivities, managed to stab himself in the foot with his conductor's baton while directing a performance of one of his own works in 1687; he died soon afterwards when gangrene set in.
Nothing, however, quite equals the death of Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, the self-styled sieur de Moliere. a man established by 1672 as actor/manager and chief playwright of la troupe du ropi, performing at the Palais Royal in Paris and much in demand at court. But might it not be a bit dangerous to counterfeit death? Moliere, as Argan, the hypochondriac protagonist of his last comedy, Le Malade Imaginaire, enquired, when about to do just that, during the play's fourth performance on February 17th, 1673. No, no, the maid Toinette reassured him, what danger could there be? But Moliere did, in fact, die: not actually on stage - though he finished Argan's part with considerable difficulty - but an hour or two later at home. Predictably, a strictly Catholic France where actors were excommunicated and refused burial in consecrated ground (though churchmen patronised the theatre and wrote plays themselves), the usual dour moral lessons were drawn.
The stage chair in which Moliere as Argan was stricken in earnest, not in jest, can still be seen on permanent display in the upper lobby of the Comedie Francaise - the theatre which, in effect, he founded. It is, apart from the plays themselves and their prefaces, almost the only tangible relic of a man much written about by friends and enemies during and immediately after his lifetime, who nevertheless remains in many ways mysterious, despite endlessly proliferating scholarly and critical research. Virginia Scott, author of the latest attempt at a biography, is well aware of the difficulties. No one can disentangle legend from fact, fiction from truth - not even in the brief life attached to the collected edition of Moliere's works produced by his associate La Grange in 1682, or in the 1705 biography by Grimmarest. Moliere himself left no letters, no diaries, no memoirs. None of the various houses in which he is said to have lived remains, nor do any of his personal possessions. Not only do his contemporaries provide ambiguous and conflicting reports, but the basic facts are wanting. Shakespeareans may complain about a certain paucity of information, but at least they know where their man was buried and whom he married. Molieristes do not.
Ms. Scott is engagingly candid about her biographical method. "My agenda is to express those intersections between myself and the past that I experience imaginatively...I order what I know or believe I know so as to create characters whom I choose to call Moliere and Madeleine - who could have made with some degree of probability the choices I believe the real Moliere and Madeleine to have made." So she is free to decide that Armande Bejart, the teenager Moliere married in 1662, was indeed the daughter of his former mistress Madeleine Bejart by the Comte de Modene, rather than her youngest sister. (But not, as some of his enemies suggested, also Moliere’s daughter.) As to where and when the respectable Jean-Baptiste Poquelin first met the distinctly bohemian Madeleine, and how he was drawn away from the solid family upholstery business into the theatre, she does not pretend to offer more than speculation. Like everyone who writes about Moliere, Ms. Scott combs the plays themselves for clues about his private life and comes up with suggestions that mayor may not be right. Most innovative of all, perhaps, is her hypothesis that Moliere's relationship with his young protégé Baron was homoerotic - though even that was hinted at by the more malicious of his contemporaries.
The last biography of Moliere published in English, John Palmer's Moliere (1930; reprinted in 1970), is still worth reading. To compare it, however, with Ms. Scott's is to realise how enormously attitudes have changed during the intervening years. Nervous even about Moliere's illicit relationship with Madeleine, Palmer could not bring himself to say more than that probably they had an affair. Over Baron's possibly sexual appeal to Moliere he maintained total silence. Also very much of its period was his slight regard for that improvised Italian theatre which provided Moliere with many dramatic types, and his contempt for lavish baroque spectacle of the kind that Louis XIV loved and on which Moliere wasted his talents. The ballet de cour and comedies-ballets are now regarded with far more interest and respect than was the case in 1930 (as indeed are the court masques that Ben Jonson and Inigo Jones created for James I). Both the delicious Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme and Le Malade Imaginaire are, after all, comedies-ballets - a category that a more flexible 21st-century idea of theatre can once again accommodate.
Ms. Scott provides valuable correctives here. The strength of her book (as might be expected from the author of The Commedia dell' Arte in Paris, 1990) lies less in its portrait of Moliere himself than in the densely researched and persuasive background against which she is able to situate him. This is made up of families and places (she is particularly good on the 13 years during which Moliere and his troupe wandered the French provinces before returning to Paris), while also including portraits of his enemies, as well as eminent friends such as Boileau, La Fontaine and Racine. She does not offer much in the way of commentary on the plays themselves. What she does do is arrestingly illuminate the complex world of theatre and court, both in Paris and elsewhere, that finally constitutes almost all that can really be known of Moliere's life.

What is/are the main difficulty(ies) in knowing about the life of Moliere according to the author?

Directions: Answer the question based on the following passage.

Among the considerable number of men dedicated to the task of keeping Louis XIV entertained, several met bizarre ends. In 1671 at Chantilly, the great chef Vatel, after providing the king and some 2,000 courtiers with three superb meals on the first day of their visit, killed himself on the next, when a consignment offish he had ordered failed to appear (it turned up shortly thereafter). Jean-Baptiste Lully, in charge of music for all the royal festivities, managed to stab himself in the foot with his conductor's baton while directing a performance of one of his own works in 1687; he died soon afterwards when gangrene set in.
Nothing, however, quite equals the death of Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, the self-styled sieur de Moliere. a man established by 1672 as actor/manager and chief playwright of la troupe du ropi, performing at the Palais Royal in Paris and much in demand at court. But might it not be a bit dangerous to counterfeit death? Moliere, as Argan, the hypochondriac protagonist of his last comedy, Le Malade Imaginaire, enquired, when about to do just that, during the play's fourth performance on February 17th, 1673. No, no, the maid Toinette reassured him, what danger could there be? But Moliere did, in fact, die: not actually on stage - though he finished Argan's part with considerable difficulty - but an hour or two later at home. Predictably, a strictly Catholic France where actors were excommunicated and refused burial in consecrated ground (though churchmen patronised the theatre and wrote plays themselves), the usual dour moral lessons were drawn.
The stage chair in which Moliere as Argan was stricken in earnest, not in jest, can still be seen on permanent display in the upper lobby of the Comedie Francaise - the theatre which, in effect, he founded. It is, apart from the plays themselves and their prefaces, almost the only tangible relic of a man much written about by friends and enemies during and immediately after his lifetime, who nevertheless remains in many ways mysterious, despite endlessly proliferating scholarly and critical research. Virginia Scott, author of the latest attempt at a biography, is well aware of the difficulties. No one can disentangle legend from fact, fiction from truth - not even in the brief life attached to the collected edition of Moliere's works produced by his associate La Grange in 1682, or in the 1705 biography by Grimmarest. Moliere himself left no letters, no diaries, no memoirs. None of the various houses in which he is said to have lived remains, nor do any of his personal possessions. Not only do his contemporaries provide ambiguous and conflicting reports, but the basic facts are wanting. Shakespeareans may complain about a certain paucity of information, but at least they know where their man was buried and whom he married. Molieristes do not.
Ms. Scott is engagingly candid about her biographical method. "My agenda is to express those intersections between myself and the past that I experience imaginatively...I order what I know or believe I know so as to create characters whom I choose to call Moliere and Madeleine - who could have made with some degree of probability the choices I believe the real Moliere and Madeleine to have made." So she is free to decide that Armande Bejart, the teenager Moliere married in 1662, was indeed the daughter of his former mistress Madeleine Bejart by the Comte de Modene, rather than her youngest sister. (But not, as some of his enemies suggested, also Moliere’s daughter.) As to where and when the respectable Jean-Baptiste Poquelin first met the distinctly bohemian Madeleine, and how he was drawn away from the solid family upholstery business into the theatre, she does not pretend to offer more than speculation. Like everyone who writes about Moliere, Ms. Scott combs the plays themselves for clues about his private life and comes up with suggestions that mayor may not be right. Most innovative of all, perhaps, is her hypothesis that Moliere's relationship with his young protégé Baron was homoerotic - though even that was hinted at by the more malicious of his contemporaries.
The last biography of Moliere published in English, John Palmer's Moliere (1930; reprinted in 1970), is still worth reading. To compare it, however, with Ms. Scott's is to realise how enormously attitudes have changed during the intervening years. Nervous even about Moliere's illicit relationship with Madeleine, Palmer could not bring himself to say more than that probably they had an affair. Over Baron's possibly sexual appeal to Moliere he maintained total silence. Also very much of its period was his slight regard for that improvised Italian theatre which provided Moliere with many dramatic types, and his contempt for lavish baroque spectacle of the kind that Louis XIV loved and on which Moliere wasted his talents. The ballet de cour and comedies-ballets are now regarded with far more interest and respect than was the case in 1930 (as indeed are the court masques that Ben Jonson and Inigo Jones created for James I). Both the delicious Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme and Le Malade Imaginaire are, after all, comedies-ballets - a category that a more flexible 21st-century idea of theatre can once again accommodate.
Ms. Scott provides valuable correctives here. The strength of her book (as might be expected from the author of The Commedia dell' Arte in Paris, 1990) lies less in its portrait of Moliere himself than in the densely researched and persuasive background against which she is able to situate him. This is made up of families and places (she is particularly good on the 13 years during which Moliere and his troupe wandered the French provinces before returning to Paris), while also including portraits of his enemies, as well as eminent friends such as Boileau, La Fontaine and Racine. She does not offer much in the way of commentary on the plays themselves. What she does do is arrestingly illuminate the complex world of theatre and court, both in Paris and elsewhere, that finally constitutes almost all that can really be known of Moliere's life.