I'm having trouble understanding why D is the best answer. According to my understanding of "translate the experience of literature into intellectual terms, assimilate it to a coherent scheme which must be rational if it is to be knowledge", I thought this meant you should translate and assimilate it in order to better understand THE WORK ITSELF. D is talking about translating it to understand why the work is so popular, not about the work itself or its meaning. so I didn't think D was the right answer.
The main idea I wrote down for this passage was: student of lit should translate it into intellectual terms, the methods used can be literature's own scientific methods, not just the natural science's methods.
deciding between B and C, which would align more with this main idea, was very tricky. But C was out because like the AAMC said, it aligns more with evolution = a natural science method. so I went with B.
Can someone please explain where the flaw is in my thinking?
Your main idea looks okay, but the author is making a strong argument that the point of a literary study is to contribute to knowledge. This is illustrated in Paragraphs 1, 2 and 5.
The question states that a literary scholar is planning to do an extensive study on Red Riding Hood, so the author wants the study to contribute in some way to knowledge. The book should be analyzed in depth and the scholar's study should show how it would contribute to new insights and ideas. Like the author said in P1 when distinguishing between literature and literary study; the literary study, "if not precisely a science, is a species of knowledge or of learning". So the methods in literary study can in fact look scientific as you noted in your main idea.
Choice A focuses on looking at the social context of the work that was written. That's not a literary study because it's not focusing on the work itself but rather focuses on the social factors surrounding the work.
Choice B connects between occurrence of words to different concepts. So it does look into the work itself, but what do these connections indicate and how does it add new knowledge? I'm not seeing any new insights from this approach since they aren't readily apparent.
Choice C looks into the impact of prior literature and their influences on the current work. But similar to Choice A, this doesn't focus on the work itself, so it's not a literary study.
Choice D talks about looking into story elements to explain why it's popular. What this means is the scholar is looking into the story carefully with the purpose on understanding why it's famous. So the scholar basically is analyzing the story to understand the story's far reaching impact, which from the author's perspective, contributes to new knowledge and therefore is a literary study.
You're right in that the story should be understood for the purpose of understanding the work itself. But Choice D talks exactly that, since you need to understand the work to understand why it's popular. There's a purpose in Choice D that's not evident in Choice B. Choice D has the purpose of analyzing the story to understand what made the work popular. Choice B doesn't have a clear purpose (sure they're looking into connections between words and concepts, but why? What's the point? How is it adding to new knowledge?)
