What is meant by 'mock reality' in the passage?
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Correct answer: A. The reality contrived by novelists through the strategic use of words
Explanation
The novelist's self-consistent invented world.
Note: Passage II is from Christopher Caudwell, Illusion and Reality (1937), which is copyrighted and not reproduced. Caudwell argues that poetry, through rhyme, metre and inversion, distorts the structure of external reality to exalt 'the structure of the self', drawing attention to its own language. The novel instead 'blots out external reality by substituting a more or less consistent mock reality' of people and scenes; its emotions attach to that world, so rhythm, 'preciousness' and style are alien to it, and novels translate well.
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