View a FREE sample

This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. Which of the following topics describes the theme of "The Absent One/Absence?"

2. In "The Tip of the Nose/Alteration," what does "the tip of the nose" refer to?

3. What is the feeling that the author refers to in the section entitled "Agony?"

4. In "To Be Ascetic," how does the narrator's asceticism take shape?

5. In the section entitled "Waiting," which of the following processes is described?

Short Essay Questions

1. In The Heart, how does the author compare the heart to other attributes such as wit?

2. In Agony/Anxiety, why does the author compare the lover to a psychotic who fears a breakdown?

3. In Connivance, what position does the other (the object of desire) occupy in the lover's conversation with his rival?

4. Briefly describe the lover's sense of engulfment in the section "I am engulfed, I succumb..."/To Be Engulfed.

5. Discuss the function of the dark glasses in Dark Glasses/To Hide.

6. In Laetitia/To Circumscribe, what are two pleasures the narrator dreams of, and which one does he aspire to.

7. What is the ascetic process that the lover goes through in the section entitled To Be Ascetic/Askesis?

8. Describe the effect that the lover hope to achieve by adopting ascetic behavior.

9. Describe the two affirmations of love discussed at the end of the section entitled Intractable/Affirmation.

10. In The Absent One/Absence, how does the lover interpret the other's absence?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

In Ravishment, the myth of love at first sight is discussed at length. Love at first sight or ravishment is in fact drawn explicitly from the image-repertoire.

- How does the text describe love at first sight?

- What are the conditions needed for it to occur?

- How does the visual function, e.g. what is the significance of the "scene?"

- How does the aural function?

- Does love at first sight really happen, or is it something that takes shape in the lover's mind upon reflection?

Essay Topic 2

On the first page of the book, the author claims that the lover's discourse functions as an affirmation. He discusses this affirmation again in Affirmation (pg. 22), Alone (p. 210) and Signs (p. 214).

- What is the status of love and of the lover's discourse in society?

- What is it defining itself against and why? Is it excluded? How?

- Why is love classified as "intractable"?

Essay Topic 3

In the short paragraph that precedes the author's discussion of figures, he writes that "the lover is not to be reduced to a single symptomal subject."

- Explain what the author means when he says that the lover is not just a single individual.

- Why does the author choose to write with the first person pronoun ("I") and what does it show or signify?

- How does the lover speak and for whom is the discourse intended?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 1,071 words (approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample