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. The narrator believes that after the moment of theory there comes, inevitably, the ________ of theory, when it ceases to be the exclusive concern of a dedicated minority and enters the intellectual bloodstream.

2. What is thecritical approach which uses the methods and findings of the science of linguistics in the analysis of literary texts?

3. Author Peter Barry uses an excerpt from which author to illustrate the analysis of narratologists?

4. Lesbian theory that broke away from feminism and made new allegiances, in particular, with gay men rather than with other women is called "queer theory" or ________.

5. ________ is a co-founder of ecocriticism with Harold Fromm that developed in the early-1990s in the USA.

Short Essay Questions

1. What are the ambitions of stylistics as defined by Peter Barry?

2. Is stylistics confined to just the analysis of literature? Explain.

3. What are the four characteristics that define the term "Political Shakespeare"?

4. Discuss the three elements Aristotle identified in a plot. What key point does Barry suggest about timing as it relates to plot?

5. Briefly define "mimesis" and "diegesis" as determined by Peter Barry.

6. What is discourse as it relates to new historicism?

7. What was the "Vulgar Marxism"?

8. What is the aim of Marxism, according to the narrator?

9. What is lesbian feminism?

10. Briefly explain what lesbian/gay critics do.

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Discuss the relevance of Beginning Theory to English literature today.

Essay Topic 2

Identify, discuss, and analyze the history of English studies as foretold by Peter Barry.

Essay Topic 3

Identify, analyze, and discuss the following quote: "The most basic difference between liberal humanist and structuralist reading is that the structuralist's comments on structure, symbol, and design, become paramount, and are the main focus of the commentary, while the emphasis on any wider moral significance, and indeed on interpretation itself in the broad sense, is very much reduced."

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 688 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample