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This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through Introduction: What is Literature?.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. According to Eagleton, "In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, the word ______seems to have been used about true and fictional events."
(a) Memoir.
(b) News.
(c) Theory.
(d) Novel.

2. Why is the example Eagleton gives of the sign in the London Underground system that "dogs must be carried on the escalator" a case of estrangement?
(a) Because the directive is unambigious and therefore inherently meaningful.
(b) Because of the ambiguities inherent in the statement, which raises questions about its meaning.
(c) Because the statement is a directive where people who do not follow are estranged from society.
(d) Because the language is prosaic and straightforward.

3. For the economist Eagleton discusses, "those economists who dislike theory or claimed to get along better without it" were what?
(a) In the grip of an older theory.
(b) Didn't understand the importance of theory.
(c) In the grip of the most current theory.
(d) Had no knowledge of any theory.

4. According to Eagleton, "theory was a way of _______ literary works from the ________of civilised sensibility'"
(a) Excluding; oppression.
(b) Studying; truth.
(c) Dismissing; idea.
(d) Emancipating; stranglehold.

5. According to Eagleton, Gibbon and the authors of Genesis share what in common?
(a) Both wrote fiction that is read as fact by some and fiction by others.
(b) Both wrote historical truth that is read as fiction.
(c) They both thought they were writing historical truth, but are read as fact by some and fiction by others.
(d) Both wrote fiction that is read as historical fact.

Short Answer Questions

1. Eagleton argues that if literature includes much factual writing, it also excludes "quite a lot of" what?

2. Who silenced the Russian formalists, according to Eagleton?

3. For Eagleton, opposition between "historical" and "artistic" truth does NOT apply to what?

4. What is "imaginative" literature or literature that is not necessarily true?

5. According to Eagleton, what kind of thought does literary education NOT encourage?

(see the answer key)

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