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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. What genre of writing does Eagleton provide that is an example of writing that is NOT considered to be literature?
(a) Romance.
(b) Science fiction.
(c) Comics.
(d) Young Adult.

2. According to Eagleton, why did the Russian formalists NOT see a literary work as a vehicle for ideas, reflection of reality, or transcendental truth?
(a) Because they saw language as words and not objects or feelings.
(b) Because they saw language as a mode of speech for the wealthy.
(c) Because they saw language as potentially empowering the masses.
(d) Because they saw language as obtuse, vague, and ephemeral.

3. What is "imaginative" literature or literature that is not necessarily true?
(a) Biography.
(b) Memoir.
(c) Nonfiction.
(d) Fiction.

4. For Eagleton, opposition between "historical" and "artistic" truth does NOT apply to what?
(a) Middle English.
(b) Early Icelandic sagas.
(c) Fairy-tales.
(d) Late Victorian novels.

5. According to the Russian critic Roman Jakobson, literature represents "organized ______committed on ordinary _______."
(a) Protest; speech.
(b) Religion; writing.
(c) Violence; speech.
(d) Violence; people.

Short Answer Questions

1. What is the name of the Russian formalist who published the pioneering essay that is the "beginnings of the transformation which has taken over literary theory in this century"?

2. According to Eagleton, what does his book try to demonstrate about a body of literary theory?

3. The Russian formalists rejected what kind of doctrines that had influenced literary criticism?

4. According to Eagleton, what is ironic about those who complain of the difficulty of literary theory?

5. What example from the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries does Eagleton provide that was not considered purely factual?

(see the answer key)

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