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This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

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

2. According to Eagleton, the approaches outlined in his book have implications where?
(a) Well beyond politics.
(b) Well beyond literature.
(c) Well beyond feeling.
(d) Well beyond language.

3. The distinction between fact and fiction in defining literature is what?
(a) Complicated.
(b) Difficult.
(c) Important.
(d) Questionable.

4. In the eighteenth-century, what was the whole body of writing in society considered, including philosophy, letters, history, poems, and essays?
(a) Literature.
(b) Religion.
(c) Canon.
(d) Theory.

5. According to Eagleton, the subject in phenomenology was the source of all what?
(a) Meaning.
(b) Violence.
(c) Oppression.
(d) Life.

6. According to Eagleton, when did the Russian formalists emerge?
(a) Before the Bolshevik Revolution.
(b) During the Russian Revolution.
(c) Before WWII.
(d) After WWI.

7. Who was Husserl's most famous pupil who broke with his system of thought?
(a) Hannah Arendt.
(b) Walter Benjamin.
(c) Martin Heidegger.
(d) Ayn Rand.

8. According to Eagleton, what does his book try to demonstrate about a body of literary theory?
(a) That there is sometimes a body of literary theory that springs from and is applicable to literature alone.
(b) That there are several bodies of literary theory that spring from and is applicable to literature alone.
(c) That there is no body of literary theory that springs from or is applicable to literature alone.
(d) That there is one body of literary theory that springs from and is applicable to literature alone.

9. Eagleton provides the analogy of finding a "scrap of writing from a long-vanished civilization" to make what point about deciphering its meaning?
(a) That we would be able to tell that it was a piece of poetry regardless of access to its language.
(b) That we would not know whether it was a piece of poetry or ordinary language.
(c) That we would be able to see that poetry didn't exist by looking at its language.
(d) That we would be able to learn that it was a piece of poetry by looking at the language.

10. According to Eagleton, formalism is the application of what to the study of literature?
(a) Linguistics.
(b) Sociology.
(c) Economics.
(d) Psychology.

11. What is the name of the critic from the Constance school of reception aesthetics and the author of "The Act of Reading" who Eagleton discusses at length?
(a) Wolfgang Iser.
(b) Roland Barthes.
(c) Jean Paul Sartre.
(d) Roman Ingarden.

12. What "twin impacts" does Eagleton cite in the mid-Victorian period that was particularly worrisome to the ruling class?
(a) Scientific discovery and social change.
(b) Religious ideology and social change.
(c) Scientific discovery and religious ideology.
(d) Religious ideology and social statis.

13. What is the name Edmund Husserl gave to his philosophical method?
(a) Hermeneutics.
(b) New criticism.
(c) Phenomenology.
(d) Reception theory.

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

15. What three sequential stages does Eagleton point out in the development of modern literary theory?
(a) The preoccupation with the critic, the exclusive concern with the author, and a shift toward the text.
(b) The preoccupation with the text, the exclusive concern with the reader, and a shift toward the author.
(c) The preoccupation with the reader, the exclusive concern with the text, and a shift toward the critic.
(d) The preoccupation with the author, the exclusive concern with the text, and a shift toward the reader.

Short Answer Questions

1. From the viewpoint of Roland Barthes, Eagleton argues that "reading is less like a _______ than a _________."

2. According to Eagleton, the literary work in Romantic society is seen as a ________ that is in contrast to the "fragmented individualism" of capitalist society?

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

4. Eagleton argues that for Stanley Fish, what a text "does" to us is a matter of what we do to what?

5. According to Eagleton, literature is definable "not according to whether it is fictional or "imaginative," because it uses language in ____ways."

(see the answer keys)

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