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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What are the three points Eagleton notes about the method of structuralism?
(a) It is idealistic not rational; it doesn't understand the obvious meaning of the text; and the narrative content is its meaning.
(b) It is evaluative not analytic; it refuses obvious meaning of the text; and the narrative content is its meaning.
(c) It is rational not idealistic; it accepts the obvious meaning of the text; and the content of the narrative is its structure.
(d) It is analytic not evaluative; it refuses obvious meaning of the text; and the content of the narrative is its structure.

2. What is the name of the author whose story "Sarrasine" Roland Barthes examines in "S/Z"?
(a) Balzac.
(b) Eliot.
(c) Tolstoy.
(d) Nabokov.

3. According to Jacques Lacan, what stage does a child first develop an ego?
(a) During the mirror stage.
(b) During the Oedipal stage.
(c) During the post-Oedipal stage.
(d) During the imaginary stage.

4. What is the name of two principles Sigmund Freud identified?
(a) Pleasure principle and reality principle.
(b) Ideal principle and reality principle.
(c) Rational principle and ideal principle.
(d) Pleasure principle and rational principle.

5. According to Eagleton, why is it an illusion to think that he can be present to us in what he says and writes?
(a) Because he is no longer present in the world but in some other present in the future.
(b) Because the language he uses is not a tool but something he is made of and therefore always divided.
(c) Because language is only a tool, not something he is made of.
(d) Because he is a concrete entity but language is not.

6. According to Eagleton, why is Shakespeare considered great literature?
(a) Because the masses constitute him as great literature.
(b) Because he is great literature.
(c) Because he is better than other literature.
(d) Because the literary institution constitues him as great literature.

7. Why should politics engage with questions of sexual ideology, according to Eagleton?
(a) Because sexism and gender roles should persist in human experience.
(b) Because sexism and gender roles are deeply integrated in human experience.
(c) Because sexism and gender roles are not deeply integrated in human experience.
(d) Because sexism and gender roles do not exist in human experience.

8. According to Eagleton, what "staggering fact" could not be put right by a theoretical technique?
(a) That there was no time in history where half of the human race was not considered inferior.
(b) That there was no time in history where women were not considered superior.
(c) There was no time in history where women and men were antagonists.
(d) There was no time in history where half of the human race fought for equality.

9. According to the feminist philosopher Julia Kristeva, the language of the semiotic is a means of what?
(a) Undermining the symbolic order.
(b) Affirming the symbolic order.
(c) Reproducing the symbolic order.
(d) Understanding the symbolic order.

10. According to Eagleton, the French structural anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss did pioneering work on what?
(a) Myth.
(b) Philosophy.
(c) Language.
(d) Religion.

11. Eagleton writes that his book is less an introduction to literary theory than a what?
(a) An answer.
(b) A polemic.
(c) An obituary.
(d) A homage.

12. According to Eagleton, what is the "point" of literary theory?
(a) Its work creates the political and ideological forces in power.
(b) Its history is not a part of the political and ideological history of our times.
(c) Its work rejects the political and ideological forces in power.
(d) Its history is part of the political and ideological history of our times.

13. What year did France's student movement strike against the authoritarianism of the educational institutions and in solidarity with the working-class?
(a) 1978.
(b) 1988.
(c) 1968.
(d) 1958.

14. For Jacques Lacan, "meaning is always in some sense an _______."
(a) Abdication.
(b) Amalgamation.
(c) Approximation.
(d) Allocation.

15. The modern history of literary theory has been characterized by a flight from what?
(a) False doctrines.
(b) Real history.
(c) Shifting ideas.
(d) Absolute morality.

Short Answer Questions

1. Why is structuralism "anti-humanist," for Eagleton?

2. According to Eagleton, structuralism is a ________of inquiry whereas semiotics is a ______ of study.

3. According to Eagleton, structuralism maintains that "individual units of any system have meaning only by virtue of" what?

4. What are Northrop Frye's four narrative categories at the root of all literature?

5. According to Eagleton, who would an ideal reader be for a structuralist?

(see the answer keys)

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