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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. In American deconstruction, why does literary criticism become an "ironic, uneasy business"?
(a) Because it lays bare the illusoriness of meaning.
(b) Because it lays bare the physicality of meaning.
(c) Because it lays bare the permanence of meaning.
(d) Because it lays bare the temporality of meaning.

2. According to Eagleton, literary theorists "are not so much ______of doctrine as ________of a discourse."
(a) Critics; creators.
(b) Purveyors; custodians.
(c) Teachers; students.
(d) Writers; readers.

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

4. Jacques Lacan argues that like _______ desire emerges from a lack, which it strives to fulfill.
(a) Faith.
(b) Language.
(c) Identity.
(d) Myth.

5. What is one problem of adopting a plurality of critical methods, for Eagleton?
(a) Not all methods are compatible.
(b) Some methods are no longer available.
(c) One should start from the beginning.
(d) One should adopt the latest method.

Short Answer Questions

1. According to Eagleton, the Western philosophical tradition has "consistently vilified" what?

2. When did Sigmund Freud develop psychoanalysis?

3. What is the example Eagleton provides of a metalanguage, where one sign-system denotes another sign-system?

4. According to Eagleton, what term is "most-widely touted" in cultural theory?

5. What does Sigmund Freud see as the "royal road" to the unconscious?

Short Essay Questions

1. How does Julia Kristeva view language and why is it significant?

2. What is significant about the ways in which Sigmund Freud treated women and men?

3. According to Sigmund Freud, what are the two conflicting principles that all people are motivated by and why is it significant?

4. How did post-structuralism develop and why is it significant?

5. Who developed semiotics and what was his contribution to literary theory?

6. Why does Eagleton reject the idea of a disconnected individual in society?

7. What was the significance of the Prague structuralists?

8. Who is Ferdinand de Saussure and what was his contribution to the field of literary theory?

9. During the 1960s and 1970s why did feminist scholars reject Marxist thought on the left?

10. For Roland Barthes, what does literature embody and why is it significant?

(see the answer keys)

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