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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. What is the "final logical move" for literary theory, according to Eagleton?
(a) To subjugate literature for its own ends.
(b) To distance itself from the text.
(c) To privatize theory for the general public.
(d) To recognize that it is an illusion.

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

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

4. What is the example Eagleton provides of a metalanguage, where one sign-system denotes another sign-system?
(a) The relation between literary criticism and literature.
(b) The relation between philosophy and literature.
(c) The relation between philosophy and religion.
(d) The relation between literary criticism and religion.

5. According to Eagleton, what is the disadvantage of claiming literature as more valuable and rewarding than other texts?
(a) Because it partly true.
(b) Because it is true.
(c) Because it is no longer true.
(d) Because it is untrue.

Short Answer Questions

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

2. According to the Soviet semiotician Yury Lotman, a poetic text is "semantically _________."

3. What is the name of the author whose story "Sarrasine" Roland Barthes examines in "S/Z"?

4. What is the name of the Yale theorist who believed that all language is metaphorical?

5. According to Eagleton, "the meaning of a sign is a matter of what the sign is _____."

Short Essay Questions

1. What was a "healthy" sign according to Roland Barthes and why is it significant?

2. Beyond helping the status of women, what is the women's movement's goal and why is it significant?

3. According to Eagleton, why should the notion of literary theory be abolished?

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

5. Why does Eagleton claim that Northrop Frye's work emphasized the "utopian root'" of all literature and what is his response?

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

7. According to Eagleton, why should rhetorical science replace literary theory and what is its objective?

8. How did Northrop Frye attempt to combine the formalist focus on the text with the essence of new American criticism?

9. How did Mikhail Bakhtin view language?

10. What is structuralism and how what does it share in common with formalism?

(see the answer keys)

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