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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. According to Eagleton, what is the disadvantage of claiming literature as more valuable and rewarding than other texts?

2. What literary movement, according to Eagleton, "brought structuralist and post-structuralist criticism to birth in the first place"?

3. Why should politics engage with questions of sexual ideology, according to Eagleton?

4. For Eagleton, what are the two ways in which literary theory can have a distinct purpose and identity?

5. Who is the founder of modern structural linguistics?

Short Essay Questions

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

2. How did Mikhail Bakhtin view language?

3. Why does Eagleton argue that politics should engage with questions of sexual ideology?

4. How does the philosopher Jacques Derrida conceive of language?

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

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

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

8. What are the three stages of development in psychoanalysis and how do they relate to literary theory?

9. What was the significance of the Prague structuralists?

10. What is multiple pluralism and why does Eagleton object to it?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Choose two Russian formalists and discuss their work.

1) How did they define literature?

2) What aspects of literary production did they focus on?

Essay Topic 2

Discuss the ways in which the concept of literature has changed from the seventeenth century to the twentieth century.

1) What was considered literature in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries?

2) How do the romantic movement transform the definition of literature?

3) What was the function of literature during the Victorian era?

Essay Topic 3

What is the relationship between politics and literature, according to Eagleton? How does the production of literature inculcate and disseminate ideological values?

(see the answer keys)

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