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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. How does Boorstin characterize the autobiography as a form?
(a) An objective account of a person's feelings and language.
(b) A scientific glimpse into the workings of the self.
(c) A shifting subject viewed from a shifting perspective.
(d) A rebellion against the act of being misread.

2. How does Boorstin characterize the Heroic American Literary Myth?
(a) A tale of shining visions fulfilled.
(b) A tale of brutality and crude mysticism.
(c) A tale of revenge and madness.
(d) A tale of morality and sacrifice.

3. In what does Zola say man DID NOT stop believing in the epigraph to Book 3?
(a) God.
(b) Nature.
(c) Immortality.
(d) The future.

4. In what way is Moby Dick NOT a novel according to Boorstin?
(a) It lacks historical attributes.
(b) It lacks characterization and plot.
(c) It lacks metaphor and allegory.
(d) It lacks antagonism and heroism.

5. In what tradition was Cristabel written according to Boorstin?
(a) Classical symmetry.
(b) Modernism.
(c) Baroque ornamentation.
(d) Gothic Romance.

Short Answer Questions

1. What does Boorstin say Mozart said about dying?

2. Boorstin says that Dickens' work was a love affair with what?

3. What artistic movement does Boorstin say Monet initiated?

4. When did Bruneleschi make the Foundling Hospital in Florence?

5. When did Goethe start Faust?

Short Essay Questions

1. What does Boorstin say is Ben Franklin's contribution to the art of imaginative life?

2. What is the place of the essay in the history Boorstin is describing?

3. How does Boorstin describe the evolution of the orchestra over time?

4. How did Beethoven change the nature of music according to Boorstin?

5. When does Boorstin say authors became the subject of their own writing?

6. How does Boorstin characterize Michelangelo's contribution to human culture?

7. In what way did T. S. Eliot change the course of literature's evolution?

8. What was Gibbon's innovation?

9. How does Boorstin characterize Johann Sebastian Bach's contribution to human imaginative work?

10. What does Boorstin say is William Wordsworth's contribution to imaginative culture?

(see the answer keys)

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