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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. How long was it before Gothic art changed the style of European art and architecture in Boorstin's account?

2. What does Boorstin say is the difference between tragedy and comedy?

3. What part of Philo of Alexandria's philosophy does Boorstin say determined what man could know and what he could not?

4. What does Boorstin say upturned stones signify?

5. What does Virginia Woolf say, in the second epigraph to Part 7, about writing?

Short Essay Questions

1. How does Boorstin characterize the Confucian teachings?

2. What improvement did the Greeks make in architecture?

3. What innovation do the Homeric epics represent in the culture of the imagination?

4. How do Muslims differ from Greeks and Christians in their approach to making images?

5. What innovation did Dante introduce to Western culture?

6. What is a dithyramb and what is its place in imaginative culture?

7. How does Boorstin describe the birth of hymns?

8. How does Boorstin say the Japanese differ from Westerners in their architectural approach?

9. What contribution does Boorstin say Boethius made to imaginative culture?

10. How does Boorstin characterize the Gothic style of art?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Would you recommend The Creators? For what purposes would you recommend The Creators, and what kinds of readers would you not recommend it? What book would you recommend that would cover the same material or provide the same emotional experience in a different way?

Essay Topic 2

Other critics have told this story--of the progress of art and literature--as an evolution of a state of crisis, as individuals reacted to changes in culture with innovations in art, which changed the nature of the question. To what extent does Boorstin account for the cultural causes of the evolution of art, and to what extent does he account for the sense of ongoing crisis many artists have described?

Essay Topic 3

Where is the climax of this book? Are there different climaxes? What questions does each climax resolve? What questions does each climax leave unanswered?

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