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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. When were the cave drawings discovered?

2. What is Boorstin's subject in The Creators?

3. What is a dithyramb?

4. For what was God cutting rods, in the quote from Martin Luther that opens Part 2?

5. What fear did St. Ambrose's creation allay?

Short Essay Questions

1. How does Boorstin describe the Hindu contribution to imaginative culture?

2. How does Boorstin characterize Chaucer's Canterbury Tales?

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

4. How does Boorstin characterize Shakespeare's role in the development of imaginative works?

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

6. What improvement did the Greeks make in architecture?

7. What does Boorstin say is the Koran's position on imaginative culture?

8. What is the purpose of life in Buddhist teachings?

9. What contribution did the Egyptians make in building the pyramids?

10. How do Greek depictions compare with Egyptian symbols?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Why do you think Boorstin excluded technological inventions and imaginative work? What is it about combustion engines, or industrial processes, or scientific discoveries, that excludes them from this work?

Essay Topic 2

From what perspective could the narrative described here--of an art that came to approximate the condition of lived individual experience--be described as a falling away into false life and pseudo-awareness? How else could this narrative be described? What would a person have to believe in order to make a different characterization than Boorstin makes?

Essay Topic 3

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?

(see the answer keys)

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