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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. For E.D. Hirsch, the aim of "policing" an author's meaning is to what, according to Eagleton?
(a) Control her/his "private property."
(b) Protect her/his "private property."
(c) Sell her/his "private property."
(d) Alter her/his "private property."

2. Eagleton writes that "New Criticism was the ideology of an ________, _______intelligentsia who reinvented in literature what they could not locate in reality."
(a) Apathetic, placid.
(b) Aggressive, violent.
(c) Educated, grounded.
(d) Uprooted, defensive.

3. According to Eagleton, what idea is "truly elitist" in literary studies?
(a) "The idea that works of literature can only be appreciated by those with a particular sort of cultural breeding."
(b) "The idea that literature can only be understood by writers of literature."
(c) "The idea that literature should not be read by those without a higher degree."
(d) "The idea that literature is the only way to understand a particular culture."

4. During the Romantic period, how is literature more than "idle escapism"?
(a) It is the rejection of creative values celebrated in English society.
(b) It is the acceptance of totalarian values rejected in English society.
(c) It is the celebration of totalarian values enforced in English society.
(d) It is the affirmation of creative values expunged from English society.

5. What kind of language does Eagleton say people think of literature as?
(a) Dull.
(b) Ordinary.
(c) Strange.
(d) Difficult.

Short Answer Questions

1. According to Eagleton, the formalists were not out to define literature but they were out to define what?

2. According to Eagleton, the approaches outlined in his book have implications where?

3. According to Eagleton, literature is definable "not according to whether it is fictional or "imaginative," because it uses language in ____ways."

4. By the early 1930s, the study of English literature became what kind of pursuit?

5. Eagleton argues that reading literature in a new critical way was a recipe for what?

Short Essay Questions

1. What kind of thought does a literary education not encourage, according to Eagleton, and what does this signify?

2. How is Martin Heidegger's philosophy similar to that of the Russian formalists?

3. What did new American criticism focus on and why is it significant?

4. What is Eagleton's goal in writing "Literary Theory: An Introduction"?

5. During the eighteenth century, how was art perceived in England and why is it significant?

6. What is the reach of the "theoretical revolution" and why is it significant?

7. Why is literature an unstable term, according to Eagleton?

8. In the late-sixteenth and early-seventeenth centuries, what was considered "fact" and what was considered "fiction," and how is it significant?

9. How does phenomenological criticism view literature and what is Eagleton's response?

10. How does Eagleton define elitism in literary studies and why is it important?

(see the answer keys)

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