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This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What does Boorstin say upturned stones signify?
(a) Man's determination to find food sources.
(b) Man's desire to live forever.
(c) Man's determination to find origins.
(d) Man's attempt to measure and regulate his environment.

2. What did Thespis invent, according to Boorstin?
(a) Tragedy.
(b) Comedy.
(c) Drama.
(d) Poetry.

3. Why does Confucius say that it is impossible for men to serve the spirits?
(a) Because the spirits do not exist.
(b) Because they cannot trust the sanctity of any texts.
(c) Because the ways of serving the spirits have all been forgotten.
(d) Because they don't know how to serve each other.

4. What does Boorstin say is the difference between tragedy and comedy?
(a) Tragedy ended in death, comedy in marriage.
(b) Tragedy dealt with long-ago events, comedy with the present.
(c) Tragedy dealt with kings, comedy with commoners.
(d) Tragedy was for intimate gatherings, comedy for large audiences.

5. What does Boorstin say Christianity helped man discover?
(a) Man's power to control nature.
(b) Democracy.
(c) Man's power to create.
(d) The New World.

6. What does The Consolation of Philosophy explain?
(a) How to distinguish God's way of knowing from Man's.
(b) How to reinvent yourself as a religious person.
(c) How to see God's will in events.
(d) How to live in a world without God.

7. What does the dome of the Pantheon proclaim according to Boorstin?
(a) Man's ability to provide houses for his gods.
(b) Man's ability to fill a void with his own creation.
(c) Man's ability to defy gravity in building.
(d) Man's ability to enclose a sacred precinct.

8. What should be the outcome of art according to the Byron epigraph?
(a) Heroic beauty.
(b) Replacement of God.
(c) Perfection of human nature.
(d) Emulation of God.

9. On what was Roman architecture based according to Boorstin?
(a) The human body.
(b) The ideals of the philosophers.
(c) The harmony of the spheres.
(d) The symmetries in nature.

10. What did the dithyramb and its derivatives do in Greek history?
(a) Define Greek metaphysics.
(b) Provide a foundation for mathematical logic.
(c) Glorify Greece.
(d) Explore the territories around Greece.

11. In what does Boorstin say Pantagruel luxuriates?
(a) Sadism.
(b) Divine sensualism.
(c) Devotion.
(d) Vulgarity.

12. Of what is The Odyssey a parable according to Boorstin?
(a) The mystery of warfare.
(b) The mystery of language.
(c) The mystery of death.
(d) The mystery of creation.

13. For what does Boorstin say the Pyramids were built in Egypt?
(a) Proclaiming the Egyptians' power as a people.
(b) Challenging the gods.
(c) Housing the dead pharaohs.
(d) Measuring the progress of the heavens.

14. What was depicted in the first images?
(a) The landscape.
(b) Animals.
(c) Men.
(d) Abstract symbols.

15. What did Greeks discover through drama according to Boorstin?
(a) The laws of fate.
(b) Heroes of myth.
(c) The laws of the state.
(d) Themselves.

Short Answer Questions

1. What does the third-eye represent in Hindu art?

2. Who was the first divinity according to the Rig Veda?

3. What does Boorstin say was absent from the Decameron?

4. What does Boorstin say man discovered in Section 24: The Birth of the Spectator?

5. What did Saint Ambrose invent?

(see the answer keys)

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