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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. What are the advantages of the act of annulment?
(a) The lover retreats into the idea of love when threatened by injury or jealousy.
(b) The lover is never without the attentions of the beloved.
(c) The lover can take on a new identity.
(d) The lover can seek out a new love interest.

2. In "Catastrophe," what causes the lover's panic?
(a) The inability to recover the self when the lover is absent.
(b) The potential for rejection.
(c) The other's loss of memory.
(d) The lover's fear of intimacy.

3. To whom is the narrator's asceticism addressed?
(a) To the mother.
(b) To the other (the one who is loved).
(c) To society.
(d) To those friends who doubt the depth of his feelings.

4. When does this desire affect the subject?
(a) When the subject is irritated.
(b) When the subject is in a state of despair or fulfillment.
(c) When the subject is bored.
(d) When the subject is in a state of raw panic.

5. According to the author, who carries out the "discourse of absence" historically?
(a) The Woman.
(b) The father.
(c) The Man.
(d) The mother.

Short Answer Questions

1. The section entitled "Catastrophe" refers to two systems of despair. What are they?

2. "Connivance" describes a situation of connivance that occurs between which two people?

3. When the narrator states that "the other whom I love...is atopos," what does he mean?

4. In the section on agony, to what does the narrator compare the steady progress of the emotional state he experiences?

5. In "Events, Setbacks and Annoyances," which of the following describes the effect of "contingencies" on the amorous subject?

Short Essay Questions

1. In Waiting, how is "the scenography of waiting" structured?

2. How does Catastrophe discuss the "amorous catastrophe" experienced by the lover?

3. In "I have an Other-ache"/Compassion, in relation to the other's suffering, the lover sees himself as a Mother, but an insufficient one-why?

4. In Laetitia/To Circumscribe, what are two pleasures the narrator dreams of, and which one does he aspire to.

5. How does the mother-child relationship relate to the lover's feelings about the other's absence?

6. What is the lover's attitude towards choice in "What is to be done?"/Behavior?

7. In The Absent One/Absence, how does the lover interpret the other's absence?

8. In "All the delights of the earth"/Fulfillment, what does the author mean when he says that fulfillments are not spoken?

9. Discuss the example of Werther's love for Charlotte that the author uses to explain annulment in To Love Love/Annulment.

10. In Agony/Anxiety, why does the author compare the lover to a psychotic who fears a breakdown?

(see the answer keys)

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