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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 does the lover respond to accidental contact with the desired being in the section entitled "When my finger accidentally..."?

2. What does the subtitle of this section, "to circumscribe," refer to?

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

4. How is the heart described in the section entitled "The Heart?"

5. What three things can shatter the ideal and protected Image of the lover according to the author?

Short Essay Questions

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

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

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

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

5. Describe the lover's predicament with regard to understanding love in "I want to understand."

6. In Atopos, how does the lover see himself in relation to the other?

7. Describe the two affirmations of love discussed at the end of the section entitled Intractable/Affirmation.

8. In "Tutti Sistemati"/Pigeonholed, how does the lover perceive the system inhabited by others?

9. In Atopos, how does the lover associate the other with innocence?

10. In "When my finger accidentally. . ."/Contacts, what does the author imagine Werther's reaction to be when he accidentally touches Charlotte?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

"I love you" is a peculiar phrase because, as the author states in I-Love-You (pg. 147), it is the metaphor of nothing else: it only has meaning at the moment it is uttered. Analyze the author's argument in this section.

- How does he describe the utterance in linguistic terms, i.e. how does it fit into language?

- What are the various responses to this utterance, both acceptable and unacceptable to the lover's ears?

- How is I-love-you an "active force," and against what?

Essay Topic 2

Discuss the idea of the figure that Roland Barthes outlines in the beginning of the book.

- What is a figure, according to his definition?

- Why did he choose this structure for the text?

- How do figures function, generally, and in the context of the lover's discourse?

Essay Topic 3

In the short paragraph that precedes the author's discussion of figures, he writes that "the lover is not to be reduced to a single symptomal subject."

- Explain what the author means when he says that the lover is not just a single individual.

- Why does the author choose to write with the first person pronoun ("I") and what does it show or signify?

- How does the lover speak and for whom is the discourse intended?

(see the answer keys)

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