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

2. When does this desire affect the subject?

3. In this section, what does the lover hope to achieve by touching the other?

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

5. In "Agony," what forms does the feeling discussed by the author take?

Short Essay Questions

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

2. Briefly describe the lover's sense of engulfment in the section "I am engulfed, I succumb..."/To Be Engulfed.

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

4. Discuss the function of the dark glasses in Dark Glasses/To Hide.

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

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

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

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

9. 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?

10. In "Adorable!," the author notes how the lover sees the other as a Whole; what does he mean?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

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 2

"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 3

The lover goes through a process of identification in Habiliment (pg. 126) and Identification (pg. 129.) This identification structures the lover's view of himself in the love relationship, both through his view of the beloved and of other lovers.

- Describe how the lover identifies with the other. How does his identification present itself?

- How is clothing involved in this process?

- In Identifications (pg. 129), what shape does the lover's identification take? With whom does he identify and why?

- How was this process of identification shown historically?

(see the answer keys)

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