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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. "Intractable/Affirmation" discusses which of the following themes?

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

3. The lover compares his gaze on the other's body to which of the following things?

4. In this section, how is the term "karma" defined?

5. According to the author, what is always involved in every discourse on love, whether philosophical, gnomic, lyric, or novelistic?

Short Essay Questions

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

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

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

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

5. 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?

6. Describe the effect that the lover hope to achieve by adopting ascetic behavior.

7. In Connivance, what position does the other (the object of desire) occupy in the lover's conversation with his rival?

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

9. In the section called The Tip of the Nose/Alteration, the author uses a scene between Werther and Charlotte from the novel Werther to represent the lover's change in attitude toward the loved one. What happens in this scene and what does it demonstrate?

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

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

Continuing with the theme of language, discuss the myth that love can be "sublimated in aesthetic creation" in "To Write" (pg. 97.)

- Outline the two myths (Socratic and romantic), that the author mentions.

- Discuss the examples of the failure of amorous creation such as Werther's drawing and the haiku. Why do these attempts fail?

- What obstructs amorous writing? What does the author mean when he says that language is both "too much" and "too little?"

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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