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

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

3. What does the "fulfillment" or comblement of the title refer to?

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

5. What does the term "alteration" refer to in this section of the text?

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

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

4. 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?

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

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

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

8. 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?

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

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

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

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?

Essay Topic 3

In I-Love-You, the author claims that this utterance is on the side of expenditure (pg. 154.) Likewise, he sees the lover as a figure of expenditure (Expenditure, pg. 84.)

- Define the word "expenditure."

- Discuss I-Love-You and the lover's relation to expenditure.

- What is the result of excessive expenditure for the lover?

(see the answer keys)

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