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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. What does the lover acknowledge in This can't go on/Unbearable?

2. What does the lover give the other when he offers a gift?

3. What does that composer claim regarding tears?

4. What do a person's tears prove to him?

5. How does Werther fall in love with Charlotte in the section "Show me whom to desire/Induction?"

Short Essay Questions

1. "I am crazy"/Mad: How is the lover's madness metaphorical?

2. How does the section Fade-Out connect the loved beings withdrawal with the Mother?

3. In Love's Languor/Languor, how is the Satyr contrasted with languor?

4. In The Ghost Ship/Errantry, why is the lover doomed to wander?

5. Describe the lover's process of identification, as seen in the character Werther, in the section entitled Identifications.

6. In Inexpressible Love/To Write, what does the narrator suggest when he says "I cannot write myself"?

7. Describe the scenario in At Fault/Faults between the lover and the loved one at the train station.

8. Novel/Drama: Why does the form in which a love story is told matter?

9. Briefly describe the process of induction in the figure "Show me whom to desire"/Induction.

10. Describe the lover's struggle with demons in "We are our own demons"/Demons.

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

The other's absence is an important theme in the text. It surfaces in figures such as Absence, Anxiety, and Waiting. Discuss how the lover defines himself through absence:

- What does it mean that amorous absence functions in a single direction? (Absence, pg. 13)

- Who carries out the discourse of absence historically and what does this mean for the lover?

- What position does the other occupy in this dynamic?

- How does the other's absence affect the lover? (Anxiety, pg. 29)

- In what way is the absent other associated with truth? (Waiting, pg. 37)

Essay Topic 2

On the first page of the book, the author claims that the lover's discourse functions as an affirmation. He discusses this affirmation again in Affirmation (pg. 22), Alone (p. 210) and Signs (p. 214).

- What is the status of love and of the lover's discourse in society?

- What is it defining itself against and why? Is it excluded? How?

- Why is love classified as "intractable"?

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?

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