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This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What does the narrator say the reader will have the most difficulty as the result of what?
(a) The way theory was created.
(b) The way theory is told.
(c) The way theory is written.
(d) The way theory is taught.

2. According to Plato, "a state of language anterior to the Word" is called ________.
(a) Chora.
(b) Organic form.
(c) Surrealism.
(d) Semiotic.

3. Who said the following quote found in the chapter titled Theory Before Theory--Liberal Humanism: "We are told that the study of literature 'cultivates the taste, educates the sympathies and enlarges the mind'"?
(a) Oscar Wilde.
(b) Elie Wiesel.
(c) Lewis Carroll.
(d) Edward Freeman.

4. David Lodge, Professor of English at Birmingham, combined the ideas of structuralism with more traditional approaches in which one of his books?
(a) Beginning Structuralism.
(b) Beyond Structuralism.
(c) Working with Structuralism.
(d) Transforming Structuralism.

5. What example did Saussure use to explain what he meant by saying that there are no intrinsic, fixed meanings in language?
(a) 1984.
(b) Ulysses.
(c) Animal Farm.
(d) 8.25 Geneva to Paris.

6. In the chapter titled Structuralism, Saussure used the terms ________ and ________ to signify language as a system or structure on the one hand, and any given utterance in that language on the other.
(a) Paradigm / paradigmatic.
(b) Langue / parole.
(c) Humanism / icon.
(d) Logocentrism / margin.

7. In the chapter titled "Feminist Criticism," which group did author Peter Barry say maintained a major interest in traditional critical concepts like theme, motif, and characterization?
(a) The Anglo-Americans.
(b) The Native Americans.
(c) The African Americans.
(d) The American Indians.

8. In Julia Kristeva's essay "The System and the Speaking Subject," the ________ aspect is associated with authority, order, fathers, repression, and control.
(a) Natural.
(b) Symbolic.
(c) Semiotic.
(d) Imaginary.

9. Who was credited as being a key figure in the development of modern approaches to language study in the chapter titled Structuralism?
(a) Saki.
(b) Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
(c) Thomas de Quincey.
(d) Ferdinand de Saussure.

10. Who does Peter Barry claim described the feminist change in the late 1970s as a shift of attention from "andro-texts" to "gyno-texts"?
(a) Katherine Mansfield.
(b) Jane Austen.
(c) Daisy Bates.
(d) Elaine Showalter.

11. The chapter titled "Postmodernism" states the term "postmodernism" was used in the 1930s, but its current sense and vogue can be said to have begun with ________'s "The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge."
(a) L.S. Lowry.
(b) Jean Baudrillard.
(c) Jean-Francois Lyotard.
(d) Mies van der Rohe.

12. Which of the following term best can be defined as one in which we cannot know where we are, since all the concepts which previously defined the center, and hence also the margins, have been "deconstructed," or undermined?
(a) Decentered universe.
(b) Binary oppositions.
(c) Absurdism.
(d) Allegorical Interpretation.

13. All of the following religious believers were not allowed to attend university in England in the nineteenth century except which one?
(a) Catholic.
(b) Jewish.
(c) Atheist.
(d) Anglican.

14. The narrator explains in the chapter "Psychoanalytic Criticism" that distrust of Freud has grown in recent years, partly as a result of his mainly negative views on ________.
(a) Children.
(b) Americans.
(c) Men.
(d) Women.

15. Who was the first critic to develop a "reader-centered" approach to literature?
(a) Sophocles.
(b) Plato.
(c) Aristotle.
(d) Sigmund Freud.

Short Answer Questions

1. Sigmund Freud believed that a ________ was an escape-hatch or safety-valve through which repressed desires, fears, or memories seek an outlet into the conscious mind.

2. Lacan argues that the two "dream work" mechanisms identified by Freud correspond to the basic poles of language, identified by the linguist Roman Jakobson, to ________ and ________.

3. Who was the major theorist of postmodernism and French writer of the book "Simulations"?

4. Which of the following best fits the definition of a discipline which has always been inherently confident about the possibility of establishing objective knowledge?

5. Sigmund Freud connects infantile sexuality to the ________, in which the male infant conceives the desire to eliminate the father and become the sexual partner of the mother.

(see the answer keys)

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