View a FREE sample

This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What term is used in the Introduction means not politically radical, and hence generally evasive and non-committal on political issues?
(a) Socialists.
(b) Conservative.
(c) Communists.
(d) Liberal.

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

3. According to the narrator in the Introduction, what two introductions to theory sources deal with the problems of teaching or learning theory?
(a) Literary Studies in Action and Texts and Contexts.
(b) The Use of English and The English Review.
(c) After Theory and The Critical Decade.
(d) The Oval Portrait and The End of English.

4. The notion of the ________, posited by Levi-Strauss, denoting the minimal units of narrative "sense," is formed on the analogy of the morpheme, which, in linguistics, is the ________ unit of grammatical sense.
(a) Semantics / largest.
(b) Bliss / largest.
(c) Rhetoric / moderate.
(d) mytheme / smallest.

5. What does Peter Barry say is the topic of the book Beginning Theory?
(a) Modern theory.
(b) Literary theory.
(c) Historical theory.
(d) English studies.

Short Answer Questions

1. 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."

2. Peter Barry explains that ________'s most significant thinking was contained in the essays "The Function of Criticism at the Present Time" and "The Study of Poetry."

3. 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.

4. The chapter "Feminist Criticism" informs the reader that "for her notion of the basic opposition between semiotic and the symbolic Kristeva was indebted to Jacques Lacan and his distinction between two realms, the ________ and the ________.

5. All of the following religious believers were not allowed to attend university in England in the nineteenth century except which one?

Short Essay Questions

1. Explain what author Peter Barry means when he says the frame of mind he would recommend his readers is threefold.

2. Explain what Peter Barry means when he informs the reader "that it is much better to read intensely in theory than to read widely".

3. In which way is post-structuralism more fundamental than structuralism?

4. What did Ferdinand de Saussure say about linguistic structures which the structuralists found so interesting?

5. What is the most basic difference between liberal humanist and structuralist reading?

6. Discuss what higher education was like in England until the first quarter of the nineteenth century, according to the chapter titled "Theory Before Theory--Liberal Humanism."

7. Explain F.D. Maurice's opinions of literature as detailed in the chapter "Theory Before Theory--Liberal Humanism."

8. How does Disneyland fit into the concept of hyperreality according to Baurdrillard?

9. Why was Freudian interpretation interesting to literary critics?

10. What is "ecriture feminine"?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 939 words (approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample