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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. Which of F.R. Leavis's teachings was essentially a syllabus, manageable within a year-long undergraduate course?
(a) Great Tradition.
(b) Great American Literature.
(c) Great Explorations.
(d) Great Expectations.

2. Which of the following best fits the definition of a discipline which has always been inherently confident about the possibility of establishing objective knowledge?
(a) Mimesis.
(b) Formalism.
(c) Linguistics.
(d) Hermeneutics.

3. According to the narrator in the Introduction, the term "liberal humanism" became current in what decade?
(a) 1930s.
(b) 1910s.
(c) 1920s.
(d) 1970s.

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 ________.
(a) Reference / referent.
(b) Imaginary / symbolic.
(c) Story / discourse.
(d) Syntagm / syntagmatic.

5. What term suggests a range of negative attributes, such as "non-Marxist" and "non-feminist," and "non-theoretical"?
(a) Humanism.
(b) Absurdism.
(c) Dialogism.
(d) Modernism.

Short Answer Questions

1. Who wrote the following statement on the mythologized misrepresentation of the United States and Disneyland: "All its [the USA's] values are exalted here, in miniature and comic-strip form. Embalmed and pacified"?

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. According to the chapter titled Structuralism, what is another term for "alba," the poetic form dating from the twelfth century in which lovers lament the approach of daybreak?

4. What language does the narrator describe as being a Romance language that takes most of its words directly from Latin, and lacks the reassuring Anglo-Saxon layer of vocabulary?

5. What does Peter Barry say was the earliest work of theory written by Aristotle?

Short Essay Questions

1. What does the formula SQ3R mean? Explain.

2. What is structuralism? Where and when did it begin?

3. What are some of the important characteristics of the literary modernism practice?

4. Who was Jean Baudrillard? How was he associated with "the loss of the real"?

5. Briefly summarize author Peter Barry's own introduction to literary theory as seen in "My own stock-taking" found within the "Introduction."

6. What is "ecriture feminine"?

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

8. According to the "Introduction," what does the saying that "after the moment of theory comes the 'hour' of theory" mean?

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

10. What are the three particular areas that are debated and disagreed upon when it comes to feminist criticism?

(see the answer keys)

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