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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 the following terms best fit the following definition: "a form of literary criticism which uses some of the techniques of psychoanalysis in the interpretation of literature"?
(a) Psychoanalytic criticism.
(b) Applied criticism.
(c) Practical criticism.
(d) Impressionistic criticism.

2. What was the term used in the Introduction that is defined as the science of signs?
(a) Phenomenology.
(b) Logocentrism.
(c) Mimesis.
(d) Semiotics.

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

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

5. Who does the narrator say was the founder of a method of studying English which is still the norm today?
(a) Ralph Waldo Emerson.
(b) I.A. Richards.
(c) Samuel Langhorne Clemens.
(d) T.S. Eliot.

Short Answer Questions

1. According to the narrator in the chapter "Psychoanalytic Criticism," who did Sigmund Freud link the situation of Hamlet in the play to?

2. I.A. Richards pioneered the technique called ________ which was also the title of his book in 1929.

3. Jean Baudrillard was associated with what is usually known as ________ according to the narrator.

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.

5. What was another name for the semic code found within the chapter titled Structuralism?

Short Essay Questions

1. Explain how literary theory, after Sir Phillip Sydney, was significantly advanced in the eighteenth century.

2. 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."

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

4. What is "ecriture feminine"?

5. What is the purpose of displacement and condensation?

6. Discuss how J.A. Cuddon describes postmodernism in his "Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory."

7. Why was Freudian interpretation interesting to literary critics?

8. Why was the representation of women in literature felt to be one of the most important forms of socialization?

9. What does the formula SQ3R mean? Explain.

10. In the first half of the twentieth century, who, according to Barry, were the critical names in British literary theory? Who were at Cambridge University in the 1920s and 1930s?

(see the answer keys)

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