View a FREE sample

This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. 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.

2. The narrator suggests that liberal humanists believe in ________ as something fixed and constant which great literature expresses.

3. All of the following authors were considered some of the literary "high priests" of the modernist movement according to the narrator in the chapter titled "Postmodernism," except for which one?

4. Whom does author Peter Barry say was a French psychoanalyst whose work had an extraordinary influence upon many aspects of recent literary theory and who began his career by taking a medical degree and then training in psychiatry in the 1920s?

5. What example did Saussure use to explain what he meant by saying that there are no intrinsic, fixed meanings in language?

Short Essay Questions

1. 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?

2. What is a theoretical difference between structuralist and post-structuralist?

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

4. What does the formula SQ3R mean? Explain.

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

6. Why was Freudian interpretation interesting to literary critics?

7. How is French feminism different from American feminism?

8. Explain the Oedipus complex of Sigmund Freud.

9. What is "ecriture feminine"?

10. Do liberal humanists use the term "human nature"? Explain.

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Discuss how women are represented by both men and women in a piece of literature that you have read in the past. Explain how this representation of women would be viewed by feminist critics.

Essay Topic 2

Explain Edgar Allan Poe's impact on structuralism. Be sure to cite Poe's literary works and discuss how they fit into the structuralist theory.

Essay Topic 3

Explain how Peter Barry draws a parallel between gay and lesbian theory.

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 790 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample