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. Who said there was no one in the world who was less able to conceal his emotion than Kant?

2. Who did Groddeck say staged the drama of disease?

3. What problems did Victorian cancer patients describe in their lives?

4. In ancient times, what did people believe most often caused disease?

5. When did Keats die?

Short Essay Questions

1. How did the contrast between passions change according to Sontag in Chapter 6?

2. What observations did Galen make regarding women who got breast cancer?

3. In Chapter 5, what example does Sontag present of how cancer was viewed as a disease that caused a person to finally behave well?

4. How did Kafka describe TB?

5. Why were nineteenth-century cancer patients believed to get cancer, and what advice might they be given?

6. How did the fantasies about TB in the nineteenth century relate to ideals of capitalist accumulation?

7. In Death in Venice, how did disease affect Gustav von Achenbach?

8. How does cancer take its controlling metaphors from the language of warfare?

9. What did Kant say about passion and cancer?

10. How were the cancer-prone and the TB-prone persons described in Chapter 5?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Military metaphors were often used for cancer. What were some military metaphors that were used for cancer? Why were military metaphors used for cancer?

Essay Topic 2

Culture and psychology were used to explain illness. How were culture and psychology used to explain illness? What did psychologizing disease seem to provide? What did it seem to undermine?

Essay Topic 3

Genre is a means of classifying literature. What is the genre of the novel? Why is it not a treatise?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 779 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample