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

Short Answer Questions

1. Which of the following does Rushdie posit may have connected Shakespeare to Cervantes?

2. What message does Vonnegut’s work assert is encoded in Stonehenge?

3. In which of the following districts of Bombay does Rushdie report having lived?

4. Which of the following is posited to have written Don Quixote?

5. The phrase “sui generis” most nearly means which of the following?

Short Essay Questions

1. What does Rushdie assert that falling in love with stories awakens in children?

2. To what does the “Lakshman rekha” refer?

3. Why does Rushdie note that the Philip Roth Lecture he gives takes Roth as its topic?

4. What, from context, does Rushdie mean by saying “English, I understood, could be chutnified” (91)?

5. What answer to the question of difficult reading does Rushdie propose?

6. Why is Rushdie grateful for the mixed reception of his first published novel?

7. Why does Rushdie note it took him so long to write his second published novel as it did?

8. For what reason does Rushdie report Scheherazade pled for her life to be spared by her husband?

9. What does Rushdie remark the phase “so it goes” is used to euphemize?

10. In what way does Rushdie contrast the animal fables of “the Eastern canon” with those represented by Aesop?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Similarly, the lengths of chapters influence reading. What pattern of chapter-length is present in the anthology, if any? What effect does the length of chapters have on the reading? How is the effect achieved?

Essay Topic 2

Readerly attention focuses on the following passage: “I believe that the books and stories we fall in love with make us who we are, or, not to claim too much, that the act of falling in love with a book or story changes us in some way, and the beloved tale becomes a part of our picture of the world, a part of the way in which we understand things and make judgements and choices in our daily lives” (3). Does the passage bear out? What in the anthology and in your experience suggests as much? How does it do so?

Essay Topic 3

Assuming that Languages of Truth should be standard reading for a given class and level, what class and what level? Why that class and why that level? What in the text suggests as much, and how does it do so?

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