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This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through Chapter 4, Post-Structuralism.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. Eagleton provides the analogy of finding a "scrap of writing from a long-vanished civilization" to make what point about deciphering its meaning?
(a) That we would not know whether it was a piece of poetry or ordinary language.
(b) That we would be able to tell that it was a piece of poetry regardless of access to its language.
(c) That we would be able to see that poetry didn't exist by looking at its language.
(d) That we would be able to learn that it was a piece of poetry by looking at the language.

2. How are "writable" texts different from ones that can be read?
(a) Writable texts encourage the reader/critic to become a producer of the text.
(b) Writable texts encourage the author/writer to reject the reader/critic of the text.
(c) Writable texts encourage the author/writer to become the reader/critic of the text.
(d) Writable texts encourage the reader/critic to become a consumer of the text.

3. The transition from structuralism to post-structuralism is partly in response to what movement?
(a) Christian movement.
(b) Marxist's movement.
(c) Student movement.
(d) Women's movement.

4. What is the name Edmund Husserl gave to his philosophical method?
(a) Hermeneutics.
(b) New criticism.
(c) Reception theory.
(d) Phenomenology.

5. What novel by John Updike does Eagleton discuss from the position of reception theory?
(a) Couples.
(b) Of the Farm.
(c) Rabbit Run.
(d) Terrorist.

Short Answer Questions

1. Eagleton argues that for Stanley Fish, what a text "does" to us is a matter of what we do to what?

2. For Eagleton, Gadamer's theory only holds if one makes what "enormous assumption"?

3. What three sequential stages does Eagleton point out in the development of modern literary theory?

4. According to Viktor Shklovsky, what novel was "the most typical novel in world literature" because it impeded its own story-line so that it never gets off the ground?

5. What role does reception theory examine?

(see the answer key)

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