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This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through Introduction: What is Literature?.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. For Eagleton, opposition between "historical" and "artistic" truth does NOT apply to what?
(a) Middle English.
(b) Early Icelandic sagas.
(c) Fairy-tales.
(d) Late Victorian novels.

2. According to Eagleton, the sentence "this is awfully squiggly handwriting" from Knut Hamsun's "Hunger" tells him its literary because of what reason?
(a) The content.
(b) The facts.
(c) The ideas.
(d) The context.

3. According to Eagleton, what kind of thought does literary education NOT encourage?
(a) Rational thought.
(b) Analytical thought.
(c) Creative thought.
(d) Irrational thought.

4. According to Eagleton, Gibbon and the authors of Genesis share what in common?
(a) Both wrote historical truth that is read as fiction.
(b) Both wrote fiction that is read as historical fact.
(c) Both wrote fiction that is read as fact by some and fiction by others.
(d) They both thought they were writing historical truth, but are read as fact by some and fiction by others.

5. The distinction between fact and fiction in defining literature is what?
(a) Important.
(b) Difficult.
(c) Questionable.
(d) Complicated.

Short Answer Questions

1. According to Eagleton, what kind of age do we live in, where "meaning, like everything else, is expected to be instantly consumable"?

2. For the economist Eagleton discusses, "those economists who dislike theory or claimed to get along better without it" were what?

3. For Eagleton, hostility toward theory means what?

4. Why is the example Eagleton gives of the sign in the London Underground system that "dogs must be carried on the escalator" a case of estrangement?

5. What year did Terry Eagleton's "Literary Theory: An Introduction" first appear?

(see the answer key)

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