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This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through Chapter 1, Rise of the English.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What person is NOT included in the ranks of Russian formalists?
(a) Heinrich Wolffin.
(b) Boris Tomashevsky.
(c) Roman Jakobson.
(d) Viktor Shklovsky.

2. Eagleton argues that reading literature in a new critical way was a recipe for what?
(a) Political inertia.
(b) Political ambition.
(c) Political consciousness.
(d) Political progress.

3. According to Eagleton, the formalists were not out to define literature but they were out to define what?
(a) Inventiveness.
(b) Criticism.
(c) Literariness.
(d) Realism.

4. According to Eagleton, William Empson "insists on treating poetry as a species of ______language."
(a) Ordinary.
(b) Spectacular.
(c) Religious.
(d) Secular.

5. How far has the "theoretical revolution" spread according to Eagleton?
(a) To the outer circle of critics and readers.
(b) Far beyond the circle of specialists and enthusiasts.
(c) Within the inner circle of critics and readers.
(d) Not beyond the circle of specialists and enthusiasts.

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. 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?

3. According to Eagleton, when did the Russian formalists emerge?

4. What genre of writing does Eagleton provide that is an example of writing that is NOT considered to be literature?

5. What period did our own definition of literature begin to emerge, according to Eagleton?

(see the answer key)

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