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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. During the last decades of the eighteenth-century, the word prosaic begins to acquire what a kind of connotation?
(a) A familiar connotation.
(b) A unfamiliar connotation.
(c) A positive connotation.
(d) A negative connotation.

2. What is the name of the Russian formalist who published the pioneering essay that is the "beginnings of the transformation which has taken over literary theory in this century"?
(a) Alexander Pushkin.
(b) Viktor Shklovsky.
(c) Leo Tolstoy.
(d) Fyodor Dostoevsky.

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

4. Who was glad to abandon the "feminine vagaries of literature" in favor of penning war propaganda?
(a) George Gordon.
(b) Lord Byron.
(c) Walter Raleigh.
(d) Matthew Arnold.

5. According to Eagleton, what does his book try to demonstrate about a body of literary theory?
(a) That there is one body of literary theory that springs from and is applicable to literature alone.
(b) That there is no body of literary theory that springs from or is applicable to literature alone.
(c) That there is sometimes a body of literary theory that springs from and is applicable to literature alone.
(d) That there are several bodies of literary theory that spring from and is applicable to literature alone.

Short Answer Questions

1. According to Eagleton, in the romantic aesthetic theory the meaning of the word literature became what?

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

3. How many decades, according to Eagleton, has there been a "striking proliferation of literary theory" since the publication of the Russian formalist's pioneering essay?

4. Eagleton argues that the readership his book has attracted dispels the notion that literary theory is what?

5. According to Eagleton, what happens when literary theory becomes "turgidly unreadable"?

(see the answer key)

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