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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. 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 be able to see that poetry didn't exist by looking at its 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 not know whether it was a piece of poetry or ordinary language.
(d) That we would be able to learn that it was a piece of poetry by looking at the language.

2. What date does Eagleton settle on as the "beginnings of the transformation which has taken over literary theory in this century"?
(a) 1977.
(b) 1937.
(c) 1957.
(d) 1917.

3. 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 facts.
(b) The content.
(c) The context.
(d) The ideas.

4. What is "imaginative" literature or literature that is not necessarily true?
(a) Memoir.
(b) Biography.
(c) Fiction.
(d) Nonfiction.

5. For Eagleton, how did the romantics usher a "forestalling of reasoned critical enquiry"?
(a) Because the text was regarded as a reflection of society that you either saw or didn't see.
(b) Because the symbol was regarded as an absolute spiritual truth that you either saw or didn't see.
(c) Because the image was seen as material reality that you saw immediately.
(d) Because the word was seen as a refleciton of religious truths that you either saw or didn't see.

Short Answer Questions

1. The distinction between fact and fiction in defining literature is what?

2. What word does Eagleton discuss that is both a descriptive term to mean "literally untrue" as well as an evaluative term to mean "visionary" or "inventive"?

3. Eagleton argues that if literature includes much factual writing, it also excludes "quite a lot of" what?

4. Eagleton writes that "New Criticism was the ideology of an ________, _______intelligentsia who reinvented in literature what they could not locate in reality."

5. What "twin impacts" does Eagleton cite in the mid-Victorian period that was particularly worrisome to the ruling class?

(see the answer key)

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