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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. According to Eagleton, what is ironic about those who complain of the difficulty of literary theory?
(a) "That those who complain are often civilised and educated."
(b) "That those who complain are often uncivilised and uneducated."
(c) "That those who complain would expect to understand a textbook of biology or chemical engineering."
(d) "That those who complain would not expect to understand a textbook of biology or chemical engineering."

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?
(a) Because the language is prosaic and straightforward.
(b) Because the statement is a directive where people who do not follow are estranged from society.
(c) Because the directive is unambigious and therefore inherently meaningful.
(d) Because of the ambiguities inherent in the statement, which raises questions about its meaning.

3. According to Eagleton, "In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, the word ______seems to have been used about true and fictional events."
(a) Novel.
(b) Theory.
(c) News.
(d) Memoir.

4. What is the name of the pioneering essay the Russian formalist wrote that is the "beginnings of the transformation which has taken over literary theory in this century"?
(a) Theory as Practise.
(b) Literature as Image.
(c) Film as Thought.
(d) Art as Device.

5. What example from the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries does Eagleton provide that was not considered purely factual?
(a) Novels.
(b) Sermons.
(c) Decrees.
(d) News.

Short Answer Questions

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

2. According to Eagleton, the formalists were not out to define literature but they were out to define what?

3. According to Eagleton, what becomes the "panacea for all problems" as part of the romantics' aesthetic theory at the turn of the eighteenth century?

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

5. 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"?

(see the answer key)

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