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This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through Chapter 2, Phenomenology, Hermeneutics, Reception Theory.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. According to Eagleton, why did the Russian formalists NOT see a literary work as a vehicle for ideas, reflection of reality, or transcendental truth?
(a) Because they saw language as a mode of speech for the wealthy.
(b) Because they saw language as words and not objects or feelings.
(c) Because they saw language as potentially empowering the masses.
(d) Because they saw language as obtuse, vague, and ephemeral.

2. 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 learn that it was a piece of poetry by looking at the language.
(b) That we would be able to see that poetry didn't exist by looking at 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 tell that it was a piece of poetry regardless of access to its language.

3. What is the German word for how reality is not objective, but experienced and organized by an individual subject?
(a) Vorgeschichte.
(b) Lebenswelt.
(c) Bildungsroman.
(d) Wendepunkt.

4. The German philosopher Edmund Husserl argued that objects can be regarded as things ______ by consciousness.
(a) Evaluated.
(b) Understood.
(c) Intended.
(d) Realized.

5. 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.

Short Answer Questions

1. What is the name of the critic from the Constance school of reception aesthetics and the author of "The Act of Reading" who Eagleton discusses at length?

2. What role does reception theory examine?

3. According to the Russian formalist Osip Brik, Pushkin's "Eugene Onegin" would have been written if Pushkin had what?

4. According to Eagleton, why is E.D. Hirsch able to maintain his view that literary meaning is absolute and resistant to historical change?

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

(see the answer key)

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