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This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through Chapter 4, Post-Structuralism.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. According to Eagleton, what "staggering fact" could not be put right by a theoretical technique?
(a) That there was no time in history where women were not considered superior.
(b) There was no time in history where women and men were antagonists.
(c) There was no time in history where half of the human race fought for equality.
(d) That there was no time in history where half of the human race was not considered inferior.

2. From a structuralist perspective, why could literature could no longer claim to be a unique discourse?
(a) Because structures could be found in all texts.
(b) Because structures considered literature a base form of discourse.
(c) Because structures placed a hierarchy on texts other than literature.
(d) Because structures could not be found in literature.

3. Who is the key figure in the Victorian period Eagleton cites as "preternaturally aware of the needs of his social class"?
(a) William Morris.
(b) George Gordon.
(c) Matthew Arnold.
(d) Percy Shelley.

4. According to Eagleton, "Literary Theory: An Introduction" has managed to reach readers beyond __________.
(a) Historians.
(b) Academia.
(c) Literature.
(d) Students.

5. 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) Leo Tolstoy.
(b) Viktor Shklovsky.
(c) Alexander Pushkin.
(d) Fyodor Dostoevsky.

Short Answer 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?

2. For the literary theorist, Mikhail Bakhtin, "linguistic community" was what kind of society?

3. What is the example Eagleton provides of a metalanguage, where one sign-system denotes another sign-system?

4. According to Eagleton, formalism is the application of what to the study of literature?

5. According to Eagleton, William Empson "insists on treating poetry as a species of ______language."

(see the answer key)

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