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This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. How did post-structuralism respond to France's student movement's failed attempt to break state power?
(a) Post-structuralism sought to create a more powerful language.
(b) Post-structuralism sought to break state power.
(c) Post-structuralism sought to break the structures of language.
(d) Post-structuralism sought to create a free language.

2. What does Jacques Derrida label any thought system which depends on an unassailable foundation?
(a) Mythical.
(b) Philosophical.
(c) Metaphysical.
(d) Teleological.

3. Why should politics engage with questions of sexual ideology, according to Eagleton?
(a) Because sexism and gender roles are not deeply integrated in human experience.
(b) Because sexism and gender roles are deeply integrated in human experience.
(c) Because sexism and gender roles do not exist in human experience.
(d) Because sexism and gender roles should persist in human experience.

4. According to Eagleton, what is the oldest form of literary criticism?
(a) Religion.
(b) Sociology.
(c) Philosophy.
(d) Rhetoric.

5. What is the name of the author whose story "Sarrasine" Roland Barthes examines in "S/Z"?
(a) Nabokov.
(b) Tolstoy.
(c) Balzac.
(d) Eliot.

6. Jacques Lacan argues that like _______ desire emerges from a lack, which it strives to fulfill.
(a) Faith.
(b) Myth.
(c) Language.
(d) Identity.

7. According to Eagleton, why is Sigmund Freud's discussion of women problematic?
(a) Because of his sexist and demeaning attitudes toward women.
(b) Because of his refusal to discuss women in his work.
(c) Because of his troubling personal relationships.
(d) Because of his glorification of men in his work.

8. What aspect of Jacques Lacan's work is of particular interest to literary theorists?
(a) Lacan's work on religion.
(b) Lacan's work on history.
(c) Lacan's work on women.
(d) Lacan's work on language.

9. According to Eagleton, structuralism exposed what "shocking truth"?
(a) That even our most intimate experience is the effect of a structure.
(b) That even our most painful experience is outside the realm of structure.
(c) That even our most pleasurable experience is outside the realm of structure.
(d) The even our most private thoughts is caused by structure.

10. According to Eagleton, "the tactic of _________criticism ... is to show how texts come to embarrass their own ruling systems of logic."
(a) Deconstructive.
(b) Feminist.
(c) Psychoanalytic.
(d) Post-structuralist.

11. According to Eagleton, why did the women's movement reject the economic focus of classical Marxist thought?
(a) Because it failed to place sexual ideology at the heart of its theory and practice.
(b) Because it succeeded in placing sexual ideology at the heart of its theory and practice.
(c) Because it failed to place material conditions over sexual ideology at the heart of its theory and practice.
(d) Because it placed sexual ideology over the material conditions at the heart of its theory and practice.

12. According to Sigmund Freud, what is the process by which human beings cope with desires they cannot fulfill by directing them towards a more socially valued goal?
(a) Transference.
(b) Sublimation.
(c) Repression.
(d) Idealization.

13. According to Eagleton, literary theorists "are not so much ______of doctrine as ________of a discourse."
(a) Purveyors; custodians.
(b) Critics; creators.
(c) Writers; readers.
(d) Teachers; students.

14. What does Sigmund Freud see as the "royal road" to the unconscious?
(a) Education.
(b) Sex.
(c) Therapy.
(d) Dreams.

15. According to the Soviet semiotician Yury Lotman, a poetic text is "semantically _________."
(a) Irrational.
(b) Saturated.
(c) Transparent.
(d) Rational.

Short Answer Questions

1. Who is the founder of modern structural linguistics?

2. For Jacques Lacan, "meaning is always in some sense an _______."

3. How are "writable" texts different from ones that can be read?

4. According to Eagleton, structuralism maintains that "individual units of any system have meaning only by virtue of" what?

5. According to Sigmund Freud, what distinguishes humans from other animals?

(see the answer keys)

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