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

Multiple Choice Questions

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

2. In psychoanalytic treatment, what happens during transference?
(a) The patient "transfers" on to the analyst feelings she or he experiences.
(b) The analyst "transfers" on to the patient the diagnosis.
(c) The analyst "transfers" on to the patient the conflicts she or he suffers from.
(d) The patient "transfers" on to the analyst the conflicts she or he suffers from.

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

4. According to Eagleton, structuralism has proved that there is nothing _____ about codes.
(a) Guilty.
(b) Evaluative.
(c) Progressive.
(d) Innocent.

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

6. According to Eagleton, the French structural anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss did pioneering work on what?
(a) Religion.
(b) Myth.
(c) Language.
(d) Philosophy.

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

8. What are the three points Eagleton notes about the method of structuralism?
(a) It is evaluative not analytic; it refuses obvious meaning of the text; and the narrative content is its meaning.
(b) It is idealistic not rational; it doesn't understand the obvious meaning of the text; and the narrative content is its meaning.
(c) It is analytic not evaluative; it refuses obvious meaning of the text; and the content of the narrative is its structure.
(d) It is rational not idealistic; it accepts the obvious meaning of the text; and the content of the narrative is its structure.

9. According to the feminist philosopher Julia Kristeva, the language of the semiotic is a means of what?
(a) Understanding the symbolic order.
(b) Affirming the symbolic order.
(c) Undermining the symbolic order.
(d) Reproducing the symbolic order.

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

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

12. What is the name of the Yale theorist who believed that all language is metaphorical?
(a) Northrop Frye.
(b) Paul de Man.
(c) Julia Kristeva.
(d) Michel Foucault.

13. The English philosopher J. L. Austin saw language as what?
(a) Penultimate.
(b) Performative.
(c) Progressive.
(d) Pejorative.

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

15. Why is structuralism "anti-humanist," for Eagleton?
(a) Because it rejected the myth that meaning begins and ends with individual experience.
(b) Because it rejected the myth the individual experience begins and ends with structure.
(c) Because it rejected the myth that humanity was humane.
(d) Because it rejected the myth that individuality was humanist.

Short Answer Questions

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

2. 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?

3. According to Sigmund Freud, what is the name of the complex whereby a child experiences an unconscious desire for sexual union with its same sex parent?

4. According to Eagleton, why is it an illusion to think that he can be present to us in what he says and writes?

5. How did post-structuralism respond to France's student movement's failed attempt to break state power?

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