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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What three neurotic symptoms can a person develop that are the result of internal conflict, according to Sigmund Freud?
(a) Obsession, hysteria, and phobia.
(b) Pain, hysteria, and fatigue.
(c) Obsession, phobia, and depression.
(d) Fatigue, pain, and depression.

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

3. What is the object named literature, according to Eagleton?
(a) The literary canon.
(b) Classic writing.
(c) All writing.
(d) There is no one object.

4. 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?
(a) The Oedipus complex.
(b) The Eros complex.
(c) The Pandora complex.
(d) The Medusa complex.

5. According to Jacques Lacan, what stage does a child first develop an ego?
(a) During the imaginary stage.
(b) During the mirror stage.
(c) During the post-Oedipal stage.
(d) During the Oedipal stage.

6. In American deconstruction, why does literary criticism become an "ironic, uneasy business"?
(a) Because it lays bare the permanence of meaning.
(b) Because it lays bare the physicality of meaning.
(c) Because it lays bare the temporality of meaning.
(d) Because it lays bare the illusoriness of meaning.

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

8. When did Sigmund Freud develop psychoanalysis?
(a) Mid-twentieth century.
(b) Late-twentieth century.
(c) Late-nineteenth century.
(d) Mid-nineteenth century.

9. Why do feminists embrace the work of Jacques Lacan, despite the fact that he was contemptuous of the women's movement?
(a) Because Lacan taught Freudianism.
(b) Because Lacan embraced Freudianism.
(c) Because Lacan rewrote Freudianism.
(d) Because Lacan rejected Freudianism.

10. In structuralism, the relationship between the sign and what it refers to is what?
(a) Identical.
(b) Necessary.
(c) Arbitrary.
(d) Opposite.

11. What is the "literary canon"?
(a) Writing selected as representative of real life.
(b) Writing excluded from a certain discourse.
(c) Writing selected as amenable to a certain discourse.
(d) Writing selected as more valuable than real life.

12. What does Sigmund Freud call the first stage of sexual life?
(a) The phallic stage.
(b) The erogenous stage.
(c) The anal stage.
(d) The oral stage.

13. According to Eagleton, why did intellectuals preoccupy themselves with language in the late-nineteenth and twentieth centuries?
(a) Because discourse had become elevated by intellectuals.
(b) Because discourse had become irrelevant in industrial society.
(c) Because discourse had become degraded to an instrument of industrial capitalism.
(d) Because discourse had become an instrument of opposition in academia.

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

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

Short Answer Questions

1. According to Eagleton, the Western philosophical tradition has "consistently vilified" what?

2. According to Eagleton, why does Northrop Frye emphasize the "utopian root of literature"?

3. According to Jacques Lacan, what is the "symbolic order"?

4. From a structuralist perspective, why could literature could no longer claim to be a unique discourse?

5. The modern history of literary theory has been characterized by a flight from what?

(see the answer keys)

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