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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. Who said "there is no cultural document that is not at the same time a record of barbarism"?
(a) Karl Marx.
(b) Michel Foucault.
(c) Walter Benjamin.
(d) Julia Kristeva.

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

3. 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 glorification of men in his work.
(c) Because of his refusal to discuss women in his work.
(d) Because of his troubling personal relationships.

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

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

6. According to Eagleton, what term is "most-widely touted" in cultural theory?
(a) Modernism.
(b) Postmodernity.
(c) Postmodernism.
(d) Premodernity.

7. What is one problem of adopting a plurality of critical methods, for Eagleton?
(a) Not all methods are compatible.
(b) Some methods are no longer available.
(c) One should adopt the latest method.
(d) One should start from the beginning.

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 analytic not evaluative; it refuses obvious meaning of the text; and the content of the narrative is its structure.
(c) It is idealistic not rational; it doesn't understand the obvious meaning of the text; and the narrative content is its meaning.
(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 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) Sublimation.
(b) Transference.
(c) Repression.
(d) Idealization.

10. According to Eagleton, the Western philosophical tradition has "consistently vilified" what?
(a) Man.
(b) Speech.
(c) Writing.
(d) Myth.

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

12. For Jacques Lacan, "meaning is always in some sense an _______."
(a) Allocation.
(b) Abdication.
(c) Approximation.
(d) Amalgamation.

13. According to Eagleton, if structuralism examined the "product" of literature, but left out what?
(a) The material conditions that destroyed literature.
(b) The material conditions that produced literature.
(c) The immaterial conditions that produced literature.
(d) The immaterial conditions inherent in the product.

14. According to Eagleton, one of the gains of structuralism is that it represents a "remorseless _____of literature."
(a) Rationlization.
(b) Mystification.
(c) Demystification.
(d) Idealization.

15. What text did Tzvetan Todorov attempt a grammatical analysis of so that the characters were nouns, their attributes adjectives, and actions verbs?
(a) Twain's "Tom Sawyer."
(b) Dostoevsky's "Crime and Punishment."
(c) Updike's "Rabbit."
(d) Boccaccio's "Decameron."

Short Answer Questions

1. What year did France's student movement strike against the authoritarianism of the educational institutions and in solidarity with the working-class?

2. According to Eagleton, "the meaning of a sign is a matter of what the sign is _____."

3. What is the name of the author whose story "Sarrasine" Roland Barthes examines in "S/Z"?

4. What is NOT a material reality in the oppression of women?

5. What is the object named literature, according to Eagleton?

(see the answer keys)

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