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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. According to Eagleton, William Empson "insists on treating poetry as a species of ______language."
(a) Spectacular.
(b) Secular.
(c) Religious.
(d) Ordinary.

2. Eagleton argues that for Stanley Fish, what a text "does" to us is a matter of what we do to what?
(a) To the reader.
(b) To the author.
(c) To the critic.
(d) To the text.

3. What date does Eagleton settle on as the "beginnings of the transformation which has taken over literary theory in this century"?
(a) 1937.
(b) 1957.
(c) 1917.
(d) 1977.

4. According to Eagleton, Stanley Fish's model excludes the possibility that there is a ______ of interpretations?
(a) Dominance.
(b) Rejection.
(c) Struggle.
(d) Acceptance.

5. For Eagleton, how did the romantics usher a "forestalling of reasoned critical enquiry"?
(a) Because the word was seen as a refleciton of religious truths that you either saw or didn't see.
(b) Because the symbol was regarded as an absolute spiritual truth that you either saw or didn't see.
(c) Because the text was regarded as a reflection of society that you either saw or didn't see.
(d) Because the image was seen as material reality that you saw immediately.

Short Answer Questions

1. Eagleton argues that reading literature in a new critical way was a recipe for what?

2. According to Eagleton, what is ironic about those who complain of the difficulty of literary theory?

3. Eagleton argues that a literary work in Romantic society becomes what rather than rational and mechanical?

4. Who was glad to abandon the "feminine vagaries of literature" in favor of penning war propaganda?

5. By the early 1930s, the study of English literature became what kind of pursuit?

Short Essay Questions

1. What is hermeneutics and how is it significant?

2. What is Eagleton's major problem with formalism and why is it significant?

3. What is "Tristram Shandy" and why is it significant?

4. What period of literature did the critic Roland Barthes focus on and why is it significant?

5. What is Eagleton's argument regarding the literary canon as the "unquestioned" great tradition of national literature?

6. How does Eagleton respond to critics who claim that literary theory as irrelevant or elitist and what are its implications?

7. Why is literature an unstable term, according to Eagleton?

8. How did the romantic movement develop and why is it significant?

9. What does "concretize" mean and why is it significant?

10. What did new American criticism focus on and why is it significant?

(see the answer keys)

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