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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, what does his book try to demonstrate about a body of literary theory?
(a) That there is sometimes a body of literary theory that springs from and is applicable to literature alone.
(b) That there are several bodies of literary theory that spring from and is applicable to literature alone.
(c) That there is no body of literary theory that springs from or is applicable to literature alone.
(d) That there is one body of literary theory that springs from and is applicable to literature alone.

2. What three sequential stages does Eagleton point out in the development of modern literary theory?
(a) The preoccupation with the reader, the exclusive concern with the text, and a shift toward the critic.
(b) The preoccupation with the critic, the exclusive concern with the author, and a shift toward the text.
(c) The preoccupation with the text, the exclusive concern with the reader, and a shift toward the author.
(d) The preoccupation with the author, the exclusive concern with the text, and a shift toward the reader.

3. According to Eagleton, as the first industrialist capitalist nation, England becomes what kind of state?
(a) A police state.
(b) A free state.
(c) A perfect state.
(d) A wealthy state.

4. Who developed hermeneutics?
(a) E.D. Hirsch.
(b) Hans-Georg Gadamer.
(c) Stanley Fish.
(d) Roland Barthes.

5. According to Eagleton, what kind of thought does literary education NOT encourage?
(a) Irrational thought.
(b) Creative thought.
(c) Rational thought.
(d) Analytical thought.

Short Answer Questions

1. According to Eagleton, literature is definable "not according to whether it is fictional or "imaginative," because it uses language in ____ways."

2. According to Eagleton, eighteenth-century literature embodied more than social values, it also was an instrument for what?

3. According to Eagleton, why did the Russian formalists NOT see a literary work as a vehicle for ideas, reflection of reality, or transcendental truth?

4. What is the name of the Russian formalist who published the pioneering essay that is the "beginnings of the transformation which has taken over literary theory in this century"?

5. According to Eagleton, the Russian formalist shifted their attention to the "material reality" of what?

Short Essay Questions

1. What is the significance of Viktor Shklovsky's 1917 essay "Art as Device," according to Eagleton?

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

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

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

5. How has the population in higher education changed in Britain since the 1960s and what it its significance?

6. Who developed reception theory and why is it significant?

7. How does Eagleton define elitism in literary studies and why is it important?

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

9. What did the critic E.D. Hirsch, Jr. believe about the reader's relationship to a text?

10. How did the Russian formalists answer the question "what is literature?" and why was it significant?

(see the answer keys)

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