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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, "in the terminology of reception theory, the reader _________ the literary work, which is in itself no more than a chain of organized black marks on a page."
(a) Terrorizes.
(b) Rationalizes.
(c) Concretizes.
(d) Sanitizes.

2. The German philosopher Edmund Husserl argued that objects can be regarded as things ______ by consciousness.
(a) Realized.
(b) Evaluated.
(c) Understood.
(d) Intended.

3. According to Eagleton, why is E.D. Hirsch able to maintain his view that literary meaning is absolute and resistant to historical change?
(a) Because meaning is viewed as pre-linguistic.
(b) Because meaning is viewed as pre-modern.
(c) Because meaning is viewed as pre-historic.
(d) Because meaning is viewed as pre-arranged.

4. For the economist Eagleton discusses, "those economists who dislike theory or claimed to get along better without it" were what?
(a) In the grip of an older theory.
(b) Didn't understand the importance of theory.
(c) In the grip of the most current theory.
(d) Had no knowledge of any theory.

5. What role does reception theory examine?
(a) The critic's role.
(b) The reader's role.
(c) The teacher's role.
(d) The author's role.

Short Answer Questions

1. Eagleton argues that for Stanley Fish, what a text "does" to us is a matter of what we do to what?

2. According to Eagleton, "if one were asked to provide a single explanation for the growth of English in the later nineteenth century" what would it be?

3. According to Eagleton, "properly understood, literary theory is shaped by a ______impulse rather than an _______one."

4. What kind of analysis is phenomenology, according to Eagleton?

5. For Eagleton, Gadamer's theory only holds if one makes what "enormous assumption"?

Short Essay Questions

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

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

3. What were the Russian formalists responding to in terms of literary criticism?

4. In the late-sixteenth and early-seventeenth centuries, what was considered "fact" and what was considered "fiction," and how is it significant?

5. How does phenomenological criticism view literature and what is Eagleton's response?

6. What is Eagleton's goal in writing "Literary Theory: An Introduction"?

7. Why does Eagleton argue that the demarcation between fiction and fact in writing is "questionable"?

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

9. What kind of thought does a literary education not encourage, according to Eagleton, and what does this signify?

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

(see the answer keys)

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