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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, why is Hans-Georg Gadamer not concerned about bringing our cultural preconceptions to a literary work?
(a) Because unlike the literary work, they come from modernity.
(b) Because like the literary work, they come from modernity.
(c) Because unlike the literary work, the come from tradition.
(d) Because like the literary work, they come from tradition.

2. Eagleton argues that the readership his book has attracted dispels the notion that literary theory is what?
(a) Simple.
(b) Elitist.
(c) Misguided.
(d) Boring.

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

4. According to Eagleton, when did the Russian formalists emerge?
(a) During the Russian Revolution.
(b) Before WWII.
(c) After WWI.
(d) Before the Bolshevik Revolution.

5. From the viewpoint of Roland Barthes, Eagleton argues that "reading is less like a _______ than a _________."
(a) "Boudoir; laboratory."
(b) "Boudoir; system."
(c) "Philosophy; laboratory."
(d) "Laboratory; boudoir."

Short Answer Questions

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

2. What proposes a "severe problem" for Husserl's theory?

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

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

5. According to Eagleton, "In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, the word ______seems to have been used about true and fictional events."

Short Essay Questions

1. What is phenomenology and when did it emerge as a serious discipline?

2. What is the reach of the "theoretical revolution" and why is it significant?

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

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

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

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

7. What was the romantics relationship to the symbol and why is it significant?

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

9. During the eighteenth century, how was art perceived in England and why is it significant?

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

(see the answer keys)

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