View a FREE sample

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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. In the eighteenth-century, what was the whole body of writing in society considered, including philosophy, letters, history, poems, and essays?
(a) Religion.
(b) Theory.
(c) Literature.
(d) Canon.

2. What is the name of the economist Eagleton discusses in his preface?
(a) Adam Smith.
(b) J. M. Keynes.
(c) Gordon Tuck.
(d) I. Fischer.

3. During the 1960s, what kind of students began to enter higher education that broke down assumptions about literary studies?
(a) Students from supposedly "uncultivated" backgrounds.
(b) Students from supposedly "third-world" countries.
(c) Students from supposedly "first-world" countries.
(d) Students from supposedly "cultivated" backgrounds.

4. During the last decades of the eighteenth-century, the word prosaic begins to acquire what a kind of connotation?
(a) A unfamiliar connotation.
(b) A negative connotation.
(c) A familiar connotation.
(d) A positive connotation.

5. Who silenced the Russian formalists, according to Eagleton?
(a) Stalinists.
(b) Bolsheviks.
(c) Liberals.
(d) Socialists.

Short Answer Questions

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

2. How many decades, according to Eagleton, has there been a "striking proliferation of literary theory" since the publication of the Russian formalist's pioneering essay?

3. For the Romantics, why was their vision of a just society was inverted into a nostalgia for an old and "organic" England?

4. According to Viktor Shklovsky, what novel was "the most typical novel in world literature" because it impeded its own story-line so that it never gets off the ground?

5. According to Eagleton, the approaches outlined in his book have implications where?

Short Essay Questions

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

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

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

4. Why does Eagleton call the emergence and development of literary theory a "theoretical revolution" and what does it signify?

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

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

7. What kinds of writing were considered literature in the eighteenth-century and why is this significant?

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

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

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

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 812 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample