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

2. What proposes a "severe problem" for Husserl's theory?
(a) Truth.
(b) Individuality.
(c) Language.
(d) Consciousness.

3. What is "imaginative" literature or literature that is not necessarily true?
(a) Memoir.
(b) Biography.
(c) Nonfiction.
(d) Fiction.

4. Eagleton's goal in "Literary Theory: An Introduction" is to provide a comprehensive account of literary theory for whom?
(a) Those who have specialised knowledge of literary theory.
(b) Those with little knowledge of literary theory.
(c) Those with extensive knowledge of literary theory.
(d) Those who have some knowledge of literary theory.

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

Short Answer Questions

1. According to Eagleton, "Literary Theory: An Introduction" has managed to reach readers beyond __________.

2. According to Eagleton, what becomes the "panacea for all problems" as part of the romantics' aesthetic theory at the turn of the eighteenth century?

3. The Russian formalists rejected what kind of doctrines that had influenced literary criticism?

4. From the viewpoint of Roland Barthes, Eagleton argues that "reading is less like a _______ than a _________."

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

Short Essay Questions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(see the answer keys)

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