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. According to Eagleton, structuralism maintains that "individual units of any system have meaning only by virtue of" what?
(a) Their status in the world.
(b) Their connection to religion.
(c) Their meaning for the critic.
(d) Their relations to one another.

2. Why is psychosis difficult to cope with, according to Sigmund Freud?
(a) Because psychosis is difficult to perceive.
(b) Because the psychotic is violent.
(c) Because psychosis is only treatable with shock therapy.
(d) Because the psychotic has lost contact with reality.

3. According to Roland Barthes, what kind of sign draws attention to its own arbitrariness?
(a) An unhealthy sign.
(b) An unproductive sign.
(c) A productive sign.
(d) A healthy sign.

4. According to Eagleton, structuralism exposed what "shocking truth"?
(a) That even our most pleasurable experience is outside the realm of structure.
(b) The even our most private thoughts is caused by structure.
(c) That even our most intimate experience is the effect of a structure.
(d) That even our most painful experience is outside the realm of structure.

5. For Jacques Lacan, "meaning is always in some sense an _______."
(a) Amalgamation.
(b) Abdication.
(c) Allocation.
(d) Approximation.

Short Answer Questions

1. What is a belief in "ultimate word, presence, essence, truth, or reality"?

2. What is the difference between metaphor and metonymy?

3. What is the root of the present crisis in literary studies, according to Eagleton?

4. Roland Barthes "double" sign is the "grandchild" of what kind of language of the Formalist and Czech structuralists?

5. What is the "impotence" of liberal humanism a symptom of, according to Eagleton?

Short Essay Questions

1. For Roland Barthes, what does literature embody and why is it significant?

2. Beyond helping the status of women, what is the women's movement's goal and why is it significant?

3. Who is Ferdinand de Saussure and what was his contribution to the field of literary theory?

4. How does Julia Kristeva view language and why is it significant?

5. What was the significance of the Prague structuralists?

6. Why does Eagleton claim that Northrop Frye's work emphasized the "utopian root'" of all literature and what is his response?

7. How did post-structuralism develop and why is it significant?

8. What is significant about the ways in which Sigmund Freud treated women and men?

9. What are the three stages of development in psychoanalysis and how do they relate to literary theory?

10. How did Mikhail Bakhtin view language?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 802 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample