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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 the Soviet semiotician Yury Lotman, a poetic text is "semantically _________."
(a) Rational.
(b) Transparent.
(c) Saturated.
(d) Irrational.

2. According to Jacques Lacan, what is the "symbolic order"?
(a) It is the emergence of an imaginary conflict with the parental figures.
(b) It is the pre-given structure of social and sexual roles that make up the family and society.
(c) It is the reconciliation of an imaginary conflict with the parental figures.
(d) It is the pre-given structure of social and sexual desires that make up a self.

3. According to Eagleton, "the meaning of a sign is a matter of what the sign is _____."
(a) Not.
(b) Signifying.
(c) Doing.
(d) For.

4. According to Eagleton, what is the oldest form of literary criticism?
(a) Sociology.
(b) Philosophy.
(c) Religion.
(d) Rhetoric.

5. What does Sigmund Freud call the first stage of sexual life?
(a) The oral stage.
(b) The anal stage.
(c) The erogenous stage.
(d) The phallic stage.

Short Answer Questions

1. When did Sigmund Freud develop psychoanalysis?

2. According to Eagleton, literary theorists "are not so much ______of doctrine as ________of a discourse."

3. Why do feminists embrace the work of Jacques Lacan, despite the fact that he was contemptuous of the women's movement?

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

5. According to Jacques Lacan, what stage does a child first develop an ego?

Short Essay Questions

1. According to Eagleton, why should rhetorical science replace literary theory and what is its objective?

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

3. How did Northrop Frye attempt to combine the formalist focus on the text with the essence of new American criticism?

4. How did Mikhail Bakhtin view language?

5. What was the significance of the Prague structuralists?

6. What is the dominant ideology within academia and what are its major problems?

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

8. What does Julia Kristeva define as "semiotic" and why is it significant?

9. What is multiple pluralism and why does Eagleton object to it?

10. Why does Eagleton reject the idea of a disconnected individual in society?

(see the answer keys)

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