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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. Who silenced the Russian formalists, according to Eagleton?

2. According to Eagleton, what happens when literary theory becomes "turgidly unreadable"?

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

4. According to Eagleton, "in the terminology of reception theory, the reader _________ the literary work, which is in itself no more than a chain of organized black marks on a page."

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

Short Essay Questions

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

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

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

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

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

6. What is "Tristram Shandy" and why is it significant?

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

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

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

10. In the nineteenth century, what was the outcome of religion as a result of the industrial revolution where new technologies and science were being developed?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Compare and contrast structuralism with phenomenology.

1) What are the basic tenets of each school of thought?

2) What are the similarities between them?

2) What are their differences?

Essay Topic 2

Compare and contrast the work of Northrop Frye with Stanely Fish. What are their methodologies?

Essay Topic 3

Define, discuss, and analyze the emergence and development of romantic aesthetic theory.

1) What were the romantic writers responding to in terms of the society in which they lived and worked?

2) What was the role of the romantic artist in society?

3) According to the romantics, why was the symbol so central to the meaning of a text?

4) What are some of the lasting effects of romantic theory?

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