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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. According to Eagleton, in the romantic aesthetic theory the meaning of the word literature became what?

2. Eagleton provides the analogy of finding a "scrap of writing from a long-vanished civilization" to make what point about deciphering its meaning?

3. According to Eagleton, when did the Russian formalists emerge?

4. Eagleton argues that for Stanley Fish, what a text "does" to us is a matter of what we do to what?

5. Eagleton writes that "New Criticism was the ideology of an ________, _______intelligentsia who reinvented in literature what they could not locate in reality."

Short Essay Questions

1. What did new American criticism focus on and why is it significant?

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

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

4. What is the significance of Viktor Shklovsky's 1917 essay "Art as Device," according to Eagleton?

5. Why does Eagleton argue that the demarcation between fiction and fact in writing is "questionable"?

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

7. How does Eagleton define elitism in literary studies and why is it important?

8. What was the dominant ideology of eighteenth-century England?

9. What is phenomenology and when did it emerge as a serious discipline?

10. How did new criticism emerge in England and America?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

What is the basic problem of literary theory, according to Eagleton? Why does Eagleton that "literature" should not be any more important in terms of a field of study as film or television shows? For Eagleton, why is rhetoric a more comprehensive and constructive discipline and methodology?

Essay Topic 2

Discuss Sigmund Freud's Oedipus complex.

1) Identify and analyze the three stages of human development-- the oral, anal, and phallic stage.

2) Compare and contrast Freud's views on males and females.

Essay Topic 3

Discuss liberal humanism.

1) Identify liberal humanism as a group, viewpoint, and methodology.

2) What is liberal humanism an instrument for, according to Eagleton?

3) Are liberal humanists politically conscious? Why or why not?

(see the answer keys)

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