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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, what is ironic about those who complain of the difficulty of literary theory?

2. Who is the key figure in the Victorian period Eagleton cites as "preternaturally aware of the needs of his social class"?

3. According to Eagleton, literature is definable "not according to whether it is fictional or "imaginative," because it uses language in ____ways."

4. Eagleton's goal in "Literary Theory: An Introduction" is to provide a comprehensive account of literary theory for whom?

5. According to Eagleton, the formalists were not out to define literature but they were out to define what?

Short Essay Questions

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

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

3. 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?

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

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

6. What does "concretize" mean and why is it significant?

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

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

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

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

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

What is the relationship between politics and literature, according to Eagleton? How does the production of literature inculcate and disseminate ideological values?

Essay Topic 2

Discuss the ways in which the concept of literature has changed from the seventeenth century to the twentieth century.

1) What was considered literature in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries?

2) How do the romantic movement transform the definition of literature?

3) What was the function of literature during the Victorian era?

Essay Topic 3

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?

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