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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. The Russian formalists rejected what kind of doctrines that had influenced literary criticism?

2. For Eagleton, hostility toward theory means what?

3. What date does Eagleton settle on as the "beginnings of the transformation which has taken over literary theory in this century"?

4. According to Eagleton, eighteenth-century literature embodied more than social values, it also was an instrument for what?

5. According to Eagleton, William Empson "insists on treating poetry as a species of ______language."

Short Essay Questions

1. What is hermeneutics and how is it significant?

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

3. How is Martin Heidegger's philosophy similar to that of the Russian formalists?

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

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

6. What is Eagleton's argument regarding the literary canon as the "unquestioned" great tradition of national literature?

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

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

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

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

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Discuss Eagleton's argument for a movement that would reform the academy and society at large by identifying and analyzing the 4 major goals of this political movement.

Essay Topic 2

Discuss modernism as a literary movement.

1) Identify two modernist writers and four characteristics of modernist literature.

2) Discuss the emergence of modernism and the literary theories that developed from this movement.

Essay Topic 3

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?

(see the answer keys)

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