View a FREE sample

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, eighteenth-century literature embodied more than social values, it also was an instrument for what?

2. According to Eagleton, "Literary Theory: An Introduction" has managed to reach readers beyond __________.

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

4. Eagleton argues that reading literature in a new critical way was a recipe for what?

5. From the viewpoint of Roland Barthes, Eagleton argues that "reading is less like a _______ than a _________."

Short Essay Questions

1. During the eighteenth century, how was art perceived in England 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. What is hermeneutics and how is it significant?

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

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

6. What did the critic E.D. Hirsch, Jr. believe about the reader's relationship to a text?

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

8. Who developed reception theory and why is it significant?

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

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

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Define the notion of estrangement and choose two examples from the book as evidence for this concept.

Essay Topic 2

What was the relationship between the 1968 student movement in Paris and post-structuralism? What were their similarities and differences?

Essay Topic 3

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?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 697 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample