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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. What does Sigmund Freud call the first stage of sexual life?

2. How did post-structuralism respond to France's student movement's failed attempt to break state power?

3. According to Eagleton, structuralism is a ________of inquiry whereas semiotics is a ______ of study.

4. What is one problem of adopting a plurality of critical methods, for Eagleton?

5. In American deconstruction, why does literary criticism become an "ironic, uneasy business"?

Short Essay Questions

1. According to Eagleton, why should the notion of literary theory be abolished?

2. What is the dominant ideology within academia and what are its major problems?

3. Why does Eagleton reject the idea of a disconnected individual in society?

4. During the 1960s and 1970s why did feminist scholars reject Marxist thought on the left?

5. Beyond helping the status of women, what is the women's movement's goal and why is it significant?

6. What is significant about the ways in which Sigmund Freud treated women and men?

7. Who developed semiotics and what was his contribution to literary theory?

8. Why does Eagleton claim that Northrop Frye's work emphasized the "utopian root'" of all literature and what is his response?

9. What was the significance of the Prague structuralists?

10. How does Julia Kristeva view language and why is it significant?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Explain Eagleton's ideas on structuralism.

1) Choose two positive aspects of structuralism.

2) Choose two negative aspects of structuralism.

Essay Topic 2

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?

Essay Topic 3

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.

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