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

2. From a structuralist perspective, why could literature could no longer claim to be a unique discourse?

3. For Eagleton, what are the two ways in which literary theory can have a distinct purpose and identity?

4. What is a belief in "ultimate word, presence, essence, truth, or reality"?

5. According to Roland Barthes, what kind of sign draws attention to its own arbitrariness?

Short Essay Questions

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

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

3. What is structuralism's lasting impact on literary theory and what is Eagleton's critique of their methodology?

4. What is multiple pluralism and why does Eagleton object to it?

5. How does the philosopher Jacques Derrida conceive of language?

6. For Roland Barthes, what does literature embody and why is it significant?

7. What was a "healthy" sign according to Roland Barthes and why is it significant?

8. What are the three stages of development in psychoanalysis and how do they relate to literary theory?

9. According to Sigmund Freud, what are the two conflicting principles that all people are motivated by and why is it significant?

10. What are the four areas Eagleton discusses rhetoric should target that would bring about transformation in society?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

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 2

Discuss Jacques Lacan's work on language as it relates to psychoanalytic theory. How does Lacan's work differ from Freud's?

Essay Topic 3

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.

(see the answer keys)

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