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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 is the name of two principles Sigmund Freud identified?

2. What is the "literary canon"?

3. According to Eagleton, who would an ideal reader be for a structuralist?

4. According to Eagleton, what is the "point" of literary theory?

5. According to Eagleton, the French structural anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss did pioneering work on what?

Short Essay Questions

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

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

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

4. How did Northrop Frye attempt to combine the formalist focus on the text with the essence of new American criticism?

5. What is structuralism and how what does it share in common with formalism?

6. According to Eagleton, why should rhetorical science replace literary theory and what is its objective?

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

8. How did post-structuralism develop and why is it significant?

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

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

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

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

Essay Topic 3

Compare and contrast the arguments for and against literary theory.

1) According to Eagleton, why have people opposed literary theory?

2) What is Eagleton's position regarding literary theory?

(see the answer keys)

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