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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. According to Eagleton, structuralism maintains that "individual units of any system have meaning only by virtue of" what?

2. According to Eagleton, why is Shakespeare considered great literature?

3. What is the name of the author whose story "Sarrasine" Roland Barthes examines in "S/Z"?

4. What is the name of two principles Sigmund Freud identified?

5. Literary texts are code-productive, code-transgressive, and code_____.

Short Essay Questions

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

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

3. What is Sigmund Freud's Oedipus complex and why is it significant?

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

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

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

7. What is Eagleton's main critique of the some forms of post-structuralism and why is it significant?

8. Why does Eagleton argue that politics should engage with questions of sexual ideology?

9. Who is Ferdinand de Saussure and what was his contribution to the field of literary theory?

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

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Choose one work of literature (a story, essay, poem, play, or novel) and one method of literary analysis (new criticism, structuralism, post-structuralism, phenomenology, psychoanalysis) and examine the work by utilizing a specific literary theory.

Essay Topic 2

Explain Eagleton's ideas on structuralism.

1) Choose two positive aspects of structuralism.

2) Choose two negative aspects of structuralism.

Essay Topic 3

Discuss the women's movement.

1) Identify four major goals of the women's movement.

2) What is the relationship between politics and sexual ideology?

3) How did the women's movement respond to dominant literary theories?

(see the answer keys)

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