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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 aspect of Jacques Lacan's work is of particular interest to literary theorists?

2. According to Eagleton, why did intellectuals preoccupy themselves with language in the late-nineteenth and twentieth centuries?

3. In structuralism, the relationship between the sign and what it refers to is what?

4. What are Northrop Frye's four narrative categories at the root of all literature?

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

Short Essay Questions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Essay Topic 2

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?

Essay Topic 3

Discuss Roland Barthes work on signs. In particular, how did he categorize signs in terms of their function?

(see the answer keys)

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