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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. Why do feminists embrace the work of Jacques Lacan, despite the fact that he was contemptuous of the women's movement?

2. For Jacques Lacan, "meaning is always in some sense an _______."

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

4. According to Eagleton, why did the women's movement reject the economic focus of classical Marxist thought?

5. What is the example Eagleton provides of a metalanguage, where one sign-system denotes another sign-system?

Short Essay Questions

1. How did Mikhail Bakhtin view language?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

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?

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 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.

(see the answer keys)

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