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This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What is a dithyramb?
(a) A monument that commemorates a sacrifice.
(b) A poem that commemorates a battle.
(c) A song sung in honor of the god.
(d) A dance done to honor ancestors.

2. What does Horace say about the escaped word in the epigraph for Part 5?
(a) That it cannot be offered in prayer.
(b) That it cannot be defined.
(c) That it cannot be written.
(d) That it cannot be recalled.

3. What does Virginia Woolf say, in the second epigraph to Part 7, about writing?
(a) That written accounts are only valuable in settling disputes between people.
(b) That writing is just the poor afterimage of a lived reality.
(c) That writing is a weak man's refuge from the tyranny of events.
(d) That a thing has not happened until it has been described.

4. Which kind of creation does Boorstin NOT describe in The Creators?
(a) Literature.
(b) Visual arts.
(c) Technology.
(d) Music.

5. What does Boorstin say is Buddhism's response to the questions of living?
(a) To refer all questions to sacred texts.
(b) To trust whatever the heart says.
(c) Not to answer.
(d) To meditate but not to settle for any answer.

6. When did men begin to make images of themselves?
(a) Upper Paleolithic period.
(b) Mesolithic period.
(c) Early Paleolithic period.
(d) Middle Paleolithic period.

7. For what does Boorstin say the Pyramids were built in Egypt?
(a) Challenging the gods.
(b) Housing the dead pharaohs.
(c) Proclaiming the Egyptians' power as a people.
(d) Measuring the progress of the heavens.

8. What should be the outcome of art according to the Byron epigraph?
(a) Replacement of God.
(b) Emulation of God.
(c) Perfection of human nature.
(d) Heroic beauty.

9. What does the dome of the Pantheon proclaim according to Boorstin?
(a) Man's ability to provide houses for his gods.
(b) Man's ability to fill a void with his own creation.
(c) Man's ability to enclose a sacred precinct.
(d) Man's ability to defy gravity in building.

10. What did Saint Ambrose invent?
(a) Christian architecture.
(b) Colored printing.
(c) Christian hymns.
(d) Stained glass windows.

11. What did the dithyramb and its derivatives do in Greek history?
(a) Define Greek metaphysics.
(b) Explore the territories around Greece.
(c) Provide a foundation for mathematical logic.
(d) Glorify Greece.

12. What does Boorstin say upturned stones signify?
(a) Man's attempt to measure and regulate his environment.
(b) Man's determination to find origins.
(c) Man's desire to live forever.
(d) Man's determination to find food sources.

13. What are hieroglyphs?
(a) An early alphabet.
(b) A pictorial language.
(c) No one knows.
(d) Symbols of a dead language.

14. Why does Confucius say that it is impossible for men to serve the spirits?
(a) Because they cannot trust the sanctity of any texts.
(b) Because they don't know how to serve each other.
(c) Because the ways of serving the spirits have all been forgotten.
(d) Because the spirits do not exist.

15. What did Confucius say comprised wisdom?
(a) Knowing how to confront difficult questions without flinching.
(b) Knowing what you do not know.
(c) Knowing how to expand your power.
(d) Knowing how to survive.

Short Answer Questions

1. What was the special element of Gothic architecture in Boorstin's opinion?

2. On what was Roman architecture based according to Boorstin?

3. What does Paul Valery say the artist's business is in the epigraph to Book 1?

4. How did the ideal human figure shift from Egypt to Greece?

5. What was unique about the first literary work in Boorstin's account?

(see the answer keys)

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