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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What does Boorstin say man discovered in Section 24: The Birth of the Spectator?
(a) That there is safety in crowds.
(b) That he need not be a participant all the time.
(c) That crowds have personalities of their own.
(d) That the universe does not have anything to do with him.

2. What was unique about the first literary work in Boorstin's account?
(a) It described the origins of the world.
(b) It was in prose.
(c) It was in dactylic hexameter.
(d) It was about the ancient past.

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

4. What does Byron say a sculptor should do in the epigraph to Part 4?
(a) Perfect his model.
(b) Leave some flaw by which the work could be distinguished from the model.
(c) Exceed his model.
(d) Capture his model.

5. What else did Thespis invent?
(a) The monologue.
(b) The cult of Apollo.
(c) The dithyramb.
(d) The dramatic mask.

6. To what use did Romans put sculpture according to Boorstin?
(a) Memorializing the dead.
(b) Marking territories.
(c) Teaching anatomy.
(d) Holding up buildings.

7. What does Boorstin say the Renaissance offered to Shakespeare?
(a) Historically new material for his plays.
(b) New technology to react against and to use in his plays.
(c) New problems in human experience.
(d) A community of spectators.

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

9. What does The Consolation of Philosophy explain?
(a) How to reinvent yourself as a religious person.
(b) How to distinguish God's way of knowing from Man's.
(c) How to live in a world without God.
(d) How to see God's will in events.

10. Who are the devas?
(a) Hindu gods.
(b) Syrian warriors.
(c) Mesopotamian scribes.
(d) Buddhist monks.

11. In what does Boorstin say Rabelais' book was an act of faith?
(a) Culture.
(b) God.
(c) Literary history.
(d) Language.

12. Who was the first divinity according to the Rig Veda?
(a) Afghanistani.
(b) Prajapati.
(c) Darsan.
(d) Karma.

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

14. What metaphor does Boorstin say permeates Christian literature?
(a) Death.
(b) Pilgrimage.
(c) Conversion.
(d) Transformation.

15. What does Boorstin say man seeks in making art?
(a) Immortality.
(b) Fame.
(c) Rebellion against God.
(d) Gain.

Short Answer Questions

1. What is the source of the epigraph that opens The Creators?

2. What was the purpose of Don Quixote in Boorstin's account?

3. Of what does Stonehenge consist?

4. What does Boorstin see in men making images of men?

5. What does Boorstin say is the difference between tragedy and comedy?

(see the answer keys)

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