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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What did Gibbon add to the genre of human comedy according to Boorstin?
(a) The historical novel.
(b) The biography of kings.
(c) The saga of empire.
(d) The fairy tale of history.

2. Mozart composed eight symphonies, four divertimentos and some sacred works in a few months at what age?
(a) 22.
(b) 4.
(c) 16.
(d) 11.

3. What was the subject of Monet's art?
(a) Architecture.
(b) His own perceptions.
(c) Human figures.
(d) Nature.

4. What does Boorstin say was combined in the skyscraper?
(a) Water and stone.
(b) Form and function.
(c) Man and machine.
(d) Past and future.

5. When did Montaigne publish his Essays?
(a) 1825.
(b) 1580.
(c) 1607.
(d) 1620.

6. How was Gibbon perceived in Boorstin's account?
(a) As a pornographic philosopher.
(b) As a prophet of communism.
(c) As a leading adventure novelist.
(d) As the ultimate humanist historian.

7. When did opera develop in Europe?
(a) Around 1600 in Italy.
(b) Around 1550 in France.
(c) Around 1500 in England.
(d) Around 1800 in Germany.

8. In what way is Moby Dick NOT a novel according to Boorstin?
(a) It lacks characterization and plot.
(b) It lacks historical attributes.
(c) It lacks metaphor and allegory.
(d) It lacks antagonism and heroism.

9. What did William Henry Fox Talbot discover?
(a) A process for capturing images on glass.
(b) A process for retouching negatives.
(c) A process for using silver nitrate to make copies.
(d) A process for capturing sharp contrasts between black and white on photographic film.

10. What does Boorstin say man is finally learning to celebrate in Book 3?
(a) The Other.
(b) Industry.
(c) The human masses.
(d) Each individual.

11. What was the relationship between Wordsworth and Coleridge?
(a) Competitors.
(b) Collaborators.
(c) Enemies.
(d) Teacher and student.

12. How does Boorstin characterize the Heroic American Literary Myth?
(a) A tale of shining visions fulfilled.
(b) A tale of morality and sacrifice.
(c) A tale of brutality and crude mysticism.
(d) A tale of revenge and madness.

13. In what period was the symphony created?
(a) Renaissance.
(b) Romantic.
(c) Gothic.
(d) Baroque.

14. How does Boorstin characterize Of Education?
(a) A manifesto of humanism.
(b) A morality tale about experience and wisdom.
(c) A satire on learning.
(d) A farce about religious education.

15. How does Boorstin characterize Wordsworth's best work?
(a) Remembrance.
(b) Epic poetry.
(c) Prophecy.
(d) Drama.

Short Answer Questions

1. When did Goethe start Faust?

2. When did Bruneleschi make the Foundling Hospital in Florence?

3. Into what is man split according to Emerson in the epigraph to Part 11?

4. What did Kafka believe about the inner and outer selves according to Boorstin?

5. What does Boorstin say Eliot tried to express in "The Waste Land"?

(see the answer keys)

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