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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What becomes harder to understand in a culture that believes in one god in Boorstin's account?
(a) Death.
(b) The existence of evil.
(c) The nature of physical matter.
(d) The origins of the universe.

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

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

4. What does each Tale in the Canterbury Tales have according to Boorstin?
(a) A moral.
(b) A villain.
(c) A pregnant woman.
(d) A devil figure.

5. What does Boorstin say is the paradoxical nature of Moses' God?
(a) He speaks in texts but means all things.
(b) He has always existed and still waits to come into existence.
(c) He is a creation of mankind but exists beyond human comprehension.
(d) He exists but his qualities can not be known.

Short Answer Questions

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

2. Of what are Chaucer's Canterbury Tales comprised?

3. What does Virginia Woolf say, in the second epigraph to Part 7, about writing?

4. How does Boorstin characterize the nature of Gothic art?

5. In what does Boorstin say Pantagruel luxuriates?

Short Essay Questions

1. How does Boorstin describe the difference between tragedy and comedy?

2. How does Boorstin characterize Cervantes' contribution to imaginative literature?

3. What improvement did the Greeks make in architecture?

4. How do Greek depictions compare with Egyptian symbols?

5. What contribution did the Egyptians make in building the pyramids?

6. What explanation does Boorstin offer for the cave paintings of Altamira, Lascaux and Les Trois Freres?

7. How does Boorstin characterize Chaucer's Canterbury Tales?

8. How does Boorstin describe the birth of drama?

9. How does Boorstin characterize the Confucian teachings?

10. What was St. Augustine's contribution to imaginative culture according to Boorstin?

(see the answer keys)

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