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

2. In what tradition was Cristabel written according to Boorstin?
(a) Modernism.
(b) Gothic Romance.
(c) Baroque ornamentation.
(d) Classical symmetry.

3. What happened to Milton before he wrote Paradise Lost?
(a) He went blind.
(b) He lost his wife.
(c) He lost his children.
(d) He nearly died.

4. What does Boorstin say Giotto di Bondone was the first Western artist to do?
(a) Depict the human nude.
(b) Include text in his paintings.
(c) Bring Christian archetypes to life.
(d) Tell stories in paintings.

5. How did Dostoevsky view Western science according to Boorstin?
(a) As a denial of freedom.
(b) As social Darwinism.
(c) As materialistic determinism.
(d) As primitive superstition.

Short Answer Questions

1. What was startling about Leaves of Grass in Boorstin's account?

2. When did opera develop in Europe?

3. What does Boorstin say Dostoevsky's novels do to Western values?

4. How did the orchestra change in the fifteenth century according to Boorstin?

5. What does Boorstin say T.S. Eliot believed poetry was about?

Short Essay Questions

1. How did photography change the nature of art and representation in Boorstin's account?

2. How did Beethoven change the nature of music according to Boorstin?

3. What is the place of the essay in the history Boorstin is describing?

4. What is Coleridge's importance in imaginative literature according to Boorstin?

5. What does Boorstin say is Rousseau's contribution to the art of autobiography?

6. How does Proust change the way we understand imagination in modern times?

7. How did painting begin to reflect the changes that were taking place in literature?

8. What is the skyscraper's role in the development of the human imagination?

9. In what way did T. S. Eliot change the course of literature's evolution?

10. How does Boorstin characterize Milton's contribution to imaginative culture?

(see the answer keys)

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