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

2. How does Boorstin characterize the autobiography as a form?
(a) A rebellion against the act of being misread.
(b) A shifting subject viewed from a shifting perspective.
(c) A scientific glimpse into the workings of the self.
(d) An objective account of a person's feelings and language.

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

4. How did the orchestra change in the fifteenth century according to Boorstin?
(a) Instruments were grouped into families.
(b) Conductors were introduced to coordinate parts.
(c) Composers began to employ new forms of harmony and dissonance.
(d) They swelled to unprecedented size.

5. What does Boorstin say Milton wrote after Comus and Lycidas?
(a) Poetry.
(b) Criticism.
(c) Prose.
(d) Drama.

Short Answer Questions

1. In what way does Boorstin say Milton was a strong individual?

2. Where was the skyscraper born?

3. How was Gibbon perceived in Boorstin's account?

4. To what does Melville say the sea and land are analogous in the epigraph to Part 12?

5. What did Gibbon add to the genre of human comedy according to Boorstin?

Short Essay Questions

1. What does Boorstin say is Dostoevsky's contribution to imaginative literature?

2. Why does Boorstin say Goethe's Faust is an important work?

3. What innovation does Boorstin say Leonardo da Vinci made in imaginative art?

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

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

6. How does Boorstin characterize Michelangelo's contribution to human culture?

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

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

9. How does Boorstin characterize Dickens' contribution to imaginative culture?

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

(see the answer keys)

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