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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. How does Boorstin say Muslims see creativity?

2. For what was God cutting rods, in the quote from Martin Luther that opens Part 2?

3. When were the cave drawings discovered?

4. What is a dithyramb?

5. What does Boorstin say Paleolithic man discovered in making images?

Short Essay Questions

1. How do Greek depictions compare with Egyptian symbols?

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

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

4. What did Moses add to the culture of imagination?

5. How do Muslims differ from Greeks and Christians in their approach to making images?

6. What does Boorstin say is the importance of megaliths?

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

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

9. How does Boorstin describe the birth of prose?

10. How does Boorstin characterize the Confucian teachings?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

From what perspective could the narrative described here--of an art that came to approximate the condition of lived individual experience--be described as a falling away into false life and pseudo-awareness? How else could this narrative be described? What would a person have to believe in order to make a different characterization than Boorstin makes?

Essay Topic 2

Assess the proposition that Boorstin's inclusion of non-Western art and culture amounts to tokenism that reflects a Western bias.

Essay Topic 3

Other critics have told this story--of the progress of art and literature--as an evolution of a state of crisis, as individuals reacted to changes in culture with innovations in art, which changed the nature of the question. To what extent does Boorstin account for the cultural causes of the evolution of art, and to what extent does he account for the sense of ongoing crisis many artists have described?

(see the answer keys)

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