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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. What was depicted in the first images?

2. Why does Confucius say that it is impossible for men to serve the spirits?

3. What does Boorstin say upturned stones signify?

4. How does Boorstin characterize Suger's creation at the St. Denis cathedral?

5. How does Boorstin characterize Philo of Alexandria's view of philosophy?

Short Essay Questions

1. How does Boorstin characterize Shakespeare's role in the development of imaginative works?

2. What does Boorstin mean when he says that theology was born in Greek philosophy?

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

4. What innovation did Dante introduce to Western culture?

5. How does Boorstin describe the birth of prose?

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

7. What innovation do the Homeric epics represent in the culture of the imagination?

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

9. What improvement did the Greeks make in architecture?

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

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

What is missing from this book? What should have been covered or presented that was not? What is the effect of this absence? Describe an element that ought to have been covered, and explain why it would have made the book stronger.

Essay Topic 2

How do the differences between men and women figure in Boorstin's book? What kind of creativity, and what forms are appropriate to each? What are the essential differences according to Boorstin? What underlying symmetries or similarities are there?

Essay Topic 3

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?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 783 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample