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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 Proust created life?

2. How does Boorstin characterize "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"?

3. What did Kafka believe about the inner and outer selves according to Boorstin?

4. When did Montaigne publish his Essays?

5. In what does Zola say man stopped believing in the epigraph to Book 3?

Short Essay Questions

1. What does Boorstin say is Ben Franklin's contribution to the art of imaginative life?

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

3. What, in Boorstin's opinion, is calligraphy's place in the history of human culture?

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

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

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

7. How does Boorstin describe the evolution of the orchestra over time?

8. Where does Boorstin put Kafka in his portrait of imaginative thinkers?

9. What was Gibbon's innovation?

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

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Write an evaluative review of The Creators. What is this book's place in culture? What are its uses? Who is its audience? What are its limitations?

Essay Topic 2

Why do you think Boorstin excluded technological inventions and imaginative work? What is it about combustion engines, or industrial processes, or scientific discoveries, that excludes them from this work?

Essay Topic 3

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?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 682 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample