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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 characterize the Heroic American Literary Myth?

2. In what tradition was Cristabel written according to Boorstin?

3. What does Boorstin say Mozart said about dying?

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

5. Out of what did Milton create poetry in Boorstin's account?

Short Essay Questions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

8. How does Boorstin characterize Monet's accomplishment?

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

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

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

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 2

In autobiography, artists change themselves in the process of revealing themselves--putting their experiences down on paper seems to give them a new perspective, or free them. Using examples from the text, describe the difference between art that is a final product and art that is psychologically useful to the personal development of the author. Do they make different legacies? Can a psychological process be handed down?

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 799 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample