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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. Advances in what field made it possible for calligraphy to be an art in Chinese culture according to Boorstin?

2. How does Boorstin characterize the form of Whitman's poetry?

3. What did Bondone create according to Boorstin?

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

2. How does Boorstin characterize Monet's accomplishment?

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

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

5. How did visual arts change as artists came to appreciate the power of light?

6. How did dance change during the transition into modernity?

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

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

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

10. Where does Melville's Moby Dick fit in Boorstin's narrative?

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

Make an annotated timeline and map to show Boorstin's progress through the history of imagination in World culture. Describe how you arrived at the graphic representation at which you arrived. Account, too, for Boorstin's departures from straight chronology.

Essay Topic 3

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?

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This section contains 787 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample