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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 does Alphonse Daudet claim music is in his epigraph to Part 9?

2. How does Boorstin characterize the autobiography as a form?

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

4. Whom does Boorstin say was the first biographer?

5. What does Boorstin say was Milton's contribution to poetry?

Short Essay Questions

1. What does Boorstin say Pickering and Prescott have in common, and what is their role in the development of the Western imaginative consciousness?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Modern times are often described as either the summit of individual expression or the fragmentation of culture--but these are opposing concepts, and the opposition is always a tricky territory to navigate. How does Boorstin render these two trends, how does he reconcile them, and how does he account for the sense some people have that modern culture is a catastrophe from the perspective of the family or community?

Essay Topic 2

Evaluate the proposition that Boorstin's portrait of culture is outdated. Describe how it is no longer appropriate to our times, and, if possible, what has replaced it.

Essay Topic 3

Evaluate your own reading of The Creators--did you resist it, or were you compelled by the story? What does your reading tell you about yourself and your interests? Use specific examples from the book to describe yourself as a reader.

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This section contains 817 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample