View a FREE sample

This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. How did Benjamin Franklin innovate in the autobiographical form?

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

3. In what period was the symphony created?

4. What did Bondone create according to Boorstin?

5. What does Boorstin say was combined in the skyscraper?

Short Essay Questions

1. How does Boorstin characterize Michelangelo's contribution to human culture?

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

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

4. How does Boorstin characterize Monet's accomplishment?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

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?

Essay Topic 2

Which of the many epigraphs Boorstin uses in the headings for each Part is most applicable to the book as a whole? Using your analysis of the text, make a case for one epigraph in particular as an emblem of the whole project.

Essay Topic 3

Who is the hero of The Creators? Is there one person or figure who emerges? How does Boorstin distribute the focus among so many artists without dissipating the effect of his work? What characteristic work or decision defines the hero in The Creators?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 737 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample