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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. To which of the following do the narrators compare writing?

2. Of which of the following did Mieczyś’s father approve?

3. Which of the following descriptors is applied to Thilo?

4. Which of the following names predominates in the cemetery where Klara is interred?

5. To which of the following is Schwärmerei compared?

Short Essay Questions

1. Why does Willi dine with his lodgers on the day his wife dies?

2. Why does Mieczyś note liking the concept of things being appetizing?

3. Why does Mieczyś associate the smell of fat with his father?

4. How had Mieczyś been instructed to ward off panic caused by coughing?

5. To what does Mieczyś initially ascribe the strange sounds he hears from the attic of his lodgings?

6. Why does Mieczyś study mathematics and chemistry?

7. What features on the grave of Mieczyś’s mother?

8. What had Mieczyś and his nanny called tweaking?

9. What does August posit is “the basis of old age” (57)?

10. Why do Mieczyś and his teacher veer away from formal German towards more local dialects?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Conversely, given demonstrated efforts toward censorship in a number of countries, what would likely prompt bans of The Empusium? By which groups? Why?

Essay Topic 2

A lack of formal sectional division in the novel obliges a fairly arbitrary breakdown of the text for purposes of study and discussion. How might the novel be sectioned off other than it currently is? Why might those divisions be appropriate, based on the text and its contexts of composition and reception?

Essay Topic 3

How reliable are the narrators of the novel? What in the text indicates that reliability, and how does it do so?

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