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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. How does Bachelard refer to words?
(a) Shells that conceal identies.
(b) Locked boxes filled with mysteries.
(c) Leaves in an endless forest.
(d) Little houses with their own sense of space.

2. According to the author, the cuckoo can be compared with which water creature?
(a) The hermit crab.
(b) The shellfish.
(c) The mollusk.
(d) The pea-crab.

3. Poets, states Bachelard, use words to bring together what two entities?
(a) Earth and sky.
(b) Inside and outside.
(c) Past and present.
(d) Individual and universe.

4. In many countries, insists the author, tiny-ness is the center of what?
(a) An invitation to daydream.
(b) Inadequacy.
(c) Decision over the great.
(d) A return to childhood.

5. What is the eighteenth-century theory that states the purpose of life is to make shells?
(a) Ontogenesis.
(b) Homology.
(c) Ontology.
(d) Phenomenology.

Short Answer Questions

1. According to Bachelard, what term can describe the emergence of being through poetry and contemplation of poetic immensity?

2. What, in the opinion of Bachelard, moves the dreamer into the world of infinity?

3. Outside and inside space are like a mixture of what two concepts, in the opinion of the author?

4. While a phenomenologist accepts a poetic image, what will a psychologist do in the opinion of Bachelard?

5. In folklore and poetry, as described by Bachelard, how is image size transposed?

Short Essay Questions

1. How do a psychologist and a phenomenologist differ when viewing a poetic image in Bachelard's opinion?

2. How does the Hughes character, Emily, reveal the concept of "invented childhood"?

3. How does Paris manage to make the tiny stature of Tom Thumb seem believable?

4. How does Valery's knowledge of geometry fail him in regard to spiral shells?

5. For Bachelard, what occurs when a person allows himself to pass a threshold of absurdity?

6. What does Bachelard propose, to give a door sacred character? What is sacred about doors?

7. What two fears are contrasted by Michaux that may coexist even though they are opposites?

8. With regard to metaphoric levels of existence, Bachelard theorizes that poets differ from philosophers in what way?

9. In what way might a poet surprise an intellectual philosopher according to Bachelard?

10. How does the age of a forest compare with the ages of fields and meadows according to Bachelard's theory put forth in "Intimate Immensity"?

(see the answer keys)

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