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This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through Section 7: Part II--God’s Language, including the essays “The Trouble with Paradise” through “Faulkner and Woman”.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. In "Black Matter(s)," Morrison says that we can understand something important about literary "whiteness" by studying what?
(a) Literary Blackness.
(b) Changes to the canon over time.
(c) History.
(d) Black writers.

2. In "Chinua Achebe," what does Morrison say she discovered at Africa House?
(a) African American art.
(b) A writer who helped her meet Chinua Achebe.
(c) A series of lectures by Chinua Achebe.
(d) African literature.

3. In "The Site of Memory," Morrison says that slave narratives had two purposes: one was to record the life of an individual human being, and the other was what?
(a) To condemn their former masters.
(b) To rebut narratives by plantation owners.
(c) To advance the cause of abolition.
(d) To contribute to the historical record.

4. In "Unspeakable Things Unspoken," Morrison brings up Bernal's two models of Greek history in order to illustrate what point?
(a) The Phoenicians are wrongly viewed as culturally close to ancient Jewish civilization.
(b) Western Civilization's European foundation story rests on dubious scholarship.
(c) Ancient Greece's contributions to Western culture are not as significant as many claim.
(d) The European model of Ancient Greece is the basis of Christianity's appropriation of Israel.

5. In her "Sarah Lawrence Commencement Address," Morrison says that one of her aims is to do what?
(a) Criticize.
(b) Remember.
(c) Reassure.
(d) Provoke.

Short Answer Questions

1. "Noblesse oblige" is a philosophy that urged the nobility to do what?

2. In "The Habit of Art," Morrison tells the anecdote about Antigone in Haiti to illustrate what point?

3. According to "Harlem on My Mind," almost 28 years after the "Harlem" exhibit, the Guggenheim museum did what?

4. In "The Site of Memory," Morrison remarks upon what tone common in slave narratives?

5. John Gardner's novel Grendel uses the original story as a source for what?

(see the answer key)

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