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This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What do flowers witness, in "The Language of Flowers"?
(a) The architectural order of fields and forests.
(b) The reason for the plants' existence.
(c) The life and death of love.
(d) Nothing but a moment in the life of the plant.

2. In what piece of writing did Bataille record his childhood?
(a) The Lugubrious Game.
(b) [Dream].
(c) The Language of Flowers.
(d) The Eye.

3. What was Bataille being punished for in "[Dream]"?
(a) Wetting himself.
(b) Seeing his parents naked.
(c) Staying up too late.
(d) Playing with a hoop.

4. What are flowers not matched by, in "The Language of Flowers"?
(a) The corrupt hands that pick them.
(b) A show of human love.
(c) The work of bees.
(d) The purity of the sunshine.

5. What critique does Bataille make in "The Critique of the Foundations of Hegelian Dialectic"?
(a) He frees dialectical negation from Engels' mechanical abstraction.
(b) He mocks Marx and Engels for their idealism.
(c) He criticizes the Oversoul as a childish fantasy.
(d) He demonstrated why dialectical materialism is inevitable.

6. In "Sacrificial Mutilation and the Severed Ear of Vincent Van Gogh", how long does Bataille say it took Van Gogh to paint suns after his self-mutilation?
(a) Fifteen months.
(b) Nine months.
(c) Six months.
(d) Two years.

7. What do volcanoes serve as, in "The Solar Anus"?
(a) Mother earth's breasts.
(b) God's mouths.
(c) Penises.
(d) The earth's anus.

8. Where did "[Dream]" originate?
(a) In Bataille's psychoanalysis.
(b) In Bataille's marriage.
(c) In Bataille's imagination.
(d) In Bataille's childhood obsession with eyes.

9. What relationship do the writings in Section II have to the writings in Section I?
(a) They were unrelated.
(b) They were unprecedented.
(c) They were implicit in them.
(d) They were logical extensions.

10. When did Bataille publish "W.C."?
(a) 1920.
(b) 1926.
(c) 1913.
(d) 1902.

11. When did Bataille and his mother abandon his father?
(a) When the Germans arrived in 1915.
(b) When the mother took a job in Paris.
(c) When the father was imprisoned.
(d) When the father went insane.

12. Who introduced Bataille to surrealism?
(a) Joan Miro.
(b) Michael Leiris.
(c) Andre Breton.
(d) Marcel Duchamp.

13. What strategy does Surrealism use for presenting images?
(a) The images are distorted beyond recognition.
(b) Opposite images are contrasted.
(c) Images are piled on, one after another.
(d) Layers of each image are stripped away until the essential truth is apparent.

14. What does Bataille say was the driving force beneath his heterodox theory?
(a) Obsession with priests.
(b) Homoerotic terror.
(c) Oedipal terror.
(d) Obsession with excrement.

15. What film does Bataille cite in "The Eye"?
(a) L'Age d'Or.
(b) The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie.
(c) That Obscure Object of Desire.
(d) Andalusian Dog.

Short Answer Questions

1. Whom did Bataille join with to form the Popular Front?

2. What does Bataille say his father looked like in "[Dream]"?

3. What kind of eye does Victor Hugo describe in a poem Bataille cites?

4. How do philosophers use natural forms, in "The Language of Flowers"?

5. What claim does Bataille discuss in "The Deviations of Nature"?

(see the answer keys)

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