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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. What was the subject of Bataille's first pamphlet?

2. Where did "[Dream]" originate?

3. What description fits with the "Acephale" group?

4. What does Bataille say was the driving force beneath his heterodox theory?

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

Short Essay Questions

1. How does Bataille describe his role in "The Jesuve"?

2. What is the value of Gnosticism in "Base Materialism and Gnosticism"

3. Explain the title of the essay "The Use Value of D. A. F. de Sade".

4. What were Bataille's early publications?

5. Describe the change in Bataille's early work to his more mature work and values.

6. Describe Bataille's experience with psychoanalysis.

7. What was Bataille's relationship with Andrea Breton?

8. How does the mouth in "Mouth" compare with the eyeball in ''The Eye'?

9. What does Bataille say about surrealism in "The 'Old Mole' and the Prefix Sur in the Words Surhomme [Superman] and Surrealist"?

10. What examples does Bataille cite to illustrate the horror of the eye's vulnerability?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Assess Bataille's place in the rank of surrealists--In what ways is he a surrealist, and in what ways does his art exceed or fail to live up to surrealism?

Essay Topic 2

Research Andre Breton's personality and his effect on surrealism, and assess the value of the proposition that Bataille was better off with Breton as an enemy than he would have been with him as a friend.

Essay Topic 3

Bataille valued revolutionary concepts from Marx and Hegel, but when the National Socialists came to power in Germany, he organized the Popular Front to oppose it. Characterize Bataille's desire for revolution, in art, in culture, and in European politics.

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