UGC NET ENGLISH LITERARY THEORY
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1
Choose one
answer.
a. To connect human beings with a higher ideal
b. To entertain those who enjoy it
c. To criticize society through satire
d. To bring to light social oppressions
e. All of the above answers are correct.
According to Plato, what is the moral purpose of art?
2
Choose one
answer.
a. Literary theory engages with theoretical rather than real-world issues.
b. Literary theory asks fundamental questions about literary interpretation, and at the same time
builds specific systems of literary interpretation.
c. Literary theory relies totally on speculation rather than history.
d. Literary theory is detached from the reality of politics and the economy.
e. All of the above answers are correct.
How does literary theory resemble the practice of philosophy as it was developed by Plato and Aristotle?
3
Choose one
answer.
a. Claude Lévi-Strauss
b. Ferdinand de Saussure
c. Viktor Shklovsky
d. Roland Barthes
e. Michel Foucault
Modern literary theory began with the work of which theorist?
4
Choose one
answer.
a. A reversal
b. An imitation
c. A satire
d. A poetic metaphor
e. A spectacle
What is mimesis?
5
Choose one
answer.
a. To understand the importance of the formal elements of literary structure
b. To formulate relationships among an author, a reader, and a literary work
c. To understand the role of sexuality, gender, race, and ethnicity in literary study
d. To evaluate the role of historical context in the interpretation of literature
e. All of the above answers are correct.
What is the main function of literary theory?
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6
Choose one
answer.
a. Literary criticism is concerned only with the meaning of a literary work, while literary theory is
concerned only with the structure of a literary work.
b. Literary criticism draws upon research derived from sources outside literature, while literary
theory draws upon sources within a text.
c. Literary criticism is concerned with how characters in a text act, while literary theory is
concerned with why characters act.
d. Literary theory is concerned with the method used to interpret a work, while literary criticism is
the application of literary theory.
e. All of the above answers are correct.
Which of the following best describes the difference between literary criticism and literary theory?
7
Choose one
answer.
a. Aristotle
b. Viktor Shklovsky
c. Cleanth Brooks
d. Stanley Fish
e. Toni Morrison
Which of the following literary theorists is most closely associated with the concept that became known as liberal humanism?
8
Choose one
answer.
a. Plato
b. Claude Lévi-Strauss
c. Julia Kristeva
d. Walter Benjamin
e. Louis Althusser
Which theorist is associated with the idea that art is a copy of a copy?
9
Choose one
answer.
a. Jacques Derrida
b. Jacques Lacan
c. Edward Said
d. Stephen Greenblatt
e. Plato
Which theorist is most closely associated with the idea of art as imitation?
10
Choose one
answer.
a. An idea traditionally associated with the Renaissance
b. A humanity-centered view of the universe
c. A school of theory devoted to the revival of Classical (ancient Greek and Roman) literature
What is humanism?
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d. A theory that values restraint, form, and imitation
e. All of the above answers are correct.
11
Choose one
answer.
a. As an aesthetic object that is independent of historical context
b. As an aesthetic object that is influenced by historical context
c. As a historical object that is also aesthetic
d. As a historical object that is not necessarily aesthetic
How did the New Critics view literature?
12
Choose one
answer.
a. Both sets of critics reject the importance of historical context in studying literature.
b. Both sets of critics look for an objective way to view texts.
c. Both sets of critics study the underlying forms of texts.
d. Both sets of critics focus on evaluating literature in a scientific manner.
e. All of the above answers are correct.
What do structuralist and formalist critics have in common?
13
Choose one
answer.
a. A term first used by literary theorists William Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley
b. A term that suggests that a critic should study the structural and thematic elements of a poem
rather than the effect it has on the emotions of the reader
c. A term that describes the confusion between a poem and its result
d. An important term in the field of New Historicism
e. All of the above answers are correct.
What is affective fallacy?
14
Choose one
answer.
a. A term that describes how literature exposes its own artificiality
b. A concept associated with Russian formalism
c. An idea explored by Viktor Shklovsky
d. A term that describes the capacity of art to counter the effects of habit
e. All of the above answers are correct.
What is defamiliarization?
15
Choose one
answer.
a. An approach that emphasizes literary devices in a text
b. An approach that emphasizes the historical context of a text
c. An approach that emphasizes the biographical intent of a text
d. An approach that emphasizes racial issues in a text
Which of the following descriptions best defines the literary theory known as formalism?
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e. An approach that emphasizes the representation of the economy in a text
16
Choose one
answer.
a. Cleanth Brooks
b. Ferdinand de Saussure
c. Karl Marx
d. Sigmund Freud
e. Toni Morrison
Which of the following figures is considered to be the father of the linguistic theory known as structuralism?
17
Choose one
answer.
a. Critics should examine historical information surrounding a literary work.
b. Critics should develop universal readings of texts.
c. Critics should consider evolving notions of a text over time.
d. Critics should attempt to paraphrase texts in order to find out what they mean.
e. Critics should look at the biographical information of authors.
Which of the following statements best describes Cleanth Brooks's attitude towards studying literature?
18
Choose one
answer.
a. Plato's The Republic
b. T.S. Eliot's "Tradition and the Individual Talent"
c. Jacques Derrida's Of Grammatology
d. Roland Barthes's "The Death of the Author"
e. Jacques Lacan's "The Mirror Stage ... "
Which of the following texts is the BEST example of the argument that a work's meaning does not come entirely from the
imagination of the author?
19
Choose one
answer.
a. Aristotle's Poetics
b. Leo Tolstoy's The Kreutzer Sonata
c. John Keats's "Ode on a Grecian Urn"
d. Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness
e. W.E.B. Du Bois's The Souls of Black Folk
Which of the following texts provides the best example of defamiliarization?
20
Choose one
answer.
a. Viktor Shklovsky
b. Cleanth Brooks
c. Terry Eagleton
d. Judith Butler
Which of the following theorists is associated with formalism?
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e. Mikhail Bakhtin
21
Choose one
answer.
a. Humanism
b. Formalism
c. Structuralism
d. Poststructuralism
e. Marxism
Which school of literary theory is associated with the phrase "to make the stones stonier"?
22
Choose one
answer.
a. Language is inseparable from its historical context.
b. There are five phases of linguistic development.
c. Language can be analyzed as a formal system of elements.
d. Linguistics is too complicated to be distilled to a formula.
e. All of the above answers are correct.
What is the central idea of Ferdinand de Saussure's Course in General Linguistics?
23
Choose one
answer.
a. refuses maternal bonds.
b. is able to separate the "I" from the "Other."
c. looks into a mirror for the first time.
d. first engages with speech.
e. All of the above answers are correct.
According to Jacques Lacan, the mirror stage is the point at which a child:
24
Choose one
answer.
a. Biographical information about the author must be considered when evaluating literature.
b. A text and its author text are unrelated.
c. It is possible to distill meaning from a work based on the author's politics.
d. Authorial intent must be considered when evaluating literature.
e. Literature is inextricably connected to its creator.
In his essay "The Death of the Author," Roland Barthes argues what about literature?
25
Choose one
answer.
a. The idea of the author came into being at a certain point in history.
b. The names of authors serve a classificatory function.
c. The author is not a source of infinite meaning.
d. The author may not always exist.
In his essay "What Is an Author?" what position(s) on authorship does Michel Foucault take?
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e. All of the above answers are correct.
26
Choose one
answer.
a. No fixed, stable meaning is possible.
b. Language must be studied in conjunction with history in order to create meaning.
c. There is no potential for multiple and differing meanings in a work of literature.
d. Literature is timeless, and thus meaning does not change.
e. All of the above answers are correct.
In Of Grammatology, Jacques Derrida argues what about literature?
27
Choose one
answer.
a. mirrors our physical evolution as human beings.
b. prevents us from communicating through writing or speech.
c. involves a constant process of deferred meaning.
d. evolved exclusively as a function of our individual psyche.
e. All of the above answers are correct.
Jacques Derrida's concept of différance challenges us to think about language as a system that:
28
Choose one
answer.
a. The ability of a text to contain truth
b. The "undecidability" and essentially unstable nature of a text
c. The idea that a text has a specific meaning that can be understood through a process of
deconstruction
d. Jacques Derrida's style of writing
e. All of the above answers are correct.
To what idea does the ancient Greek term aporia refer in terms of deconstruction theory?
29
Choose one
answer.
a. the meaning of a text always relies on context.
b. texts are always heterogeneous.
c. the instability of a text is actually evident in the text itself.
d. any system for the production of meaning is inevitably bound by context, yet also limitless.
e. All of the above answers are correct.
Ultimately, the literary theory of deconstruction argues that:
30
Choose one
answer.
a. It contains secret instincts and desires that are repressed.
b. It has little impact on human behavior.
c. It is the only significant aspect of the human psyche.
d. It can never be accessed.
What did Sigmund Freud believe about the unconscious?
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e. All of the above answers are correct.
31
Choose one
answer.
a. Literary texts should not be read as a projection of the author's psyche.
b. Literary texts solely reflect an author's intentions.
c. Literary texts are unlike dreams because they have a system of order and produce meaning.
d. Literary texts reveal secret elements of an author's unconscious.
e. All of the above answers are correct.
What fundamental idea does psychoanalytic criticism hold about literary texts?
32
Choose one
answer.
a. A maxim of logic developed by Charles Sanders Peirce
b. A theory of practical actions developed by William James
c. An idea used to guide conduct towards clear objectives
d. A concept derived from the ancient Greek word pragma, meaning action
e. All of the above answers are correct.
What is the philosophical theory known as pragmatism?
33
Choose one
answer.
a. T.S. Eliot
b. Jacques Lacan
c. Jacques Derrida
d. Stanley Fish
e. Edward Said
Which literary theorist argues that "there is nothing outside the text"?
34
Choose one
answer.
a. Neurotic behavior
b. Changes in emotional states
c. Obsessions
d. Slips of the tongue
e. All of the above answers are correct.
Which of the following human behaviors is important to a Freudian psychoanalytic study of William Shakespeare's Hamlet?
35
Choose one
answer.
a. All linguistic concepts evolve solely out of the responses of people within a specific historical
era.
b. All linguistic and social phenomena are texts, and the object of studying these texts is to reveal
the underlying codes that make them meaningful.
c. All linguistics is in some way related to class struggle.
Which of the following is a rule of semiotics?
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d. All linguistics is related to history, and therefore the meaning of linguistics relies exclusively on
historical context.
e. All of the above answers are correct.
36
Choose one
answer.
a. Judith Butler's Gender Trouble
b. W.E.B. Du Bois's The Souls of Black Folk
c. Roland Barthes's "The Death of the Author"
d. Jacques Derrida's Of Grammatology
e. Jacques Lacan's "The Mirror Stage ... "
Which text argues that, as infants, human beings begin to define their identities against the identities of others?
37
Choose one
answer.
a. Claude Lévi-Strauss
b. Jacques Derrida
c. Jacques Lacan
d. Michel Foucault
e. Carl Jung
With what literary critic is the term the author function most closely associated?
38
Choose one
answer.
a. Calling into question the possibility of the coherence of discourse
b. Suggesting that the study of literature is based on the breakdown of language into signs
c. Arguing that language, and therefore literary texts, relies on the difference between terms and
therefore constantly defers meaning.
d. Calling into question the capacity of language to communicate
e. All of the above answers are correct.
Which of the following best defines the work of a deconstructionist critic?
39
Choose one
answer.
a. Kristeva rejects the idea that neuroses provide insight into the unconscious.
b. Kristeva suggests that women are not subject to traditional fetishes.
c. Kristeva offers a more central place for women's issues within psychological development.
d. Kristeva fundamentally disagrees with the idea of the mirror stage.
e. All of the above answers are correct.
How are Julia Kristeva's psychoanalytic theories distinct from traditional Freudian concepts?
40
Choose one
answer.
a. It suggests that the suppression of women is part of a historical climate that will naturally fade
away.
b. It suggests that gender roles are conditioned by the possession of money and power.
How does Virginia Woolf's essay "A Room of One's Own" contribute to feminist theory?
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c. It suggests that gender has power over class.
d. It suggests that education, rather than money, is needed for the liberation of women.
e. All of the above answers are correct.
41
Choose one
answer.
a. Women's gender is artificial, while men's gender is not.
b. While gender is not real, the stereotypes that accompany it are true.
c. Gender is a problematic, but essentially true, category.
d. Gender is largely a cultural construct.
e. All of the above answers are correct.
In general, what is Judith Butler's concept of gender?
42
Choose one
answer.
a. Women should write for and about themselves in order to counter phallocentric texts.
b. Women should write, but they should do so only within the existent male canon.
c. Women should primarily dedicate themselves to studying women's literature from the past.
d. Women should be unconcerned with the struggle for identity.
e. All of the above answers are correct.
In her essay "The Laugh of the Medusa," what does Hélène Cixous suggest for women?
43
Choose one
answer.
a. Kristeva wholly rejects Lacan's theory of psychosexual development.
b. Kristeva centralizes the maternal and the feminine in her revisions of Lacan's theory.
c. Kristeva argues that the mirror stage does not occur until the individual embraces a distinct
gender role.
d. All of the above answers are correct.
In what way does Julia Kristeva build on Jacques Lacan's theory of psychosexual development?
44
Choose one
answer.
a. Ophelia's madness represents the social oppression of women.
b. It is nearly impossible to represent women as anything other than mad in patriarchal
discourses.
c. Feminist critics need to re-appropriate Ophelia for their own purposes.
d. Women's tragedies tend to be subordinated to those of men.
e. All of the above answers are correct.
What does Elaine Showalter argue about gender in terms of representations of the character of Ophelia in William
Shakespeare's Hamlet?
45
Choose one
answer.
a. Examining only female-authored literature more critically
b. Considering women's literature outside of its historical context
What does gynocriticism recommend as an approach to literature?
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c. Studying women's literature for its linguistic qualities only
d. Becoming more familiar with the history of women and women's writing
e. All of the above answers are correct.
46
Choose one
answer.
a. Gender does not reflect an essential truth, but rather is a role people play based on their
internalization of socially constructed gender roles.
b. Gender roles do not exist.
c. Real gender roles are scripted by excellent writers.
d. Only individuals who have the capacity to perform have gender.
e. All of the above answers are correct.
What does Judith Butler mean when she suggests that gender is "performed"?
47
Choose one
answer.
a. To advocate for women's rights
b. To create literary subjects with which female readers can identify
c. To critique phallocentric assumptions about literature
d. To counter stereotypes about women
e. All of the above answers are correct.
What is the purpose of feminist theory?
48
Choose one
answer.
a. Performance is the ultimate objective of all human beings.
b. Language is used to indicate action as well as thought.
c. Individuals perform gender actively.
d. Individuals develop consciousness through speech.
e. All of the above answers are correct.
Which of the following ideas relates to J.L. Austin's performativity theory?
49
Choose one
answer.
a. Understanding sexuality is crucial to understanding culture.
b. Understanding homosexuality has little effect on understanding culture.
c. Literary study is unaffected by a lack of interest in sexuality.
d. Understanding homosexual themes in novels has become too routine.
e. All of the above answers are correct.
Which of the following is a theme of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's book Epistemology of the Closet?
50
Choose one
answer.
a. How women really feel about male writers
b. The inscription of womanhood and femininity in texts
Which of the following offers the best definition of écriture féminine?
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c. Second-wave feminism
d. Psychological studies of women
e. Literary works that feature women
51
Choose one
answer.
a. Elaine Showalter
b. Julia Kristeva
c. Lucy Irigaray
d. Hélène Cixous
e. Louise M. Rosenblatt
With which feminist theorist is gynocriticism most closely associated?
52
Choose one
answer.
a. Hélène Cixous
b. Judith Butler
c. Lucy Irigaray
d. Mary Wollstonecraft
e. Julia Kristeva
Which of the following writers might be considered one of the early founders of first-wave feminism?
53
Choose one
answer.
a. History comprises the essential framework for the performance of literary analysis
b. Politics and the economy are the most important factors in literary analysis
c. Biography is essential to literary analysis
d. Psychoanalysis is critical to literary analysis
e. All of the above answers are correct.
In Fredric Jameson's book The Political Unconscious, what does Jameson suggest about literature?
54
Choose one
answer.
a. Formalism
b. Structuralism
c. Poststructuralism
d. Marxism
e. Postcolonialism
The Frankfurt School of literary theory was most greatly influenced by which of the following schools of thought?
55
Choose one
answer.
a. An infant's inability to speak prior to the mirror stage
b. The referential relationships among symbols, signifiers, and signs
To what idea does the term heteroglossia refer?
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c. The multi-layered nature of language in a literary work
d. The formulaic shift between economic and political themes
e. All of the above answers are correct
56
Choose one
answer.
a. A form of literary criticism that is based on historical context
b. A form of literary criticism that does not incorporate economic concerns
c. A form of literary criticism based on linguistic analysis
d. A term related to gender theory that argues that men are dominant in society by virtue of their
economic privilege
e. A form of literary criticism that is based on a reader's response
What is dialectical materialism?
57
Choose one
answer.
a. A term developed by Mikhail Bakhtin
b. A term used to describe how texts include a variety of styles
c. A term used to explain the use of multiple points of view in literature
d. A term that explains resistance to a monolithic text
e. All of the above answers are correct.
What is dialogism?
58
Choose one
answer.
a. A term for the false neuroses expressed in dreams
b. A feminist term for the state that occurs when texts written by women are not considered in
the study of literature
c. Another term for the unconscious
d. A term related to the period of psychosexual development that occurs before an infant reaches
the mirror stage
e. An ideology that involves dominating the consciousness of exploited classes
What is false consciousness?
59
Choose one
answer.
a. The effect of literature in enlightening the human mind
b. The effect of modern society on human suffering
c. The effect of the economy on women's concerns
d. The effect of the unconscious mind on the conscious self
e. All of the above answers are correct.
What is generally considered to be Theodor W. Adorno's primary concern as a theorist?
60 Which of the following statements best explains Mikhail Bakhtin's philosophy of language?
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Choose one
answer.
a. Language includes multiple social dialects and jargons.
b. Language can include socio-ideological contradictions from the past.
c. Language exhibits and is bound up in the social lives and historical context of the people who
speak it.
d. Language is loaded with the intentions of others.
e. Language is shaped by the context of a socially-charged life.
61
Choose one
answer.
a. Sigmund Freud
b. Carl Jung
c. William James
d. Theodor W. Adorno
e. Edward Said
With which theorist is the term identity thinking most closely associated?
62
Choose one
answer.
a. They accept ideology as an essential, although sometimes problematic, part of society.
b. They subject all ideologies to critique in order to expose biased interests.
c. They reject the idea that ideology has real effects on social progress.
d. They promote ideology because it helps to create a dominant social order.
e. All of the above answers are correct.
How do Marxist theorists react to ideology?
63
Choose one
answer.
a. Understanding the author's ideas in the context of the real world
b. Entering the author's mind through his or her literary works
c. Understanding the author's consciousness
d. Reproducing the author's thoughts in a critical context
e. All of the above answers are correct.
According to the Geneva School, what is the function of the reader?
64
Choose one
answer.
a. The reader fills in the gaps imposed by an author's intention.
b. The reader is sublimated beneath the author.
c. The reader is less important than the author's context.
d. The reader is totally subject to the author's intention.
e. All of the above answers are correct.
How does Wolfgang Iser envision the reader?
65 In her essay "The Poem as Event," Louise M. Rosenblatt sees the reader as performing what function?
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Choose one
answer.
a. The reader participates in a transaction with the text.
b. The reader is acted upon by the text.
c. The reader acts upon the text.
d. The reader brings individual knowledge to his or her reading of the text.
e. All of the above answers are correct.
66
Choose one
answer.
a. It is impossible to view a piece of literature as its author intended.
b. It is impossible to divorce a text from capitalist ideology.
c. It is impossible to view a piece of literature correctly, because we can only work within the
hetero-normative paradigm.
d. It is impossible to separate a text from the linguistics that compose it.
e. It is impossible for a reader to recognize multiple voices in a text.
What does hermeneutic theory suggest about how readers view literature?
67
Choose one
answer.
a. A term that describes the absence of racial others in the canon
b. A term that describes the attempt to read homosexuality into literature
c. A term that describes the effect of autobiography on text
d. A term that describes the interpretation of meaning
e. A term that describes the layers of voices in literature
What is hermeneutics?
68
Choose one
answer.
a. The examination of structures informing our conscious experience
b. The examination of desires informing our consciousness
c. The examination of our unconscious experience
d. The examination of intricate structures within our unconscious
e. The examination of transmissions between our unconscious and conscious experiences
What is phenomenology?
69
Choose one
answer.
a. The Moscow School
b. The Chicago School
c. The Frankfurt School
d. The Geneva School
e. The Yale School
Which school of theorists is most closely associated with phenomenology?
70 With which theorist is phenomenology associated?
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Choose one
answer.
a. Edmund Husserl
b. Wolfgang Iser
c. Jean-Paul Sartre
d. Emmanuel Lévinas
e. All of the above answers are correct.
71
Choose one
answer.
a. Wolfgang Iser
b. William Wimsatt
c. Cleanth Brooks
d. Harold Bloom
e. Edmund Husserl
With which theorist is the term implied reader associated?
72
Choose one
answer.
a. How readers learn to read
b. How readers imagine visual images in a text
c. How readers participate in creating the meaning of a text
d. How readers regard critics
e. How readers choose to read what they read
Reader-response theory is focused on considering which of the following?
73
Choose one
answer.
a. Theodor W. Adorno
b. Claude Lévi-Strauss
c. Julia Kristeva
d. Jacques Derrida
e. Jacques Lacan
From whom did New Historicists draw the idea of "self-regulating systems"?
74
Choose one
answer.
a. New Historicism rejects the idea that history is neutral.
b. New Historicism does not make strict delineations between literary and non-literary texts.
c. New Historicism takes a particular interest in marginalized peoples.
d. New Historicism is interested in how texts help us understand economic realities.
e. All of the above answers are correct.
How does New Historicism differ from traditional historicism?
75 The concept of otherness is related to which of the following theories?
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Choose one
answer.
a. Psychoanalytic theory
b. Feminist theory
c. Ethnic criticism
d. Postcolonial theory
e. All of the above answers are correct.
76
Choose one
answer.
a. It includes too few works by non-European writers.
b. It includes too few works by non-white writers.
c. It includes too few works by women.
d. It includes too few works by non-Western writers.
e. All of the above answers are correct.
What do many contemporary theorists find problematic about the literary canon?
77
Choose one
answer.
a. It has little relationship to the colonization of Asian countries by the West.
b. It illustrates the fundamental political equality of all nations.
c. It was produced by Western scholarship.
d. Its literature is less proud that that of the West.
e. All of the above answers are correct.
What does Edward Said argue about the concept of the Orient?
78
Choose one
answer.
a. An early aspect of ethnic criticism
b. An understanding of how double experiences create identity
c. A concept developed by W.E.B Du Bois
d. An attempt to explain dual identity
e. All of the above answers are correct.
What is double consciousness?
79
Choose one
answer.
a. To represent the relationship between colonizers and the colonized
b. To draw attention to the positive effects of colonization on literature
c. To explain why there are few examples of successful non-Western literature
d. To show the ways in which most Western literature is superior
e. All of the above answers are correct.
What is the main function of postcolonial criticism?
80 What is the main goal of ethnic criticism?
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Choose one
answer.
a. To bring attention to false Euro-centric paradigms
b. To rectify the double experiences of certain racial groups
c. To reconcile cultural identity with individual identity
d. To expand the canon to include works authored by different racial groups
e. All of the above answers are correct.
81
Choose one
answer.
a. The West spends too much time trying to consider an Asian perspective.
b. The West tends to look at Asian countries as individual units rather than lump them together.
c. The West views matters through its own limited historical position.
d. The West refuses to apply economic and political coercion to Asian writers.
e. The West compels writers to work in pre-colonial, lost languages.
Which is a common postcolonial critique of the West?
82
Choose one
answer.
a. Texts are examined to see how colonizers and the colonized interact.
b. Texts are examined to see how the formal aspects of the text create meaning.
c. Texts are examined to determine how they reveal social realities.
d. Texts are examined to determine the author's intent.
e. Texts are examined to show how history has little effect on literary production.
Which of the following statements best explains the main objective of New Historicism?
83
Choose one
answer.
a. Harold Bloom's "An Elegy for the Canon"
b. Jacques Lacan's "The Mirror Stage ... "
c. Cleanth Brooks's "Keats's Sylvan Historian"
d. Edward Said's Orientalism
e. Toni Morrison's Playing in the Dark
Which of the following texts is considered the first example of postcolonial criticism?
84
Choose one
answer.
a. Jacques Derrida
b. Terry Eagleton
c. Fredric Jameson
d. Stephen Greenblatt
e. Louise M. Rosenblatt
Who coined the term New Historicism?
85 With which theorist is the concept imaginative geography associated?
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Choose one
answer.
a. Julia Kristeva
b. Fredric Jameson
c. Terry Eagleton
d. Edward Said
e. Michel Foucault
86
Choose one
answer.
a. A theory that sees history as a form of writing and discourse
b. A theory that abandons the idea of history as an imitation of events
c. A theory that regards history as a series of narratives
d. A theory that capitalizes on the interplay between literature and history
e. All of the above answers are correct.
What is New Historicism?
87
Choose one
answer.
a. A figure of judgment
b. Religious belief
c. A witness
d. Psychological treatment
e. An easy way to explain trauma
According to trauma theorists, a testifying subject needs which of the following to deliver a successful testimony?
88
Choose one
answer.
a. Literary theory is limited in its ability to interpret a text.
b. Literary theory often depends on esoteric knowledge to be properly understood.
c. Literary theory is employed mostly by academics.
d. Literary theory should not be an academic focus in English departments.
e. Literary theory is the only proper way to conceptualize literary texts.
Christopher Ricks would most likely DISAGREE with which of the following claims about literary theory?
89
Choose one
answer.
a. How writers conceptualize natural environments and the representation of environmental
issues in literature and culture
b. How writers have damaged the environment
c. How the environment can be repaired
d. Who is responsible for damaging the environment
e. How clean energy sources can be developed
Ecotheorists tend to show an interest in which of the following?
90 In his essay "The Business of Theory," William Deresiewicz argues which of the following about Terry Eagleton's book After
Theory?
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Choose one
answer.
a. It offers a strong outline for how theory can be conducted in the 21st century.
b. It should not be read or considered by any student or scholar.
c. It offers some valid ideas and critiques, but its author is not entirely trustworthy.
d. It offers a strong counterpoint to Jacques Derrida's notion of deconstruction.
e. It proves that William Shakespeare did not author his plays.
91
Choose one
answer.
a. Reject all previous modes of literary theory
b. Focus on a return to traditional critical methods
c. Make use of different literary theories in order to develop new theories
d. Work only with ideas developed by post-Marxist theorists
e. Insist that literary studies should be abandoned
New trends in literary theory tend to do which of the following?
92
Choose one
answer.
a. Literary theory tends to be too political.
b. Literary theory does not offer a holistic interpretation of a text.
c. Literary theory depends on specialized knowledge that is outside the realm of literary studies.
d. Literary theory is sometimes very abstract and difficult to read.
e. All of the above answers are correct.
Some critics of literary theory argue that literary theory is problematic for which reason?
93
Choose one
answer.
a. Psychoanalysis
b. Marxism
c. Feminism
d. Deconstruction
e. Reader-response theory
Trauma theory is tremendously influenced by which theoretical school?
94
Choose one
answer.
a. Sigmund Freud
b. Carl Jung
c. Michel Foucault
d. Jacques Derrida
e. Jacques Lacan
Trauma theory primarily developed out of the work of which psychoanalyst?
95 What are some common criticisms of literary theory?
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Choose one
answer.
a. Theory has replaced literary appreciation with formulas for understanding.
b. The reasoning of theory is often too circular.
c. Many theories have been pushed too far into abstraction.
d. Many theories are no longer accepted by their parent disciplines.
e. All of the above answers are correct.
96
Choose one
answer.
a. A language about another language
b. A supernatural language
c. A language that does not yet constitute a real language
d. A language used by a particular marginalized group of people within a larger dominant culture
e. All of the above answers are correct.
What does the term meta-language mean, according to Andrzej Warminski?
97
Choose one
answer.
a. He considers it to be vital in order to understand literary texts.
b. He considers theory to be the only way that literary texts can be interpreted.
c. He has no misgivings about the practical usability of literary theory.
d. He feels that literary theory is ultimately too limited in scope to serve as a proper method of
interpretation.
e. He claims never to have read a piece of literary theory.
What is Christopher Ricks's attitude toward literary theory?
98
Choose one
answer.
a. Trauma theory
b. Ecotheory
c. Game theory
d. Marxist theory
e. Psychoanalytic theory
Which literary theory would most directly explore questions of the role of spatial setting in a poem?
99
Choose one
answer.
a. Strange attractors are mysterious forces that are entirely random.
b. Strange attractors are complex forces that are determined by the laws of physics.
c. Strange attractors are mysterious forces that are both random and determined.
d. Strange attractors are complex forces that are entirely random.
e. Strange attractors are mysterious forces that have no basis in logic or reason and cannot be
observed in nature.
Which of the following statements offers the best definition of the concept of strange attractors in chaos theory?
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100
Choose one
answer.
a. Trauma theory
b. Ecotheory
c. Chaos theory
d. Formalism
e. Marxist theory
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1
Choose one
answer.
a. To connect human beings with a higher ideal
b. To entertain those who enjoy it
c. To criticize society through satire
d. To bring to light social oppressions
e. All of the above answers are correct.
According to Plato, what is the moral purpose of art?
2
Choose one
answer.
a. Literary theory engages with theoretical rather than real-world issues.
b. Literary theory asks fundamental questions about literary interpretation, and at the same time
builds specific systems of literary interpretation.
c. Literary theory relies totally on speculation rather than history.
d. Literary theory is detached from the reality of politics and the economy.
e. All of the above answers are correct.
How does literary theory resemble the practice of philosophy as it was developed by Plato and Aristotle?
3
Choose one
answer.
a. Claude Lévi-Strauss
b. Ferdinand de Saussure
c. Viktor Shklovsky
d. Roland Barthes
e. Michel Foucault
Modern literary theory began with the work of which theorist?
4
Choose one
answer.
a. A reversal
b. An imitation
c. A satire
d. A poetic metaphor
e. A spectacle
What is mimesis?
5
Choose one
answer.
a. To understand the importance of the formal elements of literary structure
b. To formulate relationships among an author, a reader, and a literary work
c. To understand the role of sexuality, gender, race, and ethnicity in literary study
d. To evaluate the role of historical context in the interpretation of literature
e. All of the above answers are correct.
What is the main function of literary theory?
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6
Choose one
answer.
a. Literary criticism is concerned only with the meaning of a literary work, while literary theory is
concerned only with the structure of a literary work.
b. Literary criticism draws upon research derived from sources outside literature, while literary
theory draws upon sources within a text.
c. Literary criticism is concerned with how characters in a text act, while literary theory is
concerned with why characters act.
d. Literary theory is concerned with the method used to interpret a work, while literary criticism is
the application of literary theory.
e. All of the above answers are correct.
Which of the following best describes the difference between literary criticism and literary theory?
7
Choose one
answer.
a. Aristotle
b. Viktor Shklovsky
c. Cleanth Brooks
d. Stanley Fish
e. Toni Morrison
Which of the following literary theorists is most closely associated with the concept that became known as liberal humanism?
8
Choose one
answer.
a. Plato
b. Claude Lévi-Strauss
c. Julia Kristeva
d. Walter Benjamin
e. Louis Althusser
Which theorist is associated with the idea that art is a copy of a copy?
9
Choose one
answer.
a. Jacques Derrida
b. Jacques Lacan
c. Edward Said
d. Stephen Greenblatt
e. Plato
Which theorist is most closely associated with the idea of art as imitation?
10
Choose one
answer.
a. An idea traditionally associated with the Renaissance
b. A humanity-centered view of the universe
c. A school of theory devoted to the revival of Classical (ancient Greek and Roman) literature
What is humanism?
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d. A theory that values restraint, form, and imitation
e. All of the above answers are correct.
11
Choose one
answer.
a. As an aesthetic object that is independent of historical context
b. As an aesthetic object that is influenced by historical context
c. As a historical object that is also aesthetic
d. As a historical object that is not necessarily aesthetic
How did the New Critics view literature?
12
Choose one
answer.
a. Both sets of critics reject the importance of historical context in studying literature.
b. Both sets of critics look for an objective way to view texts.
c. Both sets of critics study the underlying forms of texts.
d. Both sets of critics focus on evaluating literature in a scientific manner.
e. All of the above answers are correct.
What do structuralist and formalist critics have in common?
13
Choose one
answer.
a. A term first used by literary theorists William Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley
b. A term that suggests that a critic should study the structural and thematic elements of a poem
rather than the effect it has on the emotions of the reader
c. A term that describes the confusion between a poem and its result
d. An important term in the field of New Historicism
e. All of the above answers are correct.
What is affective fallacy?
14
Choose one
answer.
a. A term that describes how literature exposes its own artificiality
b. A concept associated with Russian formalism
c. An idea explored by Viktor Shklovsky
d. A term that describes the capacity of art to counter the effects of habit
e. All of the above answers are correct.
What is defamiliarization?
15
Choose one
answer.
a. An approach that emphasizes literary devices in a text
b. An approach that emphasizes the historical context of a text
c. An approach that emphasizes the biographical intent of a text
d. An approach that emphasizes racial issues in a text
Which of the following descriptions best defines the literary theory known as formalism?
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e. An approach that emphasizes the representation of the economy in a text
16
Choose one
answer.
a. Cleanth Brooks
b. Ferdinand de Saussure
c. Karl Marx
d. Sigmund Freud
e. Toni Morrison
Which of the following figures is considered to be the father of the linguistic theory known as structuralism?
17
Choose one
answer.
a. Critics should examine historical information surrounding a literary work.
b. Critics should develop universal readings of texts.
c. Critics should consider evolving notions of a text over time.
d. Critics should attempt to paraphrase texts in order to find out what they mean.
e. Critics should look at the biographical information of authors.
Which of the following statements best describes Cleanth Brooks's attitude towards studying literature?
18
Choose one
answer.
a. Plato's The Republic
b. T.S. Eliot's "Tradition and the Individual Talent"
c. Jacques Derrida's Of Grammatology
d. Roland Barthes's "The Death of the Author"
e. Jacques Lacan's "The Mirror Stage ... "
Which of the following texts is the BEST example of the argument that a work's meaning does not come entirely from the
imagination of the author?
19
Choose one
answer.
a. Aristotle's Poetics
b. Leo Tolstoy's The Kreutzer Sonata
c. John Keats's "Ode on a Grecian Urn"
d. Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness
e. W.E.B. Du Bois's The Souls of Black Folk
Which of the following texts provides the best example of defamiliarization?
20
Choose one
answer.
a. Viktor Shklovsky
b. Cleanth Brooks
c. Terry Eagleton
d. Judith Butler
Which of the following theorists is associated with formalism?
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e. Mikhail Bakhtin
21
Choose one
answer.
a. Humanism
b. Formalism
c. Structuralism
d. Poststructuralism
e. Marxism
Which school of literary theory is associated with the phrase "to make the stones stonier"?
22
Choose one
answer.
a. Language is inseparable from its historical context.
b. There are five phases of linguistic development.
c. Language can be analyzed as a formal system of elements.
d. Linguistics is too complicated to be distilled to a formula.
e. All of the above answers are correct.
What is the central idea of Ferdinand de Saussure's Course in General Linguistics?
23
Choose one
answer.
a. refuses maternal bonds.
b. is able to separate the "I" from the "Other."
c. looks into a mirror for the first time.
d. first engages with speech.
e. All of the above answers are correct.
According to Jacques Lacan, the mirror stage is the point at which a child:
24
Choose one
answer.
a. Biographical information about the author must be considered when evaluating literature.
b. A text and its author text are unrelated.
c. It is possible to distill meaning from a work based on the author's politics.
d. Authorial intent must be considered when evaluating literature.
e. Literature is inextricably connected to its creator.
In his essay "The Death of the Author," Roland Barthes argues what about literature?
25
Choose one
answer.
a. The idea of the author came into being at a certain point in history.
b. The names of authors serve a classificatory function.
c. The author is not a source of infinite meaning.
d. The author may not always exist.
In his essay "What Is an Author?" what position(s) on authorship does Michel Foucault take?
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e. All of the above answers are correct.
26
Choose one
answer.
a. No fixed, stable meaning is possible.
b. Language must be studied in conjunction with history in order to create meaning.
c. There is no potential for multiple and differing meanings in a work of literature.
d. Literature is timeless, and thus meaning does not change.
e. All of the above answers are correct.
In Of Grammatology, Jacques Derrida argues what about literature?
27
Choose one
answer.
a. mirrors our physical evolution as human beings.
b. prevents us from communicating through writing or speech.
c. involves a constant process of deferred meaning.
d. evolved exclusively as a function of our individual psyche.
e. All of the above answers are correct.
Jacques Derrida's concept of différance challenges us to think about language as a system that:
28
Choose one
answer.
a. The ability of a text to contain truth
b. The "undecidability" and essentially unstable nature of a text
c. The idea that a text has a specific meaning that can be understood through a process of
deconstruction
d. Jacques Derrida's style of writing
e. All of the above answers are correct.
To what idea does the ancient Greek term aporia refer in terms of deconstruction theory?
29
Choose one
answer.
a. the meaning of a text always relies on context.
b. texts are always heterogeneous.
c. the instability of a text is actually evident in the text itself.
d. any system for the production of meaning is inevitably bound by context, yet also limitless.
e. All of the above answers are correct.
Ultimately, the literary theory of deconstruction argues that:
30
Choose one
answer.
a. It contains secret instincts and desires that are repressed.
b. It has little impact on human behavior.
c. It is the only significant aspect of the human psyche.
d. It can never be accessed.
What did Sigmund Freud believe about the unconscious?
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e. All of the above answers are correct.
31
Choose one
answer.
a. Literary texts should not be read as a projection of the author's psyche.
b. Literary texts solely reflect an author's intentions.
c. Literary texts are unlike dreams because they have a system of order and produce meaning.
d. Literary texts reveal secret elements of an author's unconscious.
e. All of the above answers are correct.
What fundamental idea does psychoanalytic criticism hold about literary texts?
32
Choose one
answer.
a. A maxim of logic developed by Charles Sanders Peirce
b. A theory of practical actions developed by William James
c. An idea used to guide conduct towards clear objectives
d. A concept derived from the ancient Greek word pragma, meaning action
e. All of the above answers are correct.
What is the philosophical theory known as pragmatism?
33
Choose one
answer.
a. T.S. Eliot
b. Jacques Lacan
c. Jacques Derrida
d. Stanley Fish
e. Edward Said
Which literary theorist argues that "there is nothing outside the text"?
34
Choose one
answer.
a. Neurotic behavior
b. Changes in emotional states
c. Obsessions
d. Slips of the tongue
e. All of the above answers are correct.
Which of the following human behaviors is important to a Freudian psychoanalytic study of William Shakespeare's Hamlet?
35
Choose one
answer.
a. All linguistic concepts evolve solely out of the responses of people within a specific historical
era.
b. All linguistic and social phenomena are texts, and the object of studying these texts is to reveal
the underlying codes that make them meaningful.
c. All linguistics is in some way related to class struggle.
Which of the following is a rule of semiotics?
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d. All linguistics is related to history, and therefore the meaning of linguistics relies exclusively on
historical context.
e. All of the above answers are correct.
36
Choose one
answer.
a. Judith Butler's Gender Trouble
b. W.E.B. Du Bois's The Souls of Black Folk
c. Roland Barthes's "The Death of the Author"
d. Jacques Derrida's Of Grammatology
e. Jacques Lacan's "The Mirror Stage ... "
Which text argues that, as infants, human beings begin to define their identities against the identities of others?
37
Choose one
answer.
a. Claude Lévi-Strauss
b. Jacques Derrida
c. Jacques Lacan
d. Michel Foucault
e. Carl Jung
With what literary critic is the term the author function most closely associated?
38
Choose one
answer.
a. Calling into question the possibility of the coherence of discourse
b. Suggesting that the study of literature is based on the breakdown of language into signs
c. Arguing that language, and therefore literary texts, relies on the difference between terms and
therefore constantly defers meaning.
d. Calling into question the capacity of language to communicate
e. All of the above answers are correct.
Which of the following best defines the work of a deconstructionist critic?
39
Choose one
answer.
a. Kristeva rejects the idea that neuroses provide insight into the unconscious.
b. Kristeva suggests that women are not subject to traditional fetishes.
c. Kristeva offers a more central place for women's issues within psychological development.
d. Kristeva fundamentally disagrees with the idea of the mirror stage.
e. All of the above answers are correct.
How are Julia Kristeva's psychoanalytic theories distinct from traditional Freudian concepts?
40
Choose one
answer.
a. It suggests that the suppression of women is part of a historical climate that will naturally fade
away.
b. It suggests that gender roles are conditioned by the possession of money and power.
How does Virginia Woolf's essay "A Room of One's Own" contribute to feminist theory?
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c. It suggests that gender has power over class.
d. It suggests that education, rather than money, is needed for the liberation of women.
e. All of the above answers are correct.
41
Choose one
answer.
a. Women's gender is artificial, while men's gender is not.
b. While gender is not real, the stereotypes that accompany it are true.
c. Gender is a problematic, but essentially true, category.
d. Gender is largely a cultural construct.
e. All of the above answers are correct.
In general, what is Judith Butler's concept of gender?
42
Choose one
answer.
a. Women should write for and about themselves in order to counter phallocentric texts.
b. Women should write, but they should do so only within the existent male canon.
c. Women should primarily dedicate themselves to studying women's literature from the past.
d. Women should be unconcerned with the struggle for identity.
e. All of the above answers are correct.
In her essay "The Laugh of the Medusa," what does Hélène Cixous suggest for women?
43
Choose one
answer.
a. Kristeva wholly rejects Lacan's theory of psychosexual development.
b. Kristeva centralizes the maternal and the feminine in her revisions of Lacan's theory.
c. Kristeva argues that the mirror stage does not occur until the individual embraces a distinct
gender role.
d. All of the above answers are correct.
In what way does Julia Kristeva build on Jacques Lacan's theory of psychosexual development?
44
Choose one
answer.
a. Ophelia's madness represents the social oppression of women.
b. It is nearly impossible to represent women as anything other than mad in patriarchal
discourses.
c. Feminist critics need to re-appropriate Ophelia for their own purposes.
d. Women's tragedies tend to be subordinated to those of men.
e. All of the above answers are correct.
What does Elaine Showalter argue about gender in terms of representations of the character of Ophelia in William
Shakespeare's Hamlet?
45
Choose one
answer.
a. Examining only female-authored literature more critically
b. Considering women's literature outside of its historical context
What does gynocriticism recommend as an approach to literature?
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c. Studying women's literature for its linguistic qualities only
d. Becoming more familiar with the history of women and women's writing
e. All of the above answers are correct.
46
Choose one
answer.
a. Gender does not reflect an essential truth, but rather is a role people play based on their
internalization of socially constructed gender roles.
b. Gender roles do not exist.
c. Real gender roles are scripted by excellent writers.
d. Only individuals who have the capacity to perform have gender.
e. All of the above answers are correct.
What does Judith Butler mean when she suggests that gender is "performed"?
47
Choose one
answer.
a. To advocate for women's rights
b. To create literary subjects with which female readers can identify
c. To critique phallocentric assumptions about literature
d. To counter stereotypes about women
e. All of the above answers are correct.
What is the purpose of feminist theory?
48
Choose one
answer.
a. Performance is the ultimate objective of all human beings.
b. Language is used to indicate action as well as thought.
c. Individuals perform gender actively.
d. Individuals develop consciousness through speech.
e. All of the above answers are correct.
Which of the following ideas relates to J.L. Austin's performativity theory?
49
Choose one
answer.
a. Understanding sexuality is crucial to understanding culture.
b. Understanding homosexuality has little effect on understanding culture.
c. Literary study is unaffected by a lack of interest in sexuality.
d. Understanding homosexual themes in novels has become too routine.
e. All of the above answers are correct.
Which of the following is a theme of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's book Epistemology of the Closet?
50
Choose one
answer.
a. How women really feel about male writers
b. The inscription of womanhood and femininity in texts
Which of the following offers the best definition of écriture féminine?
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c. Second-wave feminism
d. Psychological studies of women
e. Literary works that feature women
51
Choose one
answer.
a. Elaine Showalter
b. Julia Kristeva
c. Lucy Irigaray
d. Hélène Cixous
e. Louise M. Rosenblatt
With which feminist theorist is gynocriticism most closely associated?
52
Choose one
answer.
a. Hélène Cixous
b. Judith Butler
c. Lucy Irigaray
d. Mary Wollstonecraft
e. Julia Kristeva
Which of the following writers might be considered one of the early founders of first-wave feminism?
53
Choose one
answer.
a. History comprises the essential framework for the performance of literary analysis
b. Politics and the economy are the most important factors in literary analysis
c. Biography is essential to literary analysis
d. Psychoanalysis is critical to literary analysis
e. All of the above answers are correct.
In Fredric Jameson's book The Political Unconscious, what does Jameson suggest about literature?
54
Choose one
answer.
a. Formalism
b. Structuralism
c. Poststructuralism
d. Marxism
e. Postcolonialism
The Frankfurt School of literary theory was most greatly influenced by which of the following schools of thought?
55
Choose one
answer.
a. An infant's inability to speak prior to the mirror stage
b. The referential relationships among symbols, signifiers, and signs
To what idea does the term heteroglossia refer?
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c. The multi-layered nature of language in a literary work
d. The formulaic shift between economic and political themes
e. All of the above answers are correct
56
Choose one
answer.
a. A form of literary criticism that is based on historical context
b. A form of literary criticism that does not incorporate economic concerns
c. A form of literary criticism based on linguistic analysis
d. A term related to gender theory that argues that men are dominant in society by virtue of their
economic privilege
e. A form of literary criticism that is based on a reader's response
What is dialectical materialism?
57
Choose one
answer.
a. A term developed by Mikhail Bakhtin
b. A term used to describe how texts include a variety of styles
c. A term used to explain the use of multiple points of view in literature
d. A term that explains resistance to a monolithic text
e. All of the above answers are correct.
What is dialogism?
58
Choose one
answer.
a. A term for the false neuroses expressed in dreams
b. A feminist term for the state that occurs when texts written by women are not considered in
the study of literature
c. Another term for the unconscious
d. A term related to the period of psychosexual development that occurs before an infant reaches
the mirror stage
e. An ideology that involves dominating the consciousness of exploited classes
What is false consciousness?
59
Choose one
answer.
a. The effect of literature in enlightening the human mind
b. The effect of modern society on human suffering
c. The effect of the economy on women's concerns
d. The effect of the unconscious mind on the conscious self
e. All of the above answers are correct.
What is generally considered to be Theodor W. Adorno's primary concern as a theorist?
60 Which of the following statements best explains Mikhail Bakhtin's philosophy of language?
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Choose one
answer.
a. Language includes multiple social dialects and jargons.
b. Language can include socio-ideological contradictions from the past.
c. Language exhibits and is bound up in the social lives and historical context of the people who
speak it.
d. Language is loaded with the intentions of others.
e. Language is shaped by the context of a socially-charged life.
61
Choose one
answer.
a. Sigmund Freud
b. Carl Jung
c. William James
d. Theodor W. Adorno
e. Edward Said
With which theorist is the term identity thinking most closely associated?
62
Choose one
answer.
a. They accept ideology as an essential, although sometimes problematic, part of society.
b. They subject all ideologies to critique in order to expose biased interests.
c. They reject the idea that ideology has real effects on social progress.
d. They promote ideology because it helps to create a dominant social order.
e. All of the above answers are correct.
How do Marxist theorists react to ideology?
63
Choose one
answer.
a. Understanding the author's ideas in the context of the real world
b. Entering the author's mind through his or her literary works
c. Understanding the author's consciousness
d. Reproducing the author's thoughts in a critical context
e. All of the above answers are correct.
According to the Geneva School, what is the function of the reader?
64
Choose one
answer.
a. The reader fills in the gaps imposed by an author's intention.
b. The reader is sublimated beneath the author.
c. The reader is less important than the author's context.
d. The reader is totally subject to the author's intention.
e. All of the above answers are correct.
How does Wolfgang Iser envision the reader?
65 In her essay "The Poem as Event," Louise M. Rosenblatt sees the reader as performing what function?
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Choose one
answer.
a. The reader participates in a transaction with the text.
b. The reader is acted upon by the text.
c. The reader acts upon the text.
d. The reader brings individual knowledge to his or her reading of the text.
e. All of the above answers are correct.
66
Choose one
answer.
a. It is impossible to view a piece of literature as its author intended.
b. It is impossible to divorce a text from capitalist ideology.
c. It is impossible to view a piece of literature correctly, because we can only work within the
hetero-normative paradigm.
d. It is impossible to separate a text from the linguistics that compose it.
e. It is impossible for a reader to recognize multiple voices in a text.
What does hermeneutic theory suggest about how readers view literature?
67
Choose one
answer.
a. A term that describes the absence of racial others in the canon
b. A term that describes the attempt to read homosexuality into literature
c. A term that describes the effect of autobiography on text
d. A term that describes the interpretation of meaning
e. A term that describes the layers of voices in literature
What is hermeneutics?
68
Choose one
answer.
a. The examination of structures informing our conscious experience
b. The examination of desires informing our consciousness
c. The examination of our unconscious experience
d. The examination of intricate structures within our unconscious
e. The examination of transmissions between our unconscious and conscious experiences
What is phenomenology?
69
Choose one
answer.
a. The Moscow School
b. The Chicago School
c. The Frankfurt School
d. The Geneva School
e. The Yale School
Which school of theorists is most closely associated with phenomenology?
70 With which theorist is phenomenology associated?
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Choose one
answer.
a. Edmund Husserl
b. Wolfgang Iser
c. Jean-Paul Sartre
d. Emmanuel Lévinas
e. All of the above answers are correct.
71
Choose one
answer.
a. Wolfgang Iser
b. William Wimsatt
c. Cleanth Brooks
d. Harold Bloom
e. Edmund Husserl
With which theorist is the term implied reader associated?
72
Choose one
answer.
a. How readers learn to read
b. How readers imagine visual images in a text
c. How readers participate in creating the meaning of a text
d. How readers regard critics
e. How readers choose to read what they read
Reader-response theory is focused on considering which of the following?
73
Choose one
answer.
a. Theodor W. Adorno
b. Claude Lévi-Strauss
c. Julia Kristeva
d. Jacques Derrida
e. Jacques Lacan
From whom did New Historicists draw the idea of "self-regulating systems"?
74
Choose one
answer.
a. New Historicism rejects the idea that history is neutral.
b. New Historicism does not make strict delineations between literary and non-literary texts.
c. New Historicism takes a particular interest in marginalized peoples.
d. New Historicism is interested in how texts help us understand economic realities.
e. All of the above answers are correct.
How does New Historicism differ from traditional historicism?
75 The concept of otherness is related to which of the following theories?
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Choose one
answer.
a. Psychoanalytic theory
b. Feminist theory
c. Ethnic criticism
d. Postcolonial theory
e. All of the above answers are correct.
76
Choose one
answer.
a. It includes too few works by non-European writers.
b. It includes too few works by non-white writers.
c. It includes too few works by women.
d. It includes too few works by non-Western writers.
e. All of the above answers are correct.
What do many contemporary theorists find problematic about the literary canon?
77
Choose one
answer.
a. It has little relationship to the colonization of Asian countries by the West.
b. It illustrates the fundamental political equality of all nations.
c. It was produced by Western scholarship.
d. Its literature is less proud that that of the West.
e. All of the above answers are correct.
What does Edward Said argue about the concept of the Orient?
78
Choose one
answer.
a. An early aspect of ethnic criticism
b. An understanding of how double experiences create identity
c. A concept developed by W.E.B Du Bois
d. An attempt to explain dual identity
e. All of the above answers are correct.
What is double consciousness?
79
Choose one
answer.
a. To represent the relationship between colonizers and the colonized
b. To draw attention to the positive effects of colonization on literature
c. To explain why there are few examples of successful non-Western literature
d. To show the ways in which most Western literature is superior
e. All of the above answers are correct.
What is the main function of postcolonial criticism?
80 What is the main goal of ethnic criticism?
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Choose one
answer.
a. To bring attention to false Euro-centric paradigms
b. To rectify the double experiences of certain racial groups
c. To reconcile cultural identity with individual identity
d. To expand the canon to include works authored by different racial groups
e. All of the above answers are correct.
81
Choose one
answer.
a. The West spends too much time trying to consider an Asian perspective.
b. The West tends to look at Asian countries as individual units rather than lump them together.
c. The West views matters through its own limited historical position.
d. The West refuses to apply economic and political coercion to Asian writers.
e. The West compels writers to work in pre-colonial, lost languages.
Which is a common postcolonial critique of the West?
82
Choose one
answer.
a. Texts are examined to see how colonizers and the colonized interact.
b. Texts are examined to see how the formal aspects of the text create meaning.
c. Texts are examined to determine how they reveal social realities.
d. Texts are examined to determine the author's intent.
e. Texts are examined to show how history has little effect on literary production.
Which of the following statements best explains the main objective of New Historicism?
83
Choose one
answer.
a. Harold Bloom's "An Elegy for the Canon"
b. Jacques Lacan's "The Mirror Stage ... "
c. Cleanth Brooks's "Keats's Sylvan Historian"
d. Edward Said's Orientalism
e. Toni Morrison's Playing in the Dark
Which of the following texts is considered the first example of postcolonial criticism?
84
Choose one
answer.
a. Jacques Derrida
b. Terry Eagleton
c. Fredric Jameson
d. Stephen Greenblatt
e. Louise M. Rosenblatt
Who coined the term New Historicism?
85 With which theorist is the concept imaginative geography associated?
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Choose one
answer.
a. Julia Kristeva
b. Fredric Jameson
c. Terry Eagleton
d. Edward Said
e. Michel Foucault
86
Choose one
answer.
a. A theory that sees history as a form of writing and discourse
b. A theory that abandons the idea of history as an imitation of events
c. A theory that regards history as a series of narratives
d. A theory that capitalizes on the interplay between literature and history
e. All of the above answers are correct.
What is New Historicism?
87
Choose one
answer.
a. A figure of judgment
b. Religious belief
c. A witness
d. Psychological treatment
e. An easy way to explain trauma
According to trauma theorists, a testifying subject needs which of the following to deliver a successful testimony?
88
Choose one
answer.
a. Literary theory is limited in its ability to interpret a text.
b. Literary theory often depends on esoteric knowledge to be properly understood.
c. Literary theory is employed mostly by academics.
d. Literary theory should not be an academic focus in English departments.
e. Literary theory is the only proper way to conceptualize literary texts.
Christopher Ricks would most likely DISAGREE with which of the following claims about literary theory?
89
Choose one
answer.
a. How writers conceptualize natural environments and the representation of environmental
issues in literature and culture
b. How writers have damaged the environment
c. How the environment can be repaired
d. Who is responsible for damaging the environment
e. How clean energy sources can be developed
Ecotheorists tend to show an interest in which of the following?
90 In his essay "The Business of Theory," William Deresiewicz argues which of the following about Terry Eagleton's book After
Theory?
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Choose one
answer.
a. It offers a strong outline for how theory can be conducted in the 21st century.
b. It should not be read or considered by any student or scholar.
c. It offers some valid ideas and critiques, but its author is not entirely trustworthy.
d. It offers a strong counterpoint to Jacques Derrida's notion of deconstruction.
e. It proves that William Shakespeare did not author his plays.
91
Choose one
answer.
a. Reject all previous modes of literary theory
b. Focus on a return to traditional critical methods
c. Make use of different literary theories in order to develop new theories
d. Work only with ideas developed by post-Marxist theorists
e. Insist that literary studies should be abandoned
New trends in literary theory tend to do which of the following?
92
Choose one
answer.
a. Literary theory tends to be too political.
b. Literary theory does not offer a holistic interpretation of a text.
c. Literary theory depends on specialized knowledge that is outside the realm of literary studies.
d. Literary theory is sometimes very abstract and difficult to read.
e. All of the above answers are correct.
Some critics of literary theory argue that literary theory is problematic for which reason?
93
Choose one
answer.
a. Psychoanalysis
b. Marxism
c. Feminism
d. Deconstruction
e. Reader-response theory
Trauma theory is tremendously influenced by which theoretical school?
94
Choose one
answer.
a. Sigmund Freud
b. Carl Jung
c. Michel Foucault
d. Jacques Derrida
e. Jacques Lacan
Trauma theory primarily developed out of the work of which psychoanalyst?
95 What are some common criticisms of literary theory?
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Choose one
answer.
a. Theory has replaced literary appreciation with formulas for understanding.
b. The reasoning of theory is often too circular.
c. Many theories have been pushed too far into abstraction.
d. Many theories are no longer accepted by their parent disciplines.
e. All of the above answers are correct.
96
Choose one
answer.
a. A language about another language
b. A supernatural language
c. A language that does not yet constitute a real language
d. A language used by a particular marginalized group of people within a larger dominant culture
e. All of the above answers are correct.
What does the term meta-language mean, according to Andrzej Warminski?
97
Choose one
answer.
a. He considers it to be vital in order to understand literary texts.
b. He considers theory to be the only way that literary texts can be interpreted.
c. He has no misgivings about the practical usability of literary theory.
d. He feels that literary theory is ultimately too limited in scope to serve as a proper method of
interpretation.
e. He claims never to have read a piece of literary theory.
What is Christopher Ricks's attitude toward literary theory?
98
Choose one
answer.
a. Trauma theory
b. Ecotheory
c. Game theory
d. Marxist theory
e. Psychoanalytic theory
Which literary theory would most directly explore questions of the role of spatial setting in a poem?
99
Choose one
answer.
a. Strange attractors are mysterious forces that are entirely random.
b. Strange attractors are complex forces that are determined by the laws of physics.
c. Strange attractors are mysterious forces that are both random and determined.
d. Strange attractors are complex forces that are entirely random.
e. Strange attractors are mysterious forces that have no basis in logic or reason and cannot be
observed in nature.
Which of the following statements offers the best definition of the concept of strange attractors in chaos theory?
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100
Choose one
answer.
a. Trauma theory
b. Ecotheory
c. Chaos theory
d. Formalism
e. Marxist theory
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