Question: critical approaches to literature quiz structuralism poststructuralism and readerresponse theory...

CRITICAL APPROACHES TO LITERATURE

Quiz: Structuralism, Poststructuralism, and Reader-Response Theory

Question 1: What is a goal of Formalism?

o to find elements in literary texts that explain how writers achieve certain effects

o to uncover the motives of the author of a literary work

o to reveal the influence of history on the development of a literary work

o to fit the work into a larger system

Question 2: Which of the following best represents a New Critical reading of literature?

o connecting Emily Dickinson's poem "Wild Nights-Wild Nights!" to the fact that she never married

o examining how the rhyme scheme of "The Raven" by Edgar Allan Poe reflects its literariness

o exploring the connection between the name of the character Hamlet and Shakespeare's son named Hamnet

o examining the influence of John Milton's blindness on the composition of his poem Paradise Lost

Question 3: How are Reader Response Theory and Poststructuralism similar?

o Both consider gaps in meaning that are filled in by the reader.

o Both originated in France.

o Both look only at texts and nothing outside them.

o Both focus on the importance of the author.

Question 4: According to the module readings, what is a potential disadvantage of using Structuralism as a critical approach?

o It is too focused on the background and not the literary work itself.

o It ignores the individual differences in literary works in favor of fitting them into larger systems.

o It requires a great deal of practice.

o It requires you to find gaps, double meanings, and wordplay in literary works.

Question 5: What does Reader-Response Theory require the reader of literature to do?

o concentrate exclusively on the literary work alone

o fit the literary work into a larger category or genre

o identify wordplay in the literary work

o recognize how his or her understanding of literary works is influenced by personal biases

Question 6: Which of the following sounds most like a Structuralist study?

o examining how word choice contributes to meaning in a poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

o determining how modern readers' expectations about relationships affect their understanding of Jane Austen's novels

o determining how economic conditions in nineteenth-century America influenced the philosophy of Thoreau

o examining which elements of the Gothic horror genre appear in Bram Stoker's Dracula

Question 7: Which would Reader-Response Theory NOT consider an influence on the reader's interpretation of literature?

o having previously seen a movie version of the work!

o the reader's knowledge of the author's life

o the author's age when the work was written

o the reader's experience with close reading of literature

Question 8: Which is NOT true of Reader-Response Theory?

o Anything the reader believes about the literary work is correct.

o The reader fills in gaps in the literary work.

o The reader's background influences his or her understanding of the literary work.

o The literary work is communicated by the author and the reader has to decipher the message.

Question 9: How did the historical background of the twentieth century impact the rise of Poststructuralism?

o Positive developments in science led to the optimism of Poststructuralism.

o The horrors of World War II influenced the idea of uncertainty in Poststructuralism.

o The artistic nature of postwar French culture inspired it.

o Poststructuralist thinkers wanted specifically to oppose Formalism and New Criticism.

Question 10: What argument might you use to justify using a Poststructuralist approach to a literary work?

o The work contains a lot of wordplay and words with double meanings.

o The work has conventions that clearly make it part of the sci-fi genre.

o The work reminds you of another work that contains a similar plot.

o The work uses rhyme and poetic meter that show it is literary,