SUMULONG COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES

Antipolo, City
PRE-FINAL EXAMINATION
LITERARY CRITICISM

I. Directions: Choose the letter of the correct answer.

1. What is the goal of Russian Formalism?
A) To define literary language
B) To explore different critical branches
C) To analyze literary works
D) To study literariness
ANSWER: D

2. According to Roman Jakobson, what is the object of literary science?

A) Language
B) Literature
C) Poetry
D) Literariness
ANSWER: D

3. How did the Russian Formalists define literariness?

A) As a reflection of the world
B) As a linguistic dislocation
C) As a deviance from ordinary language
D) As a special use of language with observable features
ANSWER: D

4. Why did the Russian Formalists receive strong disapproval from Marxist critics?
A) Because they focused on linguistic deviations
B) Because they disregarded the contents of literary works
C) Because they studied poetry only
D) Because formalism was seen as a term of reproach
ANSWER: D

5. In the context of modern American poetry, what does Russian Formalism specifically refer to?
A) Adoption of Marxist theories
B) Experimental writing styles
C) Adherence to traditional meters and verse forms
D) Use of free verse
ANSWER: C

6. When and where did the centre of Russian Formalism research migrate to?
A) Charles University, Prague in the 1940s
B) The Soviet Union in the 1920s
C) The Prague School in the 1930s
D) Moscow Linguistic Circle in the 1950s
ANSWER: C

7. What is another name for the Prague Linguistic Circle?

A) The Russian Formalist Circle
B) The Prague School
C) The Prague Literary Society
D) The Moscow Literary Group
ANSWER: B

8. Who was the most influential figure of the Prague School?

A) Jan Mukařovský
B) Felix Vodička
C) Roman Jakobson
D) René Wellek
ANSWER: C

9. According to the Formalists, what is the basis of literariness?

A) The contrast between plot and story
B) The abstract qualities like imagination
C) The observable devices by which literary texts foreground their own language
D) The traditional use of meters and verse forms
ANSWER: C

10. What is defamiliarization?

A) Making literature strange
B) A series of deviations from 'ordinary' language
C) A linguistic dislocation
D) Alliteration and repetition
ANSWER: B

11. Who introduced the concept of defamiliarization?

A) Felix Vodička
B) Victor Shklovsky
C) Roman Jakobson
D) Jan Mukařovský
ANSWER: B

12. What does the term 'отстранение' refer to in Viktor Shklovsky's essay 'Poetry as Technique'?
A) Foregrounding
B) Defamiliarization
C) Formalism
D) Literariness
ANSWER: B

13. According to Shklovsky, why does art exist?

A) To examine linguistic dislocations
B) To explore the effect of defamiliarization
C) To reflect the world
D) To recover the sensation of life diminished in everyday experience
ANSWER: D

14. What did the Formalists see literature as?

A) A reflection of the world
B) A linguistic dislocation or a 'making strange'
C) An expression of imagination
D) A series of linguistic deviations
ANSWER: B

15. What is foregrounding according to Jan Mukařovský?

A) Analyzing linguistic deviations
B) Giving unusual prominence to one element or property of a text
C) Defining the distinction between plot and story
D) Exploring the concept of 'отстранение'
ANSWER: B

16. Who among the Russian Formalists was most active in Moscow and Prague?
A) Felix Vodička
B) Roman Jakobson
C) Boris Eikhenbaum
D) Victor Shklovsky
ANSWER: B

17. What is the distinction made by the Formalists between plot and story?
A) Plot is subjective, while story is objective
B) Plot is the actual series of events, while story is the arrangement of events
C) Plot is the arrangement of events, while story is the actual series of events
D) Plot refers to non-fictional prose, while story refers to poetry
ANSWER: C

17. According to the Formalists, how does literature draw attention to itself?
A) Through the use of meter, rhyme, surprising metaphors, alliteration, and patterns of sound
B) Through a reflection of the world
C) Through the experimental use of language
D) By challenging linguistic norms
ANSWER: A

What effect did Formalism have under Stalin's dictatorship in the Soviet Union?
18. A) It gained support from Marxist critics
B) It migrated to the United States
C) It was silenced as a heresy
D) It became widely accepted
ANSWER: C

19. What did Shklovsky argue art exists to do?

A) Recover the sensation of life diminished in everyday experience
B) Challenge traditional use of language
C) Expose linguistic devices in literature
D) Reflect the world accurately
ANSWER: A

20. According to Brecht's theory of alienation effect, how does drama achieve its purpose?
A) By highlighting the linguistic medium
B) By using traditional verse forms
C) By making the familiar strange to the audience
D) By presenting a realistic reflection of society
ANSWER: C

21. What influence did the Prague School have on the development of structuralism?
A) Negative
B) Minimal
C) Major
D) No
ANSWER: C

22. What is the common name given to the group of linguistic and literary theorists based at Charles University,
Prague?
A) Russian Formalist Circle
B) Moscow Literary Group
C) Prague Literary Society
D) Prague Linguistic Circle
ANSWER: D

23. Who developed the theory of foregrounding within Czech Formalism?

A) Jan Mukařovský
B) Felix Vodička
C) Victor Shklovsky
D) René Wellek
ANSWER: A

24. Who further developed the principles of Russian Formalism in Prague?

A) Victor Shklovsky
B) Felix Vodička
C) The Prague School
D) René Wellek
ANSWER: C

25. According to Samuel Taylor Coleridge, what does familiarity do to our perception of the world?
A) Blinds us to the wonders of the world
B) Makes the world seem ordinary
C) Brings the wonders of the world into focus
D) Enables us to see things afresh
ANSWER: A

26. Who wrote the essay 'The Defence of Poetry'?

A) Mikhail Bakhtin
B) P.B. Shelley
C) Vladimir Propp
D) Samuel Taylor Coleridge
ANSWER: B

27. What did P.B. Shelley claim that poetry does to familiar objects?
A) Enhances their familiarity
B) Brings attention to their familiarity
C) Removes their unfamiliarity
D) Makes them be as if they were not familiar
ANSWER: D

28. Who contrasted the dialogic and monologic nature of characters' voices in novels?
A) P.B. Shelley
B) Samuel Taylor Coleridge
C) Mikhail Bakhtin
D) Vladimir Propp
ANSWER: C

29. According to Mikhail Bakhtin, how does Dostoevsky's novels differ from Tolstoy's in terms of interplay of voices?
A) Both Dostoevsky's and Tolstoy's novels have dialogic interplay
B) Dostoevsky's novels have dialogic interplay while Tolstoy's have monologic interplay
C) Dostoevsky's novels have monologic interplay while Tolstoy's have dialogic interplay
D) Both Dostoevsky's and Tolstoy's novels have monologic interplay
ANSWER: B

30. When were the works of the Russian Formalists rediscovered in the West?
A) 1960s
B) 1915
C) 1821
D) 1929
ANSWER: A

31. What has had an important influence on structuralist theories of literature and Marxist literary criticism?
A) Russian dialogic text
B) English Romantic poets
C) Structuralist analysis of mythology
D) Work of the Russian Formalists
ANSWER: D
32. What does structuralism analyze cultural phenomena according to?
A) Human perception
B) Principles derived from linguistics
C) Historical perspectives
D) Marxist theories
ANSWER: B

33.According to structuralism, how do elements of a cultural phenomenon gain meaning?

A) By being derived from the rules of the language
B) By directly reflecting reality
C) By being referential to the external world
D) By contrasting with other elements in the system
ANSWER: D

34. What is the primary focus of structuralist criticism?

A) Analyzing the cultural contexts of literary works
B) Interpreting what literary works mean
C) Exploring the author's intentions
D) Explaining how literary works can mean
ANSWER: D

35. Which linguistic function is oriented towards a message's linguistic features?

A) Referential function
B) Emotive function
C) Phatic function
D) Poetic function
ANSWER: D

36. Who described 31 narrative functions in Russian fairy tales?

A) Mikhail Bakhtin
B) Roland Barthes
C) Vladimir Propp
D) A.J. Greimas
ANSWER: C

37. How many basic categories of fictional role are there according to A.J. Greimas?
A) 2
B) 8
C) 4
D) 6
ANSWER: D

38. Who wrote the book 'Mythologies'?

A) Roland Barthes
B) Vladimir Propp
C) Aristotle
D) Claude Lévi-Strauss
ANSWER: A

39. What do some of Roland Barthes' later writings show a shift to?
A) Formalism
B) Structuralism
C) Marxist literary criticism
D) Post-structuralism
ANSWER: D

40. Who is considered the founding figure of semiotics (semiology)?

A) Mikhail Bakhtin
B) Ferdinand de Saussure
C) Vladimir Propp
D) C.S. Peirce
ANSWER: B

41. Which school of thought reacted against structuralist pretensions to scientific objectivity and
comprehensiveness?
A) Psychoanalytical theories
B) Marxist Literary criticism
C) Structuralism
D) Post-structuralism
ANSWER: D

42. Post-structuralism aimed to undermine any theoretical system that claimed to have universal validity due to its
emphasis on:
A) the fixed binary oppositions of structuralist thought
B) the cultural-political writings of Jean-François Lyotard and Gilles Deleuze
C) the linguistic nature of metalanguage
D) the instability of meanings and intellectual categories
ANSWER: D

43. Who was a prominent figure in the philosophical deconstruction of post-structuralism?

A) Jacques Lacan
B) Jacques Derrida
C) Roland Barthes
D) Michel Foucault
ANSWER: B

44. Post-structuralism sought to dissolve the binary opposition between:

A) language and metalanguage
B) literature and criticism
C) meaning and intellect
D) French and English intellectual life
ANSWER: A

45. Which term refers to any use of language about language?

A) Metalanguage
B) Metacriticism
C) Historical materialism
D) Proletcult
ANSWER: A

46. Criticism is considered a metalanguage about:

A) metalanguages
B) the human 'subject'
C) linguistics
D) literature
ANSWER: D

47. According to post-structuralism, is there an absolute distinction between criticism and literature in principle?
A) Maybe
B) Not known
C) Yes
D) No
ANSWER: D

48. What is metacriticism?

A) Criticism of criticism
B) Criticism of literature
C) The evaluation of literary works according to their socialist sentiment
D) The examination of the principles underlying critical interpretation
ANSWER: A

49. Post-structuralism favored a 'non-hierarchical plurality' and emphasized the ________ of texts.
A) universality
B) hierarchy
C) stability
D) indeterminacy
ANSWER: D

50. Which thinker defended 'bourgeois' realism as a basis for socialist literature?
A) Walter Benjamin
B) Raymond Williams
C) Georg Lukács
D) Bertolt Brecht
ANSWER: C

51. Who rejected 'bourgeois' realism and defended modernist experiments as potentially radical?
A) Raymond Williams
B) Walter Benjamin
C) Georg Lukács
D) Bertolt Brecht
ANSWER: D

52. In which essay did Walter Benjamin reflect upon the work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction?
A) Studies in European Realism
B) The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction
C) Literature and Revolution
D) Proletcult
ANSWER: B

53. Neo-Marxist literary criticism emerged from the interaction of Marxism with various other critical schools, such
as:
A) post-structuralism, existentialism, surrealism, and deconstruction
B) Marxist literary criticism, feminist theory, deconstruction, and Marxism
C) historical materialism, cultural materialism, formalism, and new historicism
D) structuralism, psychoanalytic criticism, feminist criticism, and postcolonial theory
ANSWER: D

54. Who inspired the school of cultural materialism?

A) Raymond Williams
B) Walter Benjamin
C) Georg Lukács
D) Bertolt Brecht
ANSWER: A

55. Neo-Marxist criticism focused on literature's relations with ideology and the specific cultural contradictions of:
A) totalitarian society
B) modern capitalist society
C) feudal society
D) socialist society
ANSWER: B

56. What did Russian Communist literary policy impose upon writers?
A) Socialist realism
B) Proletarianization of literature
C) Bland official optimism
D) Decadent alternatives
ANSWER: C

57. Post-structuralism's delayed influence upon literary and cultural theory was especially prominent in which part of
the world?
A) Western academic institutions
B) French intellectual life
C) English-speaking world
D) Russian literary circles
ANSWER: C

58. In studies of literary evolution, which factor is commonly accepted as formative?

A) Social factors
B) Political factors
C) Moral factors
D) Economic factors
ANSWER: D

59. Which critical school was encouraged by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in their writings?
A) Post-structuralism
B) Marxist Literary criticism
C) Cultural materialism
D) Psychoanalytic criticism
ANSWER: B

60. Which phase signified the renewal and diversification of Marxist criticism?
A) Neo-Marxist phase
B) Psychoanalytical phase
C) Post-structuralist phase
D) Structuralist phase
ANSWER: A

Prepared by: Reñer G. Aquino, LPT

College Instructor 6