Literary Criticism

Unit 1 b, c, a, b, a
The relationship between criticism and creativity is as illusive as .... .
Hen and egg

The critic of ______ is given independent place and it differs from all other kind of
criticism.
Art and literature

The renowned Elizabethan playwright Ben Jonson is of the view that:

(a) Judge of poets is only the faculty of poets; and not of all poets, but the best.

True criticism may be defined as:

(b) The art of judging the merits and demerits of creative composition.

(v) No critic can ever be a good critic unless:

(a) He possesses the artist's vision and has capability of artistic sensibility

Komos : A festive procession with all kinds of ritual exhuberance.

Maenads : Feminine worshippers of the cult of Dionysus, who gathered in the woods outside
the city and did not allow any man to participate in the rituals.
Phallika : A ritual song-dance held during the rural festivals of Dionysus celebrating the
male organ.

Unit 2 (i) (a) (ii) (d) (iii) (c) (iv) (b) (v) (c)
(vi) (b)
Tragedy is an imitation of …
(a) an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude.

Which of the following lines of the definition of tragedy deals with the function of tragedy?
(d) through pity and fear effecting the proper purgation-catharsis of these and similar emotions.

Aristotle classifies various forms of art with the help of ______, ______ and ______ of their
imitation of life.
(c) Object, medium and manner.

According to Aristotle metre / verse alone is the distinguishing feature of poetry or

imaginative literature in general..
(b) False

Who summarizes Aristotle’s views in reply to Plato’s charges in brief: “Tragedy

(c) David Daiches

Aristotle did not agree with Plato in calling the poet an imitator and creative art, imitation.
(b) False

1. Mememis : A Greek word for invitation

2. Magnitude : Length, size
3.Spectacle : Stage property
Unit 3 (i) (d) (ii) (a) (iii) (c) (iv) (a) (v) (a)
(iv) (b)
(i) Read the definition of Tragedy find which of the following lines substantiate the theory of
catharsis.
(a) an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude
(b) several kinds being found in separate parts of the play
(c) in the form of action, not of narrative
(d) through pity and fear effecting the proper purgation-catharsis of these and similar
emotions

(ii) The book Tragedy: Serious Drama in Relation to Aristotle's Poetics throws illuminating
light on the theory of catharsis? Who is the writer of this book?
(a) F.L.Lucas
(b) W. Macniele Dixon
(c) Ingram Bywater
(d) S.H.Butcher

(iii) According to F.L.Lucas, the concept of Catharsis is better translated as:

(a) Purgation
(b) Purification
(c) Moderation or tempering
(iv) Tragic beauty and tragic delight which tragedy evokes constitutes the aesthetics of balance
as propounded for the first time by Aristotle in his theory of Catharsis.
(a) True
(b) False
(c) Cannot say
(v) Hamartia in the Aristotelian sense of the term is a mistake or error of judgement and the
deed done in consequence of it is an erratum.
(a) True
(b) False
(c) Cannot say

(vi) Othello is the Greek example, Oedipus in the renaissance, are the two most conspicuous
examples of ruin wrought by characters, noble, indeed, but not without defects, acting in
the dark and, as it seemed, for the best.
(a) True
(b) False
(c) Cannot say
1. Nemesis ("retribution") : The inevitable punishment or cosmic payback for acts of hubris.
2. Peripateia ("plot reversal") : A pivotal or crucial action on the part of the protagonist that
changes his situation from seemingly secure to vulnerable.
UNIT 4 (i) (a) (ii) (a) (iii) (b) (iv) (a) (v) (b)
1. Choose the correct option:
(i) On which three grounds did Plato objected to poetry?
(a) Educational, philosophical and moral
(b) Sexuality, morality and philosophical
(c) Educational, obscenity and sexuality

(ii) According to Plato, poets are breeders of ............... and poetry is ............... of lies.
(a) Falsehood and mother
(b) Truth and mother
(c) Falsehood and sister.

(iii) Aristotle’s well-known treatises are:

(a) Dialogues
(b) Poetics and Rhetoric
(c) Poetry and drama
(d) Tragedy and epic

(iv) Plato wrote his treatise in form of:

(a) dialogues
(b) pauaguaphs
(c) Poetry
(d) story telling

(v) According to Plato, poetry is better than philosophy:

(a) True
(b) False
(c) Cannot say
1. Anagnorisis ("tragic recognition or insight") : According to Aristotle, a moment of
clairvoyant insight or understanding in the mind of the tragic hero as he suddenly
comprehends the web of fate that he has entangled himself in.

2. Hamartia ("tragic error") : A fatal error or simple mistake on the part of

the protagonist that eventually leads to the final catastrophe. A metaphor from archery,
hamartia literally refers to a shot that misses the bullseye. Hence it need not be an
egregious "fatal flaw" (as the term hamartia has traditionally been glossed). Instead, it
can be something as basic and inescapable as a simple miscalculation huhu or slip-up.

3. Hubris ("violent transgression") : The sin par excellence of the tragic or over
aspiring hero. Though it is usually translated
as pride, hubris is probably better understood
as a sort of insolent daring, a haughty
overstepping of cultural codes or ethical
boundaries.
Unit 5 (i) (a) (ii) (c) (iii) (a) (iv) (a)
(i) Fish was born in ............... .
(a) 1938
(b) 1935 ñ
(c) 1940
(d) 1945

(ii) ‘Is there a text in this Class’ was published in ............... .

(a) 1988
(b) 1975
(c) 1980
(d) 1982

(iii) ‘Sexual Personae’ was written by ............... .

(a) Camille Raglia
(b) Stanley
(c) Martha Nussbaum
(d) None of these

(iv) Fish began working at Duke University in ............... .

(a) 1985
(b) 1980
(c) 1981
Poststructuralism : Term used to describe those kinds of thinking and writing that disturb
or exceed the ‘merely’ rational or scientific, self-assuredly ‘systematic’
work of structuralists. It is primarily associated with the work of Derrida,
Lacan, Foucault, Deleuze and Guattari, Cixous and (post-1967) Barthes.

Poststructuralism entails a rigorous and, in principle, interminable

questioning of every centrism (logocentrism, ethnocentrism,
anthropocentrism, etc.), of all origins and ends, meaning and intention,
paradigm or system.

UNIT 6 (i) (b) (ii) (d) (iii) (c) (iv) (c)

(i) Reading is an ............... .
(a) Art
(b) Activity
(c) Interpretations
(d) None of these

(ii) Who was referred as the New Readers by Meyesr Abrams ............... ?
(a) Jacques Derrida
(b) Harold Bloom
(c) Stanley Fish
(d) All of these

(iii) Hirsch’s Sentence is constrained by the meanings words have in a ............... .

(a) Socio-linguistic system
(b) Psycho-linguistics system
(c) Normative linguistic system
(d) None of these

(iv) ‘The air is’ referred as ............... .

(a) Mild
(b) Short
(c) Crisp
(d) None of these
Close reading : ‘Method’ of reading emphasized by new critics which pays careful attention to
‘the words on the page’ rather than the historical and ideological context,
the biography or intentions of the author and so on. Glose reading, despite its name, brackets
questions of readers and reading as arbitrary and irrelevant to the text as an artifact (see affective
fallacy). It assumes that the function of reading and criticism is simply to read carefully what is
already ‘there’ in the text.

Unit 7 (i) (c) (ii) (d) (iii) (a) (iv) (a)

(i) Jacques Derrida belongs to ............... philosophers.
(a) 18th century
(b) 19th century
(c) 20th century
(d) None of these

(ii) Derrida was born into a Jewish family in Algiers in ............... .

(a) 1935
(b) 1931
(c) 1339
(d) 1930

(iii) In ‘memoires: for Paul de Man’ was written in ............... .

(a) 1983
(b) 1980
(c) 1965
(d) None of these

(iv) Derrida was awarded an honorary doctorate at Cambridge in ............... .

(a) 1992
(b) 1990
(c) 1983
(d) None of these
1. Episteme : Knowledge/system of thought
2. Arche : Origin/beginning/foundation/source
3. Telos : End/ goal/destiny
Unit 8: Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences’—Jacques
Derrida: Detailed Study
(i) Derrida first read his paper ‘Structure, Sign, and Plan in the Discourse of the Human Science
in ............... .
(a) 1966
(b) 1970
(c) 1965
(d) 1980
(ii) Derrida uses the classical debate on the opposition between
(a) Religion an culture
(b) Culture and society
(c) Nature and culture
(d) None of these

(iii) Derrida concludes his seminal work regarded as the ............... .

(a) Post-structuralist manifesto
(b) Industrialist manifesto
(c) Both (a) and (b)
(d) None of these
(iv) Derrida asserts that there are heterogeneous ways of erasing the difference between the
signifies and the signified ............... .
(a) Three
(b) Two
(c) Four
(d) Five

1. Ousia : Essence/being
2. Aletheia : Truth
3. Transcendentality : The realm of (for Kant) the conditions of possible experience and
knowing.
4. Physis : Nature
5. Nomos : Law [culture]
Unit 9: Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences’—Jacques
Derrida: Critical Appreciation
(i) Derrida demonstrates how structuralism as represented by the anthropologist Clande Levi-
Strauss in ............... .
(a) 1965
(b) 1966
(c) 1950
(d) 1985
(ii) Derrida’s structure published in ............... .
(a) 1970
(b) 1975
(c) 1966
(d) 1985
(iii) In “Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences”, Derrida starts off
hinting at an event, a ............... .
(a) change
(b) rupture
(c) ideas
(d) structure

(iv) By structure, Derrida means ............... .

(a) an intellectual edifice
(b) philosophical system of ideas
(c) a kind of diseases
(d) all of these

1. Metonomy : Substitution
2. Eidos : Plato's term: "form," essence
3. Energia : "Energy"/activation
4. Techne : Technique, skill, art, craft
5. Factum : Fact
6. Bricolage : Using whatever means are linguistically at hand, regardless of their truth
7. Bricoleur : One who engages in bricolage

Unit 10: Freud and Literature—Lionel Trilling: An Introduction

i) Trilling was ............... .
(a) A British literary critic
(b) An American literary critic
(c) An Irish literary critic
(d) None of these
(ii) Trilling earned his doctorate with a dissertation about ............... .
(a) William Shakespear
(b) T. S. Eliot
(c) Matthw Arnold
(d) None of these
 (iii) Trilling was selected by the National Endowment for the Humanities to deliver the first
Jefferson lecture in ............... .
(a) 1972
(b) 1980
(c) 1985
(d) 1965

(iv) Trilling who became an associate professor at Columbia in ............... .

(a) 1943
(b) 1944
(c) 1945
(d) 1948
Realism : A descriptive term particularly associated with the nineteenth century novel to refer to
the idea that texts appear to represent ‘the word as it really is.’

Unit 11: Freud and Literature—Lionel Trilling: Detailed Study

(i) Trilling discusses the relationships that exist between Freud and ............... .
(a) language
(b) literature
(c) poetry
(d) none of these
(ii) Trilling proceeds to remark on the obsessions of the period with ............... whose mental life,
it is left, is less overlaid than that of the educated adult male by the properties of social habit.
(a) children
(b) women
(c) peasants and savages
(d) all of these
(iii) The aim of psychoanalysis is the control of the ............... .
(a) bright side of life
(b) bad side of life
(c) night side of life
(d) none of these
(iv) For Trilling, Freud’s rationalistic positivism has both ............... .
(a) good and bad
(b) day and night
(c) strengths and weaknesses
(d) positive and negative
1. Oedipus complex : A reference in Freud’s theory to the unconscious wish of every (male)
child to have sex with its mother and to eliminate its father.
2. Phallus : A term in psychoanalytic theory for the authority invested in the male. In Lacan it is
the symbol of power associated with ‘the law’ of the male penis. It is rather the signifier of
sexual difference in gene
Unit 12: Freud and Literature—Lionel Trilling: Critical Appreciation
1. Choose the correct options: (i) Partisan review appeared in ............... .
(a) 1945
(b) 1942
(c) 1950
(d) None of these

(ii) The photagonist in this essay is ............... .

(a) Rameau
(b) Diderot
(c) Meister
(d) None of these

(iii) Trilling’s biography of Arnold appeared in ............... .

(a) 1938
(b) 1935
(c) 1939
(d) 1940

(iv) Freud was greeted as the ............... .

(a) Inventor of the greats
(b) Discoverer of the unconscious
(c) Founded of pshcho-analysis
(d) None of these

6. Lack: Lack is located in the fact of desire being founded on a primordial absence yet being
committed to a necessarily futile quest for what is lacking.
7. Desire: Desire is the gap between the demand for love and the appetite for satisfaction.

Unit 13: The Insistence of the Letter in the Unconscious—Jacques Lacan: An Introduction
Lacan was a ............... psychoanalyst.
(a) French (c) American
(b) German (d) None of these
(ii) Lacan developed the Theory of Mirror in ............... .
(a) 1930 (c) 1936
(b) 1935 (d) 1940
(iii) The Mirror style concerns the ability of ............... .
(a) A boy
(b) A girl
(c) An infant
(d) A man
(iv) The discourse of Rome is the more common name given to Lacan’s lecture presented in
Rome in ............... .
(a) 1950 (c) 1945
(b) 1953 (d) 1960
Jouissance : (Fr. ‘bliss’, ‘pleasure’,
including sexual bliss or orgasm) a term
introduced into psychoanalytic theory by
Jacques Lacan, to refer to extreme pleasure,
but also to that excess whereby pleasure
slides into its opposite.
Unit 14: The Insistence of the Letter in the Unconscious—Jacques Lacan: Detailed Study
(i) The instance of the letter in the unconscious published is ............... .
(a) 1966
(b) 1961
(c) 1960
(d) 1965

(ii) S/s indicates ............... .

(a) the signifier
(b) the signified over signifier
(c) the signifier over the signified
(d) none of these

(iii) Interpretation of dreams refers to the process of ............... .

(a) mental activity
(b) physical activity
(c) spiritual activity
(d) none of these

(iv) Lacan’s letter originally delivered as a ............... .

(a) speech
(b) talk
(c) text
(d) none of these

1. Metafication : A short story or novel which exploits the idea that it is (only) fiction, a fiction
about fiction. Arguably, however, there are metafictional dimensions in any work of fiction.
2. Metaphor : A basic trope or figure of speech in which one thing is described in terms of its
resemblance to another thing, e.g. the verb ‘to fly’ in ‘she flew into his arms’.