What is Structuralism?
1. A new series called “New Accents” was launched by Methuen in 1977. The first title to be published in the series was:
(1) Deconstruction : Theory and Practice
(2) Formalism and Marxism
(3) Structuralism and Semiotics
(4) Making and Difference : Feminist Literary criticism
Answer: 3
2. In literary studies structuralism promotes
(1) new interpretations of literary works.
(2) the view that literature is one signifying practice among others.
(3) a systematic account of literary archetypes.
(4) unstable structures of systems of signification.
Answer: 2
3. Which of these statements describe correctly the basic assumption of Structuralism?
A. Structuralism is concerned with signs and signification.
B. A structuralist theory considers only verbal conventions and codes.
C. Structuralism began in the works of Jacques Derrida that influenced the 20thcentury literary criticism.
D. Structuralism challenges the long-standing belief that literature reacts a given reality.
E. All signs are arbitrary but without them we cannot comprehend reality.
Choose the correct answer from the options given below:
1. A, C and E only
2. A, D and E only
3. A, B and C only
4. A, B and E only
Answer: 2
Ferdinand De Saussure
1. What term used by Ferdinand de Saussure corresponds to Noam Chomsky’s term ‘performance’?
1. Difference
2. Parole
3. Paradigm
4. Langue
Answer: 2
2. From among the following, identify the incorrect observation regarding Ferdinand de Saussure’s seminal distinction between language and parole.
1. Parole is the particular language system, the elements, the elements of which we learn as children, and which is codified in our grammars and dictionaries, whereas langue is the language-occasion (what A says to B).
2. A language consists in the interrelationship between Langue and Parole.
3. Saussure made this crucial distinction in a study called A Course in General Linguistics (1916).
4. Langue is the particular language-system, the elements of which we learn as children, and which is codified in our grammars and dictionaries, whereas Parole is the language-occasion (what A says to B).
Answer: 1
3. Semiotics originated mainly in the works of two theorists. They are:
a. Charles Sanders Peirce
b. Mikhail Bakhtin
c. Ferdinand de Saussure
d. Valentin Voloshinov
The right combination according to the code is ______________ .
1. (a) and (b)
2. (b) and (c)
3. (a) and (c)
4. (c) and (d)
Answer: 3
4. Ferdinand de Saussure argued that meaning is generated through
(1) a system of structured differences in language
(2) a system of random differences in language
(3) a system of structured references in language
(4) a system of random references in language
Answer: 1
5. What term used by Ferdinand de Saussure corresponds to Noam Chomsky’s term ‘performance’?
1. Difference
2. Parole
3. Paradigm
4. Langue
Answer: 2
Gerard Genette
1.According to Gerard Genette,which are the following are the type of narrators?
A.Extradiegetic
B.Heterodiegetic
C.Intradiegetic
D.Homodiegetic
Choose the correct answer from the options given below:
[1]B and D only
[2]A and B only
[3]C and D only
[4] A and E only
Answer:1, 2,3
Mikhail Bhakin
1. Which among the following are written by Mikhail Bakhtin?
A) White Mythology
B) Freudianism: A Marxist Critique
C) The Ideology of the Aesthetics
D) Rabelais and His World
E) Morphology of the Folktale
Choose the correct answer from the options given below:
1) A and C only.
2) B and D only.
3) A and E only.
4) B and C only.
Answer: 2
2. Who among the following theorists declines novel as phenomenon multiform in style and variform in speech and voice ?
a. E.M. Forster
b. Henry James
c. Mikhail Bakhtin
d. Eric Auerbach
Answer: 3
3. Which two of the following essays form part of Mikhail Bakhtin’s The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays?
A. “From the History of Novelistic Discourse”
B. “Discourse in the Novel”
C. “Romance and Novel”
D. “Forms of Time and the Chronotope in the Novel”
Choose the correct answer from the options given below:
A- A and B only
B- A and D only
C- B and C only
D- B and D only
Answer: D
Roland Barthes
1. Roland Barthes’ Image, Music, Text was published in
1) 1968
2) 1977
3) 1979
4) 1969
Answer: 2
2. Which among the following are written by Roland Barthes:
A) Allegories of Reading
B) Mythologies
C) The Pleasure of the Text
D) Some Versions of Pastoral
E) What is an Author?
Choose the correct option given below:
1) B and C
2)A and C
3)A,C and D
4) A,C and E
Answer: 1
3. Who among the following is NOT a Yale critic?
1) Geoffrey Hartman.
2) Paul de Man
3) J. Hills Miller
4) Roland Barthes
Answer: 4
3. Which of the following observations are true about Roland Barthes’ contributions to literary theory?
[A] He rejected the model for structural analysis of narratives
[B] He perceived “meaning” as an effect of various interconnections among linguistic codes
[C] He identified the various codes found in the process of structuration
[D] He played a significant role in the development of ‘semiology’
[E] He questioned the concept of literary criticism as an act of uncovering some hidden truth intended by the “author”
Choose the correct answer from the options given below:
[1] A, Band C only
[2] C, D and E only v
[3] B,C,D and E only
[4] A, B, C, D and E only
Answer: 3
4. According to Roland Barthes, which of the following “codes” are common to all narratives?
[A] Synthetic code
[B] Proairctic code
[C] Semiccode
[D] Hermencutic code
[E] Symbolic code
Choose the correct answer from the options given below:
{1] A and B only
[2] Band C only
[3] A, Band C only
[4] B,C,D and E only
Answer: 4
5. Given below are two statements:
Statement I: Roland Barthes believes that the author is “the epitome and culmination of capitalist ideology”.
Statement II: Walter Benjamin, in his the storyteller, observes that every real story has something useful in it. In light of the above statement,
choose the correct answer from the options given below V
[1] Both statement 1 and statement 2 are true
[2] Both statement | and statement I] are false
[3] Statement I is true, but statement II is false
[4] Statement 1 is false, but statement Il is true
Answer: 1
6. Mythologies was written by :
(A) Roland Barthes
(B) Jacques Derrida
(C) Homi K. Bhabha
(D) Ernest Dowson
Answer: A
7. The essay ‘The Death of the Author’ is written by :
(A) Michel Foucault
(B) Jacques Derrida
(C) Roland Barthes
(D) Alvin Kernan
Answer: C
8. The structural analysis of signs was practised by
(A) Michel Foucault
(B) Jacques Lacan
(C) Julia Kristeva
(D) Roland Barthes
Answer: D
9. “We know now that a text is not a line of words releasing a single “theological” meaning (the “message” of the Author-god) but a multidimensional space in which a variety of writings, none of them original, blend and clash . . . . literature . . . . by refusing to assign a “secret”, an ultimate meaning, to the text (and to the world as text) liberates what may be called an anti-theological activity , that is truly revolutionary since to refuse to x meaning is, in the end to refuse god and his hypostases reason, science, law.” The passage comes from which of the following essays?
1. “tradition and individual talent” by T.S. Eliot
2. “discource in the novel “ by Mikhail Bakhtin
3. “what is an author?” by Michel Foucault
4. “the death of the author” by Roland Barthes
Answer: 4
10. Roland Barthes is the author of one of the following texts :
(A) The Death of Tragedy
(B) The Death of a Hero
(C) The Death of the Author
(D) The Death of Literature
Answer: C
11. According to Roland Barthes, the “writerly text” is
(1) a unique expression of the writer’s individual genius
(2) consumed by way of a seemingly unitary meaning
(3) linked to active participation of the reader in the establishment of the text’s meaning
(4) immediately accessible to the reader
Answer: 3
12. . In his essay “From Work to Text” Roland Barthes says the following about the text :
I. The text is singular.
II. The text can be held in the hand.
III. The text is held in language.
IV. The text is a methodological field.
The right combination according to the code is
(1) I and III
(2) II and IV
(3) III and IV
(4) III and II
Answer: 3
13. Which two of the following features shall apply to Roland Barthes’s notion of a ‘ writerly text ” ?
( A ) In case of writerly text , the reader accepts the meaning without too much reading effort
( B ) A writerly text tends to focus attention on what is written
( C ) A writerly text makes the reader a producer
(D) A writerly text tends to be self – conscious .
Choose the correct answer from the options given below :
a. ( A ) and ( B ) Only
b. Band ( C ) Only
c. ( A ) and ( C ) Only
d. ( C ) and ( D ) Only
Answer: D