Structuralism and After — GK Questions with Answers

1. Saussure’s Course in General Linguistics was published in —
   1. 1906
   2. 1916
   3. 1926
   4. 1936
   Show answer

   Answer: (B) 1916

   1916, three years after his death, compiled by his students from lecture notes.

2. In Saussure’s terms, the concept to which a word refers is the —
   1. signifier
   2. signified
   3. sign
   4. referent
   Show answer

   Answer: (B) signified

   The signified is the concept; the signifier is the sound-image. Together they form the sign.

3. "In language there are only differences without positive terms" is from —
   1. Derrida
   2. Saussure
   3. Jakobson
   4. Barthes
   Show answer

   Answer: (B) Saussure

   It is Saussure’s, and it is the foundation on which Derrida later builds.

4. The study of a language at a single point in time is —
   1. diachronic
   2. synchronic
   3. syntagmatic
   4. paradigmatic
   Show answer

   Answer: (B) synchronic

   Synchronic; diachronic is the study of change over time.

5. "The Death of the Author" was written by —
   1. Foucault
   2. Barthes
   3. Derrida
   4. Wimsatt
   Show answer

   Answer: (B) Barthes

   Roland Barthes, 1968. Foucault replied with "What Is an Author?" in 1969.

6. Binary oppositions in myth were studied by —
   1. Propp
   2. Lévi-Strauss
   3. Greimas
   4. Todorov
   Show answer

   Answer: (B) Lévi-Strauss

   Claude Lévi-Strauss, in Structural Anthropology and The Raw and the Cooked.

7. Derrida’s term "différance" combines —
   1. difference and deference
   2. to differ and to defer
   3. difficulty and distance
   4. division and reference
   Show answer

   Answer: (B) to differ and to defer

   Meaning is both different from other meanings and endlessly deferred.

8. The privileging of speech over writing is called —
   1. logocentrism
   2. phonocentrism
   3. ethnocentrism
   4. anthropocentrism
   Show answer

   Answer: (B) phonocentrism

   Phonocentrism; logocentrism is the wider assumption of a centre of truth.

9. The Panopticon is used by Foucault in —
   1. The Order of Things
   2. Discipline and Punish
   3. Madness and Civilization
   4. The History of Sexuality
   Show answer

   Answer: (B) Discipline and Punish

   Bentham’s prison design becomes the model of modern self-regulating power.

10. The Anxiety of Influence (1973) was written by —
    1. Paul de Man
    2. Harold Bloom
    3. J. Hillis Miller
    4. Geoffrey Hartman
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) Harold Bloom

    Harold Bloom — strong poets must creatively misread their precursors.

11. "Hegemony" as rule by consent is the term of —
    1. Althusser
    2. Gramsci
    3. Lukács
    4. Williams
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) Gramsci

    Antonio Gramsci, in the Prison Notebooks.

12. "Interpellation" and "Ideological State Apparatuses" belong to —
    1. Gramsci
    2. Althusser
    3. Macherey
    4. Jameson
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) Althusser

    Louis Althusser — ideology "hails" the individual into being a subject.

13. "Structure of feeling" was coined by —
    1. Terry Eagleton
    2. Raymond Williams
    3. Fredric Jameson
    4. Stuart Hall
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) Raymond Williams

    Raymond Williams, founder of British cultural materialism.

14. Who described postmodernism as "the cultural logic of late capitalism"?
    1. Lyotard
    2. Baudrillard
    3. Jameson
    4. Hutcheon
    Show answer

    Answer: (C) Jameson

    Fredric Jameson, in his 1991 book.

15. The founder of New Historicism is —
    1. Raymond Williams
    2. Stephen Greenblatt
    3. Jonathan Dollimore
    4. Louis Montrose
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) Stephen Greenblatt

    Greenblatt, who also coined "self-fashioning".

16. In Freud’s model, the internalised moral authority is the —
    1. id
    2. ego
    3. superego
    4. libido
    Show answer

    Answer: (C) superego

    Id = desire, ego = the reality-governed self, superego = conscience.

17. The "collective unconscious" is a concept of —
    1. Freud
    2. Jung
    3. Lacan
    4. Adler
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) Jung

    Carl Jung — the storehouse of the archetypes.

18. Lacan’s mirror stage occurs at about —
    1. birth
    2. 6 to 18 months
    3. 3 to 5 years
    4. adolescence
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) 6 to 18 months

    The infant misrecognises its reflection as a whole self — the founding méconnaissance.

19. Which are Lacan’s three orders?
    1. Id, ego, superego
    2. Imaginary, Symbolic, Real
    3. Sense, feeling, tone
    4. Base, superstructure, ideology
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) Imaginary, Symbolic, Real

    Imaginary, Symbolic, Real — remember I-S-R.

20. "The unconscious is structured like a language" is the claim of —
    1. Freud
    2. Jung
    3. Lacan
    4. Kristeva
    Show answer

    Answer: (C) Lacan

    Lacan re-reads Freud through Saussure.

21. "Intertextuality" was coined by —
    1. Bakhtin
    2. Kristeva
    3. Barthes
    4. Genette
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) Kristeva

    Julia Kristeva, drawing on Bakhtin’s dialogism.

22. The "horizon of expectations" belongs to —
    1. Iser
    2. Jauss
    3. Fish
    4. Ingarden
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) Jauss

    Hans Robert Jauss and reception theory.

23. "Interpretive communities" is the concept of —
    1. Wolfgang Iser
    2. Stanley Fish
    3. Norman Holland
    4. Michael Riffaterre
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) Stanley Fish

    Stanley Fish — meaning comes from the conventions a group of readers shares.

24. Reader-response theory effectively rehabilitates which New Critical fallacy?
    1. Intentional
    2. Affective
    3. Pathetic
    4. Genetic
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) Affective

    The affective fallacy — the reader’s response becomes the proper object of study.

25. Louise Rosenblatt distinguishes efferent reading from —
    1. referential reading
    2. aesthetic reading
    3. close reading
    4. extensive reading
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) aesthetic reading

    Efferent carries information away; aesthetic reading lives through the text.

26. Postmodernism is defined as "incredulity towards metanarratives" by —
    1. Baudrillard
    2. Lyotard
    3. Jameson
    4. Hassan
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) Lyotard

    Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition (1979).

27. A copy for which no original exists is Baudrillard’s —
    1. pastiche
    2. simulacrum
    3. palimpsest
    4. paratext
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) simulacrum

    The simulacrum, which produces the hyperreal.

28. "Historiographic metafiction" was coined by —
    1. Jameson
    2. Linda Hutcheon
    3. Ihab Hassan
    4. Robert Scholes
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) Linda Hutcheon

    Linda Hutcheon, for novels that are both self-conscious and historical.

29. The term "ecocriticism" was first used by —
    1. Cheryll Glotfelty
    2. William Rueckert
    3. Lawrence Buell
    4. Harold Fromm
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) William Rueckert

    William Rueckert in 1978; Glotfelty and Fromm later established the field.

More chapters in this subject

• Feminism & Postcolonialism29 questions
• Indian Aesthetics — Sanskrit Poetics29 questions
• Renaissance to Romantic Criticism26 questions
• A Marriage Proposal12 questions
• A Tale of Two Cities12 questions
• Malgudi Days12 questions