World Lit Final Dr. Utter Quizzes

T or F: To the extent that this text describes a religion as well as an account of humankind's origins, that religion could be accurately described as monotheistic.

False

T.S. Eliot's contribution to the philosophical, artistic, and literary movement known as Modernism was most influenced by his exposure to:

French Symbolic poetry

What is the effect of the Mau Mau uprising on Wariuki?

He reaps minor economic benefits by cooperating with the colonialists.

From the film, we learned that the infamous Dreyfus Affair had what effect on Proust?

It confronted him with the shocking truth of how anti-Semitic much of French society was.

A Room of One's Own began as a . . .

lecture that Woolf was invited to give at a women's college

You may have noticed by now that the Chorus speaks on behalf of . . .

the Women of Corinth

The deus ex machina moment in Medea arrives in the form of

A flying chariot

Just what does the so-called "garden of forking paths" turn out to be?

A labyrinthine book, a story so vast in its complexity of narrative variations as to be nearly infinite.

What does Aegeus, king of Athens, tell Medea that he seeks from the Oracle of Delphi?

A solution to his childlessness

Wollstonecraft offers the lovely and (hopefully) memorable metaphor of "the graceful ivy, clasping the oak that supported it" to describe ________________.

An ideal image of marriage that is, she argues, appealing but almost always illusory, since few men or women are as strong and dependable as oaks.

Careful readers of footnotes will know that Medea tricked the daughters of Jason's uncle, King Pelias of Iolchus, into doing what to him?

Boiling him to death

Why does she compare women to soldiers?

Both, she argues, are victims of incomplete, poorly organized educations

Written down in __________, a language whose name derives from a Latin word meaning wedge, of all things.

Cuneiform

Which of these best sums up the sort of persona that The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock depicts?

Deeply sensitive, vulnerable, and perhaps despairing

King Creon . . .

Dies horribly, attempting to save his daughter

Among the societal forces which Wollstonecraft holds responsible for reducing the agency and status of women are those people who write on the subject of ____________.

Female education and manners

Euripides was an Athenian who died in Macedon. It has been suggested, though without much evidence, that he left his native Athens for what reason?

He left Athens in outrage because he felt inadequately appreciated as an artist.

What "misdeed" has young Marcel committed?

He left his bedroom and demanded a kiss from his mother.

We learn that the word Babylon means?

Houses of the great gods.

What is the one requirement that Douglas Jones and his wife make for Wariuki, should he wish to marry their daughter?

It must be a church wedding (and thus an expensive one)

Without attention to context, both temporal and geographical, one cannot fully enjoy a story. What was the setting of "The Women's Swimming Pool?"

Lebanon

We learn in the Norton's Intro to Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern Literature that the word "Literature" comes from the Latin for what?

Letters

"The women" in The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock who "come and go" through drawing rooms, speak idly and pretentiously of what as they stroll?

Michelangelo

The women of the Chorus reflect aloud on the good fortune of those who:

Never have children

What boon does Creon grant Medea?

One day to prepare for exile.

Jason laments that Medea has not allowed him even to do what for his sons?

Properly bury

Based on the introduction to Medea, which of the following is not true about the title character?

She has been faithful to her husband Jason

Babylonian creation epic Enuma Elish provides an illuminating instance of how scholars can go about assigning titles to things that were never officially titled by their creator. In this case, the title comes from?

The epic's first line of text

Mary Wollstonecraft's writing which, we learn in her brief bio in the Norton, was largely spurned for over a century because . . .

The news emerged that she had given birth to a child "out of wedlock" (what a phrase, by the way!)

In Search of Lost Time glimmers with startling metaphors, and we get a haunting one in the Introduction to it, as well. What did the writer Jean Cocteau, Proust's friend, describe as "watches ticking on the wrists of dead soldiers"?

The stacks of notebooks beside the recently-deceased Proust's bed.

To the steps of which institution does she refer?

The university library

We learn from the introduction that Hanan Al-Shaykh's novels (the first of which she published at the tender age of 25) and plays have drawn critical attention for all but which of these?

Their shockingly iconoclastic (if it makes any sense to use that term for a religion that abjures icons) criticism of Muslim orthodoxy.

According to the Wife of Bath, why have elves and fairies disappeared from England?

There's no room for them what with all the begging friars walking about!

Why were the visits of M. Swann traumatic for young Marcel?

They meant the delay—or complete deprivation—of a goodnight kiss from his mother

What is Wariuki's "one consuming passion," which he nurses "like one nurses a toothache with one's tongue"?

To contemptuously flaunt his success before the men who had humiliated him.

Despite the standard creative writing advice to "show, don't tell," Euripides tells through messengers and the Chorus most of the violence of the play, rather than actually showing it.

True

Douglass finds that a city slave is treated much better, on the whole, than a plantation slave.

True

T/F Of the two dramatic genres performed at Greek religious festivals, comedy tended to be more explicitly related to political and social concerns than did tragedy.

True

You now know what a "Proustian sentence," is, but do you recall from the film what high-society Parisians meant when they described someone as "Proustifying?"

Trying to gain favor with aristocratic hostesses through giving elaborate gifts and bestowing outlandish flattery.

The film concludes with the following quote from what writer, whose work we have read together this semester? "My great adventure is really Proust. What is left to be written after that?"

Virginia Woolf

We heard in class today Ngugi Wa Thiong'o describe loss of language in terms of ___________.

alienation

Eliot's reputation has suffered in consequence of the ___________ remarks in some of his speeches and poems.

anti-Semitic

Evliya Çelebi's account of his time in Vienna comes from his time spent there . . .

as part of a diplomatic delegation

T.S. Eliot is considered . . .

both an American and a British poet

Medea declares that she would rather endure three battles than . . .

endure childbirth once

Woolf's criticism of Professor Trevelyn's History of England is primarily that . . .

it includes nothing of the ordinary--but vital--details of the lives of real women.

"I now understood what had been to me a most perplexing difficulty—to wit, the white man's power to enslave the black man. [ . . . ] From that moment, I understood the pathway from slavery to freedom." What is Douglass describing?

literacy

what choice does the knight make?

to let his wife choose