1000+ Literary Theory MCQs – Part 18: New Historicism & Cultural Materialism

1. The term “new historicism” was coined by the ________ critic Stephen Greenblatt.

1. Italian
2. Russian
3. American
4. German

2. Who is credited with describing the textuality of history as “an intensified willingness to read all of the textual traces of the past with the attention traditionally conferred only on literary texts”?

1. Greenblatt
2. Louis
3. Montrose
4. Dutton

3. Who among the following theorists talks about “the circulation of social energy”?

1. Raymond Williams
2. Stephen Greenblatt
3. Antonio Gramsci
4. Hayden White

4. Which writer applied the term ‘cultural poetics’ to his own critical contribution, treating literature and the arts as part of social practice?

1. Mikhail Bakhtin
2. Stephen Greenblatt
3. Jonathan Dollimore
4. Raymond Williams

5. The terms ‘resonance’ and ‘wonder’ are associated with

1. Terry Eagleton
2. Terence Hawkes
3. Stephen Greenblatt
4. Roland Barthes

6. Which of the following is not a book by Stephen Greenblatt?

1. Beginnings
2. Hamlet in Purgatory
3. Will in the World
4. Marvelous Possessions

7. Which of the following deals with Renaissance culture?

1. Renaissance Self-Fashioning
2. Renaissance and Resistance
3. Culture and Society
4. Writing Culture

8. The book written by Stephen Greenblatt and Catherine Gallagher is:

1. Hamlet in Purgatory
2. History Studies
3. Practicing New Historicism
4. Essays in Early Modern Culture

9. Which critic begins his well-known book with the statement ‘I began with the desire to speak with the dead’?

1. Catherine Belsey
2. Stephen Greenblatt
3. Alan Sinfield
4. Terry Eagleton

10. The practice of giving ________ to literary and non-literary material is the first and major difference between the “new” and the “old” historicism.

1. Emotive language
2. Catharsis
3. Deep structure
4. Equal weighting

11. In the phrase “the archival continuum”, an important difference between old and new historicisms is encapsulated in the word ________, for that word indicates that new historicism is indeed a historicist rather than a historical movement.

1. New
2. Historic
3. Archival
4. Continuum

12. In new historicism, the notion of the state as all-powerful and all-seeing stems from the post-structuralist cultural historian ________.

1. Sigmund Freud
2. Michel Foucault
3. Edwin A. Abbott
4. Anthony Burgess

13. New historicists focus attention on issues of ________ and how it is maintained, on patriarchal structures and their perpetuation, and on the process of colonisation, with its accompanying “mind-set”.

1. State power
2. Immigration
3. Poverty
4. Social class

14. On which work did Louis Montrose write an essay that is an example of new historicism in practice?

1. Lord of the Flies
2. Heart of Darkness
3. The Sun Also Rises
4. A Midsummer Night’s Dream

15. What was the name of the American journal considered the “house magazine” of new historicism?

1. Representations
2. Competence
3. Dramatic unities
4. Diegesis

16. Which of the following would not be invoked to describe a form of New Historicist criticism?

1. Archaeology of social constructs
2. Genealogy of patriarchal discourse
3. Cultural materialism
4. Post-structural recovery of authorial intent

17. A New Historicist reading, above everything else, is influenced by the philosophy of

1. Jacques Derrida
2. Jacques Lacan
3. Michel Foucault
4. Theodor Adorno

18. New Historicism was fundamentally influenced by

1. Marx
2. Foucault
3. Derrida
4. Henri Lefebvre

19. “The poststructuralist orientation to history now emerging in literary studies may be characterized chiastically, as a reciprocal concern with the historicity of texts and the textuality of history” is a statement by the new historicist ____.

1. Stephen Greenblatt
2. Clifford Geertz
3. Louis Adrian Montrose
4. Catherine Gallagher

20. How does New Historicism differ from traditional historicism?

1. New Historicism rejects the idea that history is neutral.
2. New Historicism does not make strict delineations between literary and non-literary texts.
3. New Historicism takes a particular interest in marginalised peoples.
4. All of the above answers are correct.

21. What is New Historicism?

1. A theory that sees history as a form of writing and discourse
2. A theory that abandons the idea of history as an imitation of events
3. A theory that regards history as a series of narratives
4. All of the above answers are correct.

22. The British critic ________ described cultural materialism as “a politicised form of historiography”.

1. Graham Holderness
2. W. Somerset Maugham
3. Robertson Davies
4. Charles de Lint

23. Dollimore and Sinfield defined the term “Political Shakespeare” as designating a critical method which has ________ characteristics.

1. Nine
2. Seven
3. Two
4. Four

24. The term ‘Cultural Materialism’ is associated with

1. Stephen Greenblatt
2. Raymond Williams
3. Matthew Arnold
4. Richard Hoggart

25. What, according to Raymond Williams, is the right description of the term ‘Cultural Materialism’?

1. The material effect that culture has in wider social life
2. The political effect that matter has in social lives
3. The cultural effect that religion has in social life
4. The effect of social life in cultural situations of uncertainty

26. The dynamic of the “perverse” was first explored by Jonathan Dollimore in:

1. Radical Tragedy
2. Sex, Literature and Censorship
3. Sexual Dissidence
4. Death, Desire and Loss

27. Cultural materialism makes analysis based in critical theory, in the tradition of the ____.

1. Chicago School
2. Rinzai School
3. Prague School
4. Frankfurt School

28. Who says of cultural materialism that it is a “politicised form of historiography”?

1. Herbert Marcuse
2. Graham Holderness
3. Antonio Gramsci
4. Alan Sinfield