1000+ Literary Theory MCQs – Part 7: Post-Structuralism: Barthes, Kristeva & Intertextuality

1. The crucial essay “The Death of the Author” (1968) was the “hinge” around which ________ turned from structuralism to post-structuralism.

1. Johnson
2. Joyce
3. Eddison
4. Barthes

2. Given below are two statements, one labelled as Assertion (A) and the other as Reason (R). In the context of the two statements, which one of the following is correct?

1. Both (A) and (R) are true and (R) is the correct explanation of (A).
2. Both (A) and (R) are true and (R) is not the correct explanation of (A).
3. Assertion (A) is true but Reason (R) is false.
4. Assertion (A) is false but Reason (R) is true.

3. 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. immediately accessible to the reader
4. linked to active participation of the reader in the establishment of the text’s meaning

4. “A text is not a line of words releasing a single ‘theological’ meaning (the ‘message’ of the Author-God) but a multi-dimensional space in which a variety of writings, none of them original, blend and clash. The text is a tissue of quotations drawn from the innumerable centres of culture.” Which of the following best expresses the position stated above?

1. A text is a tissue of lies that has no referential and cultural validity.
2. A text is a linguistic construct without any unity of meaning and is linked to multiple sources of language and culture.
3. A text is a force field of ambiguity where meanings collapse in the face of opposition.
4. A text is a communication from the Author-God with multiple meanings.

5. In his essay “From Work to Text” Roland Barthes says the following about the text:

1. I and III
2. II and IV
3. III and IV
4. III and II

6. According to Barthes, a text which draws attention to its artifice, to the ways in which it is structured, is called

1. Readerly text
2. Aesthetic text
3. Writerly text
4. Formal text

7. “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, an activity that is truly revolutionary since to refuse to fix meaning is, in the end, to refuse God and his hypostases: reason, science, law.” The passage comes from which of the following essays?

1. “The Death of the Author” by Roland Barthes
2. “Discourse in the Novel” by Mikhail Bakhtin
3. “What Is an Author?” by Michel Foucault
4. “Tradition and the Individual Talent” by T.S. Eliot

8. Camera Lucida is a book by

1. Laura Mulvey
2. John Berger
3. Roland Barthes
4. Jacques Derrida

9. Which critic spoke in favour of an erotics of reading?

1. Roland Barthes
2. Stanley Fish
3. Michel Foucault
4. Jean Baudrillard

10. Which critic makes a distinction between readerly and writerly texts?

1. Walter Benjamin
2. Roland Barthes
3. Michel Foucault
4. Stanley Fish

11. Barthes considered novels such as those by George Eliot and Arnold Bennett __________, and those by Joyce or Faulkner to be __________.

1. Respectable, soporific
2. Risible, scriptible
3. Reasonable, surreal
4. Lisible, scriptible

12. Roland Barthes in his famous essay, “The Death of the Author” ________.

1. believes that the text is to be interpreted in the biographical context of the author
2. believes that the author has sole claim to his work
3. challenges the author’s claim as ‘cogito’ or origin of all knowledge
4. concludes that an author is an atypical product of his social milieu

13. “[…] a text is made of multiple writings, drawn from many cultures and entering into mutual relations of dialogue, parody, contestation, but there is one place where this multiplicity is focused and that place is the reader, not, as was hitherto said, the author. […] the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author.” Which theoretical school does the excerpt best represent?

1. Reader-response criticism
2. Formalism
3. New Criticism
4. Post-structuralism

14. Choose the correct option with reference to “The Death of the Author”:

1. It was first published in France
2. It was first published in 1967 in Aspen
3. It is written by Michel Foucault
4. It is written by Jacques Derrida

15. Julia Kristeva’s ‘intertextuality’ derives from

1. A and B
2. B and C
3. C and D
4. A and D

16. What is meant by ‘intertextuality’?

1. Demonstrating relationships between texts
2. Making a new edition of an existing text
3. Plagiarising from several texts
4. Quoting from several texts

17. Which of the following is a discipline which has always been inherently confident about the possibility of establishing objective knowledge?

1. Hermeneutics
2. Linguistics
3. Mimesis
4. Formalism

18. ________ is a discipline which has always tended to emphasise the difficulty of achieving secure knowledge about things.

1. Sociology
2. Criminology
3. Psychology
4. Philosophy

19. Post-structuralism emerged in France in the late ________.

1. 1960s
2. 1930s
3. 1970s
4. 1990s

20. Which one of the following assumptions best expresses the position of Post-Structuralist criticism?

1. Definite structures underlie empirical events.
2. Language is representational.
3. Apprehension of reality is a construct.
4. Knowledge operates according to procedures that are axiomatic.

21. Which of the following is incorrect about post-structuralism?

1. It seeks to undermine the idea that meaning pre-exists its linguistic expression.
2. There can be no meaning which is not formulated, and no language formulation reaches anywhere beyond language.
3. Every sign refers to every other sign adequately.
4. There is no a-textual ‘origin’ of a text.

22. What are theories that produce ideas of social mechanisms of power referred to as?

1. Post-structuralist
2. Post-political
3. Post-feminist
4. Post-masculinity

23. The concept of the rhizomic narrative was formulated by

1. Jean Baudrillard
2. Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari
3. Jean-François Lyotard
4. Donna Haraway