100 Important MCQs on Literary Theory Post World War II in English Literature
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100 Multiple Choice Question Answers on Literary Theory Post World War II - English Literature
Note: Most of these multiple-choice questions are based on the following works/essays which cover Unit-IX: Literary Theory Post World War II under Literary Theory and Criticism of UGC NET English as well as HPSC Assistant Professor English Recruitment Test -
- Marxism
- Poststructuralism and Deconstruction
- Postmodernism
- Feminism, Feminist Theory, and Post-Feminism
- Psychoanalysis and Reader-Response Theory
- Postcolonial Theory and Neocolonialism
- New Historicism and Cultural Materialism
- Ecocriticism
- Queer Theory
100 English Literature Literary Theory Post World War II MCQs
1. Who wrote The German Ideology, a foundational text in Marxist theory?
A) Friedrich Nietzsche
B) Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
C) Louis Althusser
D) Raymond Williams
Answer: B) Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
Explanation: The German Ideology (1846) laid the groundwork for Marxist materialist philosophy.
2. What is Louis Althusser best known for in Marxist theory?
A) Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses
B) Class struggle
C) Historical materialism
D) Alienation
Answer: A) Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses
Explanation: Althusser introduced ISAs to explain how ideology functions through institutions.
3. Raymond Williams introduced which key Marxist cultural concept?
A) Base and superstructure
B) Hegemony
C) Cultural materialism
D) Reification
Answer: C) Cultural materialism
Explanation: Williams emphasized the material role of culture in Marxist analysis.
4. Which term in Marxist theory refers to the commodification of human relations?
A) Hegemony
B) Alienation
C) Reification
D) Interpellation
Answer: C) Reification
Explanation: Reification turns human qualities into things in capitalist society.
5. Who coined the term différance?
A) Michel Foucault
B) Roland Barthes
C) Jacques Derrida
D) Jean Baudrillard
Answer: C) Jacques Derrida
Explanation: Derrida coined différance to show the deferral of meaning in language.
6. According to Derrida, what is the function of deconstruction?
A) To find hidden meanings
B) To destabilize binary oppositions
C) To affirm authorial intent
D) To strengthen structure
Answer: B) To destabilize binary oppositions
Explanation: Deconstruction exposes internal contradictions in texts.
7. Roland Barthes' The Death of the Author argues for:
A) Authorial intention
B) Reader's sovereignty
C) Political reading
D) Structural integrity
Answer: B) Reader's sovereignty
Explanation: Barthes asserts the reader creates the meaning, not the author.
8. Foucault’s idea of power/knowledge suggests:
A) Power and knowledge are separate
B) Knowledge is apolitical
C) Knowledge is a form of power
D) Knowledge resists power
Answer: C) Knowledge is a form of power
Explanation: Foucault connects discourse, knowledge, and institutional power.
9. Which of the following is a key trait of postmodern literature?
A) Linear narrative
B) Authorial objectivity
C) Metafiction
D) Realist perspective
Answer: C) Metafiction
Explanation: Postmodernism often features self-referential narrative styles.
10. Jean-François Lyotard defined postmodernism as “incredulity toward”:
A) Art
B) Reason
C) Grand Narratives
D) Science
Answer: C) Grand Narratives
Explanation: Lyotard critiques totalizing ideologies claiming universal truth.
11. Who described postmodernism as “the cultural logic of late capitalism”?
A) Terry Eagleton
B) Jean Baudrillard
C) Fredric Jameson
D) Edward Said
Answer: C) Fredric Jameson
Explanation: Jameson links postmodern culture to global capitalism’s logic and spectacle.
12. What is a major theme of feminist theory?
A) Deconstruction of language
B) Economic determinism
C) Patriarchy and gender inequality
D) Psychoanalytic repression
Answer: C) Patriarchy and gender inequality
Explanation: Feminist theory critiques male dominance and explores women's roles in literature and society.
13. Simone de Beauvoir’s key feminist work is titled:
A) Gender Trouble
B) The Second Sex
C) Sexual Politics
D) The Feminine Mystique
Answer: B) The Second Sex
Explanation: De Beauvoir’s classic explores how women are historically constructed as the “Other.”
14. Judith Butler’s concept of gender performativity means:
A) Gender is innate
B) Gender is a stable identity
C) Gender is performed through repeated actions
D) Gender is biologically fixed
Answer: C) Gender is performed through repeated actions
Explanation: Butler argues that gender is not what one is, but what one does.
15. Post-feminism is often seen as:
A) A rejection of all feminist ideas
B) A continuation of second-wave feminism
C) A critique of feminism’s relevance in the modern era
D) A Marxist approach to gender
Answer: C) A critique of feminism’s relevance in the modern era
Explanation: Post-feminism reflects a response to or evolution of earlier feminist waves, sometimes suggesting feminism is no longer needed.
16. Psychoanalysis in literary theory often explores:
A) Cultural hegemony
B) Reader autonomy
C) The unconscious motives of characters and authors
D) Ecological balance
Answer: C) The unconscious motives of characters and authors
Explanation: Psychoanalytic criticism delves into hidden desires and repressions in texts.
17. Freud’s model of the psyche includes:
A) Logos, ethos, pathos
B) Ego, id, superego
C) Subject, object, predicate
D) Conscious, unconscious, intuition
Answer: B) Ego, id, superego
Explanation: Freud theorized these three aspects of the psyche to explain human behavior.
18. Lacan reinterprets Freud by emphasizing:
A) Biological drives
B) Language and the symbolic order
C) Mythology
D) Realism
Answer: B) Language and the symbolic order
Explanation: Lacan connected psychoanalysis with linguistic structures and symbolism.
19. In Lacanian theory, the "mirror stage" signifies:
A) Rejection of identity
B) A child's recognition of self in a mirror
C) The end of the unconscious
D) Social alienation
Answer: B) A child's recognition of self in a mirror
Explanation: This stage marks the formation of the ego through self-image and misrecognition.
20. Who argued that literature is a space for the unconscious to reveal itself?
A) Derrida
B) Foucault
C) Freud
D) Said
Answer: C) Freud
Explanation: Freud saw art and literature as revealing repressed desires and conflicts.
21. Reader-Response theory emphasizes:
A) Textual unity
B) Authorial intention
C) Reader’s role in creating meaning
D) Historical context
Answer: C) Reader’s role in creating meaning
Explanation: Reader-response theory focuses on how readers interpret and construct meaning.
22. Stanley Fish is best associated with:
A) Authoritarian criticism
B) Affective fallacy
C) Interpretive communities
D) Structuralist linguistics
Answer: C) Interpretive communities
Explanation: Fish proposed that meaning is shaped by communities that share interpretive strategies.
23. Wolfgang Iser emphasized the concept of:
A) The author-god
B) The implied reader
C) The real reader
D) Archetypes
Answer: B) The implied reader
Explanation: Iser’s “implied reader” is a hypothetical reader constructed by the text.
24. Which of the following is a criticism of Reader-Response theory?
A) It ignores the reader
B) It is too author-centered
C) It disregards textual integrity
D) It emphasizes history too much
Answer: C) It disregards textual integrity
Explanation: Critics argue that it can lead to overly subjective interpretations, neglecting the text itself.
25. Edward Said’s Orientalism critiques:
A) Western representations of the East
B) Modernist poetry
C) Gender roles in the 19th century
D) Ecological degradation
Answer: A) Western representations of the East
Explanation: Said exposes how colonial powers constructed the “Orient” as the exotic other.
26. Gayatri Spivak’s famous essay is titled:
A) Can the Subaltern Speak?
B) The Empire Writes Back
C) Black Skin, White Masks
D) Culture and Imperialism
Answer: A) Can the Subaltern Speak?
Explanation: Spivak examines whether marginalized voices can truly be heard within dominant discourse.
27. Homi Bhabha's concept of “hybridity” suggests:
A) Cultural purity
B) Racial superiority
C) Mixed cultural identities formed through colonial contact
D) Static identities
Answer: C) Mixed cultural identities formed through colonial contact
Explanation: Hybridity challenges rigid colonial binaries, showing identity as fluid and mixed.
28. Neocolonialism refers to:
A) Colonization through direct rule
B) Economic and cultural dominance by global powers post-independence
C) Cultural integration
D) Tribal sovereignty
Answer: B) Economic and cultural dominance by global powers post-independence
Explanation: Neocolonialism critiques how former colonial powers continue to dominate through economic and cultural influence.
29. Stephen Greenblatt is associated with:
A) Psychoanalysis
B) New Criticism
C) New Historicism
D) Structuralism
Answer: C) New Historicism
Explanation: Greenblatt pioneered New Historicism, which connects literature with cultural power structures.
30. New Historicism views literary texts as:
A) Independent of history
B) Moral allegories
C) Cultural artifacts influenced by their historical context
D) Purely fictional constructs
Answer: C) Cultural artifacts influenced by their historical context
Explanation: New Historicism sees texts as deeply embedded in the power relations of their time.
31. Cultural Materialism differs from New Historicism in that it:
A) Ignores politics
B) Focuses solely on aesthetics
C) Emphasizes ideology and political commitment
D) Rejects historical context
Answer: C) Emphasizes ideology and political commitment
Explanation: Cultural Materialism, influenced by Marxism, explicitly foregrounds political engagement and social change.
32. Who is a key figure in Cultural Materialism?
A) Stephen Greenblatt
B) Jonathan Dollimore
C) Edward Said
D) Jacques Derrida
Answer: B) Jonathan Dollimore
Explanation: Dollimore, along with Alan Sinfield, helped develop Cultural Materialism in British literary theory.
33. Ecocriticism is primarily concerned with:
A) Gender and sexuality
B) Nature and the environment in literature
C) Deconstruction of meaning
D) Class struggle
Answer: B) Nature and the environment in literature
Explanation: Ecocriticism explores the relationship between literature and the natural world.
34. The term "ecocriticism" was popularized by:
A) Arne Naess
B) Cheryll Glotfelty
C) Rachel Carson
D) Aldo Leopold
Answer: B) Cheryll Glotfelty
Explanation: Glotfelty’s work helped establish ecocriticism as a literary discipline in the 1990s.
35. Deep Ecology, within Ecocriticism, emphasizes:
A) Human dominance
B) Anthropocentrism
C) The intrinsic value of all living beings
D) Urban development
Answer: C) The intrinsic value of all living beings
Explanation: Deep Ecology views all species as equal in value, challenging human-centered thinking.
36. Queer Theory emerged from the intersection of:
A) Psychoanalysis and feminism
B) Gender studies and poststructuralism
C) Ecocriticism and Marxism
D) Structuralism and realism
Answer: B) Gender studies and poststructuralism
Explanation: Queer Theory destabilizes fixed categories of gender and sexuality using poststructuralist tools.
37. Judith Butler’s work is foundational to:
A) New Historicism
B) Reader-Response Theory
C) Queer Theory
D) Structuralism
Answer: C) Queer Theory
Explanation: Butler’s theories on gender performativity and identity helped launch Queer Theory.
38. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s Epistemology of the Closet addresses:
A) Class consciousness
B) Feminist utopias
C) Sexual identity and binary oppositions
D) Nature writing
Answer: C) Sexual identity and binary oppositions
Explanation: Sedgwick critiques the binary opposition of homosexual/heterosexual as reductive and limiting.
39. Queer Theory challenges:
A) Structuralist readings
B) Heteronormativity and fixed identity categories
C) Ecological analysis
D) Postcolonial representation
Answer: B) Heteronormativity and fixed identity categories
Explanation: Queer Theory critiques normative gender and sexuality assumptions in texts and society.
40. Which of the following best defines heteronormativity?
A) The belief in gender equality
B) The privileging of heterosexual norms in culture and society
C) A feminist utopia
D) A Marxist economic term
Answer: B) The privileging of heterosexual norms in culture and society
Explanation: Heteronormativity assumes heterosexuality as the default or normal sexual orientation, which Queer Theory seeks to critique.
41. Which theorist argued that “discourse is the power which is everywhere and comes from everywhere”?
A) Roland Barthes
B) Michel Foucault
C) Jacques Derrida
D) Judith Butler
Answer: B) Michel Foucault
Explanation: Foucault’s theory of discourse links knowledge and power as pervasive and productive forces in society.
42. The term "simulacra" is central to the theory of:
A) Terry Eagleton
B) Fredric Jameson
C) Jean Baudrillard
D) Roland Barthes
Answer: C) Jean Baudrillard
Explanation: Baudrillard uses “simulacra” to describe representations that no longer refer to reality but have become real in themselves.
43. In Marxist theory, the base-superstructure model implies:
A) Art creates the economy
B) Economy (base) determines ideology, culture, and politics (superstructure)
C) Superstructure controls the base
D) Literature operates independently
Answer: B) Economy (base) determines ideology, culture, and politics (superstructure)
Explanation: Marxists argue that the economic foundation of a society shapes its cultural and ideological expressions.
44. “The death of the author” implies:
A) Authors are irrelevant
B) Readers should focus only on biography
C) Meaning lies in the reader’s interpretation, not the author’s intention
D) Literature is dead
Answer: C) Meaning lies in the reader’s interpretation, not the author’s intention
Explanation: Roland Barthes argues that interpretation should focus on the reader’s experience, not the author’s intended meaning.
45. Which of these is a key term in Derrida's deconstruction?
A) Hybridity
B) Interpellation
C) Différance
D) Ideology
Answer: C) Différance
Explanation: Derrida coined “différance” to describe the endless deferral and difference of meaning in language.
46. In poststructuralist theory, meaning is:
A) Fixed and final
B) Determined solely by the author
C) Always deferred and unstable
D) Created by historical facts
Answer: C) Always deferred and unstable
Explanation: Poststructuralists argue that language cannot provide stable meaning due to its inherent contradictions and slippages.
47. Which feminist theorist analyzed how literature reinforces gender norms through language?
A) Helene Cixous
B) Elaine Showalter
C) Sandra Gilbert
D) Julia Kristeva
Answer: A) Helene Cixous
Explanation: Cixous advocated for "écriture féminine," a female mode of writing that disrupts patriarchal language structures.
48. What does the term “phallocentrism” critique?
A) Capitalist exploitation
B) Environmental degradation
C) Male-centered language and culture
D) Colonial discourse
Answer: C) Male-centered language and culture
Explanation: Phallocentrism critiques how masculine norms dominate language, thought, and representation.
49. In psychoanalytic criticism, repression refers to:
A) A conscious denial of feelings
B) The act of forgetting grammar rules
C) The process of excluding disturbing desires from consciousness
D) A biological reaction
Answer: C) The process of excluding disturbing desires from consciousness
Explanation: Freud’s idea of repression involves the unconscious blocking of unacceptable thoughts and desires.
50. The term “intertextuality” was coined by:
A) Roland Barthes
B) Julia Kristeva
C) Tzvetan Todorov
D) Mikhail Bakhtin
Answer: B) Julia Kristeva
Explanation: Kristeva developed intertextuality to describe how texts are always shaped by other texts and discourses.
51. Who proposed the idea of the “author-function”?
A) Jacques Derrida
B) Roland Barthes
C) Michel Foucault
D) Edward Said
Answer: C) Michel Foucault
Explanation: Foucault’s “author-function” challenges the traditional notion of authorship by emphasizing cultural and institutional roles.
52. Which theory examines literature as a social institution affected by class struggle?
A) Queer Theory
B) Deconstruction
C) Marxist Criticism
D) Reader-Response Theory
Answer: C) Marxist Criticism
Explanation: Marxist critics view literature as shaped by and reflective of material conditions and class conflict.
53. Gayatri Spivak critiques Western feminism for:
A) Ignoring ecological concerns
B) Oversimplifying women’s roles in developing countries
C) Supporting queer theory
D) Emphasizing textuality over politics
Answer: B) Oversimplifying women’s roles in developing countries
Explanation: Spivak criticizes how Western feminism can silence or misrepresent Third World women.
54. “Othering” in postcolonial theory refers to:
A) Creating utopias
B) Treating the colonizer as superior
C) Defining people as different and inferior
D) Celebrating cultural difference
Answer: C) Defining people as different and inferior
Explanation: Othering is a way to dehumanize or marginalize the colonized subject by emphasizing difference and inferiority.
55. The term “panopticon,” related to surveillance and control, is linked to:
A) Jacques Lacan
B) Michel Foucault
C) Edward Said
D) Terry Eagleton
Answer: B) Michel Foucault
Explanation: Foucault used Bentham’s panopticon metaphor to describe modern systems of surveillance and discipline.
56. Stuart Hall is associated with which school of theory?
A) Russian Formalism
B) Frankfurt School
C) Cultural Studies
D) Structuralism
Answer: C) Cultural Studies
Explanation: Hall was a major figure in Cultural Studies, analyzing media, race, and ideology in popular culture.
57. Which term refers to the ideology that heterosexuality is the default and natural sexual orientation?
A) Homonormativity
B) Binary opposition
C) Heteronormativity
D) Performativity
Answer: C) Heteronormativity
Explanation: Queer theorists use this term to critique the assumption of heterosexual norms as standard.
58. Which theorist combined Marxist, psychoanalytic, and structuralist ideas to critique ideology?
A) Terry Eagleton
B) Jacques Lacan
C) Louis Althusser
D) Stanley Fish
Answer: C) Louis Althusser
Explanation: Althusser introduced the concept of “ideological state apparatuses” and discussed how ideology interpellates individuals.
59. The Frankfurt School primarily focused on:
A) Environmental literature
B) Deconstructive strategies
C) The critique of mass culture and ideology
D) New Criticism
Answer: C) The critique of mass culture and ideology
Explanation: Thinkers like Adorno and Horkheimer analyzed how culture serves capitalist ideology and maintains the status quo.
60. Donna Haraway’s "Cyborg Manifesto" challenges:
A) Romanticism
B) Ecofeminism
C) Gender binaries and essentialist feminism
D) Linguistic turn
Answer: C) Gender binaries and essentialist feminism
Explanation: Haraway uses the figure of the cyborg to question stable categories of gender, identity, and politics.
61. Who wrote "The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act"?
A) Edward Said
B) Fredric Jameson
C) Terry Eagleton
D) Louis Althusser
Answer: B) Fredric Jameson
Explanation: Jameson's book applies Marxist analysis to literature, arguing that all narratives are embedded in ideology and history.
62. “There is nothing outside the text” is a quote by:
A) Roland Barthes
B) Jacques Derrida
C) Michel Foucault
D) Jean-François Lyotard
Answer: B) Jacques Derrida
Explanation: This quote emphasizes that interpretation is always within language and no meaning exists beyond textual representation.
63. Who introduced the idea of “écriture féminine”?
A) Julia Kristeva
B) Luce Irigaray
C) Simone de Beauvoir
D) Hélène Cixous
Answer: D) Hélène Cixous
Explanation: Cixous advocated for a uniquely feminine style of writing that disrupts patriarchal language structures.
64. “The Postmodern Condition” was written by:
A) Jean Baudrillard
B) Jean-François Lyotard
C) Fredric Jameson
D) Ihab Hassan
Answer: B) Jean-François Lyotard
Explanation: Lyotard explores knowledge and legitimation in postmodern societies, especially the collapse of grand narratives.
65. What does the term “hybridity” refer to in Postcolonial Theory?
A) Racial mixing
B) Economic dependence
C) Cultural fusion and resistance
D) Linguistic evolution
Answer: C) Cultural fusion and resistance
Explanation: Coined by Homi Bhabha, “hybridity” denotes the cultural mixing that subverts colonial authority.
66. “Gender Trouble” is a foundational text in:
A) Ecofeminism
B) Queer Theory
C) Psychoanalytic Criticism
D) Reader-Response Theory
Answer: B) Queer Theory
Explanation: Judith Butler’s “Gender Trouble” challenges fixed identities and introduces the idea of gender performativity.
67. “A Room of One’s Own” is a key feminist text by:
A) Mary Wollstonecraft
B) Simone de Beauvoir
C) Virginia Woolf
D) Julia Kristeva
Answer: C) Virginia Woolf
Explanation: Woolf argues that economic and intellectual freedom is necessary for women writers to thrive.
68. In New Historicism, a “thick description” refers to:
A) A summary of a novel
B) Surface-level commentary
C) Detailed contextual analysis
D) Statistical data
Answer: C) Detailed contextual analysis
Explanation: Stephen Greenblatt used this term to emphasize historically rich readings of literature.
69. “The Wretched of the Earth” was written by:
A) Chinua Achebe
B) Edward Said
C) Frantz Fanon
D) Gayatri Spivak
Answer: C) Frantz Fanon
Explanation: Fanon’s anti-colonial work discusses violence, resistance, and the psychological effects of colonization.
70. “Performativity” in gender theory means:
A) Social roles are biologically fixed
B) Gender identity is a fixed inner truth
C) Gender is enacted through repeated behaviors
D) Gender is irrelevant in discourse
Answer: C) Gender is enacted through repeated behaviors
Explanation: Butler posits that gender is constructed through socially performed acts, not innate essence.
71. Which critic is known for the concept of “Death of the Author”?
A) Michel Foucault
B) Roland Barthes
C) Jacques Derrida
D) Jean Baudrillard
Answer: B) Roland Barthes
Explanation: Barthes argued that the author’s intentions are irrelevant; meaning is created by the reader.
72. “Can the Subaltern Speak?” is a seminal essay by:
A) Homi Bhabha
B) Edward Said
C) Gayatri Spivak
D) Frantz Fanon
Answer: C) Gayatri Spivak
Explanation: Spivak discusses how colonial and elite structures silence the marginalized “subaltern” voices.
73. What is the main focus of Ecocriticism?
A) Gender identity
B) Economic class struggle
C) Representation of nature
D) Linguistic play
Answer: C) Representation of nature
Explanation: Ecocriticism studies the relationship between literature and the natural environment.
74. The phrase “Simulacra and Simulation” is associated with:
A) Jean-François Lyotard
B) Jean Baudrillard
C) Jacques Lacan
D) Julia Kristeva
Answer: B) Jean Baudrillard
Explanation: Baudrillard explores how representations (simulacra) can replace reality in postmodern culture.
75. Which of the following is a key concept in Reader-Response Theory?
A) Authorial intention
B) Structural unity
C) Implied reader
D) Political unconscious
Answer: C) Implied reader
Explanation: The “implied reader” is a construct of the text that guides interpretation, introduced by Wolfgang Iser.
76. “The Anxiety of Influence” was written by:
A) Harold Bloom
B) Stanley Fish
C) Jacques Lacan
D) Terry Eagleton
Answer: A) Harold Bloom
Explanation: Bloom suggests that poets struggle against their predecessors' influence to create original work.
77. Which theory critiques environmental exploitation and literary representation of nature?
A) Cultural Materialism
B) Deconstruction
C) Ecocriticism
D) Psychoanalysis
Answer: C) Ecocriticism
Explanation: Ecocriticism evaluates how literature portrays nature and advocates ecological responsibility.
78. Who coined the term “logocentrism” in the context of Western metaphysics?
A) Roland Barthes
B) Michel Foucault
C) Jacques Derrida
D) Julia Kristeva
Answer: C) Jacques Derrida
Explanation: Derrida criticized logocentrism for privileging speech over writing and fixed meanings.
79. What concept did Edward Said explore in his book “Orientalism”?
A) Gender performance
B) Environmental degradation
C) Western construction of the East
D) Historical materialism
Answer: C) Western construction of the East
Explanation: Said showed how Western discourse stereotypes and dominates Eastern cultures.
80. Who proposed the idea of “interpellation” in Marxist theory?
A) Terry Eagleton
B) Fredric Jameson
C) Louis Althusser
D) Antonio Gramsci
Answer: C) Louis Althusser
Explanation: Althusser's “interpellation” describes how ideologies shape individuals’ identities unconsciously.
81. The idea that identity is fragmented and performative is central to:
A) Psychoanalysis
B) Postmodernism
C) Classicism
D) Structuralism
Answer: B) Postmodernism
Explanation: Postmodernism challenges unified identity, emphasizing multiplicity and performance.
82. Which theorist is associated with “The Madwoman in the Attic”?
A) Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar
B) Hélène Cixous
C) Luce Irigaray
D) Judith Butler
Answer: A) Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar
Explanation: This feminist text examines how 19th-century women writers encoded resistance in their works.
83. The concept of “cultural capital” is associated with:
A) Michel Foucault
B) Terry Eagleton
C) Pierre Bourdieu
D) Louis Althusser
Answer: C) Pierre Bourdieu
Explanation: Bourdieu described how knowledge, education, and culture can function as a form of capital.
84. According to Lacan, the “mirror stage” is important because:
A) It marks language acquisition
B) It leads to identity formation through the Other
C) It removes all unconscious drives
D) It ends the Oedipal complex
Answer: B) It leads to identity formation through the Other
Explanation: Lacan believed that the mirror stage is when infants first recognize their reflection, forming a sense of self through misrecognition.
85. “Cultural Materialism” combines Marxism with:
A) Psychoanalysis
B) Historicism
C) Structuralism
D) Reader-Response Theory
Answer: B) Historicism
Explanation: Cultural Materialism focuses on historical context and power dynamics in literary texts.
86. In Deconstruction, “différance” refers to:
A) The rejection of writing
B) A method of close reading
C) The endless deferral and difference in meaning
D) The stability of textual meaning
Answer: C) The endless deferral and difference in meaning
Explanation: Derrida’s term shows that meaning is never fixed but always deferred through language.
87. “Surveillance and discipline” are major themes in which thinker’s work?
A) Louis Althusser
B) Jacques Derrida
C) Michel Foucault
D) Jean Baudrillard
Answer: C) Michel Foucault
Explanation: Foucault analyzed how modern institutions control people through surveillance and norms.
88. Which theorist developed the concept of “carnivalesque”?
A) Mikhail Bakhtin
B) Terry Eagleton
C) Edward Said
D) Stanley Fish
Answer: A) Mikhail Bakhtin
Explanation: Bakhtin’s “carnivalesque” challenges authority through humor, parody, and subversion.
89. “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman” is a quote by:
A) Luce Irigaray
B) Judith Butler
C) Simone de Beauvoir
D) Julia Kristeva
Answer: C) Simone de Beauvoir
Explanation: This statement from “The Second Sex” emphasizes that gender is socially constructed.
90. The “author-function” was introduced by:
A) Roland Barthes
B) Michel Foucault
C) Jacques Derrida
D) Harold Bloom
Answer: B) Michel Foucault
Explanation: Foucault examined how the concept of the author functions within discourses to organize knowledge and texts.
91. Who argued that texts are polysemic and readers are active co-creators of meaning?
A) Stanley Fish
B) Wolfgang Iser
C) Hans Robert Jauss
D) All of the above
Answer: D) All of the above
Explanation: All these Reader-Response theorists emphasized the interpretive role of readers in textual meaning.
92. “Writing Degree Zero” is a work by:
A) Roland Barthes
B) Jacques Derrida
C) Jean Baudrillard
D) Terry Eagleton
Answer: A) Roland Barthes
Explanation: Barthes explores the idea of neutral writing that resists ideological influence.
93. The concept of “panopticism” is derived from:
A) Jacques Derrida
B) Michel Foucault
C) Fredric Jameson
D) Louis Althusser
Answer: B) Michel Foucault
Explanation: Foucault uses the Panopticon as a metaphor for modern disciplinary societies and surveillance.
94. Which literary theory advocates for a political reading of texts to uncover class struggle?
A) Postmodernism
B) Feminism
C) Marxism
D) Deconstruction
Answer: C) Marxism
Explanation: Marxist criticism examines how literature reflects and reinforces socio-economic ideologies and class conflict.
95. Who is the author of “The Location of Culture”?
A) Edward Said
B) Gayatri Spivak
C) Homi K. Bhabha
D) Chinua Achebe
Answer: C) Homi K. Bhabha
Explanation: Bhabha’s work explores hybridity, mimicry, and cultural identity in postcolonial discourse.
96. In Feminist Theory, the term “phallocentrism” refers to:
A) Male biological determinism
B) Male-centered linguistic and symbolic order
C) Rejection of Freud
D) Celebration of femininity
Answer: B) Male-centered linguistic and symbolic order
Explanation: Phallocentrism critiques how male-centered logic dominates language, culture, and knowledge.
97. Which theorist is known for “readerly” and “writerly” texts?
A) Jean Baudrillard
B) Roland Barthes
C) Jacques Derrida
D) Wolfgang Iser
Answer: B) Roland Barthes
Explanation: Readerly texts offer fixed meaning; writerly texts invite the reader’s creative participation.
98. “Strategic essentialism” is a concept developed by:
A) Edward Said
B) Gayatri Spivak
C) Judith Butler
D) Terry Eagleton
Answer: B) Gayatri Spivak
Explanation: Spivak proposed strategic essentialism as a temporary collective identity to aid political resistance.
99. The term “rhizome” in poststructuralist theory is associated with:
A) Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari
B) Jacques Derrida
C) Jean Baudrillard
D) Roland Barthes
Answer: A) Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari
Explanation: The “rhizome” symbolizes non-hierarchical, interconnected thought structures.
100. “The Use of Literature” is a work by:
A) Terry Eagleton
B) Derek Attridge
C) Rita Felski
D) Stanley Fish
Answer: C) Rita Felski
Explanation: Felski critiques suspicious reading and promotes literary appreciation in new theoretical contexts.
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