MH Literature and Literary Theory 1 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: Which critical approach argues that a text's meaning is determined solely by the reader, not by authorial intent?
- Reader-response criticism (Correct answer)
- New Criticism
- Biographical criticism
- Marxist criticism
Correct answer: Reader-response criticism
Reader-response criticism holds that meaning is created in the interaction between the reader and the text, not fixed by the author.
Question 2: Roland Barthes' essay 'The Death of the Author' (1967) primarily argues that:
- The author's biography is irrelevant to textual meaning (Correct answer)
- Authors should write anonymously
- Literary texts have no meaning
- Readers cannot interpret texts accurately
Correct answer: The author's biography is irrelevant to textual meaning
Barthes argued that once a text is published, the author's intentions cease to govern its meaning, freeing interpretation to the reader.
Question 3: In New Criticism, what term refers to the fallacy of judging a work by the author's stated intentions?
- Intentional fallacy (Correct answer)
- Affective fallacy
- Pathetic fallacy
- Genetic fallacy
Correct answer: Intentional fallacy
Wimsatt and Beardsley coined 'intentional fallacy' to describe the mistake of equating authorial intent with textual meaning.
Question 4: Which narrative device involves a story within a story, common in texts like 'The Canterbury Tales'?
- Frame narrative (Correct answer)
- Stream of consciousness
- Free indirect discourse
- Analepsis
Correct answer: Frame narrative
A frame narrative embeds one or more stories inside an outer narrative structure, as Chaucer uses with the pilgrimage framing the tales.
Question 5: Which literary period in American literature is most associated with the post-Civil War realism movement?
- The Gilded Age (Correct answer)
- The Harlem Renaissance
- Transcendentalism
- Modernism
Correct answer: The Gilded Age
The Gilded Age (1870s–1900) saw writers like Mark Twain and William Dean Howells depict everyday American life with realist techniques.
Question 6: In structuralist literary theory, what does Ferdinand de Saussure's concept of the 'sign' consist of?
- Signifier and signified (Correct answer)
- Symbol and referent
- Word and definition
- Text and context
Correct answer: Signifier and signified
Saussure defined the linguistic sign as the combination of the sound-image (signifier) and the concept (signified), with their relationship being arbitrary.
MH Literature and Literary Theory 1
Which critical approach argues that a text's meaning is determined solely by the reader, not by authorial intent?