Mid Term Examination

Instructions: This is a take-home examination. Your answers are due (either written neatly in blue books or printed by a word processor) by time announced in email. Be sure to read each question carefully and answer all parts of the question. Do not just regurgitate your notes or the info from the book or the WWW pages, synthesize the data and construct appropriate arguments in your own words. Although this is a take home, this is not a group effort. Any indications of academic honesty will not be tolerated.

Choose 4 of the following:

1. The question of text has plagued literary criticism since the days of Hellenism. Determine which definition of text you feel is best. Use the ideas of any of the critics we have studied to date to support your definition.
2. Homer and Hesiod established rival world views that still exist today. Pick the side you most agree with, explain why you agree with it, and trace the development of this world view through the thinkers we have studied.
3. Compare and Contrast Francis Bacon's Idols with Karl Marx's Dialectical Materialism and Giambattista Vico's Historical Consciousness.
4. The dialectic is an important tool in critical thought. Define dialectic, trace it's development, and explain how it can be used in criticism today.
5. Compare and Contrast Kant's notion of Noumena with Descartes' Skepticism.
6. Define Epistemology, determine how you believe we gain epistemes. Create an argument to support your theory. Use the thoughts of the thinkers we have studied to support your argument.
7. Outline and explain the impact of the Christian Church on the philosophic inquiry into rhetoric. Be sure to address the role of Verbum, verbum, and factum. Don't forget St. Augustine!
8. Choose the one theorist (of the ones we have studied to date) that you most agree with. Explain their arguments (in your words) and then construct an argument for their superiority of thought.

Questions? Email me at: Sophist@Bigfoot.Com