TEST GUIDE ENGLISH SUBTEST I - CSETs

28. Read the excerpt below from an essay
by Claude Lévi-Strauss; then answer
the question that follows.
Poetry is a kind of speech which cannot
be translated except at the cost of serious
distortions; whereas the mythical value
of the myth is preserved even through
the worst translation. Whatever our
ignorance of the language and the culture
of the people where it originated, a myth
is still felt as a myth by any reader
anywhere in the world. Its substance
does not lie in its style, its original music,
or its syntax, but in the story which it
tells. Myth is language, functioning on
an especially high level where meaning
succeeds practically at "taking off" from
the linguistic ground on which it keeps on
rolling.
The author's argument in this excerpt best
exemplifies which of the following
structuralist concepts of literary
criticism?
A. The meaning of language resides
not in concrete words and sounds,
but in an abstract deep structure.
B. The binary opposition of
reality/symbolism is a significant
feature of literary works.
C. The chronological order of events
and the sequence in which events
occur are distinct elements of a
narrative.
D. Genre conventions, like codes or
signs, convey meaning independently
of the words in a written
text.
English Subtest I
29. Which of the following best describes
a primary aim of postcolonial literary
criticism?
A. to investigate questions relating to
the cultural differences among texts
B. to analyze ways in which themes of
non-Western texts parallel themes
in the Western literary tradition
C. to consider how various texts
address universal aspects of human
experience
D. to examine factors relating to the
social and political background of
the authors of various texts
California Subject Examinations for Teachers Test Guide 21