Final Take-Home ExamI. PART ONE tests your knowledge of literary terms, critical and theoretical approaches, and historical concepts. Choose
three of the following fifteen terms, and write a single, well-developed paragraph on each one.
NOTE: The list of terms will be chosen from the current edition of
A Glossary of Literary Terms by M. H. Abrams (Harcourt, Brace College Publishers).
Allegory
Poststructuralism
Queer Theory
Prosody
Transcendentalism
Restoration
Sonnet
Tragedy
Feminist Criticism
Neoclassic
Modernism
Psychoanalytic Criticism
Irony
New Historicism
Romantic
II. PART TWO asks you to write two well-developed essays. The first essay focuses on issues of theory and criticism discussed in our class. The second essay should reflect as much as possible what you have learned about various periods, topics, terms, and critical methods. Within your answers, DO NOT write two separate mini-essays on two separate periods or works. Each of your answers should be a unified essay.
Essay 1 (2-3 pages) – Answer one question below.A. Discuss the role of deconstruction in at least two different schools of criticism.
B. Discuss the ways in which changing the canon is important to at least two different schools of criticism.
C. Discuss political commitment in relation to critical method in at least two different schools of literary criticism.
D. What is the importance of exposing the unconscious of the text in at least two different schools of literary criticism?
Essay 2 (5-6 pages) – Answer one question below, using quotations as evidence.A. In a chapter on Conrad, F.R. Leavis says the following: “Borrowing a phrase from Mr. Eliot’s critical writings, one might say that
Heart of Darkness achieves its overpowering evocation of atmosphere by means of ‘objective correlatives’. The details and circumstances of the voyage to and up the Congo are present to us as if we were making the journey ourselves and (chosen for the record as they are by a controlling imaginative purpose) they carry specificities of emotion and suggestion with them.”
Discuss the role of objective correlatives and controlling imaginative purpose in three literary works from different periods.
B. Chinua Achebe asks in his famous lecture on Heart of Darkness “whether a novel which celebrates this dehumanization, which depersonalizes a portion of the human race, can be called a great work of art.” Edward Said, on the other hand, states that “Conrad’s self-consciously circular narrative forms draw attention to themselves as artificial constructions, encouraging us to sense the potential of a reality that seemed inaccessible to imperialism, just beyond its control, and that only well after Conrad’s death in 1924 acquired a substantial presence.”
Discuss the role of formal techniques that seem to belie “ugly” or controversial content in at least two literary works from different periods.
C. It has been suggested that there is such a thing as a feminine writing style endemic to women, characterized as a subversive interruption of the predominantly male tradition seen as “rational,” systematic, orderly, balanced. Where in literary history do you see this feminine style being practiced, and what are the ramifications of labeling it “feminine”? Discuss at least two works from different periods. They can be literary or critical, and from male or female authors.
D. An assumption may be made that the narrator of a work of fiction differs from the actual living author who wrote the work. The narrator may be an "implied author," interested in and knowledgeable about the characters and events he or she reports on but not directly involved with them; or, at the other extreme, the narrator may be a character in the story with a definite purpose in telling the story as he or she wants to tell it. The narrator may, in short, express a wide range of relationships to the narrative.
Discuss the effect of narrative point of view on overall style, characterization, and theme, using as examples three works of fiction that differ from one another in their narrative point of view, indicating the kind(s) of narrator(s) used in each work.
E. In his "deconstruction" of Conrad’s
Heart of Darkness, J. Hillis Miller discusses the "denial of the possibility of making the reader see by means of literature...Heart of Darkness," Miller asserts, "is posited on the impossibility of achieving its goal of revelation...."
Can this notion of a "revelation of the impossibility of revelation" be applied to any other major work you have read? Good examples to explore might be key scenes which, at least on the surface, appear to be "revelations" or "epiphanies" in, say, Hamlet, Wuthering Heights, or Joyce’s "The Dead."
