English Survey I: Final Exam

Prof. Katy Stavreva
ENG 211: English Survey I
Final Exam

Part 1 (20 min): Provide a definition and an analytical illustration to four glossary entries and one character from the reading assignments since the Middle Ages (TBA).

Parts 2 and 3 (take home; short essays): 1) Develop a clear and substantive thesis; 2) Support your arguments with specific textual examples in both essays; 3) Whenever you use quotations make sure that their context has been properly introduced and that you have provided an interpretation of the quotation to enhance the point you're making; 4) Don't forget that this is a comparative essay, not a sequential analysis of two or more literary texts and make sure that you draw connections between the texts. Turn in your essays by noon either through the Moodle web site, or in a hard copy delivered personally to my office. If you opt for an electronic submission, make sure that the document you upload is in MS Word or Rich Text format.

Part 2 (50 min writing, exclusive of planning): Write an essay on one of the following topics. The questions invite you to reflect on broad historical changes in literature from the Elizabethan period, through the Jacobean (baroque) age, to the Reformation and the eighteenth century. Make sure that your thesis and analysis reflect awareness of historical change.

1. From the Red Crosse Knight to Gulliver, literary texts often end with character-transformation. Choose either two male or two female characters from the lists below and compare the transformations they experience. What is the part played by the body (including costume, armor, etc.) and by the mind in these transformations? Draw some conclusions about historical differences in the representation of, respectively, male or female gender, as evidenced by the texts of your choice.

a. Una, Niger's daughters, Eve, Imoinda.

b. the Red Cross Knight, Adam, Gulliver, Equiano.

2. Choose a text from two of the three groups below and compare and contrast its representations of love, sex, and (if applicable) marriage:

a. book 1 of Spenser's Fairie Queene, any of the poems by Wyatt, Sidney, Elizabeth, Shakespeare, or Donne's love poems;

b. Lanyer's "Eve's Apology in Defense of Women," Milton's Book 4 and/or 9 of Paradise Lost;

c. Behn's "The Disappointment"; Swift's Gulliver's Travels, Lady Mary Montagu's "Epistle from Mrs Yonge to Her Husband."

3. Choose a text from two of the three groups below and discuss the physical and social aspects of utopia and/or dystopia as developed in them:

a. Jonson's Masque of Blackness;

b. Milton's Paradise Lost, Books 4 or 9;

c. either Swift's Gulliver's Travels, Part 2 or Aphra Behn's Oroonoko.

4. Along with the emerging notion of the "self" during the Renaissance and the Long 18th century, the concept of the "other" also began to emerge. "Proper" characters began to be distinguished by their difference from "improper" characters. The latter are represented as somehow "Other" than the norm, or the standards attributed by the author to the work's implied audience. (Note that the author may or may not share the standards of this implied audience.) Discuss the representation of "otherness" and its rhetorical goals in two of the following texts: Jonson's Masque of Blackness, Milton's Paradise Lost, Lanyer's "Eve's Apology in Defense of Women," Behn's Oroonoko, Equiano's Interesting Marrative.

Part 3 (50 min): Now is your turn. Write down and respond to a question relevant to two of the texts we read this term. Please note that one of the texts you choose should belong to the broad historical period, defined in our anthology as the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries (1485-1660), and the other one--to the era of the Restoration and the eighteenth century (1660-1785). In addition to the historical comparison, you can also choose to compare these texts in terms of their genre (narrative fiction, lyric or epic poetry, drama), in terms of the gender of their authors, etc. Feel free to bounce an idea off me or to build on intertextual connections you brought up in your presentations. The quality of your question, its ability to address important issues and draw out a worthwhile answer will account for 30% of your grade for this part of the exam. Since this is your final, I will be looking for an indication of the learning and thinking you have done throughout the block.

NOTE: Do not include texts from the medieval period in your discussion.