ENGL3073 Midterm Essay Exam Questions

See

general instructions here

. Your combined responses should be a total of 3-5 pages long (double-spaced, 10- or 12-point font, 1″ margins all around).

Do not use a single work of literature as a primary focus more than twice across Sections A & B. Repeating a text is fine for Section C.

Section A (worth 50%): two questions (answer from questions listed here), one on major genres and one on examples of literary influence

A.1 Realism and representationalism in East vs. West: Compare the effects achieved in dramatic forms such as kabuki, kunque, and bunraku/puppets, poetic forms such as haiku and later imagist forms, fantasy in the early Chinese novel [Suggested writers and texts: PEACH BLOSSOM FAN, JOURNEY TO THE WEST; lectures

2.1

,

3.1

, discussions

2.3

,

2.5.21

,

3.2

,

3.3

, classes

1.29.21

,

2.5.21

]

A.2 Satire and social critique: What were key genres, methods, and modes, used for social critique, particularly satire, and what were the targets or butts of these critiques? [Suggested writers and texts: Moliere, Pope, Swift, Blake, RAPE OF THE LOCK, TARTUFFE, GULLIVER’S TRAVELS, OROONOKO; writers on colonialism, abolition, the slave trade, social conditions during the Revolutionary period; lectures

2.1

,

4.2

,

6.1

, discussions

2.4

,

4.2

,

4.3

,

7.1

, classes ]

A.3 Attitude towards classical writers, texts, forms, and rhetoric: How did the 18C and some Romantic writers make use of classical literature in the genres/forms such as the epic/mock-heroic, ode, pastoral, sonnet) and language (such as poetic diction) they employed? [Suggested writers and texts: Pope, Byron, Wordsworth, RAPE OF THE LOCK; lectures

5.2

, discussions

4.2

, classes

2.10.21

]

Section B (worth 40%): two questions, your choice from these on key issues central to the unit

B.1 Change in ways of looking at, experiencing, and understanding nature: How did writers focus on, position themselves within, and experience the effects of the natural world in the Romantic period? [Suggested writers, concepts, texts: Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley, landscape, sublime, “I Wandered Lonely,” “Tintern Abbey,” “Skylark,” “Nightingale,” Blake’s illustrations to SONGS OF INNOCENCE & EXPERIENCE; lectures

5.1

and discussions
5.2
, 7.2]

B.2 Experience, confessionalism, sentimentalism: What is the importance and desired effect of recounting individual experiences, especially those of the ordinary person and particularly in such a way that rouses sympathetic feeling, in the writings of the Romantic period? [Suggested writers and texts: Wordsworth, Douglass, Equiano, “Preface to LYRICAL BALLADS.” Shelley’s “Defense of Poetry,” “The Cry of the Children,” Silesian Weavers,”; lectures

5.2

and discussions

6.2

, and classes

2.24.21

,

3.1.21

]

B.3 Shift in ways understanding the imagination: What new claims did poets make and demonstrate for the functions of the poetic imagination and its relation to perception, memory, transformation of experience, and the uniqueness of the poet’s mind? [Suggested writers and texts: Locke and sense experience, Wordsworth, Coleridge’s “Biographia “Literaria,” Hawthorne, “I Wandered Lonely,””On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer,” Shelley’s “Defense of Poetry”; lectures
5.2
,

7.3

and discussions

5.3

, classes

1.22.21

,

2.19.21

]

Section C (worth 10%): one question about what you encountered so far in the course that relates to the motifs of “monsters” and “madness.”

EXTRA CREDIT: Identify encounters with a text or a concept from this unit that changed your thinking or provoked new thoughts. Identify the text or concept and explain with specifics its effect on you. Write at least a paragraph centered around a specific text or a specific concept.

Exams

We will have one exam at midterm and a final exam for the course.

The purpose of exams is to prompt you to identify and synthesize trends and patterns across each period we have studied. Exams will focus on the material for the units in the half of the course we have just completed. The final exam will also have some questions that are cumulative, looking at connections and disjunctions across all units we have studied. The format for the cumulative final exam will likely be a combination of essay, bullet points, and oral discussion, with the final arrangements to be determined by class consensus. The goal of the final exam is for you to leave the course with a clear idea of highlights from the course and dominant patterns and connections across the material we have studied.

Format. Exams are primarily in essay format, though you may request to do an individual oral exam if you prefer. You will typically have a choice among the exam questions so that you can focus your answers around your insights from that unit. Here is the typical unit exam setup:

· Section A (worth 50%): two questions, one on major genres and one on examples of literary influence

· Section B (worth 40%): two questions, your choice from 3 or more key issues central to the unit

· Section C (worth 10%): one question about what you encountered that was new in this unit

Collaboration and independent work. For each exam, I encourage you to consider buddying up with at least one other student in the class and split up the work to review material and brainstorm for the essays. You are encouraged to use electronic tools (Google Docs, Zoom, etc.) to collaborate. Your writeup must be your own, however. Essays should be written up individually and reflect your own thinking in addition to ideas emerging from collaboration.

Research and source documentation. You are not required to use research in answering essay exam questions, but if you do use material from the textbook or other print or online sources, you must quote or cite these materials and document them using MLA Works Cited format. Do this on a separate page that does not count in the page count. (Since essays are submitted through Canvas, use of source material will be automatically checked through Turn-it-in.)