Mi-term Exam Sp09

ENG 2433 - Mid-Term Exam
Due March 13 (75 points total)

Choose two of the following four questions

Type all answers. Professionally format your paper according to MLA guidelines. Avoid plot summaries and generalizations; be specific to the literary texts and inferences drawn from those references. The best answers will demonstrate careful reading of the texts by reasoning and quoting – weaving the primary and secondary source material together in a thoughtful manner (in-text references and complete MLA works cited page required). Label the questions clearly. For English majors: hand in two copies, one to be returned and one to go into your English Department portfolio. Create titles for your answers. You may use secondary sources, but document thoroughly, in-text and "works cited" – see syllabus for plagiarism consequences.

1. To what exactly does Edna awaken in Chopin’s novel? Be specific and trace your answer by close reading and interpreting enough passages to cover the novel.

2.Use three of the following six stories to discuss relevant stylistic, literary effects (things like literary devices, images, language, plot outcomes, etc.) that would indicate or suggest the author was aware of a philosophy of Naturalism and was concerned with a realistic portrayal of life: Outcasts of Poker Flat, Editha, Chickamauga, Episode of War, To Build a Fire and The Yellow Wall-Paper.

3. Toni Morrison, in Playing in The Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination (NY: Vintage Books, 1993), writes about a "certain set of assumptions conventionally accepted among literary historians and critics and circulated as ‘knowledge’. This knowledge holds that ... American literature is free of, uninformed, and unshaped by the four-hundred-year old presence of, first, Africans and then African-Americans in the United States. ... It assumes that this presence ... has had no significant place or consequence in the origin and development of that culture’s literature. ... The contemplation of this black presence is central to any understanding of our national literature and should not be permitted to hover at the margins of the literary imagination" (5). Using Morrison’s comment as a guide, discuss the role of (or absence of) black influence in American literary culture. What implications are involved? Refer specifically to either Washington or DuBois and to at least two of the African-American poets we have read this semester to explain and defend your answer. Use the poets thoroughly.

4. Discover a significant, specific recurring theme in the following poets: Frost, Stevens, Williams, Jeffers, Moore and Eliot. Demonstrate that theme in a titled, focused essay that also explains the theme, refers to the lines where it occurs, interprets the affect of the theme. Use three of the six poets, but again, look at thorough samples of their poems.