Revised 5/10/2012

This portion of the final exam is 50% of the total final exam grade.  The comprehensive essay section (see Comprehensive Final) (click) accounts for the other 50%.  You should devote about an hour to this portion of the test.

The exam is designed to:

• Reward students who have read works, attended class, and participated in group work.
• Gauge students’ ability to identify important passages from texts and explain their significance  
• Measure how well students can discuss issues and ideas associated with the romantic period.  

Preparation Tips:

• Spend time reviewing the reading list.  Look at particular authors and jar your memory about their works and what makes the writers distinctive.
• Reread the introduction on the Modern period.
• For essays, make sure you can remember main points and ideas.
• For stories and poems, try to review the plots or main ideas, themes and techniques. 
• Make outlines to answers for questions on the essay question sheet.
• Review group work and study with classmates.

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Part I.  Short Answer:  Answer six of seven questions with a brief response (12 total points).  Some will require a word or two; others will require a sentence or two. 

These questions will be factual questions based on information from the introduction to the period, PowerPoints, class notes, the author biographies, and the literature you read.  You will need to know some of the important historical dates we emphasized, significance of historical events, facts about the authors lives, and details from the plots. Some of this information will come from works we discussed, but a significant portion will come from works on the reading list that we did not discuss in class. 

Part II. Identification:  Choose 4 of the 5 quotations or images and identify author/artist and title of the work (1 pts.).  Then in two or three sentences explain the significance of the lines (why the lines are especially important to the work) or important features of the image (if it's a painting). (3 pts.). (4x4=16 total points)

See sample answer on romantics exam study guide.

Part III. Essay:  Choose 1 of 2 and answer in a brief essay.  (22 total points).  Make sure to plan your answer before writing it in a blue book.  Begin your answer with a clear thesis statement that forecasts your answer (you may use a brief introduction if you wish), and then develop your thesis with organized paragraphs that include topic sentences, use specific references to the texts, have clear analysis which explains your answer to the question or addresses the topic.  Take time to proofread your answer before you turn it in.  These questions test both your ability to write in depth about particular ideas and make connections across genres and periods.

1. In the Romantic and Victorian periods, nature was often conceptualized as "benevolent."  There are different treatments of nature in the Modern period.  Using one work of fiction and one work of poetry, explain how each writer perceives nature differently.
2. An important feature of Modernist literature is a conscious break from tradition.  Using two works, explain how two different writers overtly display a conscious break from tradition.
3. An important feature of Modernist literature is that values are generally constructed and not accepted from past traditions.  Using two works, explain how two different writers display the modern construction of values.
4. Time is often (but not always) constructed as flowing instead of linear in Modernist literature.  Compare and contrast how one modern work displays time as flowing and one characterizes time as more linear.  What idea or attitude does the choice support in each work?
5. Several Modernist writers have tried to integrate a world they perceive as fragmented through art.  Explain how two writers use art to make sense of the fragmented world in different ways.
6. Probably the most common feature of Modernist writing is the presentation of a protagonist who is alienated. Explain how one poet and one fiction writer present alienated characters in different ways. 
7. World War I was clearly a watershed event in the 20th century, and the horror of the war that the poets depicted was one way the masses came to understand this horror.  Pick two different war poems and explain how the poets use different poetic strategies to convey the horror of war.
8. Several of the short fiction pieces we read depict the misogyny that some men felt  in the first half of the twentieth century and tried to explain why some men had such negative attitudes towards women.  Choose two works and show how each one explains the misogyny in different ways.
9. Yeats's "Lapis Lazuli" presents at least two ways that people use creation to overcome or compensate for the tragedy of life--humankind's mortality.  Discuss how Yeats reveals two of these different strategies in the poem.
10. Whether one relies on Freudian criticism to discern it or not, sexuality is a subject that Modern literature has treated more often than nineteenth-century literature.  Select two works and explain how they depict and comment on sexuality in different ways.