Revised 01/08/2012

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.

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. 

  1. What dates are we using for the Modern period and what historical events occur on those dates?

  2. What Modern poet originally trained as an architect?

  3. Ironically, what does the speaker of "Hap" wish God would be like? Why?

  4. Who was Leopold II?

  5. Where was Conrad born?

  6. What is a "framed" narrative and how is this structure significant for Heart of Darkness?

  7. Why is the confusing style of Heart of Darkness appropriate?

  8. What event sparked World War I and in what year?

  9. In what year did World War I end?

  10. Name one facet of "total war"?

  11. On average, how many British soldiers died each day during World War I?

  12. According to Rupert Brooke, how is it possible for "some corner of a foreign field" to be "forever England"?

  13. How does Sassoon show sympathy for the Germans in "Glory of Women"?

  14. How is the title of  "Dulce et Decorum Est" ironic?

  15. What flower is significant in "Break of Day in the Trenches" and why is it significant?

  16. Why is the rat in ""Break of Day in the Trenches" cosmopolitan?

  17. Why is George so angry at his wife in West's "Indissoluble Matrimony"?

  18. To what animal is Evadne most often compared in "Indissoluble Matrimony"?

  19. Which two WWI poets were Jewish?

  20. What was the Easter Uprising and in what year did it occur?

  21. Who was Maude Gonne and why is she important?  

  22. How does the speaker of "Sailing to Byzantium" suggest he will overcome mortality?

  23. What is the significance of the Shakespearean characters in "Lapis Lazuli"?

  24. With what writer (whose work we read) did H.G. Wells have an affair?

  25. What is Sligo?

  26. Who is Fergus and why should you go with him?

  27. What two Yeats poems are very similar to "Tintern Abbey" and why?

  28. In what two ways are "stones" significant symbols in "Easter 1916"?

  29. What is an epiphany and with what writer is the concept associated?

  30. Why does Amy Ivors get angry with Gabriel?

  31. What is the significance of snow in "The Dead"?

  32. What stylistic technique does Woolf use in "Kew Gardens" and why is it appropriate given what the story is about?

  33. Why does Woolf choose to use a snail's perspective in "Kew Gardens"?

  34. Explain the significance of the flowers' shapes in "Kew Gardens."

  35. What does "500 pounds a year symbolize" for Virginia Woolf?

  36. To what building is the speaker of A Room of One's Own denied entry?

  37. When Woolf talks about the few women writers who have preceded her, what point is she trying to make about why there haven't been many women writers?  

  38. What is the significance of food in A Room of One's Own?

  39. According to Woolf, what would have happened to Judith if she'd been as brilliant as her brother?

  40. What point does Mansfield make in "The Daughters of the Late Colonel" if you read it as an allegory about politics?

  41. How is the tone of "The Daughters of the Late Colonel" different from the other twentieth-century stories we read?  Why does she use this tone?

  42. What writer from this semester was born in New Zealand?

  43. What was Lawrence's father's occupation?

  44. What is Lawrence's special contribution to Modernism?

  45. What's the difference between the mother's and wife's responses to John's death in "An Odour of Chrysanthemums"?

  46. What is Vorticism?

 Part II. Identification:  Choose 4 of the 5 quotations and identify author 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). (3 pts.). (4x4=16 total points)

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.