Introduction to English Literary Studies
Test for practicing
(Katalin G. Kállay, Ágnes Kiricsi, Miklós Péti)
- Please give short answers to the following questions:
- What is decorum?
- List four things that may help you decide in what genre a work is written.
- Identify the feet and metre: „Let her live to earn her dinner.” (J.M.Synge)
- .Identify the feet and metre: „Take her up tenderly.” (Hood)
- Give an example to a simile.
6. What is an allegory?
7. What is the ideal length of a short prose tale according to E.A.Poe?
8. Who wrote about the “principle of the iceberg”?
9. What is the difference between „plot” and „story”?
10. What is a „bildungsroman”?
11. What do we call a narrator who consciously narrates and is involved as the main character in a narrative?
12. What is the difference between „novel” and „romance”?
13. What is hubris?
14. Why isn’t it necessary for a tragedy to end with the hero’s death?
15. Identify the figures of speech: „California is the bleach-blonde you want to have an affair with; Minnesota is the girl you marry.”
16. Identify the figures of speech: „The US won three gold medals.”
17. What is the basic difference between mimetic and pragmatic criticism?
18. Who did some early modern critics have to defend poetry from? Why?
19. Which critical approach would focus on the image of the devil’s snake-like staff and Faith’s pink ribbons as symbols of sexuality in Hawthorne’s „Young Goodman Brown” ?
20. What is in the center of a formalistic reading?
- Please recognize the following texts:
1.
Labour is blossoming or dancing where
The body is not bruised to pleasure soul.
Nor beauty born out of its own despair,
Nor blear-eyed wisdom out of midnight oil.
O chestnut-tree, great-rooted blossomer,
Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole?
O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?
2. “Why did he kill himself, Daddy?”
“I don’t know, Nick. He couldn’t stand things, I guess.”
“Do many men kill themselves, Daddy?”
“Not very many, Nick.”
“Do many women?”
“Hardly ever.”
“Don’t they ever?”
“Oh, yes. They do sometimes.”
“Daddy?”
“Yes.”
“Where did Uncle George go?”
“He’ll turn up all right.”
“Is dying hard, Daddy?”
“No, I think it’s pretty easy, Nick. It all depends.”
3. I am the rose of Sharon and the lily of the valleys. As the lily among thorns, so is my love among the daughters. As the apple tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among the sons. I sat down under his shadow with great delight, and his fruit was sweet to my taste.
- Please write a short (approx.one page long) essay on one of the following texts:
1. William Wordsworth:
"I WANDERED LONELY AS A CLOUD"
I WANDERED lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay: 10
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed--and gazed--but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood, 20
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
2. From F.Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby
„I think it’s cute” said Mrs. Wilson enthusiastically. „How much is it?”
„That dog?” He looked at it admiringly.”That dog will cost you ten dollars.”
The Airedale – undoubtedly there was an Airedale concerned in it somewhere, though its feet were startlinly white –changed hands and settled down into Mrs. Wilson’s lap, where she fondled the weatherproof coat with rapture.
„Is it a boy or a girl?” she asked delicately.
„That dog? That dog’s a boy.”
„It’s a bitch,” said Tom decisively. „Here’s your money. Go and buy ten more dogs with it.”
We drove over to Fifth Avenue, so warm and soft, almost pastoral, on the summer Sunday afternoon that I wouldn’t have been surprised to see a great flock of white sheep turn the corner.
„Hold on,” I said, „I have to leave you here.”
„No, you don’t,” interposed Tom quickly. „Myrtle will be hurt if you don’t come up to the apartment.. Won’t you, Myrtle?”
„Come on,” she urged. „I’ll telephone my sister Catherine. She’s said to be very beautiful by people who ought to know.”
„Well, I’d like to, but – ’’
Weíwent on, cutting back again over the Park toward the West Hundreds. At 158th Street the cab stopped at one slice in a long white cake of apartment houses. Throwing a regal homecoming glance around the neighborhood, Mrs. Wilson gathered up her dog and her other purchases, and went haughtily in.”
(IV. Bonus questions: 16 literary terms to define, from your list. This part of the exam is optional, two correct definitions make up for one of the test questions in part I.)