EN2650
UNIVERSITY OF WARWICK
Summer Examinations 2015
The Global Novel
Time allowed:
2 hours
Seen Examination Paper
Answer TWO questions. For ONE of the questions you must write on AT LEAST
TWO texts from the term you chose NOT to write on for your essay. For the other
question, you may write on AT LEAST ONE text from any part of the syllabus.
Read carefully the instructions on the answer book and make sure that the particulars
required are entered on each answer book used.
Do not write on texts you have covered in your assessed essay, nor substantially
repeat material from assessed essays.
1. Why is magic and/or fantasy and/or unreality a significant feature in global novels?
2. Write an essay detailing ways in which the territory of global novels is expanded
and/or restricted.
3. Write an essay on the topic of narration OR time OR space in global novels.
4. Choose a character from a global novel of your choice and make a case why we can
read him/her as a “global” character. (NB If you write on more than one novel, choose
a character from both.)
5. Franco Moretti, in his book Modern Epic, argues that One Hundred Years of
Solitude “tells the story of an ‘incorporation’: of an isolated community that is caught
up in the modern world system, which subjects it to an unexpected, extremely violent
acceleration. It is the novel of uneven and combined development.”
Using this description as your starting point, apply it (either all of it or a component
part) to a reading of at least two novels we have read on the course. (You do not need
to use Marquez’s novel in your answer.)
6. How can “home” be viewed as a “global” concern in the novels we have read?
(You may want to argue against this – that “home” is in fact anti-global or ultralocal).
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7. “Disaster is everywhere, and touches everything.” [Cazdyn, ‘Disastrous
Consequences’]. Why is the pervasiveness of disasters a feature of the ‘global novel’?
Support your answer by examining a selection of the novels you have studied for this
module.
8. “Needless to say, climate change is as culturally as it is scientifically complex. It
possesses an immensity of scale both spatially (as a global event) and temporally (as
an unprecedented crisis in human history)”. [Adam Trexler and Adeline Johns-Putra,
‘Climate Change in Literature and Literary Criticism’] How does climate change
allow writers to engage simultaneously with three different scales – local, regional
and global – in their narratives?
9. “Rather than representing the collapse of historically constituted social and
political order, disasters reveal the normal order of subordination and inequality.”
[Mark Anderson, Disaster Writing] How do disasters work as moments of revelation
in cultural and literary narratives?
10. “By slow violence I mean a violence that occurs gradually and out of sight, a
violence of delayed destruction that is dispersed across time and space, an attritional
violence that is typically not viewed as violence at all.” [Rob Nixon, Slow Violence]
Discuss how the concept of ‘slow violence’ can be useful for reading global novels.
11. “Trauma is a medium that enables dialogue and exchange.” [Perera, ‘Torturous
Dialogue’] How does the experience of disaster act as a narrative trigger in the texts
you have studied?
12. “An excess of reason is a form of madness.” [Kim Stanley Robinson, Forty Signs
of Rain] How do global novels represent the relationship between reason and
disasters?
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