Wesleyan University, College of Letters
Junior Comprehensive Examination, Spring Term 2004
Examiners: Benjamin G. Kohl, History, Emeritus, Vassar College
Edward Mendelson, English, Columbia University
General Instructions:
The questions you will be answering over the next three days invite you to
display your understanding of the texts you have read and your ability to think
creatively about them. Your essays should be analyses, not summaries—though
you may occasionally have to summarize a text to make clear your arguments.
They will be judged on aptness, range and specificity of the examples you have
chosen, on coherence of arguments, on felicity of expression, and above all, on
the clarity and coherence with which you have stated and argued a particular
thesis. In answering each question and on the examination as a whole, you
should attempt to show the breadth as well as the depth of your understanding.
Remember that the COL allows you to spend only three hours in the writing of
your answers for each day’s examination. Thus, you should spend about one and
a half hours answering each of the two questions on each of the three days.
You are required to word-process your answers. Please double space your
essays, number the pages ands provide one-inch margins.
The examination consists of three parts.
Examination Day 1. Answer two of the four questions using the texts from the
Junior Colloquia on Antiquity and the Middle Ages.
Examination Day 2. Answer two of the four questions using the texts from the
Sophomore Colloquium on the Twentieth-Century.
Examination Day 3. Answer two of the four general questions using texts from at
least two, and, if feasible, all three of the COL Colloquia you have taken, and,
where appropriate, from other courses.
Examination Day 1
Answer any two of the following questions using the texts from the Junior
Colloquia on Antiquity and the Middle Ages.
1. Friendship. The Hero in pre-modern literature is not only a leader of and
source of power and authority for his followers, but he is often also a
consummate friend. Heroes such as Gilgamesh, Odysseus, Aeneas, Beowulf
and Roland and the knights of the crusades and medieval romances all
developed friendships with at least some of their followers. Why and how were
these friendships expressed, what were the obstacles and costs to these
friendships, and how did both the hero and his follower sometimes transform
their friendship into the highest expression of human love.
2. Conversion. In the literature of Antiquity and the Middle Ages the conversion
of the individual from one state into another takes many forms, from shape
changing to a new religious commitment and the transforming power of love and
the divine. Discuss the varieties of conversion found in such diverse texts as
Ovid, the Bible, Apuleius, Augustine, medieval romances and Dante (the list is
meant to be suggestive, not prescriptive). Why do you think that conversion can
take so many forms and why is it so central to the definition of the individual in
this literature?
3. Rulers. The question of the legitimate exercise of some form of political power
has been one of the constant concerns of the thought, history and poetry of
Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Discuss how the good ruler was defined and
what were the problems he faced and the sources of his corruption in three or
four of the texts you have studied. Gilgamesh, Plato’s Republic, Thucydides’
Peloponnesian War, Augustine’s City of God, the epic Beowulf, and chronicles of
the First Crusade come to mind, but there are doubtless others.
4. Destinies. In many of the texts you have read, the extent and nature of the
control that peoples and individuals have over their own destinies has been a
central theme. How have such figures as Odysseus, Antigone, Aeneas, St.
Perpetua, Beowulf, and such peoples as the Israelites, Trojans, the early
Christians, and the Crusaders both shaped their own destinies and conformed to
a plan that was fated for them? (Again the list is meant to be suggestive, rather
than prescriptive.)
Examination Day 2
Answer two of the following questions using the texts from the Sophomore
Colloquium on the Twentieth-Century.
1. The hidden self. One of the recurring anxieties of the modern era is the
thought that the person who you really are may not be knowable to yourself or to
the people around you. One of the recurring reassurances of the modern era is
the thought that psychological or social or economic analysis can show you who
you are and perhaps even show you what you ought to do when you discover
who you are. Some modern writers are convinced by this reassurance; others
are convinced that the discovery of who you are can leave you worse off than
you were before. Discuss these opposing views in terms of some of the books
you read for the colloquium (and don’t forget that a real self might be visible in a
hidden painting as well as hidden inside oneself).
2. The future. Darwin brought into clear focus a growing sense that the changes
that occur over vast periods of time have no particular direction, that events have
no great goal to which they inexorably lead. Some writers tried to regain a lost
sense of direction in which political and social forces tend toward a goal that they
will eventually achieve. Others were more skeptical. Discuss.
3. Private and public. The conflict between private and public obligations goes
back at least as far as the episode of Achilles’ withdrawal to his tent, but it
becomes a special object of attention in the modern era. What do writers such as
Weber, Freud, and others have to say about this conflict and how, and whether, it
might be resolved?
4. Some modern writers tend to think of one’s memory as one’s greatest
treasure, to be preserved at all costs, to be relied upon in times of crisis and in
times of repose. Discuss in terms of some of the writers you read in this
colloquium.
Examination Day 3
Answer two of the four general questions using texts from at least two, and, if
feasible, all three of the COL Colloquia you have taken, and, where appropriate,
from other courses.
1. At a dinner party held in New York City in 1800, Alexander Hamilton was
heard to remark: “The People is a great beast.” At one level, this may seem to
be simply a crude expression of the elite bias of the most conservative of the
Founding Brothers; at another Hamilton’s remark may seem the norm of most
great works of literature, at least in the pre-modern era. Compare and contrast
how great authors of Antiquity and the Middle Ages from Homer, Virgil and
Apuleius to Chrétien de Troyes and Dante have viewed the People. Has
twentieth century thought treated the People so very differently? If so, why?
2. Exile, temporary or permanent, has been one of the common motifs of western
experience described in a number of the works you have read (Genesis, the
Odyssey, the Aeneid, Beowulf, the Decameron, Thomas Mann, and Primo Levi),
as well as the personal position of several authors, including Dante and
Hemingway. Using texts from Antiquity, the Middle Ages and the Twentieth
Century, discuss some of the possible exploitations of this theme.
3. The past. To be modern is (perhaps) to be divided, excluded, expelled, or
isolated from a past whose answers no longer apply to your questions. To be
modern is to be obliged to find a new way of life because the old ones no longer
serve. Modernity is not something new. Aeschylus, for example, is not modern,
but Euripides is. How has the experience of modernity recurred over many
thousands of years? In answering the question consider such issues as whether,
say, Virgil or John or Dante are modern, and whether, say, Proust or Simone
Weil are modern.
4. The Quest. Odysseus knows where he is going and wants to go there. Aeneas
doesn’t has to be told where to go and doesn’t particularly want to go there.
Dante knows where he must go, although he needs to be reassured that he can
make the journey. The quests in more modern works tend to be more openended, and the hero either has no way of knowing which goal to seek, or the goal
is in the hero’s unknowable interior rather than in Ithaca or Heaven. This is not
necessarily a problem (think of Kim, for example), but it is very different from the
style of earlier quests. Discuss the changing idea of the quest over three
thousand years.