Spring 2010 Comprehensive Examination
M.A. Program in English
Instructions
Responses to the following two questions are due at 9:00 AM on Saturday, April 17,
2010.
The response to each question should be 1500-2000 words. To keep your responses
within this limitation, be sure to offer analysis, not plot summary; assume your audience is
familiar with the works you are discussing. In addition, quote sparingly. Use MLA parenthetical
citation form and attach a list of works cited for each question.
Responses should be typewritten or computer-printed, double-spaced. Answers to the
two questions should be stapled together. Do not put your name on your responses. Instead,
put your student ID number on the first page of each. Please turn in THREE copies of each
essay.
M.A. Exam Text Question: The Inferno
By what authority does Dante write the /Inferno/? The poem insistently and repeatedly
claims to be telling the truth, but it is clearly (at least to 21st-century readers) fictional. We
know for a fact today that there is no nightmarish, funnel-shaped cavern under the earth's crust,
and most of Dante's contemporaries were probably aware of this fact as well. So, how does
Dante author-ize the untenable truth claims of his poem? Upon what foundation or authority
does he base his fiction/poetry? What is the effect of his outlandish truth claims on the reader?
Why does he make them?
Write a historically, critically, and theoretically informed essay in which you examine the
foundations of Dante's claims to authority and truth in his poem. Remember that this is a
research essay in which you must demonstrate your familiarity with secondary scholarship as
well as contemporary literary theory. To provide a theoretical backdrop for your examination of
Dante's claims to authority, you might look to linguistics (e.g., speech act theory), cultural
studies, reader-response theory, deconstruction, semiotics, or any number of other theoretical
approaches, but you should probably settle on just one such theoretical approach for the purposes
of your essay. Your final draft should be properly documented in MLA format and include a
"works cited" page.
M.A. Exam Theme Question: “Home, Exile and Borders”
We take home and language for granted; they become nature and their
Underlying assumptions recede into dogma and orthodoxy. The exile
knows that in a secular and contingent world, homes are always provisional.
Borders and barriers, which enclose us within the safety of familiar territory,
can also become prisons, and are often defended beyond reason or necessity.
Exiles cross borders, break barriers of thought and experience.
-Edward Said, Reflections on Exile
Using three texts from a variety of cultures and time periods (including at least one nonWestern text), write a critically and theoretically informed essay that addresses Said’s ideas
about “home” in conditions of conflict. Your selected texts must address diaspora,
postcolonialism, neocolonialism, or displacement because of war or genocide. You should
explicate the above quotation by Said to begin to complicate the idea of “home,” and then read
more of this critic’s work to further analyze these ideas about “home,” “exile” or “borders.”
You might even consider looking at other theorists’ analysis of this theme—such as Gloria
Anzaldua—and weave their insights into your analysis.
Remember that this essay is a theoretical/research endeavor and, as such, should
demonstrate familiarity with a body of critical and theoretical writings as well as your chosen
primary texts. Your essay must have an analytically sophisticated thesis, employ secondary
sources on the texts you use, and underpin your ideas with Said’s critical points. Your final draft
should be properly documented in MLA format and include a list of works cited.
M.A. Exam Poetry Question
Spring 2010
You are to choose ONE of the following two poems written by the British poet George
Meredith (1828-1909) and write an analysis of it. Your analysis should consist of a unified
interpretation of the poem drawing directly upon its constitutive elements. Among the elements
that you might choose to discuss are imagery, structure, figurative language, tone, formal
qualities (including syntax, stanza, and lineation), rhythm, and sound.
Your answer will be judged on the coherence of your overall interpretation as well as
your insight into how various aspects of the poem enable that interpretation.
Lucifer in Starlight
BY GEORGE MEREDITH
On a starred night Prince Lucifer uprose.
Tired of his dark dominion swung the fiend
Above the rolling ball in cloud part screened,
Where sinners hugged their spectre of repose.
Poor prey to his hot fit of pride were those.
And now upon his western wing he leaned,
Now his huge bulk o'er Afric's sands careened,
Now the black planet shadowed Arctic snows.
Soaring through wider zones that pricked his scars
With memory of the old revolt from Awe,
He reached a middle height, and at the stars,
Which are the brain of heaven, he looked, and sank.
Around the ancient track marched, rank on rank,
The army of unalterable law.
Modern Love: I
BY GEORGE MEREDITH
By this he knew she wept with waking eyes:
That, at his hand's light quiver by her head,
The strange low sobs that shook their common bed
Were called into her with a sharp surprise,
And strangled mute, like little gaping snakes,
Dreadfully venomous to him. She lay
Stone-still, and the long darkness flowed away
With muffled pulses. Then, as midnight makes
Her giant heart of Memory and Tears
Drink the pale drug of silence, and so beat
Sleep's heavy measure, they from head to feet
Were moveless, looking through their dead black years,
By vain regret scrawled over the blank wall.
Like sculptured effigies they might be seen
Upon their marriage-tomb, the sword between;
Each wishing for the sword that severs all.