M.A. Exam
Summer 2005
1. In his famous essay, “From Work to Text,” Roland Barthes writes,
The Text is plural. This does not mean just that it has several meanings, but rather
that it achieves plurality of meaning, an irreducible plurality. . . . The Text’s
plurality does not depend on the ambiguity of its contents, but rather on what
could be called the stereographic plurality of the signifiers that weave it
(etymologically the text is a cloth; textus, from which text drives, means
“woven”). (76)1
Samuel Beckett’s play Waiting for Godot would seem to illustrate Barthes’ claim that literary
works resist singular interpretation or classification, as Beckett himself subtitled the play “a
tragicomedy in two acts.”
Drawing upon published criticism of Waiting for Godot, write an essay in which you support the
post-structuralist view of the undecidability of texts by applying at least the following rubrics to
the play: tragedy, comedy, theatre of the absurd, existentialism, modernist, postmodernist. If you
employ a particular handbook’s definition of these genres or movements (e.g., Holman’s A
Handbook to Literature), be sure to cite that source in your Works Cited.
2. Can violence be narrated? In this essay, using three texts from three different cultures or eras,
you will analyze how and why authors represent and narrate acts of violence. What narrative
strategies do they use? To what effect? Are personal/private acts or experiences of violence
narrated differently than mass/public ones? Does it matter if the author has experienced these
acts of violence first-hand?
Remember: this essay is a theoretical/research endeavor and as such it should demonstrate
familiarity with your chosen primary sources as well as with critical and theoretical writings on
the subject. Your essay should be properly documented and include a works cited page.
1
Roland Barthes, “From Text to Work,” in Textual Strategies: Perspectives in Post-Structuralist Criticism,
ed. Josue V. Harari. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1979, 73-81.
M.A. Exam Poetry Question
Summer 2005
Analyze and interpret the poem below. It was written by the contemporary poet Eavan Boland;
born in Dublin (1944), she has taught in the creative writing program at Stanford since 1995.
Your answer must demonstrate an understanding of the relation of content to form. In particular,
your answer should focus on how the poem uses figurative language—e.g., metaphor, imagery,
simile—to further its argument. What do you take to be its point or argument? How does the
figurative language illustrate or complicate that argument? Your answer may also address, but
need not be limited to, the following elements:
•
Structure, syntax, stanzaic form
•
Meter
•
Perspective and tone
•
Use of rhythm and sound
A Woman Painted on a Leaf
I found it among curios and silver.
in the pureness of wintry light.
A woman painted on a leaf.
Fine lines drawn on a veined surface
in a handmade frame.
This is not my face. Neither did I draw it.
A leaf falls in a garden.
The moon cools its aftermath of sap.
The pith of summer dries out in starlight.
A woman is inscribed there.
This is not death. It is the terrible
suspension of life.
I want a poem
I can grow old in. I want a poem I can die in.
I want to take
this dried-out face,
as you take a starling from behind iron,
and return it to its element of air, of ending –
so that autumn
which was once
the hard look of stars,
the frown on a gardener’s face,
a gradual bronzing of the distance,
will be,
from now on,
a crisp tinder underfoot. Cheekbones. Eyes. Will be
a mouth crying out. Let me.
Let me die.