HUM LIT Blog Central

Final Exam

Choose 4 of the 5 questions below with which to work (omit one). For each, write a short essay (350-500 words) addressing the question. Please start each on a fresh page, beginning with the question number; print in a 12pt. font. You should do this work on your own, without any external research; but please do make reference to the texts and quote from them when appropriate. Please email me with any questions: sherwood at iup dot edu.

Completed, typed exam is due in the classroom on Friday, Dec. 15th at 12:30pm — or before, in my LEO 110 mailbox. 

1. Throughout the semester, we’ve viewed and discussed examples of digital literature that exaggerated certain qualities of traditional literature, or raised familiar questions to the extreme. Please look at the following piece, which we have not discussed: Project Tachistoscope. I’d like you to first view it and reflect on the experience. Then discuss the following questions about the reader, author and literature itself: What are we invited to do in reading it? 2) What idea of an “author” lies behind it? 3) What implied function does it fulfill (entertain, please, teach, inform, raise questions, move emotionally…)? You may compare and contrast it with other examples of digital literature if you like. Click Here

2. Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest has been seen as a one of the emblematic books of the 1960s, in its theme of oppressive authority that extends beyond the walls the psychiatric ward. At the same time, some have seen the novel as being backward or constrained in the way it imagines women and sexuality. Does it reflect a radical or conservative ideology? Discuss the depictions of female characters and the role sexuality plays in the efforts of McMurphy and the men to gain power. Decide whether the book is radical in this respect or repeats familiar stereotypes, and explain why.
3. We discussed how Lorca’s “Blood Wedding” may have been inspired by a new clipping about a real event, but it transposes fact into tragedy–giving us a drama that explores subjectivity and the struggle with social conventions and constraints. Discuss how this imaginative approach could be seen to deepen the truth or information conveyed. (You may focus on gender roles, family loyalty and ties, marriage conventions; mention at least one non-realistic detail).
4. Alexie’s short stories can be seen as attacking aspects of American ideology (habitually accepted values and perspectives) yet, at the same time, can be hilarious, especially if one doesn’t mind laughing at oneself. Identify one or two mainstream values or ideas that Alexie skewers, discuss how he does so in at least two different stories, and explain how he uses humor or irony to do so. In concluding, consider whether his approach means that Alexie has a different attitude towards or use for literature than some of our other authors (and why).
5. Why literature? You may be aware that IUP is currently reconsidering the framework for liberal studies requirements; the year-long discussion includes the reexamination of what courses, skills, and knowledge every undergraduate should have. Consider what the chair of the English department recently said, to the faculty senate, in defense of requiring literature: If we think of literature as an educational frill or a pleasant afternoon pastime, we are missing the point: the importance of literature in a vibrant society. Literature is one of the key places in which a civilization situates and preserves its values, its sense of what is important, its formulations of big questions, and its experiments with possible answers. It fleshes out dry facts and statistics. It fosters imagination and enlarges the capacity for empathy. It allows an opportunity to consider the beauty and force of language, for both good and ill, and the craft and patience that go into creating powerful literary works. Literature provides a chance to “create ourselves” (Misson and Morgan) and to try on or try out the lives of others.
   Write about whether you think these claims hold up, making reference to at least two works we have read this semester. Can literature do what Dr. Berlin claims, in your experience? How does your reading of Kesey, Lorca, Allende, or Silko support one or more of these ideas about the importance of reading?

Portfolio

Please prepare to turn in your portfolio (blogs since mid-term only) on the last day of class (12/11).  Staple, include a cover sheet with your name, and preface the blogs themselves with a 1-2 pp. cover letter discussing your blog entries.

Final

You will write a take-home final, as we did with the mid-term. You’ll find the questions in advance posted to the blog. It will be due, typed, each response beginning on a new page on Friday, 12/15 at 12:30 in Leo 204 (OR BEFORE, turned in to my mailbox, Leo 110 during business hours).

(Due at the start of class, Wednesday)

Choose four of the five questions below with which to work. For each, write a short essay (250-400 words) addressing the question. Please start each on a fresh page, beginning with the question number; print in a 12pt. font. You should do this work on your own, without any external research; but please do make reference to the novels and quote from them when appropriate. Please email me with any questions: sherwood at iup dot edu.

1. When we talk about identity, we usually end up talking up choice, will, and determinism. The theory of subjectivity holds that we are neither born as our “selves” nor do we assume an identity by simple, personal choice. Think about its claim that one’s subjectivity is comprised of a series of social roles that one takes up and works with like an actor (student, brother, mother, athlete, daughter of a salesman, Hispanic, worker, country-clubber, sorority sister, etc.). Choose one relevant scene from each novel in which you can see subject formation taking place. A character or narrator might be confronted with an appropriate role or compelled to shape his/her behavior to correspond. Describe the scene and compare/contrast the views the novels seem to take about subject formation.

2. Novels can be thought of as forms of entertainment, but authors sometimes have grander ideas about the significance or potential weight and writing. Both Silko’s Ceremony and Allende’s House of the Spirits feature characters and narrators for whom stories within the book have special significance. Discuss several examples of the role stories play in each of these, exploring such features as how stories come to be known, how they are viewed in general, and what uses the protagonists find for them.

3. Power is sometimes measured in terms of weaponry, brute force, the success with which events can be shaped to one’s will. Choose just one of the two novels, and discuss how it provides a counter-example. Can you find a view that power-as-brute-force is limited? Can you find dramatization of an alternate image of power? Be sure to describe specific incidents and characters in detail.

4. Reading a novel, we might imagine we are responding to an author’s intention; sometimes, it even comes to seem like a book is forcing us to submit to its authority, perhaps in ways we do not want to. Choose one, single example from just one of the novels for which you resist the author’s intent – i.e. where you don’t want to be seduced into seeing the world as the book does. Describe the instance, explain how the novel tries to exert a force upon you, and discuss whether or how one can continue reading but resist it.

5. One of the interesting things about reading a foreign novel is that it can open one’s eyes to a different culture. In Isabel Allende’s House of the Spirits the “culture” of Chilean childhood is populated with spirits, myths and other fantastic elements. Write an essay in which you discuss how the narrator’s familiarity with the world of the imagination literally helps her face and survive terrors as an adult. What does this suggest the novel has to say about the power of the imagination?

Culture can be defined as a whole way of life, the practices and habits and values that characterize a group. As such it is the horizon or field upon which subjects act and sets the terms for whether they receive praise or blame. We take up our roles as subjects within a culture by internalizing the structures of praise and blame: structures which are informed by and communicated through literature.

Let’s look at several sections in chapters 4 and 5.

1. The meeting of Blanca and Pedro Tercero (104); Pedro’s education (138-141); and their coming of age (146-147)
2. Pedro’s becoming a singer (154-5);discussion with his father over the law of God (163)
3. Clara on change (168); and acceptance (170); and Pedro Segundo’s pride ( 175)

Be ready to discuss (or perhaps be quizzed) on chapters 6-9 for Monday.

Don’t forget to assemble your Blog Portfolio for monday; printed versions of all your posts (and any comments you have made). Please paste this into word rather than giving me a skinny column of text 100 pages long!

This is a reminder that your blog posts are graded twice during the course of the semester. You will print and submit your first “portfolio” for Monday, October 16th. Please print your posts in a readable format (you may need to copy and paste into MS Word), and include copies of comments you have posted on other’s blogs.

You may find the following rubric helpful in preparing that portfolio. If you have begun to fall behind, now is a perfect time to catch up!

RUBRIC