Study Guide, Exam 2
Engl 4040 Modernism and Postmodernism
O'Donnell, ETSU, Fall 2015

Last update:  December 2, 2015


Exam date: Tuesday, December 8, 8-10am (during the official final exam period)

 

About the Exam
A. Scope

This exam is for material covered in class from weeks 9 through 15. 

 

B. Format

1. Like exam 1, this second exam will have two sections: I) Identification, and II) Short Essay. Each is explained below.

2. All the prompts that may appear on the exam are now here on this study guide web page. 
3. The exam is "open book":  I encourage you to bring your texts and notes to the exam. However, I require that you compose your responses during the exam period, rather than composing the sentences ahead of time and transcribing them during the exam.

 

Section I. Identification
A. Instructions

This section is worth half of the exam grade. The section will include a list of 8 prompts -- that is, names, titles, concepts, and/or quotes. All 8 prompts on the exam will be drawn from the list of 16 prompts that appears below. 

 

From the 8 on the exam, you will in turn select 6, to which you will respond in writing.

 

For each of those 6 prompts, write a "mini essay" -- three or four clear, complete, self-explanatory sentences -- in which you identify 1) the author(s) and text(s) with which prompt is associated; 2) the context or definition; 3) an important issue associated with the prompt.

 

B. 16 prompts

 

1. epistolary novel

2. dechronification treatments

3. AlliedWasteCVSCitigroupCredit

4. RateMe Plus

5. American Restoration Authority (ARA)

 

6. cubism  

7. noir fiction

8. ARPAnet

9. "Was it possible, that at every gathering—concert, peace rally, love-in, be-in, and freak-in, here, up north, back East, wherever—those dark crews had been busy all along, reclaiming the music, the resistance to power, the sexual desire from epic to everyday, all they could sweep up, for the ancient forces of greed and fear?"

10. " [A]s a poet, I may very possibly be more interested in the so-called illogical impingements of the connotations of words on the consciousness (and their combinations and interplay in metaphor on this basis) than I am interested in the preservation of their logically rigid significations at the cost of limiting my subject matter and the perceptions involved in the poem." 

 

11. confessional poetry

12. Poetry magazine 

13. concupiscent curds

14. persona poem

15.       When you will not see again

            The whale calves trying the light

            Consider what you will find in the black garden

            And its court

            The sea cows the Great Auks the gorillas

            The irreplaceable hosts [...] 

 

16. Doc Sportello

 

Section II. Short Essay
A. Instructions and Prompt

This section is worth half of the exam grade. Write a short essay -- 300-500 words -- in which you argue that a particular work is either modernist, or postmodernist, or both, or neither. Be sure to have a point!--that is, a purpose for discussing the work that you discuss, and for adopting the position which you take.  The works you may discuss include any of the imaginative literature we've read since week 9, or any of the other poems in the anthology. 

 

B. Grading Criteria for the Short Essay

An "A" essay will ...

1. ... have a clear, well-defined purpose/ focus/ thesis, and a title that reflects that;

2. ... be well-developed, including dates, author names, titles, other proper nouns, and specific, well-selected quotes from texts;

3. ... be well-organized, with clear section divisions and paragraph breaks;

4. ... be reasonably fluent and readable;

5. ... be well edited.