Final Exam Study Guide
English 226 Sections 7-12

 

The Final Exam will cover all materials on 20th-century authors assigned since Exam II. It will NOT be comprehensive. Review the assigned works by the following authors: George Orwell, Derek Walcott, Thomas Hardy, William Butler Yeats, T. S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, D. H. Lawrence, Katherine Mansfield, Doris Lessing, Salman Rushdie, and Tom Stoppard.

 

EXAM TIME: Thursday, December 9, 8 AM in Bondurant Auditorium.

The exam will consist of 15 short-answer questions and one essay question. You will have 3 hours to complete the exam. Please bring a pen or pencil; paper will be provided.

 

Study Suggestions:

It would be wise to review the dominant concepts of Modernism and Postmodernism, as well as the central artistic concepts associated with each author, by looking back over the appropriate sections in the PowerPoint presentations discussed in lectures (copies of all PowerPoint presentations are available on our course website on Blackboard in the COURSE DOCUMENTS section. Instructions for accessing the website are on the last page of the course syllabus). You should also be able to discuss how these artistic concepts are reflected in the particular poems/plays/stories covered in lecture and discussion sections. Pay particular attention to the following:

• The characteristics of twentieth-century Modernism as reflected in the poetry of T. S. Eliot, and the stories of D. H. Lawrence, Woolf, Mansfield, and Lessing
• The characteristics of twentieth-century Postmodernism as reflected in the writings of Salman Rushdie and Tom Stoppard
• Features of Postcolonial literature and reactions to British Imperialism in the writings of George Orwell, Derek Walcott, and Salman Rushdie
• William Butler Yeats' attitude to Irish Nationalism in "Easter 1916"
• D. H. Lawrence's approach to the theme of love
• Twentieth-century reactions to the domestic female stereotype in the writings of Virginia Woolf, Katherine Mansfield, and Doris Lessing
• Characteristics of the dramatic monologue in T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"
• The passage from the Victorian Age to the Modern Age as reflected in Hardy's "The Darkling Thrush"

 

 

Also know the significance of important objects or settings and (if the work is a narrative) the plot and characters for each work we've read. Some examples:

• Symbolic significance of various stream-of-consciousness imagery in T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"
• Significance of items such as the chrysanthemums in Lawrence's "Odor of Chrysanthemums," the diary in Woolf's "The Legacy," the party hat in Mansfield's "The Garden Party," and the river and the hotel room in Lessing's "To Room Nineteen"
• Plots and characters of the assigned short stories
• The characters and stage setting of Stoppard's The Real Inspector Hound

 

 

As in Exams I and II, some questions in the final exam will require you to discuss significant passages from specific poems/plays/stories. The author and source of each passage will be identified for you, but you should be able to explain what the passage's thematic significance is and how it exemplifies central themes or artistic concepts associated with that author's work. Therefore, you should review passages that were specifically discussed in lectures and discussion sections.

 

The essay question will ask you to draw broad comparisons between the 20th-century works in terms of character types, themes, or the characteristics of Modernism and Postmodernism.