ENL 3273: British Literature 1900-1945 Exam 1

Directions: Pick one topic below from each section and write a well-supported essay using specific evidence from the text(s) and lecture(s). You may use your books and notes. You have one hour per essay. Please type your essays (12-point font, double-spaced), label your essays clearly, save often, and put your name of your exam.

Section 1: Joyce

1. Kershner states that one aspect of modernism is “the massive disenchantment with sentimental patriotism [that] generalized itself in a feeling of rejection of the older generation’s entire set of values.” Discuss this statement and how it might apply to Portrait, speciafically, and modernism, generally. (You might begin by suggesting that Portrait is a search for individual style and structure.)
   
   
2. Conrad, in “The Task of the Artist,” suggests that “Fiction—if it at all aspires to be art—appeals to the temperment . . . [it] must be an impression conveyed through the senses; and, in fact, it cannot be made in any other way.” How do the writings of Joyce support and/or contradict Conrad’s notion?
   
   
3. Construct an essay of your own choosing based on any aspect of “Araby,” “The Dead,” and/or A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

Section 2: Forster

1. Both Mrs. Moore and Ms. Quested are haunted by echoes in Passage. Speculate as to what these echoes might symbolize in both Passage, specifically, and modernism, in general.
   
   
2. Discuss the phrase “the sky settles everything” and how it applies to the themes of nature/India, the relationship between Indians and Anglo-Indians, and (spurious) unity in Passage.
   
   
3. Compare that last paragraph of Passage to the third-to-last paragraph of Conrad’s “Task.” (You might begin with notions of space and time.)
   
   
4. Construct an essay of your own choosing based on any aspect of A Passage to India.