LITR 4232 American Renaissance

LITR 4232 2004 final exam

LITR 4232: American Renaissance, UHCL, fall 2004

Date: Thursday, 9 December 2004; Time: 2 hours & 50 minutes.

·        If you take the exam in-class, you have from 10am until 12:50pm.

·        If you take the exam by email, you have between 9:45am and 3pm to complete the exam, but spend only 2 hours & 50 minutes total. Keep a log of when you start, stop, or pause.

Format—In-class & email

·        This exam is open-book and open-notebook.

·        Some questions are comprehensive for the semester, but you are welcome to discuss more fully our post-midterm texts.

·        Avoid copying out long quotations unless you’re commenting very comprehensively on them.

·        You need not give page numbers for familiar quotations.

·        After your first reference to an author and title, you are welcome to use abbreviated titles, like "Black Veil" for "The Minister's Black Veil."

Format—In-class

·        Write in blue or black ink in a bluebook or on paper of your choice. You may write on fronts and backs of pages. Don’t bother erasing anything you don’t want read—just draw a line through it.

Format—email

·         Please try both of the following approaches.

·         Type out your essays in a word processing file and attach the file to an email to me at whitec@uhcl.edu

·         Paste the contents of your answer directly into an email message and send it to me at whitec@uhcl.edu. This option is especially preferable if you're writing in Microsoft Works or on a Mac computer. Or save your word processing file in a “text only” or “read” format and send it to me in an attachment.

·         If you work within designated time-lines, I should acknowledge receipt of your exam through email by sometime during the afternoon of the 8^th. If you haven't heard from me by that evening, check the email address. If still no response, leave me a phone message at 281 283 3380.

Content:

·        Write two essays in response to two of the following questions.

·        Spend at least 1 hour on each answer.

·        Please indicate which questions (by number) you’re answering.

Standards: Your work is graded chiefly on a combination of the following:

·        Your ability to form a well-organized and clearly-expressed essay in which the texts support and develop ideas; and,

·        Your comprehension & expression of major themes from the course.

My attitude in reading a timed writing exercise like this is not to watch like a hawk for minor errors but rather to see how far you go in developing our shared ideas. Occasional careless errors don’t count against you, but you may lose credit for chronic problems such as run-on sentences or fragments, or a repeated inability to use apostrophes or divide paragraphs.

Essay Question 1. Describe the characteristics and significance of the Gothic as well as some variations on it in our course readings.  To what different purposes do various authors use the Gothic? (Objective 2, the Gothic)

·        Briefly review Irving’s and Cooper’s use of the Gothic

·        Refer more extensively to Poe and Hawthorne

·        Additionally refer to at least one other text or author (in these additional cases the Gothic may appear only briefly or tangentially, and we may not have gotten around to discussing these manifestations in class, but our readings offer plenty of examples).

·         Conclusion: consider the purposes or significance of the Gothic.

Essay question 2. A constantly-changing society like America—where, like Rip Van Winkle, we wake up every day to a new world of changing fashions, values, and rules—constantly stimulates questions of appropriate moral insight and behavior.

            The two standard reactions are moral absolutism--“A woman’s place is in the home,” “It’s their fault,” and “Just say no”--or moral relativism: "Live and let live," "You are not the judge of me," "As long as you feel all right about it . . . ."

            In contrast to this choice between urgent narrow-mindedness or careless open-mindedness, classic writers like Hawthorne, Whitman, Dickinson, and Melville or great leaders like Lincoln seem to recognize both the importance and complexity of human morality.

            Referring to writings by at least two of these five writers (and to any others for comparison or contrast), describe how human problems of good and evil are depicted vividly and significantly but without a simple, reductive moral judgment of who is right or wrong, or innocent or guilty.

·        Give a picture of the moral situation in which the characters find themselves.

·        What does a reader learn from the moral situation, and what pleasure or benefit may a reader take from such a scene or story?

·        What are the responsibilities, rewards, and risks of studying complex moral issues in public schools as we do here?

Essay question 3.  Here are two lyric poems, one by Whitman and another by Dickinson.  Identify which author wrote which poem and how you can tell.  Referring to these poems (and briefly to others?), describe, compare, and contrast Whitman's and Dickinson's unique styles and subjects.

·         Comment on what aspects of the poem are characteristic of Whitman and Dickinson, and also comment in what ways these poems may not be characteristic—that is, in what ways may they surprise your expectations about Whitman and Dickinson?

·         Identify characteristic (or non-characteristic) subject matter and stylistic devices on the parts of the two poets.  Details and definitions are welcome, plus locate examples in the poem.

·         Conclusion possibilities:

·         How does each poem meet and vary the definition of a lyric poem?

·         Compare Dickinson and Whitman in relation to each other—What do you gain, learn, or experience from one in contrast to the other?

                        Come Up from the Fields, Father

1
Come up from the fields, father, here's a letter from our Pete;
And come to the front door, mother—here's a letter from thy dear
son.

2
Lo, 'tis autumn;
Lo, where the trees, deeper green, yellower and redder,
Cool and sweeten Ohio's villages, with leaves fluttering in the
moderate wind;
Where apples ripe in the orchards hang, and grapes on the trellis'd
vines;
(Smell you the smell of the grapes on the vines?
Smell you the buckwheat, where the bees were lately buzzing?)

Above all, lo, the sky, so calm, so transparent after the rain, and
with wondrous clouds;
Below, too, all calm, all vital and beautiful--and the farm prospers
well.

3
Down in the fields all prospers well;
But now from the fields come, father--come at the daughter's call;
And come to the entry, mother--to the front door come, right away.

Fast as she can she hurries—something ominous—her steps trembling;
She does not tarry to smoothe her hair, nor adjust her cap.

Open the envelope quickly;
O this is not our son's writing, yet his name is sign'd;
O a strange hand writes for our dear son—O stricken mother's soul!
All swims before her eyes—flashes with black—she catches the main
words only;
Sentences broken—"gun-shot wound in the breast, cavalry skirmish,
taken to hospital,
At present low, but will soon be better."

4
Ah, now, the single figure to me,
Amid all teeming and wealthy Ohio, with all its cities and farms,
Sickly white in the face, and dull in the head, very faint,
By the jamb of a door leans.

"Grieve not so, dear mother", (the just-grown daughter speaks through
her sobs;
The little sisters huddle around, speechless and dismay'd;)
"See, dearest mother, the letter says Pete will soon be better".

5
Alas, poor boy, he will never be better, (nor may-be needs to be
better, that brave and simple soul;)
While they stand at home at the door, he is dead already;
The only son is dead.

But the mother needs to be better;
She, with thin form, presently drest in black;
By day her meals untouch'd—then at night fitfully sleeping, often
waking,
In the midnight waking, weeping, longing with one deep longing,
O that she might withdraw unnoticed—silent from life, escape and
withdraw,
To follow, to seek, to be with her dear dead son.

*********

Going to heaven!

I don't know when,

Pray do not ask me how,—

Indeed, I'm too astonished

To think of answering you!

Going to heaven!—

How dim it sounds!

And yet it will be done

As sure as flocks go home at night

Unto the shepherd's arm!

Perhaps you're going too!

Who knows?

If you should get there first,

Save just a little place for me

Close to the two I lost!

The smallest "robe" will fit me,

And just a bit of "crown";

For you know we do not mind our dress

When we are going home.

I'm glad I don't believe it,

For it would stop my breath,

And I'd like to look a little more

At such a curious earth!

I am glad they did believe it

Whom I have never found

Since the mighty autumn afternoon

I left them in the ground.

Essay question 4. Write an essay comparing classic, popular, and representative authors and literature in terms of their differing (or overlapping) styles, values, and appeals (Objective 1).

·        Define and give examples of classical, popular, and representative literature from our course.  (Suggestions below. Don’t just rename but describe them in ways that fit your definitions.)

·        Some authors may fit more than one category.

·        What different pleasures, benefits, and challenges does each category offer a reader in our time?  How were they received in their own time and by periods following their publication?

·        For what different purposes are these types of literature written?

·        What may one learn from reading across these different categories of literature?

·        What different readers might be attracted to the different categories?

·        Which balance of categories, is most appropriate for a college literature class like ours?  What about other literature classrooms?

As usual in an essay like this, do a lot of comparing and contrasting from start to finish, for the sake of sparking ideas and weaving organization.

Examples: (not an exhaustive list—you’re welcome to develop your own)

“Classic” authors and texts: Melville; Dickinson; Hawthorne

“Popular” authors and texts: Fanny Fern; Osgood; Irving

“Representative” texts and authors: “History of the Miraculous Apparition of the Virgin of Guadalupe in 1531”; Mariano Guadalupe Vellejo; Frederick Law Olmsted; William Apess; Elias Boudinot; Chief Seattle; Frederick Douglass; Sojourner Truth; Harriet Jacobs.

(In the second part of the semester we concentrated less on this category, so your treatment of this category may or may not be equal in length to the other two categories.)

*Also consider authors who combine or cross categories: Poe, Douglass, Stowe, Irving, Fuller.