LITR 4232 American Renaissance 2010 final exam—Index to Sample Answers (final exam assignment)

A. Mid-length essay

A1. Review & prioritize your learning in American Renaissance.

Jeanette Williams, Knowledge is Power

A2. Mid-length essay on 1 or 2 terms or subjects:

• Passive Resistance / Civil Disobedience

  Eric Cherrie, It is the Meaning, not the Messenger: Coming to Terms with Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience

  Mary Price, Passively Resisting Unjust Governments

• Sentimental / Domestic Literature in the American Renaissance (+ / - sentimental stereotypes)
  

  Brittany Fletcher, Crisp Apple Strudels with a Side of Sentimentality

• Religious literature or references discussed as literature in public schools?

  Jillian Silva, America’s Soft Spot: The Re-Birth of Religious Sentiment

• Transcendentalism

  Matt Chavez, Transcendental Thought & Form

  Melissa King, Anything You can Say (Feel, Believe, Do), I can Say (Feel, Believe, Do) Better

B. Long Essay Questions

B1. Essay Question 1. Briefly define the Gothic & describe its various characteristics and uses in 3-4 course readings.

Matt Chavez, Divisions of the Gothic Text

Jeff Derrickson, A Legacy of Fear

Brittany Fletcher, My Gothic is Your Gothic

Melissa King, Things that go Boom in the Night

Jonathan Nguyen, Journey to the Center of the Dark Black Forest

Jennifer Martin, Gothic Death

B2. Essay question 2. Describe how moral problems are depicted vividly and significantly but without simple, reductive moral judgment.

Eric Cherrie, There is no Black America . . . no White America . . . Only a Grey America: Understanding American Morality Though the Lens of the American Renaissance

Amber Criswell, The Non-Existence of Closure in Literature

Allison Evans, Morality’s movement from Black and White to Grey

Jennifer Martin, Mosaic Morality

Mary Price, Questions of Christian Morality

B3. Essay question 3. How have readings in American Renaissance literature developed your ideas of history, or how has history developed your idea of literature?

Eric Cherrie, The American Renaissance and New Historicism: Understanding Progress in a New Nation

Amber Criswell, An Intimate History

Jeff Derrickson, A Nexus of Literary and Historical Depth

Melissa King, The Raw Footage of a Person’s Soul

B4. Essay question 4. Write an essay comparing classic, popular, and representative authors and literature in terms of their differing (or overlapping) styles, values, audiences, and appeals (Objective 1).

Matt Chavez, Divisions of Appeal 

Jillian Silva, Abstaining from Classification: Classic, Popular, and Representative Literature of the American Renaissance