LITR 5734 2003 Final Exam Assignment

Conditions: The conditions under which you take your final exam are variable. All options are open-book and open-notebook.

·        You may write your exam in-class during the final class period, using the full class period of 3 hours and turning in the exam by 6pm.

·        You may write your exam out-of-class and send it to me by email, using a time span of up to four hours, with the exam due by noon on Tuesday, 1 July. This is an absolute deadline, as grades are due the following day.

·        Since the assignment is known, you are welcome to prepare your answers. In writing your submission, however, please observe time allotments.

Content: Regardless of whether you take the exam in-class or via email, the exam content is the same.

·        Compose a dialogue between the last four of the course's primary texts

·        A Passage to India

·        The God of Small Things

·        Adventures of Robinson Crusoe

·        Lucy

·        Refer also to

·        at least one of Walcott's poems

·        one of the “textual dialogues” from this course (2003)

·        a web posting from the 2001 course.

·        Literary Theory handout

·        The theme or subject of this dialogue is your choice. You might refer to the course objectives for inspiration, or propose an idea that you saw emerging in the class.

·        How specific should be the subject of the dialogue? As in all writing, the greater the unity amid diversity, the better. You could choose one of the course objectives as the center of your discussion, or you might choose a more evolutionary topic, such as "What may one learn from putting these texts in dialogue?" (For this last option the potential topics are numerous, so the exam writer should make efforts to summarize and unify as the essay progresses.)

·        On the last class day we will have a roundtable discussion in which each student will announce her or his probable topic. (Topics may change.)

Length: Since the final exam is a timed exercise, and different writers have different rates of production, I can only say that you should probably use at least two and a half hours of the exam period. A surprisingly brief but wonderfully efficient exam occasionally happens under these circumstances, but it remains surprising. Most students do better by covering as much ground as possible as well as possible in the time allotted.

Email test-takers should keep a log of when they start and stop writing. Pauses or interruptions within the time allotment are acceptable and sometimes inevitable. Include your log at the beginning or end of your exam.