Romantics:
Victorians
Modern:
Journal Question -
Oscar Wilde: Due 4/9/2009
What significance does the
title of The Importance of Being Earnest have to the play’s
themes? How does the play undermine Victorian social
conventions? Pay close attention to the use of wordplay,
paradox, and satire.
Take-home Exam #2 will be
assigned on 4/9/2009. Due 4/30.
Take Home Exam #2
Journal Question - World
War I: Due 4/14/2009
Other than their common
theme—war, and "the pity of war"—do the so-called "war
poets" share enough characteristics in terms of style, form,
and perspective to be considered a "school" or "movement" in
literature? Demonstrate why they do or why they do not,
using examples from the work of at least three "war poets.
Journal Question - W.B.
Yeats: Due 4/16/2009
What is Yeats’s attitude
toward the men and women involved in the “Easter, 1916”
rebellion as depicted in the first stanza? How does his view
of the revolutionaries change in the rest of the poem? To
what extent does Yeats support them and to what extent does
he qualify his endorsement of them?
Journal Question -
Virginia Woolf: Due 4/21/2009
In A Room of One’s Own, what
does Woolf mean when she asserts, “Intellectual freedom
depends upon material things”? What is her rationale? How
does this idea relate to women writers?
Journal Question -
Joyce & Lawrence: Due 4/23/2009
Compare Lawrence's "Odour of
Chrysanthemums" with Joyce’s “The Dead.” In both
narratives, the protagonist realizes that even after many
years of marriage, he or she did not really know the spouse.
How does this lack of understanding shape the way the
protagonists think and feel? How does the realization that
they have been mistaken change them?
Journal Question - Ted
Hughes & Seamus Heaney: Due 5/5/2009
Part I: Compare the concept
of burial in section 1 of “Out” and the first two stanzas of
Eliot’s The Waste Land. How does each poem imagine World War
I and its legacy?
Part II: How does the ancient
corpse in "Punishment" correlate to how the IRA punished the
women who fraternized with British soldiers?
Journal Question - Salman
Rushdie Due 5/7/2009
Part I: “The Prophet’s Hair”
contains elements of magic realism: the portrayal of
supernatural or fantastic occurrences within a realistic
framework. Locate some of these occurrences and discuss
their effects on the story.
Part II: What is the story’s attitude toward the religious
relic? Why does the relic cause such mayhem in Hashim’s
life? Why does it destroy Sheikh Sín and cure his wife and
children of their afflictions?
