English literature Year II
Study guide
Prerequisites: names (first names and surnames) of the authors, titles of the main works. Spelling mistakes in the names of the writers will result in point deduction. General chronology - the ability to place an author in the appropriate century.
Old English literature. Titles, genres and themes. Formal feature - alliterative verse, accentual system, rhetorical devices - kenning. Flyting and its role. Christian and pagan influences. Caedmon - his story and his poetry. Epic poem, elegiac poem, dream-vision poem, perceptions of transience, gnomic verses (riddles), thane, scop, hall, wergild;
Middle English literature - three languages. Arthurian literature - origins and themes: the Knights of the Round Table, the quest for the Holy Graal. Translatio Studii et Imperii. Chivalric romance. Courtly love. Alliterative revival. The poems from Cotton Nero manuscript: Sir Gawain, Purity, Patience, Pearl. Concantenation. Dream-vision technique. Allegory and its use in Langland's The Vision of Piers Plowman.
Medieval drama - origins, evolution from the trope. Medieval drama as Biblia pauperum. Pageant cycles - the method of staging, the participation of trade guilds. The influence of devotio moderna. Four great play cycles. Mystery (miracle) plays - why are they “mysteries”?. Other staging methods - place-and-scaffold, theatre-in-the round. Morality plays - the use of allegory, psychomachia.
English women mystics. Julian of Norwich - the experience of God and vision of the universe. Views on the nature of sin, the use of the terms “sensuality” and “substance”. God as Mother - the history of the idea, its expression in Julian's visions. Margery Kempe - her mystical experience, her fight to be allowed to take the vow of chastity, her mystical marriage to God. Affective piety and its role in Kempe's experience. The position of women visionaries in the medieval Church.
Sonnet - the history of the form. Sonnet sequence, corona sequence. Petrarchan/Italian sonnet vs. English sonnet - rhyme patterns, octave, sestet, couplet, volta. Gravita dolcezza. Wyatt and Surrey, their role in developing the English sonnet. Main themes.
Elizabethan theatre - origins, stage construction (thrust stage). Elizabethan drama - blank verse, revenge tragedy/tragedy of blood, Senecan influence. overreacher, hamartia, hubris. University Wits. Christopher Marlowe - main themes of his plays. Shakespeare's historical plays - two tetralogies, sources, the vision of history. Comedies: cross-dressing (gender bending), the story arc (from chaos to order). “Problem plays” and romances - the difference between them and comedies. Shakespeare's tragedies - the use of comical elements. NB: be able to name at least one title by Shakespeare as the example of all the genres listed above.
Sample questions:
1. Identification of the passage:
Identify the following quotations giving the name of the author, title and literary period.
Then answer the questions that follow:
a) Then fashioned for him the folk of Geats
firm on the earth a funeral-pile,
and hung it with helmets and harness of war
and breastplates bright, as the boon he asked;
and laid amid it the mighty chieftain,
heroes mourning their master dear.
1. Author, title, epoch:
2. Whose funeral is described in the passage above? Briefly characterize this person.
3. Which aspects of Anglo-Saxon life are visible here? Prove your answers by referring to a broader literary, historical and cultural spectrum.
II “Compare and Contrast” Question(s):
In this part of an examination you will be asked to choose one question out of three alternatives and write a short answer (no longer than 250 words)!
1. Compare the representations of pilgrims in the General Prologue. Use two representatives of the Church (or related to the Church).
* or Use two representatives of women from the General Prologue and compare them. Are the portraits amiable or nor? Are the portraits stereotyped or individualized? How does Chaucer select details for his descriptions of the pilgrims?
2. At the end of Romeo and Juliet, the prince announces that “some shall be pardoned and some punished.” Choose one or more of the survivors, and say how far you think pardon or punishment is deserved.
3. Explain the concept of the courtly love tradition and show how this is reflected in two selected texts from our syllabus.
Remember that in this type of the examination question and elsewhere as well we pay attention to:
1. correct spelling of the titles, names of the authors, and other proper names;
2. correct dates/ literary periods
3. your choice of relevant texts/ figures/ settings to compare
4. your relevant illustration of the concept/ theme/ literary device, etc.
* Knowledge of direct quotations from the texts is really appreciated
For example:
That evil ended. So also may this!
Love is a smoke, made with a ………………………. of sighs.
Let me not to the marriage of true minds / Admit impediments …
Love is not love / Which alters when it alteration finds …
But in eternal lines to time thou grow'st …
III Open questions (to be answered in 3 - 4 sentences)
1. What is the kenning, in what era was it used? Define, using examples.
2. What is volta in the sonnet and what role does it play?
3. What is psychomachia, in what kind of texts does it appear and in what period?