The Spring 2012 Comprehensive Exam will tentatively be given on Friday, April 13, 1:00-5:00 pm, and Saturday, April 14, 9:00 am-12:00 noon.  The deadline to register with the School of Graduate Studies to take the exams is February 15, 2012. The registration form is available here.

Note: If you are planning to take the exam, or even strongly considering it, please contact Dr. Eric Leonidas, chair of the English Department's Graduate Committee, at leonidase at ccsu.edu or 832-2750.  This will assure you an invitation to any informational or preparatory meetings.

Primary

Chaucer, Book of the Duchess (recommended edition: Chaucer's Dream Poetry, ed. Helen Phillips and Nick Havely [Longman, 1997])

Spenser, Fairie Queene (1590 edition, i.e., books 1-3; The Faierie Queene, ed. Thomas P. Roche [Penguin, 1978])

Henry Fielding, Tom Jones (Norton Critical Ediiton, ed. Sheridan Baker [Norton, 1994])

Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Defense of Poetry and lyrical poems selected in Shelley's Poetry and Prose, ed. Neil Fraistat and Donald H. Reiman [Norton, 2002])

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays, from Emerson: Essays and Lectures, ed. Joel Porte (Library of America, 1983):

• "Nature" (1836)
• "The American Scholar" (1837)
• "Divinity School Address" (1838)
• "Man the Reformer" (1841)
• "The Conservative" (1841)
• "The Young American" (1844)

From Essays: First Series (1841):

• "History"
• "Self-Reliance"
• "The Over-Soul"

From Essays: Second Series (1844):

• "The Poet"
• "Experience"
• "Politics"

From Representative Men (1850):

• "Uses of Great Men"
• "Napoleon"

From The Conduct of Life (1860):

• "Fate"
• "Wealth"
• "Culture"
• "Considerations by the Way"

James Fenimore Cooper, The Pioneers, or The Sources of the Susquehanna. NY, Penguin, 1988.

Charlotte Bronte, Villette (1853)

Willa Cather, My Ántonia (1918)

Lorraine Hansberry, A Raisin in the Sun (1959)

Herbert Marcuse, Eros and Civilization: A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud. NY: Vintage, 1955.

Secondary

The secondary list is available electronically through Burritt Library reserve here.

Alpers, Paul J. “The Rhetorical Mode of Spenser's Narrative.” The Poetry of the Faerie Queene. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1967.

Baker, John Ross. “Poetry and Language in Shelley's Defence of Poetry.” The Journal

of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 39.4 (1981): 437-449.

Bloom, Harold, ed. Henry Fielding's Tom Jones: Modern Critical Interpretations. New York: Chelsea, 1987: Ian Watt, “Fielding as Novelist: Tom Jones,” 7-33; Martin Price, “The Subversion of Forms,” 39-50; Leopold Damrosch, Jr., “Tom Jones and the Farewell to Providential Fiction,” 103-123.

Bloom, Harold, ed. Ralph Waldo Emerson. NY: Chelsea, 1985.

Carter, Steven R. Hansberry's Drama: Commitment amid Complexity. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1991. Chaps 1-2, 1-69.

Everest, Kelvin, ed. Percy Bysshe Shelley: Bicentenary Essays. Essays and Studies 45. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1992: Kelvin Everest, “'Ozymandias': The Text in Time,” 24-42; Michael O'Neill, “'And all things seem only one': the Shelleyan Lyric,” 115-131.

Hennedy, Marie C. “Deceit with Benign Intent; Story-Telling in Villette.” Bronte Studies 28 (2003): 1-14.

Hough, Graham. A Preface to the Faerie Queene. NY: Norton, 1962. Chapters 1, 3, 5-7, 9,

O'Brien, Sharon, ed. New Essays on My Antonia. New York: Cambridge UP, 1999.

Travis, Peter W. “White,” Studies in the Age of Chaucer 22 (2000): 1-66.

Rajan, Tilttama. “Romanticism and the Death of Lyric Consciousness.” Lyric Poetry: Beyond New Criticism. Ed. Chaviava Hosek and Patricia Parker. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1985. 194-207.

Robbins, Ruth. “How Do I Look? Villette and Looking Different(ly).” Bronte Studies 28 (2003): 215-24.

Ware, Tracy. “Shelley's Platonism in A Defence of Poetry.” Studies in English Liteature, 1500-1900 23.4 (1983): 549-66.

Note: Unless otherwise noted, all secondary texts are required reading.  

Sample Questions

For a list of sample questions, contact the chair below. (Note: These are not the actual questions that will be on the exam. Rather, they are intended to help you gauge how prepared you'll need to be.)

Contact Information

For more information about the comprehensive exam, contact Dr. Leonidas, chair of the department's graduate committee.