Fall 2009 M.A. Comprehensive Exam  
 

The Fall 2009 Comprehensive Exam will be given on Friday, November 6, 1:00-5:00pm and Saturday, November 7, 9:00am-12:00noon.  The deadline to register with the School of Graduate Studies to take the exams is October 15

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 832-2751.  This will assure you an invitation to any informational or preparatory meetings.

Primary Texts

Erich Auerbach, Mimesis

George Gordon Byron, Manfred*

Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim

J. M. Coetzee, Disgrace

George Herbert, all poems in The Church, from The Temple (Recommended edition: F.E. Hutchinson, ed., The Works of George Herbert, Oxford: Clarendon, 1941)

Langston Hughes, The Weary Blues

Sir Thomas Malory, Le Morte Darthur, seventh and eighth tales (“Launcelot and Guenivere” and “Le Morte Darthur”).  (Recommended edition: Ed. P.J.C. Field, Hackett Publishing, 2008)

William Shakespeare, The Winter’s Tale (Recommended edition: Arden Shakespeare, ed. J.H.P. Pafford)

Zadie Smith, White Teeth

Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin

August Wilson, Fences

 

Note: While with the exception of Malory and Wilson all of the primary texts are on reserve at Burritt Library for your reference, it is recommended that you acquire your own copy of each text for close study.  Shorter texts may be photocopied; others may be available in the library's circulating collection, and most are readily available for purchase from the usual sources.  Texts marked with an asterisk (*) are also available on electronic reserve.

 

Secondary Texts

Derek Attridge, “Age of Bronze, State of Grace: Music and Dogs in Coetzee’s Disgrace,” Novel: A Forum on Fiction 34.1 (Fall 2000): 98-121.*+

Arthur Clements, The Poetry of Contemplation: John Donne, George Herbert, Henry Vaughan, and the Modern Period (Albany: SUNY Press, 1990), pp. 81-127. (recommended)*+

Harry J. Elam, Jr., “August Wilson,” A Companion to Twentieth-Century American Drama, ed. David Krasner (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2005), pp. 318-333.*+

Howard Felperin, “Our Carver’s Excellence: The Winter’s Tale, ch. 7 of Shakespearean Romance (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1972), pp. 211-245. (recommended)*+

Howard Felperin, “’Tongue-tied our queen?’: The Deconstruction of Presence in The Winter’s Tale,” Shakespeare and the Question of Theory, ed. Patricia Parker and Geoffrey Hartman (New York: Methuen, 1985), pp. 3-18.*+

P.J.C. Field, Introduction, Le Morte Darthur: The Seventh and Eighth Tales, by Sir Thomas Malory (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2008), pp. xi-lxxxvii.*+

Stanley Fish, “Letting Go: The Dialectic of the Self in Herbert’s Poetry,” Self-Consuming Artifacts: The Experience of Seventeenth-Century Literature (Berkeley: U of California Press, 1972), pp. 156-223.*+

Dominic Head, “Zadie Smith’s White Teeth: Multiculturalism for the Millennium,” Contemporary British Fiction, ed. Richard J. Lane, Rod Mengham, and Philip Tew (Polity, 2003), pp. 106-119.*+

Michael Holquist, “The Last European: Erich Auerbach as Precursor in the History of Cultural Criticism,” Modern Language Quarterly 54.3 (Sept. 1993): 371-391.*+

Langston Hughes, “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain,” The Nation (June 19, 1926), repr. in The Heath Anthology of American Literature vol. 2, 4th edn., ed. Paul Lauter (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2002), pp.1616-1619.*+

David Levering Lewis, When Harlem Was in Vogue (NY: Oxford UP, 1981). (on Hughes; recommended)*

Jerome McGann, Fiery Dust: Byron’s Poetic Development (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1968). (recommended)

Fred Parker, “Between Satan and Mephistopheles: Byron and the Devil,” Cambridge Quarterly 35.1 (2006): 1-29.*+

Rebecca Saunders, “Disgrace in the Time of a Truth Commission,” Parallax 11.3 (2005): 99-106.  (on Coetzee; recommended)*+

George Samuel Schuyler, “The Negro-Art Hokum,” The Nation (June 26, 1926), repr. in The Heath Anthology of American Literature vol. 2, 4th edn., ed. Paul Lauter (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2002), pp. 1703-1706.*+

J.H. Stape, “Lord Jim,” The Cambridge Companion to Joseph Conrad, ed. J.H. Stape (Cambridge UP, 1996), pp. 63-80.*+

Jane Tompkins, “Sentimental Power: Uncle Tom’s Cabin and the Politics of Literary History,” Sensational Designs: The Cultural Works of American Fiction, 1790-1860 (NY: Oxford UP, 1986), pp.  122-146.*+

 * available in Burritt Library reserve room

+ available on electronic reserve

Note: With the exception of McGann, all secondary texts are on reserve at Burritt Library; those marked with an asterisk (*) are also available on electronic reserve.  It is recommended that you photocopy or print out copies of each text for your own use.

 

Sample Questions

For a list of sample questions, click here. (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.

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