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From: Prof. Steinberg
Date: 08 Mar 2001
Time: 17:07:20
Remote Name: 159.91.94.122
Here, as promised, is the midterm exam:
At the beginning of the semester, I had you all write down the answers to five questions and seal them in an envelope. On Monday, March 12, I will return those envelopes to you, unopened.
For the midterm exam, I want you to choose four out of those five questions. I want you to look at the responses you wrote at the beginning of the semester. Then, I want you to choose two theorists we have read this semester for each question. For each of the four questions, tell me how your response to the question has been influenced (positively, negatively, neutrally) by the two theorists. Have you changed your mind about your response to the question since the beginning of the semester? Do you feel that you can articulate your response better now than at the beginning of the semester (perhaps thanks to the theorists that you've chosen to consider)? Which of the theorists seem valuable to you in responding to the questions? Which theorists take a position on the question with which you can't agree? Do you feel that you can respond to the theorists with whom you disagree better than you were able at the beginning of the semester? How would you respond to them?
The rules are
1.) you may not use the same theorist for more than one question (so once you've used Plato to talk about what literature is, you can't use him again to talk about what the value or purpose of literature is, for example),
2.) you may not use more than two theorists for any one question (so that you should have talked about exactly 8 different theorists by the time you've finished the exam), and
3.) you should try to use as much variety as possible in terms of theorists you choose (not both Jung and Freud, for example).
Remember that the purpose of the exam is to test your knowledge of *all* the theorists we've studied this semester, to see how well you understand and can apply their theories, and to examine where you are in your own thinking about "the big questions" of literary study. So, you will be graded on what *you* think, on how clear and compelling your thinking is, on how reasonable your choice of theorists is, and on how accurately you can summarize those theorists.
Use as much detail as time allows you (20 minutes for each question).
The five questions that I asked at the beginning of the semester (with suggesions of possible theorists you might consider for each) were
1.) What is literature? (You might choose to look at Aristotle, Wordsworth, Barthes, Longinus, or Geertz.)
2.) What is the purpose or value of literature? (You might choose to look at Plato, Horace, Wilde, Emerson, or Heidegger.)
3.) How is literature created? (You migh choose to look at Marx, Woolf, Freud, Jung, Bloom, Bakhtin, Gilbert and Gubar, or Irigaray.)
4.) What makes good or bad literature? (You might choose to look at Johnson, Nietzsche, Bourdieu, Arnold, Eliot, or Leavis.)
5.) What happens when we experience literature? (You might choose to look at Gadamer, Iser, Kant, or Sartre.)