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Division of Literary Periods
Students need to select eight of eleven literary divisions
from the following: The Middle Ages (to ca. 1485), The Sixteenth
Century (1485-1603), The Seventeenth Century (1603-1660),
The Restoration and the Eighteenth Century (1660-1785), The
Romantic Period (1785-1830), The Victorian Age (1830-1901),
20th-Century British, Colonial American, American Renaissance,
20th-Century American, Literary Criticism.
Students may be examined in a maximum of five British
periods, with the other three coming from American literature
and/or literary criticism.
Area 1: The Middle Ages (to ca. 1485)
"The Wanderer"
"The Wife's Lament"
"The Dream of the Rood"
"Sunset on Calvary"
"I Sing of a Maiden"
"Adam Lay Bound"
The Wakefield Second Shepherd's Play
Beowulf
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Malory: Morte D'Authur (bks. 20-21 of the Caxton Edition
or "The Death of King Arthur")
Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales: "The General Prologue,"
The Wife of Bath's Tale," "The Pardoner's Tale,"
and "The Nun's Priest's Tale"
Langland: The Vision of Piers Plowman: "The Prologue"
[The Field of Folk] and "Passus 5"
Kempe: The Book of Margery Kempe: "Pilgrimage
to Jerusalem" and "Examination Before the Archbishop"
Area 2: The Sixteenth Century (1485-1603)
Wyatt: "Whoso List to Hunt," "The Long Love
That in My Thought Doth Harbor," and "They Flee
From Me"
Surrey: "Love, That Doth Reign and Live Within My Thought"
Sidney: Astrophil and Stella: Sonnets 1, 49, 53
The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia (Book 2, Chapter
2)
The Defense of Poesy
Marlowe: "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love"
Spenser: The Faerie Queene: Letter; Book One, Canto
One; Book One, Canto Ten; Book Two, Canto Twelve (the Bower
of Bliss)
Shakespeare: Sonnets 55, 130, 138, 144
Hamlet or Twelfth Night
Ralegh: "The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd"
Queen Elizabeth: "On Monsieur's Departure," "The
doubt of future foes," "Speech to the Troops at
Tilbury, 1588"
Choose one: Sir Thomas More's Utopia or Christopher
Marlowe's Dr. Faustus
Area 3: The Seventeenth Century (1603-1660)
Donne: "The Flea," "A Valediction: Forbidding
Mourning," "A Nocturnal upon St. Lucy's Day, Being
the Shortest Day," and Holy Sonnet 13
Marvell: "To His Coy Mistress" and "A Dialogue
Between the Soul and Body"
Jonson: Volpone
Milton: Paradise Lost: I, II, IV
Wroth: from The Countess of Montgomery's Urania and
""In this strange labyrinth how shall I turn"
Herbert: The Temple: "The Altar," "Jordan,"
"The
Windows," and "Love (III)"
Herrick: "Corinna's Going A-Maying" and "To
the Virgins, to Make Much
of Time"
Area 4: The Restoration and the Eighteenth Century (1660-1785)
Congreve: The Way of the World
Dryden: "Mac Flecknoe"
A. Finch: "The Introduction" and "A Nocturnal
Reverie"
Bunyan: Pilgrim's Progress: "Vanity Fair,"
"The Slough of Despond," and "The Celestial
City"
Swift: "A Description of a City Shower" and Gulliver's
Travel's, Part 4
Johnson: The Rambler, Number 4 and Lives of the
Poets: Cowley [Metaphysical Wit]
Boswell: The Life of Samuel Johnson
Pope: "The Rape of the Lock"
Choose between the following novels
Fielding: Joseph Andrews
Defoe: Moll Flanders
Area 5: The Romantic Period (1785-1830)
Blake: Songs of Innocence and Experience: "The
Lamb" and "The Tyger"
Wollstonecraft: A Vindication of the Rights of Woman,
Chapters 2 and 4
Wordsworth: "Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern
Abbey," "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud, "Ode:
Intimations of Immortality," and "London, 1802"
Coleridge: "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner"
Shelley: "Ozymandias" and "Hymn to Intellectual
Beauty"
Keats: "Ode on a Grecian Urn," "A Thing of
Beauty," and "Eve of St. Agnes"
Austen: Pride and Prejudice
M. Shelley: Frankenstein
Area 6: The Victorian Age (1830-1901)
E. B. Browning: Sonnets from the Portuguese (choose
one)
R. Browning: "My Last Duchess"
Tennyson: "The Lotus-Eaters" and "Ulysses"
Arnold: "Dover Beach" and Culture and Anarchy,
Chapter 1 (Sweetness and Light)
C. Rossetti: "Goblin Market"
Hopkins: "The Windhover: To Christ Our Lord"
Bronte: Jane Eyre
Dickens: Hard Times
Shaw: Mrs. Warren's Profession or Major Barbara
Wilde: The Importance of Being Earnest
Area 7: 20th Century British
Woolf: To the Lighthouse
Joyce: "The Dead"
Hardy: "Channel Firing," "Hap," and "Convergence
of the Twain"
Yeats: "The Second Coming," "Sailing to Byzantium,"
"Leda and the Swan," and "Among School Children"
D. Thomas: "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night"
and "Fern Hill"
Larkin: "Church Going"
S. Smith: "Not Waving But Drowning," "The Person
From Porlock," "Our Bug is Dood," "The
New Age," and "Pretty"
Auden: "Musee des Beaux Arts," "Lullaby"
and "In Memory of W.B. Yeats"
Walcott: "A Far Cry from Africa" and "Midsummer"
Heaney: "Digging" and "Casualty"
Conrad: Heart of Darkness
Beckett: Endgame
Stoppard: The Real Inspector Hound
Pinter: The Dumb Waiter
Area 8: Colonial American
Bradford: Of Plymouth Plantation, Chapters 1, 9, 10,
11, 12, and 28
Bradstreet: "The Prologue" and "The Author
to Her Book"
C. Mather: Wonders of the Invisible World: "A
People of God in the Devil's Territory" and "The
Trial of Martha Carrier"
Winthrop: A Model of Christian Charity from The
Journal of John Winthrop
Edwards: "Letter to Rev. Dr. Benjamin Colman (May 30,
1735)"
Woolman: from Some Considerations on the Keeping of Negroes
A. Adams: "Letter from Abigail Adams to John Adams, March
31, 1776"
Paine: The Age of Reason
Franklin: The Autobiography: "Project for Moral
Perfection"
Wheatley: "On Being Brought from Africa to America"
Brown: from Wieland, or The Transformation: An American Tale
Area 9: American Renaissance
Emerson: "Self-Reliance"
Hawthorne: The Scarlet Letter and "Young Goodman
Brown" or "My Kinsman, Major Molineux"
Poe: "The Fall of the House of Usher" and "The
Purloined Letter"
Fuller: Woman in the Nineteenth Century
Thoreau: Walden: "Economy," "Where I
Live, and What I Lived For," "Conclusion"
Whitman: Song of Myself and "When Lilacs Last
in the Dooryard Bloom'd"
Melville: "Bartleby, the Scrivener" and Billy
Budd, Sailor or Moby Dick (the complete text, not
the Norton selections)
Crane: "The Open Boat"
Davis: Life in the Iron Mills
Dickinson: #465 "I heard a Fly buzz"; #303 "The
Soul selects her own Society"; #448 "This was a
Poet"; #510 "It was not Death, for I stood up";
and #754 "My Life had Stood-a Loaded Gun-"
Twain: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
James: Daisy Miller
Jacobs: Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, I, VII,
X, XIV, XXI, XLI
Wharton: House of Mirth
Chopin: The Awakening
Area 10: 20th-Century American
Cather: O Pioneers
Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby
Faulkner: The Sound and the Fury
Silko: Ceremony
Morrison: Beloved
T. Williams: A Streetcar Named Desire
Wilson: Fences
Hemingway: "Snows of Kilimanjaro"
O'Connor: "Good Country People"
Carver: "Cathedral"
Walker: "Everyday Use"
Yamamoto: "Seventeen Syllables"
Frost: "The Oven Bird," "Birches," and
"Design"
W.C. Williams: "The Red Wheelbarrow" and "Spring
and All"
Pound: "In a Station of the Metro," "Hugh Selwyn
Mauberley: Life and Contacts"
Eliot: "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," The
Waste Land (first and final sections), and "Burnt
Norton"
Bishop: "The Fish" and "The Moose"
Stevens: "Sunday Morning, " "The Idea of Order
at Key West," and "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a
Blackbird"
Brooks: "A Bronzeville Mother Loiters in Mississippi,
Meanwhile a Mississippi Mother Burns Bacon"
Oliver: "The Black Snake"
Ginsberg: "Howl"
Ashbery : "Illustration," "Self-Portrait in
a Convex Mirror," "Soonest Mended"
Rich: "Diving Into the Wreck" and "Snapshots
of a Daughter-in-Law"
Hughes: "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" and "I,
Too"
Harper: "Dear John, Dear Coltrane" and "Nightmare
Begins Responsibility"
F. O'Hara: "The Day Lady Died" and "A Step
Away From Them"
Area 11: Literary Criticism
Plato: The Republic, Book X
Aristotle: Poetics
Horace: Ars Poetica
Dryden: "Essay on Dramatic Poesy"
Sidney: "An Apology for Poetry"
Johnson: "Preface to Shakespeare"
Wordsworth: Preface to Lyrical Ballads
Poe: "The Philosophy of Composition"
Eliot: Tradition and the Individual Talent
Woolf: A Room of One's Own, Chapter 6
Wimsatt, Beardsley: "The Intentional Fallacy"
L. Hughes: "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain"
Frye: The Archetypes of Literature
Mulvey: "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema"
Foucault: "What is an Author?" and The History
of Sexuality
Fish: "Is There a Text in this Class?" (the essay,
not the book)
Derrida: "Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse
of the Human Sciences"
Butler: Gender Trouble
Bordo: Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture,
and the Body
Kolodny: Dancing Through the Minefield . . .
Benjamin: "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction"
Bakhtin: "Discourse in the Novel"
Iser: "Interaction Between Text and Reader"
Rich: "When We Dead Awaken"
Evaluation of
Exit Exam Performances
The Samford English Department recognizes three levels of
performances on the English major exit exam: pass with distinction,
pass, and fail. We also may invite students back who, for
some reason (because we start late or get stuck on one topic),
have not been able to demonstrate competence. Being asked
to return of a portion of any part of the exam constitutes
a failure of that section. Below are general criteria for
pass, pass with distinction, and failure. These are general
criteria and not objective categories. Ultimate success or
failure depends on faculty judgement of student performance.
Category: Pass with Distinction
Students who pass with distinction will likely demonstrate
all of the strengths listed in pass with hardly any weaknesses.
What is distinctive, however is the superior quality of their
performances. They may show a depth of sensitivity to literature
that makes their responses exceptional; they may display affinities
to works and poets and genuine appreciation for periods and
movements in literary history. They may well be intellectually
invigorated by the examination experience and seem to be enjoying
the occasion with spirited motivation. They may seem to be
filled to the brim with their knowledge and love of the literature.
We the examiners will likely be grateful be grateful for their
performances and feel among equals. We shall know in our hearts
that these students have performed with distinction, and we
shall assume that in the future, whether they enter the teaching
profession immediately or proceed to graduate school, they
will distinguish themselves and bring honor to themselves
and to us.
Category: Pass
The student should perform in the 80th and above percentile
in all the following areas of competencies:
1. Information: the student should apparently have
read all the texts in all the areas in which they are being
examined and should have ready retention of each work. The
student should know the historical, cultural, and intellectual
contexts of each work as representative of a time, a genre,
and a world view. Students should be able to provide on command
some specifics from all the works and no less than 80% from
works on which they focus their discussions and summaries.
2. Comprehension: the student should be able to use
the language of critical approaches to demonstrate analytical
aptitudes and intellectual perspicuity in the discussion of
literature. The student should show a clear grasp of themes;
of patterns of implications (meaning) in forms, in figurative
language, in narrative, descriptive, and expository structures;
of contextual allusions and references; of poetic and fictional
strategies. The student should also be able to trace threads
of content and technique through multiple texts and to apply
philosophical,, political, theological, and social education
to the illumination of literary texts. A passing student performs
at a competent level, demonstrating that, despite gaps and
spots of indecisiveness, they understand what is required
of the profession of literary studies. They should be able
themselves to recognize their strengths and weaknesses.
3. Test-Taking Aptitudes: the student should be able
to present with confidence and composure. He or she should
demonstrate the virtues of oral communication. When pressed,
the successful student should be able to confess uncertainty
and to offer alternative responses, directing discussions
always toward strengths. (This approach should not become
an escape strategy and should be used sparingly.) The student
should, however, appear comfortable with the exposure of his
or her weaknesses as long as they apparently recognize high
standards for themselves.
Category: Failure
A student may fail the oral exam for one or more of the following
deficiencies:
1. Information Deficiency: the student knows somewhat
less than 80 percent of the primary material in specifics
of content. Examiners' concerns: does he/she not know specific
knowledge or not know how to demonstrate specific knowledge?
2. Comprehension Deficiency: the student seems unable
to demonstrate experience in processing thematic approaches,
n explicating themes, and in tracing historical, social, and
intellectual patterns in specific works and fields of works.
The student may seem unable to understand the theme or unable
to recognize its possibilities within a specific work or period.
He/she may hesitate, may have false starts, may ignore obvious
and essential relevancy and implications. To the examiner,
however, the problem will appear to be a lack of thoughtful
reading of the literature, or worse, a deficiency in discipline
acculturation. (A student will never pass who has a serious
deficiency in discipline acculturation; we shall always try
to identify other kinds of deficiencies, such as a deficiency
in preparation.)
3. Test-taking Deficiency: the student seems unable
to use the occasion to demonstrate his/her knowledge and preparation,
a personality inhibition that can be severely limiting if
not totally debilitating. We have seen students freeze up
or muddle through the exam as if they were incapable of functioning
under the pressure of the oral. For these students, we might
request that they present themselves for another session,
perhaps giving them additional time.
4. Failing to show up for the exam or postponing the exam
will also constitute a failure.
Requirements for Retaking the Oral Examination
A student may fail one section of the oral exam without failing
the entire exam. If a student fails as individual section
of the exam, he or she will be required to retake the oral
exam in that section. A student has a total of three opportunities
to pass the oral examination in total in order to graduate.
If a student is unable to pass the oral examination, he or
she will be required to return in a subsequent semester and
begin the process anew. If a student fails, he or she should
meet with the professor of the Capstone course to make arrangements
for retaking the exam. As mentioned above, if a student fails
to show up for the scheduled exam, or needs to reschedule,
such an absence constitutes a failure.
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