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OLLSCOIL na hÉIREANN, GAILLIMH NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF IRELAND, GALWAY
SECOND SITTING EXAMINATIONS, 2009/ FIRST ARTS EXAMINATION
EN 125 INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH II
Prof. A. Minnis Prof. S. Matterson Prof. S. Ryder Dr. C. Carney Dr. R. Dixon Dr. S. Kavanagh Dr. Kenny Dr. F. McCormack
TIME ALLOWED: TWO HOURS
This exam has TWO sections (Section 1 and Section 2) and each section has two parts (A and B). Students must answer both sections and both parts of each section.
PLEASE USE A SEPARATE ANSWER BOOK FOR EACH SECTION
Section 1:
Texts and Contexts (Cliodhna Carney and Stephen Kavanagh)
Answer both parts
Part A Spend no more than 20 minutes on this part.
Choose one of the following three items and perform a ‘close reading’ of it.
(a) Sonnet 90
Then hate me when thou wilt, if ever, now, Now, while the world is bent my deeds to cross, Join with the spite of Fortune, make me bow, And do not drop in for an after-loss. Ah do not, when my heart hath ‘scaped this sorrow, Come in the rearward of a conquered woe; Give not a windy night a rainy morrow To linger out a purposed overthrow. If thou wilt leave me, do not leave me last When other petty griefs have done their spite But in the onset, come, so shall I taste At first the very worst of Fortune’s might, And other strains of woe, which now seem woe, Compared with loss of thee, will not seem so.
(c) Annus Mirabilis
Sexual intercourse began In nineteen sixty-three (which was rather late for me) - Between the end of the Chatterley ban And the Beatles' first LP.
Up to then there'd only been A sort of bargaining, A wrangle for the ring, A shame that started at sixteen And spread to everything.
Then all at once the quarrel sank: Everyone felt the same, And every life became A brilliant breaking of the bank, A quite unloseable game.
So life was never better than In nineteen sixty-three (Though just too late for me) - Between the end of the Chatterley ban And the Beatles' first LP.
Part B
Spend no more than 40 minutes on this part.
Answer Question 1 or 2
EITHER
1. Discuss the issue of how texts are responded to by other texts, with reference to at least ONE of the adaptations covered on this section of the course (i.e., the adaptation of one of Beckett’s short plays into film; the adaptation of Edward Hopper’s ‘Nighthawks’ into poetic form; how Ophelia’s drowning in Hamlet or Tennyson’s “The Lady of Shalott” are responded to in visual art; or how T.S Eliot’s The Waste Land is responded to in Wendy Cope’s ‘Waste Land Limericks’)
N.B: If you are discussing longer texts such as Tennyson’s “The Lady of Shalott” or Eliot’s The Waste Land, you are welcome to focus on just ONE or TWO passages from these texts, and how they are responded to by other texts.
OR
2. Choose one of the texts on your course and do an ‘informed reading’ of it, going outside the text to another text or texts, and showing how the latter casts light on the former.
5. ‘He thought of Peter sitting alone here at night making the shapes of animals out of matchsticks, of those same hands now in a coffin before the high altar of Cootehall church. Tomorrow he’d lie in the earth on the top of Killeelan Hill. A man is born. He dies.’
Part B
Spend no more than 30 minutes on this part. Do not write on the same novel as you did for your Blackboard essay.
The Fiction of Adolescence (Professor Hubert McDermott)
Answer on ONE of the following:
1. Write on the themes of sex and death in any novel on your course.
2. “The quest for communicability with one’s fellow man is a major theme in the fiction of adolescence.” Discuss, with reference to any novel on your course.
3. Write on “emotional turbulence” as depicted in the fiction of adolescence referring to any novel on your course.
END EN
