Appendix 2: Sample examination paper

Time allowed: THREE hours.

Answer THREE questions, ONE from each section. Candidates may not discuss the same text in more than one answer.

Section A

Answers in this section should refer to one text only.

  1. 1. To what extent is Homer’s Odyssey characterised by a preoccupation with recurrence and return?
  2. 2. ‘Classical epic seems to be both fascinated and repulsed by physical violence.’
    Discuss in relation to any one text of your choice.
  3. 3. Discuss the role of fate in Sophocles’ Antigone.
  4. 4. Why are fame and notoriety such prominent concepts in the Inferno, and how creatively does Dante incorporate them in the narrative?
  5. 5. Explore some of the ways in which Chaucer exploits the relationship between his teller and their tale.
  6. 6. Consider the ways in which pictorial effects are employed in the Metamorphoses.
  7. 7. How important is ‘the boisterous world of simple folk’ to medieval literature’s expression of Christian feeling? Discuss with reference to any one text of your choice.
  8. 8. What effects are achieved by the poetic patterning of Gawain and the Green Knight?
  9. 9. ‘Love links the everyday to the transcendent world.’ Discuss in relation to any one text of your choice.
  10. 10. How do Books I and II of Paradise Lost engage the reader’s interest in Milton’s religious themes?
  11. 11. Would you agree that the satire of The Rape of the Lock is directed more at poetic than social convention?
  12. 12. ‘Merely a string of loosely connected adventures.’ Is this a fair description of Joseph Andrews.

Section B

Answers in this section should refer to one text only.

  1. 13. Discuss Austen’s presentation in Emma of her protagonist’s growth in self-knowledge.
  2. 14. To what extent is Dickens a ‘sentimentalist’?
  3. 15. In what ways can A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man be described as ‘self-conscious’ in its narrative technique?
  4. 16. Investigate the significance of gender for the power-struggle of assertive minds in Strindberg’s Miss Julie.
  5. 17. How successfully does any one text that you have read engage with philosophical questions?
  6. 18. To what extent does Eliot’s poetry represent a successful marriage of thought and feeling?
  7. 19. ‘A tale told by an idiot…signifying nothing.’ How applicable is this comment to Beckett’s drama?
  8. 20. Does Woolf's preoccupation with the subjective conscioussness of individuals in Mrs Dalloway undermine, or support, the book's cohesion?

Section C

Answers in this section should refer to two texts, each by a different author.

  1. 21. Discuss the part played by one of the following in two works, each by a different author: female sexuality; humour; chivalric or heroic codes.
  2. 22. Examine the representation and function of the underworld and/or hell in any two texts studied on the course.
  3. 23. Discuss the treatment of one of the following in two works, each by a different author:
  1. 24. Explore the themes of sin and reconciliation in two works, each by a different author.
  2. 25. ‘Realism is not a literary term applicable to writing up to Shakespeare’s time.’

Discuss in relation to two works, each by a different author.

  1. 26. Compare and contrast the portrayal of resourceful female characters in any two texts studied on the course.
  2. 27. Discuss the use made of one of the following in two works, each by a different author: disguise; soliloquy; magic.
  3. 28. Compare two course texts in which you have found the imagination to be pushed to its limits.