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. To what extent is Homer’s Odyssey characterised by a preoccupation with recurrence and return?
- 2. ‘Classical epic seems to be both fascinated and repulsed by physical violence.’
Discuss in relation to any one text of your choice.
- 3. Discuss the role of fate in Sophocles’ Antigone.
- 4. Why are fame and notoriety such prominent concepts in the Inferno, and how creatively does Dante incorporate them in the narrative?
- 5. Explore some of the ways in which Chaucer exploits the relationship between his teller and their tale.
- 6. Consider the ways in which pictorial effects are employed in the Metamorphoses.
- 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. What effects are achieved by the poetic patterning of Gawain and the Green Knight?
- 9. ‘Love links the everyday to the transcendent world.’ Discuss in relation to any one text of your choice.
- 10. How do Books I and II of Paradise Lost engage the reader’s interest in Milton’s religious themes?
- 11. Would you agree that the satire of The Rape of the Lock is directed more at poetic than social convention?
- 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.
- 13. Discuss Austen’s presentation in Emma of her protagonist’s growth in self-knowledge.
- 14. To what extent is Dickens a ‘sentimentalist’?
- 15. In what ways can A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man be described as ‘self-conscious’ in its narrative technique?
- 16. Investigate the significance of gender for the power-struggle of assertive minds in Strindberg’s Miss Julie.
- 17. How successfully does any one text that you have read engage with philosophical questions?
- 18. To what extent does Eliot’s poetry represent a successful marriage of thought and feeling?
- 19. ‘A tale told by an idiot…signifying nothing.’ How applicable is this comment to Beckett’s drama?
- 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.
- 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.
- 22. Examine the representation and function of the underworld and/or hell in any two texts studied on the course.
- 23. Discuss the treatment of one of the following in two works, each by a different author:
- • the supernatural
- • the passage of time
- • resentment.
- 24. Explore the themes of sin and reconciliation in two works, each by a different author.
- 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.
- 26. Compare and contrast the portrayal of resourceful female characters in any two texts studied on the course.
- 27. Discuss the use made of one of the following in two works, each by a different author: disguise; soliloquy; magic.
- 28. Compare two course texts in which you have found the imagination to be pushed to its limits.