Appendix 2: Examiners’ report 2010

Advice to candidates on how Examiners calculate marks

It is important that candidates recognise that in all papers, three questions should be answered in order to get the best possible mark (ensuring that the rubric for the paper has been followed accordingly).

Examiners follow a simple mathematical formula when awarding a final overall mark: they give each answer a mark out of 100 (up to three answers only, as required by the exam paper); they then total all available marks; and finally they divide the total by three, thus giving an average overall mark.

So, if your first answer is given 57%, your second answer is given 56%, and your third answer 50%, then the calculation will look like this:

57 + 56 + 50 = 163

163 ÷ 3 = 54.3

Overall mark: 54%

Two good essays and no third essay will always bring the mark down. So, if in the example above a third answer was not given, the calculation would look like this:

57 + 56 = 113

113 ÷ 3 = 37.6

Overall mark: 38%

In this case, even if the candidate had written a ‘poor’ third answer getting a mark of 40% their overall mark would be higher than not attempting an answer at all:

57 + 56 + 40 = 153

153 ÷ 3 = 51

Overall mark: 51%

Note in the example above how the 40% mark, while low, still enables the candidate to achieve an overall mark in the Lower Second category, which is in keeping with their first two marks of 57% and 56%. Not answering a third question would see the candidate lose considerable marks and drop two whole classes. It could also mean the difference between a pass and a fail.

Candidates are thus strongly advised to give equal attention across the paper, plan their time accordingly, and attempt to provide three answers of roughly the same length and as full as possible. Candidates are also reminded that it is totally unnecessary to copy out the question again into the answer book; a question number in the margin is sufficient enough, and this will also save valuable minutes.

General remarks

The Moderns course covers twentieth-century literary movements and the intellectual contexts of both modernism and postmodernism, and requires candidates to demonstrate a detailed knowledge of both in their answers as well as to show an ability to read texts very closely. The exam questions are designed to elicit responses that ask candidates to recognise, describe and analyse a range of genres including poetry, prose and drama. Candidates are asked to be attentive to ways in which specific features of the modern are manifested in crucially different ways across a range of texts. In addition to showing a thorough knowledge of modern literary movements, candidates are expected to carry out close textual reading thus demonstrating a facility with critical terminology and concepts relevant to the two major literary movements of the period, modernism and postmodernism. Candidates’ responses are not expected to rest upon extensive plot descriptions or summaries of narrative or to offer a biographical account of the writer’s life but rather to balance nuanced and detailed close readings with relevant contextual information that illuminates ideas of what constitutes the modern.

A number of questions on the paper require candidates to show detailed knowledge of a range of issues that might affect literary text, including questions of race, nation, class, gender and sexuality, and the ways in which these radically shifted during the modern period. Candidates are additionally required to be aware of the complex relationship between form and content in their answers and not to over-emphasise one at the expense of the other.

Answers to questions in Sections B and C required a capacity to move between broader considerations of the contextual to a consideration of the particulars of individual texts that articulate a diversity of aesthetic responses to the idea of the modern. In general, weaker responses over all three sections had a tendency to address the questions in an over-literal manner, describing literary movements and using critical terms as if they were immovable and unchanging concepts that can be transferred unproblematically between all modern writers and texts. The most insightful and successful answers were those that carefully considered the philosophical implications of language as an increasingly beleaguered system that was becoming ever more unstable in its ability to describe the modern world.

Overall, responses to the questions on the Moderns examination paper covered a wide selection of answers which, while varying significantly in academic ability, expression and relevance of content, all showed that candidates had engaged with key issues on the course as a whole. Responses in Section A demonstrated that the number of candidates choosing the Beckett, Yeats and Faulkner passages was approximately equal, fewer chose the Pirandello extract and despite there being no response to the Levertov poem, there seemed no overall preference for prose over poetry or vice versa. In Section A, candidates need to remember to consider very carefully the question of what is distinctively ‘modern’ about the passages and not to simply write what they know about the author or the modernist or postmodernist movements in ways that are not closely connected to the specific passages. Similarly, answers are not expected to give a lengthy account of the kinds of critical approaches one might take in answering the question.

Candidates are asked to remember in all sections of this paper that a very focused and detailed response to literary analysis is required and not a generalised and digressive approach that risks losing sight of specific textual and aesthetic issues. Answers should remain as closely engaged as possible to the relevant themes and issues emerging from their study of the literature and contexts of the modern period. The choice of primary texts to consider in responses is crucial in Sections B and C. It seemed, at times, that candidates chose inappropriate texts in their responses which inevitably compromised the relevancy and accuracy of answers and produced answers that seemed ill-fitted to the question. As always, candidates are reminded that Examiners look for well-structured, critically informed and engaging answers to the questions and reward those that succinctly and precisely argue their points with appropriate reference to a range of material relevant to the question. Responses that refer to irrelevant issues and topics are inevitably less successful than those that keep the focus of the response tightly drawn and do not adopt a rambling and digressive approach. Candidates are also reminded of the importance of a clear prose style, organised structure and legible handwriting.

Section A

Candidates chose between five extracts from a range of writers taking in both the modernist and postmodernist period of the ‘modern’: Samuel Beckett, Luigi Pirandello, William Faulkner, Denise Levertov and W.B. Yeats. Each of the five passages had a diverse range of aesthetic features that were clearly and distinctively modern ranging from narrative point of view, temporal schema, metre, repetition and circularity. The texts chosen in this section also covered a range of philosophical and intellectual issues around language, subjectivity and memory that should have prompted detailed considerations of this in the candidates’ answers. The most successful responses among these answers were those that very carefully followed the rubric, paying equal attention to text and context; that is, to technical aspects of the writing as well as to the broader questions of modernism or postmodernism. It was notable that responses to the Yeats poem ‘The Second Coming’ seemed rather reluctant to tackle the formal aspects of the poetic form. Close attention to form in poetry or prose, is, of course, essential in this section and it was striking to note that across the responses such attention often elevated somewhat average responses to a more sophisticated reading, showing an in-depth knowledge of literary terminology lacking in more general responses.

Question 1

Passage a

This relatively short but complex extract from Beckett’s Molloy required very careful attention to the place of the narrative ‘I’ and the changed notion of place in the text as this is crucial to identifying the distinctively ‘modern’ aspects of the writing. This was noted by most candidates who chose this passage but the most successful answers were those that made careful connections between this disappearing or wavering sense of subjectivity to broader intellectual and aesthetic concerns of the period taking in questions of memory, language and religion. In responding to Beckett’s prose here, candidates should pay attention to the use of vernacular or ‘non-literary’ language.

Passage b

Most of the responses to the Yeats poem ‘The Second Coming’ noted the crucially important line ‘Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold’ as central to a discussion of the poem’s essentially modern aspects. Some responses noted that this may be an example of what might be called ‘prophetic’ poetry and that it is firmly located in its fractured post-war (or interwar) period in which the role of religion was being called into question. Candidates were mostly aware of the Biblical and apocalyptic aspects evident in the poem’s imagery and were able to usefully link this to the urgency of the historical context.

Passage c

This extract from Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury has some continuities with the Beckett passage in that the narrating ‘I’ is problematic when read in earlier realist ways and all responses needed to note the dramatically altered role of the narrative voice. Less successful answers attempting this question noted the temporal disruption of the text but did not always make connections between this disruption and some of the wider concerns of Anglo-American modernism. Some mention of Henri Bergson’s notion of duration would be very useful here. This is pointed to by the contrast between the mechanical time of the ticking clock that Quentin views as the ‘reducto absurdum of all human experience’ and the natural time suggested by the presence of sunlight and shadow in the room. Responses also needed to elucidate the image of the crucified Christ in this passage and what this might mean in a wider context.

Passage d

This extract was taken from Pirandello’s most well-known work Six Characters in Search of an Author. The most successful answers correctly identified the self-consciousness expressed in the dialogue and the fact that the author – or more precisely here, the playwright – has a dramatically diminished role in the production of textual meaning. This shifting role of the writer points to Roland Barthes’ idea of the ‘death of the author’ that candidates may be familiar with from the course. Almost all candidates who chose this passage noted this aspect of self-consciousness as a significant feature of postmodernist literature but the more sophisticated answers took this further and broke down the category of postmodernism. Candidates whose answers focused on the inadequacy of language to fully and meaningfully articulate human experience presented some of the more successful responses to this passage.

Passage e

There were no responses about this passage.

Section B

The rubric very clearly states that answers in this section must refer to at least two texts by any one writer. While the vast majority of candidates did fulfil this requirement, it was very noticeable that a few answers tended to focus very much more abundantly on one of the two texts. Candidates should note that very limited reference to one of the texts is a serious weakness (bordering on rubric violation in some cases) that candidates should do their utmost to avoid.

Question 2

This question was answered by a few candidates but with varying degrees of success. The best answers paid close attention to the idea of the unreliability of memory rather than focusing on the idea of the artistic imagination. Those addressing the issues of memory and writing correctly identified this relationship as central to many aspects of the modern period. Less successful answers chose inappropriate writers to illustrate their answer and were not as attentive as they could have been to the questions of the subjectivity that is suggested by the quotation from Freud. Ways of tackling this question might have included a consideration of personal memory in relation to national and cultural memory central to postcolonial texts by writers such as Rushdie and Marquez. A consideration of memory in modernist writers like Proust, Woolf, Eliot or Joyce clearly needed some reference to Bergson. Another approach again might consider memory and disruption, for instance in the representation of Septimus Smith’s ‘shellshock’ in Mrs Dalloway.

Question 3

This question asked for a critical consideration of the relationship between myth and primitivism. Answers varied greatly in quality with the best responses offering good examinations of poetry by T.S. Eliot and prose by D.H. Lawrence. A successful answer would very carefully define and delineate precisely how both terms have been understood over the course of the period covered by this unit. For example, myth can be located in the work of modernist writers such Joyce, Eliot and Pound but a meticulous answer would pay attention to the crucially different ways in which these writers use myth and/or the primitive in their writing. A fully successful answer would refer to the question of temporal and cultural continuity as well as to discontinuity, fragmentation societal change and the ways in which myth and the primitive can be mobilised in order to articulate the anxieties and concerns of the present. Responses could have also looked at the ways in which postcolonial, African-American and feminist writers have played with mythology to subvert dominant ideological narratives of patriarchy and colonialism.

Question 4

This question asked for an assessment of time and was popular among candidates eliciting a wide variety of responses both in the texts chosen and in the quality of the arguments provided. As always, the best answers moved beyond the generally descriptive and summarising approaches that tarnish many answers to this question. The best answers considered ‘why’ rather than simply ‘how’ writers articulated changing notions of time in their work. Candidates are again reminded to avoid summarising the plots of novels in their answers. Most answers referred to Henri Bergson and his notion of duration. Most responses correctly identified Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway, The Waves and To the Lighthouse as examples of modernist ‘time’ novels as well as to Joyce’s Ulysses. Elsewhere candidates commented on The Waste Land. An insightful answer might also consider the ways in which time might function in different ways for feminist or postcolonial writers in their efforts to re-write or write back to history.

Question 5

There were no responses to this question.

Question 6

This proved to be a very popular question but also one that had the widest discrepancy in the quality of responses. Exmainers rewarded those answers that correctly identified the main issues of the question: the difficulty of language and its increasingly complicated relationship to ‘reality’. The best responses considered the movement form realism to modernism and an anti- or non-realism in modern literature. It was imperative in this answer that candidates differentiated very clearly between modernist and postmodernist texts and that they understood what is at stake as the notion of ‘reality’ shifts within a changing cultural context. The best kind of responses might offer an insight into not only ‘how’ realism was challenged but also into ‘why’ this challenge occurred at a particular juncture in history. Again, any consideration of the representation of ‘reality’ in literary texts was most successfully carried out when detailed and well-structured answers gave a nuanced critical consideration to both the form and the content of an individual writer’s works.

Question 7

This was a very popular question. Candidates were asked to give a critical account of rupture and shock in modern writing. The key word here is, of course, critical and the best answers were rewarded for their ability to discuss these themes in a nuanced and structured way that demonstrated fluency with relevant critical terminology and intellectual concepts. Many responses referred to Woolf but there was a diverse range of texts and writers chosen in the responses to this question. As usual, the least successful answers were wholly descriptive, mainly consisted of summaries of novels or were unfocused and ill-organised in their consideration of the issues. The Examiners preferred responses that specifically addressed the question set and not those that were clearly attempting to realign the question to fit a previously prepared answer. Structured, clear arguments demonstrating confident use of primary and secondary texts to examine the nature of shock and rupture of the ‘modern’ were most rewarded by the Examiners.

Question 8

This question on the changing role of sexuality in modern literature was a very popular choice for candidates. It was not, however, always tackled successfully. This question elicited many responses that focused on plot summaries and character studies. Candidates are again reminded that it is important to provide analysis and not description in their answers and to avoid sweeping and very general statements that are not useful in literary criticism. The treatment of sexuality needs to be considered in informed and nuanced ways and needs to refer at some point to the groundbreaking work of Sigmund Freud and the relationship between sexuality and literature.

Question 9

In this question, candidates were asked to consider the relationship between war and trauma in modern writing. Responses were generally competent but again needed to avoid merely describing and summarising to ensure that answers were relevant. Candidates are reminded of the importance of choosing appropriate texts to illustrate their answers. Most chose the example of Septimus Smith in Mrs Dalloway and these answers were rightly attentive to the breakdown of language within a broader context of post-war Europe. Those candidates that chose unsuitable texts in their responses inevitably compromised the relevancy and accuracy of their answers which in the end seemed very ill-fitted to the question.

Question 10

Prompted by a quotation by Michel Foucault considering the ideas of self-consciousness in modern writing, this question had no responses.

Question 11

This question asked candidates to consider the relationship between language, national identity and exile. The most successful answers picked up on the importance here of the word ‘national’ and clearly distinguished this from other notions of identity. Good answers correctly identified this relationship as manifested most urgently in postcolonial writing but modernist writers, such as Joyce and Beckett, could also have been used.

Section C

The rubric to this section requires that candidates’ answers refer to at least two different authors. Again, as in Sections A and B the choice of writers is crucial to providing a good response and it was striking that the less successful answers chose authors whose work was not the most relevant to the question.

Question 12

A quotation by Beckett prompted some good responses here that addressed the idea of subjectivity in modern writing and the place of the narrative ‘I’ in the text. The idea of the ‘self’ is an important one in the modern period and Examiners would look for detailed knowledge and analysis of the distinctive ways this issue is taken up in different writers. Candidates should be extremely careful not to repeat material from Section B in their answers here and they must use different authors in their answers. Beckett and Woolf were popular choices of writer as was Pinter.

Question 13

There were no responses to this question.

Question 14

A quotation by John Barth proved an extremely popular choice for this year’s candidates. This question called for a careful consideration of the aesthetic forms of modern literary text taking into careful and detailed consideration both modernism and postmodernism in the answer. The most accomplished answers began by providing extremely precise definitions of the two terms, suggesting that they are not always rigidly discrete entities but that a range of possible continuities exists between the two. The best answers clearly explicated the salient features of both terms and recognised the overlapping between them in modern writing such as Beckett’s drama and prose and Joyce’s Ulysses. An answer should avoid treating the terms as chronologically-based distinct aesthetic or cultural movements as this produces very literal and basic responses.

Question 15

In this very popular question candidates were asked to discuss the function of literary tradition in modern literature. A good answer would carefully define and delineate the idea of tradition before moving onto specific textual readings. Good examples of writers for this question might include modernist writers, such as Joyce, Eliot and Pound, and a diligent consideration would need to nuance the very different ways in which these writers choose to use tradition in their writing with some relevant examples. A competent answer would also refer to the question of temporal and cultural continuity as well as to discontinuity, fragmentation societal change and the role that these ‘older’ traditions can articulate the anxieties and concerns of the present.

Question 16

This question asks candidates to address a range of aspects of modern literature. The most popular choice of terms from the list was narrative self-consciousness followed by intertextuality. A successful answer to this question would entail a clear definition of the terms under consideration and Examiners would look for knowledge of not just how, but why, certain modes might be preferred over others at particular historical and philosophical moments. A consideration of what kinds of issues, either ideologically or aesthetically, are at stake in the various devices used in modern writing would be a good way of approaching this question.

Question 17

The most successful responses to this question on mass culture chose Eliot and Woolf in their answers. Examiners are looking for a good level of understanding of the changing place of mass culture in the twentieth century and how this was addressed and represented in modern literature. Candidates are again reminded of the importance of a consistently focused approach to their answers and to avoid an overly general discussion that is reliant upon a series of imprecise assertions about culture and literature.

Question 18

There were no responses to this question.