ENG 334: Final Questions

Directions: For each of the following questions, prepare a brief outline (one-page maximum).  You may write out a short argument, organize sections, and you should include some brief quotations to support your claim (you will not be allowed to use your books on the exam).

Close reading of these passages will be your main evidence in support of your argument.  I encourage you to sketch out a rough order to structure your response.  The final, written answer should be 2-3 typed pages (you may bring a computer to class).

For each question, please read just one text, and please do not repeat texts among

The final exam will require you to answer just one of these questions:

1.  Recall our “approach” to tragedy and argue that one of our short lyric poems can be interpreted as a tragedy in small.  In other words, in what ways does a defeated or otherwise “fallen” speaker reveal impossibly contradictory 17-century cultural values?

2.  Several texts we have read grapple with the difficulty of upholding one’s “vocation” (understood in the specifically Protestant sense of the concept).  Choose one text, and argue that over its course a character or speaker discovers or asserts for him or herself a “purpose,” whether in God’s eyes, in the context of a specific social value, or within an identified cultural context (political, educational, romantic, etc.).

3.  Choose one text and argue that it somehow asserts an important idea about the capacities of art or artistry.