Comprehensive Examination
The comprehensive exam is administered twice each academic year, once in October and once in March. Normally, it will be undertaken in a student's final semester. At the beginning of each regular semester, the graduate director will invite students to register their intent to take the exam.
The entire exam will be based on a reading list of nine works, which can be found below. The exam consists of two parts: one short answer and more "objective" than the second part, which is an essay covering the three "periods" (pre- and post-1800 British literature, and American literature) and at least two genres. The first part of the exam will ask students to write a full paragraph on each of ten prompts that are taken from the texts (you'll have twelve to choose from). These might be concepts or characters, ideas or identifications, but all will derive from the nine texts. Likewise, the essay will require you to draw on selective works from this master list, and will require you to be conversant with the general, current critical conversation surrounding these texts.We encourage students to form and utilize study groups.
**2008/2009 Exam Dates**
Fall: Sat., October
25, 2008, 9-12 am, The Citadel, Bond Hall 251
Spring: Sat., March
21, 2009, 9-12 am, CofC (room tba)
Previous Exams: Fall 2004
Spring 2005 Fall 2005 Spring 2006 Fall 2006
Spring 2007 Fall 2007 Spring 2008
Reading List: Fall 2008 / Spring 2009
pre-1800 British:
- John Webster, The Duchess of Malfi
- Geoffrey Chaucer, “The Book of the Duchess”
- Daniel Defoe, Moll Flanders
post-1800 British:
- William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair
- Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead
- Seamus Heaney, selected poems:
“Digging”
“Death of a Naturalist”
“Blackberry Picking”
“Mid-Term Break”
“Requiem for the Croppies”
“Bogland”
“The Tollund Man”
“Punishment"
“The Skunk”
“Terminus”
“At Toomebridge”
“Electric Light”
American:
- Frederick Douglass, 1845 Narrative of the Life of Frederick
Douglass, a Slave, Told By Himself
- Emily Dickinson, selected poems:
“A narrow Fellow in the Grass”
“Apparently with no surprise”
“Because I could not stop for Death”
“The Brain – is wider than the Sky – “
“I cannot live with You – “
“I dwell in Possibility”
“I heard a Fly Buzz – when I died”
“I started Early – Took my Dog –“
“I taste a liquor never brewed”
“My Life had stood – a Loaded Gun”
“One need not be a Chamber – to be Haunted – “
“The Soul selects her own Society”
“There’s a certain Slant of Light”
“This was a Poet – It is That”
“Title divine – is mine!”
“Wild Nights – Wild Nights”
- Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried