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 will still be 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 exploit study groups.
Previous Exams: Fall 2004 | Spring 2005
Reading List: Fall 2007 / Spring 2008
pre-1800 British:
Pearl (Middle English) (Recommended Edition: The Poems of the Pearl Manuscript, ed. Malcolm Andrew and Ronald Waldron, Exeter Medieval Texts and Studies)
William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
John Dryden, Major Poetry (Recommended Editions: Dover Critical Edition, Penguin, or Oxford World’s Classics)
post-1800 British:
John Keats, Odes (Recommended Edition: The Major Works: Oxford World’s Classics)
Jane Austen, Emma
John Fowles, The French Lieutenant’s Woman
American:
Henry James, The Golden Bowl
Lorraine Hansberry, A Raisin in the Sun
Elizabeth Bishop, Major Poetry (Recommended Edition: The Complete Poems, 1927-1979)