Due: Tuesday, June 5 by 6pm in my office (E&T A608) or department mailbox (E&T A637)
You have as much time as you like to think about your responses to the following questions. Before starting the exam, take a look at the passages referred to in the first question. When you are ready to begin your response, try to limit yourself to the suggested times. You can use more time if you wish, but you should also be able to complete the tasks in the time suggested. You can use the texts, but try not to get distracted form the task of writing by needless searching after quotes. The page lengths are suggestions only and intended to give you a sense of the minimally adequate and the excessive (i.e. if your response to the first question is either one page or six pages then you are probably doing less or more than necessary).
Part I: Approximately 60 minutes
Write a response of about 3-4 handwritten pages (2-3 pages word-processed) to the following:
Compare Satan's soliloquy in Book 4 (lines 32-113) to Adam's soliloquy in Book 10 (lines 706-844). What are the important similarities and differences? What do these similarities and/or differences suggest about the important themes of Paradise Lost?
Part II: Approximately 75 minutes
Write a response of about 4-5 handwritten pages (3-4 pages word-processed) to the following:
As we have seen this quarter, a recurring issue in British literature is the relationship between pride and humility. Individual ambition has been both celebrated and chastised, rewarded and punished, sometimes in the same text. Compare one of the main texts studied before the midterm (Beowulf, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, or The Canterbury Tales) with one of the main texts studied after the midterm (Doctor Faustus, Henry V, or Paradise Lost) and explain what role ambition plays in each text and what the treatment of ambition suggests about attitudes towards pride and humility.