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ENGL 270 American Literature | Gregory Eiselein | Fall 2002

Midterm Examination Review

The midterm exam will be 50 minutes long, and it will be worth 50 points. Please bring a blank blue book or blank loose-leaf paper (but no spiral notebook paper please) for your answers. You cannot use your books or your notes. There will be two parts to the exam.

Part 1. Identifications. This section will be worth 18 points. I will give you seven quotations or characters from texts we've read so far this semester. You will need to identify six of them by providing the name of the author, the title, and a brief explanation of the quotation's significance.

Part 2. Essay Questions. This section will be worth 32 points. I will provide you with two of the following questions. You will need to write an essay in response to one of the two.

1. In important respects, both Little Women and Winesburg, Ohio are narratives of development, maturity, growing-up, moving away from home, and beginning life as an adult. Compare the two books use of this theme. In what ways are they similar as narratives of growing up and getting out of the family home? In what ways are they different? What is important or meaningful about those similarities and those differences?

2. The Society for the Study of the Family has invited you to attend its annual meeting and deliver a talk on "Families in American Literature." Having just taken an American literature course in which you encountered different representations of families, you decide to accept the invitation. Write a letter accepting the invitation. In the letter outline the theme of your speech and give examples drawn from both Little Women and Winesburg, Ohio.

3. When Little Women and Winesburg, Ohio were first published, each was criticized on moral grounds. A critic for The Ladies Repository disapproves of Little Women because "it is not a Christian book. It is religion without spirituality, and salvation without Christ. It is not a good book for the Sunday school library." Likewise, The New York Evening Post described Winesburg, Ohio with terms such as "sordid," "unedifying," "distorted," "depressing," etc. (See the full review in the Norton Critical Edition of Winesburg, Ohio [page 164-65].) How would you respond to these critiques? In what way would you agree or disagree? What seems to make sense in these views? Where does the critic seem to miss something important? Where does your own view differ from the critics' views?

4. Both Little Women and Winesburg, Ohio feature an up-and-coming writer as a central figure. Compare the two author figures in these two narratives. How would you describe their place or function in the book? How are the figures similar? How are they different from each other? In what ways do their identities as writers play an important role in the overall narrative?

Note: While studying for this examination, please keep in mind that I am looking for your answers to be as specific as possible. Persuasive, informed use of concrete details selected from the works we studied will earn you a lot of points; vague generalizations will earn only a few.

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