Subject Code : | ENGL20023 |
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Answer one question only:
(1) In what ways does Mary Rowlandson’s captivity narrative provide todays readers with insights into the psychology and world view of the Puritans who settled in New England, including their views on the American landscape and Native Americans?
(2) Some critics argue that Mary Rowlandson’s narrative shows that the experience of being held captive by Native Americans had the effect of confirming her in her religious beliefs whereas others argue that there are signs that she was profoundly changed by her experience. Where do you stand on this question and why?
(3) In what ways do you think was the genre of the captivity narrative served to remind contemporaneous readers of their precarious situation in the new world as well as their natural rights and privileges as Christian believers? Discuss with reference to one or more captivity narratives that you have studied this semester.
(4) Some critics have seen Poe’s The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym as plumbing the very depths of the abyss, while others see it as a clever attempt to privilege high over popular art. Where do you stand in this debate and why?
(5) In his essay on Poe’s The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, Geoffrey Sanborn declares that “one of the functions of art is to help us remember what it is like to be born as a subject into a world of lines, shapes, colour, densities and positions – to return us to the simultaneously painful and pleasurable” confusion of the “I” and the “non-I.” In what ways do you think this statement of Sanborn’s can be applied to a reading of Poe’s novel?
(6) In what ways do you think, Poe’s The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym can be seen as reflecting contemporary 19th-century American ideas about slavery and race?
(7) In what sense do you think Hawthorne’s heroine Hester Prynne can be understood as a nineteenth century feminist as well as a seventeenth-century Puritan Heretic?
(8) Henry James, writing about The Scarlet Letter in 1879 says, “The faults of the book are, to my sense, a want of reality and an abuse of the fanciful element—of a certain superficial symbolism. The people strike me not as characters, but as representatives, very picturesquely arranged, of a single state of mind; and the interest of the story lies, not in them, but in the situation, which is insistently kept before us, with little progression, though with a great deal, as I have said, of a certain stable variation; and to which they, out of their reality, contribute little that helps it to live and move.” In your view, is this a fair assessment of the novella. Write an essay stating why you agree or disagree with James’s criticisms.
(9) In the Scarlet Letter Hawthorne not only criticises the excesses of his Puritan ancestors, he also exposes the hypocrisy of the Puritan Church and its leaders. Explain how he used both characters and symbols to achieve this result and whether gender also had a significant role.
(10) In what ways did Frederick Douglass’s “The Heroic Slave” reflect some of the author’s views concerning slavery and slave owners as these can be gleaned from his autobiographies and/or his speeches?
(11) “What are some of the strategies that Frederick Douglass used in “The Heroic Slave” to convert readers to the Anti-Slavery cause. And, in what ways, if any, do you think this story still seems relevant today?
(12) Compare the way Melville portrays the slave mutiny in Benito Cereno to the approach taken to the slave mutiny at the ending of Douglass’s The Heroic Slave? How do you account for these author’s different approaches? Your essay should address each writer’s racial backgrounds, respective aims, who they were writing for, the way each used historical sources and their narrative strategies.
(13) “At the back of the drama played out between Delano, Benito Cereno and Babo in Benito Cereno is a subtle but powerful critique not just of American imperialism but the naïve and sentimental approach to Africans and slavery.” Discuss.
(14) Tawil notes that Melville was fascinated by silence and that silence is everywhere in Benito Cereno. Write an essay on the different ways in which silence features in the novella and why you think Melville placed so much emphasis on it.
(15) As a natural philosopher, Thoreau’s overriding interest in Walden Pond is that it carries multiple and complex symbolic meanings. Based on your reading of Walden, what in your view are some of these meanings and what do they tell us about his view of Nature?
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