Post on 01-Jan-2017
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Master of Arts in English
Comprehensive Exam Study Guide
and Reading List
During the comprehensive exam, students will respond to questions drawn from the following
areas of English Studies:
Rhetoric and Writing
The History of Rhetoric
Teaching Composition
Theory
Theory
Literature
American Literature to the Civil War
American Literature from the Civil War to the Present
British Literature of the Middle Ages
British Literature of the Early Modern Period
British Literature of the 18th and 19th Centuries
World Literature
When registering for ENG 697 or ENG 698, students will consult with their directors and
readers, and with the approval of their directors and readers, students will identify three different
subtopics from the areas above.
Students can select no more than two subtopics from a single area. For example, a student might
choose World Literature, The History of Rhetoric, and Teaching Composition, but a student
could not choose, World Literature, American Literature to the Civil War, and British Literature
of the 18th and 19th Centuries.
The exam itself will include two questions for each of the three areas of interest chosen by the
student. Students will have the option of writing on one of the two questions that appear in each
section of the exam. Each of the exam periods will be two hours long. The first exam period runs
from 8:00 am to 10:00 am. The second exam period: 10:30 am to 12:30 pm. Students will have
90 minutes for lunch. The third exam period runs from 2:00 pm to 4:00 pm. Exams will take
place in one of the second floor, Orr Center computer labs. If they choose to do so, students may
take blank paper and pens or pencils into the exam rooms to help them brainstorm and outline
responses. No other materials, including books and notes are permitted in the exam room.
Students are not permitted to access the internet during the exam.
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Students will access the exams through their course Blackboard sites. The Blackboard sites will
use the Respondus Lockdown Browser feature to prevent access to the internet. The exams will
be available on a timed basis, meaning they must be completed during the time assigned to work
on them. Students will not be able to go back and work on the question from the first exam
period, for example, after 10:00 am.
Thoughtful response to each exam question should be at least 1500 words.
Students will be provided with a blank flash drive to save backup their work.
The exam will be completed approximately one-third of the way through the 15-week Fall,
Spring, or Summer semester in which the student is enrolled in ENG 697 or ENG 698. Exam
dates for the 2015-2016 through 2019-2020 academic years are as follows:
Fall 2015: Sat. 09/26 Spring 2016: Sat. 02/13 Summer 2016: Sat. 06/11 Fall 2016: Sat. 09/24 Spring 2017: Sat. 02/11 Summer 2017: Sat. 06/10 Fall 2017: Sat. 09/23 Spring 2018: Sat. 02/10 Summer 2018: Sat. 06/09 Fall 2018: Sat. 09/22 Spring 2019: Sat. 02/09 Summer 2019: Sat. 06/08 Fall 2019: Sat. 09/21 Spring 2020: Sat. 02/15 Summer 2020: Sat. 06/13
The exam will be graded by the three committee members (the Director and the two Readers) of
the student’s final project. If the student passes the exam, he or she will be given approval to
begin work on the portfolio or thesis.
The exam will be graded on a pass/fail basis. If a student does not pass the exam, he or she will
meet with the Director and the two Readers of his or her committee, and set a date for the student
to take a second comprehensive exam. This date should be approximately five weeks after the
date of the first exam, but if the Director of the MAE Program, the Director and Readers of the
student’s project, and the student agree, a different date can be set. However, if the student does
not take the second exam by the end of the semester in which he or she is enrolled in ENG 697
or ENG 698, then a grade of “IP” or “In Progress” will be recorded and the student will need to
re-enroll for one additional semester in ENG 697 or ENG 698. Regardless of the date of the
second exam, when the student passes it, he or she will then be given approval to begin work on
the thesis.
If the student does not pass or for any reason does not take the second comprehensive exam, a
grade of "F" will be recorded for the course, and the student will be dismissed from the MAE
program.
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MAE Comprehensive Exam
Reading List
THE HISTORY OF RHETORIC
Those works listed as appearing in The Rhetorical Tradition can be found in:
The Rhetorical Tradition: Readings from Classical Times to the Present. 2nd ed. Eds.
Patricia Bizzell and Bruce Herzberg. Boston: Bedford, 2001.
Anonymous. Dissoi Logoi. The Rhetorical Tradition. 47-55.
Anonymous. Rhetorica ad Herennium, Book IV. The Rhetorical Tradition. 243-82.
Aristotle. The Art of Rhetoric.
Aspasia. “Plato, from Menexenus,” “Cicero, from De Inventione,” “Athenaeus, from
Deipnosophistae,” and “Plutarch, from Lives.” The Rhetorical Tradition. 56-66.
Augustine. On Christian Doctrine, Book IV. The Rhetorical Tradition. 450-85.
Burke, Kenneth. from Language as Symbolic Action. The Rhetorical Tradition. 1340-47.
Burke, Kenneth. “Part I: The Range of Rhetoric.” A Rhetoric of Motives. University of California
Press, 1969. 3-48.
Cicero. De Inventione.
Cicero. De Oratore.
Cicero. Orator.
Fish, Stanley. “Rhetoric.” The Rhetorical Tradition. 1605-27.
Gorgias. Encomium of Helen. The Rhetorical Tradition. 42-46.
Isocrates. Against the Sophists. The Rhetorical Tradition. 67-74.
Isocrates. Antidosis.
Longinus. from On the Sublime. The Rhetorical Tradition. 344-58.
Plato. Gorgias, and Phaedrus. The Rhetorical Tradition. 80-168.
Quintilian. from Institutes of Oratory. The Rhetorical Tradition. 359-428.
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Teaching Composition
HISTORY OF RHETORIC AND COMPOSITION
Reynolds, Nedra, Jay T. Dolmage, Patricia Bizzel, and Bruce Herzberg. “A Brief History of
Rhetoric and Composition.” The Bedford Bibliography for Teachers of Writing. 7th ed.
Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2011. 1-17.
HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY
Berlin, James A. Rhetoric and Reality: Writing Instruction in American Colleges, 1900-1985.
Carbondale: SIUP, 1987. Chapters 2, 3 (pp. 53-57), 4, and 7.
HISTORY OF THEORY AND PEDAGOGY
Connors, Robert J. Composition-Rhetoric: Backgrounds, Theory, and Pedagogy. Pittsburgh:
University of Pittsburgh Press, 1997. Chapters 1, 3, and 4.
THEORY AND PEDAGOGY
from Cross-Talk in Composition Theory: A Reader. Ed. Victor Villanueva. National Council of
Teachers of English (NCTE).
Berlin, James. “Rhetoric and Reality in the Writing Class.”
Bertoff, Ann. “Is Teaching Still Possible: Writing, Meaning and Higher Order
Reasoning.” 309-24.
Bruffee, Kenneth. “Collaborative Learning and the ‘Conversation of Mankind.’” 395-
416.
Emig, Janet. “Writing as a Mode of Learning.” 7-16.
Flynn, Elizabeth. “Composing as a Woman.” 581-96.
Lunsford, Andrea. “Cognitive Development and the Basic Writer.” 279-90.
COGNITIVE THEORY AND DEVELOPMENTAL WRITING PEDAGOGY
Shaughnessy, Mina. P. Errors and Expectation: A Guide for the Teacher of Basic Writing.
Oxford University Press, 1979. Chapters 1, 4, and 8.
EXPRESSIVIST THEORY AND DEVELOPMENTAL WRITING PEDAGOGY
Elbow, Peter. Writing Without Teachers. 2nd ed. Oxford University Press, 1998.
FEMINIST THEORY AND PEDAGOGY
Miller, Susan. “The Feminization of Composition.” Feminism and Composition: A Critical
Sourcebook. Eds. Gesa E. Kirsch, Faye Spencer Maor, Lance Massey, Lee Nickoson-
Massey, and Mary P. Sheridan. Bedford/St. Martin’s Press, 2003.
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INTERDISCIPLINARITY, SITES, ESL, WAC, WID
from Exploring Composition Studies: Sites, Issues, Perspectives. Eds. Kelly Ritter and Paul Kei
Matsuda. Boulder: Utah State University Press, 2012.
Addler-Kassner, Linda, and Susanmarie Harrington. “Creation Myths and Flash Points:
Understanding Basic Writing through Conflicted Stories.” 13-35.
Donahue, Christiane. “Transfer, Portability, Generalization: (How) Does Composition
Expertise ‘Carry’?” 145-66.
Downs, Doug, and Elizabeth Wardle. “Reimagining the Nature of FYC Trends in
Writing-about-Writing Pedagogies.” 123-44.
Estrem, Heidi, and E. Shelly Reid. “Writing Pedagogy Education: Instructor
Development in Composition Studies.” 223-40.
Gunner, Jeanne. “Scholarly Positions in Writing Program Administration.” 105-22.
Hawisher, Gail E. and Cynthia L. Selfe. “Studying Literacy in Digital Contexts:
Computers and Composition Studies.” 188-98.
Matsuda, Paul Kei. “Teaching Composition in the Multi-Lingual World: Second
Language Writing in Composition Studies.” 36-51.
Peeples, Tim, and Bill Hart-Davidson. “Remapping Professional Writing: Articulating
the State of the Art and Composition Studies.” 52-72.
Yancey, Kathleen Blake. “Writing Assessment in the Early Twenty-First Century: A
Primer.” 167-87.
ASSESSING/RESPONDING TO STUDENT WRITING
Connors, Robert J. and Andrea A. Lunsford. “Teachers’ Rhetorical Comments on Student
Papers.” College Composition and Communication 44:2 (1993): 200-23.
Sommers, Nancy. Responding to Student Writers. Boston: Macmillan, 2013.
NCTE POSTSECONDAY POLICY STATEMENTS, RECOMMENDATIONS, AND
STANDARDS FRO WRITING PROGRAM ADMINISTRATION
“College.” NCTE. 2016. Web. 20 Jan. 2016.
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Theory
OVERVIEW
You might start by looking at one of these well-written, accessible overviews to literary theory:
Peter Barry, Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory.
(Manchester University Press, 2009)
Gregory Castle, The Literary Theory Handbook. (Wiley-Blackwell, 2013)
Jonathan Culler, Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2011)
Ann B. Dobie, Theory into Practice: An Introduction to Literary Criticism. (Wadsworth,
2014)
Terry Eagleton. Literary Theory, An Introduction.
Pelagia Goulimari Literary Criticism and Theory: from Plato to Postcolonialism (Routledge,
2015)
Steven Lynn. Texts and Contexts: Writing about Literature with Critical Theory. (Longman,
2010)
Robert Dale Parker. How to Interpret Literature: Critical Theory for Literary and Cultural
Studies. (Oxford, 2014)
Lois Tyson. Critical Theory Today: A User Friendly Guide. (Routledge, 2015)
In addition, you should be familiar with the following excerpts from canonical theoretical works.
Those works listed as appearing in Norton can be found in:
The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, 2nd ed. Gen. Ed. Vincent B. Leitch. New
York and London: W. W. Norton and Co., 2010 (2001).
NEW CRITICISM
Wimsatt, William K., Jr., and Monroe C. Beardsley. “The Intentional Fallacy,” and “The
Affective Fallacy.” Norton. 1230-61.
RACE
Achebe, Chinua. “An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.” Norton. 1610-
23.
Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. “Talking Black: Critical Signs of the Times.” Norton. 2427-38.
HISTORICISM
Greenblatt, Stephen. “Resonance and Wonder.” Norton. 2150-61.
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STRUCTURALISM
de Saussure, Ferdinand. from Course in General Linguistics. Norton. 845-66.
GENRE
Bakhtin, Mikhail. from Discourse in the Novel. Norton. 1072-106.
READER RESPONSE
Fish, Stanley. “Interpreting the Variorum.” Norton. 1970-92
SEXUALITY AND POWER
Foucault, Michel. “Panopticism.” Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Trans. Alan
Sheridan. New York: Vintage Books, 1979. 195-228.
Foucault, Michel. from The History of Sexuality, Vol 1, Introduction. “The Repressive
Hypothesis.” Norton. 1502-21.
GENDER
Butler, Judith. from Gender Trouble. Norton, 2536-53.
FEMINISM
Kolodny, Annette. “Dancing through the Minefield: Some Observations on the Theory, Practice,
and Politics of a Feminist Literary Criticism.” Norton. 2045-66.
NATIVE AMERICAN, MODELS OF INTERPRETATION
Allen, Paula Gunn, “Kochinnenako in Academe: Three Approaches to Interpreting a Keres
Indian Tale.” Norton, 2000-21.
PSYCHOLOGY
Lacan, Jacques. “The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I as Revealed in
Psychoanalytic Experience.” Norton. 1156-69.
MARXISM
Williams, Raymond. “Base and Superstructure,” and “Hegemony.” Marxism and Literature.
Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1977. 75-82 and 108-14.
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CANONICITY
Guillory, John. “Canonical and Noncanonical: The Current Debate” Cultural Capital: The
Problem of Literary Canon Formation. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago
Press, 1993. 3-82.
POST-MODERNISM
Hutcheon, Linda. “Theorizing the Postmodern: Toward a Poetics.” Poetics of Postmodernism:
History, Theory and Fiction. London: Routledge, 1988. 3-21.
POST-COLONIALISM
Said, Edward. from Orientalism. Norton. 1861-88.
WORLD LITERATURE
from World Literature: A Reader. Eds. Theo D’haen, César Domínguez, and Mads Rosendahl
Thomsen. New York and London: Routledge, 2013.
Zhang Longxi. “Toward Interpretive Pluralism.” 135 – 141.
Franco Moretti. “Conjectures on World Literature and More Conjectures.” 160-75.
David Damrosch “What is World Literature?” 198–206.
MATERIAL CULTURE
Freedgood, Elaine. “Introduction: Reading Things” The Ideas in Things: Fugitive Meaning in the
Victorian Novel. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2006. 1-29.
ANTI-THEORY
Christian, Barbara. “The Race for Theory.” Norton. 2126-37.
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American Literature to the Civil War
Anne Bradstreet
o “In Honour of that High and Mighty Princess Queen Elizabeth of Happy Memory”
o “The Author to Her Book”
o “Before the Birth of One of Her Children”
o “A Letter to Her Husband, Absent upon Public Employment”
“Upon the Burning of Our House”
o “In Memory of My Dear Grandchild Elizabeth Bradstreet”
Charles Brockden Brown, Wieland
Emily Dickinson
o Emily Dickinson: Selected Letters. Ed. Thomas H. Johnson. Belknap Press, 1986.
o from The Poems of Emily Dickinson. Ed. R. W. Franklin. Belknap Press, 2005.
“I’m ‘wife’”
“Safe in their alabaster chambers”
“Wild nights”
“There’s a certain slant of light”
“Some keep the Sabbath”
“This was a poet”
“I heard a fly buzz”
“I started early”
“The brain is wider”
“Tell all the truth”
“The Bible is an antique volume”
“My life closed twice”
Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Ralph Waldo Emerson
o from Nature
“Introduction”
Chapters 1-4
o “The American Scholar”
Fanny Fern, Ruth Hall
Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
Herman Melville
o Moby Dick
o Benito Cereno. Ed. Wyn Kelley. Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2006.
o Battle-Pieces and Poems and Aspects of the War: Civil War Poems.
Edgar Allan Poe
o “The Raven”
o “Ulalume”
o “Annabel Lee”
o “Israfel”
o “The Fall of the House of Usher”
o “The Philosophy of Composition”
o “The Poetic Principle”
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Lydia Huntley Sigourney
o “The African Mother at Her Daughter’s Grave”
o “The Deaf, Dumb, and Blind Girl of the American Asylum at Hartford, Connecticut”
o “To a Shred of Linen”
o “Niagara”
Henry David Thoreau
o from Walden
“Where I Lived, and What I Lived For”
“Economy”
“Spring”
Phillis Wheatley
o “To the Public”
o “On the Death of the Rev. Mr. George Whitefield”
o “On Being Brought from Africa to America”
o “To S. M., a Young African Painter, on Seeing His Works”
o “To his Excellency General Washington”
Walt Whitman, Song of Myself, (1855 ed.)
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American Literature
from the Civil War to the Present
E. L. Doctorow, The Book of Daniel
T. S Eliot, The Waste Land
Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises
Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
Henry James, The Ambassadors
Maxine Hong Kingston, The Woman Warrior
Robert Lowell, Poems (all in the Norton Anthology):
o “Skunk Hour”
o “For the Union Dead”
o “Mr. Edwards and the Spider”
o “Memories of West Street and Lepke”
N. Scott Momaday, The Way to Rainy Mountain
Eugene O’Neill, Long Day’s Journey Into Night
Wallace Stevens
o “Sunday Morning”
o “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird”
o “The Idea of Order at Key West”
o “Of Modern Poetry”
Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire
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British Literature of the Middle Ages
Not Available
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British Literature of the Early Modern Period
Thomas Dekker, The Shoemaker’s Holiday
Thomas Dekker, John Ford, and William Rowley, The Witch of Edmonton
John Donne
o Songs and Sonnets
o Holy Sonnets
Elizabeth I, “Armada Speech to the Troops at Tilbury, August 9, 1588”
John Foxe, Book of the Martyrs
Ben Jonson, Epicoene.
Christopher Marlowe, Tamburlaine the Great, Part I
Thomas Middleton, The Roaring Girl
John Milton, Paradise Lost
Philip Sidney, Astrophil and Stella
William Shakespeare
o Hamlet
o Measure for Measure
o Othello
o Twelfth Night
Edmund Spenser
o The Faerie Queene, Books I-III
John Webster, The Duchess of Malfi
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British Literature of the 18th and 19th Centuries
Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
o from Sonnets from the Portuguese
1: [I thought once how Theocritus had sung]
5: [I lift my heavy heart up solemnly]
6: [Go from me. Yet I feel that I shall stand]
7: [The face of all the world is changed, I think]
14: [If thou must love me, let it be for nought]
20: [Beloved, my Beloved, when I think]
22: [When our two souls stand up erect and strong’
26: [I lived with visions for my company]
28: [My letters! all dead paper, ... mute and white!]
35: [If I leave all for thee, wilt thou exchange]
38: [First time he kissed me, he but only kissed]
43: [How do I love thee? Let me count the ways]
44: [Beloved, thou has brought me many flowers]
o “The Cry of the Children”
o “The Lady’s Yes”
o “To Flush, My Dog”
Robert Browning
o “My Last Duchess”
o “Porphyria’s Lover”
o “Fra Lippo Lippi”
o “The Bishop Orders His Tomb at Saint Praxed’s Church”
o “The Pied Piper of Hamelin”
Lord Byron
o “And Thou art Dead, as Young and Fair”
o “Darkness”
o “Epistle to Augusta”
o “January 22nd, Missolonghi”
o “Love and Death”
o “Prometheus”
o “She Walks in Beauty”
o “So We’ll Go No More a Roving”
o “Stanzas for Music”
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
o “Rime of the Ancient Mariner”
o “Kubla Khan”
o “Christabel”
o “Frost at Midnight”
o “Dejection: An Ode”
Daniel Defoe, Moll Flanders
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Charles Dickens, Bleak House
Olaudah Equiano (Gustavus Vassa), The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah
Equiano, Chapters 1 and 2
George Eliot, Middlemarch
Eliza Haywood, Fantomina
John Keats
o “Ode to Psyche”
o “Ode to a Nightingale”
o “Ode to a Grecian Urn”
o “Ode on Melancholy”
o “Ode on Indolence”
o “To Autumn”
o “Bright Star”
o “Eve of St. Agnes”
o “La Belle Dame Sans Merci”
o “On First Looking into Chapman's Homer”
o “On Seeing the Elgin Marbles”
o “On Sitting Down to Read King Lear Once Again”
Mary Prince, The History of Mary Prince, A West Indian Slave, Related by Herself
Samuel Richardson. Pamela.
Percy Shelley
o “Ozymandias”
o “Stanzas Written in Dejection—December 1818, Near Naples”
o “Ode to the West Wind”
o “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty”
o “Mont Blanc: Lines Written in the Vale of Chamouni”
o “Music when Soft Voices Die (To --)”
o “Mutability” [The flower that smiles to-day]
o “Mutability” [We are as clouds that veil the midnight moon]
o “Ode to the West Wind”
o “To Wordsworth”
Jonathan Swift
o “The Lady’s Dressing Room”
o “A Modest Proposal”
Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest
William Wordsworth
o “Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802”
o “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud”
o “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, On Revisiting the Banks of the
Wye during a Tour. July 13, 1798”
o “Lines Written in Early Spring”
o “London, 1802”
o “Most Sweet it is”
o “Mutability”
o Preface to “Lyrical Ballads”
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World Literature
Anna Akhmatova, “Requiem”
Charles Baudelaire
o “The Flowers of Evil”
o “Correspondences”
o “To the Reader”
Jorge Luis Borges, “The Garden of Forking Paths”
Tadeusz Borowski, “To the Gas Ladies and Gentlemen”
Albert Camus, “The Guest”
Paul Celan
o “Deathfugue”
o “Shibboleth”
Anton Chekov, Lady with the Dog
J. M. Coetzee, Waiting for the Barbarians
Mahmoud Darwish
o “Identity Card”
Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from the Underground
Cristina Henríquez, The Book of Unknown Americans
Henrik Ibsen, Hedda Gabler
Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz
o “Reply to Sor Filotea de la Cruz”
Franz Kafka, “The Metamorphosis”
Sahar Khalifeh, Wild Thorns
Fatima Mernissi, Scheherazade Goes West
Shani Mootoo, Cereus Blooms at Night
Orhan Pamuk, Snow
Marcel Proust, from Swann’s Way, Part I: “Combray”
Salman Rushdie, Shalimar the Clown
Tayeb Salih, Season of Migration to the North
Wislawa Szymborska
o “The Terrorist, He Watches”
Dangarembga Tsitsi, Nervous Conditions
Gao Xiaolo, I am China
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SAMPLE
Master of Arts in English
Comprehensive Exam
Student Name
Course Number
Semester
Date
EXAM #1: The History of Rhetoric, 8:00 am to 10:00 am
Write a thoughtful, well-argued response (at least 1500 words) to ONE of the following
questions:
Each writer on the reading list below emphasizes one or more of the rhetorical canons
(invention, arrangement, style, memory, and delivery). Choose two writers and explain how
the canon/s they privilege help to shape their rhetorical theory. Compare and contrast the
writers’ theories. In what significant ways do their canonical emphases differ?
[On the actual MAE exam, you will have the option of choosing between two questions for
each area in which you take exams. Only one sample question for each area is included here
on the study guide.]
You are encouraged to take some time (no more than 20-30 minutes) to brainstorm and outline
your response before writing your formal answer. You are allowed to use pen or pencil and
paper, but no other materials, including books and notes are permitted in the exam room. You are
not permitted to access the internet during the exam.
You should submit your response through the Blackboard site. The exam is available on a timed
basis, meaning they must submit your response before 10:00 am. You may backup your work on
the flash drive you have been provided.
The Reading list for The History of Rhetoric includes the following texts:
Anonymous. Dissoi Logoi.
Anonymous. Rhetorica ad Herennium, Book IV.
Aristotle. The Art of Rhetoric.
Aspasia. “Plato, from Menexenus.”
Aspasia. “Cicero, from De Inventione.”
Aspasia. “Athenaeus, from Deipnosophistae.”
Aspasia. “Plutarch, from Lives.”
Augustine. On Christian Doctrine, Book IV.
Kenneth Burke. Language as Symbolic Action.
Kenneth Burke. “Part I: The Range of Rhetoric.” from A Rhetoric of Motives.
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Cicero. De Inventione.
Cicero. De Oratore.
Cicero. Orator.
Stanley Fish “Rhetoric.”
Gorgias. Encomium of Helen.
Isocrates. Against the Sophists.
Isocrates. Antidosis.
Longinus. On the Sublime.
Plato. Gorgias.
Plato. Phaedrus.
Quintilian. Institutes of Oratory.
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SAMPLE
Master of Arts in English
Comprehensive Exam
Student Name
Course Number
Semester
Date
EXAM #2: American Literature to the Civil War, 10:30 am to 12:30 pm
Write a thoughtful, well-argued response (at least 1500 words) to ONE of the following
questions:
Discuss how the cultural work performed by the concept of “an American literature” differs
today from the period roughly 1775-1860. Back up your generalizations by referring in some
detail to several literary works from that period, comparing the cultural work they were
understood to be performing then with the cultural work they might be expected to perform
today. Feel free to question the use of the definite article in the phrase “an American
literature.”
[On the actual MAE exam, you will have the option of choosing between two questions for
each area in which you take exams. Only one sample question for each area is included here
on the study guide.]
You are encouraged to take some time (no more than 20-30 minutes) to brainstorm and outline
your response before writing your formal answer. You are allowed to use pen or pencil and
paper, but no other materials, including books and notes are permitted in the exam room. You are
not permitted to access the internet during the exam.
You should submit your response through the Blackboard site. The exam is available on a timed
basis, meaning they must submit your response before 10:00 am. You may backup your work on
the flash drive you have been provided.
The Reading list for American Literature to the Civil War includes the following texts:
Anne Bradstreet
o “In Honour of that High and Mighty Princess Queen Elizabeth of Happy Memory”
o “The Author to Her Book”
o “Before the Birth of One of Her Children”
o “A Letter to Her Husband, Absent upon Public Employment”
“Upon the Burning of Our House”
o “In Memory of My Dear Grandchild Elizabeth Bradstreet”
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Charles Brockden Brown, Wieland
Emily Dickinson
o Emily Dickinson: Selected Letters. Ed. Thomas H. Johnson. Belknap Press, 1986.
o from The Poems of Emily Dickinson. Ed. R. W. Franklin. Belknap Press, 2005.
“I’m ‘wife’”
“Safe in their alabaster chambers”
“Wild nights”
“There’s a certain slant of light”
“Some keep the Sabbath”
“This was a poet”
“I heard a fly buzz”
“I started early”
“The brain is wider”
“Tell all the truth”
“The Bible is an antique volume”
“My life closed twice”
Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Ralph Waldo Emerson
o from Nature
“Introduction”
Chapters 1-4
o “The American Scholar”
Fanny Fern, Ruth Hall
Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
Herman Melville
o Moby Dick
o Benito Cereno. Ed. Wyn Kelley. Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2006.
o Battle-Pieces and Poems and Aspects of the War: Civil War Poems.
Edgar Allan Poe
o “The Raven”
o “Ulalume”
o “Annabel Lee”
o “Israfel”
o “The Fall of the House of Usher”
o “The Philosophy of Composition”
o “The Poetic Principle”
Lydia Huntley Sigourney
o “The African Mother at Her Daughter’s Grave”
o “The Deaf, Dumb, and Blind Girl of the American Asylum at Hartford, Connecticut”
o “To a Shred of Linen”
o “Niagara”
Henry David Thoreau
o from Walden
“Where I Lived, and What I Lived For”
“Economy”
“Spring”
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Phillis Wheatley
o “To the Public”
o “On the Death of the Rev. Mr. George Whitefield”
o “On Being Brought from Africa to America”
o “To S. M., a Young African Painter, on Seeing His Works”
o “To his Excellency General Washington”
Walt Whitman, Song of Myself, (1855 ed.)
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SAMPLE
Master of Arts in English
Comprehensive Exam
Student Name
Course Number
Semester
Date
EXAM #3: World Literature, 2:00 pm to 4:00 pm
Write a thoughtful, well-argued response (at least 1500 words) to ONE of the following
questions:
With reference to at least four theorists and two literary works, discuss the challenges of
defining world literature. What do you understand by the category of World Literature? What
are some of the arguments for and against it?
[On the actual MAE exam, you will have the option of choosing between two questions for
each area in which you take exams. Only one sample question for each area is included here
on the study guide.]
You are encouraged to take some time (no more than 20-30 minutes) to brainstorm and outline
your response before writing your formal answer. You are allowed to use pen or pencil and
paper, but no other materials, including books and notes are permitted in the exam room. You are
not permitted to access the internet during the exam.
You should submit your response through the Blackboard site. The exam is available on a timed
basis, meaning they must submit your response before 10:00 am. You may backup your work on
the flash drive you have been provided.
The Reading list for World Literature includes the following texts:
Anna Akhmatova, “Requiem”
Charles Baudelaire
o “The Flowers of Evil”
o “Correspondences”
o “To the Reader”
Jorge Luis Borges, “The Garden of Forking Paths”
Tadeusz Borowski, “To the Gas Ladies and Gentlemen”
Albert Camus, “The Guest”
Paul Celan
o “Deathfugue”
o “Shibboleth”
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Anton Chekov, Lady with the Dog
J. M. Coetzee, Waiting for the Barbarians
Mahmoud Darwish
o “Identity Card”
Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from the Underground
Cristina Henríquez, The Book of Unknown Americans
Henrik Ibsen, Hedda Gabler
Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz
o “Reply to Sor Filotea de la Cruz”
Franz Kafka, “The Metamorphosis”
Sahar Khalifeh, Wild Thorns
Fatima Mernissi, Scheherazade Goes West
Shani Mootoo, Cereus Blooms at Night
Orhan Pamuk, Snow
Marcel Proust, from Swann’s Way, Part I: “Combray”
Salman Rushdie, Shalimar the Clown
Tayeb Salih, Season of Migration to the North
Wislawa Szymborska
o “The Terrorist, He Watches”
Dangarembga Tsitsi, Nervous Conditions
Gao Xiaolo, I am China